My life was now a double struggle; a struggle for health and a struggle
for knowledge. I was always miserable and very often ill. The joy of
being alive was a thing I never knew for many years. Naturally my
progress in education was not great. Probably, on the whole, I put as
much energy into my work as most boys; for I was not strong enough to
take part in the athletic college life, and had no inclination toward
the pleasures of the fast crowd.
My days passed in fits of tremendous energy lasting a very little
while, followed by long periods of listlessness, when everything was an
effort. I worked nearly to the limit of my strength, and fully expected
to pass my first year examinations. I was still quite confident after
having written my examination papers. The beautiful spring days between
the last examination day and convocation, when the reading out of the
results was given, I passed complacently wandering on country roads,
afoot or on horseback. I was still satisfied that I had passed when I
sat in the big hall among relations, friends and college companions.
This egregious confidence made the blow all the harder. I was plucked;
ignominiously plucked. I had failed in three subjects. It was too
much; I could not bear it, and could not bear either to look any of my
friends in the face. I felt disgraced; and ran away accordingly.
I decided to be a tramp, a free vagabond, wandering “hither and
thither,” living as best I might. Perhaps my health would benefit by
the outdoor life? If not, I would die far away somewhere in a strange
land, alone and unwept, and it would perhaps be better so, for I had
unfortunate elements in me which could lead to no real good.
It was early in spring, but warm; and the roads were not bad. I walked
till sundown. The direction did not matter; but I liked the river,
so followed it. I could not have wandered very far in the few hours
between three o’clock and seven; but by that time I was tired, so
stepped into a little country hotel which I found near by. I ate a
little and went to bed. Although I was very unhappy, I fell asleep
almost immediately. In brooding over my own affairs, I quite lost sight
of the anxiety my absence might cause my parents. Self-centred people
never feel for others.
After breakfast in the morning I paid my little bill. It took nearly
every cent I had. So much the better; tramps never had money; they
begged and stole, and I was a tramp.
Again I followed the river, sometimes on the road, and sometimes on the
shore. I really got along very well. Farm houses were plentiful and
people were kind. All I had to do was to present myself, and I was fed,
both by French and English. The people I met were mostly French.
After roaming thus for two days and a half, my feet became very sore,
particularly my right foot, which had accumulated a beautiful blister
on the side of my heel as large as a half-dollar. I had no idea my feet
were so tender and that a mere blister on the heel could make itself
so keenly felt. I began to be suspicious that one needed training to be
a tramp.
It was the morning of the fourth day of vagrancy. I had slept in a barn
on the outskirts of a small village. I rose and limped to the village,
and sitting down in a tiny railroad station, took off my right boot,
and nursed my poor foot in my lap. While I sat thus a kind-faced young
chap came in and noticing me looked me over very deliberately. I must
have looked very miserable and woe-begone. After a short scrutiny he
went away, but returned in a few minutes and sat down near me. He
smoked his pipe in silence for a while.
Then he said, “Sore foot?”
I nodded my head. He smoked two minutes, then turned again to me with,
“Hungry?”
I was shocked. Had I really come to look hungry and like a creature
in want already? Evidently I had. I admitted that I could eat. The
kindly-looking young man was the station agent I learned later. He
lived in the station with a young wife and one child. When he learned
that I was hungry he went to that half of the building which was his
home, and in a little while his child brought me nice bread and butter
and a small jug of milk. This offering deeply touched me. The delicate
thoughtfulness of the station agent is something I shall never forget.
After I had eaten he appeared again and sat down smoking silently. He
was a man of understanding, but not talkative.
“Been out on a spree?” he asked.
“Well,” I replied, “I suppose you could call it one kind of a spree.”
“Going home?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
“Come from Montreal, I suppose,” he said.
“Yes,” I replied.
Whereupon he left me once more to return nearly immediately and hand me
a small object. It was a first-class ticket to Montreal.
“Go on home now,” he said. “Train will be along in twenty-five
minutes.” He would have left me again without waiting for my thanks,
but I stopped him and insisted on his listening to my very simple
experience and accepting my card. He was mightily amused at a tramp
having a visiting-card. He certainly was an understanding young
man, only a few years older than I was, but he knew the world, and
understood many things that were to cost me much in the learning.
The price of my railroad ticket was eighty-five cents. I had been a
tramp for nearly four days, and had only walked a distance equal to
eighty-five cents in railroad travel, and thereby had acquired a foot
not fit to bear my weight without excruciating pain. I concluded that I
was not cut out for a tramp. I was cured, and had forgotten the pain of
being plucked. My friend, the station agent, knew me quite well before
my train came.
When I arrived home, lame, tired and dirty, I was surprised to discover
that the anxious one had been my father. He had had detectives
searching for me in every place where I was not.
“I knew you were not far off and would come back soon,” said my mother.
“John, I’m afraid you are a damned fool,” said my father, and he kissed
me affectionately.
I understood later the full significance of this adventure—I had tried
to run away from myself—the only fellow from whom you cannot run. No
word was said of my having been plucked.
The summer passed as summers will to those at an age when they do
not realise how short a man’s time really is. I read a good deal and
studied in a half-hearted way; rode, fished, and spent some weeks in
the woods. The fall soon came and I went back to M’Gill to take my
first year for the second time.
I believe that second “first year” was of more real value to me than
any other. I think I was the only chap who took the first year twice,
except one, Bury, who was a chronic freshman. He had already been a
freshman for several years and never was anything else. But he is
to-day general passenger agent of one of the largest railroads in the
world, while I am an automaton.
Taking a survey of all the college men I know, and have known, I cannot
be sure that the addition of a college education makes much difference
in the end. The man who succeeds with a college degree would have
succeeded without it. It is personality that counts. Character rules
the world, be it educated at college or in the gutter.
I passed into my second year in the following spring, and then in turn
from sophomore to third year without distinction, without disgrace or
notable incident. I learned to smoke and began to shave, and believed
myself to be a thoroughly sophisticated youth.
I loved many girls during my college years; how many it is impossible
to state. I always loved a girl for some special feature; because she
had red hair, or for her eyes, or her nose, or her mouth. I loved
one because she limped a little and I was sorry for her, and liked
the brave way she pretended to be unaware of her deformity. I loved
a woman much older than myself, for several days, just because she
smelled so good. In imagination I can still smell that sachet powder.
I never loved a woman altogether, faults and all, just because she
appealed to me in every sense, but always for some special feature or
peculiarity. I was fickle, for of course one must soon weary of loving
a woman because of a single detail.
My first love, after “Little Blockhead,” was red haired. I met her at
a masquerade during my second freshman year. She was masked, but I saw
her hair; that was enough; I was gone. I was presented to her. When
she unmasked, she discovered a very ordinary countenance, and she had
a distinct cast in one eye. These things made no difference to me; I
worshipped her hair, and loved her devotedly for at least six weeks.
In the winter of my sophomore year I was trapped for all time—caught to
my undoing in one way, and to my making in a hundred ways.
Paul de la Croix talked beautifully of love in two languages—French
and English. He was a past-master in the æsthetic realisation and
description of love, although I do not believe he ever really loved
any one but himself. He was very artistic, and uncommon looking, for
which reasons the women loved him, and his family adored him. Music was
his chosen career; an easy career for the pampered son of a wealthy,
common, luxury-loving father. All his love affairs were confided to me.
Most of them were interesting enough, but not striking, except the last
one I was ever called upon to listen to.
For about the hundred and first time he was loved: this time, he
declared, by the most wonderful creature, the belle of the city’s _haut
ton_; the beautiful, witty and accomplished daughter of Montreal’s
most celebrated physician. I had seen the doctor often, but had never
met the daughter. I was not one of her set. I had no taste in the
direction of teas, dances, box-parties, or other social functions.
Society in my youth drew the line a little more strictly than it is
drawn now. Fathers like Doctor Joseph, and mothers like Mrs. Joseph,
wanted to know something about every one with whom their sons and
daughters associated. Professional gentlemen of the law and medicine
held themselves a peg above mere business men, or brokers in a small
way. In a world now gone crazy with commerce, medicine, law, even
the Church, have become so commercialised that they have come down a
bit socially, and “all-important” Business has moved up the social
scale, and now rubs shoulders with those of the most exclusive circles.
The man of business, who regards money as his sole aim, is much more
one-sided and undeveloped than he whose end is knowledge of a science
or art, for every science and every art is more or less connected with
everything. Consequently, the business man cannot be veneered with the
veneer of society, but he can be very decently varnished. There is a
huge difference between veneer and varnish.
I had never been within the charmed orbit of Miss Muriel Joseph’s
soaring. Paul was different. He had large means, he was a singer, a
dancer, a ladies’ man with an irreproachable veneer bought for him by
a poorly varnished father. He was loved by Muriel Joseph; and he raved
to me about her hair, her cheek, her hand, the mole upon her lip, her
skin, which was pale and clear, and eyes which were large, full, liquid
and inquiring like those of a deer.
I listened and listened to weeks of this stuff. He did it very well. I
was told the things she said and had described to me the way she said
them till Paul had me half in love with her before I had seen her. Paul
was eloquent and I was impressionable; but I did not disclose to him
what was in my mind. In fact, I was not very clear as to what was in my
mind at the time. All these things I retailed to John, who did not like
Paul, and had seldom met him. It was arranged that I should meet Paul’s
love.
“Ah, but she will be delighted to meet my chum,” said Paul; “I have
talked to her so often of you. If you will call with me there on
Sunday, you will be invited to her birthday dance.”
I was somewhat disconcerted, for I could not dance, and I abominated
ceremonious calls. Now I regretted the opportunities I had thrown away,
when driven weekly to the dancing-class of the dandy Italian signor who
polished the young of that time. At the dancing-class I had balked and
sulked, and never learned a step. It followed that I was awkward and
clumsy on a waxed floor; felt out of place in pumps; and hated taking a
girl in my arms before every one. How I wished now that I could dance!
I was tall, slim and graceful enough while walking, riding, skating or
driving. But dancing was beyond me, although John, who was a beautiful
dancer, had often urged me to learn the art. Numberless evenings I had
played on the piano alone, or as accompanist for flute or violin, for
others to dance, and I had enjoyed it so far without any ambition to
take part in it. Lovely young things had tormented me to let them teach
me; it was all of no use. Behind all the mixed feelings it excited, I
really believe there lurked a strong desire to dance and be frivolous;
but some want, mental or physical, withheld me.
Anyhow, here I was to meet a woman whom I was prepared to love before
seeing her. I was to meet her and be invited to her dance, and I could
not dance, and would be forced to admit it as if I had been brought up
on a farm. It was galling.