190 THE BOOK OF THE CLASS OF NINETEEN-ELEVEN
but I think that the people who show a good spirit in athletics will show it in everything
e'se, because in games you don’t show all that you may be, but rather, all that you are.
I fear that I am talking too long about basket-ball, for when our respected toast-
mistress asked me to speak, she said, “You needn’t talk about basket-ball; just talk
about anything you want.” I thought for a while of reading my political economy
report on the “Economic Importance of the Panama Canal.” With much stretching
it covered almost twelve cards, and was considered by the author quite a masterpiece.
Miss Parris wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about it as I was, so I decided not to read it.
Then I thought of my themes. I wrote one on Hockey in which I discussed the merits
of the game and some of its drawbacks; among the latter the danger of losing one’s wind.
Miss Ward crushed my budding genius by writing on the margin: “Hockey seems to have
left you enough wind to write five hundred words without stopping for a new paragraph.
Rewrite.” That squelch accounts for the fact that H. P. has not found in me a close
rival in her réle of guide, philosopher, and friend of the English department.
But to return to what a friend of mine calls “that execrated game.” I hope my digres-
sion has satisfied Miss Delano, for I have touched lightly upon economics, reports,
canals, themes, English readers, hockey, and English sharks—practically every side of
college life. I have not mentioned the Infirmary, the Students’ Building, Scientific
Management, nor yet Rush Night, or rather “Parade Night,” as there is a limit to the
capacity of one speech on basket-ball. But now at the end of Senior year, we can be
serious even about basket-ball. In the first place, I don’t feel as if I ought to be making
this speech at all, because Jeannette has really always been captain, and I’ve merely tried
to fill her position, but I never could take her place. Although we have never won a
basket-ball championship, we have had a good time playing, so let’s drink together to
the games we’ve won and the games we've lost.
Letra HovuGHre.ina.
