Gridley was not a large place—–­just an average little American city of some thirty thousand inhabitants.  It was a much bigger place than that, though, when it came to the matter of public spirit.  Gridley people were proud of their town.  They wanted everything there to be of the best.  Certainly, the Gridley High School was not surpassed by many in the country.  The imposing building cost some two hundred thousand dollars.  The equipment of the school was as fine as could be put in a building of that size.  Including the principal, there were sixteen teachers, four of them being men.

In all the classes combined, there were some two hundred and forty students, about one hundred of these being girls.  Nearly all of the students were divided between the four regular classes.  There were always a few there taking a postgraduate, or fifth year of work, for either college or one of the technical schools.

With such a school and such a staff of teachers as it possessed the Gridley standard of scholarship was high.  The Gridley diploma was a good one to take to a college or to a “Tech” school.

Yet this fine high school stood well in the bodily branches of training.  Gridley’s H.S. football eleven had played, in the past four years, forty-nine games with other high school teams, and had lost but two of these games.  The Gridley baseball nine had played fifty-four games with other high school teams in the same period, and had met defeat but three times in the four years.

Athletics, at this school, were not overdone, but were carried on with a fine insistence and a dogged determination.  Up to date, however, despite the fine work of their boys, the citizens of the town had been somewhat grudging about affording money for training athletic teams.  What the boys had won on the fields of sport they had accomplished more without public encouragement than with it.

It was now October.  Dick Prescott and his five closest friends were all freshmen.  They had been in the school only long enough to become accustomed to the routine of work and study.  They were still freshmen, and would be until the close of the school year.  As freshmen were rather despised “cubs” Dick and his friends would be daring, indeed should they dare to do anything, in their freshman year, to make them very prominent.

According to a good many Gridley people Dick’s father, Eben Prescott, was accounted the best educated man in town.  The elder Prescott had taken high honors at college; he had afterwards graduated in law, and, for a while, had tried to build up a practice.  Eben Prescott was not lazy, but he was a student, much given to dreaming.  He had finally been driven to opening a small bookstore.  Here, when not waiting on customers, he could read.  Dick’s mother had proved the life of the little business.  Had it not been for her energy and judgment the pair would have found it difficult to rear even their one child properly.  The family lived in five rooms over the bookstore.