nd I saw a bunch of the
boys out on their field after school yesterday, didn't we, Sandy?"

"That's right, we did. And I understand Belleville expects to put an
extra hard-hitting nine in the game this season. They're still sore
over the terrible drubbing Allandale gave them last summer."

"Since Scranton has now become a member of the Three-Town League,
taking the place of Lawrence when that nine dropped out, seems to me we
ought to lose no time if we expect to commence practicing. That same
Allandale team swept the circuit, you remember, like a hurricane."

"We've plenty of good material, fellows, believe me, right here in
Scranton High. And somehow I've got a hunch that we're going to make
even mighty Allandale take a tumble before the season gets old."

"Don't boast too soon, Eli Griffin. That's a wee Yankee trick you must
have inherited from your forebears."

"Easy for you to say that, Andy McGuffey. Why, you're a regular old
pessimist, like all your canny Scotch ancestors were. You love to look
at the world through smoked glasses. On my part, I prefer to use
rose-colored ones, and expect the best sort of things to happen, even
if I do get fooled lots of times."

A number of well-grown lads were perched in all sorts of grotesque
attitudes along the top rail of the campus fence. That same fence of
Scranton High was almost as famous, in its modest way, as the one at
Yale known throughout the length and breadth of the whole land.

It had stood there, repaired at stated and frequent intervals, for at
least two score of years. Hundreds upon hundreds of Scranton lads,
long since grown to manhood, and many of them gone forth to take their
appointed places in the busy marts of the world, kept a warm corner in
their hearts for sacred memories of that dear old fence. Many a
glorious campaign of sport or mischief had been talked over by a line
of students perched along the flat rail at the summit of that same
fence. More than one contemplated school mutiny had been hatched in
excited whispers amidst those never-to-be-forgotten historic
surroundings.

Why, when a few years back the unthinking and officious School
Directors voted to have that fence demolished, simply because it seemed
to be out of keeping with the grand new building that had been erected,
a storm of angry protest arose from students and parents; while letters
arrived from a score and more of eminent men who were proud to call
Scranton their