Frank Merriwell's Strong Arm: Saving an Enemy

In the sweet and balmy springtime the sedate senior’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of frivolity. All through the weary winter months he may have carried himself with the grave dignity that so well becomes a senior; but when the spring comes something stirs within him, and as the world turns green and the birds begin to twitter that something takes hold of him with a grip that makes him its servant. A strange sensation of restlessness pervades his entire being, running over his nerves like little electric thrills, setting his muscles itching, his heart throbbing, his whole body aching—aching to do something, anything, everything.

This is a very dangerous condition for a senior to fall into, and yet nearly all of them suffer from an attack of it. It drags them to the border-line of recklessness, and while it possesses them in all its awesome force, there is no desperate thing it might not lead them into. It even has the power to make them forget for a while that the whole world has its eyes fastened upon them.


There must be some vent for this spring-coltish feeling which assails the senior. Until he became a senior he could occasionally disport himself as a boy, but now for some months the burden of his exalted station in the world has roosted on his shoulders until it has become almost too heavy to bear. He longs to fling it off and be a boy again.

That’s it—that’s what ails the grave-faced senior when he feels that queer sensation running over the electric-wires of his body, which are known as the nerves. For the first time in life he realizes that his boyhood is slipping from him, and he makes a clutch at it to drag it back for one last look into its happy face before he is parted from it forever.

How sad a thing it is to part with boyhood forever; and yet how many do so without a sigh or a regret! It is only in after years that they wake up to understand how great was their loss. Some, well aware that the hour has come for boyhood to bid them farewell, turn to look after it fondly, even when their feet are set on the new road that manhood has led them into. Good-by, happy boyhood! this is the final parting; we shall never meet again. Of course, it’s a grand thing to be a man, but it’s only after we have become men that we realize how grand it was to be a boy.

The senior has been playing at being a man. He has carried a sober face, his manner has been sedate, and he has been very much impressed with his own importance. All this has begun to wear upon him, and with the awakening of spring he wakes up also to a knowledge of what is happening. By Jove! it’s a serious thing, after all, to permit boyhood to drift away without so much as a word of farewell. This hits him hard, and he suddenly stretches out his hands to that part of himself that he has so carelessly thrust aside.

Behold a lot of dignified Yale seniors wooing back their boyhood on a sunny spring day. You’d scarcely know them now. There in one group are Aldrich, who carried off the honors as a drum-major in the political rally last fall; Tomlinson, widely celebrated as a “greasy grind;” Browning, the laziest man on earth; Hodge, famous on the gridiron or the diamond, and Merriwell, famous the country over. And what are they doing?