_NEW YORK_
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE AND COMPANY
_MDCCCCI_
_Copyright, 1900, by_
The Curtis Publishing Co.
_Copyright, 1901, by_
Doubleday, Page & Company
University Press
John Wilson and Son
Cambridge, U.S.A.
_TO THE_
"_For Ever Panting and For Ever Young._"
_Courteous acknowledgment is here
made to the Saturday Evening
Post, Philadelphia, in which these
papers first saw the light._
_*THE*_*
DIARY *_*of a*_* FRESHMAN*
*I*
Mamma left for home this afternoon. As I want to be perfectly truthful
in my diary, I suppose I must confess that before she actually went away
I sometimes thought I should be rather relieved when she was no longer
here. Mamma has a fixed idea that I came to college for the express
purpose of getting my feet wet by day, and sleeping in a draught by
night. She began the furnishing of my rooms by investing in a pair of
rubber boots,--the kind you tie around your waist with a string. The
clerk in the shop asked her if I was fond of trout-fishing, and she
explained to him that I had always lived in the West where the climate
was dry, and that she did n't know how I would stand the dampness of the
seacoast. Mamma thought the clerk was so interested in my last attack
of tonsillitis I didn't have the heart to tell her that all the time he
was looking sympathetic with his right eye, he was winking at me with
his left.
Now that she is gone, however, I don't see how I could have thought,
even for a moment, that I should be glad, and I 've been sitting here
for an hour just looking at my room and all the nice things she advised
me about and helped me to choose--wishing she could see how cosey it is
late at night with the green lamp lighted and a little fire going. (It
is n't really cool enough for a fire; I had to take my coat off for a
while, the room got so warm--but I was anxious to know how the andirons
looked with a blaze behind them.) I suppose she is lying awake in the
sleeping-car thinking of me. She made me move my bed to the other side
of the room, so that it would n't be near the window. I moved it back
again; but I think now I 'll change it again to the way she liked it.
Of course I was disappointed last May when I found I hadn't drawn a room
in one of the college buildings. I had an idea that if you did n't live
in one of the buildings owned by the college you would n't feel,
somehow, as if you "belonged." Before I arrived in Cambridge I worried
a good deal over it. The old Harvard men at home were most
unsatisfactory about this when I asked their advice. The ones who had
lived in the Yard when they were in college seemed to think there was
n't any particular use in going to college at all unless you could live
either in their old rooms or some in the same building; and the ones who
had lived outside as I am going to do (this year, anyhow) said the
college buildings were nice enough in their way, but if I could only get
the dear old place (which was pulled down fifteen years ago) where James
Russell Lowell had scratched his name on the window-pane, and where
somebody else (I 've forgotten who it was) crawled up the big chimney
when the sheriff came to arrest him for debt and was discovered because
he did not crawl far enough, I should be all right.
I don't see how the good times and the advantages of a place like this
hold out for so long; everybody who has been here speaks as if he had
about used them up.
Well, we found rooms pleading to be rented; every other house in
Cambridge has a "Student's Room to Let" card in the window. Even some
of the rooms in the Yard had been given up at the last minute by fellows
who flunked their exams. Mamma said she felt very sorry for the poor
boys; and after that the enormity of my having been conditioned in
physics and solid geometry decreased considerably. The trouble (there
were four days full of it) wasn't in finding a good place, but in trying
to decide on some one place. For a while it looked as though I should
either have to live in five separate houses--some of them over a mile
apart--or give up going to college. We dragged up and down all the
quiet side streets within a reasonable distance of the Yard, ringing
bells and asking questions until the words "I should like to look at"
and "What is the price of?" began to sound like some kind of a silly
English Meisterschaft system. Several times when we were very tired we
wandered by mistake into houses we had been to before. This made the
landladies exceedingly peevish; but mamma said it was just as well,
because now we knew what their true characters really were.
We found that we could rent some of the rooms lighted and heated; but
most of them were merely "lit and het."
All the houses in Cambridge and many of the buildings in the Yard seemed
to be disgorging roomfuls of old furniture and consuming cartloads of
new, and everywhere we went we met strings of cheerful, energetic
mothers with tired, rather cross-looking sons. I've seen only one
fellow with his father so far, and they sort of apologized for the fact
by being dressed in deep mourning.
At the end of three days we 'd picked out five rooms. Considered in a
lump, they seemed fine; but tackling them separately, mamma could n't
decide which one was least objectionable. One was in a part of town
that "looked damp"--a man across the street unfortunately sneezed just
as we were passing a stone wall covered with green moss. The second
smelt of cooking. On the steps of the third a groceryman was waiting to
deliver several gallons of gasoline (this one was almost struck off the
list). The fourth was near the river (we had the bad luck to be in that
part of town when the tide was out), and from the windows of the fifth
there was a merry little view of a graveyard. We simply could n't make
up our minds, and were standing in the middle of a narrow, rather shabby
little street two or three blocks below the Square discussing the
matter, when a door behind us opened and a mother and son (we turned to
look) came out, followed by a gray-haired woman--evidently the
landlady--who was doing the talking, in a very New England voice, for
all three. The mother was slim and pretty, and had on a beautiful dress
that went swish-swash-swish when she walked away, and the fellow looked
like her; he was very handsome.
"Well, I 'm real glad to know you," the landlady said to the fellow's
mother. "Jus' seems 's if I could n't rest till I knew the young men's
folks; dustin' their photographs every day makes it sort of different.
It do--don't it? Oh, yes--I 'll take care of him. They get real mad at
me, the young men do, sometimes, for makin' them change their shoes when
it's snow-in' and makin' them wear their rubber coats when it's
rai-nin'. _They 're_ in too much of a hurry, _they_ are. That's what's
the matter with _them_." She gave the fellow a roguish look, and he and
his mother walked up the street laughing as if they were very much
pleased.
"I think," said mamma (who had become strangely animated on hearing of
the change of shoes)--"I think that before we decide on one of these
five rooms we 'll go in there." So we went up to the gray-haired woman,
who had lingered outside to talk baby talk to a cat that was making
gothic arches of itself all over the piazza, and in about seven minutes
by the watch we 'd signed the lease of the last vacant rooms in the
house.
A short, steep staircase like the companionway of a ship leads up to a
landing about the size of a kitchen table. The edges of the steps are
covered with tin and are terribly slippery. The door on the left opens
into my study, and at the end of that is my bedroom, and next to that is
a great big bathroom (it's bigger than the other two) with a porcelain
tub and a shower which I am to share with the fellow who lives just
across the staircase on the right. Mrs. Chester, the landlady, says:
"All the young men thinks an awful lot of that bathroom."
The study is so small that we did n't have to buy as much furniture as
we expected to. I have an oak desk with a rolling top that makes a noise
like some one shovelling coal when you open and shut it, and usually
sticks half-way. Of course, when we finally got it out from town
(Boston is about four miles from Cambridge, and it takes anywhere from
three days to a week for an express wagon to make the trip), we found
that it was much too large to go up the staircase. But Mrs. Chester
said we could take out the back of the house and have it swung up to the
room on ropes--the "young men" always did that when they wanted pianos
or sofas, or desks like mine. I wasn't present at the operation, as I
had to go in town to lunch with mamma, but it was successfully performed
(by "a real handy gentleman from down Gloucester way, who used to be a
fisherman and is a carpenter now"), for I found the desk in the room
when I returned and the walls of the house looked about the same.
Besides the desk I have an oak chair with a back that lets up and down
by means of a brass rod; its cushions are covered with gray corduroy.
Then there is another chair, a revolving one (very painful), that goes
with the desk. We bought a bookcase at a shop just off the Square, from
an odious little man who put his hand on my shoulder and said to mamma,
"They _will_ grow up, won't they?" It looks rather bare, as there
aren't any books in it yet; but mamma would n't let me fill it, although
right next door to the place where we bought it there were loads of
books in the window for five and ten cents apiece.
We got some Turkish rugs at an auction in town. The man said they never
would wear out. When they arrived here and I saw them for the first
time by daylight (they had gas at the sale) I knew what he meant.
However, mamma darned them very nicely, and as everything else looks so
new, perhaps it's just as well.
I 've put the photographs of mamma and papa, and the one of Mildred in
the ball dress and big hat with white ostrich feathers, and the one of
Sidney in his little cart with the two goats, on the mantelpiece. I 'm
afraid I never cared much for the goats when I was at home, but to-night
I 've been thinking of all the funny things they used to do and
wondering if I'll ever see them again. They're such cute little beasts.
Over the mantelpiece I have two crimson flags with the sticks crossed.
This evening while I was sitting in front of the fire trying to decide
whether I ought to begin my diary now or wait until college opened
to-morrow and things began to happen, the door downstairs suddenly
rattled and slammed, and some one came clattering up the tin steps at a
great rate. Then the door across the landing was unlocked, and I heard
whoever it was falling over chairs and upsetting things in the dark; and
all the time he kept roaring at the top of his voice: "Oh, Mrs. Chester!
Ay-y-y-y-y, Mrs. Chester, where are you?" Mrs. Chester had told me a
few minutes before that she was "just goin' to step up street to see how
Mis' Buckson 's comin' along with them rooms o' hers," so I called out
that she was n't at home. Then the voice answered, "Oh, thank you;" and
after a few more things in the other room had fallen on the floor and
smashed, the fellow who was making all the fuss came across and stood in
my doorway.
I thought for a second that the reason he did n't come in was that he
was so big he could n't. I knew that the ceilings of the house were low
and that my study wasn't very large, but I had n't realized before how
small it all was. The fellow blocked up the whole doorway; his
shoulders, in a loose, shaggy gray coat, stretched clear across. His
face was burned a deep brown, and his hair was very black and looked
rather long, as it evidently had n't been brushed for a good while, and
he wanted to know if I could let him have a match. I could see that he
was taking in my room as he stood there, and I think he smiled a little
at something; but then he seemed to be smiling anyhow (in a different
way), so I was n't sure. I jumped up and got him a box of matches
(somehow I knew at once that he wasn't the other Freshman who has rooms
in the house, although I can't think why, as he did n't look old), and
he thanked me, saying he was sorry to trouble me, and went back to his
room.
I felt sort of excited and restless after that, and thought I would sit
down and write mamma all about him; but just as I was beginning to he
stopped humming (I don't think he can be a member of the Glee Club, as
he only struck the right note once by accident; still I knew perfectly
well what he was trying to sing) and began to laugh. Then he came over
to my door again with his hands in his pockets and said,--
"You did n't happen to see an iron bedstead lying around the streets
anywhere, did you? The good Chester has evidently spent the last three
months in putting my rooms in order and I can't find a thing." I told
him I had seen a bed in the back yard this afternoon, but that I did n't
think it could be his. He asked me very seriously why not. And then
all at once I got horribly rattled. I didn't like to tell him that the
bed had n't looked nearly big enough for him (it was a little narrow
thing), for I was afraid he might think me fresh. Then besides, I found
that I had instinctively stood up when I saw him, and as there wasn't
any particular reason why I should have done this, I got sort of
confused.
"Of course it's a very nice little bed," I hastened to add. Whereupon
he burst out laughing with a loud whoop.
"If it 's such a nice one it certainly can't be mine, and I 'd better go
down and swipe it right away," he said at last, and clattered
downstairs. I tried again to write to mamma, but he made such a noise
coming upstairs with pieces of bed and running down again that I could
n't fix my mind. Then, too, I kept wondering whether I ought to offer
to help him. Finally I went out as he was coming up with a mattress on
his shoulder and asked, "Was it your bed, after all?" which made him
laugh again and say: "I wouldn't tell you for anything in the world. If
you aren't too busy, though, I wish you would help me put the beastly
thing together."
We tried for about half an hour to make the bed stand up. It looked
simple enough, but whenever we got the sides firm and more or less
parallel, the back and front would wobble and fall to the floor. Once
we had all four pieces standing beautifully, but just as we put on the
woven wire business and Mr. Duggie (that's what Mrs. Chester calls
him--I don't think it 's his real name, though) exclaimed, "I have the
honor to report, sir, that the allied forces have taken New Bedford,"
the whole thing collapsed and pinched his finger fearfully as it came
down. After that we sat on the floor awhile. He smoked a pipe and
glanced meditatively at the ruins of the bed every now and then, and at
last turned to me and said, "Is this your first year here?" I didn't
let him see how pleased I was that he had not discovered I was a
Freshman, and merely answered, "Yes."
We talked a long time--about all kinds of things. I asked him a string
of questions that had been on my mind for months: whether it is better
to live in a private house, one of the big private halls, or in the Yard
(I called it the "Campus," and he looked queer for a moment and said it
was known as the Yard here); where would be a good place to eat; whether
he thought my allowance was big enough (I told him how much I was going
to have); and what was the best way to make friends and get on teams and
clubs and musical societies and crews and papers. He answered
everything, although once or twice he puffed at his pipe and looked at
me a good while before speaking. I couldn't tell whether the questions
had n't occurred to him before, or whether he didn't know just what to
tell me. Of course I can't remember all he said, but it sounded so
important that afterward I scribbled as much of it as I could in a
notebook.