Excerpt
CHAPTER I STUDENTS
“They’ve got a splendid broadcasting station at the Tech, Bill.”
“I know it; hence my general exuberance. And if we don’t get at it once in a while, it’ll be because we can’t break in.”
“What do you want to shout into it first off?”
“Why, I thought you knew, Gus. I’ve got it all fixed, date and time, for Professor Gray and Mr. Hooper to listen in. They’re the chaps that are responsible for our getting into the Tech and they deserve our first message. I’ll explain to President Field and I know he won’t object.”
“What’s this you were telling me about hazing?” asked Gus, but as though really little interested.
“Terry Watkins was telling me; his cousin went there. Lost a new hat the third day, a pair of glasses the fourth and most of his clothes the fifth. His dad has a lot of dough, so he needn’t have minded, but that won’t be the case with us. I guess it’s me for carrying a gun.”
“If they’re mean enough to pick on you, old scout, I’ll carry one, too, but I think you’ll be exempt. If I’m to be a victim, I reckon I’ll have to grin and take——”
“No; you won’t, either. We’ve come here to study—not to fool—and we haven’t got money to spend on ruined duds just to gratify a lot of chumps. There are better things, too, than a gun; not so crude and not illegal.”
“I can imagine,” laughed Gus, and turned again to watch the fleeting landscape.
The chums journeyed in silence then, their minds busy conjecturing what their experiences and adventures were to be, after they became students of the Marshallton Technical School, which they were rapidly approaching and from which they held high hopes of gaining much knowledge. The institution, despite its modest name, was nothing less than a university of broad constructive teaching, with departments of engineering, electricity, chemistry, manual training and biology.
It was within the first two of these departments that William Brown and Augustus Grier were to concentrate their mental efforts. They had, as already related, earned this long-hoped-for opportunity to gain technical knowledge and training by showing what they could do along these lines. They had installed a small water-power plant and an electric lighting system for the Hooper estate, and had also won greater credit for constructing high-class radio receivers through which they had heard a no less personage than Thomas A. Edison speak. The boys had been saving their earnings to meet tech school expenses for at least a year. Their high school records, good common sense and scientific inclinations had been such as to receive the plaudits of their teacher, Professor Gray, and the members of their class.
Intense application and mental force characterized William Brown, who was called “Billy” by the high school girls—fine, bright-minded young women—and “Bill” by the boys. He was just Bill to nearly everyone. His friends referred to him as the school genius; and such he had proved to be on more than one occasion....