from the dining table. I do not know the composition of the drink, yet
my nose is much at fault if it includes aught but eggs and whiskey. At
the end of the table J---- stands with his mighty ladle. It is his
jest each year--for always there is a fresh stranger who has not heard
it--it is his jest that the drink would be fair and agreeable to the
taste if it were not for the superfluity of eggs which dull the
mixture.
No one, even of a sour prohibition, refuses his entreaty. My aunt, who
speaks against the Demon, once appeared at the party. She came
sniffing to the table. "Ought I to take it, John?" she asked.
"Mildest thing you ever drank," said John, and he ladled her out a
cup.
My aunt smelled it suspiciously.
"It's eggs," said John.
"Eggs?" said my aunt, "What a funny smell they have!" She said this
with a facial expression not unlike that of Little Red Ridinghood,
when she first saw the old lady with the long nose and sharp eyes.
"Nothing bad, I hope," said John.
"N-no," said my aunt slowly, and she took a sip.
"Of course the eggs spoil it a little," said John.
"It's very good," said my aunt, as she took another sip.
Then she put down her glass, but only when it was empty. "John," she
said, "you are a rogue. You would like to get me tipsy." And at this
she moved out of danger. Little Red Ridinghood escaped the wolf as
narrowly. But did Little Red Ridinghood escape? Dear me, how one
forgets!
But in closing I must not fail to mention an old lady and gentleman,
both beyond eighty, who have always attended these parties. They have
met old age with such trust and cheerfulness, and they are so eager at
a jest, that no one of all the gathering fits the occasion half so
well. And to exchange a word with them is to feel a pleasant contact
with all the gentleness and mirth that have lodged with them during
the space of their eighty years. The old gentleman is an astronomer
and until lately, when he moved to a newer quarter of the town, he had
behind his house in a proper tower a telescope, through which he
showed his friends the moon. But in these last few years his work has
been entirely mathematical and his telescope has fallen into disorder.
His work finds a quicker comment among scientists of foreign lands
than on his own street.
It is likely that tonight he has been busy with the computation of the
orbit of a distant star up to the very minute when his wife brought in
his tie and collar. And then arm and arm they have set out for the
party, where they will sit until the last guest has gone.
Alas, when the party comes this Christmas, only one of these old
people will be present, for the other with a smile lately fell
asleep.
[Illustration]
On a Pair of Leather Suspenders.
Not long since I paid a visit to New Haven before daylight of a winter
morning. I had hoped that my sleeper from Washington might be late and
I was encouraged in this by the trainman who said that the dear old
thing commonly went through New Haven at breakfast time. But it was
barely three o'clock when the porter plucked at me in my upper berth.
He intruded, happily, on a dream in which the train came rocking
across the comforter.
Three o'clock, if you approach it properly through the evening, is
said to have its compensations. There are persons (with a hiccough)
who pronounce it the shank of the evening, but as an hour of morning
it has few apologists. It is the early bird that catches the worm; but
this should merely set one thinking before he thrusts out a foot into
the cold morning, whether he may justly consider himself a bird or a
worm. If no glad twitter rises to his lips in these early hours, he
had best stay unpecked inside his coverlet.
It is hard to realize that other two-legged creatures like myself are
habitually awake at this hour. In a wakeful night I may have heard the
whistles and the clank of far-off wheels, and I may have known dimly
that work goes on; yet for the most part I have fancied that the
world, like a river steamboat in a fog, is tied at night to its shore:
or if it must go plunging on through space to keep a schedule, that
here and there a light merely is set upon a tower to warn the planets.
A locomotive was straining at its buttons, and from the cab a smoky
engineer looked down on me. A truck load of boxes rattled down the
platform. Crates of affable familiar hens were off upon a journey,
bragging of their families. Men with flaring tapers tapped at wheels.
The waiting-room, too, kept, as it were, one eye open to the night.
The coffee-urn steamed on the lunch counter, and sandwiches sat inside
their glass domes and looked darkly on the world.
It was the hour when "the tired burglar seeks his bed." I had thought
of dozing in a hotel chair until breakfast, but presently a flood
appeared in the persons of three scrub women. The fountains of the
great deep were opened and the waters prevailed.
It still lacked an hour or so of daylight. I remembered that there
used to be a humble restaurant and kitchen on wheels--to the vulgar, a
dog-wagon--up toward York Street. This wagon, once upon a time, had
appeased our appetites when we had been late for chapel and Commons.
As an institution it was so trite that once we made of it a fraternity
play. I faintly remember a pledge to secrecy--sworn by the moon and
the seven wandering stars--but nevertheless I shall divulge the plot.
It was a burlesque tragedy in rhyme. Some eighteen years ago, it
seems, Brabantio, the noble Venetian Senator, kept this same
dog-wagon--he and his beautiful daughter Desdemona. Here came Othello,
Iago and Cassio of the famous class of umpty-ump.
The scene of the drama opens with Brabantio flopping his dainties on
the iron, chanting to himself a lyric in praise of their tender
juices. Presently Othello enters and when Brabantio's back is turned
he makes love to Desdemona--a handsome fellow, this Othello, with the
manner of a hero and curled moustachios. Exit Othello to a nine
o'clock, Ladd on Confusions. Now the rascal Iago enters--myself! with
flowing tie. He hates Othello. He glowers like a villain and
soliloquizes:
In order that my vengeance I may plot
Give me a dog, and give it to me hot!
That was the kind of play. Finally, Desdemona is nearly smothered but
is returned at last to Othello's arms. Iago meets his deserts. He is
condemned to join [Greek: Delta, Kappa, Epsilon], a rival fraternity.
But the warm heart of Desdemona melts and she intercedes to save him
from this horrid end. In mercy--behind the scenes--his head is chopped
off. Then all of us, heroines and villains, sat to a late hour around
the fire and told one another how the real stage thirsted for us. We
drank lemonade mostly but we sang of beer--one song about
Beer, beer, glorious beer!
Fill yourself right up to here!
accompanied with a gesture several inches above the head. As the
verses progressed it was customary to stand on chairs and to reach up
on tiptoe to show the increasing depth.
But the dog-wagon has now become a gilded unfamiliar thing, twice its
former size and with stools for a considerable company. I questioned
the proprietor whether he might be descended from the noble Brabantio,
but the dull fellow gave no response. The wagon has passed to meaner
ownership.
Across the street Vanderbilt Hall loomed indistinctly. To the ignorant
it may be necessary to explain that its courtyard is open to Chapel
Street, but that an iron grill stretches from wing to wing and keeps
out the town. This grill is high enough for Hagenbeck, and it used to
be a favorite game with us to play animal behind it for the street's
amusement. At the hour when the crowd issued from the matinee at the
Hyperion Theatre, our wittiest students paced on all fours up and down
behind this grill and roared for raw beef. E---- was the wag of the
building and he could climb up to a high place and scratch himself
like a monkey--an entertainment of more humor than elegance. Elated
with success, he and a companion later chartered a street-organ--a
doleful one-legged affair--and as man and monkey they gathered pennies
out Orange Street.
I turned into the dark Campus by Osborn Hall. It is as ugly a building
as one could meet on a week's journey, and yet by an infelicity all
class pictures are taken on its steps. Freshman courses are given in
the basement--a French class once in particular. Sometimes, when we
were sunk dismally in the irregular verbs, bootblacks and old-clothes
men stopped on the street and grinned down on us. And all the dreary
hour, as we sweated with translation, above us on the pavement the
feet and happy legs of the enfranchised went by the window.
Yale is a bad jumble of architecture. It is amazing how such
incongruous buildings can lodge together. Did not the Old Brick Row
cry out when Durfee was built? Surely the Gothic library uttered a
protest against its newer adjunct. And are the Bicentennial buildings
so beautiful? At best we have exchanged the fraudulent wooden
ramparts of Alumni Hall for the equally fraudulent inside columns of
these newer buildings. It is a mercy that there is no style and
changing fashion in elm trees. As Viola might have remarked about the
Campus: it were excellently done, if God did all.
Presently in the dark I came on the excavations for the Harkness
quadrangle. So at last Commons was gone. In that old building we ate
during our impoverished weeks. I do not know that we saved much, for
we were driven to extras, but the reckoning was deferred. There was a
certain tutti-frutti ice-cream, rich in ginger, that has now vanished
from the earth. Or chocolate eclairs made the night stand out. I
recall that one could seldom procure a second helping of griddlecakes
except on those mornings when there were ants in the syrup. Also, I
recall that sometimes there was a great crash of trays at the pantry
doors, and almost at the instant two old Goodies, harnessed ready with
mops and pails, ran out and sponged up the wreckage.
And Pierson Hall is gone, that was once the center of Freshman life.
Does anybody remember _The Voice_? It was a weekly paper issued in the
interest of prohibition. I doubt if we would have quarreled with it
for this, but it denounced Yale and held up in contrast the purity of
Oberlin. Oberlin! And therefore we hated it, and once a week we burned
its issue in the stone and plaster corridors of Pierson.
There was once a residence at the corner of York and Library where
Freshmen resided. The railing of the stairs wabbled. The bookcase door
lacked a hinge. Three out of four chairs were rickety. The bath-tub,
which had been the chemical laboratory for some former student, was
stained an unhealthy color. If ever it shall appear that Harlequin
lodged upon the street, here was the very tub where he washed his
clothes. Without caution the window of the bedroom fell out into the
back yard. But to atone for these defects, up through the scuttle in
the hall there was an airy perch upon the roof. Here Freshmen might
smoke their pipes in safety--a privilege denied them on the
street--and debate upon their affairs. Who were hold-off men! Who
would make [Greek: Boule!] Or they invented outrageous names for the
faculty. My dear Professor Blank, could you hear yourself described by
these young cubs through their tobacco smoke, your learned ears, so
alert for dactyl and spondee, would grow red.
Do Scott's boys, I wonder, still gather clothes for pressing around
the Campus? Do they still sell tickets--sixteen punches for a
dollar--five punches to the suit? On Monday mornings do colored
laundresses push worn baby-carts around to gather what we were pleased
to call the "dirty filth"? And do these same laundresses push back
these self-same carts later in the week with "clean filth" aboard? Are
stockings mended in the same old way, so that the toes look through
the open mesh? Have college sweeps learned yet to tuck in the sheets
at the foot? Do old-clothes men--Fish-eye? Do you remember him?--do
old-clothes men still whine at the corner, and look you up and down in
cheap appraisal? Pop Smith is dead, who sold his photograph to
Freshmen, but has he no successor? How about the old fellow who sold
hot chestnuts at football games--"a nickel a bush"--a rare contraction
meant to denote a bushel--in reality fifteen nuts and fifteen worms.
Does George Felsburg still play the overture at Poli's, reading his
newspaper the while, and do comic actors still jest with him across
the footlights?
Is it still ethical to kick Freshmen on the night of Omega Lambda Chi?
Is "nigger baby" played on the Campus any more? The loser of this
precious game, in the golden days, leaned forward against the wall
with his coat-tails raised, while everybody took a try at him with a
tennis ball. And, of course, no one now plays "piel." A youngster will
hardly have heard of the game. It was once so popular that all the
stone steps about the college showed its marks. And next year we heard
that the game had spread to Harvard.
Do students still make for themselves oriental corners with Bagdad stripes
and Turkish lamps? Do the fair fingers of Farmington and Northampton still
weave the words "'Neath the Elms" upon sofa pillows? Do Seniors still bow
the President down the aisle of Chapel? Do students still get out their
Greek with "trots"? It was the custom for three or four lazy students to
gather together and summon up a newsy to read the trot, while they, lolling
with pipes on their Morris chairs, fumbled with the text and interlined it
against a loss of memory. Let the fair-haired goddess Juno speak! Ulysses,
as he pleases, may walk on the shore of the loud-sounding sea. Thereafter
in class one may repose safely on his interlineation and snap at flies with
a rubber band. This method of getting a lesson was all very well except
that the newsy halted at the proper name. A device was therefore hit on of
calling all the gods and heroes by the name of Smith. Homeric combat then
ran like this: _the heart of Smit was black with anger and he smote Smit
upon the brazen helmet. And the world grew dark before his eyes, and he
fell forward like a tower and bit the dust and his armor clanked about him.
But at evening, from a far-off mountain top the white-armed goddess
Smit-Smit_ (Pallas-Athena) _saw him, and she felt compash--compassion for
him._
And I suppose that students still sing upon the fence. There was a
Freshman once, in those early nights of autumn when they were still a
prey to Sophomores, who came down Library Street after his supper at
Commons. He wondered whether the nights of hazing were done and was
unresolved whether he ought to return to his room and sit close.
Presently he heard the sound of singing. It came from the Campus, from
the fence. He was greener than most Freshmen and he had never heard
men sing in four-part harmony. With him music had always been a single
tune, or at most a lost tenor fumbled uncertainly for the pitch. Any
grunt had been a bass. And so the sound ravished him. In the open air
and in the dark the harmony was unparalleled. He stole forward, still
with one eye open for Sophomores, and crouched in the shadowy angle of
North Middle. Now the song was in full chorus and the branches of the
elms swayed to it, and again a bass voice sang alone and the others
hummed a low accompaniment.
Occasionally, across the Campus, someone in passing called up to a
window, "Oh, Weary Walker, stick out your head!" And then, after a
pause, satirically, when the head was out, "Stick it in again!" On the
stones there were the sounds of feet--feet with lazy purpose--loud
feet down wooden steps, bound for pleasure. At the windows there were
lights, where dull thumbs moved down across a page. Let A equal B to
find our Z. And let it be quick about it, before the student nod! And
to the Freshman, crouching in the shadow, it seemed at last that he
was a part of this life, with its music, its voices, its silent elms,
the dim buildings with their lights, the laughter and the glad feet
sounding in the dark.
I came now, rambling on this black wintry morning, before the sinister
walls of Skull and Bones.
I sat on a fence and contemplated the building. It is as dingy as ever
and, doubtless, to an undergraduate, as fearful as ever. What rites
and ceremonies are held within these dim walls! What awful
celebrations! The very stones are grim. The chain outside that swings
from post to post is not as other chains, but was forged at midnight.
The great door has a black spell upon it. It was on such a door,
iron-bound and pitiless, that the tragic Ygraine beat in vain for
mercy.
It is a breach of etiquette for an undergraduate in passing even to
turn and look at Bones. Its name may not be mentioned to a member of
the society, and one must look furtively around before pronouncing it.
Now as I write the word, I feel a last vibration of the fearful
tremor.
Seniors compose its membership--fifteen or so, and membership is
ranked as the highest honor of the college. But in God's name, what is
all this pother? Are there not already enough jealousies without this
one added? Does not college society already fall into enough locked
coteries without this one? No matter how keen is the pride of
membership, it does not atone for the disappointments and the
heart-burnings of failure. It is hinted obscurely for expiation that
it and its fellow societies do somehow confer a benefit on the college
by holding out a reward for hard endeavor. This is the highest goal.
I distrust the wisdom of the judges. There is an honester repute to be
gained in the general estimate of one's fellows. These societies cut
an unnatural cleavage across the college. They are the source of
dishonest envy and of mean lick-spittling. For three years, until the
election is announced, there is much playing for position. A favored
fellow, whose election is certain, is courted by others who stand on a
slippery edge, because it is known that in Senior elections one is
rated by his association. And is it not preposterous that fifteen
youngsters should set themselves above the crowd, wear obscure jewelry
and wrap themselves in an empty and pretentious mystery?
But what has this rambling paper to do with a pair of leather
suspenders? Nothing. Nothing much. Only, after a while, just before
the dawn, I came in front of the windows of a cheap haberdasher. And I
recalled how I had once bought at this very shop a pair of leather
suspenders. They were the only ones left--it was hinted that Seniors
bought them largely--and they were a bargain. The proprietor blew off
the dust and slapped them and dwelt upon their merits. They would last
me into middle age and were cheap. There was, I recall, a kind of
tricky differential between the shoulders to take up the slack on
either side. Being a Freshman I was prevailed upon, and I bought them
and walked to Morris Cove while they creaked and fretted. And here was
the very shop, arising in front of me as from times before the flood.
With it there arose, too, a recollection of my greenness and timidity.
And mingled with all the hours of happiness of those times there were
hours, also, of emptiness and loneliness--hours when, newcome to my
surroundings, for fear of rebuff I walked alone.
The night still lingers. These dark lines of wall and tree and tower
are etched by Time with memories to burn the pattern. The darkness
stirs strangely, like waters in the solemn bowl when a witch reads off
the future. But the past is in this darkness, and the December wind
this night has roused up the summer winds of long ago. In that cleft
is the old window. Here are the stairs, wood and echoing with an
almost forgotten tread. A word, a phrase, a face, shows for an instant
in the shadows. Here, too, in memory, is a pageantry of old custom
with its songs and uproar, victory with its fires and dance.
Forms, too, I see bent upon their books, eager or dull, with intent or
sleepy finger on the page. And I hear friendly cries and the sound of
many feet across the night.
Dawn at last--a faint light through the elms. From the Chapel tower
the bells sound the hour and strike their familiar melody. Dawn. And
now the East in triumphal garment scatters my memories, born of night,
before its flying wheel.
[Illustration]
Boots for Runaways.
Not long ago, having come through upon the uppers of my shoes, I
wrapped the pair in a bit of newspaper and went around the corner into
Sixth Avenue to find a cobbler. This is not difficult, for there are
at least three cobblers to the block, all of them in basements four or
five steps below the sidewalk. Cobblers and little tailors who press
and repair clothing, small grocers and delicatessen venders--these are
the chief commerce of the street. I passed my tailor's shop, which is
next to the corner. He is a Russian Jew who came to this country
before the great war. Every Thursday, when he takes away my off suit,
I ask him about the progress of the Revolution. At first I found him
hopeful, yet in these last few months his opinions are a little
broken. His shop consists of a single room, with a stove to heat his
irons and a rack for clothes. It is so open to the street that once
when it was necessary for me to change trousers he stood between me
and the window with one foot against the door by way of moratorium on
his business. His taste in buttons is loud. Those on my dinner coat
are his choice--great round jewels that glisten in the dark.
Next to my tailor, except for a Chinese laundry with a damp celestial
smell, is a delicatessen shop with a pleasant sound of French across
the counter. Here are sausages, cut across the middle in order that no
one may buy the pig, as it were, in its poke. Potato salad is set out
each afternoon in a great bowl with a wooden spoon sticking from its
top. Then there is a baked bean, all brown upon the crust, which is
housed with its fellows in a cracked baking dish and is not to be
despised. There is also a tray of pastry with whipped cream oozing
agreeably from the joints, and a pickle vat as corrective to these
sweets. But behind the shop is the bakery and I can watch a wholesome
fellow, with his sleeves tucked up, rolling pasties thin on a great
white table, folding in nuts and jellies and cutting them deftly for
the oven.
Across the street there resides a mender of musical instruments. He
keeps dusty company with violins and basses that have come to broken
health. When a trombone slips into disorder, it seeks his sanitarium.
Occasionally, as I pass, I catch the sound of a twanging string, as
if at last a violin were convalescent. Or I hear a reedy nasal upper
note, and I know that an oboe has been mended of its complaint and
that in these dark days of winter it yearns for a woodside stream and
the return of spring. It seems rather a romantic business tinkering
these broken instruments into harmony.
Next door there is a small stationer--a bald-headed sort of business,
as someone has called it. Ruled paper for slavish persons, plain
sheets for bold Bolshevists.
Then comes our grocer. There is no heat in the place except what comes
from an oil stove on which sits a pan of steaming water. Behind the
stove with his twitching ear close against it a cat lies at all hours
of the day. There is an engaging smudge across his nose, as if he had
been led off on high adventure to the dusty corners behind the apple
barrel. I bend across the onion crate to pet him, and he stretches his
paws in and out rhythmically in complete contentment. He walks along
the counter with arched back and leans against our purchases.
Next our grocer is our bootblack, who has set up a sturdy but shabby
throne to catch the business off the "L." How majestically one sits
aloft here with outstretched toe, for all the world like the Pope
offering his saintly toe for a sinner's kiss. The robe pontifical, the
triple crown! Or, rather, is this not a secular throne, seized once in
a people's rising? Here is a use for whatever thrones are discarded
by this present war. Where the crowd is thickest at quitting
time--perhaps where the subway brawls below Fourteenth Street--there I
would set the German Kaiser's seat for the least of us to clamber on.
I took my shoes out of their wrapper. The cobbler is old and wrinkled
and so bent that one might think that Nature aimed to contrive a hoop
of him but had botched the full performance. He scratched my name upon
the soles and tossed them into the pile. There were big and little
shoes, some with low square heels and others with high thin heels as
if their wearers stood tiptoe with curiosity. It is a quality, they
say, that marks the sex. On the bench were bits of leather, hammers,
paring-knives, awls, utensils of every sort.