URING the first week of Freshman year, someone said in the hearing of James Pepper McHenry that notwithstanding the popular rumors to the contrary, a lot of good men come from Yale.
"Yes," said Pepper brightly, "and the better they are, the quicker they come!"
From this point forward it was generally understood by the class that McHenry was one of those deep thinkers—a man with whom it was unsafe to contend in repartee unless you had very recently read the current issue of the Lampoon, and had a comprehensive outfit of quips and cranks ready to your hand.
Then when Keith Collamore fell asleep over his Government 2a textbook, and ignited himself with a half-burned cigarette, it was McHenry who thought to roll him in a Brussels rug, save the rest of the cigarettes, and then wait for the fire department which—in spite of the horrid slush—was on the scene in less than twenty minutes. Pepper, standing at the window, demanded the life net, and promised to leap into it at the short end of two to one in any amount. For this escapade he speedily had an opportunity of explaining his private views to the Administrative Board, and of pleading to the charges of disorderly conduct in dormitory, inciting a riot, blasphemy, and sending in a false alarm. Pepper responded very truthfully that he hadn't done anything but yell. He admitted that in his excitement he might have suggested that some other Freshman send in the alarm, but he declined to accept the responsibility, even as accessory before the fact. He escaped unharmed from the Board, and partly for that reason, and partly because he had preserved Keith Collamore for the future use of the crew, McHenry was immediately invested with the glory of presence of mind, initiative, and ability to handle emergencies.
First impressions are strong; if on your first meeting with a horse, you plant a hard blow between his eyes, he may refuse to make friends with you later, but he will always treat you with considerable respect. So the glorious class of which McHenry was a charter member, having been struck with amazement at the uncanny attributes of the man, set him down as a wonder, and thought of him as rather the most remarkable fellow of them all. And this sort of thing, in time, means the Institute.
It might naturally be supposed that McHenry, decorated with the honorable appellation of Pep, crowned the chief wit and all-around tactician of the Freshmen, would have been satisfied with his lot. So he was—for a short time. Then gradually and incomprehensibly he began to show signs of melancholia. He refused many invitations to town, and spent much leisure in communing with himself in his own room. His friends became seriously concerned about him, but he lived on the second floor, and kept the key in the lock. The glee club recognized the quality of his tenor, and appropriated him for the Western trip, but he only smiled deprecatingly at the distinction. He wrote splitting parodies with such rapidity that the Lampoon editors were really considerate of his feelings, and printed enough of his stuff to qualify him for the paper in the early spring—which is almost unheard of in Cambridge—but he only sighed, looked angelic, and said the Lampoon seemed to be a nice little paper. He was on the Dinner Committee and the Entertainment Committee, and he attended all the meetings, threw in a few words of pungent comment now and then, and retired early, leaving the other members wondering what he could have meant by the very transparent statements he had made. The depth of Pepper McHenry was a source of pride to his class, and when his depth took the form of gloominess, the class was all the prouder. It realized that the cause must be too deep for their feeble intellects to grasp.
It wasn't until March of Freshman year that John Phillips, who, as he would modestly admit, "happened" to have been captain of the class eleven last fall, discovered why Pepper McHenry was so sorrowful, even when people weren't looking at him. McHenry, it appears, including his mesh underwear and his biggest pipe, weighed a hundred and thirty pounds. He presented the beefy aspect of the average unpicked squab, and he was morose and inconsolable because he wasn't an athlete.