Merriwell

"Merriwell," he muttered, as he walked, "I almost believe you could have been a successful detective had you chosen that profession."

Frank Merriwell's Pursuit How to Win Burt L. Standish 1905

"Merriwell," he said, "the serpent vine will end your life, and you'll never bother me any more!"

Frank Merriwell Down South Burt L. Standish 1905

"Merriwell," he cried, "by example you are the best possible temperance lecture, and you will make more converts by keeping still than by preaching."

Frank Merriwell's Races Burt L. Standish 1905

"Merriwell," he said, with great earnestness, "the greatest enemies of our country are those who try to arouse sectional feeling.

Frank Merriwell's Races Burt L. Standish 1905

"Merriwell," he said, "I want to thank you for bringing me down into this country.

Frank Merriwell's Cruise Burt L. Standish 1905

Say, Barzy, I heerd ye wasn't no friend o 'Merriwell's. "

Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail or, The Fugitive Professor Burt L. Standish 1905

Football, invented 20 years earlier at Yale by Walter Camp as a muscular Christian rite of passage to civic leadership and statesmanship, had captured the national imagination, not only in the games themselves but in wildly popular exploits of the fictional Yale football captains Dink Stover and Frank Merriwell, the latter an exemplar of "square and manly dealing" and civic uplift, as Lewis Lapham once put it with only a slight smirk.

Jim Sleeper: Why Yale Fumbled Its Quarterback's Rhodes Scholarship Pass Jim Sleeper 2012

Even when Witt's choice seemed credible, it got Merriwell's and B.D.'s priorities backwards.

Jim Sleeper: Why Yale Fumbled Its Quarterback's Rhodes Scholarship Pass Jim Sleeper 2012

By heralding Witt's choice of football over Rhodes, Yale and the news media tried to capitalize on all that should be admired in the Frank Merriwell/Platonic guardian tradition, but they wound up corrupting that tradition in what is becoming an agonizing downward spiral of deceit and cynicism.

Jim Sleeper: Why Yale Fumbled Its Quarterback's Rhodes Scholarship Pass Jim Sleeper 2012

Although Brown was probably channeling Merriwell, then at a peak of popularity, he could just as well have been anticipating unwittingly, of course Garry Trudeau's renderings, in Doonesbury three-quarters of a century later, of the more laid-back, ironical, yet stoical Yale quarterback "B.D.," drawn from the real Brian Dowling of my own Class of 1969.

Jim Sleeper: Why Yale Fumbled Its Quarterback's Rhodes Scholarship Pass Jim Sleeper 2012