Life might well be worth
living, it would seem, to a man who should hear every year hundreds
of men's voices thundering his name as these men behind the class
banners.
Six weeks after the disaster of the Oriel mine it was commencement
day in New Haven and Johnny McLean, his broken arm in a sling,
a square of adhesive plaster on his forehead, was back for his
Triennial. He was mightily astonished at the greeting he got.
Classmates came up to him and shook his hand and said half a
sentence and stopped, with an arm around his shoulder; people
treated him in a remarkable way, as if he had done something
unheard of.
It gratified him, after a fashion, yet it more than half annoyed
him. He mentioned over and over again in protest that he had done
nothing which "every one of you fellows wouldn't have done just
the same," but they laughed at that and stood staring in a most
embarrassing way.
"Gosh, Johnny McLean," Tim Erwin remarked finally, "wake up and
hear the birdies sing. Do you mean to tell me you don't know
you're the hero of the whole blamed nation?"
And Johnny McLean turned scarlet and replied that he didn't think
it so particularly funny to guy a man who had attended strictly
to his business, and walked off.
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