“That’s what your wife will feed you on--at first, while she learns to
cook, Thropper,” I laughed. “Perhaps you’ll prefer canned things!”
“Is that so?” he retorted, with some show of heat. “Well, that’s all
you know about things. _She_ can cook already: you just wait till you
taste some of her cooking. Canned things--ugh!”
“Well,” I sighed, “I’ve little choice!”
“How would you like to spend the summer at a neat little hotel in
Michigan?”
“Thropper!”
“And room in a little cottage in the midst of a little grove of pines,
near little sandhills, among a little group of the finest fellows in
the world--college students?” continued Thropper, with a smile.
“A little bit too much imagination in your little talk, my dear little
fellow!” I retorted.
“And go down to the beach every day for a bath among the big waves, and
go boating and fishing; seeing the great crowds of excursionists and
vacationists!”
“Go on,” I gasped, “have it out, Thropper, if you particularly enjoy
the stunt!”
“Food,” continued my roommate, “well, let me see: strawberry shortcake
à la much, mutton chops with bacon à la juicy, calves’ brains on toast
à la delicious, hashed browned potatoes à la second helping, and for
desserts: cream and jellies, sherberts and pies--”
“--À la imagination, eh, Thropper,” I interrupted.
My roommate’s rugged face was overspread with a grin. He clapped me
over the shoulder and said, continuing his whim:
“To enjoy many beautiful, moon-lit hours, watching the glint of the
phosphorescent waves as they twinkle like fairy lights over the broad
expanse of Lake Michigan; to--”
“Look out, Thropper,” I exclaimed at this poetic outburst, “or you’ll
be crowding the spring poets out of a job!”
“To roam at will through the shady groves, over the sand dunes, to hear
the orchestral music, the light plash of the waves against the pier
while you hold a fish-line in the water; to loll on the fragrant pine
needles and read, muse, rest, and be inspired: what do you think of
that for a program for the next three months, Priddy?”
“Ask a Mohammedan what he thinks of Paradise or an exiled Prince what
he thinks of a Kingdom, Thropper?”
“Then,” continued Thropper, “the whole experience not to cost you a
cent: rather you are to be paid at the rate of four dollars a week:
wages for a treat like that, Priddy: what do you think of _that_?”
“It is impossible for me to think about such a prospect, Thropper, my
imagination is intoxicated!”
“Then you will go!”
I looked at Thropper as if he had parted with his senses.
“What an actor you are, Thropper. One would imagine you serious in all
this!”
“Of course I’m serious!” he announced. “I am merely offering you the
chance to go with Brook and myself to Macatawa, Michigan, to wait on
table at one of the hotels there.”
“Oh!”
“But all the things I have enumerated, Priddy, are facts and not
dreams. The work is very easy: six hours a day; two hours a meal, with
the interims filled with all sorts of good times. What do you say?
Our railway fares and steamer passages will be sent and later will be
deducted from our wages. Will you go?”
“Do they let the waiters eat calves’ brains on toast, Thropper?” I
asked, seriously.
“Extra orders which are not taken,” he responded.
“Of course I’ll go, old fellow. It will be a wonderful chance, won’t
it?”
“It will give you a good chance to get a rest, Priddy,” he averred,
solemnly. “Your poor, pinched body needs it!”
“When do we leave?”
“In two days; soon as Brock gets word to the hotel that we are coming.
I can lend you some collars and things till we get there.”
“The first month’s wages are to go for clothes,” I announced. “All
aboard for Ma-cat-a-wa: last call for dinner!” I cried, and then
Thropper and I, sharers of confidences and of dreams, linked arms and
waltzed crazily around the room--for sheer joy.
One week after having waltzed with Thropper over the creaky boards of
the dormitory, I found myself adjusted to a new phase of existence,
delicious and inspiring in its every aspect. After a lifetime spent in
the midst of places where toil and only toil held the boards: after
twenty years’ vision of strenuous tasks done by those about me, in
mills, shops, and on the street, at last I found myself in the midst of
a place set apart to idleness: where the indolent were given the palm
branch, and where work, for a wonder, found itself, even by honorable
people, spurned as a thing out of place.
The six hours’ work a day put at my command all the recreational
advantages of the resort: the shapely sand dunes, the boardwalks
through cool, shaded pine groves, the smooth, sandy, slippery beach
down which one walked past artists’ studios, soap box shanties, and
pretentious pillared cottages. And the water! We bathed by day and by
night. In it we fished and raced. Over it we rowed in boats that were
tossed like light corks from engulfing wave to engulfing waves, while
the life-boat man from the pier kept a sharp eye on our adventure. By
its edge on a moon-light night we built a chain of fires and in the
flames of them we roasted marshmallows, sang songs, and passed all
sorts of banter.
In the dining-hall I met my fellow waiters and waitresses: college
students, all of them, from different parts of the country. The
orchestra, at dinner, played complimentary college tunes in our
honor: our guests broke down all perfunctory relations and intimately
entered into our ambitions. While waiting for the arrival of guests at
breakfast the waiters stood under a wooden canopy in the hotel yard
and ironed napkins and towels. Of course neither Thropper nor I were
very expert in the laundry, but that did not excuse us from it. One day
the Irishwoman, who was proprietor of the hotel, came and investigated
the laundry. She paid particular attention to the manner in which
I conducted the flat-iron over the towels. After watching me for
some moments, during which, for a woman, she maintained a severe and
terrible silence, during which perspiration poured down my face, she
suddenly exploded with laughter and said:
“Ah, ah! You should see Mister Priddy use his iron. It’s a rale treat.
He is that gentle on the cloths! I want you all to come around and take
a lesson. You girls now,” she indicated some of the college girls,
“have been doing it wrong all the time!” She laughed loudly, as they
gathered about my board.
Taking the iron gingerly in her massive, red, and scarred hand, the
Irishwoman very gently tipped the back edge of it on a towel and
deliberately, though exactly, drew the iron backward several times,
lifting it from the board to carry it forward.
“That’s the way Mr. Priddy says you ought to iron!” she shouted, her
burly face reddening with merriment, as she noticed my chagrin. “It’s
backwards and not forwards that you should iron, all of ye!” and then
she sat down on a bench in the midst of a most industrious crowd of
laughing boys and girls. After the fun, she took the iron in hand in an
endeavor to show me the true, laundry method of using a flat-iron.
All the tricks, the horse-plays, the trivial but welcome expressions
of fun that crowd themselves into a college life, were indulged at the
hotel by the waiters and waitresses. A group of Michigan students lived
in a long, loosely-built shanty in the yard, on the doors of which they
had painted its name: “Lover’s Roost,” and the better to carry out the
fancy of its being a roost, the boys were in the habit of receiving
expected visitors, who came to inspect their quarters, perched on the
upper beams, above the partitions, flapping their hands and crowing
like lusty, gigantic roosters!
The season rushed past in its merry whirl. Tired muscles relaxed, taut
nerves slacked, weary bodies gained repose, there on the sand dunes,
amid parties, fêtes, musicales, and picnics. The first chill winds from
the lake wafted hordes of people back to work, and soon left the hotel
nearly unpeopled.
As the day approached when I should have to leave, I found that I
had saved but a trifle out of my earnings: the money had gone for a
much-needed, but not expensive, ward-robe. I counted over my change and
found that I did not have enough money left with which to purchase a
ticket for so far away a place as Massachusetts. I mentioned the matter
to Thropper. He, in turn, in that generous way of his, began to plan
for me. One day he came and said:
“Priddy, you know Gloomer, the fellow from Indiana State University;
well, if you go down to Indianapolis with him, he’ll see that you get a
chance to go on a freight train as far as New York; from there you’ll
have enough to get home, won’t you?”
“Yes. A freight train, you say? As a tramp, riding on the axles?” I
gasped, with an inward shudder at the thought of such a desperate ride.
“Of course not!” declared Thropper. “You’d go in the caboose. We’d send
you with a load of horses, you know. You’d be the man in charge; to
feed them.”
“But I don’t know anything about horses, Thropper.”
“You don’t have to know anything about them,” he said, with a smile.
“It’s just a technical way of expressing it. You see, when the
horse-dealers send a carload of horses East, they are entitled to
a representative to go along and take care of them. You’d be the
representative. Gloomer could give you a line to an Indianapolis sales
stable. They’d do the rest--as far as New York. What do you say!”
In a wild moment of incautious self-confidence, I responded:
“Anything to get to New York, Thropper.”
“It’s settled, then,” he responded. “Albert Priddy, horse chaperone, I
salute thee,” and he gravely saluted me. “When will his lordship occupy
his caboose?” he went on in good-humored raillery.
“As soon as I can get it!” I replied.
_Chapter XIX. A Chapter Which Has to do with a Series of Exciting
Affairs that Occurred between the West and the East, and Which are
Better to Read about than to Endure_
Thropper accompanied me to the wharf in Chicago where, so far as I was
able to judge, we were to part forever. The manner of our parting was
as follows:
Thropper insisted on carrying my suit-case, though his own was loaded
to excess. On crossing a street to enter the railroad station, I half
stumbled, blunderingly, under the heavy hoofs of a dray horse which
a swearing driver had pulled shortly into the air, when Thropper, by
a lunge at my back with his heavy suit-case, startled me into such
action, that I lurched ahead and away from danger.
“Thanks, old fellow!” I called, above the roar of the traffic.
My train was announced, and as I gripped my suit-case, Thropper blurted
out:
“Well, Priddy, I wish you luck: plenty of it!”
“Well,” I stammered, in return, “you’ve certainly been good to me,
Thropper. I shall never forget it!”
“I shall miss you, Priddy!”
“Maybe I shan’t miss you, old fellow!” I said hoarsely, for I was on
the verge of tears.
“God bless you!” cried Thropper, with an effort. “God be with you!”
“Make a man of yourself, old fellow!” I replied.
One moment of profound, tearful silence, with our hands tightly
clasped, and then I broke away and ran as fast as I could towards my
train, pretending by that action that I might be in danger of losing my
train, though my only intention was to be by myself, where, unseen, I
could baptize this parting from Thropper with unrestrained, heartfelt
tears.
The brick-paved and marvellously wide streets of Indianapolis were
oppressively hot when I arrived in the city, with Gloomer’s letter of
introduction to the sales-stable manager in my possession. I had to
spend two days in the city before a regular auction day arrived when
it would be possible for me to make a contract with the manager. I had
been told that the psychological time to approach the horse-dealer
would be at a sale when a carload or two of horses would be made up.
During my wait, I had to harvest my cash diligently, for fear of
getting stranded on the way. The four dollars in my pocket seemed
indescribably trivial when measured against the gigantic journey I had
between Indianapolis and New York City. I went on a side street and
searched among the cheaper lodging-houses until I found one whose red,
illuminated sign told me that beds there were fifteen cents a night.
I went in, talked with a wizened-faced tramp of a man, and was shown
up a flight of back stairs into a large, dirty-papered room, in which
stood a wooden bedstead with dampish, musty coverings. As I slept that
night, I was awakened by loud quarrelsome voices in the back kitchen,
and from what I heard, I realized that I was sleeping in a thieves’
lodging-house. After that, I found myself waking up in nervous fright
every few minutes, expecting to see the door open while some villain
entered with a knife or gun to strip me of what little I owned! It
was a night of horror, of wakeful, excited, dread. I was afraid to
sleep, and yet I kept waking, hour after hour, with the consciousness
that I had given in to sleep, and had made it possible for some one
to overpower me. Then early morning dawned, without any accident
befalling me, and I seized upon an excuse to leave. I went downstairs
very stealthily and confronted three ragged, evil-faced men who were
sitting on chairs, smoking with the landlord. I emptied a half-dozen
soiled collars on the table and said:
“I haven’t time to have these laundered, and don’t need them. You may
have them--if they fit. I wear fifteens. I have to leave early. Here
is my lodging fee for the night. Good morning!” and without another
word I rushed from the house, hoping that the men would imagine that my
excitement was due to fear of losing a train rather than to any dread
of them!
The only sight-seeing I accomplished in Indianapolis came in a long
walk I took past the freight yards, at the end of which I came to a
tomato ketchup factory, where, for two hours, I watched a carload of
ripe and otherwise tomatoes unloaded in barrows and carted into the
store vats. Then I hurried back to the stables, for a sale was due for
late afternoon, and my heart was centred entirely upon the hope of
securing the ride to New York City.
Guided by the snap of whips and the strident calls of the auctioneer, I
entered a dim vault of a place, where the sale was in progress. After
the glare of the sun had worn itself out of my eyes, I found myself on
the outer edge of a large group of horse-dealers, watching the animals
put through their paces and holding up fingers to the auctioneer.
After the sales had been concluded, I approached a cubby-hole, which
was filled with stale tobacco smoke through which I had a view of
lithographs of race horses. The manager of the stables sat at his desk,
apparently not busy, but eloquent in cigar smoke over the sales he had
made that day. He had a blown, raw face, as red as his sunset shirt
bosom and dotted with unshaved blotches of bristles. His thin nose had
been turned aside by a blow of some sort, his mild blue eyes might
not have been out of place in a woman’s head. However, on seeing me
hesitate, and probably knowing from my abject, petitioning manner, that
I was after some favor, he flavored the air with an oath and tacked on
an impatient demand as to my wants. I thereupon unfolded what was in
my heart, and in the nervousness of the moment, instead of handing him
Gloomer’s letter of introduction, gave him, instead, my pocket comb.
Then I thought he would horse-whip me, but, instead, he laughed, and
said:
“Well, you’re a thoroughbred, ain’t ye! What’s this?”
I thereupon exchanged the comb for the letter, which he took with some
show of interest. After reading it he said:
“Why, I’d ship you to Jericho, if I was sending hosses that fur, but
only thing I can do’s to send ye to Buffalo. You’ll mebbe get another
haul from there, though I can’t say.”
I thought of the small amount of money in my pocket, and of the
distance at which I found myself from home, and then said:
“I was told that you might be able to ship me to New York, sir. I need
the lift. I have less than five dollars.”
“Sorry, kid,” he muttered. “Buffalo’s best thing in the ring for a week
or more. Good day, sonny!”
“But I’ll take the chance to Buffalo,” I gasped, fearful that he would
turn me off entirely. “I’ll be very thankful for that much of a ride,
sir.”
He opened a drawer and wrote several items on a yellow way bill which
he handed to me.
“Shove that in yer pocket and skedaddle, sonny,” he said. “I wish yer
joy in yer ejucation, though I don’t in hang know what ye’ll do with it
when yer got it; plant corn, in all likelihood. S’long! Train leaves at
half-past six: freight yard. Numbers of the cars on the pass!”
At six o’clock I appeared in the terminal freight yards with a bag
of three-cent egg sandwiches under one arm and with my slate-colored
suit-case bumping against my shins. It was not until I reached the
yards and beheld the illimitable maze of tracks and the innumerable
dragon-like trains of freight cars and the hive of busy, shifting
engines that were making up trains, that I realized how wise I had been
by coming a half hour early. I asked a switchman where I should find
the freight which left for Buffalo at half-past six. Then I realized
still more acutely that my difficulties were only begun, for after he
had whirled the lever over and allowed the section of shunted cars to
rattle past, he turned to me and with a very decided and pugilistic
gesture, asked me if I would not immediately consign myself and all my
ancestors to a very negative theological place. I stumbled over the
switches and as I went felt the hot, resentful glare of the railroad
crews, as they refused me the information I sought and spiced their
refusals with peppery idioms. They would have buffeted me had I not
been armed by the pass. Finally, knowing that I was in danger of
losing my train, I entered the switch-house and after I had gulped a
stomachful of pipe-smoke, one of the men told me that I should find the
train if I would look for the numbers of the cars which were written on
the pass. So I went out in the dim twilight and tried to match numbers,
which to my startled, nervous imagination looked like 54679900993259
and 563780533255555555573275, but which, in reality, were an inch or
two shorter! Finally I found the two numbers, and then I eagerly ran
down the length of the train until I came to the caboose. I climbed up
the steps, opened the dusty door and was immediately greeted by the
angry gaze of the conductor and brakemen who were busy with some sort
of schedules.
As I humbly presented my pass to the conductor, and when it was made
known to the crew that I was to be their guest in the comfortable
caboose, they immediately gave me a lurid and explicit welcome: one
that made me shiver. Genealogical connections of a hitherto unknown
nature were ascribed to me; to them I appeared as one of the brood of
imps from that negative theological place, and various exciting and
blood-bringing adjectives were loaded on me that made my flesh quiver.
The conductor, after generously and minutely explaining how undesirable
was my presence in that caboose, going into the minutest details of my
personal limitations, sent me, shuddering, over to the opposite side
of the car, as far away as possible from his presence, where I found a
padded window seat which was to be my bed overnight.
When the train started, and the crew were sitting around with nothing
to do, I tried to enter into conversation with one of them. But I was
_persona non grata_; of a different caste, I was told to “hang my lip
on the clothes-hook,” a grewsome feat and quite a poetic conception.
The window, a little square one, was high above my head. I stood on the
seat in the attempt to look through it into the night. Immediately I
was told to “switch off.” Then I made myself comfortable for the night
by spreading myself at full length on the seat. After a time, the
fumes of the lamp drugged me into a doze, and then the thunder of the
freight and the dull, dull rumble of the train crew’s voices sent me
off into a fretful, but long sleep. In the morning, when I opened my
eyes, and looked out of the back door window, we were passing stations
in Ohio. The morning was very pleasant, and thinking that a whole night
of my presence might have made the train crew tolerant, I ascended into
the lookout, above the roof of the caboose, where, from the cushioned
seat, I could make a splendid observation of country through which we
were passing. But my joy was short-lived. Immediately the thunders of
the conductor called me down and I was sternly ordered to “sit down
where you belong,” a command which was followed by a descriptive phrase
which linked me to a low and disreputable order of creation.
By nine o’clock we brought up in the Cleveland yards, where a new
caboose and a new train were to be fastened to the freight. I was told
to “grab” my belongings and “git the-twelfth-letter-of-the-alphabet out
of this!” which I did, and found, when I got to the ground, that the
freight train had gone off and left the caboose standing in the yard.
Then I went on a frightful, heart-thumping search for the two cars
with the long numbers on them: not spending any time to be rebuffed by
the yard men. I leaped from track to track and searched car after car
until, at last, I found the numbers I wanted, and by following out the
length of the train, came to the new caboose.
In this second caboose I resolved not to irritate the crew, and to this
end I made myself comfortable in my allotted place, took off my boots,
put on a pair of tennis shoes, and read a book I had in my suit-case.
When the train finally entered the Buffalo freight yards I was hurried
out, as the conductor wanted to lock the caboose without the loss of a
minute. When I got to the ground, in my hurry, and after the conductor
had locked the door and left me standing dazed, I found that I had left
my shoes in the caboose. But no amount of search for the conductor
succeeded, and finally one of the railroad men told me that I might as
well give up the search, especially as the caboose had been whirled
out of sight by a switching engine. So I went into the city with my
suit-case and my lean purse, determined to visit the sales stables and
stock-yards, until I should find a chance to ride on to New York City.
I realized that if I should ever arrive in New York I should not have
enough money to carry me home, but I followed a blind instinct which
seemed to tell me that, New York attained, “something would turn up.”
In one of the back streets of Buffalo I found a Temperance Hotel, where
beds and rooms were fifteen cents a day. The hotel had in its frowsy
lobby a group of unkempt men who seemed to be temperate in one thing
more strikingly than another,--work, for during any part of the day I
found them there tipped back in the chairs holding their conferences on
momentous matters. I left my umbrella with the clerk for collateral,
and told him that further security for my board would be my suit-case
which was certainly worth thirty-five cents. I had a good thirty-cent
dinner in the dining-room, and then went out to visit the stock-yards
of the city.
When I saw the multitude of cattle pens, near the railroad, and saw
them filled with sheep and cattle, I estimated that in them alone were
two hundred and fifty possible trips to the end of the world; but
when I entered the lobby of the Stockman’s Hotel and tried to get the
influence of the cattle-buyers towards a pass, they would have nothing
to do with me. Thus rebuffed, I went the rounds of the sales stables,
of which there were many facing the stock pens. In these I was told
there were no sales on just then, but that if anything turned up they
would see what they could do. That gave me hope, so I said that I would
call on them during the next day.
During this wait I found that my money was nearly gone. I had fifty
cents on hand for board. I asked a disreputable fellow, near the
Temperance Hotel, where I could get some cheap meals. He pointed to
the next street and told me that they had three-cent meals in some
of the eating-houses there. That evening I indulged in a three-cent
supper. It consisted of a dish of beans, a slice of bread, some
“butter” and a cup of coffee. I went to the same place for breakfast
the next morning and for three cents secured a cup of coffee, a
doughnut, and a dish of stew. That morning a heavy rain began to fall,
and, for the first time, I began to miss the shoes I had left in the
caboose. I had on a suit of good clothes, so that the worn tennis
shoes on my feet were all the more startling; but when the streets
were filled with running brooks of rain through which I was forced to
walk, it was not merely a matter of appearance with me, but a matter
of comfort. On my way to the stock-yards to see what the sales stables
could do for me, my feet were uncomfortably soaked to the skin. The
canvas tops of the shoes were like mops. Every step I took on the
sidewalk was the cause of a soggy, moppish slop. I expected the first
policeman to arrest me as a suspicious character.
I went from stable to stable, and at each one asked in a tremulous
voice if they were about to send any horses to New York or Boston in
the near future, but neither sales nor shipments were being made. I
tried to interest some of the stock-drovers in the cattle yards in my
affairs, but evidently I bored them. I paid another, desperate visit
to the Stockman’s Hotel, but the cattle-buyers would not give me a word
of encouragement towards a pass to New York City.
After this I returned to the heart of the city and began to plan
against absolute starvation. Even with three-cent meals I could not
have a much longer time to eat unless I obtained some more money.
Then I felt the bulge of my nickel-plated watch, in my vest pocket. I
had paid a dollar for it and had used it for two years. It had been
purchased second-hand from a mill friend and had originally cost not
more than three dollars. I hurried to a pawn-broker’s shop and said,
eagerly, as I handed the shopman the weighty time-piece:
“You can have this at your own price--I don’t care how much you offer.
I need the money!”
He tossed the watch in the palm of his hand, then laughed, and as he
handed it back to me he said, impatiently:
“G’wan! It ain’t wuth a flea! I wouldn’t buy dat t’ing fer junk! Git!”
Disconsolately I passed out, with the shopman’s scornful eyes on me,
and the gaze of a burly negro and his wife following me. I had no
sooner reached the sidewalk, however, than the negro came out and said:
“Say, how much yo’ want fo’ dat watch?”
The negro’s wife appeared, and from their excessive interest in
the watch I knew that they would purchase it if I should put out an
enticing price. I cogitated in my mind as to how much I might have to
pay for a pair of second-hand shoes, and then said:
“Fifty cents! Keeps good time, too, see!”
The negro took the watch in his hand, and evidently it was the enormous
size of it rather than its efficiency as a time-keeper that interested
him, for he spent more time gazing on its back than he did in
contemplating its works. He thrust his hand into his pockets and gave
me a fifty-cent piece which, just then, looked as round and golden as a
harvest moon, but more tangible.
I hurried from the negro as swiftly as I could in fear that he might
repent and ask for a return of the precious coin. I hastened down a
side street, made a spiral through a maze of streets, and then felt
that the half dollar belonged to me. I next began a search for a pair
of shoes. There were rows of them in a Jewish cobbler’s window, so
I went in. The Jewish woman, who was in charge, in the absence of
her husband, asked me what size I wanted, and then pulled out for my
inspection a pair of iron-clads that would not have been amiss on the
feet of Ulysses when he started out on his wearing travels, and they
surely would have lasted him through all his strenuous adventures.
[Illustration: SAY, HOW MUCH YO’ WANT FO’ DAT WATCH]
“Fifty-four cents!” announced the woman.
I told her that I could not spend a cent more than fifty for foot-wear
else I should have to go without supper, and that wet feet were more
comfortable than an empty stomach.
We then entered upon an oriental haggling during which I found
it imperative to credit myself with every virtue of honesty and
candidness, and during which she called on every prophet to witness
that the shoes should not go for a cent less than fifty-four. I held
up my soggy tennis shoes and tapped them on the floor so that their
miserable splash should strike a compassionate chill in her hard heart.
I told her my lifetime’s history; gave her a most pathetic list of my
adventures; descanted with fervor on the unkindness of men towards one
who was trying to make his way, and then the shoes were mine!
I had to learn to walk over again when the dry shoes were on. I half
stumbled at first with the weight, but I felt that at last I could
go on the main street of the city and pass among respectable people
without having harsh comments made.
After my three-cent supper, I hurried to a church where a
prayer-meeting was in progress. After the meeting I made a confidant
of the minister, who took me before a group of men; the total result
of which was that they lent me ten dollars on a note which I later
paid, or tried to pay, but they refused to accept the money and sent
me back my note. A scalper’s ticket to New York City took nearly all
of the ten dollars. I returned to the “hotel” where I sold my umbrella
and out of the proceeds paid my room rent and bade good-bye to the
men who lounged there. The New York train which I had to take did not
leave Buffalo until two o’clock in the morning. As I went through the
quiet streets, the scavengers were out, with bags on their shoulders,
fingering the refuse barrels that lined the curbs in front of hotels
and eating-houses. It was a glimpse of poverty that made me shudder,
and which by comparison made me feel quite aristocratic.
The conductor accepted my scalper’s ticket without comment, though he
might have put me off the train on the least suspicion. I took off my
heavy shoes, leaned back in the seat and fell asleep without a care to
distract me while the express hummed smoothly through the night.
As soon as the train arrived in the New York station I had to hurry
across the city to the steamboat wharves in time to board the
Providence steamer for the dollar ride into the Fall River zone. Though
I had never been in the metropolis before, and though I stood for a
thrilling moment in the very midst of its wonders, impelling poverty
drove me across the city like a slave-master’s whip, and I boarded the
steamer with merely an impressionistic glance of some ferry-houses,
some wholesale fruit houses, a dilapidated horse-car, some street
corner blockades, a whiff of Hester street, and the East River bridges.
After a night in the forward part of the boat, sleeping in a berth
which might have been the confines of a barrel, while a drunken man
next to me kept up a periodic, loose-mouthed protest to a man in the
upper berth that he wished he wouldn’t snore so loud and keep everybody
awake, I was put ashore in Providence. From there I was taken by
trolley into Massachusetts and home. When I arrived in New Bedford I
had thirty-five cents remaining in my pocket. But I was home! And ready
for the next step in my education, whatever that should be.
_Chapter XX Aunt Millie’s Interpretation of Education. The Right Sort
of an Adviser Gets Hold of me_
I hurried--with a feeling of pride--in the direction of the tenement
where my aunt and uncle were living. It was nearly noon. I would
surprise my aunt! I knocked on the door. My Aunt Millie stood before me.
“Hello!” I cried. “How are you?”
She gazed on me with evident surprise, and with a mixture of suspicion,
which she put in her first words:
“I thought you were out getting made into a gentleman--at one of those
schools?”
“Why, aunt, I’ve had two years of education--so far. I mean to have
more.”
“But where’s that fortune you’ve made?”
I gasped.
“Fortune? I’ve only got thirty-five cents and I’m in debt for that!”
“It’s a failure, then?” she asked, maliciously.
“Of course it isn’t a failure!” I insisted, desperately. “Two years of
it have helped me very much. I mean to get more of it, aunt!”
“But you look poorly dressed, and you tell me that you’re poorer than
the day you went. I always thought education meant getting along in
life!”
“It does mean getting along in life,” I argued, “but not necessarily
getting along in money--or even good clothes. It has to do with the
mind--with the thinking powers--eh--”
She burst into mocking laughter and said:
“Oh, that’s it? Then maybe you’ll not be needing bed and board now that
you’ve had two years of education,--is that the state of things?”
“Oh, you don’t understand, aunt. Of course you can’t do much in the
world with only two years of it. It needs several years of it before
you can really get a position in which money or prestige may be made.
I’m only just on the way: in the first stages.”
“Then why aren’t you in it? What have you come back to us for? I
suppose you are short of money and want us to help you along in your
brainless undertaking, eh?”
“Have I asked a cent from you during the last two years, aunt?” I asked
with some show of spirit. “Haven’t I earned my own living even when I
have been at home? Is it likely that I’ll ask you to help me through
now?”
“It wouldn’t do any good if you were to ask us,” she said, firmly. “We
have debts enough in the house now to drive us to distraction.”
“Of course,” I said, “it will be some weeks, probably, before I can
shape my plans. You will let me stay here?”
“There,” she sniffed, “he’s coming the soft soap act on, now! I thought
you had something up your sleeve. So you want me to board you free of
charge for some weeks, eh, while you lord it around without working?”
“I shall have to plan just what to do next!” I announced, feeling that
this last touch to my already heavy load would break me. “That’s all. I
shall be going off to some sort of a school if it’s possible.”
“Two days free: that’s as long as you can stop without board,” she
announced. “I never was for this hair-brained business. It’s taken your
earnings away. After two days you must pay board.”
I knew it was fruitless to argue with her any further and I longed for
the noon to arrive when I could have Uncle Stanwood’s more comforting
greetings.
My uncle came in and was extremely pleased to greet me, and my return
so unexpectedly considerably upset him.
“Two years of learning, steady,” he commented. “That’s good. You are
the first Priddy to get such a chance. Make the most of it. Two years
is a good beginning. I can notice a difference in your speech and your
manner already. Keep on, Al!”
“His learning hasn’t given him any silk shirts or gold-headed canes,
has it?” scoffed my Aunt Millie.
“Don’t heap it on the lad,” chided my uncle, “it’s taken a lot of
courage and perhaps suffering for him to get through as he has. We
haven’t done anything towards it, Millie; so we shouldn’t have much to
say!”
Then my uncle asked a perfectly natural and innocent question.
“What are you aiming to be, Al, when you’re through with the schools?”
Tremblingly I whispered:
“A preacher, I think!”
If the world had cracked or the moon had leaped into the middle of our
kitchen, my aunt could not have been more startled than she appeared to
be at that announcement. She instantly rallied her powers of ridicule
and sarcasm and indulged in the following monologue that had little
savor of love in it:
“Oh, oh! That’s the lay of the land, is it? A parson! A Priddy a
parson! A fawning, hypocritical parson! A tea-drinking, smirking thing
in black. Why, at least, didn’t he choose to be a lawyer or a doctor or
something worth while? I thought he had brains!”
“Millie!” thundered uncle. “Shut up! Do you want to crush the lad?”
But she was not to be stopped. She grew almost hysterical in her tirade.
“I suppose he’ll be hurling his sermons at us, so sanctimonious and
pious!”
“Hush, aunt, please,” I pleaded, “don’t shout so loud, people will hear
and wonder what’s wrong!”
“There,” she went on with a dry laugh, “just hear that low voice: it’s
just the voice for a parson!” Then she posed before me in dreadful
mimicry, with her finger tips touching in front of her and an affected,
upward cast in her eyes, while she cried, ingratiatingly:
“‘Be good, be very, _very_ good, my dears! Do right like me and get to
heaven!’” and then releasing herself from this display she suddenly
roared, “You old hypocrite, you! The idea, _you_ a parson!”
“God knows,” muttered uncle, “it is to be wondered how a lad brought up
with us could ever turn his eyes in that direction!”
At that my Aunt Millie cast on her husband a frown and said, snappishly:
“Aye, you old sinner. Your conscience is working now. No wonder you
talk like that!”
During the dinner, while my aunt was in the pantry, uncle bent towards
me and whispered:
“Come out with me after dinner, Al. We’ll talk there!”
At half-past twelve we left the house together and sat down on some
logs on an empty lot near the mill where uncle said, after I had
recounted to him my two years’ experiences:
“But what can you do now? It seems that you have cut yourself off from
everything by leaving that school. You have nothing to go to now!”
“Oh,” I replied, “there are scores of places that I might go to in
the East here, if I only knew where to look. Rather than be idle, I
might go to the local high school and work during the spare time for
my board and clothes. Then there are free academies and preparatory
schools where I might get a chance. I will begin to look around. Mr.
Woodward, the minister, might know of some things. I mean to see him
this afternoon. I shall try to keep on with my studies somehow.”
“Why don’t you go into the mill for awhile and then get some money by
you, Al. It would make it easier for you?”
“But I can’t spare the time, uncle. I ought to keep right in with an
unbroken school career. It can be done if only the right place be
found. I am all at sea, just now, but I shall inquire. I know I shall
find something.”
We talked until the one o’clock whistle sounded, and then I went in the
direction of the minister’s house to consult with him concerning my
future.
Mr. Woodward was minister over a little church of mill people, one of
those underpaid men who not only preach faith but express it in many
kindly but unheralded services to society. He obtained congenial work
for overworked factory girls, sent tired mothers into the country in
the summer season, sent invalids to hospitals, inspired mill lads in
self-culture, and kept his own busy mind furnished with the latest and
most scholarly information in social science and theology.
When I rang his door-bell my heart nearly failed me with the thought
that as he had never had the privilege of attending a college or a
theological seminary, he might be unable to give me any advice on my
immediate problem.
But after we had sat in his study for an hour, and he had sounded me on
my past experiences, and when I had concluded with a very pessimistic
exclamation,
“But I guess I’ve thrown away my chance by leaving Evangelical
University, Mr. Woodward. I don’t know what took possession of me,
I’m sure. It was such a whim, especially when I was doing so well out
there!”
The big Scotchman stood up, laid his heavy hand on my shoulder and
exclaimed,
“Albert, I think I see you continuing the fight from now on, if I can
possibly do anything. You must have courage and faith; they are more to
you than money.” He swept his hand across his eyes as if to sweep back
the years and said, reminiscently,
“Oh, if I’d had your chance, lad! You don’t know what it cost me to
lose my chance! Listen!” He then recounted to me his own experience in
search of an education and unfolded dramatic incident after dramatic
incident for my encouragement. He showed me himself by a peat-bog fire,
in the north of Ireland, amidst poverty, struggling with his few books.
He showed me himself, an immigrant landing in New England, where he
began to work in the flare of a furnace. Next he showed me how his
chance for going to college had been cut off by his marriage. That
was followed by the picture of him, sitting in a room through the day
learning Greek and theology, while his wife went into the mill to earn
the money for rent and clothes and books. The memory of those severe
struggles which had cost nerve and health brought tears swimming into
his kindly eyes. He said, in conclusion,
“Why, if I were in your place, lad, I’d black boots to get to a
college, I would. Don’t lose a day. I know a theological seminary in
high standing where you can get as good a training for the ministry
as may be secured anywhere in the United States, where your mind will
awaken and where you may not feel ashamed after graduating from it.
From there you can go to a college, entering the Junior year. That will
mean five years more, Albert, five years of blessed privilege, which I
shall envy you, lad!”
“But I have no money, and it must cost money to enter the theological
seminary,” I insisted. “I should have to get there, and there would
occur several expenses for books and things when I get there.”
“I can get fifty dollars for you on a note, which I will secure. Trust
me,” replied Mr. Woodward. “I mean that you shall go ahead. The world
can’t afford to let one of its ambitious lads slip up. It’s not good
economy. Fifty dollars will start you off. The expenses at the seminary
are trivial. There will occur opportunities for self-help. In the
summer you may get a church. Come to me tomorrow afternoon. I’ll get
busy with the telephone and telegraph right away. The Seminary opens
this week. Come tomorrow, lad, and I hope to have good news for you. I
feel that you’ve got your chance!”
As I left him standing at the door, gazing after me, I hurried home
whistling; thinking, too, what an overturn of emotion can occur in a
single day.
_Chapter XXI. Over the Sea to a New Educational Chance. How I Revenged
Myself on the Hungry Days. The Cloistered Serenity of the New Place_
The following afternoon when I arrived at Mr. Woodward’s house, I found
a young man with him, whom he introduced as Mr. Blake, a Congregational
minister from a nearby town, whom he had invited in to talk to me about
the Seminary.
“Mr. Blake graduated there a few years ago and can tell you all about
it,” added my friend.
“Had you better not show him the telegram you have from the President
of the Seminary?” suggested the young man.
Mr. Woodward smiled, and showed me a telegram which read,
“Send the young man at once!” and bore the signature of the Seminary
President.
Then Mr. Woodward put his hand into his pocket and brought out from
thence a cluster of crinkling bills.
“Hold your hand, Albert,” he smiled. “It’s money!”
He counted into my hand fifty dollars and said,
“If you are energetic, this is all the money you will have to borrow
for awhile. I am glad for you, my lad. Now I have to attend a funeral.
You go out for a walk with Mr. Blake and come back with him in time for
supper. We’re to have an informal celebration together.”
I led Mr. Blake to the Point Road, the peninsula which juts out like
a forefinger from the south end of New Bedford into Buzzard’s Bay.
We walked along the grassy foot-path, near the low wall, past the
shimmering sea, the flying, croaking gulls, and a parade of scallop
boats. My companion had a very ambitious moustache which was trying
hard to mature, and he had a trick of unconsciously aiding the ends
by pulling them as he talked. While he interjected theological shop
talk, and had a long dissertation on Textual Criticism versus Literal
Inspiration, when he found that I had been in such a conservative
theological atmosphere as Evangelical University, and though he
prattled familiarly the names of Renan, Weissmann, Schleiermacher, and
Ritschl, I found inspiration in the man himself, for I kept thinking
to myself on that walk, “He has attained to what you are after.” We
came to a grove of spruces that had grown on the edge of some rocks
by the side of the road. Here, a quartet of blue-bloused Chinamen
were celebrating some sort of a holiday by playing strident tunes on
queer pipes and tom-toms, joining in with their falsetto voices. Mr.
Blake and I found a secure place on some ledges, from which we could
throw pebbles at the white gulls that walked up and down the beach in
lady-like fashion.
When we returned, at the supper hour, we sat down with Mr. Woodward at
the table, where both men set my head to whirling by the confidence
with which they recounted my future enjoyment of the Seminary.
Had it not been for the crumpled fifty dollars in my pocket, the
entire experience would have had the shape of a dream, for only two
days before I had stood before my critical aunt with no plans and
with thirty-five cents for my fortune. My freight ride and Buffalo
experience seemed years back, in a dim haze.
On arriving home, I pulled out the fifty dollars and showed the amount
to my aunt and uncle.
“Where did you get all that?” gasped my uncle.
“Borrowed it,” I replied. “I go to a theological seminary in two days.”
My aunt wanted to know what sort of a lunatic I was to borrow money on
which to get an education. Her theory yet remained, that only those
with large fortunes were entitled to an education.
But from the shining eyes of my uncle, I gathered that he felt glad
over my prospects, as I unfolded them to him.
Two evenings later I sat on the hurricane deck of a steamer that was
to carry me to the Seminary city. I watched the golden dome of the
State House dwindle to the size of a noonday sun. I watched the waves
from our paddles wash the edges of innumerable islands. We passed the
lighthouses: huge warning fingers flashing their diamond lights. Our
bow foam swirled over the low-lying decks of loaded coasters. Then
we entered the silences of the ocean: even the sun left us and we
swirled into night. The dismal echoes of bending bell-buoys reached our
ears out of the darkness. The chilly, night wind threatened us with
influenza, so we hurried into the cabins where, under bright lights,
people were chatting, and where, in a far corner, a musician was
tickling the popular tune from the piano:
“All the Stars in the Sky, Dear, Speak through the Night of You-u-u!”
When the glistening negro, in spotless white, rushed through the cabin,
waving a pink-bordered towel and muttering to the ceiling or to the
thick carpet, as if it were no concern of his, that this was “the last
call for dinner,” I felt that I would adventure into the considerable
menu a dollar would bring me, if for nothing else but to atone for
those hungry days of three-cent meals in Indianapolis and Buffalo!
The next morning the steamer was poking its prow insistently through
the sea and through a drizzling rainstorm. We were near land again and
passed bleak islands hardly bigger than a man’s hand on which were
exiled lonesome, bleating sheep. Then we left the bays back of us and
entered the mouth of a river roadway whose banks were lined with golden
foliage. We passed a grim, grey fort and then stopped at a quiet town
whose roofs were buried in tall trees, which in turn were topped by the
spires of two old-fashioned churches which seemed to be telling the
townspeople in which direction God was to be found. The river roadway
deepened and narrowed and twisted as we ascended it. Then we left
the autumn beauties of tree and shrub and passed between ice-houses,
factories, and tenements until a bridge marked the limits of navigation
and we were put ashore in the Seminary city.
The steamboat wharf was the front porch to a large city which began at
the summit of a hill to the south, crowded the hillside, wandered into
the valley, and ascended another hill and continued on it as far as the
eye could reach. I walked over the cobbled street in front of the wharf
shed, made my way past long rows of cordage and commercial houses,
and came out into a triangular market-place, shut in by low-set brick
and wooden houses, cheap hotels, fruit, fish, and sailors’ clothing
stores. The market-place was thronged with wagons and stalls. In one
section the hay wagons were massed and over them groups of stablemen
and citizens argued until load after load had been sold. In another
section, with their backs forming an aisle through which I walked, were
the butcher-carts offering roasts, strings of sausage, coral strings of
frankfurts, and whole sides of pork. Back of them were the vegetable
carts with loads of squashes fresh from the fields and heaps of greens.
After walking through this noisy market, I came to the main business
street of the city, lined with stores and humming with cars. Then I
walked up a hill past residences and dying grass lawns, until, in a
triangular fence which followed the parting of two streets, I had my
first view of the theological seminary.
The seminary was separated from the modern houses about it not only
by the fence, but also by its age, its soberness, its shaded walks,
and its ample stretches of lawn. Behind the leaves of the trees I saw
one of those mill-like dormitories which our stern, eighteenth-century
forefathers loved to build when they planned colleges and seminaries.
The whole aspect of the place, as I entered the gate, was one of
monkish repose, of academic sedateness. The drab paint on the porches
of the dormitory and covering the professors’ houses, the dignified
layers of brick in the chapel, all said, as plainly as you please,
“Don’t laugh here!” All my early dreams concerning how colleges and
places of learning should look, were realized. The very bricks in the
buildings seemed to be after a theological education.
As I put my foot on the porch a young man met me, asked me if I was
“Mr. Priddy,” and on learning that I was, he escorted me immediately
over to the president’s house, where the final arrangements for my
matriculation in the Seminary were completed. An hour later, under the
guidance of Burner, who was an upper-classman, I was purchasing an oil
lamp, a parlor stove, a ton of coal, a wash basin, two coal-hods, and
sundry decorations. Two hours after that I had unpacked my belongings
in a double room on the fourth floor of the dormitory, and when the
chapel bell sounded for supper, Burner conducted me into a very
old-fashioned Commons, on the walls of which were paintings of ships
and shipwrecks. Here I was introduced to the students and then found
myself eating voraciously of the fare that was set before me.
The next morning, I was awakened by the piping of a little bird that
sang on the window ledge, under the open window.
_Chapter XXII. Stoves with Traditions, Domestic Habits, and Greek,
“Boys Will be Boys”_
The apocalyptic hope of the students who were domiciled in Therenton
Hall, the Seminary dormitory, included steam heat and running water;
for neither of those modern conveniences had been installed up to that
time and students had to carry hods of coal up four flights of stairs;
and were compelled to convey pitchers of water the same distance.
Each one had his own coal bin in the vaulted cellar and also owned a
kindling pile which he watched with suspicious and amusing jealousy.
Besides that, ashes had to be raked from stoves, carried downstairs,
and sifted--by the thrifty--in a far corner of the cellar, where lay
the dormitory ash heap.
The parlor stoves, coal-hods, water bowls, and pitchers, the personal
possessions of the students, were handed down from class to class,
in many instances, until the most trivial price--say a dollar for a
six-foot stove--gave a profit of ten cents and three years’ use to
the senior who sold out. The stove I purchased for two dollars was a
giant of a stove, high, bulky, and lavishly decorated with ring-a-rosy
cherubs, covered with a thick coating of stove polish until they had
ceased being an angelic silver and had become an Ethiopian black. I
mention this stove because its sheet-tin girth was hallowed by hoary
traditions, and if it could have spoken it would have kept me cheered
for many hours by a recital of the different escapades in which it had
figured at the hands of the theologues. The rust on its bands, for
instance, was due to the fact that some students had plastered it with
a swaddling of sticky fly paper. The dent immediately under the hood
had been made by a flying theological treatise which had been aimed
originally at the head of an intruder, who insisted on keeping one of
the stove’s former owners from a study of Hebrew nouns. The broken
foot, which rested on some thin wafers of wood, was caused by the
attempt on the part of some students to reverse the stove during the
absence of another owner who was paying court to one of the young women
in the city.
We attended to the dusting and care of our own rooms with more or
less thoroughness. Some of my friends chose to sleep and study amidst
dust and disorder rather than to endure the strain and toil of a
sweeper, a beater, and a duster for a Saturday morning. When we went
to a city prayer-meeting or a lecture, we would usually dangle our
greasy kerosene cans as far as the corner grocery and leave them to
be filled. In fact, so inextricably interwoven with our intellectual
concerns were our domestic habits, that I had not been in the dormitory
very long before I caught myself entering my Greek class holding fast
to a coal-hod, which I had taken the trouble to carry along the walk
and into the recitation building, while I had unconsciously propped
my Greek Testament very snugly behind the lower banister, under the
impression that it had been the coal-hod.
One Saturday morning, Providence or Fate--whatever it would be at
a theological seminary--arranged a _mise en scène_ which called
attention, in an effective way, to the inconvenience of permitting
the students the use of coal-hods and wash bowls. The President was
entertaining a gentleman who had been the first donor to our new
and splendid gymnasium. He had escorted the benefactor through the
bathrooms, the bowling-alleys, over the running-track, and had taken
him among the equipment, with evidences of great pleasure. I had
occasion to be leaving the gymnasium in their wake. I saw the President
throw open the door which led into the lower hall of the dormitory and
heard him say, “This is our dormitory--” or something to that effect,
and he stepped back to allow the seminary benefactor to precede him
into the dignified precincts of our domicile. Then he followed, and one
may imagine how he must have felt, as he gazed upon a chaos of coal,
of wood, of water, and of broken crockery, which lay like the trail of
a sloven over the hall and over the first flight of steps; echoes from
the preceding night, when the top floor had engaged the lower floors in
a counter demonstration of noise, smash, and confusion.
_Chapter XXIII. A Plot Which had for its End the Raising up of a
Discouraged Young Preacher_
One day I was sitting in the apparently deserted library, looking over
the new books which were always kept on a side shelf, at the entrance
to one of the alcoves, when I heard a heavy, most disconsolate sigh,
coming from a hidden corner in the rear of the room. The sigh was
followed by the rustling of book leaves. I continued my investigation
of the new books, but was once more interrupted by that same, prolonged
sighing. It was just such a sigh as Dante must have heard proceeding
from the lips of those unfortunate creatures who stood in neither hope
nor despair. I decided to investigate, and, for that purpose, went down
the alcove from which the sighing seemed to have come, and there, with
his back turned to me, seated at one of the reference tables, with
his head resting woefully on his spread out arms, sat Amos Tucker, an
upper-classman.
I hesitated to approach him, at first, and pretended that I had come
into the alcove for a book. Then again the sigh proceeded from the limp
heap at the table, and, throwing all restraint to the winds, I went to
the table, touched Amos on the shoulder, and said,
“Are you in trouble, Tucker?”
He raised his tearful, grey eyes to me, and said,
“They say I’m not fit to be a preacher!”
I sat down beside him, for from his manner I knew that he welcomed me
to be his confidant.
“Who says so? Any of the students?” I asked.
“No, it wouldn’t matter if it came from them: the church says so!”
“What church is that, Tucker?”
He sat up in his chair and replied,
“I have just started to preach, this year. I have been out for two
Sundays in a little place where they give me seven dollars, out of
which I have to pay a dollar and a half for expenses. It’s not that
I care a snap about the money, though, but I want a place to call my
parish. I feel that I ought to preach. Well, I’ve got a letter from the
committee this morning, telling me that they will have to get along
without me; that they cannot have me any longer for their minister.”
“What reasons do they offer?”
“That’s it!” he responded, with a catch in his voice, “they have had
the bravery to tell me the exact reason. It is this: they tell me--oh,
hadn’t you better read for yourself,” and he handed me the last page of
a letter, explaining,
“It’s all on that one page: all that you want to know.”
I read:
“You can never make a preacher, we feel--excuse us for telling you so
frankly--you have no voice, you do not read well, your grammar is poor,
your themes are not interesting. Your last Sunday morning’s talk on
‘Conscience’ was beyond our understanding. Several good supporters have
threatened to forego their subscriptions if we have you another Sunday.
Will you kindly suggest some one to come to us next Sunday and oblige,
yours in Christian sincerity, etc.”
“Blunt, isn’t it?” he half smiled.
“The idea of asking you to send them somebody, after that!” I gasped.
“Oh,” he sniffed, “it’s all in Christian sincerity, you know!”
“Well,” I added, “there are other places, Tucker. Cheer up!”
Then a most discouraging change came into his eyes, he nodded his head,
and replied, with vigor,
“The trouble of it is, Priddy, what they say is all true, every word of
it! I have a terrible voice and can’t seem to get my words out. I don’t
know much about grammar; never had much of a chance on the farm. I’m
not quick to learn like so many here. I have to plod and plod and plod.
As for interesting sermons, why, if they aren’t interesting I do the
best I can!”
I wanted to ask him, then, why he persisted in entering the ministry,
but I couldn’t find courage to do so, but he had read my thoughts, for
he said, immediately,
“You wonder why, if I know all this, I enter the ministry, and fight
against hope? Well, I’ll tell you. I have felt, right along, that I
might break down my handicaps. At least I thought I would give myself
a thorough trial, no matter how bitter the disappointment of failure
might be. I didn’t mind losing two or three places at first, if I could
finally master myself. It was a sort of inherent vanity of mine that I
could succeed. But this--this seems to be a judgment on me, I guess. I
think I’ll pack up and go out and become--oh, anything that pays day
wages. At least, I can try to be a good layman!”
“Why don’t you try it another year?” I suggested. “Things might turn.”
“How can I stay here if I can’t earn some money by preaching?” he
asked. “If no church will take me, why, I shall have to leave the
Seminary.”
“I wouldn’t leave before having a good talk with some of the
professors,” I suggested. “I think you have the sort of a spirit which
will finally prevail, Tucker.”
“Oh,” he replied, “I haven’t got much spirit--now--after that letter.
They might have borne with me a month or two longer--perhaps I should
have surprised them.” Then he laughed, bitterly. “You can’t guess why I
came into the library with my troubles, Priddy, can you?”
“No.”
“You see this!” and he indicated a large, open book, on which his tears
had been falling. It was a huge, ancient tome, with metal bands and
chipped leather binding. The leaves were yellowed, and from them came
a dampish odor of musty age. It was a Latin edition of “The Book of
Martyrs” opened at the page where the fanciful wood-cut showed heaps of
flaming fagots, blazing in Smithfield market, directly under the bare
feet of a woman, tied to a stake and holding to her breast a crying
infant.
“There is a story about here,” went on Tucker, with a smile, “to the
effect that a former student in the Seminary, when discouraged, would
come into the library and pore over these dismal, grewsome pictures,
and persuade himself that his own sufferings were trivial when compared
with the sufferings of these martyrs! I thought I’d come and try it,
too, but it only intensified my own misery!” He shut the great book
with such an explosion that the dust issued from it and gleamed in the
rays of the sun which streamed in through the window.
“But I’d stay on till the end, Tucker,” I persisted. “It’s worth
trying--if you feel that you have a call to preach!”
“I have the call clearly enough,” he insisted, evidently cheered by my
confidence in him. “If I could only persuade others of it, though, I
should feel happier.”
“Probably you’ll have another chance to preach before you expect it,” I
said, in conclusion, and left him with the intention of speaking in his
behalf to some of the students, who might be able to encourage him in a
substantial manner.
I went, quite naturally, to Burner, the upper-classman who had
manifested an interest in my arrival. The big student heard my version
of Tucker’s experience without comment, and then, after a moment of
thought, answered,
“Don’t you bother yourself any further about him. I’ll do all I can.
This is an upper-classman’s work, and it needs, too, some fine work by
the professors. It wouldn’t take much to drive Tucker off. By the way,
don’t mention to him about your conversation with me. I’m sure he’s got
the stuff in him for a preacher. He needs practical encouragement and
he shall have it. You just watch!”
Two days later, while I was in the gymnasium, practising alone with the
basket-ball, Tucker appeared on the floor in his gymnasium clothes,
and, apparently, in a very happy frame of mind. As he stood opposite to
me and caught the ball as I threw it to him, he said,
“Priddy, I’m going to preach on Sunday; another chance to botch it.”
“Good for you,” I declared. “Where are you to preach?”
“For Burner,” Tucker explained; “he wants a Sunday off. Do you know
whether he preaches from manuscript or not, Priddy?”
“I think that he does read--I know he does. I recollect to have heard
him declare that it was only by reading that one could get logical
sequence: his pet hobby.”
Tucker held the ball in the air for a second and sighed, audibly. “That
makes it somewhat easier for me, Priddy. You see, even if I ramble
on with notes, so long as I don’t read my sermon word for word, the
congregation will give me credit for it, and I may have a chance.
Anyway, I mean to keep on, even if I am rebuffed again.”
The following Sunday morning, while Burner was shaving, he said to me,
“I hope that Tucker has a sermon with some logic in it. Anyway, he will
get back encouraged. Deacon Herring will see to that!” He turned his
face from the glass and smiled at me through the lather.
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
“I have written a letter to my deacon--about Tucker and the tight place
he’s in,” explained Burner. “Told him all the facts and asked him to
work with us to save a good man for the Lord’s cause. After his sermon,
no matter how good or ill it is, Deacon Herring will go up to Tucker
with a radiant face, tell him how glad they are to have him along, and
invite him to preach the following Sunday. Meanwhile the deacon will
forward to me a carefully written, frank criticism of Tucker, from
which we can diagnose his troubles, fairly, and then get some of the
professors to work on his case. Oh,” and Burner’s face was gleaming,
“I guess if there’s any good points under Tucker’s skin, we’ll uncover
them!”
It was an unusual edition of Tucker who returned the following day. I
walked with him, arm in arm over to the Commons.
“There, Priddy,” he chattered, “at last I’ve found somebody who thinks
I’m called to preach. They want me to supply Burner’s pulpit again next
Sunday! He’s to have another day off. Tired, he told me. That’s the
best sort of appreciation, isn’t it?” he added.
Burner said nothing to me or any one else about the personal sacrifice
he made in giving up two Sundays to the discouraged Tucker, but I knew
that the money he gave up was much needed. Burner, meanwhile, received
the diagnosis from his deacon, and reported matters to one of the
professors to whom Tucker looked with great reverence and respect.
The result of this came out in a diplomatic invitation, sent by the
professor, for Tucker to come and have a talk about his affairs--a
perfectly natural request for the professor to make.
It did not take the professor long--armed as he was by Burner’s
report-to get from Tucker a statement of his situation. Finally, the
professor set himself to work, not only on the written sermons of
Tucker, but also on his enunciation, his gestures, and his habits of
thought.
“The professor’s helping me wonderfully,” exclaimed Tucker to me one
day, as we took a walk into the outskirts of the city. “He’s landed
ker-plunk on my worst faults, just as if he could read me like a book.
You’d laugh at the sort of mournful stuff I’ve been giving from the
pulpit! It’s quite plain to me now. I’ve been too depressing. That’s
been one thing. No wonder the people didn’t want some of the stuff I’ve
been guilty of giving. It’s optimism they want, Priddy, _optimism_! The
professor’s proved that, all right! Just you wait till next Sunday,
when I preach for Burner. I’m to have a sermon, entitled, ‘Rejoice, and
again I say, Rejoice!’”
“What have you been preaching on, Tucker?” I asked.
He smiled, as one who could afford now to smile at past faults.
“Judgment, and Conscience, and the Inheritance of Penalty, and
such-like,” he said. “Heavy, eh?”
“I’ve no doubt you had some good ideas on those subjects, Tucker,
though, as you say, they are a trifle doleful, one after the other.”
“Got thinking in a groove, Priddy, that’s what the professor thought.
But, of course, I’ve other faults. I don’t speak up--just whisper:
no life or action. But,” he went on with a confidential smile, “I’m
working hard on that, too. Mean to brighten up on those things next
Sunday; though reformation can’t come in a day or a week.”
The next Monday a most encouraging report came to Burner from his
deacon. Among other things, the old man said in his letter,
“There were not many out to hear him, for they had not cared for his
preaching of the previous Sunday: but to those of us who had heard him
the first time, his second appearance was startling. First of all, he
seemed to have confidence. That was the striking thing. Then, in his
effort to make himself heard he kept on a high-pitched note, which
was somewhat monotonous, but more effective than his former timid
whispering as if he were afraid of bursting the ear-drum of a gnat
which sat on his desk. He fanned the air like a windmill in an effort
to remedy lack of action: but that was a good sign. It argues well
for the young man when he gets on the middle ground. But his sermon!
He really gave us a cheering word; that made most of the others, who
were there, like him. Personally, he would be glad to know in what a
different way I have taken the application of his sermon, to ‘rejoice,
and again--rejoice.’ I wish him the best of success. There is hope for
him. I am getting one or two people, who told me they like what he had
to say about rejoicing, to write notes of appreciation to him.”
“Twenty dollars well spent!” concluded Burner, with a smile. “At the
rate, he is going Tucker will have a church of his own, over which he
will cast his blessing. He has confidence--now!”
Late in the spring, Tucker found himself enjoying somewhat of a local
reputation among us, for he was a decided success, by that time, on his
preaching expeditions. He said to me,
“Priddy, the other people think I’ve got a call--now. I had a narrow
escape, didn’t I?”
_Chapter XXIV. Burner, a Searcher After Truth. How a May-Pole Subdued a
Tribe of Little Savages_
Burner, the upper-classman, though not my roommate, and by his
upper-class privileges under no sentimental obligations to me, became
my constant companion. He was a tall, thick-set man with a very heavy
black moustache, much older than myself and dominated by a very heavy
but sincere temperament. He had been a real estate agent and a country
auctioneer up to his thirtieth birthday. Then he had studied for three
years, privately, with a high-school principal, and later he had come
to the Seminary to put himself under training for the ministry.
Burner almost frightened me by his hunger and thirst after knowledge,
for in him I looked upon the epic grandeur of a mind, long starved,
completely awake. All the outstanding, amazing, bewildering
intellectual problems of the Universe and God, had solutions which
Burner, with a sense of his limitations, sought to master. I had seen
students of books before, prize scholars, in Evangelical University,
but I had never beheld the workings of an awakened, mature mind. Books
and the teachings of the masters were merely the starting points,
the paths of departure, for Burner. He sought his path to God and
God’s mind by his own charts. He was his own authority in thought, an
independent ship under full sail exploring unmapped territory. He would
sit in his Morris chair, in a secluded corner of his room, with his
bony fingers propping up his gaunt chin, and with blazing eyes try to
think out, in his own words, from a synthesis of his own observations,
why God permitted evil. One night he rushed into my room with almost
fanatical eagerness and compelled me to listen while, from a newspaper
item which told of a father who had given some of his blood to his
sickly child, he gave an eloquent theory of the Divine Fatherhood,
suggested by that analogy. All his studies, in language, science, and
philosophy were focussed upon his thought of God. They were not merely
a discipline, or parts of a necessary curriculum, but the means to
an end, the roads over which he went to a completer knowledge of his
faith. The most unrelated and even trivial items of truth aroused his
mind to action and set him at work on the most intricate and abstruse
doctrines. He was critical down to the fine points of sharpening a
pencil: he was intolerant of those who got their conclusions from text
books.
“I’m doing my own thinking,” was his favorite sentence, “basing it on
careful reading and minute information and nearly always I find that
I get conclusions, after hard thought, that I might have secured,
second-hand, from books. But oh, Priddy, what a treat it is to be in
the Seminary, filling in the mind after it has been starved all these
years!”
“It must be a tremendous inspiration to you, Burner,” I said, “you seem
to enjoy it so!”
“Enjoy it!” he gasped. “I revel in it! Just think how blank my mind
was when I came here! I thought they wouldn’t take me. I had never
been to college, and had little preparation. When they did take me and
give me my chance, I resolved to make up for lost time, Priddy. Other
seminaries would have refused me, and I should never have gone into the
ministry. Of course it is the biggest inspiration that has ever come to
me. It is my first real chance!”
I soon learned that I had found in the East what I had found in
Evangelical University, a professional school that was willing to bend
to the service of the ambitious but unprepared student. But in the
Seminary there was more point and breadth to the teaching; the studies
were more thorough, intellectually more satisfying; so, with Burner
and with many others who, like myself, had never been to college, I
began the exciting adventure into disciplined truth.
It was rich fare to which I was invited, during that first year: the
tough meat, Hebrew, which even moderately digested, meant exegetical
strength in Old Testament lore, the tenderer portions of Greek which
nourished one’s New Testament appetite; entrées of psychology and
philosophy; well-baked and spiced Church history, and a various dessert
of special lectures comprising every viand from the art of preaching to
nerve-stirring appreciations of social movements.
The social life of Evangelical University had been so narrow that I was
ready to appreciate the broadness of that permitted us in the Seminary.
The professors had us in their homes for teas and dinners. The intimate
touch between us and our teachers formed part of the discipline of
those years. There was hardly any sign of that academic aloofness which
I had always supposed to be characteristic of eastern institutions. I
ran into the room of a sick classmate one Saturday morning, only to
find him being nursed by the professor of theology. The utmost freedom
of thought was given us in the speculations of the classrooms. It was
an atmosphere where bigotry and dogmatism could not live overnight. Our
lives, by being linked to that of the Seminary, began to be linked to
the life of the city; for the churches and the people showed us many
thoughtful courtesies, took us into their circles, and made many winter
evenings merry and profitable.
I still had to rely upon my own efforts for money, but the days of
loading brick, raking lawns, making furnace fires, were gone now, and I
was enabled to earn money in a more professional way. I was given the
task of organizing some children for one of the smaller churches of
the city. One hundred of them met me on Sunday afternoons, in the body
of the church, where for an hour we tried to get along harmoniously
together and incidentally learn some concrete definitions of the
Kingdom of God. I tried to preach through pictures on a blackboard and
through objects like keys and nails, knives and flowers. Many of the
little ones were not used to church etiquette, so I had to wander away
from the Kingdom of God many times to instruct some of them concerning
the necessity of taking off caps in church, of the inhumanity of
pulling one another’s hair braids, of the injudiciousness of poking
pins in one another’s necks. Often, too, when the neighborhood, after
a Sunday feast of mutton and peas, was enjoying its mid-afternoon
slumbers, some of the boys would whirl the church bell and make
startled men and women imagine it was the fourth alarm of a fire. I
had to correct that practise. We held several socials during the year,
socials of a unique character. My assistants would keep the door locked
in the little chapel until the oil lamps had been lifted out of danger.
The popcorn and candy would be put on tables in heaps and the signal
of admission given. Into the room the horde of yelling, scrambling
children would come and fill it with all manner of wild romping. The
refreshments would be given, there would follow another wild frolic,
and at half-past eight the children would go home persuaded that they
had had “a dandy time! Three helpings of popcorn and all the lemonade
you could drink!”
When the first of May arrived, I announced a picnic for the children,
and though the day was cold, more than our actual membership
appeared--with individual lunches. When we arrived at the grove I had
to stand guard over the lunches until the noon hour. Then, after an
afternoon of disordered fun and fight, I managed to secure order on the
way home by permitting the children to hold the ribbons of the May-pole
and to trail behind in orderly procession, singing, as we entered the
residential section of the city, very piously and earnestly, “Onward,
Christian Soldiers!”
Meanwhile the arched elms on the seminary campus leafed out and shaded
the walks with cool shadows. The students met after supper, threw off
their coats, and played ball until darkness. The robins began to perch
on my bedroom window ledge and waken me by their dulcet flutings long
before breakfast. The fumes of burning leaves came through the open
windows from the campus. It was spring and it was graduation time for
the seniors.
It was the season of the year when at Evangelical University the
students, like Thropper, would be planning to earn money during the
coming vacation by taking subscriptions for “The Devil in Society” and
similar objects; but my summer was to be one full of inspirational and
serviceable possibilities. It had been arranged for me, by the seminary
president, that I should take two schoolhouses in a far-away district
and preach during the long vacation. At last I was to actually enter
upon my chosen profession.
_Chapter XXV. At the Heart of Human Nature. A Confidential Walk with
a Dollar Bill at the End of it. A Philosophical Observation from the
Stage-Driver_
A four hours’ journey by train, each minute going farther and farther
away from thickly settled country, and then I found myself waiting on a
depot platform for the stage-driver who was to conduct me to Upper and
Lower Village, twelve miles from the railroad.
I looked around and when my eyes lighted on a wooden-legged man, seated
on the front seat of a democrat wagon, I knew that I had found the
conveyance. I went over to him and said,
“Are you going to Upper and Lower Village?”
He aimed some colored expectoration over his horse’s ear, watched it
alight upon a fluttering piece of paper, and then, satisfied with his
marksmanship, he said, gruffly,
“Ef you’re th’ Elder, why, I got a seat. Jump in!”
The day was excessively hot, and we sat under the full glare of the
sun. We left the little railroad village and plunged on through the
churned-up swirls of choking dust straight into the isolation of this
world, into a part of New England where whole townships have not even
yet attained unto the dignity of names, but like prisoners with their
suffrage taken from them, must be known by mere numbers.
The forests had been leveled, and there were innumerable acres of
deforested land covered with rusty branches which had been left after
the choppers had trimmed the logs. After several miles, we came to wide
stretches of plain, covered with blueberry bushes.
A dip in the road, and we had plowed through the last inch of dust: the
wheels of the democrat rattled merrily over the stone road of Lower
Village. Word had been telephoned from the first farm we had passed
that “the new Elder was on the stage with Bill.” The women boldly stood
at their doors watching; from behind many windows I saw intent faces
engaged in taking a comprehensive glance at me. I maintained a stolid
attitude, and pretended not to be aware of the intense and continuous
surveillance to which I was subjected. We thundered over a wooden
bridge, went up a steep hill, and drew rein at a long veranda, which
“Bill” informed me was the “Office, whar you git down.”
A tall, timid octogenarian, in shirtsleeves, whose thick trousers were
drawn up tightly above soil-daubed shoes, introduced himself as “the
deacon” and conducted me to a little house down a lane which ended
in a pasture. The hot air of the day was fragrant with the odor of
sweet-smelling foliage. Crows were screaming in the distance over the
tops of some burnt pines. A woman, tall and thin and pale, welcomed me
with all the hospitality with which a mother would welcome a son. I
knew from that moment that I had a pleasant summer before me.
The two villages were nothing more than single rows of houses on either
side of a main road. That road went inland for miles and miles through
immeasurable solitudes, where no man dwelt. We were at the end of the
world, apparently.
Then began my missionary experience. I was passed from home to home,
sometimes staying but three days in one place: the object being both
economical and social. The cost of my board, under this arrangement,
was very light on each household, and as each hostess was not satisfied
unless she gave the “Elder” the very best cooking she could produce,
my short stay did not permit any embarrassment to the menu. But more
especially this arrangement made it possible for me to know nearly
every family in my parishes intimately, as the association with the
families at the table was the means of establishing more than a
perfunctory friendship. They learned some of my shortcomings, and I
was made aware of their needs. When, in the latter part of the summer,
I was boarding in Upper Village, in the shadow of the mountain, and
went down to Lower Village for a Wednesday evening meeting, one of the
households expected me to creep into the house with the eldest son, go
into the pantry and “steal” huge slices of blueberry cake. This done,
the husband and wife would come into the kitchen, have a hearty laugh,
and before I started back for my boarding-place, we would have our
serious talk over matters of faith and life.
There were few well-to-do farmers in the community. The distance was
too great from the railroads for the injection of much social life. The
winters were filled with days when life was grim. Had it not been for
the telephone and the mail, the life of that back-road would have been
without any great attractions. But the very isolation of the villages,
and the absence of many social opportunities through the winter, like
a church and preaching, made these farmers the prey of traveling
fanatics, who imported here and there the most fanciful conceptions of
religion and sought, by all manner of persuasion, to turn people into
Mormons and “New Lights,” “Holy Ghosters” and “Disciples.” It did not
take long to see that some of these perversions had taken root in some
homes, and I found myself having to attempt the feat of constructing a
positive and less fanatical doctrine: a feat which at the time I did
poorly enough, but which I took pleasure in attempting. But it was not
formal doctrine or intellectual discriminations which those parishes
needed as much as it was a social man, to impart into their midst,
after the austere winter, a joke, a song, a story, and a friendly
hand-clasp. If I had preached no sermon, but merely gone from home to
home, from field to field, telling men and women and children that I
was their friend, I believe that I should have accomplished the major
part of the needed ministry.
The meetings were held in the upper rooms of two very solidly
constructed schoolhouses four miles apart. Our meetings had to be
announced in two kinds of time, for some set their clocks by the sun,
while others set them by the Standard, sent over the telephone wires.
The dim, chalky atmosphere of the rooms was always colored by rich
green ferns and assortments of wild flowers. Even though the flowers
were bunched in the necks of mustard bottles, tumblers, and cream jugs,
and not always arranged according to Japanese art, yet the thought
that the sense of beauty in religion found expression even in wild
flowers apologized for all else. When the hob-nailed boot and the plow,
year in and out, are uprooting and crushing field flowers, it marks the
high tide of esthetic appreciation when the wearers of the hob-nailed
boot and guiders of the plow take pains to pick those flowers and add
them to their hymns, their prayers, and sermons in praise to God.
No small, narrow opportunity was mine, such as in my gloomier moments
I had ascribed to a country pastor. Preaching a sermon formed but a
fraction of my duty. There were young men and women who sought advice
about the outside world, and their business chances in it. There were
business colleges, academies, hospitals, and mills to propose to the
restless ones, who, like young birds, were to try life on their own
wings.
Entwined in the pastoral work, were many social pleasures that made my
body strong and rested my nerves: adventures over the high hills for
soul-subduing vistas of mountains and lakes; trout fries by the side of
meadow brooks; picnics by the river; visits to bark-peeling camps, over
corduroy roads, and encampment on a lake shore where at night the wild
birds gave voice and were interpreted to us by a guide.
The golden-rod lined the dusty road at last, and the purple flowers
took the place of the lighter summer ones, and it was time for me to
return to the Seminary. The services were crowded that last Sunday;
mothers brought their babies and did not care if the little ones did
compete with me, in voice. I knew what was in the faces, as they looked
intently on me, as I preached. They were thinking that this would
probably be the last preaching they would hear until the following
summer, unless some stray, itinerant evangelist strolled that way and
opened up the schoolhouse for an evening. There were many tearful
farewells, and then the people went out into the night. It was a clear
night of stars and chill. As I left the schoolhouse, having bade
good-bye to the janitor, for I was due to leave on the next morning’s
stage, a young farmer stepped out from the deep shadow of an oak near
the flag-staff and accosted me with,
“Say, Elder, do you care to go up the road a piece?”
I responded that I should enjoy a walk and a chat with him.
While we walked between two walls of trees, our way dimly outlined by
the faint flicker of the stars, my friend said,
“I’m one of the bashful sort, Elder. You know that; but I didn’t want
you to leave without having me tell you how much you have helped my
folks this summer. The time you come in our house and played and sang
at the organ for us, and cheered us up with a laugh, why it made
things different in our house. Since mother died, we’ve been having
a hard row to hoe, and you don’t know how much we’ve appreciated the
cheering up you give us. It gets terrible lonesome out here through the
winter, and I want to thank you for all that you’ve done!”
We took a long walk through the night, paying no attention to distance;
but sharing confidences in true brotherly fashion. Then we turned
about and when we came to the crossroad, in front of the schoolhouse,
we clasped hands, and as he hurried, without another word, into the
darkness towards his motherless home, I felt something crisp in the
palm of my hand. When I returned to my room and had a light I found
that he had given me a dollar bill for a thank offering.
The next morning I had my baggage on the stage, this time for a
return. Bill, with his wooden leg, greeted me, for by this time we
were old friends. The word of parting was given at the post-office,
and the democrat rattled down the grade and over the bridge. This time
a continuous flutter of handkerchiefs and aprons, and a continuous
hearty shout from the men and boys, followed our passage through the
two villages and then we drove into the dusk of the road through the
blueberry barrens, Bill aiming expectoration at every soap sign within
reach, and confiding in me, on the way, the fact that he had loved
once and “lost,” which he seemed to take in a very philosophical mood,
for he concluded with this phrase, “You can’t get the hang of wimmen,
anyhow!”
_Chapter XXVI. The Strange Adventure of Burner into Nothing, and How my
Own Mind Got into Trouble, and How my Faith was Strengthened under the
Chapel Window_
On my return to the Seminary I found Burner in the throes of
intellectual despair. The big fellow was sitting in his room, half
buried in the depths of the green Morris chair, his bony fingers
prodded into his working brows.
“What’s wrong, Burner?” I demanded.
“I’ve been thinking back too far,” announced the serious fellow.
“Thinking back too far?” I gasped.
“Yes,” he muttered. “I’ve nothing to stand on, now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve thought away all substance--now!” he moaned, in despair. “I can’t
even conceive a God!”
“Burner!”
“Horrible, isn’t it, Priddy?”
“What do you mean--explain, so that I can get this thing by its head,”
I suggested.
Burner seriously gathered himself together in his chair, sipped from a
glass of water, and then began,
“Probably I do too much thinking; maybe that’s what’s the matter,
Priddy. When I left here, last June, and went out for the summer, I
began to try to think through substance; I thought I might do it,
sometime. I got to thinking about it, when I took my walks over the
hills, and kept thinking about it, but, somehow, I couldn’t get my
thought back of the material. When I got back here, last week, I was
sitting in this chair, when all of a sudden I did think back of God;
and conceived all reality as being so immaterial that nothing exists:
no, nothing!” he shouted, “not even--God!”
“Can’t you think back again--to him?” I demanded, making an effort to
be of some assistance and comfort to the disconsolate man.
Burner stood on his feet, and paced the floor, excitedly, and said as
he gestured with his hands,
“I’ve got to be honest--with truth, no matter how far it leads me!”
“Yes!”
“Just think how horrible it is; I’ve thought back till I’ve struck
nothing--nothing!”
“Come, it’s not so bad as that, Burner, is it?”
“I shan’t be able to preach, to study, to believe anything!” he
declared. “How can I when there is nothing to preach, to study, or to
believe?”
I could not conceive a more pathetic restraint on a man who sought to
get his living by preaching and study.
“Perhaps some of the professors might help you back--at least as far as
a belief in God,” I suggested, timidly.
“Oh, if I only could get back there,” he pleaded, “I would pray about
the matter, but I can’t pray to nothing, can I?”
I began then to realize how much a dilemma a philosophical honesty
could create.
“You are too serious, Burner,” I proposed. “You ought to take some
things for granted; not seek to explain everything, you know.”
He looked at me through astonished eyes,
“I will take nothing for granted that cannot bear the test of logic!”
“There,” I cried exultantly, “your intellectual adventures have brought
you into German Rationalism: that’s just what’s the matter with you,
Burner. You’re not the first one that has been caught. It is a passing
experience. Keep on thinking, old fellow, you’ll come back after a
time. It looks serious now, but it’s only a phase. Read the biographies
of some of the saints; it will help you back to a positive faith, I’m
sure.”
So I left him with that comfort, hoping that he would not leave the
Seminary in his intellectual excitement, for I felt sure that his
Rationalism or Agnosticism or whatever form of mind he was in, would
pass and give way to something with more color and inspiration in it.
Our studies for the second year were more practical and philosophical
than those we received during the first year. I was ready to appreciate
the value of the studies more after my summer’s experience as a
missionary. The intellectual honesty and sincerity of Burner was
indicative of the spirit which one of the professors, who later left
us, engendered in us. One incident will illustrate the temper of
his art of teaching. Our class, in its first year, had approached
this man’s recitation with a feeling of fear, for his astute mind
and his impassive manner in the classroom, and withal, his absolute
fearlessness in bringing up the other side of an affirmative, had not
reacted in his favor. Even before we knew him, we had him placarded,
in our minds, as an unbeliever! One day when we came into his class we
found that some one had written on the blackboard, the professor’s name
with this legend after it:
“Professor ---- Atheist!”
When he came into the classroom, and saw that, I thought he would burst
into tears; a look of patient wonder came into his eyes, and he merely
said to me,
“Mr. Priddy, will you kindly take the eraser and give us a clean
blackboard!”
Our first class under this teacher was one in psychology. We met and
his first question was,
“What are we to study?”
Instantly one of my classmates replied,
“Psychology!”
“What is psychology?”
My classmate, who had read the definition in the day’s lesson replied,
confidently,
“‘The study of the mind and the processes of the mind,’ sir.”
“Ah, and what do you mean by the mind? What do you know about the mind?
Have you ever seen one?”
My classmate stammered,
“Why--eh, no, sir.”
“Then perhaps some one else will inform me what we are here for?”
No one was willing.
“Then you will return to your rooms, gentlemen,” said the professor,
without a trace of a smile, “and come tomorrow at the same hour and
tell us what we are to study during the year. I really must know. We
cannot get along until I do.”
The next day, some of us met, before the class and conspired to teach
that professor his lesson. We memorized the definitions and the
explanations so that it would be impossible for us to slip. Then we
entered the classroom.
“What are we here for, gentlemen?” began the professor.
Instantly the answer came from the corner,
“To study psychology, sir.”
“Will any one tell me what is meant by psychology?”
“‘A study of the mind and the processes of the mind, as such,’”
responded another student.
“‘As such.’ What is meant by that, sir?”
One of my classmates undertook to explain that “as such” meant that the
“states of the mind” were to be studied as “states of the mind,” and
not as--eh--
“Mince pies?” asked the professor, with a slight, serious elevation of
his eyebrows.
For the next five minutes he went around the class involving each one
of us in our own ignorance until it was impossible for him to get a
reply to any one of his questions.
“Too bad,” he muttered, seriously. “I really don’t see how we are to
get on. This won’t do. You had better go back to your rooms and come
tomorrow and see if we can let in any daylight on this matter. Good
afternoon, gentlemen!”
We resolved that we would not study a single word for the morrow; but
that we would go into the class and have no information to offer. We
would see how the professor would like that!
The following afternoon, pursuant to this plan, when the professor had
greeted us, his first question was,
“What are we to study? Can any one tell me?” It brought no response.
He looked around the room in great astonishment and went from man to
man, asking,
“Can you tell me?” and each time getting a decided and belligerent
negative.
Then a smile of satisfaction lighted up his sober face and he said,
“There, gentlemen. Now that you have made up your minds that you know
nothing about psychology, I am ready to begin to teach you!” and from
then to the end of the year we sat under instruction that was masterly,
inspiring.