Produced by Barry Abrahamsen and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
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FOLLOWING THE BALL. MAKING THE NINE. IN THE LINE. WITH MASK AND MITT. THE GREAT YEAR. THE YALE CUP. A FULL-BACK AFLOAT. THE PECKS IN CAMP. THE HALF-MILER.
Illustrated by CHARLES COPELAND. 12mo. Cloth.
THE SCHOOL FOUR. AT THE HOME-PLATE. THE UNOFFICIAL PREFECT.
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[Illustration: THE WESTCOTT MAN CLUTCHED THE BALL OVER HIS RIVAL’S HEAD.]
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COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
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“The School Four” is a story of football and rowing, its scene laid in a private school in an Eastern city. As in the Phillips Exeter books, the aim has been to keep the athletics practical and technically correct, and at the same time to present such conceptions of life and conduct as may encourage the boy reader to face his own school problems with the right spirit. Later volumes will treat successively of the city high school and the country boarding-school.
To Mr. John Richardson, Jr., captain of the undefeated Harvard crew of 1908, the author owes a special debt for expert counsel, for the freedom of the Harvard coaching launch, and, above all else, for personal inspiration.
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The Westcott man clutched the ball over his rival’s head
“They ought to tie a string to it and give Fatty the end”
His feet going like the arms of a hay tedder
And watch the Varsity eight sweep magnificently by
“Go it, Bainbridge! Kill ’em, Bainbridge!”
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THE first suggestion of the Triangular League came from a certain aspiring and nimble-witted graduate of the Newbury Latin named John Smith, whose surname, occurring on every page of every daily paper, should safely conceal his identity from any over-curious reader of this story. Moreover, it may be asserted with truth that the particular John Smith who called the first meeting of representatives of the three schools is not to be found on any of the eighteen pages of Smiths in the last Boston directory. It is enough for our purpose to know that he looked over the material in the upper half of the Newbury Latin and found it to his liking—good for the present and promising for the future. He considered within himself, with what he imagined to be uncommon shrewdness, that it is better for a school to be at the head of a small league than to swell the troop at the conqueror’s heels in a larger one. His reason for selecting Westcott’s and the Trowbridge School as complements to the Newbury Latin in this laudably patriotic scheme was that while they contained decent fellows and were nominally fair rivals, they were probably beatable without killing exertion. This last item was not included in the argument for the organization which he presented to the first meeting. His speech here took loftier grounds, such as the charms of an alliance between naturally friendly schools, and the splendid athletic ideals for which the new league would stand.