A COLLEGE TOWN
Bloomington, as we sped into it, did not seem much changed from the last
time I had laid eyes upon it, twentyfive years before, only now, having
seen the more picturesque country to the south of it, I did not think
the region in which it lay seemed as broken and diversified as it did
the year I first came to it. Then I had seen only the more or less level
regions of northern and southern Indiana and the territory about
Chicago, and so Bloomington had seemed quite remarkable, physically. Now
it seemed more or less tame, and in addition, it had grown so in size
and architectural pretentiousness as to have obliterated most of that
rural inadequacy and backwoods charm which had been its most delightful
characteristic to me in 1889.
Then it was so poor and so very simple. The court house square had been
a gem of moss-back simplicity and poverty, more attractive even, rurally
speaking, than that court house I just mentioned as being the charm of
Paoli. Here, also, the hitching rail had extended all around the square.
I saw more tumble-down wagons, rheumatic and broken-down men, old,
brown, almost moss covered coats and thin, bony, spavined horses in the
Bloomington of 1889 than I ever saw anywhere before or since. In
addition to this, in spite of the smallness of the college, many of the
six hundred students had considerable money, for Indiana was a
prosperous state and these youths and girls were very well provided for.
Secret or Greek letter societies and college social circles of different
degrees of import abounded. There were college rakes and college loafers
and college swells. At that time the university chanced to have a
faculty which, because of force and brains, was attracting considerable
attention. David Starr Jordan, afterwards President of Leland Stanford,
was president here. William Gifford Swain, afterwards President of
Swarthmore, was professor of mathematics. Rufus L. Green, a man who made
considerable stir in mathematics and astronomy in later years, was
associate in the chair of mathematics. Jeremiah Jenks, a man who figured
conspicuously in American sociological and political discussion in after
life and added considerable luster to the fame of Cornell, was occupying
the chair of sociology and political economy. Edward Howard Griggs, a
man who has carried culture, with a large C, into all the women’s clubs
and intellectual movements of one kind and another from ocean to ocean,
was occupying an assistant professorship in literature. There was Von
Holst, called to the chair of history at the University of Chicago, and
so on—a quite interesting and scintillating galaxy of educative minds.
The student body, of which I was such an unsatisfactory unit, seemed
quite well aware of the character and import of the men above them,
educationally. There was constant and great talk concerning the relative
merits of each and every one. As Miss Fielding, my sponsor and mentor,
had predicted, I learned more concerning the seeming import of
education, the branches of knowledge and the avenues and vocations open
to men and women in the intellectual world than I had ever dreamed
existed—and just from hearing the students argue, apotheosize,
anathematize, or apostrophize one course or one professor or another.
Here I met my first true radicals—young men who disagreed vigorously and
at every point with the social scheme and dogma as they found it. Here I
found the smug conventionalists and grinds seeking only to carve out the
details of a profession and subsequently make a living. Here I found the
flirt, the college widow, and the youth with purely socializing
tendencies, who found in college life a means of gratifying an intense
and almost chronic desire for dancing, dressing, spooning, living in a
world of social airs and dreams. There were, oddly enough, hard and
chronic religionists even among the incoming class, who were bent upon
preaching “the kingdom of God is at hand” to all the world. They seemed
a little late to me, even at that day and date, though I was still not
quite sure myself.
Catholicism had almost made heaven and hell a reality to me. And here
were attractive and intellectual women—the first I had ever seen,
really—who in those parliamentary and social discussions incidental to
student class and social life as represented by professorial
entertainments and receptions, could rise and discuss intelligently
subjects which were still more or less nebulous to me. They gave me my
first inkling of the third sex. Indeed, it was all so interesting, so
new, so fascinating, that I was set agape and remained so until the
college year was over.
I regained my health, which I had thought all but lost, and in addition
began to realize that perhaps there were certain things I might
intelligently investigate over a period of years, with profit to myself.
I began to see that however unsuited certain forms of intellectual
training and certain professions might be to me, they offered distinct
and worthy means of employment to others. Though I had been aroused at
first, now I began to be troubled and unhappy. I felt distinctly that I
had wasted a year, or worse yet, had not been sufficiently well equipped
mentally to make the most of it. I began to be troubled over my future,
and while I was not willing to accept my sponsor’s kind offer and return
the following year (I realized now that without some basic training it
would do me no good), still, I was not willing to admit to myself that I
was intellectually hopeless. There must be some avenue of approach to
the intellectual life for me, too, I said to myself,—only how find it? I
finally left unhappy, distrait, scarcely knowing which way to turn, but
resolved to be something above a mere cog in a commercial machine. This
proved, really, one of the most vitalizing years of my life.
During my stay here, what novel sensations did I not experience! It was
all so different from the commercial life from which I had been
extricated in Chicago. There I had been rising at five thirty, eating an
almost impossible breakfast (often the condition of my stomach would not
permit me to eat at all), taking a slow, long distance horse car to the
business heart, working from seven to six with an hour for lunch, in a
crowded, foreman bossed loft, and then taking the car home again to eat,
and because I was always very tired, to go to bed almost at once. Only
Saturday afternoons in summer (the Saturday half holiday idea was then
becoming known in America) and Sunday in winter offered sufficient time
for me to recuperate and see a little of the world to make life somewhat
endurable for me,—a situation which I greatly resented. It was most
exasperating.
In college all that was changed. From the smoky, noisy city, I was
transported once more to the really peaceful country, where all was
green and sweet, and where owing to the peculiarly equable climate of
this region, flowers bloomed until late December. The college curriculum
necessitated my presence in class only from nine until twelve thirty or
so. After that I was free to study or do as I chose. Outside my window
in this lovely old house where I had a room were flowers and vines and a
grape arbor heavy with blue grapes, and a stretch of grass that was like
balm to my soul. The college campus, while it contained but a few humble
and unattractive buildings, was so strewn with great trees and threaded
through one corner of it (where I entered by a stile) with a crystal
clear brook, that I was entranced. Many a morning on my way to class or
at noon on my way out, I have thrown myself down by the side of this
stream, stretched out my arms and rested, thinking of the difference
between my state here and in Chicago. There I was so unhappy in the
thing that I was doing. The Irish superintendent who was over my floor
despised me—very rightly so, perhaps,—and was at no pains to conceal it,
threatening always to see that I was discharged at the end of the year.
Our home life was now not so unpleasant, only I found no time to enjoy
it; my work was too arduous.
Here were no pots and kettles to pile in bins, no endless loads of
tinware and woodenware to unpack out of straw or crates and store away,
only to get them out again on orders. There I felt myself a pointless,
unimportant bondslave. Here I was a free, intellectual agent, to come or
go as I chose. I could even attend classes or not as I chose. Study was
something I must do for myself or not. There was no one present to urge
me on. Various youths, as I have said, at once gathered about me.
Prospective lawyers, doctors, politicians, preachers, educators in
embryo, walked by my side or sat by me at the club boarding table, or
dropped in between four and six of an afternoon, or walked with me in
the country, or played cards on Saturday afternoon or Sunday, or
proposed an evening at church or at a debating society to discuss
philosophy or read, or even a call upon a girl. I was not very well
equipped materially, but neither was I absolutely unpresentable, and
aside from the various Greek letter and social fraternities, it did not
make so much difference. I was never actually tapped for membership in
one of these latter, and yet I was told afterwards that two different
fraternities had been seriously divided over the question of my
eligibility—another typical experience of mine. But I went out a great
deal nevertheless, dreamed much, idled, rested; and if at the end of the
year I was mentally disgruntled and unhappy, physically I was very much
improved. There can be no question of that. And my outlook and ambitions
were better.
It was during this winter that I experienced several of those early, and
because I was young and very impressionable, somewhat memorable love
affairs which, however sharp the impression they made at the time, came
to nothing. Owing to a very retiring and nervous disposition I could
never keep my countenance or find my tongue in the presence of the fair.
If a girl was pretty and in the least coquettish or self conscious, I
was at once stricken as if with the palsy, or left rigid and played over
by chills and fever.
Adjoining this house, in the cottage previously mentioned, was a young,
tow headed hoyden, who no sooner saw that I was in this house as a
guest, than she plotted my discomfiture and unrest.
It was my custom, because there was a space between two windows outside
of which were flowers, to study in the east side of my room, looking out
on the lawn. In the cottage adjoining were several windows through
which, on divers occasions during the first and second week, I saw a
girl looking at me, at first closing the shutters when she saw me
looking; but later, finding me bashful, no doubt, and inclined to keep
my eyes on my books, leaving them open and even singing or laughing in a
ringing, disturbing way. On several occasions when our eyes met, she
half smiled, or seemed to, but I was too terrified by the thought of a
possible encounter on the strength of this to be able to continue my
gaze, or to do what would seem the logical thing to most, to speak, or
nod, or smile. Nevertheless, in spite of my inability to meet her
overtures in the spirit in which they were made, she was apparently not
discouraged. She continued to half smile—to give me the shaking
realization that some day soon I might have to talk to her whether I
would or not—and then where would I find words?
One afternoon, as I was brooding over my Latin, attempting to unravel
the mysteries of conjugations and modifications, I saw her come out of
her back door and run across the lawn to the kitchen of the old widow
lady who kept this house. I was not at all disturbed by this, only
interested, and keenly so, even jealous of the pleasure the old lady was
to have in the girl’s company. She was exceedingly pretty, and by now
there were other male students in the house, though not on my floor. I
thought of her graceful body and bright hair and pink cheeks, when
suddenly there was a knock at my door, and opening it I encountered the
feeble old lady who kept the place, very nervous and bashful herself,
but smiling amusedly in a sly, senile way.
“The young lady next door wants to know if you won’t help her with her
Latin. There’s something she can’t quite understand,” she said weakly.
Actually my blood ran cold. My hair writhed and rose, then wilted. I
felt shooting pains in my arms and knees.
“Why certainly,” I managed to articulate, not knowing anything about
Latin grammar, but being dizzard enough to imagine that any educational
information was required on this occasion.
I followed into the old fashioned diningroom, with its table covered
with a red cotton cloth, and there was the girl simpering and mock-shy,
looking down after one appealing glance at me, and wanting to know if I
wouldn’t please show her how to translate this sentence!
We sat down in adjoining chairs. It was well, for my knees were rapidly
giving way. I was dunce enough to look at her book instead of her, but
at that her head came so close that her hair brushed my cheek. My tongue
by then was swollen to nine times its normal proportions. Nevertheless I
managed to say something—God only knows what. My hands were shaking like
leaves. She could not have failed to notice. Possibly she took pity on
me, for she looked at me coyly, laughed off her alleged need, inquired
if I was taking Latin, and wanted to know if I wasn’t from Fort Wayne,
Indiana. She knew a boy who had been here the year before who looked
like me, and he was from Fort Wayne.
With all these aids I could do nothing. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t
think of a single blessed thing to say. It never occurred to me to tease
her, or to tell her how pretty she looked, or frankly to confess that I
knew nothing of Latin but that I liked her, and to jest with her about
love and boys. That was years beyond me. I was actually so helpless that
in pity, or disgust, she finally exclaimed, “Oh, well, I think I can get
along now. I’m so much obliged to you”—and then jumped up and ran away.
I went back to my room to hide my head and to bemoan my cowardice and
think over the things I should have said and done and the things I would
do tomorrow or the next time I met her. But there never was any next
time. She never troubled to look so teasingly out of her window.
Thereafter when she passed the house she ran and seemed absorbed in
something else. If, unavoidably, our eyes met, she nodded, but only in a
neighborly way. And then in a few days, the aforesaid William Wadhams
appeared upon the scene, gallant roysterer that he was, and made short
work of her. One glance and there was a smile, a wave of the hand. The
next afternoon he was leaning over her fence talking in the most gallant
fashion. There was a gay chase a day or two later, in and out of bushes
and around trees, in an attempt to kiss her, but she got away, leaving a
slipper behind her which he captured and kept while he argued with her
through her window. Later on there were other meetings. She went on a
drive with him somewhere one Sunday afternoon. In my chagrined presence
he discanted on having kissed her, and on what a peach she was. It was a
pathetic, discouraging situation for me, but the race is to the swift,
the battle to the strong, and so I told myself at the time. I really did
not resent his victory. I liked him too much. But I developed a kind of
horror of my own cowardice, a contempt for my ineptness, which in later
years, year by year, finally built up a kind of courage.
There was another girl, fifteen or sixteen, across the street from me,
the daughter of a doctor, living in a low, graceful, romantic cottage,
fronted by trees and flowers. She inspired me with an entirely different
kind of passion. The first was heavily admixed with desire—the girl who
approached me inspired it. In the second case it was wholly sexless,
something which sprang like a white flame at the sight of a delicate,
romantic face, and while it tortured me for years, never went beyond the
utmost outposts of romance. Although later I often fell in love with
others, still I could never quite get her out of my mind. And though she
colored this whole year for me, desperately, I never even spoke to her.
I first saw her coming home from school, a slim, delicate, tenuous type,
her black hair smoothed back from her brow, her thin, slender white
hands holding a few books, a long cape or mackintosh hung loosely about
her shoulders, and—I adored her at sight. The fictional representations
of Dante’s Beatrice are the only ones that have ever represented her to
me. I looked after her day after day until finally she noticed me. Once
she paused as she went into her home, her books under her arm, and
picking a flower stood and held it to her face, glancing only once in my
direction. Then she danced lightly up her steps and disappeared. At
other times, as she would pass, she would glance at me furtively, and
then seem to hurry on. She seemed terrorized by my admiration. I did my
best to screw up my courage to the point of being able to address her,
and yet I never did. There were so many opportunities, too! Daily she
went to the post office or down town for something or other, nearly
every afternoon she came home along the same street, and most often
alone. With some girls, or her sister, who was learning to play the
violin, she went to church of a Wednesday and Sunday evening. I followed
her and attended that church—or waited outside. Once in January, right
after the Christmas holidays, there was a heavy snow fall and we had
sleighing on this very street. She came out with her sled one Saturday
morning and looked over at me where I was sitting by my window,
studying. I wanted to go forth and speak to her on this hill—there were
so few there—but I was afraid. And she sledded alone!
Then as the year drifted toward spring, I wrote her a note. I composed
fifteen before I wrote this one, asking her if she would not come down
to the campus stile after she had put her books away—that I wanted to
talk with her. It was a foolish note, quite an impossible proposition
for a girl of her years—frightening. All I had to say I could have said,
falling in step with her at some point, and beginning a friendly,
innocent conversation. But I was too wrought up and too cowardly to be
able to do the natural thing.
After days of preliminary meditation I finally met her in her accustomed
path, and handed her the paper. She took it with a frightened, averted
glance—there was a look of actual fear in her eyes—and hurried on. I
went to the stile, but she did not come. I saw her afterward, but she
turned away, not in opposition, I could see that, but in fright. That
night I saw her come to the window and look over at my window, but when
she saw me looking she quickly drew the blind. Thereafter she would look
regularly, and one evening, after putting away her books, I saw her walk
down to the stile, but now I was too frightened to follow. And so it
went until the end of the second semester, when, because of room changes
and most of the crowd I was familiar with moving to the district
immediately south of the college, I felt obliged to move also. Besides,
by now I had given up in despair. I felt that she must feel and see that
I was without vitality—and as for my opinion of myself, it is beyond
description.
I left, but often of an evening in the spring I used to come and look at
her windows, the lighted lamp inside communicating a pale luster to
them. I was miserably, painfully unhappy and sad. But I never spoke. The
very last day of my stay but one, in the evening, I went again—just to
see.
What better tribute could I pay to beauty in youth!