Tramping on Life Part 96

philosophised "The Colonel"....

"Just what is it that you propose starting?" asked practical, pop-eyed Tom Jenkins.

"Oh, anything that will cause excitement!" waved Travers, serenely.

"If you boys really want some excitement ... and want to do some service for the community at the same time,--I've got a scheme to suggest ...

something I've been thinking over for a long time," suggested Jerome Miller, president of the club....

"Tell us what it is, Jerome!"

"The Bottoms ... you know how rotten it is down there ... n.i.g.g.e.r wh.o.r.ehouses ... every other house a bootlegger's joint ... blind pigs ... blind tigers, for the students....

"We might show up the whole affair....

"--how the city administration thrives on the violation of the law from that quarter ... how the present administration depends on crime and the whiskey elements to keep it in power by their vote....

"_That_ would be starting something!"

"I should say it would!" shouted Jack Travers, ablaze with enthusiasm.

"Then we might extend operations," continued the masterful, incisive Jerome, "and show up how all the drug stores are selling whiskey by the gallon, for 'medicinal' purposes, abusing the privilege of the law."

"But how is all this to be done?"

"Through the _Laurelian_?"

"No ... I have a better plan than that ... we might be able to persuade 'Senator' Blair and old Sickert, joint editors of the _Laurel Globe_, to let the Scoop Club run their paper for a day--just as a college stunt!"

"They'd never stand for it!" I averred, innocently.

"Of course they wouldn't--if we let them in on what we were up to!--for they are staunch supporters of the present administration--but they won't smell a rat till the edition is off the press ... and then it will be too late to stop it!"

"In other words," laughed Travers, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke from his nose, "they'll think they're turning over their paper, _The Globe_, to a bunch of boys to have some harmless fun ... a few soph.o.m.oric jokes on the professors, and so forth....

"And they'll wake up, to find we've slipped a real man-size sheet over on them, for the first time in local history!"

"It'll raise h.e.l.l's all I've got to say!" sagely commented the prematurely bald "Colonel," his eyes glinting merrily.

"It'll be lots of fun," remarked Travers, characteristically, "and I'm for it, lock, stock, and barrel."

"That's not the reason I'm for it; I'm for it for two reasons,"

reinforced Jerome Miller magisterially, "first, because it will put the Scoop Club on the map as something more than a mere college boys'

organisation; secondly, because it will lead to civic betterment, if only temporary--a shaking up where this old burg needs a shaking up ...

right at the court house and in the police station....

"But, make no mistake about it,--it's going to kick up a big dust!

"Also, remember, no one is going to stand by us ... even the Civic Betterment League, headed by Professor Langworth--your friend, Johnnie--will be angry with us--say our methods are too sensational.

"And the university authorities will say we shouldn't have done it because it will give the school a black eye ... it will be Ibsen's _Enemy of Society_ all over again!..."

Immediately some of our more conservative members set themselves against the "clean up" ... but Jack Travers and I delivered eloquent, rousing speeches. And the decision was more for full steam ahead.

"Senator" Blair was easily deluded, and persuaded to turn his paper over to us, for one day.

Our strong-featured, energetic president, Jerome Miller, together with the suave, plausible Travers, went to see him, deputation-wise, where he sat, in the Laurel _Globe's_ editorial office,--white and unhealthy-looking, a great, fat slug of a man, with the slug's nature, which battens on the corruption of earth.

He liked the idea of the publicity his paper would get through the stunt of the "boys." He did not guess the kind of publicity he would really come into.

During the three weeks that we had before we were to bring out the paper we grew quite proficient in the tawdry life lived in the "Bottoms."

We found out that most of the ramshackle "n.i.g.g.e.r" dives were owned by a former judge ... from which he derived exorbitant rents.

We located all the places where booze was sold, and ascertained exactly how much whiskey was disposed of in the town's drug stores for "snake bite" and "stomach trouble." We discovered many interesting things--that, for instance, "Old Aunt Jennie," who would allow her patrons any vice, but demurred when they took the name of "De Lawd" in vain--"Old Aunt Jennie" ran a "house" where the wilder and more debauched among the students came (in justice to Laurel University, let me add, very few) girls and boys together,--and stayed for the night--when they were supposed to be on trips to Kansas City....

Travers and "The Colonel" and I were half-lit for two weeks....

That was the only way to collect the evidence.

I drank but sparingly, as I loafed about the joints and "houses."

Jerome Miller did not drink at all ... and was the spirit and soul of our activities.

"Senator" Blair came out with a humorous editorial the night before we were to take the day's charge of his paper.

He headed his editorial "A Youthful Interim ... Youth Must Be Served!"

He was laying down his pen, he wrote, for a week-end holiday ... he had dug a can of bait and would go fis.h.i.+ng, turning all the care and trouble of a newspaper over to youth and eagerness ... would forgot all his troubles for a few days....

The editorial made us roar with laughter ... Blair didn't know the trouble that was preparing for him.

I wrote a poem for the Scoop Club Edition of the Laurel _Globe_ ...

"The Bottoms now I sing, where whiskey flows And two-cent makes life coleur de rose, Where negro shanties line the sordid way And rounders wake by night who sleep by day--"

By noon of the day, hints of what was coming were riding the winds of general report....

Carefully we read the proofs.

At last there it was--all the data, statistics, and details of the town's debauchery and corruption ... d.a.m.ning, in cold type, the administration, and the aquiescent powers in the university.