Produced by Janet Keller, D. Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
_Copyright, 1910, 1911,_ BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY.
_Copyright, 1911,_ BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
Printers S. J. PARKHILL & CO., BOSTON, U.S.A.
[Illustration: Twenty-five yards with four Muggledorfer men hanging on his legs FRONTISPIECE. _Page 19_]
Little did I think, during the countless occasions on which I have skipped blithely over the preface of a book in order to plunge into the plot, that I should be called upon to write a preface myself some day. And little have I realized until just now the extreme importance to the author of having his preface read.
I want this preface to be read, though I have an uneasy premonition that it is going to be skipped as joyously as ever I skipped a preface myself. I want the reader to toil through my preface in order to save him the task of trying to follow a plot through this book. For if he attempts to do this he will most certainly dislocate something about himself very seriously. I have found it impossible, in writing of college days which are just one deep-laid scheme after another, to confine myself to one plot. How could I describe in one plot the life of the student who carries out an average of three plots a day? It is unreasonable. So I have done the next best thing. There is a plot in every chapter. This requires the use of upwards of a dozen villains, an almost equal number of heroes, and a whole bouquet of heroines. But I do not begrudge this extravagance. It is necessary, and that settles it.
Then, again, I want to answer in this preface a number of questions by readers who kindly consented to become interested in the stories when they appeared in the _Saturday Evening Post_. Siwash isn't Michigan in disguise. It isn't Kansas. It isn't Knox. It isn't Minnesota. It isn't Tuskegee, Texas, or Tufts. It is just Siwash College. I built it myself with a typewriter out of memories, legends, and contributed tales from a score of colleges. I have tried to locate it myself a dozen times, but I can't. I have tried to place my thumb on it firmly and say, "There, darn you, stay put." But no halfback was ever so elusive as this infernal college. Just as I have it definitely located on the Knox College campus, which I myself once infested, I look up to find it on the Kansas prairies. I surround it with infinite caution and attempt to nail it down there. Instead, I find it in Minnesota with a strong Norwegian accent running through the course of study. Worse than that, I often find it in two or three places at once. It is harder to corner than a flea. I never saw such a peripatetic school.