Cambridge! or even half way there; and I would have time to finish the
trip on foot. I shouted him on, holding to the dasher with one hand, the
pail of eggs with the other, not daring to get off my knees, though the
bang on them, as we pounded down the wood road, was terrific. But
nothing must happen to the eggs; they must not be jarred, or even turned
over in the sand before they came to Agassiz.
'In order to get out on the pike it was necessary to drive back away
from Boston toward the town. We had nearly covered the distance, and
were rounding a turn from the woods into the open fields, when, ahead of
me, at the station it seemed, I heard the quick sharp whistle of a
locomotive.
'What did it mean? Then followed the _puff_, _puff_, _puff_, of a
starting train. But what train? Which way going? And jumping to my feet
for a longer view, I pulled into a side road, that paralleled the track,
and headed hard for the station.
'We reeled along. The station was still out of sight, but from behind
the bushes that shut it from view, rose the smoke of a moving engine. It
was perhaps a mile away, but we were approaching, head on, and topping
a little hill I swept down upon a freight train, the black smoke pouring
from the stack, as the mighty creature pulled itself together for its
swift run down the rails.
'My horse was on the gallop, going with the track, and straight toward
the coming train. The sight of it almost maddened me--the bare thought
of it, on the road to Boston! On I went; on it came, a half--a quarter
of a mile between us, when suddenly my road shot out along an unfenced
field with only a level stretch of sod between me and the engine.
'With a pull that lifted the horse from his feet, I swung him into the
field and sent him straight as an arrow for the track. That train should
carry me and my eggs to Boston!
'The engineer pulled the rope. He saw me standing up in the rig, saw my
hat blow off, saw me wave my arms, saw the tin pail swing in my teeth,
and he jerked out a succession of sharp halts! But it was he who should
halt, not I; and on we went, the horse with a flounder landing the
carriage on top of the track.
'The train was already grinding to a stop; but before it was near a
standstill, I had backed off the track, jumped out, and, running down
the rails with the astonished engineers gaping at me, had swung aboard
the cab.
'They offered no resistance; they hadn't had time. Nor did they have the
disposition, for I looked strange, not to say dangerous. Hatless,
dew-soaked, smeared with yellow mud, and holding, as if it were a baby
or a bomb, a little tin pail of sand.
"'_Crazy_," the fireman muttered, looking to the engineer for his cue.
'I had been crazy, perhaps, but I was not crazy now.
'"Throw her wide open," I commanded. "Wide open! These are fresh turtle
eggs for Professor Agassiz of Cambridge. He must have them before
breakfast."
'Then they knew I was crazy, and evidently thinking it best to humor me,
threw the throttle wide open, and away we went.
'I kissed my hand to the horse, grazing unconcernedly in the open field,
and gave a smile to my crew. That was all I could give them, and hold
myself and the eggs together. But the smile was enough. And they smiled
through their smut at me, though one of them held fast to his shovel,
while the other kept his hand upon a big, ugly wrench. Neither of them
spoke to me, but above the roar of the swaying engine I caught enough of
their broken talk to understand that they were driving under a full head
of steam, with the intention of handing me over to the Boston police, as
perhaps the easiest way of disposing of me.
'I was only afraid that they would try it at the next station. But that
station whizzed past without a bit of slack, and the next, and the next;
when it came over me that this was the through freight, which should
have passed in the night, and was making up lost time.
'Only the fear of the shovel and the wrench kept me from shaking hands
with both men at this discovery. But I beamed at them; and they at me. I
was enjoying it. The unwonted jar beneath my feet was wrinkling my
diaphragm with spasms of delight. And the fireman beamed at the
engineer, with a look that said, "See the lunatic grin; he likes it!"
'He did like it. How the iron wheels sang to me as they took the rails!
How the rushing wind in my ears sang to me! From my stand on the
fireman's side of the cab I could catch a glimpse of the track just
ahead of the engine, where the ties seemed to leap into the throat of
the mile-devouring monster. The joy of it! of seeing space swallowed by
the mile!
'I shifted the eggs from hand to hand and thought of my horse, of
Agassiz, of the great book, of my great luck,--luck,--luck,--until the
multitudinous tongues of the thundering train were all chiming "luck!
luck! luck!" They knew! they understood! This beast of fire and tireless
wheels was doing its very best to get the eggs to Agassiz!
'We swung out past the Blue Hills, and yonder flashed the morning sun
from the towering dome of the State House. I might have leaped from the
cab and run the rest of the way on foot, had I not caught the eye of the
engineer watching me narrowly. I was not in Boston yet, nor in
Cambridge either. I was an escaped lunatic, who had held up a train, and
forced it to carry me to Boston.
'Perhaps I had overdone the lunacy business. Suppose these two men
should take it into their heads to turn me over to the police, whether I
would or no? I could never explain the case in time to get the eggs to
Agassiz. I looked at my watch. There were still a few minutes left, in
which I might explain to these men, who, all at once, had become my
captors. But it was too late. Nothing could avail against my actions, my
appearance, and my little pail of sand.
'I had not thought of my appearance before. Here I was, face and clothes
caked with yellow mud, my hair wild and matted, my hat gone, and in my
full-grown hands a tiny tin pail of sand, as if I had been digging all
night with a tiny, tin shovel on the shore! And thus to appear in the
decent streets of Boston of a Sunday morning!
'I began to feel like a hunted criminal. The situation was serious, or
might be, and rather desperately funny at its best. I must in some way
have shown my new fears, for both men watched me more sharply.
'Suddenly, as we were nearing the outer freightyard, the train slowed
down and came to a stop. I was ready to jump, but I had no chance. They
had nothing to do, apparently, but to guard me. I looked at my watch
again. What time we had made! It was only six o'clock, with a whole
hour to get to Cambridge.
'But I didn't like this delay. Five minutes--ten--went by.
"'Gentlemen," I began, but was cut short by an express train coming
past. We were moving again, on--into a siding; on--on to the main track;
and on with a bump and a crash and a succession of crashes, running the
length of the train; on at a turtle's pace, but on,--when the fireman,
quickly jumping for the bell-rope, left the way to the step free,
and--the chance had come!
'I never touched the step, but landed in the soft sand at the side of
the track, and made a line for the yard fence.
'There was no hue or cry. I glanced over my shoulder to see if they were
after me. Evidently their hands were full, and they didn't know I had
gone.
'But I had gone; and was ready to drop over the high board-fence, when
it occurred to me that I might drop into a policeman's arms. Hanging my
pail in a splint on top of a post, I peered cautiously over--a very wise
thing to do before you jump a high board-fence. There, crossing the open
square toward the station, was a big, burly fellow with a club--looking
for me.
'I flattened for a moment, when some one in the yard yelled at me. I
preferred the policeman, and grabbing my pail I slid over to the
street. The policeman moved on past the corner of the station out of
sight. The square was free, and yonder stood a cab!
'Time was flying now. Here was the last lap. The cabman saw me coming,
and squared away. I waved a paper dollar at him, but he only stared the
more. A dollar can cover a good deal, but I was too much for one dollar.
I pulled out another, thrust them both at him, and dodged into the cab,
calling, "Cambridge!"
'He would have taken me straight to the police station, had I not said,
"Harvard College. Professor Agassiz's house! I've got eggs for Agassiz";
and pushed another dollar up at him through the hole.
'It was nearly half-past six.
'"Let him go!" I ordered. "Here's another dollar if you make Agassiz's
house in twenty minutes. Let him out; never mind the police!"
'He evidently knew the police, or there were none around at that time on
a Sunday morning. We went down the sleeping streets, as I had gone down
the wood roads from the pond two hours before, but with the rattle and
crash now of a fire brigade. Whirling a corner into Cambridge Street, we
took the bridge at a gallop, the driver shouting out something in
Hibernian to a pair of waving arms and a belt and brass buttons.
'Across the bridge with a rattle and jolt that put the eggs in jeopardy,
and on over the cobble-stones, we went. Half standing, to lessen the
jar, I held the pail in one hand and held myself in the other, not
daring to let go even to look at my watch.
'But I was afraid to look at the watch. I was afraid to see how near to
seven o'clock it might be. The sweat was dropping from my nose, so close
was I running to the limit of my time.
'Suddenly there was a lurch, and I dove forward, ramming my head into
the front of the cab, coming up with a rebound that landed me across the
small of my back on the seat, and sent half of my pail of eggs
helter-skelter over the floor.
'We had stopped. Here was Agassiz's house; and without taking time to
pick up the scattered eggs, I tumbled out, and pounded at the door.
'No one was astir in the house. But I would stir them. And I did. Right
in the midst of the racket the door opened. It was the maid.
'"Agassiz," I gasped, "I want Professor Agassiz, quick!" And I pushed by
her into the hall.
'"Go 'way, sir. I'll call the police. Professor Agassiz is in bed. Go
'way, sir!"
'"Call him--Agassiz--instantly, or I'll call him myself."
'But I didn't; for just then a door overhead was flung open, a great,
white-robed figure appeared on the dim landing above, and a quick, loud
voice called excitedly,--
'"Let him in! Let him in. I know him. He has my turtle eggs!"
'And the apparition, slipperless, and clad in anything but an academic
gown, came sailing down the stairs.
'The maid fled. The great man, his arms extended, laid hold of me with
both hands, and dragging me and my precious pail into his study, with a
swift, clean stroke laid open one of the eggs, as the watch in my
trembling hands ticked its way to seven--as if nothing unusual were
happening to the history of the world.'
* * * * *
'You were in time then?' I said.
'To the tick. There stands my copy of the great book. I am proud of the
humble part I had in it.'
A Father to his Freshman Son
By Edward Sanford Martin
No doubt, my son, you have got out of me already what there was to help
or mar you. You are eighteen years old and have been getting it, more or
less and off and on, for at least seventeen of those years. I regret the
imperfections of the source. No doubt you have recognized them. To have
a father who is attentive to the world, indulgent to the flesh, and with
a sort of kindness for the Devil--dear son, it is a good deal of a
handicap! Be sure I make allowances for you because of it. _Ex eo
fonte--fons_, masculine, as I remember; _fons_ and _mons_ and _pons_,
and one other. Should the pronoun be _illo?_ As you know, I never was an
accurate scholar, and I suppose you're not--_Ex eo fonte_ the stream is
bound to run not quite clear.
My advice to you is quite likely to be bad, partly from the imperfection
of its source, partly because I am not you, and partly because of my
imperfect acquaintance with the conditions you are about to meet. When I
came to college my father gave me no advice. He gave me his love and
some necessary money, which did not come, I fear, as easy as the love.
His venerable uncle who lived with us--my great uncle--gave me his
blessing and told me, I remember, that so far as book-learning went, I
could learn as much without going to college. Still he did not
discourage my going. He was quite right. I could have got more
book-learning out of college than I did get in college, and I suppose
that you, too, might get, out, more than you will get, in. Of course,
that's not the whole story; neither is it true of all people. For me,
college abounded in distractions, and I suppose it will for you. And I
was incorrigibly sociable and ready to spend time to get acquainted, and
more, to stay acquainted, and if you have that propensity you needn't
think it was left on the doorstep. You come by it lawfully. Getting
acquainted is, for most of us, one of the important branches. But it's
only one of them, and to devote one's whole time to it is a mistake, and
one that the dean will help you avoid if necessary, which probably, if I
know you at all, it won't be.
It is important to know people, but it is more important to be worth
knowing. College offers you at least two valuable details of
opportunity: a large variety of people to know, and a large variety of
means to make yourself better worth knowing. I hope, my son, that you
will avail yourself of both these details.
This is a mechanical age, and the most obtrusive of the current
mechanisms is the automobile. It has valves and cylinders and those
things that give it power and speed, and rubber tires that it runs on,
and a wheel and steering-gear and handles and treadles by which it is
directed. Your body, especially your stomach, is the rubber tires; your
brains are the cylinders and valves; and your will and the spiritual
part of you are the chauffeur and his wheel.
I beg you to be kind to your stomach, as heretofore. It needs no alcohol
at your time of life--if ever--and the less you find occasion to feed
into it, the more prosperous both your physical and mental conditions
are likely to be. I am aware that life, and college life in particular,
has its convivial intervals; but you might as well understand (and I
have been remiss, or have wasted time, if you do not understand it
already) that alcohol is one of the chief man-traps, abounding in
mischiefs if you play with it too hard. Be wary, always wary, with it,
my son, and especially with hard liquor.
Your mind, like your body, is a thing whereof the powers are developed
by effort. That is a principal use, as I see it, of hard work in
studies. Unless you train your body you can't be an athlete, and unless
you train your mind you can't be much of a scholar. The four miles an
oarsman covers at top speed is in itself nothing to the good, but the
physical capacity to hold out over the course is thought to be of some
worth. So a good part of what you learn by hard study may not be
permanently retained, and may not seem to be of much final value, but
your mind is a better and more powerful instrument because you have
learned it. 'Knowledge is power,' but still more the faculty of
acquiring and using knowledge is power. If you have a trained and
powerful mind, you are bound to have stored it with something, but its
value is more in what it can do, what it can grasp and use, than in what
it contains; and if it were possible, as it is not, to come out of
college with a trained and disciplined mind and nothing useful in it,
you would still be ahead, and still, in a manner, educated. Think of
your mind as a muscle to be developed; think of it as a searchlight that
is to reveal the truth to you, and don't cheat it or neglect it.
As to competitive scholarship, to my mind it is like competitive
athletics,--good for those who have the powers and like the game. Tests
are useful; they stimulate one's ambition, and so do competitions. But a
success in competitive scholarship, like a success in competitive
athletics, may, of course, be too dearly bought. Not by you, though, I
surmise, my son. If you were more urgent, either as a scholar or as an
athlete, I might think it needful to warn you not to wear your tires out
scorching too early in life. As things are, I say to you, as I often say
to myself: Don't dawdle; don't scramble. When you work, work; when you
play, play; when you rest, rest; and think all the time.
When you get hold of an instructor who is worth attention, give him
attention. That is one way of getting the best that a college has to
offer. A great deal you may get from books, but some of the most
valuable things are passed from mind to mind, and can only be had from
some one who has them, or else from the great Source of all truth. I
suspect that the subtle development we call 'culture' is one of those
things, and the great spiritual valuables are apt to come that way.
You know you are still growing, both in mind and body, and will continue
so to be for years to come,--I hope, always. One of the valuable things
about college is that it gives you time to grow. You won't have to earn
any money and will have time to think and get acquainted with yourself
and others, as well as with some of the wisdom that is spread upon the
records. You would be so engaged, more or less, in these years, wherever
you might be. But in college, where you are so much your own man, and
are freed from the demands and solicitudes of your parents, the
conditions for it are exceptionally favorable. I suppose that is one
thing that continues the colleges in business, since I read so often
that at present they are entirely misdirected and teach the wrong things
in the wrong way.
But nobody denies that they give the young a breathing spell. Breathe,
my son; breathe freely. Remember that the aim of all these prospective
processes is to bring out the man there is in you, and arm him more or
less for the jousts ahead. It is not to make you over into somebody
else: that can't be done,--not in three or four years, anyhow; but only
to bring out, and train as much as possible of you. There's plenty in
most of us if we can only get it out; more, very much more, than we ever
do get out. So will you please think of college as a nursery in which
you are to grow a while,--and mind you do grow,--and then, presently, to
be transplanted. It is not as if college was the chief arena of human
effort. Nevertheless, for your effort, while you are there, it is the
chief arena, and I am far from giving you the counsel to put off trying
until you leave.
I hear a good deal about clubs and societies: how many there are, how
important they are; how it is that, if a youth shall gain the whole of
scholarship and all athletics and not 'make' a proper club, he shall
still fall something short of success in college. Parents I meet who are
more concerned about clubs than about either scholarship or deportment.
They are concerned and at the same time bothered: so many strategies and
chances the clubs involve; so bad it may be to be in this one; so bad to
be out of that; so much choice there is between them, and so much
choice exercised within them, by which any mother's hopeful may be
excluded.
There is a democratic ideal of a great college without any clubs, where
the lion and the lamb shall escort one another about with tails
entwined, and every student shall be like every other student, and have
similar habits and associates. This ideal is a good deal discussed and a
good deal applauded in the public press. Whether it will ever come true
I can't tell, but there has been some form or other of clubs in our
older colleges, I suppose, for one or two centuries, and they are there
now and will at least last out your time; so it may be you will have to
take thought about them in due time.
Not much, however, until they take thought of you.
You see, clubs seem to be a sort of natural provision, just as tails
were, maybe, before humanity outgrew them. I guess there is a propensity
of nature toward groups, and the natural basis of grouping seems to be
likeness in feathers and habits. The propensity works to include the
like and, incidentally but necessarily, to exclude the unlike. Whether
it is the Knights of the Round Table or the Knights of the Garter or the
Phi Beta Kappa, you see these principles working. The measure of success
in a club is its ability to make people want to join it, and that seems
to be best demonstrated and preserved by keeping most of them out.
Now the advantages of the clubs are considerable. To have a place
always open where you can hang up your hat, and where a hospitable
welcome always awaits you, and where there is enough of a crowd and not
too much, and where you can in your later years inspect at all times a
family of selected undergraduates,--all that is valuable and good, and
pleasant besides, and this continuity of interest that the clubs foster
among their members helps to keep up in those members a lively and
helpful interest in their college. The drawback to the clubs is their
essential selfishness, and their disposition to take you out of a large
family and limit you to a small one, and one that is not yours by birth,
or entirely by choice, but is selected for you largely by other persons.
In any club you yield a certain amount of freedom and individuality, the
amount being determined by the degree in which the club absorbs you.
Don't yield too much! Don't take the mould of any club! A college is
always bigger than its clubs, and the biggest thing in a college is
always a man. The object of being in college is to develop as a man. If
clubs help in that development,--and I think they do help some
men,--they are a gain; but, of course, if they dwarf you down to the
dimensions of a club-man, they are a loss. Some men take their club
shape, such as it is, and find a sufficient satisfaction in it. Others
react on their clubs, take what they have to give, add to it what is to
be had elsewhere, and turn out rather more valuable people than if they
had had no club experience.
At all events, don't take this matter of the clubs too hard. For those
youths, comparatively few, who by luck and circumstances find themselves
eligible to them, they are an interesting form of discipline or
indulgence, and I will not say that they are unimportant. Neither would
I have you keep out of them because of their drawbacks. If you begin by
keeping out of all things that have drawbacks, your progress in this
world will involve constant hesitations. Alcohol has numerous drawbacks,
but I don't advise you to be a teetotaller. Tobacco has drawbacks, but I
believe you smoke it. Money has drawbacks, and so has advertisement.
But, bless you, we have to take things as they come and deal with them
as we can. The trick is to get the kernel and eliminate the shuck. A
large proportion of people do the opposite. If you can manage that way
with the clubs,--provided you ever get a chance,--you will be amused to
observe in due time how large a proportion of your brethren value these
organizations chiefly for their shuck, and grasp most eagerly at that.
For the shuck, as I see it, is exclusiveness, which is not valuable
except to persons justly doubtful of their own merits. Whereas the
kernel is the fellowship of like minds which has always been treasured
by the wise.
The clubs, my son, some more than others, are recruited considerably
from what is known as the leisure class. To be sure, I don't see any
very definite or important leisure class about in our land. Everybody
who amounts to anything works, and always did and must, for you can't
amount to anything otherwise; but the people who have money laid up
ahead for them, are apt to work somewhat less strenuously than the rest
of us, and not so much for money. Don't get it into your head that you
want to tie up to the leisure class, or that the condition of not having
to work is desirable. Have it in mind that you are to work just about as
hard as the quality of your tires and cylinders will warrant. Plan to
get into the game if you have to go on your hands and knees. Plan to
earn your living somehow. Don't aim to go through life spoon-fed; don't
aim to get a soft seat. If you do, you won't have your fair share of
fun. There is no real fun in ease, except as you need it because you
have worked hard.