youth's over-harsh criticism of itself--to realize that, so far, I had
made a miserable, cringing, cowardly botch of my conduct and
convictions. Some day, soon, I seemed to feel, there would come a moment
of crisis--a moment when all the shy, stammering manhood that I knew to
be in my heart would fling itself suddenly into the open and make me
strong and confident, helpful to myself and many others. I had always
longed to be a leader--as every boy does--and so far I had been a
slave--slave, most abjectly of all, to my own fears and prejudices. But
it would be different at college: there would be something--I did not
know what--which would fling courage into me, fill my veins with
flame--and it troubled me to wonder what that thing would be. Had any
one told me, then, that it would be Judaism, I should have either
laughed or been insulted.
For I was just as much afraid as ever of what hardships my religion
might work for me at college. I had as much fear, as much abhorrence of
the truth, in that regard. I wanted so much to forget it--to be one of
the other sort, little caring for creed in any form, but wishing I were
safe in the comfort of having been born into the faith of the majority.
As I looked at it then, I was going into these new four years with a
tremendous handicap scored against me. It seemed so unfair: I cared so
little for Jewish things, yet I would have to be identified with them
throughout my entire course. I had learned, by now, that I could not
escape them.
I went into college with a deeper sense of the injustice of it all than
I had ever had. I was going with the feeling that, come what may, I
should have to bow before the inevitable stigma of my race--And yet, I
hoped so yearningly that it would be otherwise. I hoped--and
dreamed--and laughed at my dreams, and told myself that college men were
only boys, after all: boys as bigoted, as cruel in their prejudices as
any that I had met at high school or military academy.
And perhaps I was justified in this last opinion. For, when I appeared
on the campus the next morning, headed for the dean's office to file my
registration, I was met by a ratty, little sophomore who made me buy a
second-hand freshman cap from him at four times its original value.
And when he had my money in his pocket, and was a safe distance across
the green from me, he began to laugh and shout:
"Oi, oi! oi, oi!"
So that this was my introduction into college life.
VIII
WITHIN THE GATES
This initial experience did not frighten me. I came up to the first day
of college in the firm and joyous belief that here, if anywhere, that
old bugbear of my past school days would be absent. I came into sight of
buildings that were new to me, and oh, how stately to my freshman eyes!
I came across a campus that was golden with the autumn grass, where red
leaves filtered down from old elms, and where, from heights, I caught
glimpses of the university's private parks, still green and soft, and of
the river beyond--and of the clean flanks of white stone buildings and
marble colonnades, half hidden in the trees. It was all so beautiful. It
was the promised land and I was within its gates.
The giddy knowledge of it buoyed me up and sent me across the campus
humming to myself one of the alma mater songs which I had so religiously
learned from that "Freshman Bible." I was on my way to my first class.
Directly ahead of me was the broad, lofty door of the recitation
building and, a little to the left, a fountain's water spilled itself
singingly over into a shallow marble basin.
Suddenly a trio of sophomores bounded out from behind a clump of bushes.
They came about me in a whooping circle, took me by the head and feet
and tossed me into the fountain.
I clambered out, dripping, spluttering, but--be it said to my
credit--still smiling. I had heard that this was the customary hazing
which all freshmen must endure--and I knew enough to take it with as
good a grace as they gave it.
I started on my way to the recitation hall again, my clothes leaving a
trickling line behind me on the walk. But they pulled me back and
thumped me into the water again. It happened a third time before they
let me go. And then one of them--a big, stocky fellow who wore a thick,
rolling sweater on which the college letter was emblazoned--laughed
heartily and thwacked me on the back and roared that I was a good kid,
even for a Jew!
The kindness of his remark was perhaps deeply meant. I've no doubt, he
thought to be paying me a compliment--but I went away, wetter than ever,
fast contracting a cold--and with a lump in my throat for which the cold
was not at all responsible.
In the class room I found a number of my new classmates in quite as
damp a condition as I. I was glad to be among them, to know that I had
not been singled out--and, being miserable, enjoyed their company. The
instructor seemed to be making a point of paying no attention to our
wetness. It made me wonder how the faculty felt about hazing. Evidently
they shut their eyes to it.
The class was soon over, since we were only kept for a preliminary
explanation of the course and a few words of supercilious greeting on
behalf of the young instructor. We came out upon the campus again,
locked arm in wet arm, paradoxically proud of what we had suffered.
But some more sophomores were waiting for us. We had to go into the
fountain over and over again. My own personal score was nine times. Nor
did my good nature--kept at what a cost!--serve to bring me any
leniency.
In fact it was only when I showed a trace of anger that the sophomores
finally released me and took me over to the gymnasium to give me a
sweater and a pair of old pants, much too big for me, to wear until my
other suit was dry.
I went home from that first day jubilant, excited, sure of my coming
four years. I had proven to myself and to all these others that I was
ready to take a joke, to share it and enjoy it even when it was "on me."
I had come out of it all with a tame but conclusive triumph of patience
and good nature.
I told my aunt of what had happened, when we sat down to dinner. She was
shocked at the recital. She wanted to know what sort of boys these
sophomores were--were they of good family and all that? Otherwise, if
they were ruffians, common street boys--she was going to write a letter
of complaint to the Dean of the university. I had a hard time
restraining her from it: I only did succeed by maintaining stoutly that
hazing was part of the social scheme, and was indulged in only by "boys
of the best families!"
The next morning, when I had traveled uptown to the college site, I was
met by more than one sophomore and upper classman who gave me a broad
smile or a humorous wink. The story of my dousings had probably gone the
rounds of the campus.
That night there was to be a reception given to the freshman class by
the college Y. M. C. A. I had arranged with Aunt Selina that I would not
be home until late.
There was a baseball game between the two classes in the afternoon. The
sophomores won, of course--as I believe they almost always do in that
first game. But after that there was a class rush around the flag pole.
I was light enough to climb up, stockinged-feet, upon the shoulders of
some of the taller classmates. I managed, somehow or other, to reach
that silly little flag and to tear it down, and then to dive down into
the twisting, jammed crowd below me, hugging the rag to my breast in
bulwarked hiding. And when the whistle blew I was still in possession of
it.
Popularity is a heady wine--and I had my fill of it that day and
evening. I--little I--had won the class rush for the freshmen. Everybody
seemed to know my name, to recognize me, to want to speak to me. At the
reception, later on, I was surrounded by a great group of freshmen too
shy to stand by themselves. Under ordinary circumstances, of course, I
should have been more shy than any of them--but these were not ordinary
circumstances. I was a suddenly awakened hero, a wolf who had thrown off
his meek lamb's outfit.
As I was leaving for home, full of ice cream, punch and much
self-conceit, a junior came toward me hesitatingly. He seemed to be
near-sighted, for he groped rather pitifully for my sleeve, and thrust
his face close to mine.
"Aren't you the freshman that won the rush?" he asked me.
I told him promptly that I was.
"Well, won't you come around for lunch tomorrow at our fraternity
house? We'll be mighty glad to have you."
I had learned a little of fraternities at school. They had not amounted
to anything there; but I knew that college fraternities were
different--were big, powerful organizations which could make or break a
man's college career. My aunt had spoken to me of fraternities, too; she
wanted me to join one which should give me--and her--a deal of social
prestige. And I, hungering for new experiences and--as every boy
does--for things that are mysterious and secretive, wanted, too, the
distinction and glory of making a fraternity. It seemed to my freshman
mind the most important thing upon the horizon.
And so, when this upper classman invited me to luncheon, my heart
bounded high with expectation. I knew from other college men that an
invitation to lunch was but the beginning of the usual system of
"rushing" a prospective member: the preliminary skirmish of festivities
which would prelude the final invitation to join the fraternity. And I
was going to lunch at one of the most influential and exclusive of the
university's fraternities.
It is needless to say, I was dressed in my Sunday-best the next morning.
And, after my 11 o'clock recitation, I hurried out to find the upper
classman waiting for me by the side of the fountain which had been the
scene of my yesterday's wetting. I smiled indulgently at the thought of
it. How changed everything was since then! The upper classman waited for
me to come up to him. I saw that he did not recognize me at once, and a
tremor of suspicion came over me. What if it were all a hoax--another
bit of hazing?
He was immensely cordial; took me by the arm and marched me across the
campus, down a side street and into the palatial, pillared house of his
fraternity. On the way, his genial face full of a stupid, expansive
smile, and his near-sighted eyes twinkling vacantly, he told me of the
men I should meet.
Inside, in the magnificent hall, with its weathered oak beams and
mission furniture and bronze plaques upon the tapestried walls, I met a
host of good-looking, well-dressed men. There was evidently a "rushing
committee" of upper classmen, who took me about and introduced me to all
the others. There were one or two freshmen, too, whom I recognized; and
these were wearing in their lapels a strange, gleaming little button. I
was to learn later than this was the "pledge button" which announced
that these men had been offered membership to the fraternity and had
accepted it.
When we went into luncheon the near-sighted junior sat me next to him.
He seemed tremendously embarrassed. Once or twice he leaned over to
whisper to other men; then he would steal a glance at me and blush a
brick red, his inefficient eyes puckering to squint closely.
The other men, for the most part, disregarded me. A classmate--one of
the pledged freshmen--spoke to me now and then, but loftily and as if it
were an effort of hospitality.
As I felt the coldness increase, I grew glum and silent. My new-found
confidence oozed out into bewilderment. What had I done? What had I said
to insult them all, to hurt my chances of election to their midst? I
could not figure it out.
They were courteous enough. They were what they claimed to be: a crowd
of young gentlemen. But I could sense, electric in the air, the
disapproval and amusement which they felt.
And after lunch was over, I did not join the others in the big,
leather-walled smoking room. I made a mumbled apology and went. They
accepted it blandly, smiling, smirking a little, and let me go.
I had just gone down the steps and towards the campus when the
near-sighted junior came after me, redder than ever of face, his eyes,
blinking very hard. He hurried up behind me and put his hand on my
shoulder.
"See here, 'fresh,'" he said thickly, "I owe you an explanation. I don't
want the other fellows to see me giving it to you. Come on, walk along
with me."
At the corner, out of range of the windows of his fraternity house, he
began his hurried, jumbling speech.
"I could see," he said, "how uncomfortable they made you. They tried to
be decent, honestly they did. But they--they've never had--never had to
entertain a--one of your sort before, don't you see? We--we don't ever
take--well, it's all my fault. I'm so darn near-sighted that I didn't
realize. I couldn't see--I didn't know--"
He could not go on, for his dull, honest face was fearfully distressed.
"What didn't you know?" I demanded.
"That you were--now, don't get sore, because I like Jews as much as any
folks--and I can't see why we don't take them in our fraternity. Only--"
"Only you didn't realize I was a Jew," I said hotly.
"That's it--I'm so near-sighted that I--"
I did not wait for his stammered finish. I went swiftly away and home,
my heart well-nigh bursting.
IX
MY AUNT AND I
"It isn't true," snapped my aunt, when I told her of what had happened
at the fraternity house. "I can't imagine that young gentlemen of such
an aristocratic set could act so meanly. You must have done something
wrong. You must have insulted them personally, yourself. I'll wager,
you're to blame--not they."
I was too sickened by it all to protest. I repeated to her slowly the
words of apology which the near-sighted junior had spoken to me at our
parting, and, when they did not convince her, gave up the task and went
to bed without any supper. I was old enough to have cured myself of the
habit of tears--though, as a matter of fact, no men ever do quite want
to cure themselves of it--but I remember that my pillow was damp the
next morning, and the grey, foggy sky, through the window, seemed in sad
tune with my spirits.
I dressed and went up to college, fearful to meet any of that fraternity
crowd again, wondering how they would act towards me, trying to be
indignant, but succeeding only in a shriveled self-debasement. Because I
was a Jew--that was their one and only reason for showing me the door in
so polite and gentlemanly a fashion.
But when, at the chapel entrance, I bumped into one of the pledged
freshmen, he simply did not pay any attention to me at all. He appeared
not to know me, murmured an unhurried and general, "Excuse me," and went
on. A few yards further on, I met with one of the seniors at whose
fraternity table I had been sitting the noon before. He bowed hastily
and walked past.
Neither one nor the other of them seemed to be much perturbed by the
meeting, nor to notice my own discomfiture. I could not imagine that
such incidents as mine of yesterday were common occurrences and yet they
seemed to take it so much as a matter of course.
I fought with my pride in the matter for a long while. Then, at the end
of a noon-time recitation, I spoke of it to a freshman with whom I had
struck up a friendship two days old. The friendship ended there. He
seemed scandalized at my mentioning fraternities at all: it was a
subject far too sacred for discussion, evidently. He merely snapped back
stiffly that he expected to be pledged to another fraternity sometime
during the day, and that he did not care to hurt his chances by talking
too freely. It made me see the secretiveness of the system from another
angle.
I received no more invitations to lunch. I contented myself henceforth
with a humble sandwich and glass of milk at the "Commons" eating hall.
It was galling to see classmates being escorted across the campus to the
fraternity houses, to overhear them accepting invitations to theater in
the evening, to watch the process of their conversion to this fraternity
or that one. It was like being in a bustling crowd with hands tied and
mouth gagged--and the sullen rage of a disappointed boyhood in my heart.
Aunt Selina did not know how to comfort me. I think she tried to, in her
superfluous way. At first she wanted to make light of the fraternities,
gibing at them whenever opportunity arose at the dinner table. But she
did not feel lightly about it--and her disappointment was too great to
be laughed away. She still had a dim suspicion that I had made some
fearful misstep--had brought the failure on myself. And so, after a
while, she kept silent on the subject, and would not speak of it at all.
But her silence was more harshly eloquent than all her foolish talk had
been.
It seems that Paul Fleming, a nephew of Mrs. Fleming-Cohen, had
belonged to a fraternity at college; and Mrs. Fleming-Cohen was always
alluding to it, as if it gave her a social security which my own aunt
could never attain. Aunt Selina wanted me to make a fraternity to prove
to Mrs. Fleming-Cohen how easy a matter it was. She had implied as much,
when we had first come back from the country.
Our life together as days went by, seemed to be going peacefully and
smoothly into some sort of a makeshift groove. I knew well enough that
she and I would never grow to be genuinely fond of each other. Our aims
were different; and the beginning of college had given me some inkling
of what my aims were going to be. I was only eighteen, to be sure; but I
was older, more settled than most youths of twenty or more. I blamed
myself a little for my impatience with her, for my hasty conclusions
concerning those friends of hers who came up from Washington square to
eat her meals and to fill her with senseless chatter of art and
literature. And yet I could not help loathing them. Whenever they came
to dinner, I made an excuse of studying at the house of another freshman
for the evening, and thus escaped them.
The first month of college was not yet over when I went, on one of those
evenings, to hear an extra-curriculum lecture on the social duties of a
college man. I had expected to hear a fop of some sort deliver dicta on
the proper angle of holding a fork or inside information as to the most
aristocratic set in college. It was that word _social_ that misled me.
Instead, the speaker was a rough, business-like man, rather shabbily
dressed, who heaped fiery anathema upon the idle rich. And he spoke of
the true social duties. He spoke mainly--because he knew most about
it--concerning the opportunities for college men in settlement work.
I had never heard of settlement work before. It was a new thing to
me--and perhaps it was its newness that at first attracted me so
strongly. I waited until the end of the lecture, and joined a little
group of listeners who gathered around the man with eager questions. I
had a few of my own to ask, too--and he answered mine as he answered all
of them, simply, kindly, directly.
The speaker was Lawrence Richards, director of one of the largest
settlement societies in New York. There was something powerful,
magnetically enthusiastic about him--and his face was tremendously keen
and happy.
He was gathering up his papers to depart when he chanced to remark to
me:
"See here, will you come over to my fraternity house with me and talk
things over? We can sit in the library, and I'll tell you lots more
that I know will interest you. We'll be comfortable--and fairly alone."
Mr. Richards, it seems, had gone to my university ten years ago. I asked
him the name of the fraternity. When he told me it, I shook my head, No.
It was the house at which I had had that memorable luncheon--and whither
I was not to be invited any more.
"Why not?" he persisted. "I want you down in my settlement. I want to
show you how you can be of help to us. Won't you come over to the
fraternity house?" And when I again declined, he insisted on knowing
why.
But I did not tell him. "Perhaps some of the members of your active
chapter will tell you," I replied, "but I will not."
He looked at me sharply, and his face grew grim. "I see," he said
warmly. "The nasty little cads. Well, it's harder for me to excuse them
than it is for you--and I'm their sworn brother!"
So I made an appointment to come down to the settlement, instead, and to
take supper with him there some evening. He wanted to show me the
splendid organization of things there: the club rooms, the dance hall,
the gymnasium and reading room. He wanted to introduce me to the
resident leaders. He wanted to persuade me to become a leader, myself:
to attend one of the clubs of young boys, to join with them in their
meetings, their debates, their entertainments and studies, to help them
by friendliness and example.
"I suppose," he said, when he left me at a subway kiosk, "that you feel
mighty sorry that you didn't make a fraternity, don't you? Well, I'm
offering you a membership in a bigger and better one than ever had a
chapter in a college--the brotherhood of humanity. You'll be proud of
it, little fellow, if you'll join. So come along down and let us 'rush'
you!"
It was so good-natured a joke that I could not resent it. I had had my
eyes opened, tonight, by some of the things that Mr. Richards had told
me. I had learned that the city has its poor, its sick and wicked, its
boys and girls embroiled in wrong environments, its lonely and
unambitious, who must be comraded and wakened. And I had learned that I,
young as I was, was able to help, to foster, to do good for such as
these.
On the way home, I passed a street corner where boys a few years younger
than myself were loitering in obscene play. A little further on I came
to a girl, not more than fifteen or sixteen, who was being followed by
some toughs. She was a Jewish girl, too, I noticed--and she was crying
with fright. I put her on a street car to get her out of harm's way.
It was of just such as these, both boys and girls, that Mr. Richards had
spoken this evening. Perhaps he was right--and what a noble thing to be
able to join in the help and companionship which the settlement could
give them. I resolved to go down to him the very next evening.
When I reached home, Aunt Selina was just getting ready for bed. She
came out into the hall in a pink silk dressing-gown, all frills and
ruffles, and asked me complainingly where I had been so long. She was
angry at my abrupt departure when her evening's guests arrived.
"I have been to hear a lecture delivered by a Mr. Lawrence Richards," I
told her.
"Oh! That settlement man?" she asked.
"Yes."
She almost snorted. "I met him once at a meeting of our Ladies'
Auxiliary. He is such a plain, undistinguished fellow!"
I hesitated a moment. "Aunt Selina," I said, "I am going down tomorrow
night to have supper with him. He wants me to become a leader in one of
the settlement clubs. It would take only one night a week, he says----"
My aunt was so affected by the announcement that I had to run and fetch
her smelling salts. "Oh, oh, down into that awful tenement house
district? Down among those dreadful people? Indeed, you shan't go. If
you do, I shall never allow you to come back! Think of the diseases you
might spread!"
And she carried on so hysterically that, after a while, I gave in and
promised I would not go--not for a while, anyhow.
"Why aren't you like other boys of your class?" she demanded. "Why
aren't you content to make the best of things and be satisfied with the
splendid opportunities you have?"
"That's just what I'm trying to do, Aunt Selina," I told her. "Trying to
make the best--the really best of everything that comes into my life!"
But she was unimpressed, and went off sobbing to bed.
X
THE RULES OF THE GAME
I became rather friendly with that near-sighted junior. He was so
genial, good-hearted, apologetic a chap that I could not harbor any
resentment against him for the events which took place at his fraternity
house. They were not his fault, anyhow.
His name was Trevelyan, and he came from one of the oldest families in
New York; one of the wealthiest, too. At college he was considered
somewhat of a fool, his never-failing good nature giving justification
for the opinion. I don't think that, since that first embarrassing
luncheon, I have never seen him unhappy--and even then it was on my
account he was discontented, not on his own. And outside of college he
must have been respected with all the awe which New Yorkers accord to
the Sons of the American Revolution and five or six million dollars. But
he was the least lofty, least snobbish man that I have ever known. Most
of his college friends thought he was too much of a fool to play the
snob; I thought he was too much of a gentleman.