“There was a time,” I said to my friend Annabel Lee, “when I went
to the Butte High School. I think of it now with mingled feelings.”
“You were younger then,” said my friend Annabel Lee.
“I was younger, and in those days I still looked upon life as
something which would one day open wide and display wondrous and
beautiful things for me. And meanwhile I went every day to the
Butte High School. I found it a very interesting place--much more
interesting than I have since found the broad world. I was sixteen
and seventeen and eighteen, and things were not brilliantly colored,
and so I made much with a vivid fancy of all that came in my path.”
“And what do you, now that you are one-and-twenty?” said my friend
Annabel Lee.
“I sit quietly,” I replied, “and wish not, and wait not--and look
back upon the days in the Butte High School with mingled feelings.”
“Also unawares,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “you still think things
relating to that which is one day to open wondrously for you. But,
never mind,” she added hastily, as I was about to say something,
“tell me about the Butte High School.”
“’Twas a place,” said I, “where were gathered together manifold
interesting phenomena, and where I studied Vergil, and grew fond
of it, and was good in it; and where I studied geometry, and was
fond of it, and knew less about it each day that I studied it;--and
always I studied closely the persons whom I met daily in the Butte
High School. I recall very clearly each member of the class of
ninety-nine. My memory conjures up for me some quaint and fantastic
visions against picturesque backgrounds that appeal to my sense of
delicate incongruity, especially so since viewed in this light and
from this distance.”
“What are some of them?” said my friend Annabel Lee.
“There is one,” said I, “of a girl whom always in my mind I called
The Shad, for that she was so bland, and so flat, and so silent,--and
she had a bad habit of asking me to write her Latin exercises, which
perhaps was not so much like a shad as like a person; and there
is one of a girl who spent the long hours of the day in writing
long, long letters to her love, but knew painfully little about the
lessons in the class-rooms; and there is one of a girl who brought
to school every day a small flask of whiskey to cheer her benighted
hours,--she was daily called back and down by the French teacher
on account of her excessively bad French, and life had looked dull
for her were it not for the flask’s pungent contents; there is one
of a strange-looking, tawny-headed girl who sat across the narrow
aisle from me in the assembly-room during my last year in school,
who kept her desk neatly piled with the works (she called them
works) of Albert Ross--and after she had read them, very kindly she
would lean over and repeat the stories, with quotations verbatim,
for my benefit;--her standing in her classes was not brilliant,
but in Albert Ross she was thorough; there is one of a clever,
pretty girl who was malicious--exquisitely malicious in all her
ways and deeds, and seemingly no thought entered her head that was
not fraught with it,--she was malicious in algebra, malicious in
literature, malicious in ancient history, malicious in physical
culture, malicious in the writing of short themes--and when it so
chanced that I made a failure in a recitation, or was stupid, she
would look up at me and smile very sweetly and maliciously; and
there is one of a girl whose quaint and voluble profanity haunts me
still. And especially there is in my memory a picture of all these
on our graduating day, receiving each a fine white diploma rolled
up and neatly tied with the class colors--a picture of these and
the others,--we were fifty-nine in all. And the diplomas stated
tacitly, in heavily engrossed letters, that we had all been good
for four years and had fulfilled every requirement of the Butte
High School. So we had, doubtless--but how much some of us had done
for which in our diplomas we were not given credit! In truth,
nothing was stated in them, in engrossed lettering, about courses
in love-letters, or profanity, or malice, and Albert Ross was not
in the curriculum.
“And the president of the school board doled out those diplomas,
with a short, set speech for each, one wet June day--but he was
not aware how insignificant they were.
“And my mind likewise conjures up a vision of two with whom I
used to take what we called tramps, during our last year in the
High School--far down and out of Butte, on Saturdays and other
days when school was not. I remember those two and those tramps
exceeding well--nor can I think with but four years gone that the
two themselves have forgotten. One of these was an individual whose
like I have not since known. She reminded me sometimes of Cleopatra
and sometimes of Peg of Limmavaddy. She was of Irish ancestry and
had a long black mane of hair braided down behind, and two conscious
and lurid eyes of the kind that is known as Irish blue. She had
brains enough within her head, but did not study overmuch. Her
ways of going through life were often very dubious. She weighed a
great many pounds. Her experience of the world was large, and to
me she was fascinating. For herself, she was always rather afraid
of me--so much afraid, in truth, that if I said a funny thing she
must need laugh--with a forced and fictitious merriment; if I told
her she had no soul, she must need agree with me abjectly, though
she was a good Catholic; if I frowned upon her, she shivered and
was silent. Fanciful names and frocks (though this lady’s frocks
were always fanciful in ways) were selected for these tramping
expeditions. This one’s fanciful name was called Muddled Maud. For
no particular reason, I believe--but she wore it well. The other
member of our trio was of a less extraordinary type. She was stout
as to figure, and she knew a great deal about some things. She was
very good in history, and at home she could make pie and cake and
bread. It is true that her cake sometimes stuck, and sometimes sank
in the middle, and when she carved a fowl she could not always hit
the joints. And she was one of the kind that always pronounces
picture, “pitcher.” She was also known as a very sensible girl. I
can see her now with a purple ribbon around her neck and a brown
rain-coat on coming into the High School on a wet morning. When we
went tramping she usually wore an immense gray-white, mother-hubbard
gown, belted in at the waist, and a wide flat hat, which made her
look rather like a toad-stool. Her fanciful name was Emancipated
Eva. Emancipated, in truth, she was. In the High School she was
dignified and sedate, but on our tramps she would frequently skip
like a young lamb, and frisk and gambol down there in the country.
“She who was called Muddled Maud likewise frisked and gamboled--and
always she personified my idea of the French noun _abandon_.
“Also I frisked and gamboled in those days far down in the country.
“The fanciful name selected for me was Refreshment Rosanna--and I
can not tell why. But it was thought a good name for a lady tramp.
We started on these tramps at six in the morning. We would rise
from our beds at five, and at ten minutes before six I would meet
Muddled Maud at the corner of Washington and Quartz streets, below
her house. Together we would go down east Park street to the home
of Emancipated Eva. Then we walked seven miles or eight away into
the open and the wild.
“We took things along to eat--sometimes a great many things and
sometimes a few. Times Muddled Maud would have but a curious-looking
jelly-roll, and Emancipated Eva would come laden with hard bits
of beef, and I could show but a plate of fudge. But other times
there were tarts and meat-pies and turnovers, and deviled ham and
deviled chicken and deviled veal and deviled tongue and deviled
fish of divers kinds, and some bottles of nut-brown October ale,
and sardines _a l’huile_, and green, green olives. Only the more
there was, the harder to carry. But, times, Muddled Maud would
carry much with little effort--she would adorn herself with the
luncheon--a long bit of sausage-link about her neck like a chain,
and upon her hat, held securely with bonnet-pins, fat yellow lemons,
and two bananas crossed in front like the tiny guns on a soldier’s
hat, and bunches of Catawba grapes scattered here and there, and
pears hanging by their little stems behind.
“The too early morning prevented all from being seen by the
inhabitants of Butte, and we did not venture home again until came
the friendly darkness.
“Those were fascinating expeditions--and whose was the glory? Mine
was the glory. ’Twas I who invented them. ’Twas I who knew there was
none so fitted for a so delicate absurdity as she we called Muddled
Maud; and after her, none so fitted as the fair, the good-natured,
the Emancipated; and together with them both, I. And I led them
forth, and I led them back, and I said things should be thus and
so, and straightway they were thus and so. And we enjoyed it, and
clear air was in our lungs and life was in our veins, for we had
each but eighteen years and were full of youth. But most of all
’twas fascinating because we were three of three widely differing
manners of living and methods of reasoning. For I was not like
Emancipated Eva, nor yet like Muddled Maud; and Emancipated Eva
was not like me, nor yet like Muddled Maud; and Muddled Maud was
not like Emancipated Eva, nor yet like me.
“To be sure, there were some things in my ordering which neither
the one nor the other found enchanting. Why should the MacLane do
all the ordering? they murmured between themselves, but they dared
not openly revolt, so all went well.
“But now these are gone.
“The three of us were graduated from the Butte High School with
the fifty-nine others of ninety-nine, and had each a fine white
diploma, and went our ways.
“She who was like Cleopatra and Peg of Limmavaddy is teaching a
school, according to the last that I heard, in the north of Montana;
and she that was Emancipated Eva has long since gone to California,
and is married, and keeps a house; and for me--I am here, far off
from Butte, with you, Annabel Lee, some things having been done
meanwhile.
“But though the two are gone, I warrant they have not forgotten.
They have not forgotten the Butte High School, nor the class of
ninety-nine, nor the tramps we went, nor their tyrant, me.
“And I daresay they all remember their Butte High School--she of the
love-letters, she of the whiskey-flask, she the student of Albert
Ross, she of the profanity, she of the malice, The Shad,--and all the
nine-and-fifty, the young feminine persons and the young masculine
persons. Some are married, and some are flown, and some of them are
grown up and different, ‘and some of them in the churchyard lie,
and some are gone to sea.’
“But whenever I’ve a fancy to shut my eyes and look back, I can
see them all, a quaint company.
“Also, whenever I’ve a fancy to shut my eyes and look back to life
when it was unspeakably brilliant in possibilities to look forward
to, and was marked in parti-colored checks and rings, it fetches
me to the days when I went to the Butte High School and studied
geometry and Vergil. Only I’m glad I’m not there now.”
“What for?” said my friend Annabel Lee.
“It is rather pitiful and dreadful to think of having been seventeen,
and to have gone every day to the Butte High School and imagined
how wonderful-beautiful life would be some day,” said I, and all
at once felt very weary.