The Tennessee Shad Author:Owen Johnson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE BEGINNING OF THE FIRM Doc Macnooder bore no grudge. Even the recollected spasms of what might properly be termed his youthful Indigestion, ... more »brought with them no feeling of malice toward the Tennessee Shad. On the contrary though his attempts at a mercantile union were continually repulsed, the determination held fast within him to turn to profit what was now only turned to mischief, and accident finally supplied the welding touch in the following manner. In those days when the Gymnasium was still an oft-promised land, the winter term, from January to April, was to the embattled Faculty what the Indian season was to the early pioneers. Four hundred-odd, combustible boys, deprived of outlet, cooped up for days by slush and sleet, presented in miniature that same state of frothy unrest from which spout forth South American somersaults and Balkan explosions. It takes usually two weeks for the exhausted boy to recuperate from the Christmas vacation, but from about the twentieth of January the physical body overtakes the imagination and things begin to happen. Toward the first week of February there gathered in the Triumphant Egghead's room ten disgusted members of the House, utterly wearied with life, especially bored with the present and without the slightest hope for the future. Outside a steady, sleety downpour brought feeble icicles from the roof and ran rivulets through the muddied snowbanks. " Now, it's turned to rain again," announced Hungry Smeed, with his nose applied to the window-pane while his waving heels cast shadows on the wall. Nice, wet, oozy, luscious rain." " Let's all go bicycling," said Lovely Mead facetiously. t "What time is it?" asked the Gutter Pup from the crowd on the couch. " Just two o'clock." A groan went up...« less