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Updated: May 21, 2025
Some of the bigger boys in the back seats, cherishing pleasant memories of the "fun" they had under Miss Seabury's easy-going rule, attempted to repeat their performances of the previous term. But the very first "spitball" which spattered upon the blackboard proved a disastrous missile for its thrower.
"There were a lot of grand guys on that club: Christy Mathewson and Chief Meyers, Larry Doyle and Fred Snodgrass, Al Bridwell and Bugs Raymond. Bugs Raymond! Ah, yes! What a terrific spitball pitcher he was. Bugs drank a lot, you know, and sometimes it seemed like the more he drank the better he pitched.
Then a hush fell. The umpire had called for play. Dick let drive with his most tantalizing spitball. The leather fell down gracefully under the Wayland's batsman's guess, and Purcell mitted the ball. "Strike one!" A hopeful cheer went up from Gridley seats, to be met with one word from Wayland fans: "Wait!" Dick served the second ball. Swat! There it went, arching up in the air, a fair hit.
I started to school in Wales when I was four years old. By the time I was six I thought I knew more than my teachers. This shows about how bright I was. The teachers had forbidden me to throw paper wads, or spitballs. I thought I could go through the motion of throwing a spitball without letting it go. But it slipped and I threw the wad right in the teacher's eye.
This frieze was almost invariably composed of Estelle Foote, a successful rival in a class candidacy for the sponge-and-basin monitorship; Sydney Prothero, infallible of spitball aim; Miss Lare with her spectacles very low on her nose and a powdering of chalk dust down her black alpaca; Flora Kemble with infinitely fewer friendship bangles on her silver link bracelet; Roy Kemble, kissing her yellow, rather than yanking her brown, braids.
There was a general feeling that enjoyment was not the whole aim of education. "Betty," said Captain Dimick, referring to his small granddaughter, "has done fust rate so fur's marksmanship and lung trainin' goes. I cal'late she can hit a nail head ten foot off with a spitball three times out of four, and she can whisper loud enough to be understood in Jericho.
"Well, anyway, Dick," said Tom Reade, "you and Dave needn't feel too badly. If Ripley turns out to be the nine's crack pitcher, the nine also carries two relief pitchers. You and Dave have a chance to be the relief pitchers. That will make the nine for you both, anyway. But, then, that spitball may be the only thing Ripley knows." "Don't fool yourself," returned Prescott, shaking his head.
I told him it was an accident, that I had merely tried to play smart and had overreached myself. "Being smart is a worse fault," he said, "than throwing spitballs. I forgive you for throwing the spitball, but I shall whip the smart Aleckness out of you." He gave me a good strapping, and I went home in rebellion. I told my father. I wanted him to whip the teacher.
"Ball game!" repeated Ivy. "I? But I'd " "Yes, you do," interrupted her father. "You've been moping around here looking a cross between Saint Cecilia and Little Eva long enough. I don't care if you don't know a spitball from a fadeaway when you see it. You'll be out in the air all afternoon, and there'll be some excitement. All the girls go. You'll like it. They're playing Marshalltown."
That was all, but his defiant head and the laundress's chance knowledge of his Juvenile Court record did for him. At six o'clock that evening, with a five-dollar bill of which he made a spitball for the judge's departing figure down the station platform, he was shipped back to Hanscha. Secretly he was relieved. Life was easier in the tenement under the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge.
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