That same afternoon, after having expressed to Brock my desire for

extra work in the hours when I was not on duty in the dining-hall, I

found myself standing over an immense cauldron under which blazed a hot

camp-fire. In the cauldron were bushels of tomatoes and many pounds of

sugar. With a long ladle I stirred the concoction until nine o’clock

that night, save for the interruption of supper, and by that time I

had the satisfaction of seeing it turn from a vivid pink to a dark red

until it turned into a tarty, pasty preserve, not unlike strawberry

damson in appearance. That night there went on the University records,

against my name, “To seven hours’ labor, at 12 cents, .84.” I had paid

that much, that week, towards my tuition.

_Chapter VII. An Academic Ride in Five Carriages at Once. A Business

Appeal Mixed in with the Order of Creation. Is it Best for a Man to

Marry his First Love. A Sleuth-Dean. A Queen’s Birthday Supper with an

Athletic Conclusion. Jerry Birch Stands up for Albion. How we Tamed him_

The terror that at first had been imposed upon me by the sense of

my own ignorance, a terror which had led me to think that at twenty

years of age no ambitious youth could at all fit into the educational

scheme, died down quite rapidly at Evangelical University. The

curriculum there was no arbitrary imposition, as it is so commonly in

the Four-Hundred-Dollar-a-Year University, into which a student must

fit himself willy-nilly, and to which he must either conform or not

approach. The Evangelical University curriculum was made to bend to the

needs of an illiterate man of forty and to the advanced demands of the

graduate who sought his doctorate in Philosophy. Its principle was that

of intellectual service to fit the needs of all who come whether poorly

fitted, old or poor. Estes, “Pa” Borden, myself and many others, who

certainly would not have had the chance for inspiration offered us in

hundreds of dignified schools, especially on such terms, were given our

lifetime’s chance in Evangelical University.

But it must have looked chaotic, intellectually riotous, to a dignified

dean of a classic university, and, no doubt, he would have had much

in criticism of the university to offer, from his proper angle, after

looking on the manner in which the students mixed their courses.

In my first term I spread myself through the common school, the

business, the college preparatory, the collegiate, and the theological

divisions of the University! It was akin to taking an academic ride

in five carriages at once! When the professor dismissed me from the

college class in logic I went immediately into the basement, where I

joined the grammar class, and from the grammar class I went to the

theological department and recited on Church History. From that class I

went into the scientific department and was heard in zoölogy, and from

zoölogy I found my way in the business department where I practised on

the typewriter.

Though I came before this intellectual privilege with a hungry mind,

yet, threaded throughout it all were the complaints of the professors

in regard to the limitations under which they worked. The professor

of science constantly unfolded to us, who met him in zoölogy, a pet

dream of his which comprehended a future benefactor who should increase

the number of specimens in the museum. The English professor was

embarrassed frequently by the inadequacy of the library. In our Bible

classes, the President would take us into his confidence, the day after

a faculty meeting, and descant upon the hardship, the embarrassing,

financial hardship, of meeting the expenses of the school. There was

no lack of dignity to this proceeding, for each one of us felt under

obligations to the University, knowing well enough that whatever

financial sacrifices the faculty underwent, were sacrifices made in

order that we might receive an education. So the President was within

the bounds of propriety and discipline when he concluded his report

with his customary: “And so, young ladies and gentlemen, if you are

acquainted with any business men or wealthy person who might be made

generous by our worthy appeal, kindly hand me their names and addresses

after class. Mr. Stanton, you will please describe the order of

creation as given in the first book of Moses!”

But it was not long before I had to realize that I had put myself under

an exacting discipline by coming to Evangelical University. We had a

dean who in effectiveness and as a sleuth would have been the dean of

deans had an international society of them existed. The presence of

young men and women on the campus rendered the Dean’s duties doubly

hard. The rules were rules of a Mede. His surveillance was that of a

man who felt an austere obligation to over a hundred anxious parents.

No one, except by special permission, could be out of his room after

half-past seven in the evening, save on society nights or on Sundays.

For the enforcement of this rule, the Dean depended upon the reports of

student monitors, but mainly upon his own vigilance. Every dormitory

was always in danger of a visit from the Dean, and as the students in

the dormitories were prevailingly men and women considerably beyond

their ’teens, there was no inconsiderable disobedience of this rule; it

made us feel too much like little children who are put to bed while

the daylight lingers on the earth. I soon had a taste of the common

experience. One evening three students met with Thropper and me to

indulge in a heated and loud discussion on the question: “That it is

best for a man to marry his first love!” We started it at half-past

six and once on the line of our pros and cons all sense of time and

existence went out of mind. We heard not the inrush of students as the

last bell rang, nor heeded the brooding silence that had come over

the campus. We lived only in our arguments on that “love” issue, and

Thropper was in the midst of a very final story of first love coming

out happily when tested by marriage, when three knocks were heard on

our wall, given by the student in the next room: That was the signal

that the Dean was stirring. Instantly the window was opened, our three

visitors leaped out, and a few seconds later, when the Dean knocked

on the door, Thropper met him innocently with the proposal, “Have a

chair, sir?” and the Dean, glancing about merely said, with a pleasant

smile, “I just thought I’d look in, that’s all.” When he left, we knew

that when he went to the rooms of our three friends, upstairs, he would

find them in their shirtsleeves poring over their books. I often saw

him in the twilight or under the glow of lighted windows, this Dean

performing his duty which, to a man of his fine, academic temper, must

have been so incompatible: a tall, ungeared, gaunt-faced, tight-lipped

man, stooped and stealthy, searching the campus with his glinting eyes,

squaring his jaws as he approached windows where law-breakers were

gathered, post-haste after delinquents!

I chanced to be one among a half-dozen stout English hearts; at least

they were English hearts when somebody proposed that it might be a

patriotic act for us to celebrate, in a fitting, English manner, the

birthday of Queen Victoria. On account of the un-American aspect of the

proposed celebration it was deemed injudicious to ask the consent of

the Dean, for we felt sure he would prohibit it. We were determined,

however, to conduct a celebration that would be quiet, dignified, and

memorable, without having in it any semblance of disorder. We also

resolved to hold it on a Saturday evening, when the rules were not so

strictly upheld. To this end, then, we persuaded the master of the

dining-hall, who was also chef and baker, to fall into our scheme,

though he was a loyal American. We engaged him to fry the steaks, and

also gave him an English recipe for chipped potatoes.

On the night of the celebration we met in a student’s room in the ell

of Pungo Hall, in the rear: a quiet, isolated room which also had the

double virtue of being a wash-room with a stove in it! Over this the

chef worked, quietly. We blanketed the windows so that no one could

peep on the scene. The table was spread and the seats occupied. Before

us, on a white platter and in white dishes, were the steaks and the

chips, surrounded by coffee, cake, and candy. After the meal, the

chairman proposed speeches which had for their theme the greatness, the

majesty, and the high repute of the “glorious Queen.” At the conclusion

of these speeches, we tried to sing a reminiscent snatch of “Rule

Britannia,” but had, finally, to compromise on “God Save the Queen.”

The college bell had struck eleven when one of the party proposed

that it might waken us up if we went out on the campus and exercised

ourselves by holding a jumping contest. On account of the lavishness of

the feast and the heartiness with which we had partaken, we were ready

to fall in with this proposal.

In front of a little cottage in which a few students had double

rooms, we leaped and jumped very quietly for some minutes, speaking

in whispers, for it was nearly midnight, on the verge of the Sabbath.

But suddenly we were startled by a loud voice calling from one of the

windows, “I have your names!” The heartless monitor had spied on us.

We were undone. Heartlessly, guiltily, we went back to our rooms. The

damage had been done. We had been caught breaking the dread laws of the

University. Nothing could keep us from the wrath of the Dean.

We indulged in our prayers and our Bible study and our church

attendance the following day with little enthusiasm, for when we

chanced to meet one another we asked the same question, over and over,

“What will he say?” For we had our heart in it. We were not flagrant

despisers of order. We cared for the respect of our Dean.

On Monday morning we assembled in chapel for the usual morning service.

The Dean led the service. We were expecting that during the notices

he would say, reading from his book, “I wish to see Mr. Priddy and

Mr. this and Mr. that,” and so on through the list of Englishmen,

“at the conclusion of chapel.” But not so. In place of the customary

sermon of ten minutes, he delivered a very Patrick-Henryish philippic

against certain unnamed students who had so far forgotten themselves

as not only to be unpatriotic towards their adopted country, and had

not only demeaned themselves by an unlawful “_revelry_,” but had even

been indulging in sports at midnight, on the verge of the Sabbath,

and thereby rendered themselves unfit to give God the highest, most

efficient service on the holy day. The unexpectedness of it, the

fierceness of it, the lurid interpretations put on our innocent

feast, its coloring into a “night revel,” and the charge of impiety,

unnerved me. I sat riveted to my chair, in a cold sweat. I felt as

must a murderer in his sober moments when he realizes to the full the

enormity of his deed. The Dean concluded his philippic, during which he

had not mentioned a name, by this oracular notice:

“I want each one of those revelers to meet me after chapel, in my

office.”

All eyes were sympathetic towards the Englishmen as we gathered at

the Dean’s door. In his sanctuary he further explained to us the

extent of our crime, making it, to the mind of Jerry Birch, a stubby,

vigorous-minded Briton, treason. Jerry flared forth in an attempt

to prove to the Dean that he (the Dean) was an enemy to the Queen,

and that an appeal might properly be made to the British ambassador,

and--but here we cautioned Jerry to stop. We finally tamed him into

quietness, and the Dean dismissed us with the warning to show ourselves

peace-respecting Americans from then on.

_Chapter VIII. The Doctrinal Temper of the University and Thropper’s

Talk about it. Introduces the Select Board of the Pharisees.

Prayer-Meeting Monopoly Combated by Independents. Jason on my Track and

How it Came out_

Evangelical University was founded by a minister of intense religious

convictions and its policy was directed by a Board composed of men

characterized by religious zeal. The University stood committed, also,

to the Christianization as well as to the education of its students.

In its advertisements, special emphasis was laid on “annual revivals,”

“personal, religious work of students,” and other evidences of a

flourishing religious atmosphere.

Now in this, Evangelical University stood in line with hundreds of

efficient institutions, but it went a step farther, and not only

made its boast in regard to its Christian background, but it also

gained repute as the exponent of a particular, very sectarian,

very dogmatic, and intense doctrine; namely, that not until a

particular emotional experience had been secured was a Christian a

substantial and serviceable Christian. “The triple-birth doctrine,”

as Thropper christened it, “being natural birth, spiritual birth, and

extra-spiritual birth.”

There were several students in the University who were there merely for

its intellectual privileges and who did not believe in this intense

doctrine of “the triple-birth.”

Thropper said to me, one night, when we were discussing this matter:

“Priddy, I’ll guarantee that out of all the students here, you will

not find more than five in all that do not profess to have a religious

experience. Now that ought to satisfy the University, but it won’t.

That isn’t enough. Until every one believes heart and soul in its

doctrine of the ‘triple-birth,’ and gets emotionalized, the whole

place will be turned upside down. Now I have always thought myself

a religious fellow. I belong to the church. I am trying to live a

Christian life. I have a Christian home in which I have always been

trained piously and well. But they have given me no rest since I came

here. They pray for me every year and struggle with me, and quibble

about me, all in order to get me to go through the ‘triple-birth,’

which may be all right for them, but does not appeal to me. Yet,

because I don’t go over to their way of thinking, they can’t regard

me as a religious man. I’m not the only one, either. There are others

whom they bother in the same way. If we were out and out heathen, they

couldn’t be more alarmed over us. If we were unsocial atheists and

immoral beings, their enthusiasm and concern would be worth while, but

when some of us are to be preachers and respect everything that is true

and helpful and yet have to be prayed for in public and hounded from

pillar to post by them, why--”

“Who do you mean by ‘they’ and ‘them,’ Thropper?” I asked.

“Oh, certain of the students who are enthusiasts on the ‘triple-birth’

doctrine,” he replied. “They mean well enough, and are good folks, but

I can’t agree with their peculiar doctrines and I tell them so, right

out.”

“But a few students can’t carry off the whole situation, Thropper.”

“Can’t, eh? Well, you see, as this is the particular doctrine for

which the University officially stands, the few aggressive students

who preach the idea are really in the majority. There’s a little set

of them, led by Jason, the Poet, who roam through the life of this

University like a little group of heretic hunters in some medieval

community, with all power and authority back of them.” He sighed,

deeply. “They make life miserable for many,” he said.

I laughed at him.

“Why, Thropper, don’t take it to heart so; just go along your own way,

tolerantly, knowing that if some of us can’t actually agree, we can

respect one another’s differences--if they’re not vicious.”

He regarded me as if I had lost my wit.

“That sounds nice, that does, Priddy, and it is good sense, too,

but it’s wasted here, old boy. You and I and some others may find

consolation in it, but Jason and his Board of Pharisees would have

their tongues cut out and their right hands severed before they

would rest easy with us differing from them, standing outside their

particular doctrines. You don’t know Jason. Besides, wait till you have

been here a year and then you will see so many things take place under

the direction of the University that it will be impossible for you not

to know that you are _persona grata_ here only when you swing over

to a full acceptance of the doctrine of the ‘triple-birth’: there’ll

be the annual revival when a whole, intense week will be devoted to

hardly anything else but a propaganda of that doctrine. There will

come the weekly prayer-meetings, the talks from visiting exponents of

the doctrine; oh, they won’t let you rest easy in your differences,

Priddy. Wait till Jason and his crowd get on your track!”

“You talk as if they were going to be the worst sort of meddlers,

Thropper.”

“Didn’t you hear me call them the Board of the Pharisees? Did you

think I didn’t mean that for a good description, Priddy? Well, what

were Pharisees always doing? Meddling. Telling the people to be holy

by washing the dinner plates thus and so; telling the people that God

was found by wearing this and that. Well, that’s what Jason and his

crowd are busy doing about here, through the year. The sight of a gold

ring on my finger fairly dilated the nostrils of one of them; he set

about praying for me and urging me day after day to stop wearing it

because it was the symbol of ‘carnal pride,’ and he quoted ever so much

Scripture, too.”

After that I noted with especial interest the monopoly exercised by

Jason and a small number of the students--male and female--over the

multitude of religious meetings that embroidered the week of study.

The two noon prayer-meetings, the after-supper services, the Thursday

evening university service, the many missionary meetings, the Bible

study classes, the Sunday morning “search” services: in all these the

tone was given by the fervid and dogmatic Jason and his followers.

Wherever a religious interest of any sort chanced to be organized,

one was certain to find on its list of officers some representative of

Jason, the Poet. Thropper and I, and several others among the students,

formed “independent” circles for prayer and Bible study, where we

could, for once a week, at least, have our own, special beliefs prevail.

One November morning, as I was leaving the dining-hall, Jason met me at

the door.

“I should like to have a word with you, Brother Priddy,” he announced.

“Certainly,” I replied.

“I have been considerably burdened for you, lately, Brother Priddy.”

“Eh?”

“You have been the subject of my prayers.”

“How is that?”

“Because I think, though you may not realize it, that Satan is trying

to lead you astray,” he answered, solemnly.

“That’s interesting, I’m sure.”

“It’s terrible!” he half shuddered.

“But--er--what especial act of mine, Jason, has brought out

this--er--burden for me?”

“Carnal pride!” he exclaimed.

“Pride?” I gasped. “I didn’t think I had anything or had done anything

to be proud over--that I know of.”

“I thought you did not see it,” he announced; “that is the

deceitfulness of sin, it blinds us. That is why I came to you--to

warn, you understand.”

“Then you will relieve the tension I am suffering from at this minute,”

I retorted, “by telling me just what it is to which I am blind, and

which is sinful. I am sure I stand ready to renounce anything that is

liable to stand between me and God, Jason.”

His severe, but intensely spiritualized features relaxed at that

declaration. He nodded his head and rubbed his pale hands.

“I am glad that you are open to the truth, Brother Priddy,” he crooned,

with satisfaction. “I have especial reference to that watch-chain of

yours and to that scarf-pin.”

“What!”

“That and that,” he reiterated, pointing first to my watch-chain and

then to my scarf-pin.

“Nonsense,” I exclaimed. “What in the world are you making this bother

over?”

“That watch-chain and the pin are ornaments and personal adornments,

not necessary to the person. They are expressions of pride which lies

in the heart to corrupt it. Therefore you will never find peace with

God until you have discarded them.”

“Those things expressions of pride?” I gasped, “why, that chain is

gold-plated and didn’t cost more than a dollar and a half, and as for

the tie-pin!” I laughed. “Well, I paid ten cents for it, opals and all,

in a Five and Ten Cent Store, Jason. Not much to grow proud over.”

“It is not the price, Brother Priddy, but the principle.”

“But I swear to you, Jason, that I don’t give those things a thought.”

“No, granting that they don’t hurt you,” went on Jason, persistently,

“they are liable to lead others into pride. It is the weak brother you

must think of.”

“I don’t think there’s much danger of others finding much to emulate

in my jewelry or dress,” I answered. “I do recognize the force of what

you have to say about the weak brother, Jason, and if, for a minute, I

imagined I was doing anything or wearing anything that would hurt the

life of another in any appreciable degree, why I’d renounce it quickly

enough, you can wager!”

“I never indulge in wagers,” protested the literalist, “it is ungodly.

I still persist in asking you to give up that jewelry on the ground

that in all things we should walk soberly, as the Bible enjoins.”

“Well, I’ll think it over, Jason,” I said, walking hurriedly away.

When Thropper returned from his trigonometry, I recounted my experience

with Jason.

“Well, your days of quietness are gone now, Priddy,” he declared.

“You’ve got a Pharisee on your trail who will keep it until your days

are made miserable.”

“But why doesn’t he cut off his beautiful curls and be consistent?”

I protested. “Why doesn’t he throw off that peculiar vest and that

military coat? He’d be consistent if he did! Talk about offending the

weak brother! If a dude wouldn’t be jealous of those finely cultivated

curls, I don’t know a dude. I’ll wager Jason is always looking in the

glass, at himself!”

“Oh,” smiled my roommate, “you just tell him about his coat and his

curls and he’ll have his explanation ready. Those curls are sent by

the Lord. As for his coat and vest; they are simple, without the fancy

incidents common to our coats! Don’t try to beat him in a quibble,

Priddy. He’s got you before you start. Can you quote over half the

Bible word for word without once looking at it?”

“No-o!”

“Jason can! Are you able to read it in Hebrew and in Greek?”

“No-o-o!”

“Jason is! He’s got you when it comes to Biblical quotation and can fit

a passage even to so common an act as eating a dish of creamed toast!”

“But I shan’t give in to him--that is, unless I really see the force of

his arguments, Thropper.”

“Oh,” smiled Thropper, “he’ll give you forceful arguments enough,

that’s the hang of the fellow. He knows so much! I tell you, Priddy,

when you employ logic, biblical lore, and a fanatical sincerity in

trying to persuade an innocent little greenhorn like you--to give up a

watch-chain and a tie-pin, why, the greenhorn is bound to go under!”

“We’ll see!” I declared, as the conclusion of the subject.

The next day, Jason found me in a corner of the library busy with

my Latin. Without a word he edged over to me, pulled a little black

book from his pocket, opened it at a marked place, fixed it on the

chair handle before me, indicated the marked passage with one of his

long, white fingers and left me to myself. I put aside my Latin and

investigated.

The book was the writing of John Wesley, and the place marked was a

passage in a sermon on “The Wearing of Ornaments” or some such theme.

In any case, that was the subject treated in the marked passage. It was

a reiteration of the arguments Jason had advanced, but coming from so

noted and often quoted an authority as the founder of the Methodists,

it considerably sobered my impressionable senses. I had no sooner

closed the book, than out of the unseen the Poet flitted to my side,

and with a whispered, “Forceful, isn’t it?” Jason took up the book and

returned to his study.

A day or two later he brought into the dining-hall a little green bound

book, printed on cheap paper and entitled, “The Victory of Selina

Bostwick--Evangelist.” As he handed it to me, Jason said,

“Sister Bostwick is well known to me. I have sung for her in tent

meetings, near Chicago. She is a saint of God. I want you to read the

place I have marked, if you cannot find time to go through the whole

book.”

In the privacy of my room, when Thropper chanced not to be around--for

I did not want him to see me reading Jason’s book--I read the extract.

It recounted, in a very rambling manner, the “third-birth” of Miss

Bostwick--who, by the way, had been so inconsiderable a person as

a seamstress who exhorted in revival services. The tale went on to

show how, as a young girl, Selina had been especially addicted to

wearing gaudy jewelry: stone-tipped hat-pins, glass ornamented combs,

two rings, one with a cluster of imitation rubies, the other a plain

band, which had been her mother’s wedding-ring, and various brooches

and fancy studs. These, it seemed, had entirely prevented Selina from

entering into the deeper faith in God, and for proof argued that so

long as she fastened her heart on those trinkets she had never once

been able to preach or exhort in meeting or revival. Then the day

came when she plucked them from her and threw them in her trunk. From

that day on, she had gone into the world preaching and exhorting

successfully!

When I returned the book to Jason, he entered into a long discussion

with me, and by the subconscious seriousness he had created in my

heart over the question of ornaments and the kingdom, and because I

was getting weary of the theme, and also because the tie-pin and the

watch-chain were becoming eyesores to me, I finally said,

“Oh, I’ll stop wearing them, I guess!”

Jason rubbed his white hands and patted me on the shoulders.

“There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth,” he quoted.

“I’m not a sin--Oh, don’t let us get into any more arguments over the

matter,” I corrected, eager to be out of the reach of my persecutor.

“Here they are; both of them to be put in a drawer--or something.”

I pulled out the tie-pin and unfastened the watch-chain. Then I was

perplexed.

“But, Jason,” I remonstrated, “I have to carry this watch, you know.

The watch-chain was handy. It kept me from losing the watch. What am I

to do, if I don’t have this chain? It seems to me that I had best keep

wearing it. What do you do for your watch?”

As he pulled out a gold Waltham I felt like asking him if it would not

be more consistent for him to wear a nickel-plated one, but remembering

Thropper’s comments, I expected Jason would argue that it was more

economical to buy a gold watch on account of its wearing qualities

and reliability, so I kept the protest to myself. Jason’s watch was

attached to a woven black chain, which, he said, he had made from a

long shoe-lace!

“I’ll make one for you, too,” he added generously, “if you’ll get a

long lace.”

The next day I gave him the lace, and after dinner, we sat in the

reception room, where in ten minutes, he wove for my watch a chain as

artistic as a shoe-string chain may be. After he had fastened it in my

button-hole and to my watch, he said:

“Well, Brother Priddy, the weak brother will not have cause to stumble

now, will he?”

_Chapter IX. My Trip into the Magic World of the Past. How Appreciation

is sometimes Worth More than Money. Jason and his Coterie on Scent of

Terrible Heresies. How God Takes Care of His Orators. How a Big Soul

can go through Annoyances_

The strangeness of my life had worn off by winter. I knew every man and

woman by name and character, and they knew me. The daily routine of

class work and waiting on table more and more took the novelty from my

existence. I was getting the maximum of inspiration from my studies.

Leaning back in my chair, under the hissing, flaring gas flame, with

drowsy Thropper opposite me in his sheepskin upholstered chair, I went

forth into the new worlds where Cæsar led his mailed Romans and his

following of slave kings, where the gaudy coronations and noisy wars of

ancient England were enacted; into the world whereon Christ scattered

the seed of faith out of which grew, stone by stone, dipped in martyrs’

blood, the magnificent cathedral Universal Church. With the guidance

of the professors, I pierced into the living, animal world where tooth

and fang and claw were in contest and where the divine finger was busy

sorting moral law out of it. I was being daily disciplined in the use

of language and in the finer esthetic appreciations of it, under the

direction of the English teachers and the Oratorical Professor.

There were many, who with me, went in confidence to our teachers and

gave them our thanks for their sacrificial services. Of all the service

that I have seen men and women render, that done by the faculty of

Evangelical University measured up to the finest. They were men and

women of liberal culture; trained, many of them, in our most prominent

institutions. Every day that they lingered at the University teaching

us was a sacrifice. They were sadly underpaid. There was no endowment

from which to guarantee them their salaries. Some of them worked with

us, out of sheer enthusiasm, claiming that their wages were the gold of

our thanks and outspoken appreciations. They were willing to economize

and live in poorly furnished homes, in order to awaken in those of

us who had had little opportunity, the first spark of intellectual

response.

One of our teachers took me aside, in the privacy of his empty

classroom, for the purpose of assisting me with a back lesson. I had

occasion to remark,

“Professor, you aren’t giving yourself a fair chance, here, are you?

Some of the students have been saying that you have had more than one

opportunity to better yourself.”

The kindly eyes of the man glistened with tears, for he was very

readily responsive to his feelings, and he said,

“Albert, I cannot better myself. There is no higher privilege in this

world than to invest what God has seen fit to give us in the way of

privilege or attainment in other lives that thirst for what we have!

There are men in colleges, whom I know, surrounded by their books

in pleasant college communities, fitted to a delightful social and

intellectual life, teaching in classrooms filled with students who do

not have to fight for a living as do the students here, yet they are

not happy men; not one-tenth so happy as I am teaching you boys and

girls! No, sir! All that those positions that have been offered me

could have done would have been to ease me from financial worries, and

relieve me from a few hours of instruction; but there is nothing in

this wide world, Albert, can equal the work I am privileged to do with

such as you, to inspire you for useful service. It is missionary work;

but missionary work pays the highest wages. I have the first chance at

men in the making!”

It was not alone the poverty of the university equipment and the

inadequate compensation they received which intensified the nobleness

of our teachers’ characters, but also their endurance of some of the

petty, trivial annoyances they suffered from the dogmatic Jason and

his few followers. For even into the classrooms religious, doctrinal

quibbles were carried by those stern and unyielding students. The

little coterie went on strike in the English department when the

Professor refused to debar Shakespere and Burns from the reading

courses, in response to the charges drawn up and presented by Jason’s

clique that those writers had unreadable passages in their works.

Some one replied, that on this basis, Jason had better stop reading

the Bible for the same reasons. To this Jason replied that “The Bible

is the Bible, but Shakespere is only Shakespere!” But the more acute

issues between Jason and his followers and the curriculum were to be

found in the scientific and theological classrooms. Here the conflict

between “science and religion” as the Church History termed it,

became pointed, tragical. I can still see them, the two followers of

Jason, standing before the scientific professor after class had been

dismissed. They are on scent of a terrible heresy! Aggressively they

quiz the able exponent of science, as follows:

“You said in this recitation, professor, that the world was created in

millions of years?”

“I did!”

“But the Bible says plainly, that God created it in six days and that

He rested from his labors on the seventh day!”

“Oh, the Bible, in that part is not to be taken literally--it--”

But he could get no further. Two shocked faces were before him, and one

of the students interjected,

“Why, we have to believe the Bible!”

“We shall stick to the Bible!” added the other in support.

“But let me explain,” began the professor, patiently, “you see the

early Hebrews possessed no real science--”

“But, professor,” interrupted one of the students, “God revealed it to

them and--”

“We will not discuss the matter further at this time,” interrupted the

teacher.

“But what shall we do when the examination comes around,” asked the

first speaker, “if you tell us to give the age of the earth, we shall

either have to say that it is millions of years old or that it was made

in six days?”

“Of course,” added the second student, with finality, “we shall have to

stick to the Bible statement, even if you mark us down!”

“Rest easy in your minds, young men,” retorted the severely tried

professor, “I don’t think I shall call on you to undergo such a

martyrdom!”

Even the professor of elocution was not exempt from this little band

of literalists. Some of this band had so firm a confidence in God that

they “could leave with Him” what they were to speak, how they were

to speak it, and the sort of gestures that should accompany their

exhortations, for they were preparing themselves for the church.

“Pa” Borden was the leader in this sort of thought. He had done some

exhorting before becoming a member of the University, and he summed up

the case quite well when he said, in his heavy, sober way,

“What right has any man, I don’t care who he is, to improve on what

God has done, I’d like to know? It will be given us in that day, says

the Bible, what we shall say and how we shall say it. What more do you

want?”

So this little band of the sons of the prophets stood apart from the

kindly and helpful criticisms of the professor of elocution, and

continued their old practise of yanking their stiff arms, standing on

their awkward feet, speaking from tight throats, in stubborn loyalty to

their faith in God’s oratorical interest in them.

The patience, the Christian patience, of the professors carried them

past such trivial, but real annoyances with the same nobleness with

which a true-compassed ship goes straight to its port despite the

little chips that tap against it. For every one of these quibblers over

doctrine, there were several appreciative, awakening minds, leaping at

the truth. The professors centered their real efforts on the majority

of those who could face the truth no matter in how startling a dress

it first presented itself. In such, these deep-hearted, sacrificing

teachers found their real reward: lasting gratitude.

_Chapter X. The Magnitude of a Postage Stamp. Showing how Desperate the

Thirst of Money made me. Brock’s Rosy Nose and its Possibilities as a

Fireplace. How Brock thought he was Fooling me and the Other Way About.

The Barrow that Became our Enemy and how Brock was Revenged on it_

It was a morning in early December. An unsealed letter lay on my

table, a Christmas greeting to a mill friend. I had written it the

previous night. When the morning dawned, I realized that I had not

enough money with which to purchase a stamp for it. A feeling of utter

miserableness took hold of me. There I stood, working my way through

school successfully, from week to week without any difficulty, and yet

when it came to forwarding a message of greeting to the outside world

I was a pauper! That strong term mastered me. I knew that for the mere

asking Thropper had a stamp waiting for me, but I resented the thought

of charity, the humiliation of asking for the gift of a postage stamp.

After chapel I went into the President’s office and on being shown in,

made the following announcement.

“Please, Doctor, I think I had better leave the University. It is no

use!”

“What is the matter now, young man?” he enquired, gently.

“I’ve got to earn some cash, sir. You know that I shall never have any

by working for the University; it all goes on my account. I need some

clothes, and just at present I need a stamp. I haven’t handled any

money since my three dollars was spent; it is almost three months since

then.”

“But you don’t have to run away from your education, do you?” asked the

President, bending on me his searching eyes. “I thought you would stick

to it!”

“But what can I do, sir?” I demanded, “I am busy waiting on the table,

and cannot leave the campus to earn money. I give all my spare time to

the University. If I could work a week or two at outside tasks I might

get some money on hand.”

“There need be no trouble about that,” agreed the President. “Get some

one to take your place in the dining-hall on Saturdays, and I will see

if there are any jobs you can do.”

The following morning, in chapel, the Dean read off my name as one of

the students that the President wished to see, in his office.

“There is a load of bricks on a siding of the brick-mill--you know

where that is, of course,” he said. “Brock has taken the contract for

loading a car at something or other a thousand--which means about

twenty cents an hour, I believe. He is quite willing to take you with

him on Saturday, if you care for the work.”

Inwardly I thought of my frail muscles hurling rows of brick through

the air on a winter’s day--and felt doubtful about the adventure, but

the President was waiting for his answer, so I said hastily,

“Anything at all, sir, that will bring me in a real, substantial piece

of money. It will look big enough when I do see it, sir!”

Thropper was eager to take a day off from the glass factory and so was

able to take my place at the tables. I had a conference with Brock,

relative to the proposed loading of the car of bricks.

“Can you manage it?” he asked dubiously, scanning his eyes doubtfully

over my frail physique.

I was in a desperate mood just then, and with an accent in my voice

that scorned even the suggestion of any mental, physical, or moral

incapacity, I declared,

“Can I?”

Then scanning Brock’s ungeared physique, I asked in turn,

“How about yourself? Seems to me you are a near rival to a centre-pole

yourself, Brock!”

He grinned, guiltily.

“I used to exercise with dumb-bells--once upon a time. It is long

since. I am afraid that the daily exercise of pressing the button of

the call bell hasn’t done well by my muscles.”

“I’ve watched the Portuguese load schooners with bricks many a time,” I

affirmed.

“Your experience might help--some,” he declared, “the man who engaged

me told me how to place them in the car and all about the number of

rows and the count. I’ll be able to manage that part of it. I hope that

you and I, Priddy, will be able to succeed with the brick end of it.”

“The way the brick loaders do,” I explained, “is to pass them from hand

to hand four or five bricks at a time--just like passing ball, you

know!”

“Um, um!” nodded Brock. “But what about the sharp ends of the bricks?

They cut gashes in soft hands, of course.”

“Oh, we’ll wear thick gloves,” I explained, “something to protect the

hands.”

“We should have to wear gloves under any circumstances,” said Brock,

“the weather we’re getting is very far from a summer day!”

“Oh, we’ll manage all right,” I affirmed, for the mere thought of a

possible dollar and a half in cash set my brain in a whirl of incaution

and illogical optimism. In that mood, if the President had offered me

his place for a week--for a cash wage--it is doubtful if I should have

refused him.

By half-past seven the following Saturday morning, Brock and I,

bundled in the oldest garments we had been able to borrow or beg, with

quadruple thicknesses of old socks covering our hands, for mittens,

and with lunches put up in pasteboard boxes, left the village center,

walked down a frozen turnpike, until we came to the lonesome, neglected

brickyard with its Egyptian tombs of piled brick, yet unsold. A covered

freight car had been left on the rusty siding; the car stood off from

the nearest brick-pile separated by a gap of two yards. It was a dreary

and very cold prospect, for the north wind surged down over the frozen

pastures, and hummed and wailed through the black latticework of an

abandoned oil-well on the opposite side of the track.

“Your face is blue to begin with,” mumbled my companion from behind the

folds of his cap.

“And your nose would make an excellent danger signal on the rear

end of a train,” I retorted. “When my hands get cold, which they are

rapidly doing, I’ll warm them over your nose!”

“Better get to work,” suggested Brock, “before we freeze to death in

this miserable place. Worth twenty cents an hour for this work, eh?”

“Worth a dollar an hour, I think,” I replied.

We fixed some stout planks into a run-way between the top of a

brick-pile and the freight car, after the door had been unbarred. We

found a shallow and creaky barrow under a shed. After helping me fill

it with the first load, Brock tried to wheel into the car what we had

put in. He gained the edge of the plank, and the ill-balanced load

dumped over on the ground.

“We put in too many, to begin with,” suggested Brock. “Next time

we’ll reduce the load by half. I forgot they were so heavy. I was too

ambitious.”

The next load went across the planks successfully, and after they had

been dumped on the floor of the car, Brock said,

“I’ll pack these in the car the way the man told me, and then when the

load is properly started, we can take turns with the barrow.”

At first it was exciting and warm work, but after the first warm

glow had died down in the blood, my body began to stiffen with the

exposure. Then my muscles, ill-treated by excessive and continuous

lifting of the loads, began to tighten and shoot with pain. But at

first, I did not care to let Brock know, Brock, who was snugly shielded

from the wind, with the easier and less straining task. But he must

have noticed me gasp in with a load for he suddenly leaped to his feet

and said,

“Your turn here, now, Priddy. Give me the barrow!”

I flung myself to the dusty floor of the car when he relieved me of the

barrow and never lifted a hand until I heard him coming with his first

load. Then I picked up a brick and fitted it in one of the rows, and

tried to say cheerfully, when he entered,

“Is that placed right, Brock?”

“All right, Priddy,” he replied, and then went out whistling with the

barrow.

With the change in the task, I recuperated somewhat, and worked on with

the thought warming me, that every hour added twenty cents in cash to

my credit. When the first twenty cents had been earned, I took heart

and said to myself,

“Well, I shall be able to buy that stamp for the letter!”

Brock ceased whistling after his fourth load. I took a look at his

face. It was pale and strained.

“Hadn’t you better take a breathing spell, Brock?” I suggested. “It

comes hard when one isn’t used to it. That barrow wheels hard, too. We

ought to have brought some wheel grease.”

“I guess I will sit down a few seconds,” agreed Brock. “It’s quite a

lift--at first, but I think we’ll manage the job, don’t you?”

“We’ll try!” I commented, grimly.

So we passed the barrow from hand to hand, the loads growing smaller

and smaller as the noon hour approached, and the need of rest and

change becoming more and more imperative. When half-past eleven

arrived I proposed that we eat our lunches; not so much for the mere

satisfaction of hunger, but for the opportunity of absolute rest for

an hour. Brock assented to the proposition the instant it had left my

lips. In fact, he dropped his barrow in the middle of the plank; an act

on which I commented by that fragment of an old song:

“For I’ve worked four hours this day, this day,

For I’ve worked four hours this day.

Keep your whiskers on, till the morning, John,

For I shan’t work another minute longer!”

We closed the doors of the car, sat in a far corner and munched our

bread and cold meat as if it had been a luxury from a king’s banquet

table. Then after our meal, in spite of the chilliness of the car, we

stretched ourselves on our backs and gave our strained, worn muscles

the opportunity of relaxation.

“How do you feel?” Brock demanded after an interminable silence.

“Cold, tired, weary and sick!” I replied, throwing the mask off. “Let

us either wheel that old barrow again or go back to the University.”

“Well,” muttered Brock, dispiritedly, “our backs can’t really get much

worse, Priddy. We might as well finish a day’s work. If we leave now

we’ll be unfit for work for another week anyway. We might as well get

all we can out of it while we are about it.”

“Oh, that barrow! If it were a thing of flesh I’d stab it for my worst

enemy!” I cried.

“We worked too steadily,” suggested Brock. “We were too ambitious.

We’ll loaf along this afternoon and take more frequent rests. You pack

the bricks for awhile. I’ll wheel!”

“Lucky you proposed to wheel first,” I muttered, “for I’d have gone on

strike if I’d been the first.”

Brock looked knowingly at me, showed me the blisters on his hands and

said,

“I know just how you feel!”

Numb, dispirited, weary and backsore, we worked until four o’clock in

the afternoon. At that time, Brock was just coming across the bridge

with a reduced load, staggering under it. I called out to him,

“I’ll not handle another brick!”

“Neither will I!” he replied, losing his grip and the handles of the

barrow so that it fell to the frozen ground with a resounding thud.

“I’m done!”

When we reported at the office of the brickyard owner, and Brock had

given the computations of the work we had done, my heart throbbed

warmly for the first time since early morning when we were each handed

a dollar and ten cents in real cash!

“This is the first money I have handled for three months!” I could not

help exclaiming in the office.

“Do you mean it?” asked the contractor, interestedly.

“I do, sir!”

“Then any time between now and the end of the month that you want to

earn a dollar or two come to this office and I’ll have some more bricks

for you to load.”

I looked with a smile towards Brock. Brock returned my gaze with a

hearty laugh. Then he said, holding out his swollen hands, for the man

to view,

“No, thanks!”

And I, I said,

“Cash is good and I need it, but I think I’ll leave the handling of

bricks to the Portuguese.”

_Chapter XI. How I Competed with Patrick Henry and was made Aware of

an Uneconomical Waste of the Eighth Letter of the Alphabet. How I

Condensed all my Studies into an Oration. How the Populace Greeted my

Rehearsal. Striking the Top Pitch_

By the middle of the year I had obtained such a grip on study that

I was bold enough to incorporate two extra subjects in the week’s

routine. Besides that, I conceived the idea of reading English history

outside of class and then securing permission to pass an examination

on it, a scheme in which the teacher acquiesced. I felt that I must

make up for lost time and hungrily, voraciously threw myself at the

privilege which fortune had brought me. I began to realize in my own

mind what men called “enthusiasm in his work.” Every day seemed to me

a momentous day of opportunity: a day in which I might atone for the

educational privilege I had missed up to my twentieth birthday. When I

saw Aborn, stately, gifted, and on his way towards his Master’s degree

at twenty, I was made to realize how long a road I had before me and

how energetic I should have to be in order to get anywhere in education

from my elementary and preparatory studies. So I put in my studies an

investment of interest and patient attention which I had put in no

other work that I had ever done.

The most outstanding interest that I had was the class in oratory.

This class met on the top floor, under the rafters, in a room directly

off from the chapel. It resembled the studio of a poor artist with its

gray northern skylight and little windows high above the bare floor.

The class included young men and women. Nearly all were preparing

for religious work, as ministers, missionaries, and evangelists.

One student, a shock-haired young Westerner with “temperament” and

“personality,” who generally sat in the pose of an actor, was planning

for the career of a public reader.

After the preliminary weeks of physical gymnastics and throat clearing,

and after we were able to say “Oh!” without making the flame of a

candle flicker, we began on the real excitement of speaking Orations;

I began with the traditional Patrick Henry, of course, and naturally,

after long and patient rehearsals in my room credited myself with the

fact that if the author of that thriller should chance to come into the

oratorical studio on the morning when I planned to recite it before my

professor, he would feel that his forceful utterance had passed into no

mean mouth!

The morning on which I was scheduled to speak duly arrived and with

it an increase in my confidence that I should do well with it: the

confidence without which no orator yet--in school--ever did much. I

stood out before the class, struck my pose--left foot at an angle from

the right and slightly in front with the weight on the right foot to

maintain balance--and attempted to recreate the atmosphere, the thrill,

and the historic eloquence of the Virginia Convention where the oration

had had its birth, before the innumerable army of school lads had

passed it on from generation to generation. Applause greeted my effort

and I sat down in a flush of happiness. However, the professor, after

crediting me several points of excellence, brought up a criticism that

plunged me into a sweat of guilty self-consciousness. He said,

“Mr. Priddy, why is it that you aspirate your words so? I know you were

born in England, but you have been in this country for some time now.

There were several places in the oration where you placed ‘h’s’ where

they should not have been placed, and where you left them off when they

should have been retained!”

It was the first time in my whole life that anybody had called my

attention to that fault. I said,

“Will you please give me samples, sir?”

“Well,” replied the professor, consulting his tablet, “you said ‘w’ile’

instead of ‘while,’ and ‘_H_i’ instead of the pronoun ‘I.’ And ‘w’at’

instead of ‘what,’ and ‘Forbid it, _H_almighty God,’ and you declaimed

that passage, ‘Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased

at the price of chains and slavery?’ became ‘_H_is life so dear _h_or

peace so sweet _h_as to be bought _h_at the price of chains and

slavery?’”

I felt angry at myself, chagrined. There trooped into my guilt-smitten

consciousness the innumerable times I must have put ‘h’s’ where they

had not belonged and left them off where they should have been retained.

“Nobody ever told me--about it before, sir!” I exclaimed.

“This is just the place to get rid of the habit,” replied the

professor. “I am here to help you. I think that when you get rid of

that habit you will make a fair showing in public speech. Now that you

are aware of it, you will be on your guard.”

I made known my discovery at the waiter’s table at noon, and instantly

my friends poured out for my consideration a whole museum of sentences

I had originated in their hearing and over which they had secretly

smiled. It seems I had said, “’Ave you got your ’at, Brock?” and “Will

you ’ave another _H_egg, please?” and “Look _h_out for this ’ot water!”

When the waiters saw that I took the criticism in good part and was

eagerly anxious to rid my speech of that defect, they were instant and

sometimes severe in their criticisms; with the result that in a very

short while I gained the advantage over my “h’s” and somewhat tamed

them.

With the mastery of my “h’s” and the daily discipline in the oratorical

class came an overmastering desire to make a public speech. I thought

that if I could accomplish that I should vindicate myself so far as I

had gone in my education. It should be the first milestone in my school

career. The opportunity was given in a proposed oratorical contest to

be held in the village church. I took Thropper into my confidence as

I prepared my original oration. Into this I tried to exemplify every

admirable rule of rhetoric and every stern rule of logic and every

manner of long, short, periodic, balanced, and climactic sentence I

was then learning in Rhetoric. I marshalled historical allusions,

read widely in the library hour after hour. Then, when I had put

myself through this profitable discipline and had typewritten my

manuscript--the final triumph of my educational career thus far--I was

ready for rehearsals. After I had practised alone and as the evening of

the contest drew near, I asked Thropper if each evening after supper

he would accompany me into the woods and listen while I delivered

my oration. He consented, cheerfully enough. That same evening he

accompanied me to the pastures in the rear of the University. I poised

myself seriously on a stump, while Thropper stood with his back to

the wind in a waiting attitude. I had not delivered more than two

paragraphs of my speech before there came a yell from behind me and a

half-dozen students ran shouting, applauding and screaming before me.

When the crowd of interrupters had exhausted their animal spirits, I

said to them, addressing them from the stump,

“I’ve a good mind to invite you to stand out there near Thropper and

listen!”

“Why not?” they demanded.

“If you can’t address a bunch of farmers like these,” smiled Thropper,

“you won’t be able to stand up in church before three hundred people

and give it. Go ahead!”

I did, and the result was that the students rallied about me at the

end, carried me on their shoulders, shouting, mockingly,

“Hail to the new Webster!” and to show their approval of me, they

sat me astride a rail and would have given me a ride home on that

conveyance had not Thropper prevented it.

The evening of the contest arrived and with it the seating of seasoned,

experienced, graceful, prize-winning orators, in comparison with whom

I knew I should not and could not under any stretch of the imagination

be placed. I wanted to give a speech in public, that was the height to

which my expectancy went, but, of course, I had to set before me the

prizes that were offered and be prepared for “accidents.” When my turn

came and I faced that illimitable sea of white faces, I felt my feet

slip from under me while I seemed to float above this conscious world.

Then I picked out an interested face in the far, far corner of the

church. At him I threw my strident voice, determined to make him hear

what I had to say. The result was, in Thropper’s words, “Priddy, it

seemed that you placed your pitch on top of the highest mountain in the

world, and after that it was a scream, that’s all, old fellow. That was

due to inexperience.”

But this failure was atoned for when the judges especially commented

on the “careful thought,” “the good English,” and “the excellent form

of the written oration” and when they marked me in second place on the

literary side of the matter, I felt repaid with my first adventure into

public speech. I felt that I had vindicated the struggles I had set

before me, through the long years, to go through the school.

_Chapter XII. The Personnel of “The Clamorous Eight” and other Social

Matters. The “Blepoes” and the “Boulomaies” Invite me into Fellowship

with a Protest from Jason. Epics and Lyrics of Love. “Pa” Borden Speaks

for the Benedicts on a Momentous Matter. How the Magic Tree Lured Some

Unfaithful Ones from their Sworn Duty_

The routine of that winter’s work was embroidered with many interesting

social experiences. For though many of the students were stern in

religious doctrine and practise, hearts were youthful and recreation

was sought. Thropper belonged to a “Bachelor’s Club,” a facetious

group of married and unmarried male students who met every now and

then for the avowed purpose of upholding the dignity of bachelordom!

Thropper also joined a “Moustache Club,” whose members met and

compared lip sprouts and looked forward to the day when they would be

sufficiently mature to be called “moustaches.” These two institutions

were more satirical than practical; outlets for the humor resident in

the students. But the “Clamorous Eight” was a real institution of the

noisiest, most untamed spirits of the school, seven of whom were young

men and the eighth member a young, gum-chewing, blondish, hobbledehoy

girl in the Business department. What we knew of the charter of the

“Clamorous Eight” was in their shoutings, their numerous practical

jokes, their songs, and their rebellions against the University rules.

If anything of an unlawful nature occurred, like the throwing of a

live rooster into the sleeping room of a sedate female monitor or the

placing near the chapel door of a stuffed dummy, suspicion of its own,

fluent accord fixed itself first of all on the “Clamorous Eight,” and

hung there with tenacity until every member had been through a “Faculty

sweat.”

There were two rival literary societies in the University and the

students were supposed to be portioned out between them. The “Blepoes”

or “The Seers” and the “Boulomaies”--“The Willers” sent their agents

after me and made a bid for my membership. These were not secret

organizations, for such an institution was considered sinful by the

University authorities. Their gatherings were open to the public and

each student was supposed to attend the different meetings before

deciding which society he would join. Jason, who considered even these

literary meetings harmful to the morale of the students, on hearing

that I had been asked to join one of them, sought me out and for a long

mournful hour tried to make me promise to keep my name off their rolls,

“For,” he whined, “they are of the Devil, brother Priddy!”

“What makes you think so?” I demanded.

“They joke in their meetings and tell light things and for every idle

word God will hold us accountable!”

“But jokes and light conversation have their places in life, haven’t

they?” I persisted.

Jason looked at me with his round, poet’s eyes growing rounder in

wonderment.

“Lincoln couldn’t have borne the weight of the Civil War if it had not

been for jokes and fun--at times,” I concluded.

“But the Bible says that for every idle word we shall have to give a

full account,” said Jason. “Are not jokes idle words?”

“They don’t--eh--” I stammered, limply.

“The Bible is true, isn’t it?” went on the logician.

I gave up in desperation.

“Look here, Jason,” I cried, “you might get me to give up wearing a

watch-chain and a tie-pin, but you aren’t going to stop me from joining

one of these societies. I want social life and I’m going to have it,

jokes or no jokes. I’m not so good as you on logic or Bible, but you

aren’t going to stand between me and a few pleasures. Don’t some of

the faculty belong to the Blepoes and the Boulomaies? If they can join

without scruples--and they are Christian men and women--I can join. So

it’s no use arguing the matter with me, Jason. I think I’ll send in my

name to the Blepoes for the next meeting.”

And I did join myself to the Blepoes and partook of their suppers,

their programs, and even went so far one night as to appear on the

platform myself, before a blackboard on which I drew sketches to

illustrate a temperance address, and at the conclusion of which I

recited with great fervor and many gestures, Kipling’s “Recessional.”

That winter, too, though far outside of love, and even the thoughts

of love, in the seriousness of my tasks, I looked on little epics and

little lyrics of love between man and woman. Thropper himself had

Cupid’s dart in his heart and his rhapsodies concerning his “luck” and

his “happiness” and “her wonderful sweet spirit” were only a few of

many indications of the depth to which he had fallen in love. Those

of us who were not enamored of love had to be diplomatic in making

engagements to walk or exercise with the boys, for there were times

and seasons when Thropper and his fellow-lovers devoted themselves

exclusively to their fiancées. For instance, there was lecture night

in Pubbets Junction, six miles away, and on that evening, under

chaperonage, the couples would seat themselves in carriages and not be

back till midnight, returning to tell the bachelors and maidens the

next morning the expressive points of the lecture and any exciting

episodes of the trip, like the adventure of the wheels up to the

axles in mud and a plunging horse pulled out by a nearby farmer, the

adventure which befell Thropper and his love when they were on their

way to hear Sam Small lecture. Those among us, like myself, who were

not concerned with sentiment, held various speculative conferences, on

Sunday evenings, as to how this and that student would mate. We had

precedent to argue from, for we had seen Donald Bryce, a laughing-eyed

Evangelist-to-be, pick out Clara Trine, an athletic and extremely

conscientious Missionary-to-be. We had seen one of the “Clamorous

Eight,” a light-haired, flush-cheeked banker-to-be, sort out and become

deeply attached to the female member of the “Eight,” the blondish

hobbledehoy, whom we judged, like grocery store sages, would at least

fit herself to spend quickly enough what money he should chance to make

as a banker.

These loving couples considerably colored our social life and often

made the University picnics problems. When the first touch of spring

pervaded the gassy atmosphere and, at least, suggested the scent of

coming flowers and grassy banks, notice was given out by Brock one

Saturday morning that the usual spring trip to the river would be

undertaken and that each one who went should go to the kitchen and

prepare a lunch from materials that would be furnished by the cooks.

After the breakfast a meeting of the excursionists was held in the

reception room, presided over by Brock, who announced,

“Now, friends, this year--mind you, this year, we are going to keep

together. In the past, on our excursions, there has been altogether too

much coupling up and going off alone. That has spoiled more than one

excursion and it is not the fair thing. Is it?”

A chorus of “Noes” gave emphasis to his protest and appeal.

“This time, though,” he went on to explain, “we are to keep together.

No matter if you are in love with the sweetest girl on earth and can’t

be alone much under the University rules, you are not to wander off

when we get out of bounds and not come around to the main party again

until lunch time and then go off and not return till it is time to come

home. What have you to say about it, Brother Borden?”

“Pa” Borden, thus appealed to, raised his pompous head, cleared his

throat after the best mode of the orator, and said,

“I’m married myself and maybe shouldn’t have much to say on the matter.

I agree with everything’s been said: agree with it hard!” and to give

oratorical force to his last word, he brought his plump fist down on

the centre table, thereby spilling half the water out of the glass

which held in it a sprig of geranium.

A representative of the Benedicts having been heard, Thropper, as

representing the unmarried was asked for his opinion. He replied,

“Of course we ought to keep together. I’m certain of it, Mr. Chairman.

That’s all I need to say!”

At nine o’clock the excursionists started for the river forty-five

people strong. To prove the sincerity of the social aspect of the

excursion, Thropper and the other lovers separated themselves from

their beloveds and walked, sacrificially, either with other young

women or mingled freely with the male members of the party! Thus two

by two and three by three we walked down the rutted, soggy lane past

the root-fenced sheep pastures where the woolly young lambs squeaked

and bleated like crying children, down past the grove where the

wood-choppers were measuring cord wood; past dismal, wind-swept forests

of burnt stumps and rusty underbrush, over which desolation huge

vultures soared, and pivoted themselves in wait for prey; past clayey

roads over which mud boats were dragged by struggling horses and oxen,

past pig-pastures torn up by the sniffing snouts of the ruminants. Then

we entered a fresh, dampish wood-path which led us along the rocky bed

of a river over which a thin stream of water churned with great energy

as if to impress us with its importance. At last we entered a cleared

grass space over which the sun held itself and lighted gloriously the

deep pool of water the river had become. Here we deposited our lunch

boxes and began to arrange our games. So far the party had remained

one, much to the admiration of Brock. But now, after the lunch boxes

had been unloaded, a rearrangement of the party began to take place.

Thropper, who had been walking and talking with me, hurried over to the

side of his beloved, and said:

“There’s a magic tree farther along the path, growing right through a

big boulder, about which there’s a legend of Indians. I’ll tell you

about it!”

That was all. They two passed out of sight while the angry Brock gazed

speechlessly after them. That was the signal for other couples who

wanted to see the “magic tree,” and to such an extent did the defection

of the lovers take place, that before long only two couples remained

with the bachelors to share the games we tried to play.

By the lunch hour, however, they came from their expeditions from this

side and that, unapologetic for leaving us, came to eat their lunches

and then go off again, paying no heed to Brock’s impassioned appeal to

their _esprit de corps_. When the hour for the return to the University

arrived, the couples returned and then either went ahead, arm in arm,

or loafed behind, immersed in their own thoughts; leaving us bachelors

to amuse ourselves by bantering flings at them, which, however, were no

more than peas aimed at the mailed shell of an armadillo.

“It’ll be the same over again next time!” growled Brock. “These

lovers--oh!”

_Chapter XIII. How One Dollar and a Half Secured “The Devil in

Society.” The Medicine Chest which Became a Tract Depository under the

Teachings of a New Creed. How I Stuck to Orthodoxy_

The spring was full upon us, with the return of the birds, the tang

of the new plowed soil in the sugar-field where the “University Mare”

tugged listlessly at the plow whose blade sliced through the clayey

earth leaving back of it shiny, damp slices on which the birds stood

and pecked up the exposed grubs and worms. The dynamite wagon with its

frail springs and its dangerous load jogged by along the turnpike on

its way to newly-bored oil-wells. Flocks of sheep with an accompanying

host of maximum-legged lamblets passed over the turnpike on their

way to the railroad-cars, to be followed by grunting packs of hogs

directed by sapling-armed drovers who in one minute of speech profaned

the whole English language. Chugging traction-engines, hauling plows

and harrows and on their way to hundred-acred wheat and corn fields,

passed in the night-time with their shrill whistle-screams for water

and their explosive puffing and puffing as if no breath in their steel

bodies could successfully spurt them through the soft mire.

Thropper said to me, one afternoon,

“Priddy, how would you like to sell books?”

“Sell books, Thropper?”

Thropper nodded.

“What for?” I asked, interestedly.

“For money, of course, Priddy! What do you think?”

“It takes talk to sell books, Thropper!”

“Then you ought to make a success at the business, Priddy!”

“What’s the book?”

“‘The Devil in Society, or High Life in Washington by an

Ex-Congressman,’” quoted Thropper.

“Sensational, then?”

“A moral book--with a lesson,” laughed Thropper, “pepper to make you

know that it stings, you see, Priddy. Fifty per cent on each one. Buy

them for seventy-five cents, sell for dollar and a half. Easy money,

everybody wants the book on sight. I’ll loan you three dollars for four

if you want. Sure to sell them!”

“Anything to get some cash,” I cried. “Besides this would take me on

Saturday trips into the surrounding towns. That would be quite an

adventure after staying here throughout the winter. Will you show me

the book?”

“‘Pa’ Borden will bring one around tonight. He’s the general agent,”

declared my roommate.

In the evening, before the half-past seven bell had signalled silence

and study, “Pa” Borden had displayed the book to us. It was a lurid

green cloth-bound affair in which the glue showed in the web of the

cloth, printed with blotched, worn type on the cheapest of cheap paper

and interspersed with amateurish wood-cuts of which I recall a drunken

revel in a ball-room and some ballet-dancer-garbed women on a seashore

with wooden waves indicated by wavy lines. I was no connoisseur of

literature at the time and took as solemn truth “Pa” Borden’s words

that “anything that was of the Devil ought to be showed up, even if it

cost a dollar and a half!” I allowed Thropper to get me four of the

books and placed myself under his instructions for a week during which

time I learned how to point out the chief items of interest in the

illustrations when they were upside down, to give a kinetoscopic view

of the table of contents, and to end by flashing the record of previous

sales before the astonished housewife’s eyes before she could make up

her mind whether she wanted the book or not.

The following week, then, after engaging a substitute waiter for the

day I accompanied Thropper to Pubbets Junction to place “The Devil in

Society.” The first door on which I knocked chanced to be that of a

Christian Science Reader, a very highly cultivated and sweet-spirited

woman who, the minute I announced that I was agent for a book entitled

“The Devil in Society” immediately knocked my “patter” _hors de

combat_ by announcing, firmly, that there was no such thing as a Devil

and that it was all a delusion of mortal mind, adding various other

remonstrances of a philosophical, semi-philosophical, and dogmatic

nature which I was in no mood or mind to combat. Besides bewildering me

in the intellectual meshes of that new doctrine, the woman made me sit

in her office and listen to a fascinating recital of her household’s

progress from a drug-store of drugs to an empty medicine chest: to a

radical change in the family temper from semi-pessimism into a real

sunburst of glorious, mellowing optimism: to an intricate and involved

interpretation of the Old Testament and then in a very cloudy but, to

me, excitingly suggestive denial of all facts that men and books had

told me were positive and real. All this, of course, was the precursor

to an attempt to proselyte me to the faith of Christian Science. After

she had shown me the empty medicine chest, which she was then using as

a store-house for all sorts of Christian Science literature, I told

her that I had learned a great deal that was both new and novel, that

I would think it over seriously, but that I should never believe in

anything but orthodoxy. Then I called at the next house and many other

houses, so that by noon, when I met Thropper at a candy store, where

we lunched on a glass of milk and some Washington pie, I had sold two

books and earned one dollar and a half. In the flush of that success, I

returned to the University, ready to repeat the excursion the following

and several other Saturday mornings. According to Thropper’s epigram,

“The Devil in Society” meant dollars in our pockets!

_Chapter XIV. A Chapter Depicting how Strife Existed Between the

Pro-Gymnasiums and the Anti-Gymnasiums and Showing how Baseball,

Debates and an Epidemic Determined Matters This Way and That_

Next to its faith in religion an extreme abhorrence of matched athletic

games pervaded the ruling spirits of the University and found its

sanction in the charter of the institution. In the Bleponian and

Boulomanian literary societies the characteristic discussion for

heated and vigorous debate, next to the eternal question: Does Love or

Money Rule the World? was: Are Athletic Contests Moral? The charter

and advertisements of the University said very emphatically that they

were not and should not be tolerated by Christian people. Jason and

his Board of Pharisees agreed with the University. On the other hand,

there were many young men and women who had an opposite mind and took

issue on every occasion with Jason and the authorities. Thus one could

find them on every occasion in the springtime when the fields and the

paved paths lured forth whatever sporting proclivities nature had

deposited in the blood, Jason and his followers firmly insisting that

under no consideration should a contest of any sort--even a game of

checkers or “Pit” be countenanced, as it led to gambling, and, if not

to gambling, then to unchristian feeling. This feeling became acute

when the students began to discuss the necessity for an athletic field

and a gymnasium: a very hypothetical discussion remote and probably

ever to remain remote, for the University had need of money for more

impending goods than gymnasiums. But Jason’s party argued as if the

gymnasium were about to be built, and said that it would only lead

young men into racing for prizes!--and competing for wagers! The party

was called the Anti-Gymnasiums.

Thropper and I aligned ourselves to the Pro-Gymnasiums, for, as

Thropper said to me:

“My kneecaps fairly creak for need of stretching. As for my arm joints

and muscles, they pain me on the least provocation. I need proper,

systematic exercise.”

The Pro-Gymnasiums were thoroughly represented by “The Clamorous

Eight,” whose faces and veins throbbed with healthy, well-exercised

blood; in fact, they were eight who cared for little else beyond

exercise of muscles.

The program of the Blepoes one Friday evening was devoted to the

debate of the question: “Resolved: That the Bible Prohibits Athletic

Contests.” Larry Thomas, who debated for the Pro’s and who was almost

as well versed in biblical lore as was Jason, argued well, basing his

strongest rhetoric on Paul’s words: “I so run that I may receive a

prize,” and “I box, not as beating the air,” but, as Larry paraphrased

it, freely, “to give a knock-out, pure and simple, a plain indication

that Paul believed in the prize-ring and the running-track!” The

Anti’s, realizing the force of these quotations, attempted to minimize

their power by arguing, “Oh, Paul was only using the common terms of

his day; the ordinary experiences of unchristian men, to represent to

them the Christian life. That was all. He was not giving sanction to

sports.” This explanation, the judges informed us, considerably helped

the Anti’s, but the debate was declared a draw.

[Illustration: EVANGELICAL UNIVERSITY WAS TREATED TO ITS FIRST MATCH

GAME]

One Saturday morning when the air was crammed with the warmth and

lassitude of early summer, and a considerable number of Pro-Gymnasiums

were playing scrub baseball, one of the “Clamorous Eight,” in a fit of

healthy rebellion against the University, proposed:

“Say, fellows, this knocking out a ball is too tame. Let’s choose up

sides. There’s no harm in it!”

Thropper, who was not working that day, and myself, were among those

enjoying the sport, and in the excitement and thoughtlessness of the

minute we consented. I was placed in the field, Thropper went in the

catcher’s box. We even engaged the services of an umpire, though few

were found from whom we could select a capable official. Many of the

Pro’s dared not come into the game, but stood off ready to look on an

incident that should become historic, like a Civil War or a French

Revolution: the first matched game ever played on the University

grounds!

Jason looked on the opening of the game with horror. To him it seemed

that the Evil One had just made his bold appearance in the morale of

the institution. When he heard the umpire’s decisions and saw the sides

changing positions, and realized at last that the whole event had

actually developed into a matched game, he hurried to the home of the

Dean and gave notice of the rebellion that he had scented. Instantly

the authorities came, ordered the game disbanded, took our names for

Faculty discipline, and we left the field to the Anti’s, who sincerely

believed that Satan himself had been flouted.

But even the anti-match spirit of Jason and his band could not

eliminate from their joints and muscles the need of exercise, and

while they argued against the advent of contested sports, they could

be found on the cinder walk after supper, previous to the evening

prayer-service, leaping, bounding, twisting, and jumping, Jason in

competition manifesting the grace of a rheumatic frog.

Shortly after this an epidemic of disease broke out in the village.

The University was quarantined--even from attendance at the village

church services. The momentousness of this is plainly evident when

it is remembered that it was these church services which gave to the

University lovers their chance to walk together, sit together, sing and

pray and talk together; consequently the quarantine imposed a severe

restriction upon the poor unfortunates.

When Sunday dawned, glorious with the summer sun, some of the members

of Jason’s clique together with their young ladies took their

black-bound Bibles and sat under the campus saplings for Bible study:

two in a class and every sapling shade occupied.

But the Dean, who hated sham of every sort, interrupted these classes

and the next morning in chapel he had some very emphatic and pointed

remarks to make on the subject: “The Sacrilege of Pretending to Study

the Bible when You are Doing Nothing but Make Love!”

It was the Pro-gymnasiums’ turn to laugh then.

_Chapter XV. A Ph.D. in a Clay Ditch and the Futility of it. A Can of

Beans at the Conclusion of a Morbid Meditation. How Thropper and I

Played David and Jonathan_

The first summer vacation brought joy to a majority of the students,

but to me it merely meant a lonely isolation for three months on

the campus where I was accustomed to watch my friends move back and

forth hour after hour through the day. They went out with tents: the

Evangelists. They went out with books: the canvassers. They went out

with brawn and health: the miners and farmers. They left me alone to

share the solitude of the campus with the few professors who were not

going to conferences, and with the superintendent of grounds, whose

assistant I was to be.

The winter’s struggle, though pleasant, had left me tired and

listless. I needed a rest, but saw no possibility of any. I had few

good clothes and no money. Any adventure into the world would have been

utter folly. So I began to scrub floors in the University building, to

mow the grass, and trim the flowers. I painted and scraped and hung

wall paper, all in the silences of the dormitories once full of merry

sounds, the recollections of which doubled the loneliness I suffered

from.

Meanwhile I made my home in the little room where we had held our feast

in honor of Queen Victoria’s birthday. In it stood the stove on which

I cooked my own meals: canned goods, tea, and sundry fries of bacon,

eggs, ham, and potatoes. Here, too, I washed my clothes.

During a lull in the work, one of the married students, who had

been given his Ph.B. at commencement asked me to go with him to the

outskirts of the village where some eight-inch gas pipes were to be

laid. He wanted me to join him at the shovel! At the time I weighed but

one hundred and twenty pounds. The foreman put us in a clay ditch under

a scalding July sun with a gang of knotted-muscled, tanned Irishmen to

whom the picking of dried lumps of clay and the shovelling of heaps of

it were mere items of a day’s work to be done mechanically, but for

my friend and myself tasks for Titans. The Irishmen at my heels kept

passing me, doubling on me, until, after a two days’ attempt, with the

lure of twenty-five cents an hour for the prize, my friend with his

Ph.B. and I with my ambitions fell out of the race and rode wearily

back to the village and to the University, where for days neither of

us was fit for even so simple a task as lifting a pound weight; the

excessive strain had undermined our strength.

While recuperating, I was given food by the superintendent and spent

most of my time wandering into the woods or through the sheep pastures

where my uppermost thought was: “What is the use of all this? It is

weariness and a vanity of the flesh. Give up your education! You must

have money and strength, money and strength, money and strength!”

And then the thought of my classmates would obtrude itself and I saw

them in visions at their tasks, at their homes, in the full enjoyment

of work, companionship, and wages. I seemed to hear, borne on the

summer wind, above the bleating of the sheep, the exhortations of the

evangelists in their tents which were crowded with farmers, paying

heed to the gospel, and I was envious of them. I thought of the miners

deep under the earth, black with their toil but happy in earning a

substantial wage; strong, oh, so strong! My fight for an education,

when contrasted with their natural endowments of strength and

friendships, seemed puny, futile. In such a way did the black demon

Despair lay its sharp claws on my spirit and make it bleed. I would

start back across the field, not heeding the innocent, questioning gaze

of the sheep as they packed off and watched me go, not watching the

swift circlings of the sombre vultures high above my head, but going

back to my lonely room feeling that I should never have another flash

of happiness flood my life again. Then I would get out the can-opener,

uncover a can of beans, and warm them on the stove for supper.

But everything has its end, even as my homesickness and discouragement

had their ending when the students came back once more, bringing

others with them. They came back flushed with eagerness for another

year’s work; eager once more to invest themselves in sacred ties of

friendship. Thropper came back with a hundred dollars: his summer’s

earnings. I reported that I had just managed to pay my last year’s

tuition and my summer’s board: I could enter upon my second year of

education with a clean slate.

Once more the round of studies, prayer-meetings, and chores commenced:

this time with less of novelty. The approach to winter brought with it

the same questions of how to earn cash. To this end I went into the

woods for a day and tried to chop down trees, but my arms were not

attuned to axe swinging; after my first cord had been cut I had to

abandon the quest for dollars in that healthful but too vigorous work.

I returned to the University and assisted the baker with bread and pies

and the janitor with the university floors; the money to be credited

against my account on the books.

But I realized at last that I was in the midst of inestimable

privileges. The studies awakened me to the possibilities of culture and

mental fitness. Some of my last year’s friends had entered upon the

pleasant vocations of teaching and business for which they received

a moderate, but, as it appeared to me, a flattering compensation.

Thropper--ever on the alert with inspiration--comforted me one night

when my empty pockets had induced a pessimistic frame of mind, by

saying:

“Now look here, Priddy. Suppose you don’t have any money and have to

scrimp on things. Here you are privileged to take extra studies every

day; a millionaire’s son couldn’t do more. You don’t have to lose a

term of study, either. You are going along through the schedule about

as comfortably as any one. That’s worth a good deal. There’s Harry

Lane--got plenty of money, but you know he was compelled to drop out

for a term on account of bad eyes. You’re lucky, old fellow!” and the

good-natured fellow gave me a staggering, but well-meant, clap on the

shoulder that knocked every ounce of pessimism out of my system.

“I am in luck, Thropper. I know it!” I declared, and then went to my

study with new courage. “The only trouble about the whole matter,

Thropper,” I declared, after some moments of quietness, “is that I am

making the fight alone--no one to rely on if I get stuck, you know. The

other fellows can depend upon more or less from friends--I can’t; all

those bridges are cut behind me!”

Thropper closed his book with an energetic snap.

“You Chump!” he exclaimed, with a melting light in his clear eyes,

“what do you think? That you haven’t won any friends since coming to

the University? That’s where you’re wrong: sadly out of tune! All you

have to do, any day, is to say the word and you can get any amount I

have on hand!”

I jumped to my feet and said, very gently, “Thropper, you’re all right!”

Then, without another word, for the situation was getting close to the

edge of tears, Thropper threw himself in his stuffed chair and I sat on

the edge of the bed, under the hissing flare of the gas, both of us as

busy as could be with the next day’s lessons.

_Chapter XVI. Visions, Hysteria, Dogma, and Poor Lessons to the Front

when the Revivalists Arrived. How Natural it Sounded when “Bird”

Thurlow Asked a Flippant Question_

Then the annual winter revival was announced. Upon this event the

University centered all its prayers, its hopes, its attention, as the

banner event of the year. In the church papers where the advertisement

of the University appeared, the annual revival was featured. Several

of the students had been sent to the institution by their parents

principally for the spiritual benefits that might come to them in the

atmosphere of the revival.

The whole air began to stir with the throb of revival preparation. A

spiritual census of the students was taken, not officially or in any

stereotyped way, and all the energy of Christian effort was brought

to bear on creating the right, psychological mood for the time the

evangelists should arrive. The prayer bands wove in extra meetings and

increased their unction. Neglected, after-supper prayer-services were

suddenly filled. Bands of earnest, zealous men and women roamed from

room to room holding spiritual inquisitions over “The Clamorous Eight”

and any others who were thought to need special portions of grace.

“I’m heartily in favor of Christian effort,” I said to Jason, one day,

when we were talking over the coming revival, “but take last year and

think how many hours were lost to study and given to the meetings!

I should think that those things might be left to camp-meetings

and churches--there were three long revivals in the village last

winter--and we ought to center our precious time on study!”

Jason declared, emphatically and finally, “Brother Priddy, what are

_heads_ compared to _souls_?”

“Oh, I don’t object to any sort of efforts being indulged if people

are to be made Christian, Jason, but according to what you said in the

prayer-meeting last night, there are only three in the whole University

who do not make any profession of religious faith: just three, and yet

two whole weeks are to be set apart to the Evangelists who will come

and preach the ‘third-birth doctrine’ and other dogmatic matters. That

is what I protest against.”

Again Jason answered with his inclusive, “Brother Priddy, what are

_heads_ compared to _souls_?”

By the time the revivalists appeared it had been announced in the

prayer-service that not one of the students stood “outside the

Christian fold.” The revivalists had a clear chance, then, to preach

the special doctrine of “the third-birth,” without any further parley.

The revivalists were a man and his wife, both of them uneducated,

whose chief claim to merit in their field lay in the fact that

they were said to be “filled with the Spirit.” In spite of the bad

grammar, the mixed figures of rhetoric, traces of demagogism, and an

excessive _ex cathedra_ tone, the revivalists were given full power in

the meetings. All interests in pure scholarship were crowded aside.

The valedictorian, the temperance orator who had won the interstate

oratorical prize, the professors, and the humble seeker after knowledge

were subordinated to the zealot, the exhorter, the unctuous pleader.

In morning chapel the time was generously lengthened to accommodate

the doctrinal exhortations of the revivalist and his wife, who spake

not so much of practical concerns, but entered into a bewildering maze

of Scripture quibblings, text jugglings, super-rational conclusions,

and a daze of fantastic analogies. When the closing bell sounded,

the speaker would turn to the President and say, familiarly--even

commandingly, “Well, brother, studies can wait on the Lord, can’t

they?” and the President had nothing to say but, “Yes.” The morning

exhortations infringed on our nine o’clock classes so that often they

had to be discontinued; much to the reluctance of the professors who

had to bear the brunt of the intellectual disqualifications of students

at graduation time.

As the meetings continued, in the evenings, the enthusiasm increased.

When emotions were running at flood the meetings were carried well into

the night and Thropper and I often did not reach our room until eleven

o’clock--with all opportunity for study taken away. But again the

professors had to lose, for if any of us were backward with lessons the

next morning, by saying, “Professor, I was at the meeting last night. I

did not have any opportunity to study,” a proper adjustment was made in

our favor. For, as Jason had said, the theory at that time was, “What

are heads compared to souls?”

At the conclusion of the first Thursday evening’s meeting, the

revivalist and his wife let it be known that “At last God is blessing

us!” High tide had been reached. That meeting had been given into the

hands of the students after the leader had preached for an hour on a

doctrinal theme. A hymn was started by a young woman. She stood while

she led the singing and at the conclusion she still stood erect, with

her eyes fixed on the ceiling. She had thrown herself into a trance

and spoke in a jumble some words nobody could decipher but which

were understood to be a “revelation.” That was the signal for a wild

demonstration. Jason leaped to his feet and after shouting, “God is

with us! Emmanuel!” he sat shivering in his seat as if his body were

in the grasp of angry spirits. A group of young women paraded down the

aisles and before the pulpit waving their handkerchiefs and shouting

in shrill ecstasy. Suddenly one of the young men near me burst into

lamentations and tears, moaning as if his heart would break. Meanwhile

the evangelists knelt at the front of the platform in prayer; praying

for people by name. Then the young man who had been crying suddenly

darted to his feet and broke into a torrent of wild, hysterical

laughter and ran to the upper end of the room clapping his hands. Hymns

of different sorts and tunes had broken out in different parts of the

room, making a musical Babel. The young woman who had had the trance

came into consciousness again, and, on the urgence of the revivalists,

ascended the platform from whence she described a vision fit to be

framed in Miltonic verse. At eleven o’clock hands were joined, a hymn

was sung, and after a benediction from “Pa” Borden, we went back to our

rooms.

Then the revivalists with their honors full on them departed, and

the emotional tension left us. It was a distinct relief, like a bit

of bird’s chatter after the epic storm, to hear “Bird” Thurlow shout

across the walk, one morning, “Hey, Paddy, going to take Miss Adee to

the lecture next Wednesday?”

_Chapter XVII. My Presidential Pose and its Central Place in “The

Record.” A Wistful Glance and Some Practical Plans towards Eastern

Education. How the Little Sparrow Brought my Class Colors to me as I

Gave the Class “Oration.” Ends in a Fight_

In the spring, when announcements of Commencement and Graduation were

in the air, a gathering of four members of the collegiate department,

as many members of the preparatory division, two business students, and

five who could not be classified by reason of their slowness to master

their studies, met in response to a call, sent out by the Seniors, for

the members of the Freshmen Class to elect officers, and after due

deliberation made me their president.

With this honor thrust on me, I was immediately in a dilemma, for

the main purpose of the class organization was to have each member’s

photograph in the Senior’s “Record,” a souvenir book of the University

life. Had I been other than the president, I should not have fretted

about my inability to afford a visit to the picture gallery, but there

I was: due to have my picture in the middle of the group. I was in

despair until finally I thought of little Jack Borden, who owned a

three-dollar camera. I told him my predicament and he consented to make

a snap-shot of me for ten cents that should be fit to be in the center

of a group of “gallery ones” as he termed those that the official

photographer would take.

As Jack had no photographer’s background, he snapped me with my back to

the flowered wall paper, and when the finished picture was handed me,

there I sat, outlined against a mass of conventional crocus leaves and

a picture of “Pa” Borden hung on the wall above my head! I was told by

one of “The Record” Committee that the picture would never be fit to

reproduce with such a background: that it should be in relief against

a plain one. I returned to my room in despair, but finally resolved

to cut my picture out from the wall paper and paste it on a piece of

plain, black pasteboard. After going over the outline with the scissors

I finally succeeded in accomplishing the feat and the picture went in

the middle of the group, an undignified, flat, ill-posed, and somewhat

jagged outline of myself, most conspicuous as “the president.”

As the year drew to an end, and the students began to talk so

emotionally of home and friends, I began to feel that I had been long

enough in exile from my eastern home and friendships. I also began

to wonder if now that I had learned the art of working a way through

school I should not be more comfortable in Massachusetts. I had heard

the graduating students talk of “Dartmouth” and “Boston University”

and “Yale” and “Harvard,” with a sort of worshipful accent, not far

short of reverence. One or two graduates in the past, so the local

legend ran, had even attained to post-graduate work in Yale and

Harvard! Therefore, as I heard this talk, listened to this semi-worship

of New England education, and realized that it was my home, my own

environment, I also asked myself the question: “Why not go and complete

your education in that atmosphere?”

I mentioned this fact to Thropper. He said to me:

“I have often wondered, Priddy, why you came away out here for your

education when you have such good schools in New England. I should

think you’d be able to work your way along out there and get some

mighty fine chances. I just wish I had been an Easterner!”

“I’ve a good mind to go East when school closes, Thropper, and try. I

must confess I feel lonesome, homesick out here. I miss the ocean and

the hills. I can’t help it. I suppose I run the risk of not getting to

school next year, though, if I break off now!”

“Not if you’re willing to work as you have,” said Thropper. “Though I’d

hate to have you go. I thought you might be my right hand man when I

marry, next fall!”

“Marry?”

“Yes, in September. Oh, you’ll get an invitation even if you won’t be

able to attend, Priddy,” he added, solemnly, “I wouldn’t try to keep

you from going East even with my wedding. Try it, old fellow. You owe

it to yourself, now that you’ve got such a good start here. This place

doesn’t pretend to be in competition with the big Eastern institutions.

Evangelical University is concerned mostly with giving a fellow a start

towards them. The faculty would be only too glad to have you leave

here, if they knew you were going to stick to your education in the

East.”

“I’ll do it, Thropper!” I replied.

The busy season of Commencement was ushered in: a busy time even for

those of us who were far, very far from graduation. My “class” voted

that I represent them with an oration on “Class Day.” No classic,

intellectual, or sentimental event was Class Day at Evangelical

University, but, rather, a Western outflow of burlesque and banter.

Every day for a week I practised my “oration” in the attic of the

University building. In this speech I had put, as all previous Class

Day orators had made a practise of putting, puns, alliterations,

pompous passages, personalities, and much bathos. I tried to perfect

myself in its delivery, not knowing just what experiences I should

encounter on the day I should speak it.

A wild, untamed, yelling, crowding procession filled the chapel hall,

each class in a section by itself and the “orators” seated on the

platform.

It came my turn. I stepped to the front and raised my hand for the

first word when suddenly the class next above mine yelled, poked up

slang signs, and then from the square ventilator hole high above my

head darted a sparrow with a trailing streamer of our class ribbon

fluttering from its tail. At every sentence, nearly every word, I had

to pause on account of the yellings, the banter, and the interruptions

caused by flying hats and scudding pieces of pasteboard. After about a

half hour of disciplined posing, I finally concluded the “oration” amid

the admiring plaudits of my class. Thus orator followed orator, each

one outdoing the other with satire, pun, and rhetorical nonsense. To

the accompaniment of a thudding fight which was taking place between

the representatives of two classes over our heads where the bird

had been sent down, Class Day came to an end, and my active life at

Evangelical University likewise.

_Chapter XVIII. Thropper Unfolds Something Better than Canned Foods. A

Lesson with the Flat Iron. Thropper Proposes that I Chaperone Horses_

“How are you going to get back to Massachusetts, Priddy?” asked

Thropper when I was shuffling some photographs which I had taken down

from a wire rack on the wall.

“Oh, I’ll have to try to get work in a factory or on a farm about

here,” I answered, “until I earn my fare!”

“Have you any definite work planned for, yet?”

“No, but I thought I’d go out this afternoon and see what I might pick

up. I could keep this room and board myself, Thropper.”

He made a wry face, and blurted out:

“Warmed over canned beans, ugh!”

“What do you mean, old fellow?”