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STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPH
81

nose point upward in the unconscious manifestations of an internal feeling that there was in his attitude something picturesquely heroic. Not since walking down the California campus one morning after the big game, won three minutes before the blowing of the final whistle by his fifty-yard run-in of a punt, had he been in that posture—at once pleasant and difficult—in which one's vital concern is to wear a humility sufficiently convincing to obtain from friends forgiveness for the crime of being great.

A series of incidents immediately following, however, made the thing quite easy.

Upon bringing the new recruit into the schoolhouse, to the perfidiously expressed delight of the already incorporated, the Maestro called his native assistant to obtain the information necessary to a full matriculation. At the first question the inquisition came to a deadlock. The boy did not know his name.

"In Spanish times," the Assistant suggested, modestly, "we called them 'de los Reyes' when the father was of the army, and 'de la Cruz' when the father was of the church; but now, we can never know what it is."

The Maestro dashed to a solution. "All right," he said, cheerily. "I caught him; guess I can give him a name. Call him—Isidro de los Maestros."