We had, too, our levees--that was the word; by it one meant what is
now called a reception. I have been told that my mother, who was a
woman of marked social tastes and gifts, oppressed by the lack of
variety in Andover life, originated this innocent form of dissipation.
These festivities, like others in academic towns, were democratic to
a degree amusing or inspiring, according to the temperament of the
spectator.
The professors' brilliantly-lighted drawing-rooms were thrown open to
the students and families of the Hill. Distinguished men jostled the
Academy boy who built the furnace fire to pay for his education, and
who might be found on the faculty some day, in his turn, or might
himself acquire an enviable and well-earned celebrity.
Eminent guests from out of town stood elbow to elbow with poor
theologues destined to the missionary field, and pathetically
observing the Andover levee as one of the last occasions of civilized
gayety in which it might be theirs to share. Ladies from Beacon Street
or from New York might be seen chatting with some gentle figure in
black, one of those widowed and brave women whose struggles to sustain
life and educate their children by boarding students form so large a
part of the pathos of academic towns.
One such I knew who met on one of these occasions a member of the
club for which she provided. The lady was charming, well-dressed,
well-mannered.
The young man, innocent of linen, had appeared at the levee in a gray
flannel shirt. Introductions passed. The lady bowed.
"I am happy," stammered the poor fellow, "I am happy to meet the woman
who cooks our victuals."
If it be asked, Why educate a man like that for the Christian
ministry?--but it was _not_ asked. Like all monstrosities, he grew
without permission.
Let us hasten to call him the exception that he was to what, on the
whole, was (in those days) a fair, wholesome rule of theological
selection. The Professor's eyes flashed when he heard the story.
"I have never approved," I think he said, "of the Special Course."
For the Professor believed in no short-cut to the pulpit; but pleaded
for all the education, all the opportunity, all the culture, all
the gifts, all the graces, possible to a man's privilege or energy,
whereby to fit him to preach the Christian religion. But, like other
professors, he could not always have his way.
It ought to be said, perhaps, that, beside the self-made or
self-making man, there always sat upon the old benches in the
lecture-room a certain proportion of gentlemen born and bred to ease
and affluence, who had chosen their life's work from motives which
were, at least, as much to be respected as the struggles of the
converted newsboy or the penitent expressman.
Take her at her dullest, I think we were very fond of Andover; and
though we dutifully improved our opportunities to present ourselves in
other circles of society, yet, like fisher-folk or mountain-folk, we
were always uneasy away from home. I remember on my first visit to
New York or Boston--and this although my father was with me--quietly
crying my eyes out behind the tall, embroidered screen which the
hostess moved before the grate, because the fire-light made me so
homesick. Who forgets his first attack of nostalgia? Alas! so far as
this recorder is concerned, the first was too far from the last. For
I am cursed (or blessed) with a love of home so inevitable and
so passionate as to be nothing less than ridiculous to my day and
generation--a day of rovers, a generation of shawl-straps and valises.
"Do you never want to _stay_?" I once asked a distinguished author
whose domestic uprootings were so frequent as to cause remark even in
America.
"I am the most homesick man who ever lived," he responded sadly. "If I
only pass a night in a sleeping-car, I hate to leave my berth."
"You must have cultivated society in Andover," an eminent Cambridge
writer once said to me, with more sincerity of tone than was to be
expected of the Cambridge accent as addressed to the Andover fact. I
was young then, and I remember to have answered, honestly enough,
but with what must have struck this superior man as unpardonable
flippancy:
"Oh, but one gets tired of seeing only cultivated people!"
I have thought of it sometimes since, when, in other surroundings, the
memory of that peaceful, scholarly life has returned poignantly to me.
When one can "run in" any day to homes like those on that quiet
and conscientious Hill, one may not do it; but when one cannot, one
appreciates their high and gentle influence.
One of the historic figures of my day in Andover was Professor Park.
Equally eminent both as a preacher and as a theologian, his fame was
great in Zion; and "the world" itself had knowledge of him, and did
him honor.
He was a striking figure in the days which were the best of Andover.
He was unquestionably a genius; the fact that it was a kind of genius
for which the temper of our times is soon likely to find declining
uses gives some especial interest to his name.
The appearances are that he will be the last of his type, once so
powerful and still so venerable in New England history. He wears (for
he is yet living) the dignity of a closing cycle; there is something
sad and grand about his individualism, as there is about the last
great chief of a tribe, or the last king of a dynasty.
In his youth he was the progressive of Evangelical theology. In his
age he stands the proud and reticent conservative, the now silent
representative of a departed glory, a departed severity--and, we must
admit, of a departed strength--from which the theology of our times
has melted away. Like other men in such positions, he has had battles
to fight, and he has fought them; enemies to make, and he has made
them. How can he keep them? He is growing old so gently and so kindly!
Ardent friends and worshipping admirers he has always had, and kept,
and deserved.
A lady well known among the writers of our day, herself a professor's
daughter from a New England college town, happened once to be talking
with me in a lonely hour and in a mood of confidence.
"Oh," she cried, "it seems some of these desolate nights as if I
_must_ go home and sit watching for my father to come back from
faculty meeting!"
But the tears smote her face, and she turned away. I knew that she had
been her dead father's idol, and he hers.