DUGGIE.

*XIII*

Some day I 'm going to write a book about Boston, because it's the most

wonderful place in the world. I suppose I really mean by this that it

is so different from Perugia. Berri, of course, would have to help

me,--that is, he would unless I lived here fifty or sixty years for the

purpose of gathering notes. It would take about that long to understand

everything and be able to write intelligently and sympathetically.

Anybody, of course, may sojourn for a time among the Bostonians--just as

he may among the Chinese or the strange races of the Pacific

islands--and record his impressions of them. But I don't think his

remarks would be more valuable than the ordinary travel book that tells

you merely the things you could tell yourself if you were on the spot

with a pencil and a strong right arm. Really to know the place you have

to be born and brought up here; which in itself amounts to saying that

Boston will never, never be understood. For the people who were born

and brought up here know and won't tell,--"know and can't tell," Berri

declares. "It would take a genius to do the thing properly," he says,

"and Boston went out of the genius business some thirty or forty years

ago."

Now, Berri was born in Paris ("Paa-is, France--or Paa-is, Kentucky?" as

a Southern girl once asked him), and I don't suppose he's a genius,

actually. But as he has, on his mother's side, more cousins and aunts

and things in Boston than anybody I 'm ever likely to know so very

intimately, and as he seems more like a genius than anybody I 've ever

seen before, what he tells me always sounds somehow as if it were the

real thing. He laughed, though, the other day--we were taking a long

walk--when I said this to him, and answered that it was very evident I

did n't know what the real thing was.

"_I'm_ not," he added, "if for no other reason than that I am able,

quite seriously at times, to consider going some place else to live

after I finish with all this." And he fluttered his hand in the

direction of Cambridge.

"Does n't anybody else?" I asked.

"Mercy, no--how you talk!" he exclaimed. "Why should they?"

"I suppose I was thinking of papa," I replied meekly. "He believes it's

better for most young men to get away from home and start life for

themselves as soon as they grow up; they 're always boys to somebody

unless they do, he says. Then, besides, he has great faith in perfectly

new places. He 's often told me that even Perugia was too old and

crowded for a young man. Perugia was fifty-three years old last

spring." Berri laughed.

"That's important, if true," he answered, "but what has it to do with

Boston?"

"Why, I merely imagined that some one in this part of the world might

have the same idea," I suggested. "Now, take Duggie, for instance.

Don't you think that Duggie wants to get out and try to do something?"

"Oh, Duggie!" said Berri, with a shrug. "He thinks he does now, but he

really doesn't. Of course Duggie is simply slopping over with

strenuousness and that sort of thing. But he gets most of it out of

books,--Fleetwood's books at that. And after all, as I say, he slops

over; it 'll just run into the sand without making even a silly little

hole. After a while, when he gets tired of reading, and thinking how

unworthy everybody else is, it won't do even that. Duggie in college is

stunning and a leader of men; but Duggie at forty will be leading

nothing but a beautiful purple life down there at his

country-place,--unless, of course, he gets fat; if he gets fat, he 'll

be a stockbroker."

"Say, Berri, how old are you, anyhow?" I asked. I know he is older than

I am, but he never will tell me how much,--he didn't this time,--he just

laughs, and says his early education was grossly neglected over there in

Europe, or he would have been classes and classes ahead of me. I did

n't like what he said about Duggie, and told him so. He answered that I

'd brought it on myself, and I suppose I had.

"Maybe we'd better talk about Bertie Stockbridge," he added. "He's my

third cousin, you know--but, dear me, if people begin to be loyal to

third cousins, Boston would turn into a sort of gigantic asylum for deaf

mutes. I don't mind _what_ you say about Bertie. Besides, he 's a more

perfect specimen than Duggie, because Duggie is passing through a phase.

Even Bostonians sometimes pass through phases when they 're very young.

It doesn't happen often, though. The truth is, Duggie can't decide

whether to be a Greek god or a college settlement. He'd really rather be

a Greek god, only it's so immoral. He 'll probably end, you know, by

coming out of his trance some June morning and finding himself married.

Then it will be too late to be either one or the other. But what was it

we were talking about? Oh, yes--Bertie. Now, Bertie isn't passing

through a phase. Not on your life. Bertie just rose Venus-like in a

state of hopeless completion from the crystal waters of the Back Bay.

He never disappoints."

"But I like Bertie," I protested; "not as much as I do Duggie, of

course. But I do like him; he's so--so--sensible."

"Sensible!" Berri screamed. "Why, child, the Stockbridge family is

_all_ sense. With trousers bagging at the knee and Adam's apples rising

and falling above their abashed collars, Bertie's ancestors came into a

lovely foolish world and _created_ sense. That's all they ever do

now,--just create one another and sense. So, the next time you hear

some old thing groaning about the scarcity of common-sense, you 'll know

that it's because the Stockbridges have it all,--they and a few friends

who live in the same street during the winter and share several thousand

front feet of the Atlantic Ocean from May to November. But you mustn't

think I don't like Bertie and his family,--perhaps I should simply say

'Bertie,' for Bertie is his family,--because I do, you know. I admire

him very much," Berri added after a moment. "He radiates a sort of

atmosphere of modest infallibility that makes me feel exactly as I

should feel if I suddenly went into Appleton Chapel and found the Pope

there reading the Boston Transcript. Calmly and without the slightest

tinge of bitterness, I admit that Bertie is always right.

"You heard what he said to Bobbie Colburn, didn't you? It was after the

hour exam in English 68, and we were all in Bobbie's room comparing

notes. Now, Bertie had passed, of course, because he 'll always pass in

everything, whether he has any talent for it or not; but he had n't

passed particularly well. It takes a person of some imagination to get

a good mark in that course. Bobbie Colburn, on the other hand, who

apparently hadn't studied at all and who'd been having a fierce time the

night before the exam, just sailed into the examination-room with a

dress-suit on under his overcoat, and got through brilliantly, which

worried Bertie to death. We 'd all made some comment on the matter, and

finally Colburn, as if to end it, said in his breezy way, 'Well, you

know the old proverb,--He laughs best who drinks most!' Whereupon

Bertie fixed him with his fine gray eyes and remarked, 'That is n't the

way it goes, Colburn; you 've got it mixed.' Then he repeated the words

correctly,--not with triumph exactly, but with the cold joy of one whose

life is spent in righting unimportant wrongs.

"And yet I can't help confessing," Berri mused, "that I 'm exceedingly

glad to acknowledge my relationship to Bertie and his tribe. They

madden me at times; they have such clear, narrow, unelastic, admirable

intellects. Their attitude toward all questions, public or private, is

so definite and uncompromising; they 're so dog-gonned _right_. Why,

American history is just one glad, sweet testimonial to the fact that

they 're never wrong. They 're not always on the popular side, or the

successful; they 're merely right. Any other human beings would keep on

trying to make use of such a splendid faculty. Years and years ago they

did make use of it; but nowadays it's enough just to know that they have

it, and pretty much all to themselves.

"But, as I was saying, I 'm secretly darned glad that Bertie and I

belong to each other, so to speak. Is n't it funny--I'm not a bit loyal

to Bertie, but he 's perfectly loyal to me. He does n't in the least

understand me. I don't think he even likes me, although that disturbing

thought probably has n't occurred to him yet; but there's no getting

around the fact that I 'm one of his relatives, and he accepts

me,--accepts me in a way he never will accept _you_, no matter how well

he gets to know you and like you. There's something rather fine in

that, don't you think? Of course, it might be a good deal of a bore if

he took a fancy to me; but as he won't, it's really a great comfort.

The fact that that plain, but healthy-looking, silent person in the very

badly made dark gray suit accepts me and will always accept me, is

equivalent to an illuminated address of welcome and the freedom of the

city.

"You really can't imagine how it simplifies things," Berri continued.

"It's such a relief, such an absolution! It leaves me, as some one

says, 'with nothing on my mind but my hair and my hat;' and even they

don't have to be brushed as long as people consider me a Stockbridge at

heart. Why, if I didn't feel like it, I shouldn't have to be even

polite. Of course I am polite. But it's a mere habit with me; I dare

say I 'll get out of it. You've noticed, haven't you, how brusque and

sort of primitive Bertie's manner is as a rule? Well, they 're all more

or less like that. People who like them say it arises from shyness and

simplicity, and people who don't like them declare that it's just common

or domestic rudeness; but it really is n't one or the other, and I think

I ought to know. The family manner comes from a curious conviction that

politeness, grace, tact--the practice of making oneself agreeable free

of charge, so to speak--has to do with the emotions; which is perfectly

absurd. The habit of politeness is about as emotional as the habit of

brushing one's teeth. But Bertie's tribe does n't think so; and emotion

with them is simply another word for effeminacy. You see, they 're so

sure of coming up to the scratch in the big things that they let the

little ones slide. I think they always vaguely associate politeness

with French waiters and Neapolitan cripples. So, in a way, they 'll

rather expect it of you; they like all foreigners to seem foreign."

Bertie gabbled about no end of things that afternoon. He had what he

calls a "dry jag," and hardly ever stopped talking from the time we left

our house just after luncheon until we came down Brattle Street on the

way back and went into Mrs. Brown's for dinner. Once he and a lot of

kids coming out of a schoolhouse away across the river somewhere, pasted

one another with snowballs (I joined them) until a policeman made us

stop, and for a few minutes the torrent of talk was interrupted. But he

made up for it by yelling every time he hit any one or got hit himself.

He told me all sorts of tales, and I could n't help thinking how

different everything was from Perugia.

It had never occurred to me before that Perugia was so happy-go-lucky

and uncivilized. Why, out there we just seem to grow up like those great

round weeds on the prairie that suddenly let go for no particular reason

and then bound along in the breeze through the wide flat streets until

they run against a fence or a house and, for a while, stick there. It

does n't seem to me that anything much is decided for us in advance. I

did n't know even that I was coming to college until about a year and a

half beforehand,--which made it simply awful, as I had to study

everything at once and did n't learn much of anything. Now, Berri says

that, with the exception of himself, who was "grossly neglected" and

never studied anything but French and German, his entire family for

generations has lived by a sort of educational and social calendar from

which they never deviate except in the event of a civil war. He says he

should n't be a bit surprised to learn that there were certain definite,

unalterable dates at which the little boys began and left off tin

soldiers and the breeding of guinea-pigs, and the little girls began and

left off paper-dolls and "dressing up." He declares that, providing the

laws of nature are reasonably consistent, they all know exactly what

they 'll be doing at any period of their lives; that even matrimony has

ceased to be a lottery with them, as they go in for marrying, not

individuals, but types. Isn't it perfectly wonderful?

"Now, take Bertie," he said. "Bertie knew who his classmates in college

were going to be, at the age of five. They 're the same chaps he's been

going to school with, and to the kid dancing-classes, you know, the

Saturday Mornings and Thursday Afternoons or whatever they are, all

these years. They go to the Friday Evenings this year, and next year

they 'll go to the Saturday Evenings, and at all these morns and noons

and dewy eves they dance with the same girls that two years from now

they 'll meet in society and subsequently marry, just because it's part

of the routine. After they get out of college they 'll all go abroad

for a few months in groups of three and four, and when they get back

they 'll be taken into the same club (their names will have been on the

waiting list some twenty-odd years), and they 'll join a lunch club down

town in order not to miss seeing one another every day at noon for the

rest of their lives."

Then Berri told me about the girls. Really my heart bleeds for the

girls, because apparently, unless they are terribly pretty or terribly

clever or terribly rich, they must have a devil of a time. Berri says

that although they all "come out," they don't all stay out; that after

about a year or so a good many of them sort of slink in again by

unanimous consent. (Imagine such a thing in Perugia! Why, every girl

has a good time there for just as long as she wants to.) The pretty

ones, however, never go in again; because, if you once get a reputation

for beauty here, Berri says it never leaves you (the reputation, I

mean), and that 's why an evening party in Boston often strikes a

stranger as being so largely a matter of physical traditions. At a

dance the rich plain girls, he says, have a good time too, but only for

the first part of the evening. The men speak of them as "pills" (a

quaint, chivalrous custom, is it not?), and try to dance with them as

early in the evening as possible, because everybody else is trying to do

the same thing and there isn't so great a chance of getting stuck for an

hour or so. But later on they ask only the ones they really want to

dance with, and the plain rich girl finds herself spending a cozy

eternity with some one who is inwardly moaning because he delayed until

the rush was over.

The girls too are born into a sort of rut, Berri says. It takes the

form of sewing-circles. Berri can discourse for hours at a time on these

institutions. His aunt Josephine has been going to the same one every

week for fifty years. He said that once when he was a little child he

heard an Englishman who had lived in India telling about the mysterious

rapidity with which a piece of news spread among the natives of that

country. Within half a day, this man declared, a rumor would sort of

leap through the air from Calcutta to the most obscure villages on the

Afghan frontier, and no one could explain how it was done. Berri used

to fall asleep at night worrying over it. But now, even in India

romance is dead, Berri says; he 's convinced that the whole thing was

nothing but just sewing-circles.

"Why, Granny, if I were to lock myself up in my room in Cambridge and

draw the curtains and stuff the keyhole and then murmur in a low voice

that--well, for instance, that you and Sarah Bernhardt had been quietly

married at the First Baptist Church in Somerville that afternoon, and

then dash in to my aunt Josephine's as fast as a car could take me, she

would greet me in the library with: 'My dear, _have_ you heard! I 've

just come from the sewing-circle, and they say--of course I don't

believe it'--and so on. And this is n't any idle jest, either; it's a

fact."

He was just beginning to tell me something else about them--I forget

what--when we both realized that it was rather late, and that if we

expected to get back in time for dinner we should have to find a shorter

way or take the car. We neither of us knew where we were, although

Berri said the place looked as if it might be called

"Upper-West-Newtonville-Centre Corners." So we stopped a little girl

who was trudging along with a pitcher of milk in her hand.

"Little girl, can you tell me where we are?" Berri asked her solemnly.

She stared at us for a moment with great round eyes (Berri admitted

afterwards that the question was a stupid one), and finally answered in

a high, scornful little voice,--

"Main Street."

Berri refused to ask again after that, and we strolled about for a time

until we caught sight of the tower of Memorial,--it suddenly appeared

against the sky in quite the wrong direction,--and then of course

getting home was easy enough.

We were rather confidential on the way back, and talked about the

"Dickey," which we had never discussed before. The Dickey is the great

Sophomore secret society. I don't remember just how the subject came

up, but something reminded Berri of one night earlier in the year,--one

of the nights on which the society takes on ten new members. They

choose them from the Sophomore class always except late in the spring,

just before college closes, when ten--the "First Ten"--are elected from

among the Freshmen. However, by that time the Freshmen are almost

Sophomores, so it amounts to about the same thing. When a ten is taken

on, the whole club marches through the streets at about eleven o'clock

at night, singing a song that has no words but "Tra la la la, la la, la

la." It's a wonderful little tune; it's very short and simple, and

after you 've heard it once it sticks in your head, you can't forget it.

Unlike other catchy airs, though, you somehow don't get tired of it. I

've heard it over and over again since I 've been here,--on pianos as I

passed under the windows of upper classmen, whistled by muckers in the

Yard, and sung by the club at night,--and it always gives me a thrill; I

suppose it 's because it means such a lot, and because you realize that

no one (except the muckers) would play it or sing it or whistle it who

was n't entitled to.

On the night that Berri referred to, the club must have been half a mile

away when we first heard it. Berri was in my room reading, and I was

writing a letter. My back was toward him, and we neither of us said

anything when the vague musical "tra la la las" floated up from away

down by the river somewhere. They were very faint, and after a minute or

two stopped entirely. Then, just as I had forgotten about it, the song

began again,--a little louder and more distinct this time and getting

louder every second. Then it suddenly broke off once more. But I

didn't forget it, for I knew that the club had stopped to take some one

out of his room--some one who had just been elected--and march him along

with the others, and I waited kind of nervously for the refrain to begin

again; it never gets started quite evenly,--only a few voices at first,

the rest joining in as the crowd turns away from the door of the

"neophyte's" house and starts along the street. They came nearer and

nearer,--the song grew louder and louder. Some of the fellows were

singing a clear tenor that made the last few notes of every verse die

away in a kind of high, sad wail. It seemed ridiculous for me to be

sitting there pretending to write a letter, with Berri reading in such

elaborate unconsciousness by the fire, when the ears of both of us were

strained to catch every note, and the hoarse, fierce shouts that

suddenly broke through the song as the Dickey turned into our street;

but neither of us knew what to say exactly. At last, however, I could

n't stand it any longer, and jumped up and blew out both the lamps.

With the room dark we could stand at the window and not be seen.

Freshmen are n't expected to show any particular interest in the

proceedings of the Dickey; it's considered fresh. They were just

tramping past our house when we leaned out,--a singing, shouting,

irresistible mob,--and Berri and I looked down at them in silence. We

were both excited, and I felt chilly all over--but that may have been on

account of the open window. The crowd did not pass on, as we thought it

would, but stopped at a house across the street a few doors down. Once

more the song ceased; men formed in a double line that reached from the

piazza to the street, and there were hoarse cries of "Pull him out--pull

him out!" Then the front door burst open, and a fellow--he seemed to be

half dressed--came hurtling through the air between the double row

waiting for him. There was a moment of confusion and savage yells,

during which it looked as if the whole crowd was trying to get its hands

on him. We lost sight of him in the shuffle, and in another instant the

song began, louder than before, and the Dickey swayed away into the

darkness. We stood at the window until the clearness and energy of the

"Tra la la la, la la, la la," faded to a thin, dim, uncertain rhythm,--a

suggestion of tenor that all but lost itself in the pearly fog rolling

up from the marshes.

I fumbled for a match when we turned at last to the room. But before I

found one, Berri said, "I think I 'll go to bed, Granny," and by the

time I got the lamp lighted he had slipped away. I don't know why

exactly, but I was rather glad he hadn't waited. After that I tried to

finish my letter, but I could n't make myself end the sentence I had

been writing the way I had meant to end it in the first place. So I put

the thing in the fire and sat there awhile, thinking, and then went to

bed myself.

*XIV*

Well, as I said, something reminded Berri of that night, and as we were

on a deserted road far from Cambridge, he referred to it,--indirectly at

first, and afterwards right out in so many words. But he didn't talk in

the same free and airy strain he had been talking in before, and

although I wanted to hear what he said and ask questions and say a few

things myself, I had a feeling all the time that perhaps we ought to

change the subject; it made me uncomfortable. Then I thought of the way

I had talked to Duggie the first evening, away back in September, and

positively blushed when I remembered that I had asked him, outright, how

one ought to go about getting on clubs. Why, that was enough to sewer

me with almost anybody in the world but Duggie. Imagine my doing such a

thing now! No one ever thinks of mentioning the clubs in general

conversation. Of course once in a while some fresh kid who happens to

live next door to one of them comes out with an allusion of some kind,

and embarrasses everybody to death; and I 've had one or two upper

classmen--Juniors or Seniors--who hadn't made the Dickey and didn't

belong to a club talk to me quite freely about the whole matter in a

tone that implied that such things were all very well, no doubt, but did

n't interest them particularly. You can get a good deal of information

from upper classmen of this kind,--fellows who are n't on clubs and have

given up expecting to be; they don't think you fresh. But it would

never do to ask for any from a Dickey man; that would be awful. Why, you

'd never be taken on if you did that.

Even Berri does n't seem to know much about the Dickey, or, if he does,

he did n't tell me anything very definite. He said, though, that if you

didn't make it, you might just as well pack up and go home; that Dickey

men kind of flocked together and did n't go outside much for their

friends, and that the fellows you wanted to know usually were on the

Dickey. Then, too, he said that if a man did n't make the Dickey, he

wasn't likely to be taken into a club. Berri seemed to know a lot about

the clubs. I knew hardly anything at all; in fact, I thought the Dickey

was a club, but he says it isn't,--that it's a society. The clubs, he

says, are great. His uncle took him to one for breakfast once before

he--Berri--got into college. (Of course he couldn't be taken to one

now.) He said he did n't notice anything particularly secret about it;

it was just like one of the good clubs in town. I found out the names

of most of them from him--they seem to have Greek names, yet are called

by queer nicknames as a rule--and where they are. This last, however, I

knew pretty well before, but I did n't know which was which, and could

n't ask exactly. I had often seen fellows going in and out of certain

houses along Mount Auburn Street that did n't look like residences

somehow, although they might have been, and wondered just what they

were. At night, even with the shades down, they were always lighted

from top to bottom. No matter how late it was, the lights were there,

cheerful and inviting,--which in itself seemed remarkable when I

considered how early Cambridge (the town, I mean) goes to bed. But one

morning when I was hurrying to a lecture, two fellows came out of

Claverly Hall, and one of them said to the other, "Hold up a minute; I

left my note-book at the club," and dashed across the street. Then it

suddenly dawned on me. Of course I never look curiously at them any

more, but just walk right on with my eyes fixed on something in the

distance as if they were ordinary houses. I can't help wondering,

sometimes, whether anybody ever noticed me staring at them and at the

fellows going in and out--before I knew. I hope not.

When I asked Duggie about getting into clubs that time, I remember he

evaded the subject (which was darned good of him, it seems to me now) by

saying something about being polite to everybody.

"That's all very well," Berri answered, when I laughed a little and told

him about it, "but there's such a thing as being too polite. You see,

there are fellows right now in our class--you know who they are and I do

too--who are, even as early as this, being considered for the First Ten.

If you suddenly turned in and tried to make yourself nice to them, why,

everybody would say you were 'swiping;' and so you would be. The First

Ten elects the Second Ten, you know."

"Duggie did n't mean that you ought to be polite only to the fellows you

think are going to help you along," I answered. "It was exactly the

reverse of that. What he meant was that you ought to be the same to

everybody."

"I wonder if _he_ was," Berri mused. "It's so easy, after you 've once

got to the top yourself, to think you did it all with the help of the

Scriptures. It's like these old vultures who 've stolen everything in

sight ever since they were born, beginning their magazine articles on

'How to Get Rich' with: 'Honesty and Industry must be the motto of him

who would attain wealth!'"

I refused to see any connection between Duggie and the old vultures, and

tried to get back to the clubs. However, we did n't say much more about

them, and squabbled most of the way home over the subject of popularity.

It does seem queer that some fellows have so many friends, while others

who start with about the same opportunities and even greater natural

advantages now and then have so few. I suggested that when a fellow was

tremendously popular and "in" everything--and I could n't see why it was

exactly--he probably had very interesting or fascinating qualities that

I had n't perhaps discovered. Berri, however, maintained that

popularity was often nothing but an idiotic fashion, and mentioned

several popular fellows he did n't like, to prove it.

"Now look at Tucker Ludlow," he burst out. "What is he? A dissipated

little beast; you know he is, everybody knows he is. Not that I should

mind his being dissipated and a beast, if he were ever anything else;

but he isn't. He's stupid, and he 's ignorant, and he is n't even

good-looking, yet he moves in a crowd,--a nice crowd too; and when he

moves, the crowd moves with him. That's nothing but fashion. It is n't

possible that anybody can really like the creature. But it amounts to

the same thing; I 've already heard it kind of whispered around that he

'll be on the First Ten."

What Berri said interested me very much, for Ludlow and I had agreed, a

few days before, to grind together on a course for the mid-year exams.

I had intended to remind him of it, but now that Berri said he was

spoken of for the First Ten I don't like to; people might think I was

swiping. I don't care much for Ludlow myself; but he doesn't irritate

me the way he does Berri, and I do think there must be something to him.

After the freaks of fashion, Berri seemed to think that the most popular

men--in one's Freshman year anyhow--were the fellows whose opportunities

for making friends were good to begin with, and who were n't in any way

particularly startling,--athletics, of course, always excepted; athletes

never lack a following. But it does n't do, he says, to be different,

or to excel at first in much of anything else. You may with perfect

safety have the reputation for knowing things or being clever, but that

's very different from really knowing or being. The man who actually

knows or is, is doomed.

"What about Reggie Howard, then?" I asked. Everybody likes Howard, and

yet he knows a fearful amount and is as clever as any one could be. I

knew Berri thought so, and wondered how he would get out of it.

"Yes, Reggie's wise,--very wise," he admitted, "but with the exception

of you and me, almost no one suspects it. He does n't object to my

knowing, because he feels sure I don't mind; and you 're safe because

you 're so kind. But he takes care that people generally don't get on

to it. That's part of his wisdom."

One thing I 've learned here that surprised me a good deal, and that

is--popularity has nothing to do with money. I always had an idea that

people with money to throw to the birds could n't help being liked; but

that evidently is n't the case. And Berri did n't have to tell me; I

found it out for myself. Of course it's nice to be able to live in

comfortable rooms and have plenty to eat and wear decent clothes. No

one objects to that, and no one objects, apparently, to a fellow's doing

more than that,--to spending, indeed, a good deal of money if he has it

to spend. But the mere fact of a man's having a record-breaking

allowance does n't seem to interest people in the least, and if some

frightfully rich fellow comes to college with a flourish of trumpets in

the Sunday papers about his father's income, and how many horses he

intends to keep, and how much the furnishing of his rooms will probably

cost, it 's decidedly against him. I was thinking, I suppose, of Tony

Earle in our class. His father makes millions and millions out of

safety-matches--I believe it is. Anyhow, everybody speaks of Tony as

"His Matchesty," and has very little to do with him. The fellows are

simply prejudiced against him because the papers said he had so much

money. And he 's really a perfectly harmless, rather quiet sort of

person who plays well on the piano. Berri and I spent an evening with

him once. We were dining in town, and Earle was all alone across the

room. He looked so dreary that Berri finally exclaimed,--

"For heaven's sake, why doesn't some one take pity on that poor wretched

millionaire? It's positively pathetic!"

I suggested asking him to come over and have his dinner with us. But

Berri, like every one else, objected.

"He 'd probably order nightingales or peacocks or some such thing, and

then insist on paying for us," he said.

"Well, let's ask him and see," I urged. "We'll make that the test. If

he tries to pay the whole bill, he won't do." So Berri went over and

asked him to join us, and he turned out just as I said,--quiet and not

especially interesting, but a good deal nicer than a lot of fellows who

won't know him. When it came to paying the waiter, Berri kicked me under

the table and spent an indecently long time in looking over the check. I

think he was actually disappointed when Earle glanced across the table

and merely said,--

"By the way, what's my share?"

When we got to Cambridge he asked us over to his rooms. They certainly

are dreams; even Berri could n't find anything wrong with them. He

bangs the box like a wizard.

"I was afraid he was going to say he was lonely, or something

melodramatic like that, when we got up to leave and he asked us to come

again," Berri remarked on the way home. "Of course he is horribly

lonely, and it was very considerate of him not to spoil everything by

saying so. I think we 'll have to go back. To-morrow at luncheon we

can start a society for the prevention of cruelty to millionaires."

Well, if I 'm ever ostracized it won't be because people are scared at

my allowance. Papa and I have been having an exceedingly brisk

correspondence lately. Just after the family got back to Perugia,

Mildred wrote me that papa had won an important lawsuit and was going to

get an unusually large fee. So I bought some clothes and a few things I

really needed on the strength of it and had the bill sent home, as he

made me promise to let him know just what I spent. He replied at some

length, declaring, among other things, that I reminded him of what

Charles Lamb says of a poor relation; Lamb's remark being, "A poor

relation is a preposterous shadow lengthening in the noontide of your

prosperity." I expostulated, and told him about Willie Jackson.

Willie's elder brother passed through Boston not long ago, and when

Willie went in to see him he asked for money with which to buy a

dress-suit case and some shoes he needed badly. No one knows exactly

how it happened,--some think that Willie had been brooding over the Fine

Arts course he is taking and the instructor's plea for more beauty in

one's every-day environment. Anyhow, when Willie stepped off the car in

Cambridge, he had--not the shoes and the dress-suit case, but a palm and

a canary-bird.

To this papa replied that he didn't see why I had taken the trouble to

record for his benefit the exploits of Willie Jackson, as he never for a

moment had doubted that there were as many fools in college as

elsewhere. That is where the matter rests at present.

As there is nothing doing now that you can watch in the afternoon as you

can the football practice in the autumn and the baseball and crews in

the spring, some of us at the table have become athletes on our own

account. We go to the gym every day at about five, and work with

chest-weights and dumbbells, and are put through all sorts of agonizing

performances in a large class of hard students who never take any other

kind of exercise. Then we run up North Avenue as far as the

railway-station and back to our rooms. I don't know how far it is, but

the return trip at first seemed to be about a hundred miles; it's a

little shorter now, and gets shorter every day. After a hot shower-bath

and then a cold one you feel eight or ten feet high, and walk through

the Square to dinner, sticking out your chest. It's queer you don't

catch cold, running in the icy wind with literally nothing on but a pair

of tennis shoes, loose short cotton drawers, and a thin sleeveless

undershirt; but you never seem to. The gym made me stiff all over for a

day or two, but I feel fine now, and wonder why we never thought of it

before. The muckers on the Avenue bother us a good deal with snowballs

when we run. Hemington very foolishly chased one of them not long ago

and washed his face with snow. The paternal mucker has since sued Hemi

for assault and battery. Hemi is in a great state about it, and we are

all looking forward to cutting a morningful of lectures and testifying

in court.

The mid-years are almost here, and I feel as if it were only about the

day before yesterday that I was failing in the hour exams. I simply

must do well in the mid-years, for if I don't they will probably change

my probation to "special probation" (as it is called), which is the

limit, my adviser says, of everything obnoxious. I should have to

report--to him most likely--every morning at half-past eight, just to

show that I was up bright and early and "in sympathy with the work," so

to speak. Then at ten or eleven in the evening I should have to drop in

again, which of course would make it impossible to go to the theatre

without permission. An extra-sharp lookout would be kept on my work,

and altogether special probation is easily a consummation devoutly to be

avoided. I suppose I 'll have to grind and grind night and day in order

to get everything down cold. I wish now that I had kept on studying an

hour or two every day, as I did for about a week after my encounter with

the exams in October. I should n't be well prepared even then, but it

would n't all seem so perfectly hopeless as it does now. It's so hard,

though, to do anything regularly when the front door is unlocked most of

the time, as ours is. And there 's no use in locking the door of my

room, as the fellows don't knock once and go away, but pound and rattle

and shout insulting remarks through the keyhole. All of which makes me

feel disagreeable and rather affected,--locking myself up when other

people get along so well without that sort of thing. I have n't done it

more than once or twice.

Anyhow I 'll probably get a good mark in my English Composition. The

instructor seems to like my themes and reads a good many of them in

class. Lately, however, he has developed the unnecessary trick of

pronouncing the words, when he is reading, exactly as they are spelled,

which is extremely trying for me and not fair to the theme. It has made

several really good ones sound ridiculous. Spelling is n't my strong

point, I know; but I draw the line at Berri's guying me about

it,--Berri, whose spelling, unless he digs every other word out of the

dictionary, looks like some kind of absurd French dialect. He has

recently taken to getting off a rigmarole (it's supposed to be about me)

that begins something like this,--

"'Berri, how do you spell "parallel"?'

"'Why, p-a-r-a-l-l-e-l, of course.'

"'Thank you; that's the way I have it.' (Then nothing was heard but the

scratching of a penknife.)"

I think they 're rather fussy about details here. On the back of my

last theme the instructor wrote: "By the way, dotting one's _i_'s and

crossing one's _t_'s are charming literary habits when once acquired."

However, I think I shall get a good mark in this course,

notwithstanding. But life isn't all English Composition, and I have a

terrible amount of work to do in the other things. Berri and I began, in

a way, to prepare for the ordeal by going to the theatre for the last

time until the mid-year period is at an end. We made an occasion of it,

and ended by doing something that I had never dreamed we were going to

do when we started out. It was foolish, I suppose, and I don't know

exactly what mamma would think about it. I should like to tell her and

find out, but I 'm afraid papa might get hold of it, and my idea of his

opinion on the subject is somewhat less vague. What we did was to invite

one of the girls in the show to supper.

Berri proposed it. We were sitting in the front row away to one side,

and when the second act was about half over, he exclaimed to me,--

"There, she 's done it again; that's the third time." I asked him what

he meant, and he replied that one of the girls on our side of the stage

had winked at us. The attention, he explained, must have been meant for

us. And for a variety of reasons it did n't seem as if it could have

been intended for any one else. In the first place our seats were the

last in the row. Behind us were some ladies, and on the other side of

Berri was a very old man who sat half turned away from the stage,

holding a great black tin trumpet to his ear, as if he were expecting

the actors to lean over the footlights and pour something into it.

"I don't want to appear vain," Berri went on, "but as a mere matter of

geographical position I think that we 're It." The comedian was singing

a song in the middle of the stage, and on either side of him was a row

of girls--convent girls they were supposed to be--who joined in the

chorus at the end of every verse and shook their fingers at him

reprovingly. They were all dressed in tights. This was n't the convent

uniform (they had appeared in that during the first act), and was

explained by the fact that they had been rehearsing for private

theatricals when the comedian fell in through the window. The comedian

was a burglar, and _his_ tights were merely a clever disguise. He was

making the girls believe that he was a professional actor hired by the

mother superior to teach them how to sing and dance. This was the plot,

and it was really rather complicated, for when they all decided to leave

the convent with the burglar and spend the evening at a roof-garden,

they rushed in dressed as policemen, pretending that they had come to

arrest the burglar. The mother superior did n't recognize them, of

course, and was naturally glad to have the burglar taken away. Then, at

the roof-garden--in the third act--they appeared as waiters; all of

which made it hard for me to keep track of them very well. But Berri

could spot our girl every time, and by carefully examining the program

and comparing the names of the chorus with the various changes of

costume she went through, he managed in some way, by the end of the

second act, to discover her name. It was Miss Mae Ysobelle. To tell

the truth, I did n't think her particularly pretty. She was tall and

not a bit graceful, and when she danced she looked as if it were hard

work to move her arms and legs the right number of times and finish with

the others. She smiled a great deal, but the moment she stopped dancing

her mouth sort of snapped back to place as if it were made of stiff red

rubber. I found, after watching her for a long time, that my own mouth

got very tired. I told Berri this; also that her clothes looked as if

they had been made for some one else. But Berri somehow seemed to think

she might be unusually agreeable if one knew her.

"Very often, you know, really pretty people don't make up well at all;

and as for her clothes looking as if they did n't belong to her, why,

she can't help that, poor thing! they probably don't. She is a little

knock-kneed, but you would n't notice that if she had a skirt on."

"Well, there doesn't seem to be any immediate danger of our seeing her

with a skirt," I answered, for some of the convent girls--Mae Ysobelle

among them--had suddenly changed their minds about being waiters and had

decided to give the interrupted private theatricals right there on the

roof-garden stage. They came prancing in dressed as jockeys, while the

man in the orchestra who, as Berri says, supplies music with local

color, slapped two thin boards together to imitate the crack of a whip.

"Oh, I don't know," Berri mused; "we might manage to meet her after the

show,--ask her to supper or something. She seems friendly enough," he

added; for, as he was speaking, the jockeys drew up at the edge of the

stage, touched their caps, then leaned over, and _all_ winked. Miss

Ysobelle was unmistakably looking at us as she did it.

I did n't believe she would go with us even if we asked her, but Berri

said we 'd rush out after the third act and buy her some flowers and

send an usher behind the scenes with them. We ended by doing this--we

got her a big box of roses--and writing a note asking her to meet us at

the stage door when the performance was ended. Berri signed it "Front

row--extreme left."

We did n't get an answer to it, at least not in words; but when the

curtain went up again on a scene in the convent garden, Miss Ysobelle

had one of our roses in her hair and another at her belt, and I began to

feel excited at the prospect of meeting her. In fact, the whole last

act had a personal interest for us that the others had not. It was

almost like being on the stage and enjoying everything from the inside.

I even felt rather sorry for the rest of the audience who were sitting

there perfectly oblivious to the intrigue going on in the blaze of the

footlights, before their unsuspecting eyes. One thing struck us both as

rather odd at first. Miss Ysobelle, except for the roses, scrupulously

ignored us through the entire act. She not only never winked at us, she

never even looked at us. In fact, she gave us both the impression that

she had become absorbed in something at the other side of the house. I

could n't understand this, and neither could Berri, although he said

there was probably some theatrical etiquette connected with her averted

gaze, or perhaps the stage-manager had told her to be more dignified.

We decided to ask her about it at supper. Well, we never got a chance

to ask her, but we found out soon enough for ourselves.

As we had the last seats on the left side of the front row, we were

naturally the last to get into the middle aisle on the way out, or,

rather, we and the people who had the corresponding seats on the other

side of the house were the last. We met them when we reached the end of

our row, and had to stop a moment as they stood there putting on their

overcoats and blocking the way. One of them I noticed particularly,--a

great, big thug of a creature who had shiny black hair slicked up in

front with a barbery flourish, and a very fancy waistcoat and cravat.

They kept just ahead of us on the way out, and laughed a good deal.

Berri and I were unusually silent.

We did n't go quite to the stage door, as the electric light fizzing

right over it made everything in the little alley as bright as day.

Neither of us was very keen to join the group loitering near by, so we

stood a little back in the shadow and waited. Finally some men with

their collars turned up came out; then two women with thick veils on.

They seemed to be in a great hurry, and for a few seconds we were afraid

that one of them might be Miss Ysobelle; but we remembered how tall she

was and did n't run after them. Then more men came, and more

girls,--some of whom were joined by men waiting at the door. It seemed

at last as if the whole company must have come out, and Berri and I were

beginning to think that Miss Mae Ysobelle must have left before we

arrived, when the door opened once more and she appeared with our box of

flowers in her arms. For a moment she stood on the step and looked

around expectantly.

"I think we ought to go up," Berri murmured nervously; but I thought it

would be better to wait and join her as she passed by.

Then a queer thing happened. Just as she decided to leave the step, who

should go up to her but the big thug with the shiny hair and loud

waistcoat? He lifted his hat and shook hands with her very cordially,

then took the box of flowers--our flowers--and strolled away with her

out of the alley to the street. As they passed by, we heard her exclaim,

"Say, it was awful nice of you to send those Jacques. When Myrtle seen

me open the box--" The rest of the sentence was lost in the rattle of a

cab.

Berri and I waited a moment before coming out of the shadow. Then we

looked at each other, and Berri shrieked with laughter. We laughed all

the way back to Cambridge. The people in the car must have thought--I

don't know what they could have thought. For a long time we could n't

imagine why things had turned out as they had until Berri remembered

that he had signed the note "Front row--extreme left." He had meant our

left, but Miss Ysobelle no doubt thought that it referred to her

left,--which was quite another matter.

*XV*

I've been dead to the world for more than a month; it seems about a

year. Yet when I came to look at the situation squarely, there wasn't

anything else to do exactly. It was a case of getting the drop on my

exams or letting them get the drop on me. Of course, I could have sort

of fooled with them and thought I was learning something about them and

then perhaps have scraped through in one or two and failed in the

others. And this, as a matter of fact, was the way in which Tucker

Ludlow and I did go at them at first. Tucker came up to my room two or

three times, armed with some type-written notes on Greek architecture

that he had bought at one of the book stores in the Square. The first

time he came was rather late in the afternoon. He examined everything

in my room, and we talked a good deal; he had been out West once, and

seemed to know much more about that part of the country than I did.

However, we finally got to work and had read about two pages of the

notes when Hemington came in. He saw that we were grinding, and said he

would n't sit down and interrupt us, especially as he ought to be in his

own room, grinding himself. He did n't actually sit down, but leaned

against the mantelpiece and smoked for a while, and then compromised by

half sitting on the arm of a chair in a temporary way and swinging his

leg. When at last he got up to leave, it was so near dinner that Ludlow

went with him, and said he would continue some other time. He left the

notes with me, and at first I thought I should study them alone, but as

Ludlow and I had agreed to grind the course up together, there did n't

seem to be any point in getting ahead of him; so in a few minutes I went

to dinner myself.

The next time Ludlow came to study was in the evening. He proposed that

I should read the notes aloud, as he found the architectural terms so

hard to pronounce; we were to stop and talk over anything we did n't

understand. I made myself comfortable in a chair near the lamp, and

Ludlow drew up to the fire. After droning along for about ten minutes

about triglyphs and epistyles and entablatures and all that sort of

thing, I suddenly had a jealous feeling that he was getting more good

from the performance than I was, for he had n't asked a question, while

I had n't understood a single sentence. Finally, without looking up, I

said,--

"Tucker, if you really know what 'pseudo-peripteral' means, I wish you

would tell me." Tucker didn't answer, and I thought he was probably

trying to get at a definition simple enough for me to grasp. But when I

glanced over toward the fireplace, I saw that he was asleep with his

mouth open. Well, I felt rather angry at first,--it all seemed such a

waste of time; but it struck me, too, as being funny, so I did n't wake

him. He must have slept for at least ten minutes longer (of course I

did n't bother about reading aloud any more), and then he came to,

exclaiming,--

"Read that about the ground plan once more; I don't think I quite got

that." As the ground plan was almost the first topic mentioned, I

suppose he had dozed off almost immediately. After that I made him do

the reading, but he had n't stumbled through many pages before he put

down the notes and said,--

"Granny, don't you think that if we tackled this beastly drivel in the

daytime, our heads would be clearer?"

That was the end of our grinding together. He came to my room once more,

but I was out. It was after this experience that I thought the matter

over and decided I should have to do the thing differently, and for the

most part alone. My most brilliant stroke was getting the key of

Duggie's room from Mrs. Chester; I could lock myself up there and be

perfectly safe. When fellows saw my own door wide open and no one at

home, they went away at once without making a row. Of course I had to

let Berri into the game; but as he began to be scared about some of his

own exams, he was grateful for the refuge and did n't give it away.

I went to work at the whole business scientifically, determined not to

leave a single thing, however unimportant, to chance. And I 'm

convinced now that if I have the nerve always to do this, I can get

through any examination I 'm ever likely to have,--not brilliantly,

perhaps, but very respectably. First of all, I spent a day in the

library and got hold of a lot of books that gave my various courses in

their simplest, clearest form. For the Fine Arts course I found that a

copy of the notes that Ludlow had was better than anything. They stated

facts in a condensed way that made it possible to keep in your head a

bird's-eye view of the entire course, as far as we had gone. Then I

made a list of the number of pages of general reading we had to

accomplish in every course, and split them up so as to be able to get

through them all--taking notes as I read--by reading a certain number of

pages a day. I left a margin at the end for review and in case of

accidents. And finally, after I had made these preparations and

collected as many of the necessary books as I could (I had to do some of

my reading in the library), I locked Duggie's door one morning after

breakfast, and sat down at his desk, and stayed there until luncheon;

and after luncheon I went back and stayed until it was time to go to the

gym and take a run; and after dinner I went back and stayed until

bedtime. And I did this every day with very few interruptions until I

could pick up any of the text-books, turn to the alphabetical index, and

plough right through it, describing in detail every darned thing it

mentioned; and an alphabetical index mentions a good deal. If I slipped

up on anything, I would mark it with a pencil, go back and learn it.

Oh, it was perfectly awful! I got so tired and discouraged and maudlin

at times that I would have to lean back and close my eyes and let my

bursting mind become a throbbing blank for a few minutes, in order to

keep from screaming. But after the gym and the run and the shower-bath,

I felt all right again,--just as if nothing had happened.

Two courses--the physics and philosophy--I had to tutor in for a while.

There was no use pegging away at them by myself, for I simply did n't

understand some of the experiments, and logic I could n't make head or

tail of. A Senior who lived in College House explained them to me in

simple golden words (three dollars an hour were his terms), and when I

once saw through it all and had it down on paper in my own language, I

could let it soak in at home. The other things--the ones I did

understand, like History and Fine Arts--were merely a matter of

incessant repetition and memory.

The night before the Fine Arts exam I went to what is called a "Seminar"

in that subject. I could have got along very well without it after my

days and days of slavery, but about every one I knew was going, and I

wanted to see what it was like. There are several men here who make a

business of boiling popular courses down to their most painlessly

swallowable dimensions, and then giving the thing the evening before the

examination in a kind of lecture, for which they charge an admittance

fee of three or four dollars. This performance is a seminar,--a kind of

royal road, if not to learning at least to passing examinations. They

say that fellows who never look at a book or take a note in class often

go to a seminar and, providing they have good memories, are able to

answer enough questions on the exam paper the next morning to get

through with colors flying. A certain number of questions on almost

every paper simply have to deal with cold, isolated facts rather than

with the generalities, comparisons, and discussions that necessitate a

real knowledge of the subject, and it is with these facts--pounded in at

a seminar--that one puts up a successful bluff. The authorities

naturally object to all this. As Berri remarked about the seminar we

went to,--

"After a professor has earnestly expounded a subject for half a year, it

must make him rather sore to have a cheeky parrot get up and do the

whole thing much better in four hours."

The Fine Arts seminar was held in a huge room, almost a hall, in a kind

of office building near the Square. It was advertised to begin at

half-past seven, and pretty much every one was there on time,--all the

sports of the Freshman and Sophomore classes, some Juniors, and even a

few Seniors. It was what the society reporter refers to as "a large and

fashionable gathering." It certainly was a mighty nice-looking crowd of

fellows; clean, well dressed, and (to quote Berri) "much more

intelligent in appearance than we actually are, or we should n't be here

at all." As every man came in, he was given a large sheet of stiff

paper on which was printed a synopsis of the course, with all the

subjects that had been touched on methodically arranged, and a list of

definitions, simple and easily remembered, but adequate. It was Greek

art in a nutshell,--a perfect marvel of clearness and condensation. The

little folding chairs had been neatly arranged in a semicircle at first,

but by the time the fellows had taken possession of them, they looked as

if they had been thrown in at random. A good many men who were

evidently old hands at the business arranged themselves comfortably in

two chairs, leaning back in one with their legs stretched across

another, as if prepared to spend the night. A lot of them took off

their coats and waistcoats--the crowd and the gas made the already

overheated room unbearably warm--and I 've never seen so many pretty

shirts in my life as I did that evening.

After every one was settled, the man who was giving the seminar took a

chair on a little platform in front of us, and began--not to talk

exactly, but to drone. He had a harsh monotonous voice--une voix

trainante, Berri called it--and spoke with painful slowness, as if

trying not to emphasize any one topic to the exclusion of the

others,--which had the effect of making his entire discourse, from

beginning to end, horribly important. Except for this crawling sound,

the room was absolutely silent; for once nobody seemed conscious of

himself or of any one else. Even when the man on the platform

pronounced Greek words in a novel fashion that was all his own, there

was n't a smile. I don't think we realized the intense strain of

attention we were undergoing until, at the end of an hour and three

quarters, Tucker Ludlow, who had gone to sleep, fell off his chair. The

second or two of relaxation that followed the crash was exquisite. We

stretched our arms and swabbed our foreheads with our handkerchiefs, and

then sank back again for another hour and fifteen minutes, until the

bell in the tower of Memorial boomed out ten o'clock. This seemed to be

the signal for a short vacation; for the fact-machine on the platform

finished the sentence he had begun and then stood up.

There was a general shuffling of chairs and a babbling of voices, and

the crowd divided into chattering groups. Some of the fellows did n't

seem to know anybody, and they either went out and strolled up and down

the corridor or sat studying the synopsis. The host of the evening had

provided beer and ginger ale and cheese and crackers with which to

sustain life until the ordeal was over. He could well afford it, as

there were at least seventy-five men in the room, every one of whom

would deposit three dollars and a half before he left.

While Berri and I and most of our table were talking in a corner, a

fellow named Smith, a Sophomore, sauntered over to us. Berri and I were

the only ones who knew him, so of course he must have come just to speak

to us. I don't remember what he said exactly, as the conversation of

the others sort of faded away when he approached, and Berri and I were

fearfully rattled. He 's very prominent and belongs to everything.

After we had stood there for a minute or two, Hemington and Bertie

Stockbridge and the others drifted off, leaving us three together, and

in a moment more Berri said, "I 'm going over to get another cracker,"

and also left us. I happened to notice that he did n't go near the

crackers, and furthermore he never came back. This seemed so queer and

unlike Berri that I spoke to him about it on the way home and asked him

why he had done it. He answered by saying,--

"You don't have to be much of a fox to know when you 're wanted and when

you 're not; and that happened to be one of the times when I wasn't."

This struck me as absurd, and does still. Berri knew Smith every bit as

well as I did, for the only other time he had ever spoken to us we

happened to be together just as we were the night of the seminar. I

reminded Berri of this; but he only laughed a little and replied,--

"Well, as Fleetwood says, 'I 'm an old man and I know my place.'" Since

then Smith has joined me twice when I was walking through the Yard and

seemed very friendly in a distant kind of way. I mean that his joining

me at all was friendly; he is n't much of a talker, and I never know

quite what to say to him. Of course it's very nice in him to do it, but

it makes me rather uncomfortable; for both times we stopped a moment on

the steps of Sever--the bell had n't rung yet--and although there were a

lot of fellows I knew waiting to go in, they merely nodded to me and

then looked away.

But I 'm forgetting about the seminar. We went back to our chairs

again, and once more tuned our ears to the monotonous voice of the

lecturer, that dragged on and on till midnight. It became harder and

harder to take in everything he said. The air was heavy with the smoke

of Egyptian cigarettes, and I counted nine men who were sound asleep. I

suppose that, even though asleep, they were more likely to acquire a

fact or two than if they hadn't been there at all. Just at the end--I

can hear him now--the man on the platform leaned back wearily with

closed eyes and chanted in the same hopeless tone,--

"Let me once more urge upon you the importance of expressing in your

examination papers sympathy with the Greek life, the Greek art, and the

Greek ideals of the best period. A page or two of sincere regret that

we moderns do not possess the innate sense of beauty, the joy of life,

civic pride, harmony, and all the other things that the Greeks went in

for will help you to get a passing mark. Remember what I told you about

[Greek: sophrosune]. Refer to [Greek: sophrosune] constantly. John

Addington Symonds calls it 'that truly Greek virtue; the correlative in

morals to the passion for beauty.' S-y-m-o-n-d-s, and there are two

_d_s in Addington. If you get stuck, make use of the quotation I gave

you from Goethe--G-o-e-t-h-e--it comes in well almost anywhere.

Good-night and good luck." He stood at the door as we passed out,

holding a box in his hand, into which every one dropped three Plunks and

a half. I was tired when we got home and went right to bed. But Berri

sat up almost until morning, studying the synopsis and going over his

notes.

It must have been some time before this that Berri's thesis arrived from

England one morning with a long letter from Duggie. I have kept a sort

of lookout for it right along, but that morning Berri saw the postman

from my window and ran downstairs to meet him. As he was coming up, he

exclaimed in a surprised voice, "What on earth do you suppose--" and

then broke off abruptly. He passed quickly through my room, dropping a

bill on my desk as he went, and after that the house for about half an

hour was very silent. I had so often wondered what Berri would do, what

he would say, how he would take Duggie's letter when it came, that I

instinctively knew it had at last arrived, and asked no questions.

He surprised me by neither saying nor doing anything; and for two days I

had no reason to suppose that the thesis had wandered back to Cambridge

at all beyond the feeling in my bones that it had. On the third day,

however, Berri, who was just starting off to spend Sunday at his aunt's,

stopped in my room with a letter in his hand. He looked at it

doubtfully for a moment, as if making up his mind about something, and

then tossed it into my lap.

"I got that from Sherwin the other day," he said; and then added, as he

made for the door and I drew the letter from its envelope,--

"Well, it may be all for the best."

I don't think anybody could read Duggie's letter and not feel that it

was for the best. Berri has n't said anything more about it, and neither

have I. There really is n't anything to say.

I passed all my exams. My marks are n't anything to be stuck up about,

but they let me through decently, and in three courses were even a

little better than they actually had to be,--which is a comfort in a

way. For my adviser says he thinks that in a few weeks it would n't do

any harm to petition the administrative board (or whatever it is that

has charge of such things) to let me off probation. He says he can't

promise anything, of course, but that stranger things have happened; all

of which seems to me rather to explode Berri's conviction that every

adviser in college spends all his odd moments in devising fiendish

schemes for the destruction of his Freshmen charges. But then Berri was

unfortunate in his adviser. He is n't young and does n't try to be

sympathetic like mine, and he annoys Berri extremely by glaring at him

over a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles and exclaiming _a propos_ of

nothing,--

"You can't fool me--you can't fool me!"

My adviser has had me to dinner twice at the professors' club. He

invites his Freshmen, four or five at a time, to dinner, in order, I

suppose, to get to know them better. Of course, he never really does

get to know us better by having these stiff little parties, but it's

awfully kind of him to ask us, and he thinks he does; so it's all right.

I dreaded the first one, but my dread was n't a patch on the dread with

which I dreaded the second, because I 'd been to the first. Naturally I

did n't dare refuse to go to either of them. Nobody does. The dinner

itself is good, and my adviser not only lays himself out to be just as

nice as possible,--he succeeds. Yet the fellows don't feel altogether

at their ease somehow and are n't themselves. They want to be and try

to be, and once in a while they put up a pretty good bluff at it, but

they never quite are. I don't know how to explain it exactly, but when

you can't help feeling that your host is sizing you up and talking only

about the things he thinks you like to talk about--even if you do like

to talk about them, why, you just can't. (I've read that sentence over

six times and it means a little less every time.) After dinner he takes

the fellows up to his room and asks them to smoke, and they never know

which would be the better swipe,--to accept or to refuse. Some decide

one way and some the other; but whether they want to smoke or not has

very little to do with the decision. The best part of the evening comes

when somebody gets up enough nerve to murmur that he is very sorry he

has to say good-night, as he has a lot of studying to do. This usually

makes the others laugh, and it always breaks up the party. Then the

fellows get together in somebody's room--if they know one another well

enough--and talk the thing over.

Oh, I wish spring would come! This seems to be the time of year when

nothing much happens. As long as we were all grinding most of the day

for the mid-years, I didn't think much about the weather, except that

when it was bad there wasn't so much temptation to idle out of doors.

Now, however, everybody wants the weather to be good, and it's vile. It

always manages to do four or five different things in the course of a

day, and the walking is unspeakable. To a certain extent, though, this

is the fault of the town itself. Most of the residence streets have

dirt sidewalks and curbstones that might be very picturesque in Egypt or

some place where it did n't rain and snow and freeze and melt all in the

course of a few hours; but here they turn into troughs full of mud and

slush, and the curbstones keep the mixture from running into the gutter.

I know I ought n't to criticise such a fine old town. So many great

people have, all their lives, floundered uncomplainingly through

Cambridge mud that I suppose it's cheeky of me to notice it. But in wet

weather the sidewalks are really not nice. In front of a few houses the

owners put down temporary wooden walks,--three boards wide, running

lengthwise,--but you invariably meet a lady in the middle of them and

have to jump gracefully into the nearest puddle, looking as if you

considered this the dearest privilege of your young life.

The candidates for the track team are crazy to get out of doors and

begin regular practice on the Soldiers' Field cinder track, but it 's

too soft yet to be raked and rolled, and they have to keep working in

the gym and on the tiresome old board track behind it. Dick Smith was

talking about this not long ago when he joined me in the Yard. He says

it's great on a warm spring morning to go across the river and sit on

the bleachers and watch the fellows practise starting and short sprints.

Well, there's nothing like that now. I hardly know how the days go by.

*XVI*

I notice that when I last wrote in my diary I was wishing for spring,

and here it is almost the end of June! Where did all those slow days I

complained of go to so quickly, I wonder? How did I spend them, and why

haven't I tried to tell about them? I don't know unless it was because

they were so slow and did go so quickly. Nothing ever happened, really,

until just at the end; but to-day with Cambridge sizzling hot (I can

smell the asphalt on the main street even here in my room) and perfectly

deserted, except for its inhabitants (who don't count) and the kids who

have come to take their entrance exams, the last three months and a half

seem like a dream. The spring is scarcely over, and yet I 've already

begun to look forward to it again next year.

I liked it so much, I suppose, because in Perugia we don't, as a rule,

have any. Out there it's very much like what you read about Russia: for

a long time it's winter, and then you wake up some morning feeling as if

you had spent the night in a Turkish bath, and know that it is summer;

you know that the soda-fountains are hissing, that a watering-cart is

jolting past, leaving behind it a damp, earthy sensation (something

between an odor and a faint breeze), that an Italian is leaning over the

fence languidly calling out, "Bananos--bananos," that a scissors-grinder

is ding-donging in the distance, and that, of course, a lawn-mower is

whirring sharply back and forth under your windows.

Here warm weather comes slowly and shyly, as if it could n't quite make

up its mind to come at all. There are many days that from the other

side of a pane of glass look all blue and white and gold, and tempt you

to snatch up a cap and run out. You do this, and stand undecidedly on

the sidewalk for a moment; then you go in again and put on your overcoat

and gloves.

Somehow the leaves don't seem to burst out all at once, as they do with

us. You notice first, on Brattle Street and in the Yard, that the trees

have undergone a change. That is, you think they have; the change is so

slight you aren't sure, and may have only imagined it, after all. But

in a few days--I can't now remember how many--you know that you were

right; the branches and twigs that have stood out so hard and definite

against all the winter sunsets have blurred a little,--they are no

longer altogether in focus. They blur more and more as the days go by,

until--shall I ever forget it?--you cease to think of them as trees, and

only know that over and beyond you there is a faint, uncertain mist of

tenderest green,--so faint, so uncertain that you almost glance up to

see whether it has drifted away on a slow, pungent gust from the

marshes. But instead of doing that, it grows denser and greener against

the rain-washed blue, until it is no longer a mist, but a cloud. Then

at last there is a delicious crinkling, and the leaves have come. In

May and June bleak, shabby Cambridge covers all its angles and corners.

They are softened and filled with billows and jets and sprays and

garlands,--green, gold, silver, mauve, and--what is the color of apple

blossoms? They are such a tremor of white and pink that I never really

know. The wind loses its bite, and then its chill. The air is moist

and warm, and as you walk slowly through the quiet leafy streets at

night, the damp, fresh lilacs stretch out to dabble against your face,

and something--it may be the stillness and sweetness of it all, or it

may be just the penetrating smell of the box hedges--something makes you

very sad and very happy at the same time.

During the day, between lectures, we loafed a good deal,--on Brattle

Street chiefly; and often in the afternoon, when we were beginning to

think of thinking of grinding for the finals, Berri and I and

occasionally Hemington used to take a book or some notes and go up to

the vacant lot across the street from the Longfellow house. At the

further end of this open space--a meadow during the poet's lifetime, but

now, unfortunately, a rather ugly little park--there is a stone terrace

with a short flight of steps and two broad stone seats against the wall

below. Passionate pilgrims come there for a moment, once in a while,

but as a rule it is deserted. We pretended to study here; but dates and

formulas and Geschmitzenmenger's reflections on the building materials

of ancient Rome always got mixed up in Hemington's tobacco smoke, or we

forgot about them in watching the sun sparkle on the pools left by the

falling tide. Berri said that even Italy had very little more to offer

one than a stone bench soaked in sunlight and the delusion that one was

accomplishing something. Now and then we strolled in Longfellow's

garden. The family were out of town, and Berri inherits the privilege

of doing this from his aunt.

I can't get away from the idea that although the days were getting

longer and slower as Class Day drew near, they went ever so much more

quickly than they had at first; notwithstanding, also, the fact that I

got up earlier. I happened to do this the first time by accident.

Bertie Stockbridge was the only person at breakfast, and when I asked

him not to leave me alone, he said he had to or he would be late for

Chapel. I had n't known before that he went to Chapel, but he told me

he never missed a morning. I had n't been there myself at all, but that

morning I went with him. It was very nice. The President was there,

and the Dean, and several of the professors, and a good many

students--some of whom I would n't have suspected of even knowing where

the Chapel was. The music was fine; the little boys in the choir sang

like angels,--the same little boys who used to paste us with snowballs

during the winter. After that I went to Chapel almost every morning

until college closed. It was a good way to begin the day, somehow.

Berri began to go too after a while, but he said he did it to give him

luck in his exams.

On Saturday afternoons and Sundays we bicycled a great deal when the

roads began to get into shape. The whole table would start off and

explore the park system, and once we made a historical tour of Lexington

and Concord, which Berri wrote up for the Lampoon. I think Berri will

make the Lampoon next year if he keeps on. His way of going about it is

killing. He writes things, and then comes into my room with a solemn,

anxious face, and says,--

"Do you think this is funny? Glance through it carelessly and tell me

just how it strikes you. I think it's perfectly side-splitting

myself,--I do really; but it mightn't strike anybody else that way."

Then there was Riverside, where the Charles all but loses itself between

steep, cool, shady banks, under trees that peer over the edges all

through the long, drowsy summer, or flows brimming across a meadow where

a man ploughs a rich black border and talks to his horses and sings. It

takes just the amount of effort you like to make, to follow in a canoe

the course of this lazy stream. Riverside is another place to which you

like to take all the essentials for study except the power of will.

As the board decided to let me off probation late in the spring, I could

cut lectures once more without anything very terrible happening, and it

was great on a warm morning to walk into town for luncheon and keep our

hats off while we were on the bridge. There 's almost always a

sea-breeze on the bridge.

I hardly know how to write of the surprising and wonderful thing that

happened to me at the end of May. It came so unexpectedly that even now

I sometimes stop to wonder if it ever happened at all, and if I can be

really I. But when I think it all over carefully, remembering a few of

the situations that led up to it,--trifling incidents that were

inexplicable at the time and worried me very much,--I see now that I

wasn't very intelligent in not suspecting a little what they meant. I

never did, though, not in the least.

The thing that happened--how little the simple statement would mean to

papa, for instance, and how much it really does mean!--the thing that

happened was, that I made the First Ten of the Dickey.

As long ago as April, the First Ten began to be--well, it began to be

very much on people's minds, although, of course, hardly anything was

said about it. Berri and I used to talk about it a little; Hemington

and I mentioned it once in a while; I suppose there are about four men

in our class that I knew well enough to discuss it with. But naturally

we spoke of it only when we were absolutely alone. If any one else came

into the room, we began to talk about something else. Yet, although the

subject could n't come up in general conversation, I often knew that it

was there--in everybody's thoughts--in the atmosphere. Every day some

little thing would happen that almost made you jump, as it suddenly

brought the question into your mind, "Who is going to make the First

Ten?" things, for instance, like seeing some one in our class walking

through the Square with a Dickey man who was in the Sophomore class.

That always looked as if it meant something, because--well, because it

very often _did_ mean something. One night Berri told me (in the

strictest confidence, of course) that Phil Blackwood--an upper

classman--had met a girl cousin of his in town at a tea, and had said to

her that he liked Berri, and thought he was great fun to talk to. She

had told this to Berri's aunt, who had repeated the remark to Berri, who

was in a great state about it, and wondered how much importance he ought

to attach to it. It really did sound to me as if something might come

of it.

We made lists of names and bet on them, and then locked them up in our

desks. I put Berri's name on my list; but whether or not he put mine on

his, I don't know, for after the crash came, we forgot to compare notes.

As the time grew near, not only Berri, but a good many fellows I knew

well began to treat me in a way I did n't understand and did n't like.

I don't know just how to describe the gradual change in their manner

toward me, because it was the sort of thing you feel without being able

to put your finger on the cause, or even on the change itself, without

seeming morbid and exaggerated. But I could n't help realizing that

they treated me rather coolly. They stopped coming to my room as often

as they had been in the habit of coming, they left me out of all sorts

of little things I had always been in before as a matter of course, and

more than once, as I took my seat at the table or went into somebody's

room, I could see that my appearance made the fellows uncomfortable for

a moment, or at least gave the talk a different turn. All this hurt my

feelings terribly, and I tried to think what I could have done to make

the fellows I liked best and considered my friends treat me this way.

But I could n't think of a thing. I supposed I must have done something

without appreciating what the consequences would be. It made me feel

pretty badly, I can tell you, and several times I was on the point of

demanding an explanation; but they were all so polite and distant and

reserved that I never could bring myself to.

Of course, now I understand exactly why it was, and see how hopelessly

stupid I must have been not to have suspected anything. The whole

situation arose from the fact that there was a rumor in the class to the

effect that I was being considered for the First Ten,--a rumor that was

apparently given foundation by my being seen several times with Dick

Smith. This made the fellows instinctively avoid me a little, from a

feeling that I and the class generally might imagine that they were

trying to swipe if they went around much with me. It seems to me now

particularly dense on my part not to have had a glimmer of this, because

it was just the way I felt myself toward Tucker Ludlow, who had gone to

the theatre one night with Phil Blackwood, and two or three other men

who were spoken of for the First Ten. Yet I never dreamed that any one

could look at me in this way.

Well, things went on, getting more whispery and panicky and

uncomfortable, until finally one night at the end of last month the

crash came. Just how anybody really knew that the Dickey was having its

great spring meeting for the purpose of electing the First Ten it would

be impossible to say, for I can't believe that it was breathed in so

many words, but we did know it, and we knew that it lasted for three

days and three nights before the decision was reached. Then----

In the afternoon Dick Smith overtook me in the street, and after walking

along for half a block, said abruptly,--

"By the way, Wood, stay in your room to-night," and then disappeared in

a doorway.

I think my heart stopped beating. I did n't dare let myself dwell on

the meaning of his words, but stumbled to my lecture and sat there,

simply dazed. At the end of the hour I ran back to my room. When I

heard Berri come in, I grabbed a book and stared at it blindly, without

seeing a word; but Berri passed along the hall to his own study without

so much as stopping at my open door. I did n't go to our table for

luncheon; I slipped into The Holly Tree later instead. But I could n't

eat anything; I was so excited and nervous and full of doubt and fright

that I don't remember just how I got through the afternoon. I know I

tried to sit in my room, but gave it up and buried myself for a while in

one of the alcoves of the library. Later I walked in back streets, and

then ran all the way home, when the light began to fade, fearing that

something--I could n't bring myself to think just what--might happen in

my absence. By that time I was painfully hungry, and managed to swallow

a cup of tea and a piece of toast at The Holly Tree.

The evening was endless. I tried to read, but by the time I reached the

end of a sentence I had forgotten the beginning of it. Then I tried to

write a letter to mamma, but my hand trembled so that the writing

scarcely looked like mine at all, and anyhow I couldn't think of enough

to fill the first page. It was as if I were two distinct persons,--one

trying to write a calm letter to mamma, and the other in an agony of

apprehension and uncertainty. I don't know which was worse,--the

feeling that the Dickey was coming for me, or the feeling that perhaps

it wasn't. Could Dick Smith have merely meant that he might drop in to

see me that evening? He had never been in my room, and it seemed

unlikely that he should come in that way. His manner, too, of telling me

to stay at home had been so odd, his leave-taking so abrupt. I turned

these things over in my mind interminably; then I would glance at the

clock and find the hands glued to the same old place.

To make things worse, Berri had come home almost as soon as I had, and

was in his room with the door shut. I longed to go in, but the feeling

that I wouldn't have anything to say if I did, kept me back. He made me

even more nervous than I really was by walking up and down, up and down,

and occasionally moving a chair as if he had run into it in his restless

promenade and were pushing it viciously out of the way. If his manner

hadn't been so strained and queer, I think I should have gone in anyhow

and relieved my mind. I did n't intend to do quite this, but at the end

of about two hours I could n't endure the lonely suspense any longer,

and decided at least to knock on his door and borrow something--I did

n't know what when I started. Mrs. Chester had forgotten to light the

lamp in the hall, and as I was feeling my way through the darkness and

deciding that a match would be the most plausible excuse for going in

and then going out again almost immediately, I bumped into somebody

coming the other way. We both jumped back, and I thought for a second

that I was about to collapse at the knees.

"Oh, it's you!" Berri exclaimed in a voice that I just recognized as

his. "Heavens! but you scared me. I was on my way to your room to

borrow your--your--your--to borrow-- Oh, Granny!" He broke off with a

kind of gulp, and threw his arms around me. "Isn't this ghastly!" Then

I knew that he had been told to stay in his room too, and had been

suffering the same horrors. Ever since dinner he had been pacing the

floor unable, just as I had been, to make up his mind as to the exact

significance of the advice to be at home that evening. He could n't

help feeling that it might have been a mistake, that something would go

wrong; and that again, if nothing _did_ go wrong, there was the hideous

conjecture as to what would happen to you to look forward to.

We sat down in my study,--Berri on the edge of a chair, his hands folded

with desperate calmness on his lap; I at my desk, where I found, after a

minute or two of strained silence, that I had dug a great hole in my

blotter and ruined a stylographic pen.

"If they do come," Berri at last whispered, "how do you think we ought

to be found? I don't know that it would be altogether the thing to be

so--so dressed and apparently waiting." Our extreme preparedness did

seem rather assuming, now that he spoke of it; I was far from wanting to

appear cock-sure of my election or of anything else to a fiendish mob

such as we had watched from my window that night in the autumn.

"And yet," I answered, "if we took off very much, I don't suppose they

would wait for us to dress; in fact, I don't think I _could_ dress, and

when I came in, it seemed to be getting cool outsi--"

"Ssssshh! I thought I heard something," Berri broke in. He leaned

toward the window, and as the lamplight fell on his face, I saw for the

first time how pale he was. We listened. The clock ticked with a queer

little hum on two notes that I had never known it to make before; the

student-lamp grumbled twice, and each time the flame rose and fell; I

had never noticed this, either.

"I was perfectly sure," Berri whispered. His whisper was several times

louder than his ordinary tone.

"How do you think it would do to take off our coats and neckties?" I

suggested. "That would look as if we had begun to get ready for bed

without any suspicion of--of--It; and at the same time we would have

pretty much everything on."

"You talk now as if you had made up your mind that they were coming,"

Berri said nervously. "Do you think they are?" The fact of his asking

me this dropped me back once more into all the sickening doubt from

which for a minute or two I had been unconsciously lifted.

"I don't know," I faltered. "What do you think?" But instead of

telling me Berri exclaimed,--

"Oh, this is awful!" and began to walk up and down the room. As he

walked he took off his coat and threw it in a corner; then he gave the

end of his necktie a jerk that not only undid the knot but ripped his

shirt open from his neck to his shoulders, for he had forgotten that on

one side the thing was pinned. I don't think he realized what he was

doing, as he went on pulling and pulling until he had torn out a narrow

strip of linen at least a foot and a half long. Berri, pacing the floor

and tearing himself to pieces in a nervous frenzy as he paced, struck me

all at once as the funniest thing I had ever seen, and I began, first to

giggle, and then to laugh with the kind of laughter that takes

possession of you all over and leaves you helpless.

I was leaning back in my chair, weak and hysterical, when Berri stopped

as abruptly as if he had been shot, and stood petrified in the middle of

the room. Away in the distance the chanting cry of the Dickey had begun

to rise and fall, die with a tenor wail and begin again; my laughter

died with it, and as I lay there, hypnotized by the sound, I think I

must have forgotten to close my mouth, for when Berri spoke again, my

throat was parched and rough. Perhaps he did n't speak--I think he just

made a feeble motion with his hand that I interpreted as a sign to take

off my coat and necktie. But I couldn't act on it; I could n't do

anything but lean back with my eyes fixed, and listen to the approaching

song. It grew louder and louder, clearer and clearer, fiercer and

fiercer, until it broke all at once into a great roar, and I knew that

they had turned the corner and were coming down our little street. Then

I felt Berri's hand in mine,--it was cold and wet,--and he was saying

incoherently,--

"Good by, Granny--I mustn't be found in your room--good-by--I must be

found in my own room--reading a book--yes--reading a book--good-by."

Then the exultant song and the heavy rhythm of feet under my window

suddenly stopped; there was a moment almost of silence, followed by a

hoarse yell from what seemed like a thousand savage throats. In the

pandemonium my ears distinguished here and there the sound of my own

name shouted and shrieked in various tones of impatient, unbridled,

vindictive eagerness, and for a second my thoughts flashed back to the

night Berri and I had seen some one else pulled out. That had thrilled

me, but this reduced me to a quaking pulp.

The door downstairs crashed back--there was a deafening scramble on the

tin steps--my own door burst open--the room was full of greedy hands and

vengeful faces. I was lifted--hurled through the air out into the hall

and down the stairs in two thuds--across the piazza, down the steps,

along the walk, out of the gate between a double line of executioners

into the hungry mob that dragged me this way and that, tore at my hair

and clothes, rolled me in the dirt, and finally jerked me upright,

linked my arms in those of some other neophytes (I could n't see who

they were), and started me down the street with a kick. We swayed

off--a million devils behind us--roaring the Dickey song, as we had been

commanded to, at the top of our lungs.

*XVII[#]*

[#] For obvious reasons, certain parts of Granny Wood's diary have not

been printed. Of the passages that refer to the Dickey, only those

describing the society's public practices have been retained.--The

Editor.

Most of the time I was on my knees. There were only two moments of

relief in the painful march; they came when the crowd stopped to pull

out two other unfortunates and hurl them, as I had been hurled, from

their respective front doors. For the time being (it was a very short

time, however) the rest of us were neglected; but as soon as the arms of

our fellow neophyte were linked in ours, the irresistible impetus from

behind began once more and we continued our perilous way.

At last all ten of us were shoved--a dazed and gasping semicircle--up

the steps of Claverly Hall, and our names were cheered in the order of

our election. With the exception of Berri, I had n't known before who

the others were. In the darkness and excitement it had been impossible

to see. There was something ominous and depressing in the cheers they

gave us. Berri said, in talking about it the week afterward, that it

was as if the cannibal band should cheer the missionary. Then the crowd

melted away with vague threats as to what was to come, and I was taken

back to my room, weary and stupid, by Dick Smith. He was to be my guide

and only friend during the week that was to follow. Before he left me,

he told me the conditions of my servitude.

* * * * * * *

That week was the longest and most absolutely wretched of my life, I

think; although now that it is over, I would n't give up the memory of

it for almost anything. Even in the midst of it the idea of chucking

the whole thing, as I suppose I might have done, never occurred to me.

I could at times conceive of my giving out, but never of my giving up.

The first day of my "running," as it is called, from six in the morning

until ten o'clock at night, was one long embarrassment, mortification,

and mental agony to me. I set my teeth and forced myself through it

doggedly. The days that followed were just as bad,--even worse,

perhaps,--but I did n't have to compel myself to do things. I went

through them mechanically; where almost everything was a hideous

nightmare, no one incident, after a time, had the power to overwhelm me

as at first. I was too tired and dirty and unshaven and cowed to care

particularly what they made me do, or to have a feeling of any kind,

other than one of hopeless submission. In the morning after an early

breakfast at The Holly Tree * * * * * * * * * * *

Then some one, usually three or four, would get hold of me and make me

do perfectly awful things in the College Yard or on the streets. I had

to perform so many crazy acts that I can't remember them all, or on what

days they came, and, as I said, I grew perfectly indifferent to what I

had to do or who saw me do it.

One warm afternoon they made me put on three soft, thick sweaters and

then took me to a drug-store in the Square, where they poured over me

half the contents of a long line of perfumery bottles on the

counter,--white-rose, heliotrope, patchouly, musk, ylangylang, violet,

bay-rum, and several kinds of cologne,--all the deadly scents that one

investigates while waiting for a prescription to be put up. Then we got

on an electric car,--the fellows who were running me at one end, and I

at the other. They of course (after instructing me to snuggle up to my

fellow passengers,--refined old ladies and peevish middle-aged gentlemen

in particular) pretended to ignore me. But the other passengers did

n't. Everybody I sat next to would turn, after about three seconds,

look at me with a slight contraction of the nostrils, and then move

away; in less than ten seconds more they would be on the other side of

the car. It was not long before I had one side of the car all to

myself. Then--this also I had been ordered to do--when we reached the

edge of the bridge, I jumped up and, as a sort of climax, "threw a fit."

Passengers in street cars always find this very trying, especially if

you fall down in the aisle foaming at the mouth and clutch at their

feet. Before my five days of running were over, I grew exceedingly

expert at throwing fits. I certainly had enough practice at it. Well,

when we got across the bridge I was hustled out of the car into a

drug-store, where I recovered in time to catch the next car back--and do

the whole thing over again.

It was on the evening of that day, I think, that they took me to the

theatre--or, I should say, the theatres, as we visited several. (They

had in the mean time taken off the perfume-soaked garments, not through

consideration for my feelings, but for their own.) One might think

that, under the circumstances, going to the theatre would have been a

delightful rest. But it wasn't. I had a seat all to myself down in

front, and the fellows who took me sat ten or twelve rows back. Beyond

the fact that the first play we went to was a nice, staid performance

that had attracted a large and very "dressy" audience, I have no

recollection of it; for my thoughts were all centred on the dreadful

thing that was going to happen at the end of the first act.

The curtain went down; there was a polite flutter of applause, and then,

while the orchestra was getting ready and the house was perfectly quiet

except for a murmur of talk, I stood up, facing everybody, and exclaimed

in a loud, distinct voice,--

"This show is bum, and I want my money back."

The effect was electrical. All conversation stopped instantly, and I

could actually hear the craning of necks from one end of the theatre to

the other.

"This show is bum, and I want my money back," I declared again, louder

than before. Some men near me began to laugh; the ladies looked scared

to death, and from the gallery came a wild clapping of hands and yells

of, "That's no lie," and "He's all right." Whereupon (as per

instructions) I began to yell the thing over and over again at the top

of my voice, and kept it up until four ushers skated down the aisle and

threw me out, still yelling. I had visions, as I flew along toward the

exit, of white-faced women indulging in hysterics. I did this at two

other shows, and the fellows regretted very much that there didn't

happen to be any five-act plays in town, for they said my technique got

better and better as the evening went on.

Then I spent whole afternoons in creeping up behind the sparrows in the

Square and endeavoring to put salt on their tails; in going from shop to

shop trying to get the clerks to change a cent; in holding up baby

carriages, kissing the occupants and then remarking that I was

"passionately fond of animals." (I kissed fifty-six babies on

Commonwealth Avenue in one afternoon.) I stalked Indians with a little

bow and arrow in the Yard one morning between lectures (cutting lectures

is n't allowed), craftily creeping from tree to tree, hiding a moment,

peeping out warily, and finally exclaiming as I shot an arrow and dashed

into the open,--

"Bang--and another red-skin bit the dust."

This was one of the few times (except in the evening) that I saw Berri

during the entire week. He was walking up and down the stone parapet of

Matthews with a silly little false red fringe of beard around his neck,

proclaiming to all the passers-by,--

"Listen to me; I am a Berrisford of Salem."

In a pair of green tights and on horseback, I distributed armfuls of the

"smuggled" cigars from Santa Bawthawthawthoth to the inhabitants of

Cambridgeport, and when a great crowd had collected around me, delivered

a lecture on the evils of smoking. I intercepted at various times many

respectable old ladies on their way across the streets, for the purpose

of confidentially whispering,--

"Madam, I regret to inform you that you are holding your skirts just a

leetle too high."

I also had to stop car after car, put my foot on the step, tie my

shoestring, and then stand back, saying to the conductor,--

"Thank you, you may go on now." This is an old game, but it's a great

favorite.

Two things happened (and only two) that I liked. One was when I had to

call on a girl in town--I had never seen her before--and write all my

part of the conversation on a slate. She was very pretty and good to

me; for instead of being disgusted at my appearance (she had every

reason to be) and having me put out of the house, she made me sit down

and ordered tea (I realized, for the first time, how nice tea could be)

and was altogether a perfect peach. She said, among other things, that

she had been at the theatre the night I made the row. I wrote on the

slate, "Which one? The performance was given by special request at

three different places," which made her laugh. I stayed talking, or

rather writing, to her for more than half an hour. The fellows who had

brought me to the door were very angry; for, thinking that I would be

chased away by a husky footman at the end of a minute or two, they had

n't told me how long to stay and were waiting outside to see what

happened. When at last I got up to go, the pretty girl held out her

hand very graciously and said,--

"We'll meet again someday, I'm sure," and I wrote on the slate,--

"It will not be my fault if we don't. Good-by!" She took the slate and

the pencil, drew a line through the last word, and wrote under it,--

"Au revoir." Then I left. I _did_ meet her again very soon afterwards,

at the Beck spread on Class Day. She was the prettiest girl there. She

's going abroad in three days, and as papa let me engage passage for our

trip (he and mamma and Mildred will be here to morrow), it did n't take

me long to decide on the steamer. When he found that I had picked out,

for no apparent reason, one of the old Cunarders sailing from Boston, he

was perfectly furious. But it's too late for him to change now.

The other thing I enjoyed during my running was the day that Mr.

Fleetwood stole me away from some fellows and took me up to his room

overlooking the Yard. He is an old Dickey man himself, and had as much

right to my services as any one. I embarrassed him at first, I think.

Strangely enough, I appreciated this a little even then, when I had no

business to be appreciating anything beyond the fact that I was a mere

grovelling worm. He sat down, when we went into his room, and looked at

me curiously, diffidently, for a moment, as if he did n't quite know how

to begin. Then he said with something of an effort, as if he considered

himself a little foolish to say anything,--

"What, pray, is your name?" I gave the required answer, at which he

smiled--rather sadly, I thought; although I did n't see what reason _he_

had to look that way. Then he asked me to do several things,--old, old

things that neophytes probably had to do when the Dickey was first

started; things that have become conventions; the kind of things you are

always asked to do by fellows who have n't enough imagination to think

of anything new. He gave his commands (with him, however, they became

requests) slowly, as if he couldn't remember just how they went. And he

didn't always express them the way the fellows do. I could n't help

feeling that if Shakespeare had ever tried to torment a neophyte, he had

done it in very much the same way. He scarcely noticed my attempts to

do what he asked. He was interested, I think, not so much in

discovering my feeble talents as in recalling the general situation. But

he stopped doing even this in a short time, and got up and went over to

the open window and looked out into the wilderness of elm leaves and

down at the cool, shady stretches of grass and the yellow paths of the

Yard.

I really think he forgot all about me, for I stood there an interminable

time waiting for him to turn around. Just before he did turn, he yawned

and said listlessly to himself,--

"Well, I suppose it's as it should be." He must have said this to

himself, as he seemed surprised to find me standing patiently in the

middle of the room where he had left me.

"My dear boy, sit down, sit down," he exclaimed,--"that is, unless you

would rather go away." I answered that I should rather stay there if he

did n't mind. It was so cool and quiet and safe in his room; I knew

that no one could ever find me, and I was very tired.

"I have some themes to read," Fleetwood went on, "but you won't disturb

me. Do whatever you want to, and if you feel like it, talk."

We did talk a little. Then I stretched out on his divan and tried to

read; but before I had finished half a chapter I drifted away into the

most blissful sleep I 've ever had. I can just remember the whispering

sound of footsteps on the pavement under the windows, and the rustle of

the crisp new leaves. When I awoke the room was dark. There was a

sheet of paper pinned to my coat, and when I got into the lighted

corridor I saw written on it,--

"In reply to any questions as to your disappearance, you may truthfully

explain that you did a difficult and important bit of work for W. J.

Fleetwood." I don't know yet what he meant. Some day next year I think

I 'll ask him. I don't believe I know any one who is so very clever and

so very kind.