In his general point of view Marchmont differed wholly from the average Seatonian. He had no particular ambition, unless to get through school without being expelled, or to slip safely into college. He cared little about lessons, but much about the condition and the perfection of his attire. He had no interest in athletics except as a passing show; his notion of proper exercise was horseback riding and fencing. He could talk, when necessary, on almost any subject, but his favorite topics were automobiles, horse-races, and the theatre. While the democratic spirit of the school did not please him and he found few fellows wholly to his liking among his classmates, his chief grievances seemed to be the food served at his boarding-house, and the necessity of getting up for eight o’clock chapel. The first he tried to remedy by little messes prepared in his room on a chafing dish; the second, being irremediable, he had to endure. He was not popular, for his manners were too supercilious to please the average boy, who is instinctively democratic and always admires the fellow who can do something rather than the fellow who claims to be something; but in a certain small coterie he ranked as king.
Lindsay’s introduction to work in the gymnasium was a novel experience. Here he was stripped, weighed, measured in height, girth of limbs and chest; tested in strength of back and arms and legs. Later he was given a chart with his measurements and strength plotted in lines upon it, so as to show his relative condition compared with the average for his age; and a card with directions as to the particular exercise which he needed to develop his weaker parts. All this the boy took, as he took much that was new to him in the school, with curiosity and temporary interest.
There was one circumstance, however, in connection with the examination, that made a deeper impression. When the measurements and the testing were over, Mr. Doane asked, “Did you ever play football?”
A week before entering school Wolcott would have answered immediately “yes.” But he had heard so much, in the few days that he had spent at Seaton, of the hard games played, of the great contests with Hillbury about which the athletic life of the school centred, of the high standard of the school teams, and what “playing football” really meant to the Seatonian, that he had almost said “no.”