We left the mountains at the beginning of October, but my home-coming
was marked by a very painful circumstance--I was sent to school! I went,
of course, only as a day scholar; and it goes without saying that I was
never allowed to go and come alone lest I should get into bad company.
The four years that I spent at the university, as a day scholar, were
as strange and as full of odd experiences as any of my life. But,
notwithstanding, from that fatal day my history becomes much less
interesting as a narrative.
I was taken to school for the first time, at two o'clock in the
afternoon, upon one of those glorious October days, so sunny and
peaceful, that is like a reluctant and sad leave-taking of the
summer-time. Ah! how beautiful it had been in the mountains, in the
leafless forests and among the autumn-tinted vines!
With a crowd of children, all talking at the same time, I entered the
torture chamber. My first impression was one of astonished disgust
because of the hideousness of the ink-stained walls, and of the old
benches of shiny wood defaced by the penknife carvings of countless
school-boys who had been so inexpressibly miserable in this place.
Although I was a stranger to my new companions they treated me with the
greatest familiarity (they used thee and thou in addressing me) and gave
themselves patronizing airs that were almost impertinent. Although I
observed my school-mates timidly and furtively I thought them, for the
most part, exceedingly ill-mannered and untidy.
As I was twelve and a half I entered the third class; my tutor
considered me advanced enough to keep up with it if I chose to do so,
although I myself felt that I was scarcely equal to the task. The first
day, for the purpose of qualifying, we had to write Latin exercises, and
I remember that my father awaited, with some anxiety, the outcome of the
examination. When I told him I was second among fifteen I was surprised
that he attached so much importance to a matter of so little interest
to me. It was all one to me! Broken hearted as I felt, how could I be
affected by such a trifle?
Later, indeed, at no time, did I feel the impetus that the desire to
excel brings with it. To be at the foot of the class always seemed to me
the least of the ills that a school-boy is called upon to endure.
The weeks following my entrance were extremely painful to me. I felt my
intellect cramping rather than expanding under the multiplicity of the
lessons and the tasks imposed; even the realm of my young dreams seemed
closing against me little by little. The first dismal, foggy weather,
and the first gray days added a greater desolation and sadness to my
already overwrought feelings. The uncouth chimney-sweeps had returned,
and their yearly autumn cry was again heard in the streets. Theirs was a
cry that in my earlier years wrung my heart and caused my tears to flow.
When one is a child the approach of winter, with its killing gloom and
cold, seems to awake in him inexplicable forebodings bespeaking the end
of all bright and beautiful things; time goes so slowly in childhood
that we appear not to be able to anticipate the inevitable reawakening
that comes in the spring to all things.
No, it is only when we are older, and would seem, therefore, to be more
impressionable to the changes of the seasons, that we regard winter
merely as an incident having its rightful place among the other
incidents of life.
I had a calendar and I marked off upon it the slowly passing days. At
the commencement of my first year of college life I was oppressed by the
thought of the months of study stretching before me, and by the prospect
of the interminable months that must come and go before we reached the
Easter vacation that was to give us a respite of eight or ten days
from the dreadful schoolroom grind and ennui; I seemed to lose all
my courage, and at times I was almost overwhelmed with despair at the
prospect of the long and dreary days that went so slowly.
In the meantime cold weather, really cold weather set in and aggravated
my sorrows. Oh! the daily journey to school upon those frigid December
mornings, where for two deadly hours the only warmth we obtained came
from the inadequate coal fire, and before me the torture of returning to
my home in the face of the icy winter wind! The other children frolicked
and ran and pushed each other, and they slid upon the ice when it
chanced that the water in the gutters was frozen over. As for me I
did not know how to slide, and, besides, sports such as the other boys
indulged in, I considered highly undignified. I was always escorted
to and from school very sedately, and I felt the humiliation of being
conducted. I was sometimes laughed at by my school-mates with whom I was
not at all popular; and I had a disdain for those who, like myself, were
in bondage. I had scarcely an idea in common with them.
Even Thursdays I had to give to the preparation of lessons that took the
entire day. The written tasks, absurd exercises, I scrawled off in the
most careless and illegible handwriting.
And my disgust for life was so great that I no longer took the least bit
of pains with myself; often now I was scolded for looking so unkempt,
and for having dirty, ink-stained hands. . . . But if I continue in
this strain I will succeed in making my recital as tedious as were the
school-days of my youth.