A QUESTION OF MONEY
The great Yale-Princeton football game, which took place during the
Thanksgiving holidays in New York, was now a matter of history--and of
rejoicing, to one side. But as all those interested in football know
which side won the championship that year, it is not necessary to
recount the game and rub it into the losers.
Everyone, almost, had gone to see the great contest and to cheer for the
team, and Princeton seemed as deserted as in mid-summer. The Invincibles
secured a huge four-in-hand coach and were half frozen driving up Fifth
Avenue to the game; but they had the privilege, granted to Freshmen on
such occasions only, of wearing the sacred orange and black--yards of
it, hung all over their hats, their clothes, the coach, the driver, and
the horses. They cheered themselves voiceless, and had a time they were
never to forget.
The Freshman team had played the Columbia University Freshmen in the
morning, and had no difficulty in defeating them by a large score. Right
Guard Young put up a very fair, steady game, the critics said, but had
no chance to make any brilliant play, as he had hoped.
But the Deacon felt very big and important when his exultant classmates
ran out at the close of the game and carried him and the rest of the
eleven off the field on their shoulders, cheering for each player by
name.
He felt less important in the afternoon, when the great contest, the
event of the day, took place; he wondered if many of those flocking in
realized that he was Right Guard Young of the Freshman team; again he
feared that he looked like the big green farmer that he did not want
people to think he was.
The enormous grand-stands and bleachers, and the coaches and carriages,
and even the neighboring houses were jammed with thousands and
thousands of eager human beings, wearing violets or chrysanthemums; and
some of the old grads had come from as far as the Pacific coast to see
this manly match, which was to decide the championship of the two best
football teams in the western hemisphere. Young had never before seen so
many people at once--"more than the population of the whole county
you're in," he wrote to his brother Charlie--and never before had he
been so thrilled as when long Jack Stehman made his famous tackle after
that Yale half-back had dodged past all the rest of the Princeton
team.... But the game and its noise and victory and defeat were all over
now, and the two universities had returned to go on where each had left
off before Thanksgiving.
* * * * *
Big Freshman Young had to go on along very pleasant lines, enviable
lines they seemed to many a Freshman who longed in vain to be prominent
and popular, and a member of the dashing Invincibles; but the Deacon had
his worries. It had been very fine at first to be looked up to and
admired, but the novelty had worn off by this time, and he had been
hoping and hoping that his table-mates would soon begin to act toward
him in the same easy, familiar, good-fellow way they acted toward each
other. Why they had not, he failed to understand; he knew it wasn't
because he was poor and ran the club; he wondered if it was because he
had not prepared for college at a large school, and hence was green and
ignorant of the ways of the world. That was one of the things that had
off and on worried him, but that was not the worst; that was not what
was making him stay awake at night thinking. It was that alarming
question of money bobbing up again.
He had supposed that with the club to run, which wiped out the largest
item of expense, he would have enough to worry along with until
something else turned up. But his account in the Princeton bank was
slowly but surely being drained, and thus far nothing had turned up.
He had intended to be more economical, but--well, for instance, the
other Invincibles were always "blowing in" money for spreads in their
rooms and all that; and Young did not like to accept favors without
returning them. To be sure he might have declined their invitations
occasionally, but he wanted to show them that the "dignified Deacon," as
they called him, was not so terribly dignified and stiff, as they seemed
to think. Then, too, when subscription lists were passed around for
various purposes, and they came to him among the first as "one of the
influential men of Ninety-blank," he felt that he ought to do his share;
"it's my duty to the good old class," he said, "I hate stinginess,
anyway."
As a matter of fact he had been doing more than his share, and it was
the appearance of stinginess, possibly, that he hated even more than
stinginess itself.
Now, he might easily have said: "Here, I can't afford this pace; you
fellows get money from home--I have to earn mine, and so, much as I'd
like to, I simply can't keep step with you--and that's all there is
about it;" he would have been liked none the less and respected all the
more. "Why, certainly; you are dead right," they would have said. But he
did not want to; he preferred to keep step, and did not like them to
know how little money he had. It was nothing to be ashamed of, surely.
It was not on account of money, as his own experience had shown him,
that a man became popular or prominent.
More money had gone when he went to New York at Thanksgiving time. His
expenses up and back were paid, of course, by the Freshman football
fund, but Lucky Lee had invited him to stay over Sunday at his home
there; and Young felt ashamed of his cut-away coat--though Lucky said,
"Nonsense"--and so he bought something which he considered very
magnificent at a large ready-made place on Broadway, together with some
brilliant neckties, something like Billy Drew's, and a huge scarf-pin
(but decided not to tell his mother how much they all cost, in the
letter describing what a good time he had and how nice Mrs. Lee was).
So, altogether, with the new term staring him in the face, and room-rent
to pay, and books--though that was a small item compared to what he had
"blown in" foolishly--it was beginning to look as if Deacon Young would
have to hustle if he meant to stay in college much longer. "We'll see
how long you stay there," his father had said.
"All right," thought Will, "we'll see! More fellows earn their way
through college than the people out home have any idea of, and I think
I'm as good as the next man. I'll talk to Barrows and Wilson and some of
those quiet fellows about it."
But it was all very well to say: "Why, there's Dougal Davis in the
Junior class who commands $2.50 an hour for tutoring, and there's
Harris, the Senior, who sometimes makes as much as $20 in a week writing
for the New York and Philadelphia papers;" it was easy enough to point
out how many men made money in various other ways; no doubt many did;
but that was just the trouble--so many did that all the opportunities
seemed to be snapped up already.
Now, a year hence, if he won the Freshman First Honor prize, he would
not only have the $200 but, in consequence of his high stand, he could
get all the tutoring he would want; but this year he was still a
Freshman and there was no class below him to tutor. Next year, also, he
would have some of those newspaper correspondences of Harris's. Young
had already arranged for that--but this year Harris was still in
college. Young might also get the agency for shoes, or athletic goods,
or photographic supplies next year, or possibly the contract for issuing
the programmes of the baseball and football and track athletic games;
or, he might, as a Sophomore, publish syllabuses of the lecture courses
(and sell them for a dollar each). In fact, now that he was on the
field, he saw more ways of earning money while getting a college
education than he had dreamed of--hundreds of ways, very good ways, if
only he had hustled and availed himself of them at the beginning of the
term. Other Freshmen had secured the jobs of distributing the _Daily
Princetonian_ and _The Nassau Literary Magazine_ and _The Tiger_, or
had taken the agency for steam-laundries at Trenton, and so on, and so
on, while he, who needed money more than most of them, had only spent it
foolishly, had not earned a cent, had not done a thing for himself, but
accept the club management which had, so to speak, been thrown into his
lap--and this is what he kept telling himself as he walked to and from
recitations, and repeated when he went to bed at night, and remembered
when he awoke in the morning ... until--how time flies at
college!--Christmas vacation was only a week off and still nothing had
turned up. He couldn't go through another term this way.
Meanwhile what made it all the harder for Young was to watch the ease
with which Lee and Powelton and the others with whom he sat down three
times a day at the club, received their comfortable allowances from
home.
"Ah!" they would say, cheerfully, when a check came fluttering out of a
letter. All they had to do to get money was to open envelopes and then
sign their names. "You fellows," Young used to think as he watched
them--"You fellows don't know how lucky you are." But of course he said
nothing to them of what worried him. He was not that kind. They had
great respect for his abilities and thought he could do anything. They
did not guess what was going on in his mind these days, while they
talked of the fun they were going to have during the holidays. "I can't
bear to think of your being away from us at Christmas," wrote the
Deacon's mother. "Perhaps," said Young to himself, "I sha'n't be away,
after all."
Then he wondered what the fellows would think and what the people "out
home" would say.
He knew just how his father would laugh at him, remarking, "I told you
so," and how his mother, who kept everyone informed of how Will was
getting on at college, would cry; for it would be as great a
disappointment to her as to him. It would surprise her, too, for he had
not let her know how much he had spent, telling himself that it would
only worry her unnecessarily, that when the time came he would pitch in
and do something.
"Deacon," said Lucky Lee on the way to luncheon, "you're to come home
with me for the holidays--at least mother says so in this letter.
Course, I don't want you, but I'll obey my mother."
The sober Deacon laughed at the pleasantry, and thanked Lucky, but shook
his head at the little fellow's repeated importunities. Young felt that
he couldn't afford even to buy a ticket to New York and back.
His excuses were so lame, however, that the bright-eyed little Lucky
suddenly got an inkling of what was the trouble. "Say, Deacon," he began
when they were alone, "if you should ever get hard up, I hope you have
decency enough to give your friends a chance to----"
Young blushed and shook his head.
"I don't mean particularly about this vacation," Lucky went on. "You're
coming home with me all right, if I have to carry you on my back all
the way. I mean in general. For instance, if you--er--that is, well,
blame it, we're good enough friends. If you are 'temporarily
embarrassed,' as they say, when you come back after Christmas, you'll do
what I would do if I were hard up, won't you? If you wouldn't you're no
friend of mine."
"What would you do, Lucky?"
"I'd let you lend me some dough--naturally."
Young hesitated. "Lucky," he said, "I am hard up--don't tell anybody,
but I'm mighty hard up. I'd rather leave college, though, than borrow
money to stay here with."
But Young spent Christmas holidays with Lucky Lee in New York, and it
turned out to be a very good thing that he did--not only on account of
the temporary rest from worry.