CHAPTER XL

_In Which the Account Comes to a Conclusion in the Life of a

Relative. Martin Quotes Spanish, and has the_ LAST WORD 387

_Illustrations_

I APPEARED BEFORE THE PRESIDENT CONSIDERABLY

UNNERVED _Frontispiece_

FACING

PAGE

JASON, THE POET, LOOKED IN 76

EVANGELICAL UNIVERSITY WAS TREATED TO ITS FIRST MATCH GAME 142

SAY, HOW MUCH YO’ WANT FO’ DAT WATCH? 184

SO ARM IN ARM THE BLIND STUDENT AND I WALKED 350

THROUGH THE SCHOOL

THROUGH THE SCHOOL

[Illustration]

_Chapter I. Fifteen Dollars and Sixty-five Cents Worth of International

Travel. An Inspiring Reception in Front of Chief Pungo Memorial Hall_

It was like taking off an old, worn, unadorning suit of clothes as

the Boston Express whirled me away from the City of Mills. It hummed

with me over the streets on which I had walked to and from work as a

mill boy. It darted me past the rows of tenements where sordid and

sinful memories lingered. “Thank God! Thank God!” Out and away from

it all. Away from the hum, the bee-like, monotonous hum of the mill

machines that overpower the nerves and dull the spirit of the workers!

Away from the bells and blaring fog whistles that disturb the sleep

of tired, weary, discouraged toilers; the bells and whistles that

sometimes mean the jubilant clamor of the mills over their moaning,

rebellious workers. Past the pale faces that waited at the crossings

for the train to pass; faces whose eyes gleamed with an instant’s wish

that the train had them in it, too! Yes, I was the chosen from among

over twenty thousand workers that day. I was actually on my way to

seek an education! There, for proof that it was no dream, was my long

green ticket with its dozen coupons in my hands! There was my brand new

suit-case! How lucky I was! Think of the fellows who had better mental

furnishing than I, who had even money in the bank, parents who were

urging them to strive for an education, friends who would loan them

money, and yet, they were going to the mill at that very moment, and

would go tomorrow, and the day after, because they were afraid to make

the break! Then I thought: “Well, they would have made the break long

ago if they had lived with an aunt and uncle who wasted their money

on drink. That would frighten them into it. There’s some good in evil

after all. I shouldn’t be on this train today if my foster parents had

been kinder, more considerate! I guess it’d be a good thing if a few

of the other mill fellows, who are ambitious, had something like it to

frighten them off. It’s probably the only way they’ll go out and make

their chance!”

Then the vision of the country-side, painted in the glories of Autumn,

the flashing views of cranberry bogs, crowded with sun-bonneted

pickers, called my mind to the new joys of existence. Here I was, out

in the world at last! Not the romp of a holiday, with the mill room for

_next_ morning, not a vacation of two days with a return at the end of

it; but the beginning of an education, a start towards a profession, a

great big chance at last to “make something of myself!”

“Here,” I said to the train boy, as he was about to pass me, “give me a

packet of that there gum--the peppermint sort.” That train boy didn’t

know, as I paid him the five cents by giving him a dollar bill to

change, that the purchase was the greatest luxury I should have on that

trip of fifteen hundred miles.

While working in the mill, I had never been able to afford a trip to

Boston, so when I arrived in the station, and realized that I was even

going beyond it, on my first excursion, I said to myself, “Boston is

only the first, small step in your travel!” The next coupon on my long

ticket paid my fare from the South Station to the North--in a CAB

WITH A UNIFORMED DRIVER!! It was the first time I had been in a cab,

except at a funeral. I was pleased when the driver took me through the

main streets; glad when he had to move cautiously through congested

traffic, because people could see me, as I sat nonchalantly in the cab.

I took care to see that the blinds were up as far as possible.

In the North Station, when the cab driver had taken me to the train,

the car that I was to travel on, to Montreal, was marked off from its

fellows by its salmon color. Awed, impressed, I went groping through

the dim car until I found a vacant seat into which I comfortably

arranged myself. But as the train pulled out, I studied my railroad

map, and, on discovering that the Green Mountains would be on the

opposite side of the railroad, I made haste to change my seat, so that

I might insure myself a view of them; for I had never seen a mountain

in my life.

That ride of twelve hours, on an express, did not tire me one bit. I

was before the world with a starved, hungry mind and starved, hungry

eyes. I kept my eyes glued on the out-of-doors. Yes, I watched both

sides of the car at once. I listened for the comments around me and

if anything of interest was mentioned I bobbed up my head to look.

I watched the time-table for the stations so that I might know when

the train passed from one state to another I was actually passing

through whole states--five of them in all! Five states of the United

States of America! There were few details that I did not observe. I

watched the farms, the villages, the back yards of cities; watched the

flying trees, the colors of soil, the crops that were being reaped,

the winding roads, and the vehicles that waited for us at the country

crossings.

At noon we were lumbering through the streets of Manchester, N.H., past

the long canal which flows like a sluggish moat along the dismal wall

of the mill. Crowds of workers were waiting for us at the crossings;

watching us with looks of envy, I thought. I threw up my window, leaned

back in my seat, and ostentatiously chewed gum with a smug, proud look,

with which I hoped to show the mill boys how unconcerned I was about

being a passenger on a Montreal Express!

It was not until we had cleared the big cotton factory towns and cities

of New England that I felt entirely like an adventurer, however. Only

by the time the cities had been left, the big cities, and the small

towns were succeeded by country villages, and the country villages

by vast wildernesses of woods and uncultivated fields, did I feel

satisfied. Then I knew that if a train wreck should end my journeying,

I could settle down on some farm. I should not have to go back into the

mill.

By watching my time-table carefully, I knew when to look for the

mountains; but long before we reached the place appointed for the

vision, my heart was leaping with expectation. We had reached the

hilly country, and every high knoll served me for a mountain. But

on and on and on, past soaring foothills, went the train until what

seemed a slate-colored storm-cloud, a thin veil of atmosphere, caught

my attention. Then, as the train turned a bend, the foothills dropped

away, and there, like a majestic dream, higher than anything on earth

before imagined, were the mountains!

Following the delight of the mountains, I had to think of our approach

into another country. We were actually going to leave the United

States and enter Canada! Immediately the English blood stirred within

me. I was actually entering the domains of the Queen. Just over the

border, the train stopped at a little village for water. I spoke to

the brakeman “Please, mister,” I said, “how long will we stop?” “Eight

minutes altogether,” he replied; “eight sure.” “Are we really in Canada

now?” I ventured. “Yep,” he said with decision, “this is Canada, sure

enough.” “Then I’m going to get off, for a couple of minutes,” I said.

I didn’t explain to him the motive I had in getting off. It was to put

the soles of my shoes on FOREIGN SOIL! Unfortunately there had been a

generous rain that had mixed with the dirt of the village road, so that

when I sought to step on Canadian earth I was called upon to wallow in

Canadian mud, and that I would not do. “Never mind,” I consoled myself

with. “This board walk is a Canadian board walk and will do.” So I ran

a hundred yards into the village along the board walk and came back to

the train satisfied. I had stepped on Queen Victoria’s territory, come

what might.

When the darkness shut out the view, even then I did not keep my eyes

from the windows. I did not know what sights I should get a view of

even in the darkness. But all I saw of towns were lights, like stars,

followed by masses of inky night. Then we stopped at a Canadian city

station. I pushed up the window, and heard the great French chatter

that went on outside. Not a word of English could I pick out, neither

did I want to hear such a word. It would have spoiled all. At last I

was in a new country, among a people who spoke a different language

from my own! I was a real traveler at last!

At ten o’clock the lights of Montreal, strings of stars, flashed by

the windows. Three miles away from the station the passengers became

restless. Some of them stood up and waited during all that time. At

last the brakeman called out with finality, a downward deflection of

the last syllable, as if that ended his day, “Mon-tree-AL!”

There my ticket told me I should have to change. The next stage of my

journey would take me along the border of Canada as far as Detroit; an

all-night journey.

During the hour that I had to wait in Montreal, I went on a thrilling,

timid sight-seeing. I recollect to have seen a couple of dim-lit

business streets, silent, ghostly, a couple of buildings which must

have been structures of importance in daylight, and a sign which could

be read because it was directly in the glare of an arc light, “National

Bank.” Having seen so much, and satisfied my provincial soul on so

spare a meal, I went back to get on my new train.

I found myself in a most comfortable car. The seat was well padded,

the back was high enough to serve for a pillow, and there was no one

in the seat in front. So I turned over that seat, took off my coat and

hat, unlaced my shoes and put them on one side, leaned back with a sigh

of content, ready for a night’s rest when--the conductor came down the

aisle, looked at my ticket, and said, “This is a first-class car and

you have a second class ticket. The next car ahead, sir!”

I slung my coat over my arm, picked up my shoes and suit-case and went

into the car ahead. It was a Tourist Sleeping car and was filled,

largely, with a medley of Europeans. Europeans, too, with peasant

manners, with peasant dirt and peasant breath. There was odor of garlic

mixed with odor of stale rye bread, as some ate lunches. There was odor

of unwashed clothes mixed with odor of sour milk. Double seats, leather

padded, had been pushed together into berths, while overhead shelves

had been let down for upper berths, with thin pads of mattress for the

colonists to find rest upon. The aisles were littered with paper, fruit

remnants, broken cigarette stubs, empty bottles, and expectoration. The

air was vapid, like a drunkard’s breath. I waded through it all to the

lower end of the car where there seemed to be an oasis of cleanliness

and order. Here, though, were men sprawled out in unpoetic postures of

sleep. At the lowest end, even the train boy had left his basket of

fruit and soda on one side, while he lay for the night, crumpled up,

snorting like a pig.

I looked around and up for a place to sleep. There on one of the high

shelves, I saw a young fellow sitting up, eating a sandwich. He saw me

looking in his direction. “Hello, fellow,” he greeted cheerily, “you’re

English, aren’t you, fellow?” I replied that I was and that I was

wanting a place to sleep for the night. He said, “These places are for

two. Get a leg up and bunk with me.” He reached down his hand, braced

me as I stood on the edge of a lower berth, and then I found myself in

the bed with my benefactor.

He sat there in his shirt, ready for bed, with a large basket of

sandwiches in front of him. There were more sandwiches together in that

one basket than I have ever seen piled up on the counter of any lunch

room.

“You aren’t a train boy, are you?” I asked. “Oh, no,” said the young

fellow, “that’s my lunch. I got a week’s go on the trains yet, so

I brought enough to eat for that time. I’m going to college away

out West. Have one,” he broke in and pointed to the basket. I had

no scruples in assisting at the reduction of such a mountain of

sandwiches, for I imagined that a company of soldiers could have

subsisted on them for three days. I ate my fill, and the young fellow

watched me with evident delight. “I’m going out to college, too,” I

explained. “We’re birds of a feather, eh?” “What college?” he asked.

“Evangelical University,” I replied. “It’s easy to get through there

because expenses are moderate. I don’t think I’ll have a chance to get

in right away,” I explained. “You see, I haven’t written them that I’m

coming or asked for a chance even. I can get out there and get some

kind of work, and when everything’s arranged, get into the University.

A friend told me about it.”

“Why didn’t you go back with some one?” asked my friend. “Well, you

see,” I answered, “I couldn’t afford to go the way the others go.

It costs twenty-four dollars and this route only costs me fifteen

dollars and sixty-five cents.” “Oh,” said the young fellow. “When you

do enter the University what class will you join?” “I’ll have to join

the beginners with common school branches,” I said. “Then I’ll work

up into the Academic course to prepare for college, then go through

college, you see.” “Oh, yes,” he said, “I see.” He then asked me

to help myself to another sandwich. “You’ve got nerve, anyway,” he

commented. “It’ll be a long pull, won’t it, to do what you plan? How

old are you?” “Oh, around twenty,” I answered. “I wish, for your sake,”

said the young man, “that you were through with it; this education

business takes a lot out of a fellow. It’s a fight right from the

start if you don’t have any money. I’m a sophomore in college. By the

way, you haven’t told me your name, fellow. Mine’s Harlan M. N. I.

Droughtwell. Plenty of initials because my folks wanted to please both

branches of the family. In full, I am Harlan Micknell Norman Ingraham

Droughtwell.” “And I,” I replied, “am just Al Priddy. No middle name. I

suppose, though, that really I am Albert, but it ain’t used much.”

Harlan put the basket aside, after having put over the bread a damp

towel and closed the cover. Then he told me to turn in near him. So

we both gave ourselves into the keeping of the engineer and slept

profoundly above the odors, the litter, the droning aliens:--two youths

college bound.

I was first up, in the morning. Harlan, on opening his eyes, proposed

that I “dive in” and he pointed to the sandwiches. First of all I

wanted to wash my face. I did so at the drinking tank. I looked around.

There was a stirring among the aliens; just a stirring. Some were

turning over, yawning and giving guttural explosions of sleepy comment.

Mothers were feeding hungry, lively babies; but at my end everything

was profoundly still. The train boy’s basket was still where I had seen

it the night before with the fruit exposed to the air. The boy himself

was a tousled, sleepy, uninspiring bundle of blue and white. I looked

at my berth-mate, the sandwich man, and noted that he combed his hair

from the side. Immediately I was conscious that I combed mine down the

middle, and I recollected that my aunt Millie had always said that

I looked like a masher with it in that way. So I took out my pocket

comb and changed the style of my hair-dressing, while Harlan, entirely

unconscious of having wielded so powerful an influence over a fellow,

sat in his berth and struggled with his clothes.

All through the morning we traveled; over high trestles, through deep

cuts, skirting tobacco fields, whirling through little settlements

until at last we were rolled to the deck of a massive iron ferry and,

still in the cars, were taken across the lake and landed at Detroit.

Meanwhile, I had parted company with Harlan, who had told me to “keep

right at it,” meaning thereby, a college education.

Transfer after transfer was made for another night and a day, each

time the trains seemed to get slower, to stop more at stations, while

the cities grew less frequent. Friday turned into Saturday, Saturday

into Sunday, and by Sunday, too, we plunged into an overpowering odor

of gas. “Is the lamp leaking?” I asked the trainman mournfully. “It’s

terrible. It must be leaking. It makes me seasick.” The man laughed.

“Oh, you’re in the gas belt,” he said. “It’s in the air. You will get

used to it. I can’t smell it at all, though at first it smells like

being right in a gas house, doesn’t it?”

The gas tinged everything; food and drink. I felt like going to sleep

to lose the sense of it. But deeper and deeper into it the train

plunged, without mercy. “If you’ve got a piece of silver about you,”

said the trainman, “a watch-chain or anything of gold or silver, this

air will turn it black soon enough. But you’ll get used to it,” he

added comfortingly enough. “I shall have to,” I complained, gloomily.

“It tastes as if all the gas works in the world had exploded about

here.”

Finally I was nearing Groat’s Crossing, the seat of Evangelical

University. The train deposited me at a station within twelve miles

of it, where I should have to take an accommodation four hours later.

There was nothing to see in the place where I waited, but glaring

brick buildings and houses on stilts. So I waited around the hot,

splintered platform, seated now on a truck, watching a group of young

men reading sections of a Sunday paper, or walking miserably up and

down wishing for the train, for the gas had gotten into my system, and

I felt lonesome, miserable. I might have gone to sleep in the waiting

room, but the seats were spoiled for beds by having iron arm rests at

intervals of two feet. I tried to thread myself through these, at full

length, but could not. There was nothing to do, but stand around and

taste gas, until the Groat’s Crossing train came.

With great joy I watched the accommodation come into the station. Only

twelve more miles between me and Evangelical University! The end of

three days’ travel. Three days from the cotton mills! In that thought I

renewed my spirit. Soon I should at least be NEAR a college!

College! For me! It was the anticipation of a first watch twenty times

intensified. I, go to college! Look back in the genealogies of the

Priddys, rooted back in Britain’s centuries, and lay your finger on

a single member of it who ever went beyond the secondary school! And

there was the brakeman calling, inconsequently, “Groat’s Crossing!”

I half stumbled from that car, thanking God that He had allowed me this

sweet day. Here I was on the platform at last. There was no one about.

A Sabbath quiet lingered over everything. The black splinters on the

platform went like knife blades between the soles of my worn shoes.

Groat’s was a very small station. Some sort of a village lay behind

it. I asked a man on the street corner if this was where Evangelical

University could be found. He pointed away from the village in the

direction of a rutted, clay road bordered by a line of houses on stilts

which ended in a pasture fence made from dry stumps interlocked. “The

place’s up thar!” mumbled the man as he moved the morsel of tobacco

from one cheek to the other. “You’ll run smack inter it ef yo’ keeps

ergoin’.” “How far about?” I asked. “Uh, ’bout a mile or mo’, I guess.”

The fumes of gas half choked me. They drowned out the perfumes from

decaying leaves which lay thick on the streets. It was a land given

over to gas, evidently, for instead of cows grazing in the flat

pastures, latticed derricks towered over oil and gas wells. In place

of the twitter of Fall songsters reaching me from the trees along

the roadside, came the mournful creaking of oil pumps and the gasps

and barks from the sputtering engines. A well had just been shot. A

crowd of spectators stood at the base of a derrick whose latticework

glistened with the black baptism of oil, and the dead grass on which

the spectators stood was soaked by a tarry iridescence; the thick,

black, greasy mess which had spouted up from the torn heart of the

underworld.

I walked along a board walk which gave me a level path over little

brooks, open culverts, house drains, and masses of surface gas mains.

It took me up a slight grade in a lonesome part of the road where were

neither houses nor trees. I stood on the crest of the hill looking

ahead for the University. It stood on the open plain ahead of me, in

full sight, Evangelical University!

I had never seen a college before. I had feasted my imagination on

photographs of the world’s leading universities: Cambridge, Oxford,

Edinburgh, and Harvard. I had revelled in the Tom Brown type of

literature which has for its background armorial gateways, ivy-clothed

turrets in which sparrows twitter all the day; which showed myriads of

mullioned windows peeping shyly through the branches of sedate, century

oaks; which showed grassy-carpeted lawns, yew gardens, swans breasting

placid, rose-fringed lakes, lakes girded by pebbled paths whereon

walked pale, lanky scholars in board caps and mourning gowns, walking

with bulky tomes of Latin on their palms in serene meditation!

And there the reality of a college, Evangelical University, spread

itself for my contemplation, a heart-choked contemplation, because

that view shattered a lifetime’s romance! It brought to mind a group of

tenements surrounding a big square, brick grammar school. The buildings

stood open to the glare of the sun, for there were no tall trees for

shade. The smaller houses, little cheaply constructed cottages, stood

on cedar posts and were so fragile that the first tempest might readily

twist them from their anchorages and carry them tumbling down the

fields like empty hat-boxes.

After the armorial-gatewayed universities of my dreams had completely

melted away, and the reality in its Puritan, pioneer severity

challenged me, I took a firm hold on my slate-colored baggage and

strode rapidly on towards my goal.

“What do you want for ninety dollars a year?” I argued with myself.

“It’s your chance, and that’s enough.”

I soon came to a newly plowed road which led to the first of the

university buildings. The hot sun had not been thirsty enough to suck

all the rain which had fallen on the new road in the last storm. The

clayey earth had mixed with it and formed a broth which waited for the

first unwary foot to slip from the springy board walk, which led over

it.

Directly ahead, I saw a salmon-colored, clapboarded building squat and

frail like an evangelist’s tabernacle, over which I read on a sign the

following explanatory inscription:

“CHIEF PUNGO HALL, 1889.

BORN IN AFRICA. DIED HERE 1885.”

With but a mere glance at this Memorial Dormitory, I had need next to

press my teeth over my under lip, stiffen my gait, bulge out my chest,

and perform all the other affectations of courage, for in front of

Pungo Hall stood a group of well-dressed young men, all looking at me!

The heart of the horseman who dashed in the charge of the Six Hundred

was a stouter one in feeling than mine when I charged on those lolling

young men. My kneecaps vibrated like a cello string. My finger nerves

leaped one over the other. My heart pumped double quantity of blood to

my cheeks. The board walk dropped from under my shoes and I walked on a

tipping cloud.

One of the students, in response to my waiting and my embarrassment,

which must have been as clear to him as an electric advertisement over

a skyscraper, advanced and asked if he could be of any service to me,

saying that his name was Thropper, James Thropper.

Now, during the long, three days’ journey, I had spent much thought

in preparation of the introduction of myself to the University upon

arrival. I had succeeded in framing an introduction which had both the

qualities of completeness and brevity. I had rehearsed it, mentally, in

many hypothetical contingencies, so that I might let them see that I

knew, definitely, what I had come for. But among all the contingencies

I had invented not one of them had resembled the one in which I found

myself: making my business known to a student. I had thought of meeting

with a gowned don or a “bursar”--whatever he was--because I was

saturated with Tom Brown. But I managed to explode my introduction to

the student, with all its brevity, in all its boyish completeness.

“My name is Al Priddy. I have come from the mills. I have not been to

school beyond common fractions. I am nineteen years old. I am willing

to learn. I heard of this place from a friend. He said there was a

chance. I have only three dollars. I am willing to work. If you think

I can’t be taken in, right off, I shall be happy to live near here, so

that when I have earned more money I can begin!”

James Thropper picked up my slate-colored suit-case and led me before

the group of students, without comment. Then, after he had introduced

me to them all, as “Brother Priddy,” he signalled to a tall, moustached

German. “Come here, Brock.” The German came to one side, and Thropper

repeated, though not so completely nor with equal brevity, the tale I

had unfolded.

“You’ve come to just the right place, Brother Priddy,” said Brock. “We

have plenty of students here who arrive without much money or much

education. It’s a splendid place for getting a start, isn’t it, Brother

Thropper?”

Thropper said, “It’s been a blessing to many a struggler.”

“But is there room?” I asked. “I could wait. It will be nice to live so

near a college and join it--later,” I tremblingly ventured. “I didn’t

come with the expectation of beginning studies right off, I thought I

might go to work in the glass factory a while and then when I’d--”

“That would be a waste of time,” said Brock. “I think you’ll be able to

start right away.”

“Excuse me--are--are you a professor--sir?” I enquired.

“No,” laughed Brock, “just a theologue, that’s all. I started late, you

see.” Then he explained: “You’ll not be able to do any business here

on Sunday. The President will see you the first thing in the morning;

but you needn’t fear. There’s no turning of you off when you’ve come so

far. Just remember that, Brother Priddy. Meanwhile, I think I might be

able to place you at a job that will pay your board.”

With a wild leap of the heart, I gasped, thrilled,

“Oh, if you only could!”

“I’m head waiter in the dining-room,” he explained, “we have a place

not filled yet. I’ll see you later about it. Better take him in with

you,” he announced, turning to Thropper. “Yours is a double room.

That’s where the President would put him, anyhow.”

“My, the gas does smell!” I announced, merely to say something as

Thropper led me into the dimness of Pungo Hall. “Doesn’t it spoil the

food, when it soaks in it?”

Thropper laughed.

“You won’t mind it, after a while. You’ll get so that you won’t notice

it. Here’s the room, ‘9’. Come in, Priddy!”

I heard the scraping of a key against the lock, a frosty light overhead

showed me where the transom was swung at an angle. Finally there came

a click as the key snapped back the bolt, Thropper threw back the

door and ushered me in my college room, a double room within a narrow

compass of a few feet something. I swept a pair of greedy eyes over

this, the first substantial step in my educational ambition.

_Chapter II. I Help a Real Poet to Sing his Hymn. My First Chance and

How I Succeeded with it_

The double bed had two depressions plainly visible on the mattress

where two previous occupants had maintained their respective sleeping

rights. The double quilt, patterned after a gaudy Chinese puzzle, sank

into the depressions of its own, warm weight.

“The best thing about that quilt,” explained Thropper, “is that when

my eyes get weary with study or tired from writing, I look at the

combinations of colors, and my eyes are rested. It’s great for that. By

the way, I’ll call you Al if you’ll call me Jim,” he suggested.

That bed occupied the major portion of the floor. Its edge left just a

narrow alley between it and two kitchen tables that were covered with

black oil-cloth. One of the tables--farthest from the window, in the

dim light,--was bare of books, and Jim said that it would be mine. The

other had about a dozen text books on it, some scraps of paper, and an

open Bible, marked with purple and red ink where Jim told me he was

busy emphasizing all the texts that he might preach sermons from--some

day.

The chair allotted me was a plain kitchen affair, as hard as a

tombstone; but Jim’s was fearfully and wonderfully stuffed. There it

stood like a parody on a fluffy Morris, library chair. It was a kitchen

chair grotesquely stuffed and upholstered within a faded, torn, and

highly colored bed comforter. When Jim noted that I took an interest in

it, he said,

“Padding made quite a difference in that chair, Al. It’s real

comfortable, though there isn’t much seat left; it’s so thickly padded.

I was out in the fields one day, and near the fence I picked up a

sheep’s skin of thick wool. I thought then that I could make good use

of it, so I brought it back, left it on the clothes-line at the back of

the building to let the air sweeten it, for it was pretty strong; then

I came to the conclusion that I could use it to stuff the chair--real

wool, you know. The comforter was left in the back room by a fellow and

I used that, too. It’s a real comfortable chair; almost makes you fall

asleep when you sit in it.”

“You didn’t manage to sweeten _all_ of the wool, did you, Jim?” I asked

dubiously as I noted the dank odor that came from the chair; an odor

that was reminiscent of a junk shop after a rain.

“Why,” replied Jim, in good humor, “I don’t notice it a bit. I think it

must be your imagination.”

“Well,” I concluded, ungraciously, “probably it’s like the gas. You’ve

got used to it.”

Between the gas stove and the wash stand stood a galvanized water pail,

three-quarters filled and with a fuzzy growth on its oily surface.

“That ain’t drinking water, is it?” I asked in alarm.

“No,” laughed Jim. “That’s in case of fire. I ought to have changed

that water two weeks ago, but I guess I’m getting lazy.”

By this time I had my coat off and had accepted Jim’s invitation to

wash the train dust off my face.

For this purpose I scraped around in the soap dish until I had secured

two thin wafers of soap, one a transparent reminder of perfumed toilet

soap, the other a dull yellow, and odorous with naphtha, which I

recognized as the remnant of a powerful disinfecting and wash-day soap;

used by my Aunt to drive black oil from overalls. I had to rub these

two antagonistic wafers together to make sufficient lather for washing.

Then, too, I had to hurry my toilet, for the flowered wash bowl had a

yellow crack on its under side, through which the water dripped rapidly

while I washed.

Jim said,

“Until you get some, Al, you must use my towel.” He took it down from

the wire behind the stove and let me have it, with the remark:

“There’s a dry corner, there near the fringe.”

The window was open, and while I was busy brushing the dust from my

clothes, a gust of wind came in and I heard a rip on the wall followed

by an exclamation from Jim,

“There it goes again! The wall will be going next!”

On examination I found that the wall paper, with its highly

conventionalized lotus leaves, had lost its grip on the wall behind

the gas stove and had uncovered a great area of plastered wall. Jim

produced some tacks, and using a flat-iron for a hammer managed to

return the paper to its place and to keep it anchored there through a

liberal use of tacks.

He apologized, when he came down to the floor,

“All this is miserable enough, Al, and I don’t blame you for thinking

so.”

“Uh,” I retorted, “I ain’t grumbling. Beggars can’t be choosers.

Besides, I don’t see what more the college can do for ninety dollars a

year, board, room, and teaching.”

“‘Tuition’ you ought to say,” corrected Jim. “I’m glad you’ve got the

right spirit about this place, Al. You’re right, we can’t expect any

more for ninety dollars! I don’t see how they can do for us what they

can. It’s worth a mighty lot for you and me to get a chance, and if

education should cost more, where would you and I be?”

“That’s just what I think!” I replied with spirit. “It is just the

chance we want. Here I am, with only three dollars to begin on and a

poor foundation for study in the bargain. What other place is there

where I could be given a start on such easy terms?”

“A lot of fellows come here,” commented Jim, “who don’t look at the

matter in that way--and they soon leave and don’t have any chance at

all. I know you’ll appreciate the hard scrabble to get the education.

Besides, poor buildings, poverty-stricken rooms, cheap board, and

limited privileges ought to make us get the most out of our studies.

That’s something.”

“But suppose they don’t let me begin?” I gasped; for up to this time I

had not let a doubt of my acceptance at Evangelical University mar the

afternoon.

“I don’t think they’ll let a fellow like you go begging, Al,” responded

Jim. “You might as well count yourself one of us, right off.”

Just then, out in the upper end of the corridor, went up a high,

lisping, effeminate voice, calling,

“Oh, Brother Thropper; Brother Thropper!”

Jim went to the door and replied,

“All right, Jason!” Then he turned to me and whispered,

“Hardwick is one of the smartest fellows in the University. He’s a

poet, too. He’s got a hymn set to music in this book,” and he waved a

much worn, manila paper covered Gospel hymn book. “It’s very popular;

sung in many of the big revivals!”

With a throb of excitement I waited for the advent of this real poet.

I had seen men who had called themselves poets in the mill; but their

productions were local in theme, personal in lines, unpoetic in metre

and never reached a further fame than insertion in the “Original Line”

column of the papers. But I was now to view a real poet; one whose

words were sung in churches. I was thoroughly subdued when I heard the

poet’s fingers searching for the knob, outside.

He was all that the comic papers and the actors suggest for poets.

There was not a bit of the world about his aspect. In reaching for the

dwelling places of the muses he had lengthened out until his head,

covered with a thick cluster of curls, roamed through the higher levels

of the atmosphere. He had to incline his head in order to get through

the doorway. His face had a poetic paleness and his lips were pulled

out as if he were on the verge of inspired speech. He wore a clerical

vest and all his clothes were of a very spiritual black. He carried a

mandolin.

I was formally introduced and on my part, in acknowledging the

introduction, I agreed that I was “right glad to know” Mr. Hardwick.

The poet had come to rehearse some hymns with Jim. The latter produced

his guitar; both musicians sat on the edge of the bed before a

nickel-plated music stand, the Gospel hymn book was put in place, and

to the strumming of the instruments, the vocalists sang some revival

hymns with such effect as to produce from me the comment, “My, that

sounds fine!”

Then, growing bold through intimacy, I said,

“I wonder, Mr. Hardwick, if you will sing that song you wrote, please?”

The poet said that he would be pleased to sing it as a trio, and asked

me, when he had found the place, if I could join in with the bass. I

thought I could.

So the three of us, I between the two musicians, sat on the edge of the

bed and sang the lilting reiterations of the hymn,

“There’s a welcome home,

There’s a welcome home,

There’s a welcome home,

For you and me.”

We were interrupted by the ringing of a bell, on the University tower,

which, I learned, was the call to the Sunday afternoon preaching

service. As my roommate was trying to urge me to attend, and while I

was protesting that my clothes were not good enough, the head waiter

came into the room and said,

“Priddy, I’m going to give you a try as a waiter at supper. Don’t go

to the preaching service. I will try to rig you up with an apron and

jacket.”

Oh, what inspiration those words had in them! It meant that the

University was already willing to give me a chance to show what I could

do. I should not have to get work in the glass factory. I should not

have to wait before I could enroll myself in the University. My chance

had come. I cried for joy; tears of which I was not ashamed, even

though Brock, the head waiter, saw them.

“I’m only poor, and a big blunderer, without any manners,” I protested,

“but if you give me a chance, I’ll do my utmost.”

At five o’clock Brock came into the room carrying on his arm a

well-starched waiter’s jacket and a patched white apron.

“I had these on the side,” he announced. “They are worth forty cents.

You may pay for them when you are able. Don’t be worrying about the

matter. Be over at the dining-room at quarter past five.”

After that I moved as if in the midst of a grand dream. Was I actually

in a dormitory, at a college? Was it true that in a quarter of an hour

I should be trying to wait on a group of real students?

The dining-hall was a squat wooden bungalow with a great many windows

in it. The front hall floor bent under my weight as I crossed it. I

unlatched one of the double doors and viewed the roomful of tables with

the dull reflector lamps hanging above them. White jacketed students

were busy with plates and plated silver cutlery. Brock, himself in

glorious white, came down the room with a word of greeting. I was

introduced to the student-waiters, was told that I was on trial only,

and that I should be carefully watched, as there were many trained

waiters among the students who coveted the position. Brock indicated

two tables near the door, the farthest away from the kitchen of all the

tables.

“You will wait on them,” he said. “There will be ten to a table. When

they come in, before the blessing, they will stand behind their chairs.

You must go around, find out what they want to drink; hot water, tea or

cold water, then you must go to the other end of the room, get one of

the trays and fill it with twenty cups. Then you must get them served

just as soon as you can. You will find plenty of chores to do when they

are seated.”

With a wild, thumping heart, and with a maximum of terror, I heard

the first of the students enter the outer hall. Brock stood at the

opposite end of the room, near the slides that connected with the

kitchen, his finger on a Sunday-school bell. The students, well-dressed

young men and women, swept past me, crowded me, stared at me, stood

at my tables; went to the different parts of the room chattering,

bantering, laughing, and accosting one another familiarly with such

abandon and effect that I felt like an intruder. No one spoke to me.

The young men and women at my two tables commented about something in a

low murmur. They cast doubting looks toward me.

For a minute I was in a panic, then, because I was tall, I could see

Brock’s eyes telling me to do something. I went through the crowded

aisles, around my tables, saying to each person, in a trembling, very

English way,

“Will you ’ave ’ot, cold water, or tea, please?”

I received eighteen orders for hot water and tea and two orders for

cold water. I came out from the ordeal of having addressed so many

students and went perspiring to the upper end of the room where the

urns and trays were. I put the weighty cups and the thick glasses on

a tray the size of an ordinary five o’clock tea table, filled them by

twisting the tray under the spigots of the urns, and with the weighty

load raised as high as my long arms could exalt it, pushed my way

nervously down the aisle, past the students whose backs were turned to

me, and conscious that all the inquisitive and critical eyes in the

world were watching me to see how I should manage. I was very fortunate

in being able to squirm my way to the lower end of the room and to

reach the vicinity of my own tables without accident. It helped me,

too, to hear the students singing a hymn. It took their minds off me,

the green mill boy trying to wait on college tables! Thus encouraged, I

tried a bold thing, which I saw the other waiters doing. As there were

no stand tables to rest our trays upon, while steadying mine against my

body as it lay on the palm of my hand, I took off a cup of hot water

from the lowered tray, and tried to reach the cup around the waist of

the young woman who had called for hot water. The balance would have

been maintained had not the person next to me suddenly drawn back,

jolted the tray from my hand, and sent the hot liquids streaming down

the skirts and shoes of those in the vicinity. There followed, too,

the crash and thump as the heavy cups clattered to the floor. The two

glasses splintered into bits, and while the students were sitting down,

I found myself growing more and more conspicuous until the seated

throng looked up from every part of the room, to see me furiously red,

with tears gathering, and with untold chagrin over the mishap.

I waited, among the ruin, for Brock to come to me, get me by the scruff

of the neck, hurl me outside to say,

“Get back to the mill. What right have you to pretend to know how to

act among cultured people? You’re too green!”

I _imagined_, too, that the students at my table must be delegating one

of their number to go to the head waiter to say,

“We don’t want that clumsy person bothering with us. He’s spoiled a

couple of fine dresses and made a regular bothersome mess. Throw him

out! Send him back to where he came from!”

But I had mistaken the temper of Evangelical University. Brock

came down, and with great kindness patted me on the back and said,

encouragingly,

“Don’t let a thing like that bother you, Priddy. I know how they crowd.

Cheer up, old fellow.”

Then the student who had jolted the tray bent back and said,

“It was all my fault, Brock. He wasn’t to blame a bit. It was downright

careless of me. I’m sorry.”

Then, after he had assisted me in bringing the hot water and other

drinkables to the tables, Brock took pains to introduce me to the

twenty young men and women, saying,

“Mr. Priddy, I hope, will see that you do not go hungry as much as you

might!”

I walked on air after that; for the head waiter had called me, “Mr.

Priddy!”

_Chapter III. Thropper’s Puff Tie. Sounds That Passed in the Night. The

Possible Advantages of Speaking Tubes. The Scroll of Divine History.

The Meditations of a Saint. How Thropper Lost his Pious Reputation_

Shortly after my return from the dining-hall, Thropper thundered into

the room, in his impetuous way, jerked his arms out of his coat, tore

at his collar and lifted up the lid of his tin-covered trunk with every

evidence of excitement.

“What’s the matter--Jim?” I asked, from my seat near the window.

“Got a date on, that’s what,” he answered, half smothered in his trunk.

“Miss Ebberd’s going--church--with me. Lucky--duck, that’s what! Going

down the board walk to--New Light revival! Say,” he interrupted,

holding up for my inspection a black, puff tie, with an opal stone

nesting in the midst of its folds, “How would this go with a choker

collar, Priddy?”

“Put it on first, Thropper,” I suggested.

He fastened it around his high choker collar: a collar whose pointed

fronts might have been successfully used by Spanish Inquisitors to make

heretics look up continually unless they wished to have holes punctured

under their chins.

“The reason I wear this tie,” said Thropper, confidentially, “is

because it blocks up my shirt bosom; hides it and saves washing, of

course. You’ve got to get on to all those sort of tricks when you work

your way through school, you’ll find, Priddy. Now, how do I look, eh?”

I thought him a very attractive Lothario indeed, although I did not

venture so far with an expression of opinion. I merely said,

“You look slick!”

As he was leaving the room, Thropper suddenly turned and in a very

apologetic tone said,

“I had planned, Priddy, to stay with you tonight, but you see how it

is, don’t you, old fellow?”

“Why, certainly,” I agreed. “I wouldn’t like to have you miss this

chance for anything, Thropper. Go ahead and good luck!”

“Thanks,” he said. “You can lock the door when you go to bed if I’m not

back. You must be tired!”

“Yes, I am tired, Thropper. I’ll sit by the window--and think. Good

luck to you!”

He was gone. As his feet echoed in the bare hall, I heard him humming,

like a happy lover,

“There’ll be no dark valley!”

The evening shadows were gathering outside, as I sat near the window,

looking out. From the village centre came the drawn out stroke of

a church bell. Then the campus was alive with sounds. The whole

University seemed astir. Some one raised up a window in the second

story, over my head, and a quiet, vibrant voice called, “Hey, Brother

Merritt?” The man in the next room stopped his strumming on a guitar,

lifted up his window and replied, “What?” “Going to the service

tonight, Brother Merritt?” To which my neighbor answered, “No, I’m

afraid I can’t. I’m tired.” A door in the next house burst open and

a trio of young women gathered on the porch. “That’s only the first

bell,” said one. “We shan’t have to hurry.” “I’m glad of that,” replied

another, “for the board walk is just simply terrible in places: full

of holes that we might trip in if we had to run.” Then their pattering

footfalls could be heard growing dimmer and dimmer in the distance

on the board walk. Little groups of young men hummed hymns as they,

too, passed Pungo Hall on their way to the revival. Others laughed

and argued. I heard the fragment of one discussion in which three

earnest-toned young men were indulging: “Saint Paul did make a failure

in that Mar’s Hill speech!” said one, loudly. “It all depends on what

you mean by ‘failure,’” replied his antagonist; “true, the Greeks might

not have been strongly enthusiastic at the time, but it seems to me

that God would use that speech for--No!” The argument was swallowed up

in the twilight and the distance. A group of young women swept by the

gloom which hung like a mystic veil between me and them. I heard only

one sentence of their conversation, “Fried potatoes--ugh!” They were

succeeded by a procession of late starters who slipped by shrouded

in the gloom, a happy, familiar, shadowy procession ignorant of the

lonesome lad who sat back of a window and envied them their evening’s

excursion. The last of the footsteps died down on the board walk, as

if the last of my generation had left me to occupy the world alone.

But the stars came out for friendliness, ruling over the silences of

the campus and rendering it more silent. The tolls of the church bell

announced the beginning of the service. When the double stroke had been

given for a last warning, the silence was about me once more. Suddenly

the troubled cry of a sheep from the back pasture broke out on the

night, a plaintive bleat as if a dog or some prowling beast of prey had

been scented. Then, through an open window in the next house, I heard

the voice of a girl as it read something, followed by a deeper voice

which said, “Oh, yum, I’ve been dozing, Grace!” That was followed by

a hand which drew apart the curtains, and soon two girls’ heads were

outlined against the golden glow in the room, and one remarked, “Oh,

what a stupid night!” I hurriedly dodged my head into the room, drew

down the window shade and lighted the flaring, hissing blaze of gas.

The whole room was cheapened when the powerful gas light shone on it.

The crowded space, filled with the tawdry effects of my roommate and

myself: the rack of dusty photographs of people I had never seen,

the stuffed chair, the bed quilt, the water bucket; all those things

oppressed me. I turned off the light and threw myself on the bed

determined not to undress till Thropper’s return. I felt the need

of Thropper. It seemed to me that he would cheer me, hearten me, be

a companion. I began to speculate about Thropper in a dreamy sort

of way. Overhead, some one began to walk back and forth, back and

forth, monotonously, humming a tune unknown to me. I listened for the

melody hoping to discover that it would be something with which I was

familiar, so that I could hum it too. But it was suddenly interrupted

by a terrific yawn. Then the man upstairs said, “Oh, Oh-h-h!” and I

heard the clatter as a pair of shoes fell on the floor. The man was

going to bed. I began to wonder who it was that had been walking and

singing and going to bed over my head. I also speculated on the social

value of a speaking tube which should connect our rooms. Then a long,

long silence, broken at last by a clatter in the hallway and at last

Thropper’s cheery voice,

“Well, you couldn’t wait to undress, eh, Priddy?”

“Oh,” I mumbled, “got back?”

“Yes,” he laughed. “Isn’t it time?”

“What time is it?”

“Nearly ten.”

“I must have been asleep, Thropper. The sounds sent me off.”

“You were homesick, I’ll bet,” he laughed. “That’s a fine description

of it.”

“It wouldn’t be surprising, would it?” I asked.

“Not a bit,” he said, “but you just wait till you get to know the folks

about here, and you’ll get over that.”

“Did you have a good service, Thropper?”

“Oh, fair,” he replied. “Fair. Miss Ebberds didn’t particularly like

the sermon.”

“But she enjoyed the walk to and from it,” I laughed.

“Well,” he said earnestly, “I know I did.”

While he was preparing himself for bed, he said,

“When I went out I forgot to tell you about the Scroll. You might have

had a good time with it. Have you ever seen one?”

“Scroll?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

Thropper plunged into the heart of his trunk again, and this time

extracted a black, leather case. He opened the front, turned a knob

and unfolded a scriptural panorama of chromo pictures, depicting the

thrilling events which took place in Eden, first of all, and then

continuing through the murder of Abel to the Flood.

“I was agent for this last summer,” said Thropper. “Look through it,

Priddy, it’s quite interesting.”

The Scroll had unfolded to Sinai accompanied by a running comment by

Thropper, which, itself, was a panorama of the exciting adventures of a

Scroll agent, when he heaved a sigh and said,

“Oh, um!”

I looked up in time to see him throw himself on his knees at the

bed-side, to bend his head in a cup made by his hands, for his evening

prayer.

The Scroll brought before me the Tabernacle, the Temple, the victory

of David over the Giant in the midst of a profound silence. Thropper

was still engaged in his devotions as devoutly, as deeply, as any

Augustinian monk. The panorama of the Divine Plan unfolded the

adventures which befell the prophets and came at last to the Birth of

Christ, when I looked around again to find Thropper still kneeling at

the bed-side. To me it was a display of the prayer-spirit unusual and I

was just investing my roommate with all the pious dignity of a Saint,

when a loud, long-drawn snore came from him. He had fallen asleep! I

shook him. He drawled, as he crept into bed,

“I’m glad you wakened me, Priddy. I fall asleep quite often. One night

I nearly got frozen to death. I didn’t have a roommate. Thanks. Turn

off the light, won’t you.”

After the Crucifixion I closed the Scroll and snuggled into bed with

Thropper. My first day in Evangelical University had ended.

_Chapter IV. Thundering Gymnastics. How to Keep on the Good Side of

the Young Women with Scriptural Quotations. The Establishment of

Friendship. Carrying Water for Beauty. How Music may be Something More

than Music. The Wonderful, Austere Man that Thropper Led me to_

I linked myself to the following day’s life by clutching the gaudy

comforter in both my hands while I sat up in bed, startled by a

thundering that shook Pungo Hall.

“What’s--that?” I gasped, turning towards Thropper, expecting to

discover that the vibrations had brought him up in alarm.

“It’s only ‘Budd’ doing his gymnastics,” he muttered, drowsily, “what

time?”

“Six.”

“Better get up and go over to the dining-room at half-past,” he

explained. “Say,” he added, lifting up his head, “you wouldn’t mind

letting me know at twenty minutes past, would you, Priddy?”

“Not at all, Thropper.” He dropped half under the clothes and in a

surprising manner was soon invested in all the dignity of thorough

repose.

From that moment until the clamor of the rising bell, at half-past

six, the heart of Pungo Hall was turned into a huge alarm clock, for

first in this corner, then in that, on this floor and then on that,

intermittent clatterings of clocks brought intermittent yawns and

mutterings as the different students were signalled by their unsleeping

timepieces. Every noise seemed to pierce from room to room as if

it went through telegraphic sounding boards. Splashings, jumpings,

muttered prayers, readings aloud, animated conversations: these

increased as half-past six drew near. The Monday morning, with its

new week of study, demanding a fresh enthusiasm after the Sabbath’s

interruption, was not being approached in any business manner. Over

the banister, leading to the top floor, a voice exclaimed, so that all

could hear, “Say, Headstone, how fine you looked last night with Her!”

To which an answer came from a suddenly opened door, “Thank you!” Then

over that banister, into the laundry basket, in a dark corner of the

hall, the bed wash was hurled accompanied by dull thuds.

“Got your quotation?” asked Thropper, as he dressed.

“Quotation?”

“Yes, Bible verse for the tables. You’ll probably be asked to give one.

You see, it’s a sort of custom for Bible verses to go the rounds of

the tables, in the morning. You don’t have to have one, but it fits in

nicely, if you have one. Especially if you’re a waiter.”

“Oh, of course I’ll take one,” I said.

“Only just remember and not do what one waiter did, Priddy: take that

verse and quote it: ‘Let your women keep silence in the churches.’ It

would get you in wrong--with the young ladies.”

“Why?”

“Well, so many of them are going to be evangelists and ministers and

missionaries: ever so many of them. You see how they would be liable to

take it.”

“We had better keep on the good side of--the ladies,” I laughed.

Thropper winked.

“Betcher life,” he replied.

Just then the head waiter peeped in at the door to say,

“Brother Priddy, are you coming across to the dining-room? I’m going

over.”

Eager to face my responsibilities of the day in the leadership of

somebody I accompanied the tall German across the road and into the

dining-room.

“Black for breakfast and supper. White for dinner,” announced Brock. “I

mean the kind of coats that are to be worn,” he explained.

While I arranged my two tables for twenty people with plates, knives

and forks, milk in granite-ware pitchers, sliced bread, corn bread

left over from the previous night’s meal, tomato butter, and dishes of

crisp, browned, fried potatoes, the other waiters came in and greeted

me with hearty,

“Morning’s!” “Howdy’s!” and “Hello, Priddy’s!” which had the effect

of making me feel in strong fellowship with them, although our

acquaintance was but a day and a night old, at the utmost. Brock smiled

at all these evidences of friendship, and whispered, as he showed me

how to arrange the breakfast things,

“Things are going well, eh?”

“Yes,” I muttered, “if I can manage not to drop another tray!”

Then the breakfast bell brought the hurried, chattering, hungry crowd

of young men and women into the room again, though, at this meal, they

were less formidable in their every-day clothes. Some brought books,

others writing pads. Fountain pens and pencils projected from the

outer pockets of the men, and were stabbed in the hair of the women.

My tables were soon lined with students. They, too, seemed to have

met me, long ago, in the remote past and to some of them I must have

been at least a third cousin or present at a family party, so freely

and lavishly did the greetings come: greetings that put me at my ease

because I felt that they came from sincere hearts.

The floor was ready to bend under the weight of the crowd that stood

waiting behind the chairs for Brock’s signal to sit. Like a stern,

powerful, determining Ruler, the head waiter stood at the opposite end

of the room, with his eye on his watch, not willing to press his thumb

on the Sunday-School bell until the instant seven o’clock arrived.

Eyes looked longingly on the hot, fried potatoes. It was no use. Seven

o’clock was a minute off. Some rumbled the legs of the chairs. To no

purpose. The German had patience. Finally the snap of the bell sent

every man and woman to the table accompanied by the roar of scraping

chairs, thumping feet, and expressions of satisfaction.

Near the head of my first table sat a very young, pink-cheeked

Southern girl possessed of charming, gracious ways. Her “Mr. Priddy,

please, a spoon,” was as musical as ever a request could be. It made

me feel sorry that the spoon was not gold instead of German metal.

Consequently, when she asked me for a third glass of water during the

first five minutes of breakfast, it was no small happiness for me to

secure it, as speedily as possible, for her. But on my return with the

third glass her neighbor asked for one. On my return with that, the

Southern girl had her glass emptied. So it went for ten minutes: each

one of them drinking amounts of water sufficient for ducks or geese to

swim in--it seemed to me. Finally, on picking up a fork some one had

let fall on the floor, I saw several glasses, full to the brim with

water, under the Southern girl’s chair. She had been initiating me.

With a broad wink at the others, I very slyly sprinkled some pepper on

the glass of water before her when her head was turned and then waited

for results. They soon came. She reached for her glass, took a sip, and

then commenced to choke.

“What is the matter, miss?” I asked, “will you have some more water?”

She looked at me in resentful astonishment, at first, and then seeing

that the others at the table were laughing, she joined in with them,

saying,

“Who peppered the water?”

“Was there pepper in the water?” asked one across the table.

There the matter ended, although, when in a spirit of boastfulness I

recounted the experience at the waiter’s table, Brock chided me by

saying,

“You will have to be careful. We must have discipline, brother Priddy!”

Thropper was waiting for me, after breakfast, when the call to chapel

sounded: the first exercise of the day. We joined the procession of

students which moved swiftly towards the central building. Into it

the procession hurried, racing against the tolling of the bell. Then

followed a tiresome climb up three pairs of stairs to the topmost room

of all, used for a chapel. An attic room, square and dimly lighted by

dormer windows. The roof girders overhead clung together like knitted

arms bent on holding together such a load of humanity as trusted to

them. Against the wall, opposite the door, spread a broad platform with

a semi-circle of male and female faculty arrayed on it. Before it, and

awed into respectful silence by it, spread a fan of students, sitting

in chairs, by groups. I sat at the heart of Evangelical University.

This chapel, in its plainness, its bareness, its poverty, formed the

pivot on which the life of the University swung; for here the religious

faith and doctrine which were the most eagerly sought gifts of the

place were received. Here, in these simple chairs, was where men and

women found God: the highest advertisement of the University.

The doors closed out late-comers. A hymn was sung. This has been said,

and echoed many a time: that a hymn was sung. But this first hymn I

heard, proceeding from over a hundred hearts, should not be plainly,

unemphatically said to have been merely sung. If each word be trebly

underscored and trebly emphasized, then, one may say, a hymn was sung

that morning, for to me, the first bar of melody seemed to be the

onrush of an Angelic symphony through a suddenly opened door of Heaven!

Were they common men and women who were singing with such resonant

exultation! The boarded ceiling and the huge square attic room throbbed

with it. Rapture, adoration, victory, joy unspeakable weighted down

each note as the melody unfolded itself. The reliant basses, anchored

to the background of the melody--a resonant, manly anchorage--made

sudden excursions into the higher realms of the theme, but not to

displace the tenors whose shrill praises were the nearest to what a

hammer stroke on a bar of silver would produce. The dulcet altos, as

rich depths of throat as any one might expect, entwined themselves

in and out of the sopranos’ soaring, singing as if to keep those

higher voices from too suddenly darting past the doors of Heaven and

surprising God. That was no mere singing of a hymn. It was a hymn for

the love of the hymn; singing for the pure love of singing. Or, better,

a spiritual exercise that could certainly be no more willingly or much

better done in a morning rehearsal of the Court melodists!

“Wonderful!” I gasped to Thropper, whose tenor had added much to the

dignity of that part.

“They do sing well, don’t they?” he commented.

A demure little woman in black, with a very set, white face, came to

the reading desk and read a scripture lesson. Then the sober Dean,

whose eyes knew every thought in that room and said so, gave some

notices. There followed a prayer whose outstanding character was

earnestness of expression, of theme, of length. Then the whole service

was embroidered by three verses of another hymn, after which we fell

in orderly lines and marched through the open doors, where an electric

gong broke up the line into unorganized groups, scattering for the

classrooms.

“Now for the President’s office,” announced Thropper, abruptly.

But a sudden pang of fear whipped across my thoughts.

“Oh, suppose I can’t enter, Thropper!” I exclaimed. “It has tasted so

good, thus far!”

He patted me on the back, in his manly way, did Thropper, and heartened

me by saying,

“Well, Priddy, if you like the first taste, I guess you’ll stay for the

whole meal--if you are hungry!”

“Thanks, old fellow,” I said. “Take me to the President!”

He led me downstairs into a very busy office where some young women

were typewriting, inscribing books, and where one dudish young man with

up-combed, wavy hair, was flirting with a pretty, tan-cheeked girl who

was supposed to be engrossed in the task of trimming a window shelf of

geraniums.

Thropper was told that the President was engaged and that we should

have to wait our turn. So we sat in high-backed chairs, in line with

three others, where I waited with a palpitating heart that began to

spell panic if my turn were delayed much longer. To increase this

threatened panic of courage, Thropper began to whisper terrible things

about the President: how he was a wonderful reader of books and had

a mentality and memory so well disciplined that he was able to read

an entire page at a mere glance and be able to pass an exacting

examination on its contents a day afterwards! Thropper also whispered

in an awe-struck voice,

“The President just feeds on learning! He can speak in ten different

languages, read in fifteen, about, and think in twelve: so they say.

You mustn’t fool with him or tell him any funny stories! He’d never get

over it, Priddy. Now, come on, it’s your turn. I’ll introduce you and

leave you with him!”

My sensitive imagination enkindled by all that Thropper had fed me on,

in the waiting room, I appeared before the President considerably

unnerved. He sat behind his desk, waiting for me: the embodiment of

every austere report I had heard. His mouth twitched; twitched all the

time. His eyes shone as brightly as those of an aroused lion from the

dark mask of a cave. It was a race between his mouth and his eyes: the

mouth slipped in and out, lip over lip, lip under and over lip, while

those two small eyes snapped back and forth with electric suddenness.

His gaunt features had the pallor of death. A world of woe, of hunger,

of intellectual dissipation could be read in him. He tried to compose

his features into a smile of welcome when he saw me, but it seemed

so unusual a thing for those ascetic signs to be disturbed by the

intrusion of anything pleasurable, that the first attempt ended in a

sad failure. He did not try again. His voice was tired when he spoke.

It had neither vibration nor health in it. I stood before that presence

chilled, uninspired, while a strong temptation to flight pulled on my

courage.

“Sir,” began Thropper, fingering his cap, “I’ve brought Mr. Priddy in.

He came yesterday, and I’ve been letting him share my room till he saw

you.”

“‘Had seen,’ you should say, sir,” corrected the President, “if you are

after the proper tense of the verb. You may go.”

Thropper sighed deeply as he left, probably over the grammatical

correction just imposed on him.

A seat was indicated and I was asked to place myself in it. Then the

President said,

“Just tell your story in your own way till I interrupt you, young man.”

Thereupon I went into such minute details about myself, that I soon

brought from the official a grunt of impatience.

“No,” he said, “I’m not a bit eager to know how many times your family

has moved about the country. I want to know the salient things about

you yourself.”

“I’ve been working in the mill till last week,” I said. “I always have

been eager to get an education. I haven’t been able to save any money.

I heard about this place. I came on. If you can’t take me, then please

let me live here; just live here, it will do me good even if I don’t

take any studies. I can work out and earn my board, I promise you. I

have been earning my own living for a long time now, sir.”

“How much money have you brought?” he asked.

“Three dollars,” I said. “But you don’t need to take me in yet, sir,” I

explained, hurriedly, for I felt that he would surely turn me off.

“A young woman came here, last year, with just four cents in her pocket

and only her own strength to rely upon, young man,” replied the

President. “Her own strength and God to rely upon, I should say, sir.”

“Yes?”

“There are several here who, at middle age, have arrived with wives and

families and hardly more than enough to keep them a week, save their

own strength and God’s.”

“Yes?”

“There is one student here who, at forty-five, has given up his

position in business to begin in the lowest grade of study, with

arithmetic, that he may receive an education.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So that you, with your youth, your three dollars, your opportunity,

ought really to get along fairly well here.”

“If you take me, sir?”

“Do you think we would turn you off, young man?”

“You mean that you’ll give me a chance, then?” I cried, in great

exultation at his quiet words.

At last a faint smile did untangle itself from his austere line.

“You are already earning your board in the dining-hall, I understand.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That leaves merely the small item of tuition and room rent. I think

that you will be able to find enough work about the campus and in the

village to arrange for the payment of that. If not, you should be able

to earn enough next summer to do it.”

“Just the thing, sir,” I cried. “I’ll do it! Here is the first

payment.” I handed him the three dollars.

He waved his hand.

“Keep them for necessities,” he said. “There is no hurry. God is back

of us, young man, and will raise up friends for us. I want you to

work hard and make of yourself a useful man in the world. We have no

luxuries here. It is plain living and high thinking: the two essential

equipments of manhood, I believe. If you will share our hardships

faithfully and work hard, we welcome you to us. That is all. Now we

will see about your list of studies.”

After fifteen minutes’ appraisement of my intellectual attainments and

of my intellectual aim, the President made me out a list of subjects

with such diverse studies on it as: Beginning Grammar, Church history,

elementary arithmetic, Jevon’s Logic, elementary Latin, typewriting and

zoölogy! I hurried from the office, with the card, to attend my first

class, the first real step in my higher education, the class in Church

history!

_Chapter V. Pungo Hall’s Occupants: Estes Who Planned to Take a Tent

and Plant it in the Midst of the World’s Sin; of the Little Man Who

Fled from the Chidings of a ‘D. D.’: of Calloused Hands and Showing How

‘Pa’ Borden was Beaten by the Grass Widower with the Long Hair_

Every scar that a sin may leave, every phase of ambition made possible

in a democratic world, every type of dramatic character: these I found

in Pungo Dormitory. As to a shelter from the world’s temptations had

come firm-lipped, tense-browed men in middle life. As to the door which

led into serviceable adventures, had come stout-hearted, finely-fibred

but poor youths. Evangelical University meant more than a place where

one could get a formal education. To some it meant a haven from a

rough sea: a sea so rough, indeed, that but for the harbor must have

wrecked them inevitably.

The sea, for instance, on which Estes, in Number 18, had found such

tempestuous experiences. To imagine Estes you have to think of two

small, very glistening black eyes shining through a forest of beard

like hut lights gleaming like faint stars in the midst of a dense

grove. That was all you noticed, at first, about him, for his body

was insignificant, unimportant. The little knobs of cheek that came

between the eyes and the black beard shone with a dull red glow, like

flesh that the winds and the frosts had hardened and tinted. When on

the campus, Estes crowned his blackish head with a cow-boy’s sombrero,

worn at a rakish, foppish slant, as if he were trying to be reminiscent

of a Mexican señor. A man to be called merely a _poseur_ when met on

the campus or in the classroom, with his arithmetic, his grammar, his

English history, and his black teacher’s Bible in the crook of his arm;

a thirty-seven-year-old man with his foot on the first rung of the

educational ladder. To most of the students he was known only in the

rôle of “elementary student.” But in the confidence of his chamber,

among his selected friends, when he opened his record, it was akin

to the opening of furnace doors to show the furious white heat of a

man’s sinful passion and the dark, twisting, sulphurous smoke of

criminal deceit. He had betrayed men and women in selfish conspiracies;

had drowned his wit in seas of alcohol; had abandoned his mother and

family to the cruelties of poverty and illness; had stolen money and

honor from his fellows; had mixed in the cheap and petty evil sports

of sailors and tramps; had roamed through the land in the guise of an

Indian doctor selling watery and greasy medicaments under a hissing,

gasolene torch to confiding purchasers; had held responsible positions

in shops; had--there seemed to be no end to his adventures in which the

coloring always turned out to be the fact that in all of them he had

introduced elements of sin, of criminality, of cruelty. They always

ended against those grim stone walls! After walking through the pages

of several high-strung romances of vagabondage and clap-trap he had

turned to Evangelical University as to the mould for a new character

which was to form him over, not only into a socialized being, but

into a serviceable, spiritual servant; for after he should have had

ingrained on him the elementary knowledge of Grammar, Bible, and

History, he planned to take a tent into the world, set it in the midst

of the slums for a season, and nightly exhort bad men to become good

with the same fervid impulsiveness with which he had formerly exhorted

them, under the yellow blaze of gasolene lamps, to buy pills and

medicine-cure-alls.

In room “20” dwelt a student of an opposite type who embodied in an

eloquent degree the strength and adventure to which ambition may

attain. “Dr.” Upwell was a little north-of-Ireland Scotchman, past his

forty-third summer: an ordained clergyman in an energetic denomination.

He was one of those unfortunate men--of which there are a sad number

in the pastorate--who, in a moment of illogical frailty had succumbed

to the temptation which a letter offered, of securing for a trivial

sum of dollars the dignified, honorary degree of “Doctor of Divinity.”

At first the privilege of adding two capital “D’s” to his name, on his

letter heads, his visiting cards, his church advertisements in the

Saturday evening paper, and on the gold-lettered sign in front of his

church, had been highly appraised. Those two “D’s” had added almost a

furlong to his mental egoism. He felt himself admitted to the highest

peak where dwelt the chosen theological giants. But finally, after

much thinking--for Upwell was at heart an honorable man--conscience

had asserted itself with a flaming manifestation that shrivelled up

this mental egoism and left inside the poor man’s mind a mass of

smoking, smouldering remorse which no amount of “Poohing” could quench.

Conscience, in that sure way it has, and blunt, kept saying: “You are

not worthy of the ‘D.D.’ In the first place, you are ill furnished with

education. You have never been under the discipline of a school. What

you have is merely the results of desultory home reading. You have

never accomplished anything worthy of a ‘D.D.’ honor. You are minister

to a handful of farmers, in an isolated community, in a church which

pays a salary of five hundred and fifty dollars a year--when it does.

You have never made more than four speeches in Conference, and they

were in debate--remarks from the floor, in which the Chairman found you

‘out-of-order’ twice! You have played no heroic part in social reform

or made any spiritual stir. The degree was purchased because you were

selfishly ambitious. It was sold to you in cold blood by a college that

funded itself, partly, by such sales. Suppose that Peter, when you

came to the gates of Heaven, should ask you, ‘Upwell, give me name,

dignities, and titles!’ what would you reply? ‘Chadworth Upwell, Doctor

of Divinity!’ with a host of angels to laugh at you? Not so. You would

feel cheap, miserable!”

Thus stung more and more into remorse, the little Scotchman had finally

been driven out to seek a place where, at least, he could be worthy of

his ill-gotten honorary degree. He had come to Evangelical University

to fill the mind with theology, ethics, history, and literature, so

that at the end of a year or two there might be some degree of merit

and fitness when he placed “D.D.” after his name! Of course, Upwell

did not put it in that bald way, but from the persistency with which he

rolled the “D.D.” under his tongue, while criticizing the possession of

it, it was not difficult to know that he would never bury it.

In Pungo Hall I came face to face with young men to whom the gates of

educational privilege had been closed until they, like myself, were

on the threshold of young manhood. They had come from the hearts of

coal mines and breakers, bringing their life’s dreams with them, and

an indomitable purpose. Every penny they spent for books and board had

been earned by the sweat of their brow. They had come, many of them,

from far-away farms and from the Southern mountain fastnesses where

life’s expressions of hope and desire were to be seen in crude form;

where they found that it took the “breath of an ideal to blow the dust

off the actual.” Hands I shook, in fellowship, that were scarred from

hard toil, calloused through contact with the tools of labor.

The comprehensiveness of the curriculum of Evangelical University was

shown in the case of the Borden family. I became intimately acquainted

with the head of the family, Julius Borden, while cutting sugar-cane

on the University farm. Julius was a pale edition of Falstaff: fat,

self-sufficient, self-important, with a scraggly yellowish moustache

half screening his pouting lips, and with a triple chin constantly

slipping like a worm back and forth over the folds of the points of

his collar. Mr. Borden, even at forty-two, after the discipline of

business, married life, and children, took himself too seriously. He

spoke with hesitating precision, though not with grammatical fluency,

as if he had predetermined that no word should ever come from the

depths of his profundity that did not aptly fit into the seriousness

of life. The merest word I flung at him became a challenge that could

be answered only when the hoe had been put down, the moustache pulled,

the brows contracted in thought, and the throat cleared. When I greeted

him with a trivial, “How do!” he could not trust himself to reply with

audible words; he wanted me to take his acquiescence for granted--I

could see it by the surprised look in his eyes. As he had been a

success at the grave-stone business, had been married the longest of

any of the married students, and possessed the most children, he seemed

to realize that these were tokens of superior power when compared to

our bachelor, or the other married students’ bridal, limitations. He

fairly withered our proffered suggestions or theories or criticisms,

with his weighty authoritative, “I’ve seen so much, you see!” It was,

in his own estimation, equal to a hurricane from the Talmud blowing

on the chaff of the Apocrypha. By reason of this constantly paraded

wisdom, Julius soon became current on the campus as “Pa” Borden.

He had given up his grave-stone business; had brought his money, his

wife, and two children to the University for a “family fitting” as he

termed it; much as a farmer goes to the general store with his family

to be clothed, shoed, and candied. The wife, at her marriage, had

just graduated from a high school, so that she entered the collegiate

department of the University, on her way towards an A.B. to be

earned outside of the chicken-raising in which she indulged. Jack, a

quick-witted lad of twelve, found a place in the elementary classes,

by the side of Estes, two Porto Ricans, a Japanese, a missionary’s

little girl, and several other students who had to commence at the

bottom of the educational scale. Edith, a romantic-eyed daughter, who

wore Scotch-plaid dresses and Sis Hopkins’ braids, was plunging through

the College Preparatory division close on the heels of her mother.

The father, least of the family in school discipline, had to humble

himself so low as to take his place with a backward grass widower in

a “B” section of the grammar class because of his tendency to forget,

after a day, the relations and distinctions between verbs and nouns and

the various other members of the grammar family. But Julius saw to it

that besides the baneful necessity of his humble place in the grammar

class he came to a proper level in those studies in which he could

express his preference. He revelled in the Bible class, the Historical

and the Oratorical classes to his heart’s content, but though he shone

creditably in them, he never could quite clear himself from the “B”

section of the grammar class; grammar being his thorn in the flesh, as

he testified in one evening’s prayer-meeting, when the Apostle Paul

and his historic affliction was the lesson. Even the backward grass

widower, who had a thick mass of shining curls and intended becoming

a temperance “orator” finally graduated from the “B” section, thereby

heightening the shame of poor Julius, who seemed predestined to do

poorly with the science of speech, and forever linger in the shadow of

the “poor-doers.”

_Chapter VI. Financial Pessimism Taken in Hand by Thropper and Shown

in its Real Light. A Turkish Rug that Smoked. A Poet in Search of

Kerosene. Wonderful Antics of an Ironing-Board. Economy at a Tub. Three

more Waiting for it After Brock’s Bath. The Chemical Reduction of a

Cauldron of Tomatoes into Something Sweet_

My capital of three dollars was very quickly expended. After I had

spent the last quarter of a dollar for writing paper and pens, my

pockets were as empty as they were the hour I bought my suit from the

Jewish merchant. I stood penniless in the first week of my educational

career: a realization that brought out every atom of self-distrust,

philosophical pessimism and gloomy foreboding. I had been completely

dependent upon nickels and half dollars previously. I had not moved

without they paved the way. Nothing of enjoyment and privilege had

been secured without money. Theatres, games, parties, trips; these had

always made their call on my spending money. Now I stood facing an

academic career absolutely without a penny and with no possible hope

that in the outside world there would ever be any benefactor to forward

one. I was stranded. I thought of the students who relied upon monthly

checks from home or from friends. I thought of the students who had

their own bank accounts which would carry them through the school. I

thought, with a kindling of envy, of the students who the previous

summer had earned the following year’s expenses. I secured a minimum of

comfort from such reflections. They plunged me deeper and deeper into

the gulping pit that sucks enthusiasm out of life.

Thropper found me, standing by the window, indulging in such a

dispiriting review of my prospects. In his bustling way he shouted:

“Well, Priddy, what’s the row now, eh?”

“I shouldn’t be--here,” I choked.

“Well,” he exclaimed, “I thought you’d get ’em--soon.”

“What do you mean, Thropper?”

“Homesick blues, that’s all. You’ve got every symptom showing, Priddy.

They’re on you, all right.”

“I’m not homesick, Thropper,” I blurted out. “I have no reason to be

homesick. It’s not that at all. I’m fretting about money: that’s all.”

“The root of all evil,” he mocked.

“Wrong there, Thropper.” I half smiled, cheered beyond measure by his

banter. “I heard a preacher say that the Bible said, ‘The love of money

is the root of evil.’”

“Well,” bluffed Thropper, “what’s the difference? Wherever you find

money you find the love of it. They are synonymous.”

“I’m in no danger from either, about this time, Thropper. I haven’t a

cent to my name, and as I search the future I don’t see a prospect of

any except I give up the University.”

“That needn’t worry you, Priddy!”

I looked at my roommate in amazement. He was not smiling. In fact, he

was looking very seriously at me.

“Not worry me?” I gasped. “That’s comforting, to be sure!”

“What have you got to worry about?” he asked.

“What--worry about?” I stammered, not falling in with his mood.

“Yes. Tell me!”

“In the first place,” I explained, “you know that I had but three

dollars--three--t-h-r-e-e, three, d-o-l-l-a-r-s, dollars; three

dollars--to begin my education with.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I told you that I shall never expect any help from the

outside; that if I stay here I shall have to rely entirely on what I

can earn with my own hands.”

“I see.”

“Well!”

“Well?”

“Well!”

“Well?”

“Isn’t it clear, Thropper?”

“Isn’t what clear?”

“The predicament I’m in.”

“Predicament?”

“Of course!” I retorted, impatiently. “What else is it for a fellow to

be stranded as I am? You surely wouldn’t call it a blessing, would you?”

“I might!”

“What!”

Then Thropper, without another word, deliberately turned inside out

each pocket that he owned and deposited in my hands the following

items: A well-worn ink and pencil eraser, a fountain pen, a stub of

a Dixon’s indelible pencil, some blurred pencil notes, a half-dozen

toothpicks, a crumpled letter, a bunch of keys, a bachelor button, two

handkerchiefs, and fifteen cents in two nickels and five coppers.

“There,” he sighed. “That’s all. There’s not a penny in my trunk. The

money represents my worldly fortunes--until I go out and earn more. I,

too, have to rely upon my own efforts. Shake, Priddy!”

The big-hearted fellow reached for my empty hand and gave it a vigorous

shaking.

“You’re not bad off!” he declared. “Let me tell you why. You see,” he

went on to explain, “after you’ve got in the swing of things here,

you become somewhat of a social or economic philosopher. You’re rich,

Priddy!” He smiled benevolently on me.

“What do you mean?” I demanded.

“You’re English, aren’t you?”

“Of course.”

“That accounts for it, probably.”

“Accounts for what?”

“Your high and exalted estimate put on money necessary to get you

through college. I understand that across the water it is only the

rich and the noble who are welcomed to the colleges; that the mass of

workers have come to respect education accordingly. At least, that

is the idea one gets through the books and magazine articles which

have to do with English college life. Whether it is true or not is

another matter. Anyway, Priddy, you’ve got to understand that things

are different in America. Our colleges are democratic and extremely

practical. Now take yourself, for instance; you have come out here

regarding it impossible for you to move hand or foot towards your

education without money in your pocket. Things are so arranged that

you don’t need to give yourself much trouble on that account. You say

you’ve got no money and that you ought to get away from here, on that

account. That’s the way thousands of plow boys and machine tenders

are arguing, only they say, ‘We haven’t any money; therefore we’ve no

chance to get to college.’”

“I know that’s so,” I interrupted.

“You see this arm,” and Thropper made a sledge-hammer of his right

arm, bringing his clenched fist down on his table. “That represents my

endowment of good health and strength. How much is that worth, in terms

of dollars earned in a year during spare time, Priddy?”

“Why--I--”

“Sixty-five dollars during school terms last year, outside of

vacations: sixty-five dollars earned at odd jobs during Saturdays and

odd hours,” he said. “All the spare cash I was called upon to spend.

Of course in the summer, by canvassing stereoscopic views, I cleared

sixty-seven more, above my expenses. That’s what the arm stands for.

Its strength is convertible into cash almost any day that I care to go

out and earn it--keeping on with my studies, too, of course.”

“But I’m earning my board by waiting on table,” I urged; “that does not

touch my tuition and room rent, Thropper.”

“Which amounts to about thirty dollars outside of board,” he laughed.

“You aren’t worth much if you can’t earn that in a year and keep on

with your studies, Priddy. I think you’re lucky, that’s what I think,

in earning your board so easily. That’s the big item!”

“But what can I find to do? I can’t leave the campus. I have to be

around for the meal hours.”

Thropper went over to his desk and secured a brown-backed account book,

and read off the following list:

“Stacking books in the library, twelve cents an hour. Wheeling

Professor Dix’s invalid aunt in wheel chair, twelve cents an hour and

dinner. Scrubbing floors in University Hall, twelve cents an hour.

Weeding garden, cutting sugar-cane, thawing frozen gas pipes, grading

lawn, kneading bread, cleaning black-boards, ringing bell, watchman,

running washing-machines, errands, pruning trees, dusting Professor

Harvey’s insects; all twelve cents an hour, Priddy. The list of my

chores for last year. Possibilities for you, my boy!”

“Oh, I see!”

“Feel better, now?”

I smiled and then said, feelingly, to my roommate:

“Thropper, you’d be worth ten dollars an hour in a hospital bracing up

discouraged financiers; that you would!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he answered, pleased with what I said. “I’ve been

up against it myself, Priddy. I understand, that’s all.”

“Have been up against it?” I gasped. “Thropper, I guess you should put

it in the present tense: _are_ up against it. Here is your fifteen

cents, your present fortune. What are you going to do about money?”

“Oh, me?” He felt under his table and brought out to view a tin lunch

box made to resemble a bundle of school books. “I’ll have that filled

on Saturday morning at six o’clock, put on these--” he rumbled behind

his clothes-screen and threw a pair of dirty overalls on the floor and

a soft, black shirt--“and go to my regular Saturday job in the glass

factory. A dollar and fifty for the day; regular as the week comes

around. That’s the way I take care of myself, Priddy!”

“But when I work for the University I don’t get cash, do I, Thropper?”

“No,” he said, “it goes on your bill. But you won’t find it hard to get

along without money here,” he said, “there isn’t much that you can buy,

outside of clothes and a lecture in the village once in a while. You’ll

soon become accustomed to getting along without cash, all right.”

When Saturday morning arrived, it was a distinct surprise to hear

Thropper moving in the room first, for he usually had droned while I

prepared for the day’s work. I opened my eyes. The alarm clock on the

table told me that it was half-past five. I watched my roommate as he

donned his working clothes and put on a slouch hat.

“An Englishman would call you a ‘navvy,’” I smiled.

“I should think an American would call me a tramp!” he replied. “But

you ought to see some of the Bulgarians I have to work with!” He spread

out his hands expressively to indicate that whatever the Bulgarians did

look like, he had not the rhetoric available at that moment with which

to describe them.

There came a knock on the door and in response to Thropper’s cheery

“Come in!” there appeared another “tramp” with his lunch box; a tall,

high-cheek-boned Southerner, named Tripp, who drawled,

“Best be gettin’ deown, Thropper!”

So with a good-bye, Thropper left the room, turning to tell me that if

I found time, I might clean up the room--in his absence.

“Be sure and shake the Turkish rugs,” he laughed, pointing to the

patches of well-worn carpet that were used for rugs. “When you shake

them you’ll find them very Turkish; they smoke!”

By the time the early lunch for the workers had ended, there were

seven “tramps” who went to the glass factory with Thropper. Included

among them were two students, whom, judged by their excellent dress and

their social graces on the campus, I had thought were none other than

the sons of wealthy parents.

When the Bible verses had been given at the tables and after the last

slice of fried potato had been scraped out of the dish, the students

hurried from the room and disposed themselves for work.

As I left the dining-hall, I saw young women with duster caps on their

heads, leaning out of dormitory windows shaking rugs; others I found

hurrying down to other dormitories with bundles of laundry. When I

arrived in Pungo Hall, I was greeted with the thumping of brushes, the

clatter of furniture, and the shouts of the men as they called to one

another above the clouds of dust that were being hurled from the rooms

into the hallway.

A knock came on my door as I started to sweep the room, and Jason, the

poet, poking his long neck around the corner of the door-post, asked in

the most concerned way imaginable,

“Brother Priddy, is the kerosene can here?”

“Why--no, I haven’t seen it. What do you do with kerosene? Don’t you

burn gas?”

Jason blushed, and then replied,

“Oh--we--er--use the kerosene for beds!”

[Illustration: JASON, THE POET, LOOKED IN]

“Beds?”

“To subdue those fiery creatures who domicile in beds!” he affirmed.

“Oh, bugs!” I blurted with such roughness that it must have made his

sensitive and poetic nerves clang.

At eight o’clock a group of students, with clean collars and

well-pressed clothes, came down from the University building, each

carrying an ironing-board, to be sold in some nearby town. This

ironing-board was entirely unlike every other ironing-board invented

by man or woman. It was the product of the fertile and practical mind

of our mathematical professor; its chief virtues being, as described

in the prospectus, that “it stands up like a soldier, kneels down like

a camel, and folds up like a jack-knife!” With all its novelty, it was

extremely practical and, the agents reported, sold well. A large number

of useful citizens are out in the serviceable centres of life, who, if

they ever choose a coat of arms will have to adorn their shield with

an ironing-board--“rampant,” for to it they owe much of the financial

lubrication which smoothed their passage through the school.

Hurrying after the same train were three young women, each armed with a

book, on their way to make fifty per cent from literary householders.

At different hours of the morning other students went to the village

where every sort of task from house-cleaning to raking up dead gardens

was undertaken. Evangelical University was at work.

The head waiter, Brock, came into the room as I was cleaning it and

said:

“Priddy, has any one been in after the tub?”

“The tub?”

“Yes, and the rubbing board!”

“I didn’t know those things were here.”

“Your roommate and I have a whole laundry set on shares. Look in my

room and you’ll see the irons; the flat-irons.”

“No, the tub and the board are not here,” I reported, after a search.

The tall German went into the hall, raised his voice in a great,

resounding shout:

“The wash tub! Who has it?”

A door at the end of the hallway opened and a voice replied:

“Just rinsing out my shirt, Brock. Have it in a jiffy!”

A few minutes later Brock called to me from his room. When I presented

myself before him, I discovered him with his sleeves rolled up, busily

engaged in pouring hot water from a kettle over some shirts and

handkerchiefs.

“Any white things of yours, handkerchiefs or shirts, Priddy,” he

announced, “might just as well go in with mine.”

So we shared the wash that morning. After they had been rinsed, I

carried them to the rear of the building and hung them on a double

wire line where the gas-laden air from the sheep pastures hummed

through them and the sun burned them dry in an hour.