a month. I do not know who of us was the more proud, my aunt or I--for
to me the idea of having a junior and a member of one of the most
powerful fraternities visiting at my home was quite as much of a marvel
as my aunt seemed to feel it, that a member of the Trevelyan family--the
Trevelyan's of Fifth avenue and Sixty-fourth street, don't you
know--should be seated at her table and giving gracious attention to her
gossipy conversation. For a whole week after his visit Aunt Selina made
a great point of it--and of telling her friends of it. The distinction
of having a Trevelyan to dinner was a great triumph over Mrs.
Fleming-Cohen, who had once entertained a Jewish mining magnate from the
Far West--but who had never attained anything like a Trevelyan.
I think Trevelyan began at first feeling very much ashamed and sorry; he
was just trying to square up matters with his own conscience. He had a
room in one of the college dormitories. He seldom used it, but when he
did he would invite me to stay up there with him and to sit until the
wee, quiet hours, talking over our briar pipes, interspacing the layers
of blue smoke with argument and stirring plans. Trevelyan had great
hopes for me. He had discovered that I was a runner.
As a matter of fact, I had done a little practicing with the track team
at military school. I had never amounted to much, had never stood out
tremendously in meets. I liked to run, I liked the healthy trim that the
exercise gave me, but I'm afraid I never took it very seriously.
But Trevelyan saw things differently. Here was my great chance. Never
mind the college papers, the literary societies and all that tame
coterie of lesser institutions. If I made the track team I would be a
college hero--and, after seeing me capture the flag in the class rush,
he had no doubt of my vim and nerve. I must make the track team.
(Trevelyan, by the way, was assistant manager of the track
organization.)
So, soon enough, I was out on the windy field in my old school
track-clothes, racing around and around with a sturdy intention of
proving myself worthy of Trevelyan's friendship. That was my chief
reason for "coming out for track," after all.
The coach, a taciturn, gray old fellow, whose muscles were running too
fat and whose temper had frayed out in the years of snarling at
prospective champions, paid little attention to me until the week before
the freshman-sophomore track meet. Then he tried me out at a 44-yard
run. That was what I had been used to doing at school. There was only
one man in the freshman class who could beat me in this run for certain.
There was no reason, said Trevelyan, why I should not be absolutely sure
of my place on the class team.
Three days before the meet the other "44" man sprained his knee. He was
out of the race for the time being. There was no doubt now that I would
be put in. So said Trevelyan, and so, in surly, semi-official fashion,
said the coach.
But we had not counted on the captain of the freshman track team. This
was one of my classmates, chosen from among the many candidates by the
captain of the 'varsity team. This freshman leader I did not know
personally. I had met him almost every day on the field, but he had
never recognized me. His track shirt bore the monogram of a noted
preparatory school; and it was echoed that he was the handsomest man in
the class. He was most certainly the most snobbish. He was thrown into
contact with me in various organizations during our four years. I do not
remember his ever having bowed to me. In his college world I, and such
as I, did not exist.
At any rate, the college newspaper came out one noon to announce the
members of the freshman track team, as chosen by its captain. My name
was not among them.
In vain did Trevelyan protest to the 'varsity captain, to the coach--I
even think he took the matter as high as a meeting of the faculty
athletic advisory committee. Nothing could be done. The 'varsity captain
shrugged his shoulders, the old coach growled but said nothing, the
faculty advisers kept away from the topic as if it were beneath their
tutelary notice. And the freshman-sophomore track meet was held with me
on the side-lines, among the spectators. I have no reason to gloat over
it, but it is a rather amusing point that we lost the entire meet
through losing the four-forty yard run.
"It's a dirty shame," said Trevelyan, his squinting eyes full of rue and
anger. "I knew that sort of thing went on in the 'varsity circle--but I
didn't think they'd carry it down into the class teams. It's all college
politics--and college politics are the meanest, most vindictive intrigue
on earth."
I didn't ask him for a further explanation, and I suppose he felt it
would be kinder not to make one. But I knew well enough to what he
referred--and why there had been this sudden, underhanded
discrimination. I made up my mind to forget the whole episode. I had not
been so tremendously anxious to make the track team that I would let the
disappointment of it rankle and grow and ruin my year's fun. I put it
all behind me, resolving to take my enthusiasm into some other of the
college activities where it would be more sincerely appreciated.
I consulted Trevelyan about it. He suggested the college newspaper. But
after he had made the suggestion, he began to stammer and make strange
protests. I asked him to tell me plainly what was wrong.
"Why, it's the same with that as with the track team. The
editor-in-chief of the paper is in my 'crowd.' I'll speak to him--and
save you any trouble. If he says yes, then you go out and win a place on
the board of editors. But if he says no, I want you to promise me that
you won't subject yourself to any more of this puppy-dog prejudice."
I did promise. And two days later I received a postcard from Trevelyan,
telling me that it would hardly be worth my while to try for the college
paper. He added, in the large, unruly handwriting which his
near-sightedness made necessary:
"You may go on breathing, however, if you don't make a noise at it."
He supplemented this, a few nights later, when he and I were at our old
places in his room. He threw down his pipe in the midst of talking about
something carefully unimportant, and sat up with a laughably angry
face.
"See here, 'fresh,'" he bawled out, "you're getting the rottenest deal I
ever saw. You know why--so do I. And we're going to show them a thing or
two. We're going to buck up against the strongest thing in the
world--and that thing is prejudice. We're going to beat it, too. Do you
understand? Were going to beat it out! Smash it to pieces!"
Yes, I understood, I said. I understood it all only too well. So well,
indeed, that I knew there was no use trying to fight. I knew that
prejudice of race and religion was the strongest shield of the ignorant
and mean, that neither he nor I could fight it fairly--and that, if he
came into the fight by my side, he would ruin his own chances of being
one of the biggest men in the college world when his senior year
arrived.
"A lot I care for being a big man in a place of little thoughts," he
snapped back at me. "I'm ready to take the consequences, now and forever
after."
"Have you thought of what your fraternity brothers might say about it?"
I asked him.
"I don't care--I don't--well, if they--." His voice died away in
perplexity. I had hit upon his weak spot. He was an easy-going, likeable
chap; he hated a rumpus. If he made any sort of fight against the
anti-Jewish prejudice, he would have his whole fraternity against him,
he would perhaps be shunned by all his sworn brothers, by his best
college friends. His enthusiasm became a little dulled, then died down
into a great good-natured sigh.
"I suppose you're right, 'fresh,'" he admitted slowly. "I'm not of the
fighting sort. And I have my fraternity to consider. That's the worst of
belonging to a fraternity." He took up his pipe again and smoked in
silence for a while. "I suppose you think you'll never be happy, now
that you know you aren't going to be in a fraternity. Take my word for
it, you're ten times luckier in having your freedom. Wait until you're
an upperclassman and you'll agree with me."
It seemed a dreadful sacrilege for him to be saying it. Besides, I
thought he was blaming his own lack of fighting power on his fraternity
in too heavy and unjust a degree. I wasn't any more of a fighter than
he--but I was disappointed, somehow, that his pugnacity had died out so
readily.
"I can't do it, 'fresh,'" he confessed, with a grin. "I'm not the
scrapper I thought I could be. I just want to go through college lazily,
happily, respectably--and all that. I wouldn't know how to make a rumpus
if I wanted to. But listen here." He pointed his finger at me sternly.
"If I were you, I wouldn't rest until I had made the fight and won it.
Fight it not only for yourself but for the hundred other Jewish fellows
in college. See that they get a square deal. See that they don't lose
out on all the things that make college worth while. A Jew is just as
good as anyone else, isn't he?"
"Yes," I answered him only faintly.
"Well, then, go ahead and prove that fact to the whole college world."
But, though I did not answer him, I knew that I was not any more able to
make the fight than he. Less able, perhaps, because I was more
handicapped. I made myself a thousand excuses as I sat there thinking it
over--I was not brave enough, that was all.
But one thing my acquaintanceship with Trevelyan did bring me. He was a
dabbler in light verse, and had been elected to the college funny paper.
He also contributed to the undergraduate literary magazine at
times--though he was a bit ashamed of being taken seriously. At any
rate, he encouraged me to go into these two activities.
Whether or not it was due entirely to his influence, or whether these
two college publications were broader and less exacting as to the
ancestry of contributors, my work for them was welcomed. Before the year
was over I had been elected an associate editor of the funny paper, and
had four articles accepted by the literary magazine--enough to put me
among the list of "probables" for election, next winter.
At the same time I went through a successful trial for membership in the
college dramatic association. I was not given a part in the annual play,
however. I made up my mind to consider this a just decision, and that I
had no right to impute it to anything other than my lack of talent. The
president of the association, however, met me at lunch hour one day and
made some rather lame remarks about the embarrassment to which the
"dramatics" would be put if I were in the cast.
"Yer see," he said, "we go on an annual tour. And we get entertained a
lot, yer see. And it's big social stunts in every city. And it's the
cream of society wherever we go--so, it'd be funny if--well don'tcher
see?"
"Yes," I admitted, "I do see. I see further than you do."
I was beginning to wonder if that fight that Trevelyan planned wouldn't
be worth while, after all.
XI
A MAN'S WORK
I talked to Trevelyan, too, of my interest in the work of Lawrence
Richards. Trevelyan had heard of him and of his settlement, and was
rather at sea to give an opinion about it. He was only mildly
enthusiastic.
"What's the use of bothering with things so far away from your college
life?" he protested lazily. "Of course, the idea of being useful to
people in need is splendid and all that. But somehow, it doesn't fit in
with college life."
"Why not? Why shouldn't it?" I argued.
He waved his hand as if to begin some generalization, but made no real
reply.
"Wait until you're through with college before you settle down to
manhood," he said a little later. "College is just the sport of kids,
after all."
It came to me--though I did not tell him so--of how, in the beginning, I
had thought of college as a place of full manhood--and of the misgivings
I had had, that perhaps, after all, college would be only another
stepping stone to that manhood. And so it was: just a stepping stone,
through brambles of prickly prejudice and childish pranks. When would it
come, that manhood?
"You know, Trev," I said to him hesitatingly, "I sometimes feel I am
much older than most fellows. Almost old enough to do a man's work."
He looked at me and laughed, refusing to take me too soberly. "You are
older," he admitted. "Only what do you call a man's work?"
I didn't know, and told him so. He seemed to consider it a triumph for
his own argument.
"See here," he said, "what's the use of all this stewing about the slums
and the wretched poor and that sort of thing, if you're just aching to
make trouble for yourself? If you want manhood, you'll reach it ten
times sooner if you'll slip into it comfortably, gracefully, lying
quietly on your back and floating--and not splashing too hard. You'll
never get anywhere if you insist on getting there with a rumpus."
I admired the studied grace of his similes, but had to confess that they
did not impress me as true. But, at the same time, I did not try to
explain any further to him how I felt.
That did not end the questioning for me, however. I even broached it to
Aunt Selina once, and she threw up her hands in despair. I think I did
it somewhat with the idea of seeing her do just that. It was beginning
to amuse me, how hopeless she thought I was.
So that was why I did not tell her of my intention to go, one evening,
to see Mr. Lawrence Richards at his East Side Settlement. But
immediately after supper, I bade my aunt good night, and answered her
suspicious query with the information that I was "bound for a social
affair." The answer seemed to reassure her and she gave me gracious
permission to go.
I took the subway to Spring street, walked across to the Bowery, and a
few blocks on the other side of it, came to the Settlement. It was in
the heart of a noisy crowded section, towering high above the shabby
buildings like a great, clean, shining bulwark.
Mr. Richards was at supper, I was told. A bright-eyed little Jewish boy,
neatly dressed and careful of speech, offered to show me the way to the
dining room on the fifth floor.
I had a hearty welcome from the Head Worker when he recognized me. He
was disappointed that I had already had my supper; made me sit down
beside him and introduced me to all his associates. They were mostly
young men, I was surprised to find; one of them told me that he had
graduated from one of the New England colleges only the year before.
Mr. Richards showed me all about the place, as he had promised he
would. Then he took me with him into his "den" as he called it--a little
room, just off the gymnasium, where he had his desk and filing cabinets
and books. He sat me down opposite him on a canvas-covered chair, and,
when he had gone over some reports which needed his signature, looked up
at me and smiled.
"Well," he said, "what's the trouble?"
"Oh, I didn't--well, how did you know there was any trouble?"
The smile broadened. "None of you ever come down here unless you are in
trouble. Trouble's a sort of bait that lands ambitious youths into doing
settlement work--and into coming to me for advice. They say I'm pretty
good at giving it. Why don't you try me?"
I did. I told him exactly how I felt: that I was growing impatient of
all the tomfoolery of college; that I wanted work more sure of manly
results, more broadening, more full of character. Then, too, I told him
of what Trevelyan had said, and he laughed at it merrily.
"Trevelyan?" he said. "Oh, yes, I know him. He belongs to my fraternity,
doesn't he? I've met him at one or another of our affairs. A good enough
fellow--a little too much money, and a little too easy with himself in
consequence. But he's a thorough gentleman at heart, isn't he?"
I almost gasped. He had summed up Trevelyan marvelously well in those
few words. He saw my wonderment and smiled.
"I've only met him once or twice," he said, "but I have the faculty of
knowing men. It's a faculty I have to have in this sort of work. It
depends so much on the human equation. I meet thousands of young men and
women every year--meet them, talk with them a little while, give them
the best I have to give in that short space--and like to think that,
even if I never see them again, I've helped them along a bit. That's all
that a settlement can do, after all."
Outside the door, in the gymnasium, we could hear the joyful shrieks of
a crowd of young boys playing basketball. From the upper floors came a
scraping of feet to tell that the clubs were beginning to meet for the
evening. From across the hall came the sound of young girls singing the
parts of a cantata--and this was all planned, all created by Lawrence
Richards who sat there at his desk and had a smile for each and everyone
who came before him.
"Don't think you're different from all the other fellows at the
university," he said to me. "You're not. You're all as much alike as a
row of pins. Your problems are youth's problems--and you needn't be
ashamed to have them, as long as you work them out to suit the best that
is in you. You've nothing definite in mind, have you?"
I said, "No." I only had an idea that he might be able to use me here at
the settlement in some capacity.
"There's a good deal in what Trevelyan said," he told me. "While you're
at college you might as well give college all that it needs of your time
and energy. College will surely pay you back. All the work that you do
on a team, for a college paper, for any of the undergraduate
organizations, will be just so much of a pledge on the part of your
college that she will honor you, give you power and position and the
opportunity to do bigger things. Don't you want those honors? Doesn't
that power mean anything to you?"
I could not answer him; I did not want to tell him that I thought myself
above these little things. He understood me, however, even in my
silence.
"They are things worth while," he said. "There is a senior society worth
'making,' if you can. It would be something to be proud of to be the
only Jew ever to have 'made' it. But it's more than an honor. That
senior society practically governs the student body--molds its thought,
holds sway over all campus opinion. Think what you could do if you were
a member of it. You could fight for the other Jewish boys, make things
easier and fairer for them--could spare them the unpleasant things you
had to bear. You could master all snobbery, could make the university a
place of real American democracy and gentlemanliness. Don't you think
that that's worth while?"
I admitted it was. I had not thought of it in that way.
"Now, this is what I suggest," he said. "It's getting near the end of
the term, and there's no use in your beginning any work down here at the
settlement while college is still in session. But when vacation begins,
I want you to come down here to live for a couple of months. I'll make
you a resident club-leader, and you'll have your full share of the best
sort of work." He paused a moment. "Will you come?"
"Will I? You bet I will!"
"Good! And in the meanwhile, take Trevelyan's advice--it's mine, to.
Stick to your college work and your college play, and don't bother about
the outside world for a while. That is your world--the college. Fight
hard in it. The whole world likes a stiff upper lip, and the college
world likes it best of all. And, sooner or later, Jew or Gentile, the
college world will repay you for all that you give it. If you go through
college shunning everyone, afraid of your own shadow, surly to the
approach of all who would be friendly to you, you will reap nothing but
loneliness and a bitter 'grouch.' If you loaf and play cards and hang
about the billiard parlors all day long, you won't make a friend worth
having, you won't gain anything worth remembering. If you work at your
studies only, you'll gain nothing but Phi Beta Kappa--and, for all its
worth, that'll mean nothing to you unless it brings along with it the
respect and good will of all the men from whom you wrested it. At
college as much as in any business office a smile will beget a smile,
willingness to work will reap willingness to reward--and Alma Mater, if
only you prove your love for her by working for her, will return your
love tenfold."
He reached over the desk and touched my arm.
"I don't mean to be just rhetorical," he continued. "I have been through
the same inner struggle and wonder and repugnance that you have--and I
know how deeply you feel it. Well, I worked blindly ahead at the things
that college gave me to work at--the football team and the newspaper and
all that--and soon enough I knew that I had been working into manhood by
the only right road. Manhood is a matter of disposition, not of work.
There's a place for manhood in your little college world. Go and find
that place--and give it all that is manly and courageous in you."
I left him, I confess, doubting his words a little to find that place of
which he spoke so feelingly.
Well, perhaps I would find it. Perhaps an opportunity would spring up
from out of the sing-song ordinariness of my daily life--and what would
I do then?
XII
THE HEART OF JUDEA
My promise to Mr. Richards brought more than one result. The first of
them was a serious quarrel with my Aunt Selina. Her horror at the idea
of my spending the summer at a slum-settlement was beyond curbing. She
had planned that I should accompany her and Mrs. Fleming-Cohen upon a
trip to Europe. They did not need me; they would be in no way dependent
on my company ... and I flatly declined. Aunt Selina, outraged at my
actual intentions, left for France a week earlier than she had
expected--and, in high indignation, gave me leave to do "whatever I
pleased by way of disgracing her reputation."
Her letter from the steamer warned me to bathe every day in very hot
water, lest I should be contaminated by the filth of that section of the
city which I had chosen for my summer home ... and to be sure and give
her warmest regards to that delightful Mr. Trevelyan!
I lost no time in moving into Mr. Richards' company at the East Side
settlement. I was given a room there which was small, dark, but neat
and comfortable enough. College had no sooner closed than I was settled
in it, ready for the two months of work which had been allotted me.
In return for my board and lodgings, the settlement demanded all my
time. There was hardly an hour which was not given to some sort of club
or class, rehearsal or supervision or gymnastic training. Almost
immediately after breakfast the playground work began; by noon I was
helping a crowd of little ragamuffins to forget the heat in the
splashing fun of the swimming pool, in the basement. In the afternoon
there were classes for young boys who needed tutoring--hungry-eyed,
eager little fellows who reminded me of what I must have been when I was
their age.
I would not have you believe that I was readily sympathetic with every
case I met. These boys and girls--though I rarely had to do with the
latter--were all Jewish. The appearance of some of them would perhaps
have justified my aunt's antipathy to the East Side. Those that were new
to the settlement, I noticed, were shabby, dull, rough of speech, surly
of manners. It would need a few weeks before I could see how subtle, yet
how fundamental, were the changes which the settlement would have
wrought in them.
I was shy, too, in the presence of so many boys: shy of their
hastily-offered friendship, their rushing eagerness to bring me into all
their schemes and boyish dreams. But I was still young enough to know
those dreams upon my own account: young enough to feel with little
Mosche, a cripple, who wanted so much to become an expert at the
swinging of Indian clubs, and who was forever dropping the heavy things
in clumsy weakness; young enough to realize how much his mother's love
meant to thirteen-year-old Frank Cohen, who had been caught stealing
fruit from a corner grocery and was "on parole."
But the feeling in itself was not enough, evidently. I must try and try
to make that feeling eloquent--to make these boys feel, in turn, the
sureness and helpfulness of my understanding. Sometimes it was torture.
It is harder to conquer shyness than to slap a dragon.
Mr. Richards saw this in me--watched the struggle, appreciated it. He
spoke of it to me, once, and I did not hesitate to tell him how I felt.
How inadequate, how chagrined and humbled in the face of all the poverty
and suffering which life down here disclosed.
"It was the same when I first came down here," he said to me in turn.
"But I gained courage. Thank God for that!"