"Local Color"
The third senior table had discovered a new amusement with which to
enlighten the tedium of waiting while Maggie was in the kitchen foraging
for food. The game was called "local color," in honor of Patty Wyatt's
famous definition in English class, "Local color is that which makes a
lie seem truthful." The object of the game was to see who could tell the
biggest lie without being found out; and the one rule required that the
victims be disillusionized before they left the table.
Patty was the instigator, the champion player, and the final victim of
the game. Baron Münchhausen himself would have blushed at some of her
creations, and her stories were told with such an air of ingenuous
honesty that the most outrageous among them obtained credence.
The game in its original conception may have been innocent enough, but
the rule was not always as carefully observed as it should have been,
and the most unaccountable scandals began to float about college. The
president of "Christians" had been called up for cutting chapel. The
shark of the class had flunked her ethics, and even failed to get
through on the "re." Cathy Fair was an own cousin of Professor
Hitchcock's, and called him "Tommy" to his face. These, and far worse,
were becoming public property; and even personal fabrications in regard
to the faculty, intended solely for undergraduate consumption, were
reaching the ears of the faculty themselves.
One day Patty dropped into an under-classman's room on some committee
work, and she found the children, in the manner of their elders,
regaling themselves on dainty bits of college gossip.
"I heard the funniest thing about Professor Winters yesterday," piped
up a sophomore.
"Tell it to us. What was it?" cried a chorus of voices.
"I'd like to hear something funny about Professor Winters; he's the
solemnest-looking man I ever saw," remarked a freshman.
"Well," resumed the sophomore, "it seems he was going to get married
last week, and the invitations were all out, and the presents all there,
when the bride came down with the mumps."
"Really? How funny!" came in a chorus from the delighted auditors.
"Yes--on both sides; and the clergyman had never had it, so the ceremony
had to be postponed."
Patty's blood froze. She recognized the tale. It was one of her own
offspring, only shorn of its unessential adornments.
"Where in the world did you hear any such absurd thing as that?" she
demanded severely.
"I heard Lucille Carter tell it at a fudge party up in Bonnie
Connaught's room last night," answered the sophomore, stoutly, sure that
the source was a reputable one.
Patty groaned. "And I suppose that every blessed one of that dozen girls
has told it to another dozen by this time, and that it's only bounded by
the boundaries of the campus. Well, there's not a word of truth in it.
Lucille Carter doesn't know what she is talking about. That's a likely
story, isn't it?" she added with fine scorn. "Does Professor Winters
look like a man who'd ever dare propose to a girl, let alone marry her?"
And she stalked out of the room and up to the single where Lucille
lived.
"Lucille," said Patty, "what do you mean by spreading that story about
Professor Winters's bride's mumps?"
"You told it to me yourself," answered Lucille, with some warmth. She
was a believing creature with an essentially literal mind, and she had
always been out of her element in the lofty imaginative realms of local
color.
"I told it to you!" said Patty, indignantly. "You goose, you don't mean
to tell me you believed it? I was just playing local color."
"How should I know that? You told it as if it were true."
"Of course," said Patty; "that's the game. You wouldn't have believed me
if I hadn't."
"But you never said it wasn't true. You don't follow the rule."
"I didn't think it was necessary. I never supposed any one would believe
any such absurd story as that."
"I don't see how it was my fault."
"Of course it was your fault. You shouldn't be spreading malicious tales
about the faculty; it's irreverent. The story's all over college by this
time, and Professor Winters has probably heard it himself. He'll flunk
you on the finals to pay for it; see if he doesn't." And Patty went
home, leaving a conscience-smitten and thoroughly indignant Lucille
behind her.
* * * * *
ABOUT a month before the introduction of local color, Patty had entered
upon a new activity, which she referred to impartially as "molding
public opinion" and "elevating the press." The way of it was this:
The college, which was a modest and retiring institution craving only to
be unmolested in its atmosphere of academic calm, had been recently
exploited by a sensational newspaper. The fact that none of the stories
was true did not mitigate the annoyance. The college was besieged by
reporters who had heard rumors and wished to have them corroborated for
exclusive publication in the "Censor" or "Advertiser" or "Star." And
they would also like a photograph of Miss Bentley as she appeared in the
character of Portia; and since she refused to give it to them, they
stated their intention of "faking" one, which, they gallantly assured
her, would be far homelier than the original.
The climax was reached when Bonnie Connaught was unfortunate enough to
sprain her ankle in basket-ball. Something more than a life-size
portrait of her, clothed in a masculine-looking sweater, with a
basket-ball under her arm, appeared in a New York evening paper, and
scare-heads three inches high announced in red ink that the champion
athlete and most popular society girl in college was at death's door,
owing to injuries received in basket-ball.
Bonnie's eminently respectable family descended upon the college in an
indignant body for the purpose of taking her home, and were with
difficulty soothed by an equally indignant faculty. The alumnæ wrote
that in their day such brutal games as basket-ball had not been
countenanced, and that they feared the college had deteriorated. Parents
wrote that they would remove their daughters from college if they were
to be subjected to such publicity; and the poor president was, of
course, quite helpless before the glorious American privilege of free
speech.
Finally the college hit upon a partially protective measure--that of
furnishing its own news; and a regularly organized newspaper corps was
formed among the students, with a member of the faculty at the head. The
more respectable of the papers were very glad to have a correspondent
from the inside whose facts needed no investigation, and the less
respectable in due time betook themselves to more fruitful fields of
scandal and happily forgot the existence of the college.
Patty, having the reputation of being an "English shark," had been duly
empaneled and presented with a local paper. At first she had been filled
with a fit sense of the responsibility of the position, and had
conscientiously neglected her college work for its sake; but in time the
novelty wore off, and her weekly budgets became more and more
perfunctory in character.
The choice of Patty for this particular paper perhaps had not been very
far-sighted, for the editor wished a column a week of what he designated
as "chatty news," whereas it would have been wiser to have given her a
city paper which required only a brief statement of important facts.
Patty's own tendencies, it must be confessed, had a slightly yellow
tinge, and, with a delighted editor egging her on, it was hard for her
to suppress her latent love for "local color." The paper, however, had a
wide circulation among the faculty, which circumstance tended to have a
chastening effect.
The day following Patty's bride-with-the-mumps contretemps with Lucille
happened to be Friday, and she was painfully engaged in her weekly
molding of public opinion. It had been a barren week, and there was
nothing to write about.
She reviewed at length a set of French encyclopedias which had been
given to the library, and spoke with enthusiasm of a remarkable
collection of jaw-bones of the prehistoric cow which had been presented
to the department of paleontology. She gave in full the list of the
seventeen girls who had been honored with scholarships, laboriously
writing out their full names, with "Miss" attached to each, and the name
of the town and the State in its unabbreviated length. And still it only
mounted up to ten pages, and it took eighteen of Patty's writing to make
a column.
She strolled down to examine the bulletin-board again, and discovered a
new notice which she had overlooked before:
Friday, January 17. Professor James Harkner Wallis
of the Lick Observatory will lecture in the
auditorium, at eight o'clock, upon "Theories of
the Sidereal System."
Patty regarded the notice without emotion. It did not look capable of
expansion, and she did not feel the remotest interest in the sidereal
system. The brief account of the lecturer, however, which was appended
to the notice, stated that Professor Wallis was one of the best known of
living astronomers, and that he had conducted important original
investigations.
"If I knew anything about astronomy," she thought desperately, "I might
be able to spread him out over two pages."
An acquaintance of Patty's strolled up to the bulletin-board.
"Did you ever hear of that man?" asked Patty, pointing to the notice.
"Never; but I'm not an astronomer."
"I'm not, either," said Patty. "I wonder who he is?" she added
wistfully. "It seems he's very famous, and I'd really like to know
something about him."
The girl opened her eyes in some surprise at this thirst for gratuitous
information; it did not accord with Patty's reputation: and ever after,
when it was affirmed in her presence that Patty Wyatt was brilliant but
superficial, she stoutly maintained that Patty was deeper than people
thought. She pondered a moment, and then returned, "Lucille Carter takes
astronomy; she could tell you about him."
"So she does. I'd forgotten it"; and Patty swung off toward Lucille's
room.
She found a number of girls sitting around on the various pieces of
furniture, eating fudge and discussing the tragedies of one Maeterlinck.
"What's this?" said Patty. "A party?"
"Oh, no," said Lucille; "just an extra session of the Dramatic Theory
class. Don't be afraid; there's your room-mate up on the window-seat."
"Hello, Pris. What are you doing here?" said Patty, dipping out some
fudge with a spoon. (There had been a disagreement as to how long it
should boil.)
"Just paying a social call. What are you doing? I thought you were going
to hurry up and get through so you could go down-town to dinner."
"I am," said Patty, vaguely; "but I got lonely."
The conversation drifting off to Maeterlinck again, she seized the
opportunity to inquire of Lucille: "Who's this astronomy man that's
going to lecture to-night? He's quite famous, isn't he?"
"Very," said Lucille. "Professor Phelps has been talking about him every
day for the last week."
"Where's the Lick Observatory, anyway?" pursued Patty. "I can't
remember, for the life of me, whether it's in California or on Pike's
Peak."