If you would like to see a college campus as it really is, with
students walking along with the gait and the manner and the clothes
they usually wear, and to hear the old bell ring, the hall and
dormitory stairs rattle, the entries echo and the feet scrape along
the stone walks as on ordinary occasions, and see the quadrangle
become crowded and noisy, then suddenly empty and quiet again, and if
you wish to have a view of your brother's room in its average state of
order and ornamentation, do not come to Princeton for one of the class
dances, or on the day of a big game, when everyone is excited and well
dressed, and even the old elms are in an abnormal flutter, but come
down in a small party some quiet day in an ordinary week, when there
are no extra cars on the small informal train which jolts up from the
junction. Tell your brother that you are coming, or his roommate, who
will gladly cut a lecture or two and show you about the campus. Then
you may see the college world in its normal state, and the
undergraduate in his characteristic settings--any number of him with a
pipe in his mouth or a song, slouching across the campus with the
Princeton gait, wearing something disreputable upon his head,
corduroys and sweaters or flannels and cheviots upon his body, and an
air of ownership combined with irresponsibility all over. In short, if
you prefer to get some idea of college life, and learn, as far as a
girl can, why college days are the best of a lifetime, visit Princeton
on some day that is not a special occasion. But very likely this is
not what you prefer.
Most girls would rather hurry down with a big trunk in a crowded
special train, and go to four teas, meet a score of men apiece whom
they will never see again, dance all night, and then, in a few
minutes, arise looking as fresh as they did on Easter Sunday, and
smile good-byes at the depot to the breakfastless young men whom they
leave forsaken and sleepy to try to go on where they left off, while
they themselves hurry back to town, and to another dance the next
night.
A college dance is generally considered very good fun. There is an
adventurous zest in journeying to a college, and exploring it, and
meeting crowds of people you never saw before, and there is something
wild and reckless in being quartered in an odd little boarding-house,
or, more delicious still, in some room in University Hall borrowed by
your entertainer for the occasion, with the owner's photographs and
souvenirs hanging about just as he left them. Then, too, the young men
themselves, some of whom you have met or heard of before, try to be
very agreeable, and do everything in their power to make you have a
good time, if for no other reason, in order that you may see how
superior their college is to any other, so that even several-seasoned
society girls consider it worth their while to run down to a college
dance, and be amused by these fresh-faced young fellows. Some of them
have been coming off and on for several generations of college men,
and could talk interestingly of your brother in the class of '88
should they be so inclined. They know all about these hops. This is
written for you who have yet to attend one.
There are three regular dances each year, and they are given by the
three upper classes. One takes place at the close of the mid-year
examinations, to usher in the new term. Another is given at a more
beautiful time of the year, usually occurring on the eve of some great
baseball game. The third one, the most splendid and most jammed, is
the sophomores' reception, given on the night before Commencement to
the class which graduates the following day.
Each class has a dance committee, who fly around and work hard to make
their dance finer than the last one, and generally succeed. They
procure a fine patroness list to engrave on their invitations,
containing several of the sort of names that appear in connection with
Patriarchs' balls and Philadelphia assemblies, together with those of
two or three professors' wives, to lend a tone. The committee get hold
of the Gymnasium, pull down the bars and draw the trapeze to one side;
then have a lot of pink and white cheese-cloth tacked up, hang some
athletic trophies over the rafters, string a few hundred incandescent
lights here and there, and send to one of the neighboring cities for a
smart caterer and a large high-priced orchestra to come for the night.
Then they are ready for you.
Before the dance, however, you are taken to a few teas which are given
by some of the clubs. You saw the club-houses when you were shown
about earlier in the day. Some of them are very handsome, and they are
all nice, and the nicest is the one to which your brother belongs, or
whoever owns the club-pin you carry home with you. At the teas the
rooms are crowded, the air is hot, the flowers are tumbled over, you
become hoarse, and in most features it is similar to any tea, except
that there are enough men. You will here meet several of those whose
names you have on your dance-card, and you may make up your mind
whether to remember that fact or not.
After the round of teas there remain but two hours in which to dress.
When you have hurried on those things which make up "a dream," "a
creation," or "a symphony," whichever it is that you bring, and have
had, if you feel like it, a bit of dinner, you are taken, at a little
after eight o'clock, to church. The Glee, Banjo, and Mandolin clubs
give a very good concert here, and it is a good place to have your
escort point out the various men who are fortunate enough to be on
your card, and gives you a good opportunity to notice the taste
displayed by other girls in their costumes, and feel pleased with your
own. There are all sorts of gowns, made of many sorts of materials
with interesting names.
When the concert is at last over--much as you enjoyed it, it seemed
rather long to you, who were thinking of what was to follow--you are
taken to University Hall, which is across the street, or to the
Gymnasium, if the dance is to be there, which is a little farther back
on the campus, and you are shown to the dressing-room, where those
last fluttering finishing touches are put on. Those calm,
assured-looking young women who came in ahead of you are a little
excited too, as is that laughing girl who was pointed out to you as a
flirt.
When you are quite ready, and are pulling and smoothing your gloves
while waiting for the chaperon to start your party, you catch a
glimpse of something, as the door opens for an instant, which extends
from the door all along the dimly lighted passage to the very stairs
beyond--something which looks like a great black bank with gleaming
white patches here and there. This is made up of young men, whose
collars are stiff and straight. When your chaperon stalks forth with a
sort of flourish, several members of the black and white bank come
forward to meet your party, and the rest make inaudible comments upon
your appearance, probably to the effect that you are "smooth." But all
that you are sure of is that your escort offers you his arm with a
smile and a stiff bow, that you walk nervously up the winding stairs,
step into a dazzle of light, where members of the dance committee are
running hither and thither with dance-cards and girls, and where
patronesses are smiling, bowing, looking stately, holding their fans,
and doing whatever patronesses usually do. Then the orchestra plays a
promenade, to which a few impatient couples try to waltz, and you
begin what you have talked about and thought about and dreamed about
for a month.
You notice when you have danced the first one with your brother's
roommate, at whose special invitation you came, that as soon as he has
taken you to your seat he rushes off like mad. In a moment he comes
back again, bearing with him the young man who was pointed out to you
at the concert as being down on your card for No. 2. While he is being
presented, still another anxious-eyed man runs up and hurriedly
snatches off your host. These are men who are "running" girls' cards.
Now, while you and your new acquaintance are waiting for the music to
begin, and are amiably agreeing that the concert was good, that the
room is warm, that the light effects are pretty, you may steal another
glance at your dance-card to make sure of this man's name. It is
carefully written in ink on the pretty silk-and-leather-bound card
which was handed to you on the way to the concert. All the numbers
are filled and three extras. This is the way it was done:
About three weeks ago a young man was sitting in the grand stand one
sunny afternoon watching the baseball practice, and wondering whether
the nine would beat Harvard, when one of his clubmates came along and
asked him for a match. He complied with the request, and said, "Don't
mention it." Then the borrower of the match asked if he were going to
the dance, and as he admitted his intention of doing so, he was handed
a preliminary card which had your name at the top of it. Then, after a
little more conversation, he put his name down for No. 2, and handed
it back to your host, who thanked him. And again he said, "Don't
mention it." That was the man who is about to dance with you. At that
time you were unknown to him. The other names were secured in various
ways. In the midst of a lecture your card was passed along to some
fellow on the end of the row, who, with the same pencil with which he
was taking notes on "Post-Kantian Philosophy," secured for himself a
_deux-temps_ with you. Other men were hailed out in front of Old North
when the seniors were singing, or at the club dinner tables, and in
the lounging-rooms when they were talking baseball, or when they were
at the billiard table and had to walk across the room to where their
coats were hanging to see their cards. Perhaps your host took a night
off to it, and went out on the campus and yelled "Hello, Billy
Wilson!" under Billy Wilson's window to see if he were in before he
ran up the stairs to his room and demanded to see his dance-card; and
went on thus from entry to entry as if he were out after
subscriptions, except that he went to his friends. Sometimes it is not
an easy task to fill five or six cards, especially when every one is
feeling rather down-hearted over an unfortunate athletic season. Of
course if the girl has been down before, and is well known and
popular, there is no difficulty of this kind. Probably the next time
you come down you won't need a card.
Except for the five dances which he saves out for himself you see very
little of your host during the evening, and even then he seems worried
and absent-minded. It no doubt piques you a little that the moment the
music ceases he leaves you, and, with an expression on his face which
reminds you of when "Pigs in Clover" was the rage, darts across the
room, bumping into people and begging pardons. The only time he looks
comfortable and recalls to your mind last Christmas holidays is when
he and you have slipped off to one of those quiet little nooks so
bounteously adorned with rugs and hangings, brought for the occasion
from some dormitory room, to enjoy two little bits of ice which he has
pillaged from the supper-room. Then for a while he seems to forget his
cares, and you two have a good old-fashioned chat. You notice a streak
of chicken-salad along his silken collar, but that gives you no
adequate idea of the muscle and bad language required to secure and
bear away those two little dabs of ice and one napkin, any more than
his anxious expression indicates the amount of patience and ubiquity
required to "run" three girls' cards at a college dance.
All this time you have been going through the several different stages
of "a perfectly lovely time." You have shown a lot of young men how
well you can dance, and have gotten along very well with all you have
met except that once when you asked sweetly, sympathetically, "Won't
you be just too glad to be a sophomore next year?" of a very studious
and diminutive member of the graduating class. The chat is no longer
about the concert, nor is the heat mentioned, though it is terrific,
nor the effect of the lights upon the pink and white cheese-cloth,
except by those gallants who see fit to say something about its being
becoming to certain complexions. And, most gratifying of all, you
notice that those who have your name on their cards more than once
come the second time without being brought. Indeed, some come again
who have not that good fortune, and you pay slight attention to your
card after supper, but dance with those who come up and beg for a
dance, because you are tender-hearted and hate to displease them. It
is a good plan to lose your card now or hide it. Some girls tear up
theirs the moment they come, for fear they might make a mistake, and
consequently hurt somebody's feelings.
By this time you have gotten your second wind, if you'll pardon the
expression. You talk without previously meditating upon what you are
about to say; but you know it's all right just as you drift to the
strains of the music automatically. Your eyes are wide open and
sparkling; your cheeks have a flush which is becoming; you are dimly
conscious that your visit at Princeton is a success. And just as you
are beginning to wish that all this could last forever you hear a
strain of music of which every daughter of a loving home should be
fond, and then, for the first time, you notice that the stately
patronesses in their bower are opening their eyes very wide and
gritting their teeth very hard. Then, having danced that last one
furiously, you are dragged off, casting a lingering glance at faded
flowers, wilted collars, tired musicians, torn skirts.
When you come from the noisy, laughing dressing-room a moment later,
wrapped from head to foot in a great long thing which covers any
changes the five hours' exercise might have wrought in your
appearance, you are met by your bedraggled escort under the light,
where you took his arm before, long ago, on the way to the dance. You
can remember how stiff his collar was then and how smooth his hair.
Everything, animate and inanimate, looks different now, especially
with that ghastly streak of dawn which mingles with the electric
light. It makes some of the girls look rather faded and jaded, you
think, and some of the men rather rakish, but not even the girls seem
to care very much. Every one is too excited to be tired, and too merry
to be formal. All the stiffness of your escort's manner has gone with
that of his collar. As he offers his arm this time he does not gaze
straight ahead of him and murmur something incoherent about hoping
that you are going to enjoy this, for he begins singing "It's all over
now," to the dank and misty campus trees on the way to University
Hall, and you give him permission to smoke a cigarette, and shout
good-night down the stairs, and tell him what time to call around in
the morning--later on in the morning--for he has made you promise to
stay over all of the following day and see a little of the college and
campus, and take a stroll in the queer old town.
Then, as the gray dawn creeps in through the dotted Swiss curtains
which somebody made for the freshman who owns the room, causing the
roses on the bureau to look pale and livid, and while the far-away
voices of the dance committee can be heard from back of Witherspoon,
where they are having an informal game of baseball in their evening
clothes to celebrate the success of their efforts, and the sparrows
outside your window begin to twitter as though there had been no
dance, you lay your head upon the pillow and tell your roommate what
the tall one said who danced the two-step so divinely, and what that
funny little fellow with frowsy hair told you, and what were the
remarks of the football man with whom you sat out two dances, and how
the entertaining man who sang the solo at the concert seemed to like
you, and what your brother's roommate told you not to tell.