HAZING
The very next evening, as Young and a classmate named Barrows were on
the way from supper, someone stepped out from behind a tree-box and
said, "Here he is, fellows," and the next moment the two Freshmen,
surrounded by a dozen Sophomores, were on their way to the canal.
Channing acted as ringmaster, as usual. To his surprise and, perhaps,
disappointment, Young was not sullen or stubborn; he seemed rather
good-natured about it.
"Take off your hat, Deacon."
"All right," said Young, smiling cheerfully, and lifted his hat.
"Do it again and don't smile."
He did it again and did not smile.
"Who said you could put it back on your head? Take it off and keep it
off."
Young held it in his hand.
"Put it on again," shouted Channing. And so it went.
"Now, Deacon, since you have taken off your cap and have shown how low
you can bow, show us how the prairie-dogs run, out home on the farm."
The group was getting beyond the houses now.
"But there aren't any prairie-dogs where I live in Illinois," returned
Young, smiling.
"That doesn't matter," growled Ballard; "do it anyway."
So William Young, thinking of how the people out home were in awe of him
because he had gone East to college, got down on all fours and ambled
along the dusty road.
"Now you do it, you little Freshman with the big head."
Barrows gave his version of a prairie-dog's method of progress, laughing
as if it were a good joke.
"Now both do it at once," said Channing.
The Sophomores laughed gleefully, especially at Young, he was so big and
awkward.
[Illustration: HAZING.
"Now both sit up on your haunches and chatter awhile."]
"That's pretty good," said Channing, as if he were the exhibitor of
trained animals. "Now both sit up on your haunches and chatter awhile."
Everybody laughed, Young included.
"Don't laugh," said Channing.
"Cork up your laughter," said Ballard.
Then they were made to crow like roosters and bark like dogs, and give
other imitations, until they reached the tow-path of the canal. Here
they were made to strip.
"Can you swim?" one of the fellows asked.
Both said they could.
"Then jump in and swim across. Be quick about it."
The water was cool, but it did not hurt them.
"Now swim back and get your clothes."
While dressing they were made to sing "Home, Sweet Home"--"in order to
keep warm," Channing said.
"Now cheer for the illustrious class above you. Are you
ready?--Hip--Hip!"
The college cheer was given with the Sophomore class numerals on the
end.
"I don't think I heard your sweet voice, Deacon Young," said one of the
Sophs, a tall fellow with glasses. "Suppose you give us one all alone.
Now then, Hip--Hip!"
Young kept silent.
"See here, you cheer, Deacon. Do as we tell you." This from Ballard, who
bellowed.
Young looked around at the Sophomores--there were twelve of them--and
then glanced at the canal; he did not want to go in there again; he was
shivering already.
"Hip--Hip!" said Ballard. Young gave a feeble cheer.
The man with the glasses said: "H'm, you'll have to do better than that.
Now then, a loud one."
Young cleared his throat and gave a loud, full cheer.
"That's the way to talk," they said, encouragingly.
"It won't hurt you, you see," said one of them, rather kindly, in a low
voice.
"You are improving, Deacon Young," said Channing, patronizingly. "We'll
make a man of you yet."
Thus began a new epoch in the life of William Young. During the next
week or so of his college course he was hazed perhaps more than anyone
in his class, although from that first time he no longer resisted or
tried to maintain his superiority.
Undoubtedly hazing, as Linton, the Junior, said, was a good thing for
his system, as it is for any young man, but Young certainly did not need
such severe doses nor so many of them.
Some of the fellows said so the third time he was taken to the canal.
"The old Deacon is all right now," they said; "why d'you give it to him
so hard?"
But Channing was one of these small men that love to get power over big
men; he loved to haze and he hated to have anyone call him little or
mouthy, and Young had called him both. The next night he and Ballard,
who, as will be seen later, had much of the bully in him, would bring
around a different crowd and Channing would take out his pipe, shake it
at Young and say to the others, "Now this old jay Deacon is innocent
and meek enough to look at, but he is atrociously fresh at bottom--isn't
he, Bally, you old horse?"
Young said nothing and took his hazing cheerfully and patiently, hoping
they would soon get tired of it.
"I suppose," he said to himself, as he hurried back to his room to work
until past midnight, in order to make up for lost time. "I suppose I
must be very fresh, or they would not keep it up so long. I did not know
I was so fresh."
But he told himself that if he were only well liked by his own
classmates as he had expected to be, he would not care what his enemies
thought of him. That he had not sprung into popularity, he decided, was
due to that painful occurrence at his first recitation. It made him
flush to think of it even now.
It was on the morning after the rush and after the Sophomores had been
turned out of his room. He went in to the Livy recitation for which he
had prepared himself so thoroughly--he went over it four and a half
times, you may remember--and took his seat, feeling strong and
confident, and, "Mr. Young, please to translate," said the professor,
before the class was hardly settled in its seats.
It was in a low voice. Young was in the back of the room. He was not
dreaming of being called upon first anyway, and he wondered why the
fellow next to him was nudging him with an elbow. Young turned and
looked at him inquiringly.
"Get up," whispered the man.
"What for?" whispered Young.
"Isn't Mr. Young present?" said the professor in a tone loud and clear,
and Young fairly jumped out of his seat, exclaiming, "Yes, marm--yes,
sir, I mean."
He added it quickly but it was too late. Everyone had heard and everyone
was laughing, and even the professor joined in, though he did not mean
it unkindly, and then they all laughed still more. The walls fairly
echoed with it. Even after the professor had rapped for order and the
laughter had quieted down, someone in the front row tittered and that
set them all off again. A new class is always somewhat hysterical. Some
of those in the front rows turned and stared at him in their laughter.
It was a natural mistake. This freshman had prepared for college at a
high school, and most of the High School teachers were women. Young
should have joined in the laughter, but he only stood there, scarlet and
serious-looking and wishing he could disappear forever.
Finally the professor said, kindly, "Now then, Mr. Young."
But Mr. Young was confused, and though he had been over the passage
until he had it nearly by heart, he now became all tangled up and
excited and finally took his seat dripping with perspiration and wishing
he had never come to college. Instead of being perfect his first college
recitation was a flat failure. But the professor did not count this
failure against him because he saw that the fellow was rattled and
because the next time he came in he made the best recitation of the day.
But that was not the trouble. The fellows would not forget it and would
not let up on it. "Thank you, marm," they whispered as he arose to
recite, and "Thank you, marm," they shouted to him on the crowded
campus. The Sophomores took it up. It became a second nick-name.
The worst of it was--in fact the reason of it all was--that he took this
as he did himself and everything else, with entirely too much
self-importance. Instead of laughing or answering back he looked sullen
and sedate when they said, "Thank you, marm," and naturally they said it
then all the more.
It cut and hurt to have his own classmates--the men with whom he had
stood shoulder to shoulder in the rush and at the class meeting--treat
him thus. If they had known that he was taking it so seriously, they
would have stopped. But they did not know it. How should they? Most
people have to suffer before they learn to be sympathetic.
So, altogether, with the Sophomores who hazed and the classmates who
guyed, Will Young decided that college life was not all it was cracked
up to be. But you may be sure he did not let this opinion get into the
letters he wrote home. Because he was discouraged was no reason for
making his mother discouraged too. But, oh, it would have helped a lot,
if he had only somebody to talk to about it all. He did not know how to
make friends with the others, and the others did not seem to care to
make friends, thank you, marm, with the sober-faced old Deacon.
It was all very well for a fellow like Linton to say that something of
this sort was a good thing for a fellow like Young. But Linton was a
Junior, with friends that loved him; and Juniors forget. Besides,
sometimes we get too much of a good thing, and then it becomes a bad
thing. If it had kept on this way Young might have become meek and
backboneless, and such an extreme would be even worse than that of
self-importance.
But it did not keep on. It all stopped one day quite suddenly.