side; in fact, we constituted the entire army of Brutus--that was
another evidence of greenness in the management. The battle had been
raging mildly for some time. We had marched and counter-marched, and had
been reviewed and exhorted two or three times, without even getting a
glimpse of the enemy. At last it came to the scene where Brutus'
aggregation gets driven across the stage by Antony's offering a
desperate resistance. Cassius had been killed, young Cato was going to
be captured, and everything was going to the bow-wows. While we were
standing in the wings along with Antony's army, waiting to go on, Jim de
Laye said, 'Hang it, let's put a little real good acting into this
thing; these stage scraps are too woodeny.' Of course I did my best to
restrain this idea among my companions, but it became popular at once in
spite of anything I could say. I must confess I always had rather a
desire myself to see that oily-mouthed peep of a Marc Antony well
thrashed. The next minute we had to go across the back of the stage,
hotly contesting every inch of the way with our trusty wooden brands,
two up and two down. About half way over, that crazy Jim de Laye opened
the ball by smiting his man hip and thigh and other parts, in the most
life-like manner. The other supe hit back in just anger, and there was
an instant rally of the Brutus forces. My man was a little fellow, and I
did him up in time to see an entirely new feature introduced in the
scene. Marc Antony himself suddenly appeared, hard pressed by a togaed
citizen. The way he got there was this--correct me, Jack, if I make any
mistake in this part of the history. Blathers, as I told you, had been
left curled up under a coat in the dressing-room. Some of the employees
had found him there, however, untied him, and started in to play with
him. Mr. Blathers, finding himself in strange company, slipped away from
them and went looking for his master. Just as the battle scene began, he
arrived at the wings, where Marc Antony was waiting to go on. Antonius
was in very bad humor about something. He asked in fluent Latin, 'What
the ---- that dog was doing there?' and made a kick at Blathers. I guess
Blathers was in much the same mood, for he turned around and effected a
prompt connection with the calf of Marc Antony's leg. He was a
disappointed dog; he got his mouth full of horsehair. Antony wasn't
touched, and let Blathers have it with the other foot.
"Now, Jack had not been assigned to the army, and was off duty in that
scene. He was standing in the wings in Roman citizen's clothes, trying
to flirt with the vestal virgins.
"Hold on," interrupted Jack, "you told me to correct any mistake. That's
one."
"Well, perhaps they were not. You know more about that than I do,"
admitted Ned. "Any way, he turned around just in time to see his
faithful hound doing somersaults from Marc Antony's toe. I'll do Jack
the justice to say that he is generally slow to wrath--he is too
lazy--but when that ugly pup of his is concerned, he loses his head.
"He not only lost his head that time, but tried to knock off Marc
Antony's too. Marc went, staggering out into the field of battle, and
Jack, the fool, followed him up. As I said, the battle had opened in
earnest all along the line when this happened, and the house was already
on it's feet. It was a good, warm house. It was mainly from Sou' Boston,
and had taken about thirty-five seconds to get on to the magnificent
realism of the scene. It went wild with delight at this addition to the
affair. Blathers rallied and flew out on the stage to the support of
Jack's charge. This time he tore all the padding off Marc's legs, amid
the enthusiastic plaudits of the audience.
"The stage-manager yelled for the policeman, and went tearing about
after him. 'Colonel' Dixey, of Kentucky, who was also off duty in this
scene, had enticed the cop into a distant corner, along with the
departed Caesar and a bottle of fizz. J. Caesar was a tragedian who would
have been dear to the heart of a _Puck_ artist. He was a thirsty soul
with a radiant nose and a beery eye. Shortly after his death he had
attached himself to Colonel Dixey and his overcoat, and the Colonel had
warmly requited his affection. In fact, Dixey devoted two whole bottles
to the good work, and at the end of the fourth act Caesar had had some
difficulty in doing his own ghost. He was free after that, and during
this last act, he and the Colonel had let in the blue-coat, and retired
into a secluded nook among the scenery. The Colonel had filled Caesar up
to the brim, and had got the law pretty well zigged, too, when the
manager brought the news of battle. All three rushed to the front, the
cop, of course, getting there last. The conflict was at its height, when
dead Caesar appeared, boiling drunk, and took sides with inspiring shouts
against his own avengers. Dixey pitched in too, and these reinforcements
turned the tide at once. Brutus was victorious at all points. We rushed
Marc Antony and his gang clear off the field, and destroyed the flying
remnants behind the wings. The audience fairly howled and encored
wildly.
"The cop was utterly useless, he grabbed the small man that I had
floored in the beginning of the row, clubbed him a little, and hung on
to him like grim death. The manager was crazy, and told him to send for
a hurry-up wagon, and run us all in. We showed the law great respect,
though, after the shindy was over; called him sergeant and offered to
support him in maintaining the peace. He didn't know exactly who was
responsible, so he contented himself with shaking the little man some
more, and declaring that he could 'attend to this business alone, and
didn't want no help, see?' Marc Antony wanted the blood of Jack and
Blathers, but Riley, the star, who played Brutus, was inclined to think
that Antony was to blame for the whole thing. You see Antony had got
more applause than Brutus all through. His great speech had had a
particular success, probably due to our able presentation of the
populace. Riley sat on Marc first, and then they both went for Caesar,
who was maudlin in the corner. He had got a helmet on, wrong side
before, and was begging us with tears in his eyes to go 'once more into
the breach, dear friends, or close the wall with our English dead.' When
Brutus cursed him he drew himself up and hiccoughed, 'Et tu,
Brute,--hic--well--hic you seen me at Philippi anyhow.'
"Riley went back on the stage and made a little speech, and the audience
cheered him to the echo. Then the play went on, Brutus died like a man,
and all the principals, including J. Caesar and Blathers, were called
before the curtain. Jack made it up with Marc Antony, and after the show
we consoled the vanquished army with what was left of the champagne.
Most of the supes were Irish, anyway, and had enjoyed the pleasantry."
IN THE EARLY SIXTIES.
It was ten o'clock and time for John Stuart Mill to give place to Mary
Jane, so Stoughton threw the former into an arm-chair and took the
latter from the mantel-piece. He filled and lighted her affectionately,
and the content of the evening pipe came upon him. Then he bethought him
of beer and pleasant converse, and strolled around to the Pudding in
pursuit thereof.
There he found the usual ten o'clock "resting convention" in session
beneath its blue cloud of nicotine. The "earnest resters," as Burleigh
termed them, were stretched about in various attitudes, more of laziness
than repose. They were just then engaged in the popular pastime of
blackguarding the last number of the _Lampoon_ for the benefit of
Hudson, one of the editors.
"Hullo, Dick," remarked that gentleman, glad to change the subject as
Stoughton entered, "we knew you were coming; smelt Mary Jane as soon as
you turned the corner."
"Did you, really," replied Stoughton, making room for himself on the
sofa by removing Rattleton's legs to a neighboring chair, and spilling
the dog Blathers on the floor. "What was that chum of yours doing in the
building last night? Were you also engaged in the unseemly disturbance?"
"No," answered Hudson, "I had nothing to do with it. I decline all
responsibility for Edward Burleigh. I am not my room-mate's keeper."
"I heard him carolling on the stairs at an hour when singing should be
left to the little birds. He hammered on my door for a while, but I knew
enough not to get up. I wonder he didn't raise the proctor. He shouted,
through my key-hole, something about the war being over."
"Yes," said Hudson, "that was what he told me when he woke me up by
sitting on my chest. He was going to carry the good news all through the
Yard, but I persuaded him to go to bed and wait until morning."
"Where had he been?"
"Well, you see, Jack Randolph carried him off yesterday evening to a
meeting of the Southern Club, as an invited guest, to span the bloody
chasm with him. They spanned it a good many times there, I guess, and
then as it was a beautiful moonlight night and perfect sleighing, they
decided that the bloody chasm ought to be spanned in Brookline and other
neighboring towns. So they got a cutter, and must have conducted
spanning operations on a wide scale all over the country, for they
didn't get back until dawn. George Smith, the policeman, says he saw
them sitting on the steps of Harvard Hall, singing 'John Brown's Body'
and 'Dixie,' and hymns of peace while the sun rose."
"I deny the aspersion on the Southern Club," exclaimed 'Colonel' Dixey,
from the other end of the long sofa. "I was present at the meeting, and
we had nothing to induce sunrise hymns. I don't know what Jack and Ned
did afterwards, but they didn't get it at the Southern Club."
This somewhat veiled assertion raised an incredulous chorus: "Oh, Dixey,
may you be forgiven." "Come, come, Colonel, do you mean to persuade us
that an organization containing at least three members from Kentucky is
run on a cold-water basis?" "Where is the glory of your old
commonwealth?" "Bet the meeting was full of rum--rum and rebellion!
Don't deny it, Colonel." "Drink and treason!"
"Neither, sir, neither," replied Dixey to this chaff. "I grieve to hear
such narrow-minded accusations. Prexy was there and made a speech.--Oh,
Holworthy! You know that man we saw yesterday in the Transept of
Memorial? He was at the Southern Club with Prexy."
"Oh, yes," said Holworthy, "who was he?"
"A grad. from Georgia. I have forgotten his name."
"I thought he was a grad., and not a stranger, for he didn't have a
guide book, and didn't ask us to show him the "_campus_." Had he been a
soldier?"
"Didn't say. If so, he was probably a Confed."
"Well, he looked like an interesting old cock anyway," said Holworthy to
the others. "He was standing before one of the tablets with his hat off.
Somehow, when we saw him, our own hats felt so uncomfortable that we
took them off, too, as we passed through."
"Holly made up all sorts of poetry about him," added Dixey.
"No, I didn't; but I do think he did the right thing in uncovering."
"Of course he did," said Ernest Gray, emphatically. "No man ought to
keep his hat on in that transept."
"Oh, now you've done it, Hol," groaned Stoughton. "You have started the
'Only Serious.'"
"We get too careless going back and forth in it every day," continued
Gray. "We don't fully appreciate it, or we forget what it means."
"Forget what it means! Great Scott, Ernest, have you never heard a Class
Day oration or poem? What would our inspired youths do without the poor,
hard-worked old transept? How did they ever get inspired before it was
built? Don't we have our hearts fired all up at least once a year on
that subject?"
"Except those of us who may have been previously fired by the Dean," put
in Rattleton, with a contemplative sigh over eminent possibilities.
"Well, it is a pity then that the Class Day conflagration doesn't last a
little longer. I don't believe in keeping sentiment for special
occasions. It would be better for all hands to preserve a little of it
throughout the year, and in this place, of all others, I should think at
least a little reverence for the past might be kept alive. But one might
suppose that there was no such thing as reverence at Harvard nowadays."
"Hooray!" "Hear, hear!" "Go it, old man!" "Good for the Only Serious!"
"Pegasus in a canter!"
"That's right," answered Gray warmly, to this burst of invidious
encouragement. "Laugh at anything that is serious or the least approach
to feeling; it is the fashion."
"Brought on by over-doses of gush," remarked Stoughton, knocking the
ashes contemptuously out of Mary Jane.
"Of course, there is a lot of twaddle talked about such things,"
answered Gray, "and I acknowledge that exaggeration tends to cheapen
patriotism, but the existence of a lot of tinsel in the world doesn't
make gold less valuable, does it?"
"Quite true," assented Hudson, "and because Dick Stoughton smokes such a
pipe as Mary Jane, there is no reason why we should all give up tobacco.
That is a better simile than yours."
"Well, it is a good thing that Harvard men have not always been so
afraid of appearing in earnest," growled Gray. "I don't believe there
was so much brilliant wit wasted when men were leaving college every day
to join their regiments. I wish I had been here then."
"So do I," drawled Rattleton; "what a bully excuse a fellow would have
had for not getting his degree."
"What an excitement there must have been," went on Gray, without
noticing the interruption. "Just think of being cheered out of the Yard
when you left for the war, and then perhaps distinguishing yourself, and
coming back to Class Day with your arm in a sling."
"Just think of coming back in a pine-box," added Hudson, graphically.
"Well, suppose you did? You have got to die some time, and your name
would have been put on a tablet in memorial."
"Yes, but you wouldn't have been tickled by seeing it there," said the
irritating Stoughton. "Half your patriotism is vanity, Ernest, you
shallow theatrical poser."
"It would do you men good to read the _Memorial Biographies_," Gray
continued, now thoroughly aroused, and paying no attention to the side
remarks. "They ought to be part of the prescribed work for a degree."
"Yes, but as Hudson says, you couldn't do that if you were a
biographee," reasoned Dane Austin, the law-school man, taking a hand in
the baiting.
"It would be perfectly disgusting to hear you fellows talk this way,"
Gray declared, "if one didn't know that it was all affectation. I am not
sure that that fact does not make it worse. You all really feel just as
I do, but you are afraid to say so."
"Another appalling case of Harvard indifference," observed Stoughton.
"The modern dilettante has no noble desire for red war."
"He likes to make people believe that he has no noble desire for
anything, and he has a morbid fear of being a hypocrite. As a matter of
fact, you are all of you the worst kind of hypocrites, for you try to
appear worse than you are."
"Oh, dear, no," Rattleton protested, lazily, "that would be too hard
work for any of this crowd--except me."
"A war would be a good thing to stir you up. I almost wish the war times
would come again," exclaimed Gray, hotly.
"Now you are getting right down to work," laughed Hudson. "What a rise
we are getting out of our earnest young man to-night."
"You let your feelings get away with you, Gray," added Holworthy. "I
don't believe it was all glory and enthusiasm in those days. You forget
there was another side to it. For instance, Jack Randolph's governor was
not cheered out of the Yard when _he_ left for the war."
"Yes, there _was_ another side to it," came a voice from the other end
of the room, and a big arm-chair, that had been facing the fire with its
back to the knot of men, was pushed around so as show its occupant. He
was evidently one of that wide class known to the undergraduate as the
"Old Grads." An old grad. attains his title as soon as he ceases to be a
very young grad.; there is no transition degree. In this case he seemed
about middle aged, perhaps fifty, with hair turning gray, and a rather
deeply marked brown face. The latter was just then a little flushed, and
had the expression often seen on a face that has just been looking a
long time into a fire and a long way through it.
The lounging students started a little at this sudden interruption, and
stirred as young men do on finding themselves suddenly in the presence
of an older one. Rattleton took his long legs down from their supporting
chair, Hudson pushed his hat back from his nose to its proper place,
Dixey took his hands out of his pockets and sat up straight, while Dick
Stoughton paused in the act of relighting Mary Jane, and when the match
burnt his fingers forbore to swear. As the cause of the disturbance rose
and came towards them they stood up. Hollis Holworthy showed signs of
positive uneasiness. He turned bright red in the face, as he recognized
the man whom he had just described as "an interesting old cock."
"I--I beg your pardon, sir," he began, "I had no idea----"
"That the old cock was present?" laughed the older man. "I assure you,
my boy, that I was not in the least offended, and even had I cause for
offence, I deserved it. Your remark was a retribution, a striking
repetition of history. I remember once asking Holworthy of '61 who the
bully old boy in the beaver hat was, and the bully old boy proved to be
Holworthy '32. Thirty years are like a spy-glass--your views depend upon
the end through which you look."
The thirty years melted at once beneath the laugh that followed this
introduction, and, as the stranger took a chair among the group, the
smoke went up again from Mary Jane and other pipes.
"Then you were in college with my father?" asked Holworthy. "You must
have been here just in the time of which we were speaking."
"That is the reason why I took the liberty of joining so abruptly in
your conversation," said the graduate. "I want to tell you young men a
story. I have never told it before, and would not tell it to any other
audience, but I know that it can be fully appreciated by you, and it
belongs to your traditions. So I am going to give it to you, if you do
not mind being bored for a while by an old grad."
"I don't think any of us will raise any serious objections," said
Stoughton, as he paused.
The graduate smiled and then began: "As I said when I just now
interrupted your discussion, there was another side to the glory of the
war times in the old college. To the war itself there was, of course,
another side, and I was on it. Up to the breaking of the storm we boys
had not troubled ourselves much about the out-look. Most of us took
politics lightly, and though burning then, still, among us at least,
they were, as now I suppose, more the subject of good-natured chaff than
of bitter feelings. However deeply the more thoughtful of us may have
felt, they never allowed their convictions to interfere with their
friendships. Of course, there were a few loud-mouthed zealots who made
themselves disagreeable, but they were as much so to men of their own
opinions as to those of the opposite.
"Hardly any one really expected war, or, if he did, ever said so. The
historic shot fired on Sumter was, therefore, as much of a shock to our
little community as to all of the North--even more, for a civil war
meant more to us. To us, you know, fraternity is a reality.
"When the news came so that it could not be denied, it was not talked of
between us Southerners and the rest. Next came the news that my State
had gone out. That night my chum Jim Standish and I sat in our
window-seat and smoked a long time without speaking. Finally the
question came from him, 'Well, old man, are you going?' I said, 'Yes.'
Then he put out his hand and I took it hard. When we had nearly finished
our pipes Jim spoke again, 'When this is over, Tom,' he said, 'you will
come back and get your degree with us.' I shook my head, I remember, and
answered: 'It won't be over until long after our commencement--or else
Harvard will be in a country foreign to me.'
"You see I remember that evening and the conversation very vividly. It
was all we ever held on the subject. I knew what Jim's opinions were,
and he knew mine well enough; but he was too much of a gentleman to make
my position any harder for me than it was. I was going to do what I
considered my duty,--let that pass now also; it was more than a quarter
of a century ago.
"Very soon the letter came from home, but I did not need it to hurry me.
Jim and I were together almost every minute until I went away, and all
my other friends seemed to go out of their way to show me courtesy and
affection.
"The night before I left was Strawberry Night at the Pudding, and I
remember I had intended not to go to the rooms. They were then in the
top of Stoughton. I was packing in my room when Jim and Harry Rodes and
one or two others came in, as a committee, to insist on my going. The
committee accomplished its purpose by the usual smooth-tongued diplomacy
of the undergraduate. They told me not to make a damn fool of myself,
and that if I did not come round like a man, the theatricals should not
go on. So I went, and tried to forget on my last night in the Yard that
there was any world outside of it. That is the play-bill of those
theatricals hanging over there on the wall now. What a time we had that
night!
"I went home next day, with Clayton Randolph, Jack Randolph's father, as
the rising generation always puts it. There was not much difficulty in
getting South at that time. I enlisted soon after I arrived, and, as a
result, was rather busy for four years.
"Of course, for a long time I heard nothing from Cambridge. You boys
know how almost the whole graduating class went to the front, and many
an underclassman did not wait for his Commencement. You can read the
degrees won by some of them in Memorial Hall. Every now and then I saw
in that precious booty, a Northern newspaper, a name that I had last
heard called in a recitation, or had myself many a time shouted across
the Yard.
"The stray Northern papers were not my source of news in all cases.
There was one name that for a time was in the mouths of all our men, and
I had to risk their scorn and suspicion in defending it. They would
hardly believe that the man who could lead a black regiment, and die in
the front of his niggers in that terrible charge on Fort Wagner, was not
a hardened ruffian, a desperate mercenary, but a fair-haired boy of
five-and-twenty, and the most sunny, lovable gentleman that ever left
the ballroom for the battle-field.
"I saw myself the fall of a man of different mould, but of the same
metal. We were holding a strong position and had repulsed two heavy
charges, when we saw the enemy forming for a third. This time they came
closer than in either of the previous attempts, and it looked for a
minute as if they would reach us. But our fire was frightful, aided by
several batteries that were pouring in grape and canister at short
range. The regiment immediately in front of us came on well; but no body
of men could stand it, and at last it wavered and then broke. Through
the smoke I could see a mounted officer tearing about and trying
desperately to rally the men, striking with the flat of his sword, and
evidently beside himself with anger. Then, as he found it was no use and
his men left him, he turned, rode all alone straight at us, and was shot
through and through. I have seen too much of what is ordinarily called
courage to be attracted to a man solely by that commonest of virtues;
but this man's splendid scorn of surviving his failure, his fury at what
he considered disgrace, and his deliberate self-sacrifice, lifted his
act above the common run of bravery. That man had breeding, and I wanted
to have a look at him. After the fight was over, I went to where he lay
dead with his horse. It was Boredon of '61. I had hated that man. He had
been one of those disagreeable cranks of whom I have spoken, a man
absorbed with one idea and allowing that idea to color all his feelings,
and spoil his manners. He had been to me as a red rag to a bull. But
when I recognized him there, I would have given a great deal to have
been able to tell him how proud I was of him. Evidently he had at least
the hard part of a gentleman. I went back to my brother officers, and,
with a good deal of boyish swagger I am afraid, said to them, 'That
fellow was at Harvard with me. That is the sort of fools they make
there.'