"I should say not!" ejaculated the Phillyloo Bird, sepulchrally, his string-bean length draped with extreme decorative effect on the Senior Fence, "Life at old Bannister without T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., is about as interesting as 'The Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture!' Prexy thought he started the college on its Marathon three days ago, but Bannister will not be officially opened until Hicks stands by his window some study-hour, twangs that old banjo, and shatters the campus quietude with a ballad roared in his fog-horn voice!"
Big Butch Brewster, enshrouded in melancholy, instinctively gazed up at the windows of the room T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. had reserved on the third floor of Bannister Hall, the Senior dorm., as if he fully expected to behold the missing youth materialize. There, in lonely grandeur, waited the sunny-souled Senior's vast aggregation of trunks, crates, and packing boxes, together with Hicks' baggage brought down from Camp Bannister. The bothersome banjo had disappeared at the same time the youthful Caruso imitated the Arabs, folding his figurative tent, and stealing away.
"It's a strange paradox," boomed Butch Brewster, finding that no Hicks appeared at the window, "but for three years Bannister has stormed at Hicks for bothering us during study-hour, or at midnight, with his saengerfest, and now I'd give anything to see him up there, and to hear that banjo, and his songs! It is just as if the sun doesn't shine on the campus, when T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., is away!"
Bannister College had been running for three days "on one cylinder," as the Phillyloo Bird quaintly phrased it, on account of the gladsome Hicks' mysterious absence. Not a word had the Head Coach, Captain Brewster, the football squad, or any of the collegians received from the blithesome youth, since the _billet-doux_ he left with old Hinky-Dink at Camp Bannister. Old students, returning to the campus for another golden year, invaded Hicks' room in Bannister, ready to enjoy the cozy den of that jolly Senior, but they encountered silence and desolation. No one had the slightest knowledge of where the cheery Hicks could be; they missed his singing and banjo strumming, his pestersome ways, his cheerful good nature, his cozy quarters always open house to all, and his Hicks' Personally Conducted tours downtown to Jerry's for those celebrated Beefsteak Busts.