Arthur M. Winfield
Grosset & Dunlap, 1899
Genre:
Realistic, School
Description
The Rover boys, Sam, Tom, and Dick, are going to be sent to
a boarding school by their Uncle Randolph because he is tired of their practical
jokes. One day Dick is coming back from the village with their mail when he is
accosted by a tramp who steals his pocketbook and his watch. The boys give
chase but the man reaches the river and gets in a boat. The boys improvise and
turn a large log into a boat. During the chase Tom falls off and Dick jumps
into the water to rescue him. Unbeknownst to poor Sam he is riding straight
towards a waterfall. Dick gets the help of Joel Darrell, a farmer nearby, to
get some wire to pull Sam out of the middle of the rapids. They continue the
chase after the tramp but discover that he made it to the train station and
it's too late. Dick is very upset because the watch belongs to his father whom
he hasn't seen in years.
Tom receives a letter from his friend Larry Colby who tells
him that he will be attending the Putnam
Hall Military
Academy. Randolph admits that this is where he is
sending the boys so that they can be with their friends Larry, Frank, Fred, and
a few others. The boys first have to take a train ride and transfer to a boat
in order to get to the Academy. They are introduced to three girls, Dora
Stanhope and Nellie and Grace Laning, and a very annoying boy named Daniel
Baxter. When the ship lands they are picked up by a man from the Academy who
notices that one of them is missing. Since the boys did not like Baxter they
failed to wake him up with the boat landed. They tell the man that he wasn't
missing any boys and Baxter gets left behind at the ship dock. They later learn
that Dora's father died two years ago and that her mother is considering
remarriage. Her family is very well-off.
At the front gates of the Academy, Tom set off a firecracker
in celebration which angers Josiah Crabtree, the Academy's first assistant. Tom
doesn't think that he did anything wrong and shouldn't get in trouble for
breaking any rules since he isn't an official pupil yet. Crabtree doesn't care
and arrests him and says that if he keeps speaking Crabtree will have no
problem caning him. After being kept in a cell for a while Tom is visited by
Crabtree who demands the keys to his trunk so that he can search for
contraband, such as dime novels, food, or other “things that might harm our
pupils.” Tom refuses to give him the key.
Later that night after dinner the boys decide to break the
rules of talking to a prisoner when they attempt to go to the guardhouse and
see Tom. Dick jumps the fence and peeks into the room where Tom is being kept.
He discovers that it is empty but Crabtree sees him, chases after him, and
arrests him. Meanwhile, Tom has managed to escape and left the grounds of the
Academy. Wandering in the forest he runs across a tall man and the tramp that
stole his watch. He discovers that the tramp is supposedly called Buddy and Buddy
almost calls the other man Arnold Baxt—, but the man gets angry at him and says
that he should be called Nolly. Nolly tells Buddy he better leave Putnam Hall
if the boys are around. Tom makes his way to the Laning farm where he learns
that Dora's mother is being courted by Crabtree and that they believe he is
after her money. In the morning, Tom heads back to the Academy and meets Captain
Victor, the man in charge. Tom explains his case—that he was arrested before he
was properly enrolled—and both Tom and Dick are cleared of all charges.
The boys start attending classes and at one point Dick and
Baxter get into a fight. They decide to make an official rematch where Baxter
hurts Dick by not playing fairly—Baxter hid sharp rocks in his hands and used
them to give his punches more leverage. Time passes again and all the boys play
huge game of hare and hound. Sam and Fred end up on a mountaintop where they
encounter a six-foot long snake. Some of the boys decide to make a detour to
visit Dora and see Crabtree who is trying to convince Dora’s mother to marry
him right now. Crabtree and Lucy get into a carriage and the boys follow
closely around it. Crabtree tells him to go away but they say that they can't
because they are playing a game and they can't stop until the hares are caught.
In anger, Crabtree takes the reins and ends up causing the carriage to run
away. Lucy is thrown out of the carriage, knocked unconscious, and suffers a
broken arm. Captain Victor interviews Crabtree the next day and fires him. Dora
is upset that her mother got injured, but she is happy to know that the wedding
has been postponed and that she has more time to convince her mother not to
marry him.
Putnam Hall is challenged by Pornell Academy
to a game of football for the town's championship. All boys chip in to get a
trophy for the event but Baxter who says that his school will lose and starts
taking up bets against his classmates. Some of the boys wonder where Baxter
gets all his money. No one knows much about him, no one comes to see him, he
gets no mail, but he always seems to have plenty of money. For the first half
of the game Putnam Hall is losing. Luckily, they turn it around and win and
Baxter has to fork over $50.
Crabtree and Dora get into an argument that turns violent.
Crabtree says that he wants to open up the school to rival Putnam Hall. Dora
tells him that her mother's property that he wants to build on actually belongs
to her and that her mother won't get it unless Dora dies before she comes of
age. The property that her mother actually owns is farther up the lake nowhere
near Putnam Hall. Dora also discovers from Dick that Crabtree was fired and
that he didn't leave the school on his own.
The weather is turning cold and the boys get permission to
go to town to buy some new ice skates. They see Baxter in town go into a tavern
with a man, which is against school rules. They peak in a window and see Baxter
receiving money from the man who Tom realizes is the man called Nolly. He puts
two and two together and realizes this man is Arnold Baxter, Daniel's father.
Later, when Tom confronts Baxter about the man Baxter gets angry and says that
the man is William Nolly and that he used to work with Baxter's father. Later
that night, Baxter runs away from the Academy.
It is winter break and the boys head back to Randolph's where they
tell him about their adventures. Randolph
tells them that their father had one enemy who had a scar on his chin like
Arnold Baxter. This man had laid claim to property owned by Mr. Rover, they had
a quarrel, and the man shot Mr. Rover in arm and ran away. Randolph tells them to be careful. On their
way back to the Academy they get stuck in town because of the weather and the
boys see Crabtree attempt to buy some wedding rings. Dora tells the boys that
Crabtree intends to marry her mother next week. Sam suggests a trick—they will
send a letter from Yale requesting an interview on the day of the supposed
wedding. Crabtree totally falls for the trick. Unfortunately, a month later,
Crabtree returns and blames the trick on Dora and threatens to send her to a
strict boarding school.
Finally it's that time of year when exams are done and the
boys are to complete a two-week encampment. Unfortunately, a bad storm causes
many of the boys to get sick. The Rovers are sent to the nearest town to get
medicine when they run into Arnold Baxter and the tramp. They overhear that Dan
stole $200 from him and ran away to Chicago.
Dick is able to get a policeman to arrest the tramp but Baxter escapes. They
chase after him and succeed in capturing him. Baxter admits that he and Mr.
Rover were enemies but the story they know is wrong as it was their father who
tried to swindle him and ran off to Africa
with his papers. A fight ensues and Baxter practically gets run over by a train
but is alive and suffers only from a broken leg. He is arrested and Dick gets a
pawn ticket for his father's watch.
Thoughts and
Nuggets of Wisdom for Research
The Rover Boys series is the most important to the history
of series books because this series set the tone for series books as we know
them today. The Rover Boys consisted of 30 books published between 1899 and
1926. While often overshadowed by better-known and longer-running series, such
as The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Tom Swift, the Rovers were highly successful
and enormously influential. It was Edward Stratemeyer's first series, and one
of his favorites. Stratemeyer was Arthur Winfield and did all of the writing
himself, rather than hiring ghostwriters.
The original Rover Boys were brothers Tom, Sam, and Dick
Rover. Their children (Fred, son of Sam Rover; Jack, son of Dick; anf Andy and
Randy, twin sons of Tom) took over in the "Second Series" which began
with Volume 21 The Rover Boys at Colby Hall, published in 1917. The
elder Rovers continued making appearances in the second series. In addition,
there was a related Putnam Hall series of six books that featured other
characters from the first Rovers series although the Rovers themselves do not
appear.
The Rovers were students at a military boarding school:
adventurous, prank-playing, flirtatious, and often unchaperoned adolescents who
were constantly getting into mischief and running afoul of authority figures as
well as criminals. The series often incorporated emerging technology of the
era, such as the automobile, airplanes and news events, such as World War I.
Like other series of the era, the books often utilized exaggerated ethnic
stereotypes and dialect humor.
Randolph Rover gets a lot of slack from the boys. They
complain from page one that “he doesn't see any fun in tricks. He expects us to
just walk around the farm, or study, and, above all things, keep quiet, so that
his scientific investigations are not disturbed. Why doesn't he let us go out
riding, or boating on the river, or down to the village to play baseball with
the rest of the fellows? A real live American boy can't be still all the time,
and he ought to know it” (p. 2-3). When Tom says he doesn’t want to studying
farming because he wants to be a sailor, Randolph
has a fit: “A sailor! Of all things! Why, a sailor is the merest nobody on
earth! Yes, Thomas—the calling of a sailor amounts to absolutely nothing.
Scientific farming is the thing—nothing more noble on the face of the earth
than to till the soil” (p. 6-7).
The history of the Rover boys is a bit of a sad one. Richard,
commonly called Dick, is the eldest. He is sixteen, tall, slender, and with
dark eyes and dark hair. He is rather quiet, the one who loves to read and
study, although he is not above having a good time now and then, when he feels
like “breaking loose,” as Tom expresses it. Next to Richard came Tom, one year
younger, who is not above playing all sorts of tricks on people, but has a
heart of gold. Sam is the youngest. He is fourteen but of the same height and
general appearance as Tom, so they are sometimes taken as twins. He is very athletic.
They are the only children of Anderson Rover, a mineral expert, gold mine
proprietor, and traveler. Rover had gone to California a poor young man and made a
fortune in the mines. Returning to the East, he married and settled down in New York City, and there
the three boys were been born. An epidemic of fever had taken off Mrs. Rover
when Richard was ten years old. The shock had come so suddenly that Anderson was dazed. “Take
all the money I made in the West, but give me back my wife!” he said
heartbrokenly. Since this could not happen, he left the three boys in the charge
of the housekeeper and set off to tour Europe
thinking that a change of scene would help his grief.
When he came back he seemed to change man. He was restless,
and could not remain at home for more than a few weeks at a time. He placed the
boys at a boarding school in New York and returned to the West, where he made
another strike in the gold mines—he was reported to be worth between two and
three hundred thousand dollars. At one point he was reading up on Africa, and had reached the conclusion that there must be
gold in the great unexplored regions of the country. He became determined to go
to Africa and try his luck. Randolph asked him what would become of his
boys. Rover knew well the risk he was running, “knew well that many a white man
had gone into the interior of Africa never to
return.” It was settled that Randolph
should become Dick, Tom, and Sam's temporary
At the time of Anderson Rover's departure Randolph had been on the point of purchasing
a farm of two hundred acres. The land had not change hands until year later,
however, and then Dick, Tom, and Sam had to give up their life in the
metropolis and settle down in the country. For a month things went very well,
for everything was new and exciting. They had run over the farm from end to
end, climbed to the roof of the barn, explored the brook, and Sam had broken
his arm by falling from the top of a cherry tree. But after that the novelty
wore away, and the boys began to fret. Thus, Randolph decides to send them to Putnam Hall
and that is where their adventures begin (p. 9-13).
Captain Victor Putnam is a distinguished fellow: “Captain
Victor Putnam was a bachelor. A West Point
graduate, he had seen gallant service in the West, where he had aided the
daring General Custer during many an Indian uprising. A fall from a horse,
during the campaign in the Black Hills, had
laid him on a long bed of sickness, and had later on caused him to retire from
the army and go back to his old profession of school-teaching. He might have
had a position at West Point as an instructor,
but he had preferred to run his own military academy” (p. 64).
An interesting historical aspect to the first book is when
the boys have their two-week encampment and they learn a military drill. The person
in charge gives the instructions: “Now the first thing to remember is to say
nothing, but obey orders promptly. When an order is given the first part is a
warning, while the conclusion is the time when that order must be executed. For
instance, I tell you 'Eyes right!' I say 'Eyes,' and you get ready to move your
eyes; I add 'Right,' and you instantly turn them to the right, and keep them
there. Now we'll try it: Eyes—right! Great smoke! number four, you turned them
to the left! Now again: Eyes—right! Good! Eyes—front! That's first-class. Now:
Eyes—left! Eyes—front! That couldn't be better!” Eventually the boys also learn
to “left face,” “right face,” “front face,” and “about face”—that is, to turn
directly to the rear. Then they learned how to “mark time” with their feet,
starting with the left foot. The Corporal King tells them that they will learn
how to march and “then each of you will get a gun and go through the manual of
arms” (p. 105).
Stratemeyer was not a man who wanted violence in his books.
However, there is a little in this story. When the boys are playing hare and
hound, Sam and Fred end up on a mountain top and get corned by a large snake.
Fred is deathly afraid and tells Sam to be careful because he could get poisoned
when “whack! Sam gave the body of the reptile a swing and brought the head down
with great force on the edge of the rock. One blow was enough, for the head was
smashed flat. Then Sam threw the body into the bushes, there to quiver and
twist for several hours to come, although life was extinct” (p. 123-124). There
is also a big fight scene between Dick and Baxter, the evil bully. Since
Stratemeyer did not believe in violence, he does pre-empt the fight with a
message to his readers:
“Now, lest my readers obtain a false impression of my views
on the subject, let me state plainly that I do not believe in fights, between
boys or otherwise. They are brutal, far from manly, and add nothing to the
strength of one's character. It is well enough to know how to defend one's self
when occasion requires, but such occasions occur but rarely. But I have set out
to relate the adventures of the Rover boys, in school and out, and on land and
sea, and I feel I must be truthful and tell everything just as it happened, not
only in this volume, but in all those which are to follow; and, consequently, I
shall tell all of the fight as the particulars related to me by Sam Rover, Fred
Garrison, and others—details which I am certain are correct” (p. 109-110). So
here is Stratemeyer providing some action in his story while at the same time
giving a little bit of a moral lesson that fighting isn’t a manly thing. Part
of the fight reads (p. 116):
“Oh!” he [Baxter] yelled in pain, and put his hand up to the
injured optic, which began to grow black rapidly. Then he struck out wildly
half a dozen times. He was growing excited, while Dick was as calm as ever.
Watching his opportunity, Dick struck out with all his force, and Baxter
received a crack on the nose which caused him to fall back into the arms of
Mumps.
Of course, the good guy wins the fight. J
There are a few interesting scenes with Dora, one of the
only female characters. She and Crabtree get in a heated argument over Dora’s
mother’s impending marriage to him which makes Dora a rather feisty young women
in 1899 (p. 155):
“Your mother is quite willing to marry me, and as a dutiful
daughter you should bow to her wishes.”
“Mother is not herself, Mr. Crabtree. Ever since father died
she has been upset by business matters, and you have pestered the life out of
her. If you would only go away for a month or so and give her time to think it
over, I'm sure she would into this matter between you.”
“Tut, tut, child, you do not know what you're talking about!
Your mother has given me her word, and you ought to bow to the inevitable.”
“She has not yet married you, sir, and until she is actually
bound to you there will still be hope for her.”
“This is—is outrageous!” cried Josiah Crabtree wrathfully.
“Do you think I will allow a mere slip of a girl to stand between me and my
plans? Just wait until I am your father—”
“You shall never take the place of my dear dead father, Mr.
Crabtree—never!”
There is also a budding romance between Dick and Dora which
is very chaste. I’m surprised to see the word “kiss” in a Stratemeyer book. Oh
well, it was actually Harriet Adams who decreed that no Syndicate book would
allow “smooching” so I guess her father was a little more open to young love. There
is one scene in which Dick is sympathizing with Dora over her problem with
Crabtree and the narration says, “It was now growing late, and Dick took his
departure, kissing Dora’s had a third time as he stood in the darkness of the
porch. . . . Girls and boys are about the same the world over, and Dick's
regard for Dora was of the manly sort that is creditable to anyone” (p. 162).
Lastly, there are some racist elements. When Tom is arrested
and put in the jail cell, he meets the caretaker, Alexander Pop. He talks in
black vernacular: “‘Alexander Pop, sah, at yo' service, sah,’ and again the
colored man grinned. He was a short, fat fellow, the very embodiment of good
nature” (p. 85). The most racist element doesn’t even involve the presence of a
minority character! On page 188, when, during winter break the boys can't
return back to the Academy because of weather, Sam says, “Well, if we can't
walk and can't ride, how are we to get there?” To which Larry (okay, so it isn’t
one of the Rovers who is acting racist . . . Stratemeyer’s boys would be above
that) says “imitating a negro minstrel”: “That's the conundrum, Brudder Bones.
I'se gib it up, sah!”
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