8. College Days

Freddy Frey might be desirable personally, and it was too bad that this problem had come up; but there it was. The three cronies are very unhappy. They tell Freddy that they will decline to accept their bids, but he insists that they toss him to the wolves and save themselves. Perhaps one of the exclusively Catholic fraternities will bid him. But by now the Catholic fraternities had bidden their limit of housing space.

Freddy told me all about it, one day. I ventured the wrong guess that this incident must have had the effect of binding him more tightly to his church. Strangely enough that hadn’t happened. He had never realized at home that there was any discrimination against Catholics; but, if that were true, he would reject the handicap.

I thought he was making a mistake and told him so. He had his parents to consider. Anyhow, he could get along without a fraternity, I said. It might be an incentive to work harder and earn some medals. But he hadn’t a drop of cum laude in him, he said. I told him he was a good sport to cut loose from his chums when they were bidden to the Betas; reminded me of Jonah, I said.

“What about Jonah?” inquired Freddy.

“Jonah, Freddy, was a prophet whom the Lord ordered to conduct what you might call a novena in Nineveh.”

“I’ve heard of Nineveh,” said Freddy. “Quite an old city. What’s that line, ‘One with Nineveh’—and Someplace.”

“Tyre,” I assisted. “Nineveh was very old and enormously wicked, and Jonah didn’t want to go. But he was afraid that the Lord would arrange transportation for him, so he boarded a ship that was just sailing in the opposite direction, paid his fare, went to his cabin, and fell asleep.”

“You’re making that up,” muttered Freddy.

I opened a Bible at the right place and pushed it across the desk. He read in silence for a minute or two.

“Well—whadda yuh know?” Freddy said.

“You ought to read the Bible some time, Freddy,” I said. “Interesting book… Getting back to Jonah, a great storm came up. There were representatives of a good many religious denominations on board”—

Freddy peered suspiciously into the Good Book.

“You win,” he said.

“And they all prayed,” I continued, “all but Jonah, who was hiding from his God. But the storm was growing worse: shipwreck was inevitable. So Jonah found the Captain and told him that the storm was his own personal property; his God had sent it. If they would pitch him overboard, the storm would cease.”

“A good sport, was this Jonah,” Freddy said.

“He was all of that,” I agreed. “The Captain hesitated to penalize such courage, but disaster was imminent. He said (if I may make a free translation of it), ‘I hate to do this to you, chum, but if you’re sure you’re right about the storm, over you go.’ And over he went.”

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