The High School Pitcher

Clang! "Attention, please." The barely audible droning of study ceased promptly in the big assembly room of the Gridley High School. The new principal, who had just stepped into the room, and who now stood waiting behind his flat-top desk on the platform, was a tall, thin, severe-looking man of thirty-two or three. For this year Dr. Carl Thornton, beloved principal for a half-score of years, was not in command at the school. Ill health had forced the good old doctor to take at least a year's rest, and this stranger now sat in the Thornton chair. "Mr. Harper," almost rasped out Mr. Cantwell's voice, "stop rustling that paper."

H. Irving Hancock was an American chemist and writer who wrote prolifically in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Best known for his fictional novel centered on the idea of a German invasion of the United States, Hancock also held an avid interest in health and exercise. His writings on Jiu-Jitsu were some of the first to be widely read in the United States. He died in 1922.