He tried to show that obviously uninterested mammoth that, like the
Hercules he so resembled, he stood at the parting of the ways.
"You are on the threshold of your college career, old man!" he thundered
impressively, though he might as well have tried to shoot holes in a
battleship with a pop-gun, "What you do now will make or break you. Do you
want the fellows as friends or as enemies; do you want comradeship, or
loneliness and ostracism? You have it in your power to do two
big things,
to win the Championship for your Alma Mater, and to win to yourself the
entire student-body, as friends; will you do that, and build a firm
foundation for your college years, or betray your Alma Mater, and gain the
enmity of old Bannister!"
Followed more fervid periods, with such phrases as, "For your Alma Mater,"
"Because of your college spirit," "For dear old Bannister," and "For
the Gold and Green!" predominating; all of which terms, to the stolid,
unimaginative Thorwald being fully as intelligible as Hindustani. They
appealed to him not to betray his Alma Mater; they implored him, for his
love of old Bannister; they besought him, because of his college spirit;
and all the time, for all that the Prodigious Prodigy understood, they
might as well have remained silent.
"I will tell you something," spoke Thor, at last, with an air of impatient
resignation, "and don't bother me again, please! I have come to Bannister
College to get an education, and I have the right to do so, without being
pestered.
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