Lowell University wasn’t one of those little colleges about which books for boys are often written, nor was it just a big college. It was the greatest University in the East. It had thousands of students and hundreds of teachers. It was a rich college with dozens of buildings. A great many hundreds of the boys who had been graduated from it, poor boys and rich boys and medium-fortuned boys, now held high positions in the big world outside.

Two of the boys who had attended school there years before and who had played on its athletic teams had become Presidents of the United States, and every year while these men were in the White House they came to attend the big football and baseball games, and acted just like boys again, while the games were going on at least. Other boys had been made members of the Cabinet and a great many had become Senators and Representatives in Congress while still others had become famous ministers, doctors and merchants.

The students were made up of sons of rich families and poor alike. Boys from the farms and from the city. Of those who were lucky in having rich fathers, there were quite a number at school every year. Some of them had finely furnished rooms, servants, automobiles and other things which a rich man’s son generally has, and it must be said that a great many, in fact, most of these boys developed into men of fine character and ability, and made their marks in the world.

A few thought they were better than those who didn’t have so much spending money, but they didn’t get very far or do so much in the world, either in school or after they got out.

The spirit of Lowell was democratic, and with the exception of these foolish fellows, the sons of the rich associated with the poor fellows, particularly where the honor and fame of the school were at stake.

The poor fellows associated with the rich boys whenever they got a chance. They lived in cheaper rooms and worked a little harder, because the bright boys soon figured out that they would have to hustle to keep up with the rich fellows.

Some of them worked during the vacations and earned enough money to keep them at school during the winter just as they do at other colleges, and some of them looked after furnaces around town, or waited on tables at the boarding houses and did other things to assure their schooling. Fully as many of the poor fellows who had been graduated had become rich and famous in life, and one of the two who had become President of the United States was a poor farmer’s boy.

The Faculty of the University wanted the students to mix with each other and didn’t want any difference to be shown between rich boys and poor, so they encouraged all athletic games, and this brought about exactly what they wanted. There is nothing like athletics to put boys on a common ground, and a fellow was always welcome to show what he could do.

They had a fine athletic association. The equipment was the best that money could buy. The best coaches in the world were secured to train the boys in the different sports, and everything was done in a business-like way. This made it possible to select the teams on merit alone.

Any fellow who thought he could do something in the line of college sports had only to report for a trial at the proper time, and at the place called for in the notice, and he was given a chance to show what he could do. The merit system picked him out and in that way the best possible team was secured. If he had done one thing better than some other fellow, he got the job, and he could keep it until some other fellow who could do it better turned up and pushed him out of the position.

If a fellow thought he could pitch he was given a chance to show what he could do before the coach who was engaged especially to try out the pitchers. If the coaches thought he “had it in him,” they would bring it out. Very often, some young fellow showed up who proved to be a wonder, and he got on the Varsity the first year.

This spirit attracted from all over the country boys who wanted to enter college. It made college life very attractive and more students came every year, and somehow Lowell University got more and more in the habit of having winning teams in most college sports. Likewise, it was usually Lowell boys who carried off the lion’s share of the Jerry Harriman Scholarships in baseball.

In baseball, Lowell had most always been the champion. Her basketball and hockey teams were only beaten when outlucked; her crew was beaten but twice in twenty years. Only in football did she seem to fall behind. Year after year she would get a team together that would win its way through the games with the other schools in the East, hardly ever scored against, only to fall before her old time rival college in the West in the final game of the year. This happened in spite of the fact that all of the cunning and ability of her coaches, captains and managers were used to get a team together that could beat Jefferson College.

But this past fall they had finally turned the trick against Jefferson and won for the first time in five years. Half-back last year and Captain and Half-back this year, good old Hughie Jenkins who had won the baseball Championship three times, had done it, and now he was back after the Christmas vacation, and when he had time to think about something besides his studies he would be thinking about baseball and the gaps in last year’s winner that would have to be filled because the old standbys like Fred Penny, Johnny King, Joe Brinker and others had been graduated.

“Well,” said Hughie one evening about the middle of January, to his roommate and chum, Johnny Everson, “I have about five weeks before the 15th of February to dream that the new fellows who think they can play ball are going to be as good as the old boys and I am going to have another winner this year, if—well, we just have to win the Championship this year, that’s all.”

Little did he know that among those who had seen him on the day he got back after the holidays, were almost a half dozen boys who had been in school only five months who would make the Varsity this year, and whose names would be written very near the top of the Roll of Honor in Lowell’s Hall of Fame, and that another fellow, one who was destined to be greater than all the rest, had not yet arrived.