—­Boston Herald.

His name was Riley, and although his parents had called him Thomas, to the boys he had always been “Dennis,” and by the time he had reached his senior year in college he was quite ready to admit that his “name was Dennis,” with all that slang implied.  He had tried for several things, athletics particularly, and had been substitute on the ball nine, one of the immortal second eleven backs of the football squad, and at one time had been looked upon as promising material for a mile runner on the track team.

But it was always his luck not quite to make anything.  He couldn’t bat up to ’varsity standard, he wasn’t quite heavy enough for a Varsity back, and in the mile run he always came in fresh enough but could not seem to get his speed up so as to run himself out, and the result was that, although he finished strong and with lots of running in him, the other fellows always reached the tape first, even though just barely getting over and thoroughly exhausted.

Now “Dennis” had made up his mind at Christmas time that he actually would have one more trial on the track, and that his family, consisting of his mother and a younger brother, both of them great believers in and very proud of Thomas, should yet see him possessed of a long-coveted “Y.”

So he went out with the first candidates in the spring, and the addition of the two-mile event to the programme of track contests gave him a distance better suited to his endurance.  There were a half-dozen other men running in his squad, and Dennis, from his former failures, was not looked upon with much favor, or as a very likely man.  But he kept at it.  When the first reduction of the squad was made, some one said, “Denny’s kept on just to pound the track.”  With the middle of March came some class games, and Dennis was among the “also rans,” getting no better than fourth place in the two-mile.  The worst of it was that he knew he could have run it faster, for he felt strong at the finish, but had no burst of speed when the others went up on the last lap.  But in April he did better, and it soon developed that he was improving.  The week before the Yale-Harvard games he was notified that he was to run in the two-mile as pace maker to Lang and Early, the two best distance men on the squad.  Nobody believed that Yale would win this event, although it was understood that Lang stood a fair chance if Dennis and Early could carry the Harvard crack, Richards, along at a fast gait for the first mile.

So it was all arranged that Early should set the pace for the first half mile, and Dennis should then go up and carry the field along for a fast second half.  Then, after the first mile was over, Early and Dennis should go out as fast as they could, and stay as long as they could in the attempt to force the Harvard man and exhaust him so that Lang could come up, and, having run the race more to his liking, be strong enough to finish first.