Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo’s lute
And a perpetual feast of nectar’d sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns.”
Tyndall’s and Hunt’s writings appealed to my imagination at that
time in the same way as Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” or as Longfellow’s
“Hiawatha,” or as William Cullen Bryant’s “Thanatopsis.” They convinced
me that the Slavs were not the only people who, as I had been inclined
to think, see the poetical side of science, but that everybody sees
it, because science on its abstract side is poetry; it is Divine
Philosophy, as Milton calls it. Science is a food which nourishes not
only the material but also the spiritual body of man. This was my pet
argument whenever I was called upon to defend science against Bilharz’s
attacks.
My progress in Greek and Latin grammar under the guidance of Bilharz
was rapid even before I had decided to steer for Columbia. It was
a question of memory and of analysis. My memory had had a stiff
linguistic training during the several years preceding that date,
in trying to master the English language with all its vagaries in
spelling and pronunciation. These vagaries I did not find in the
grammars of the classical languages, which appeared to me to be as
definite and as exact as the geometrical theorems in Euclid. Hadley’s
Greek Grammar did not differ much, I thought, from Davies’ Legendre’s
Geometry. Mathematics was always my strong point, and good memory is a
characteristic virtue of the Serb race; I, therefore, had an easy road
in my classical studies with Bilharz.
As the time went on I saw that entrance into Columbia College was
within easy reach so far as my studies were concerned. But here
again the old question arose which I first asked myself three years
before, when the train, taking me from Nassau Hall to the Bowery, was
approaching New York. “Social unpreparedness” stared me in the face. I
could not define it, but I felt its existence. I shall try to describe
it. Columbia College, a daughter of great Trinity Church, an alma mater
of men like Hamilton, Jay, Livingston, and of many other gentlemen and
scholars who guided the destiny of these great United States--can that
great American institution, I asked myself, afford to enroll a raw
Serbian immigrant among its students; train me, an uncouth employee of
a cracker factory, to become one of its alumni? I thought of the first
sentence in the Declaration of Independence, but it did not persuade me
that I was an equal of the American boy who was prepared to meet all
the requirements necessary for entrance into Columbia College, because
I was convinced that in addition to entrance examinations there were
other requirements for which no prescribed examinations existed. The
college of Hamilton and of Jay expected certain other things which
I knew I did not have and could not get from books. A jump from the
Cortlandt Street factory to Columbia College, from Jim and Bilharz to
patriarchal President Barnard and the famous professors at Columbia,
appeared to me like a jump over Columbia’s great and venerable
traditions. Old Lukanitch and his family and their American friends
helped me much to start building a bridge over this big gap, but the
more I associated with these people, who lived around humble Prince
Street, not far from the Bowery, the more I saw my shortcomings in what
I called, for want of a better name, “social preparedness.” “How shall
I feel,” I asked myself, “when I begin to associate with boys whose
parents live on Madison and Fifth Avenues, and whose ancestors were
friends of Hamilton and of Jay?” Their traditions, I was sure, gave
them an equipment which I did not have, unless my Serbian traditions
proved to be similar to their American traditions. My native village
attached great importance to traditions, and I knew how much the
peasants of Idvor would resent it if a stranger not in tune with their
traditions attempted to settle in their historic village.
The examination of immigrants which I saw at Castle Garden, when I
landed, had made me think that traditions did not count for much in
Castle Garden. But my principal acquisition from my apprenticeship
as greenhorn had been the recognition that there are great American
traditions, and that the opportunities of this country are inaccessible
to immigrants who, like Bilharz, do not understand their meaning and
their vital importance in American life. Vila’s mother on the Delaware
farm, my experiences with Christian of West Street, and Jim’s little
sermons in the Cortlandt Street boiler-room had impressed this idea
upon my mind very strongly. The mental attitude of a young Serb from
the military frontier was naturally very receptive to impressions of
that kind. My respect for the traditions of my own race had prepared me
to respect the traditions of the country which I expected to adopt,
and hence I was afraid that my cultural equipment was not up to the
standards of the college boys who were brought up in accordance with
American traditions. My subsequent experience showed me that my anxiety
was justifiable.
I have already mentioned that a short time before I ran away from
Prague and headed for the United States I had read a translation of
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” It had been recommended
to me by my American friends who gave me a free ride in a first-class
compartment from Vienna to Prague. My mention of the name of this great
woman, together with the names of Lincoln and of Franklin, as Americans
that I knew something about, had won me the sympathy of the immigration
officials at Castle Garden, who, otherwise, might have deported me.
Her name was deeply engraved upon the tablets of my memory. The famous
Beecher-Tilton trial was much discussed in those days in the New York
press, and when I heard that Henry Ward Beecher was a brother of the
author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” my opinion of Tilton was formed, and no
judge or jury could have changed it. Beecher’s photographs, which I
saw in my inspection tours on Broadway, confirmed me in my belief that
he was a brother worthy of his great sister. Young Lukanitch and his
sister knew of Beecher’s fame and, although strict Roman Catholics,
they consented to accompany me on my first pilgrimage to Beecher’s
Plymouth Church, and there I saw the great orator for the first time.
His face looked to me like that of a lion and his long gray locks,
reaching almost to his shoulders, supported this illusion. The church
provided a setting worthy of his striking appearance. The grand organ
behind and above the pulpit supplied a harmonious musical background to
the magnificent singing of the large choir. I felt that the thrilling
music was tuning me up for the sermon which the great orator was
about to preach, and I was right. The sermon was free from involved
theological analysis; it dealt with simple questions of human life
and its determination by human habits. It was a dramatic and poetic
presentation of the little sermons which Jim preached in the Cortlandt
Street boiler-room, but in a very plain form of statement. The fact,
however, that I found many spiritual bonds between great Plymouth
Church and Jim’s humble boiler-room shows me to-day why Beecher touched
the heart-strings of the plain people. He helped them to solve some of
their problems of life just as Jim tried to help me solve mine. But
Jim was not a cultured man and he delivered his chunks of practical
wisdom in the same offhand manner in which he fed shovelfuls of coal
to the busy fires under his boilers. Beecher, on the other hand, was a
great orator and a great poet, and every little grain of wisdom stored
up in human life was placed before his congregation with all the force
of his overpowering personality and with all the embellishments with
which the imagination of a poetical nature could clothe it. I felt
thrills creeping over my whole body as I listened, and the effect was
not only mental and spiritual, but also physical, undoubtedly because
of the quickening of the blood’s circulation produced by the mental
exhilaration. Bilharz, although a rigid Roman Catholic, admitted, after
hearing Beecher several times, that great sermons are possible even
without any theological flavoring. “But,” said he in his usual dramatic
way, “everything is possible to a poetic soul which is propelled by the
wings of a genius.” A remarkable concession from a man of Bilharz’s
training and mental attitude!
Jim, who was a strict Presbyterian, rejoiced that I had picked out
a Congregational Church for religious worship, and old Lukanitch
confessed that if I persuaded his children to go with me to Plymouth
Church very often they might desert the Roman Catholic faith of their
ancestors. I felt assured, however, that St. Sava and the Orthodoxy
of my mother would never lose me through the influence of Beecher’s
genius, because Beecher was preaching to all humanity and not to a
particular creed. His words were like the life-giving radiation of the
sun, which shines upon all things alike. I saw in him a living example
of that type of American who, like Hamilton, Jay, Livingston, and the
other great men of whom I had heard at the Philadelphia exposition,
were the spiritual and the intellectual giants of the Revolutionary
period. My study of the history of Hamilton’s life had shown me
that the number of these giants was large; many of them signed the
Declaration of Independence. I did not fail to see in this a most
propitious omen of a great future for the country. What a spiritual
giant Lincoln must have been, I thought, when I heard Beecher refer to
him with humblest veneration! Beecher was the sunrise which dispelled
much of that mist which prevented my eyes, just as it prevents all
foreign eyes, from seeing the clear outline of American civilization.
Four years previously I had for the first time attended an American
church service in Delaware City, and had carried away the impression
that in matters of public worship America was not up to the standards
prescribed by the Serbian Church. Beecher and his Plymouth Church
changed my judgment completely. Beecher’s congregation seemed to me
like a beehive full of honey-hearted beings. Each of them reminded
me of the Americans who had befriended me at the railroad-station in
Vienna, and had rescued me from the official dragon who threatened
to send me back to the prisons of the military frontier. I firmly
believed that Beecher was preaching a new gospel, the American gospel
of humanity, the same gospel which his great sister had preached. Every
member of his congregation looked to me like a faithful disciple of
this doctrine.
One of those honey-hearted disciples was a Doctor Charles Shepard,
of Columbia Heights, Brooklyn. He and his family were Unitarians, I
think, but they often attended Plymouth Church on account of their
great admiration for Beecher. Doctor Shepard’s family was, in my
opinion, a family of saints; generosity, refinement, and spiritual
discipline filled the golden atmosphere of their home. When I disclosed
my plans to the good doctor, he offered to help me carry them out.
He was an ardent advocate of the curative powers of hydropathy in
conjunction with proper diet and total abstinence from alcohol and
tobacco. “Cleanliness is next to godliness” was his motto, and by
cleanliness he meant freedom from unclean habits of every kind. His
theory was successfully practised in his hydropathic establishment, and
he flourished, and his institution was famous. His very old father,
over eighty years of age, who managed the office of the establishment,
needed assistance, and Doctor Shepard offered me the position and
spoke of getting a friend of his to help me prepare for entrance to
Columbia. His friend was Professor Webster, who taught Greek and Latin
at the Adelphi Academy in Brooklyn. I jumped at Doctor Shepard’s offer,
although the prospect of deserting Jim and Bilharz made me hesitate.
But Jim applauded my decision and he recalled his prophecy that I
should soon outgrow the opportunities of the New England Cracker
Factory. Bilharz expressed his gratification that he had contributed to
my progress, and he certainly had, both by what he praised and by what
he condemned. He was sincere in both, but his praise was founded upon a
rare knowledge of classical literatures, while his condemnation was due
to prejudice against science and against American democracy. The real
secret of his grip upon my imagination I shall disclose later.
Professor Webster was an ideal pedagogue; his pupils were boys and
girls from some of the best families of Brooklyn. Their teacher was
to them an apostle of classical culture, in which they were much
interested, partly because of their admiration for their beloved
teacher. After a few private lessons he invited me to join his classes
in Greek and Latin, where I was received with many signs of cordiality
from both the boys and the girls. Like myself, they were preparing for
college. I attended these classes three times a week and entertained
them much by my continental pronunciation of Greek and Latin, which
I had learned from Bilharz, who had also taught me to recite the
Greek and Latin hexameter with proper intonation. This delighted the
heart of Professor Webster and of his pupils. Recitations of Greek
and Latin verses with faultless rhythm were all which at first I
could offer to the entertainment of my classmates. After a while I
entertained some of them with Serbian poetry and also with Serbian kolo
dancing. I made every effort to make them forget that I was a Balkan
barbarian; but everybody, as if reading my thoughts, assured me that
I was contributing more to the Adelphi Academy than I was getting in
return. I knew better. I felt that the association with those splendid
boys and girls and with Professor Webster contributed much more to my
preparation for Columbia than all the book work which I had ever done
anywhere.
Doctor Shepard and his family saw the rapid change in me, I thought,
and many of their evidences of approval were very encouraging. When
I first met Doctor Shepard he was strongly pro-Turkish whenever the
Balkan war, which was raging at that time, was discussed. He had a
notion that the Serbians were a rebellious and barbarous race. During
the early part of 1879 he gradually shifted to the Serbian side, and I
was bold enough to take all credit for it to myself. I considered his
and his family’s approval the best test of the success of my efforts to
understand the American standards of conduct. This success meant much
more to me in my preparation for college than the success in my studies.
In an interscholastic athletic contest I volunteered to run in a
ten-mile race without any previous training, and won. From that day on
my friends at the Adelphi Academy regarded me as one of their number,
and it was a liberal education to me to listen to their eulogies of
_my loyalty to them and to their institution_, which, they said, I
displayed when I fought under the Adelphi banner on the athletic
field. Legends began to grow up among the Adelphi boys and girls about
a Serbian youngster who had won the ten-mile race without previous
training. When your young and enthusiastic friends begin to indulge
in legends about you, be assured that you are getting on some. But
legends, like nursery rhymes, will lull you to sleep if you are not
very, very wide-awake. This experience made me see clearly what young
Lukanitch had meant when he told me what oarsmanship might do for me at
Columbia even if I did not know much Greek and Latin. I was confirmed
in this when the boys of the Adelphi Academy who expected to enter
Yale or Princeton used much of their persuasive powers to steer me to
these colleges. It encouraged me much and diminished greatly my anxiety
about “social unpreparedness.” But my answer was that the college of
Hamilton, Jay, and Livingston, in the City of New York, was the port
for which I was sailing, and that Beecher’s church in Brooklyn would be
one of the anchors to keep me there, and that Beecher, as far as I was
concerned, would be a part of Columbia College.
The summer vacation of 1879 was approaching, and I knew that all my
academic friends in New York and Brooklyn would leave for the country.
There was nothing to keep me in Brooklyn except my obligations to good
Doctor Shepard. He excused me when I told him that I wished to devote
all my time during that summer to study, so as to insure my passing
with a high mark all my entrance examinations in the following autumn.
A high mark would gain me freedom from all tuition fees at Columbia,
a very serious consideration. Doctor Shepard approved, and I moved to
what I called, jokingly, my summer “villa” on the Passaic River, near
Rutherford Park, New Jersey. It was a tiny little cottage near the bank
of the river; it had not been occupied for a long time, and it was
looked after by an old Danish woman who lived quite near it. She kept
two cows and a lot of chickens and ducks and sold butter and eggs and
fowl. Her son Christopher peddled kindling-wood in Passaic, Belleville,
and Newark, New Jersey. The old lady consented to let me live in the
cottage until a permanent tenant should appear, and she was willing to
take care of me for a certain payment per week. I accepted her terms on
condition that she allow me to work off a certain part of the agreed
amount by sawing kindling-wood from ten to twelve in the morning and
from four to six in the afternoon. My suggestion made her thoughtful,
and she finally confessed her fear that my exercises before meals might
give me such an appetite that I should eat her out of house and home.
We agreed to try the scheme for a week, and we were both satisfied with
the result. She took good care of me, and I furnished her with more
kindling-wood for her son’s trade than she had ever expected. Moreover,
the regular help, who was hired for the specific purpose of cutting
kindling-wood, increased his output, in order to keep up with me. I
enjoyed the work hugely as means of splendid exercise, and rejoiced in
making the output as large as possible. The old lady was delighted with
the unexpected result. Every two-hour period of sawing and splitting
of kindling-wood was followed by a dip and swim in the Passaic River,
and by the end of the summer I was all muscle and could have run a
race of twenty miles without any previous training. This proved a very
valuable asset in the beginning of my college career; muscle and brawn
are splendid things to take along when one enters college, and have
while in college. Several incidents in my college career bear upon the
interesting feature of athletics in American college life, and I shall
describe them later even at the risk of appearing egotistical. This
feature is characteristically American and is quite unknown on the
continent of Europe.
Eight hours each day I devoted to study: three in the morning to Greek,
three in the afternoon to Latin, and two in the evening to other
studies. It was a most profitable summer outing of over three months,
and it cost me only thirty dollars; the rest was paid in sawing and
splitting of kindling-wood. Whenever I read now about the Kaiser’s
activities at Doorn, I think of my summer activities in 1879, and I
wonder who in the world suggested my scheme to William Hohenzollern!
During the last week of September of that year I presented myself at
Columbia for entrance examinations. They were oral, and were conducted
by the professors themselves and not by junior instructors. The first
two books of the Iliad, excepting the catalogue of ships, and four
orations of Cicero, I knew by heart. My leisure time at my Passaic
River “villa” had permitted me these pleasant mental gymnastics; I
wanted to show off before Bilharz with my Greek and Latin quotations;
to say nothing of the wonderful mental exhilaration which a young
student gets from reading aloud and memorizing the words of Homer and
of Cicero. The professors were greatly surprised and asked me why I
had taken so much trouble. I told them that it was no trouble, because
Serbs delight in memorizing beautiful lines. The Serbs of Montenegro,
for instance, know by heart most of the lines which their great poet
Nyegosh ever wrote, and particularly his great epic “The Mountain
Glory.” I told them also of illiterate Baba Batikin, the minstrel of
my native village, who knew most of the old Serbian ballads by heart.
Besides, I assured the professors, I wanted to do in Greek and Latin
as well as I possibly could, so as to gain free tuition. For the other
studies I was not afraid, I told them, and they assured me that my
chances for free tuition were certainly good. The other examinations
gave me no trouble, thanks to my training with Bilharz and with the
lecturers in the evening classes at Cooper Union. A note from the
Registrar’s office informed me a few days later that I was enrolled as
a student in Columbia College with freedom from all tuition fees. There
was no person in the United States on that glorious day happier than I!