To Hugh the remainder of the term was simply a fight to get an
opportunity to study. The old saying, "if study interferes with college,
cut out study," did not appeal to him. He honestly wanted to do good
work, but he found that the chance to do it was rare. Some one always
seemed to be in his room eager to talk; there was the fraternity meeting
to attend every Monday night; early in the term there was at least one
hockey or basketball game a week; later there were track meets, baseball
games, and tennis matches; he had to attend Glee Club rehearsals twice a
week; he ran every afternoon either in the gymnasium or on the cinder
path; some one always seduced him into going to the movies; he was
constantly being drawn into bull sessions; there was an occasional
concert: and besides all these distractions, there was a fraternity
dance, the excitement of Prom, a trip to three cities with the Glee
Club, and finally a week's vacation at home at Easter.
Worst of all, none of his instructors was inspiring. He had been
assigned to a new section in Latin, and in losing Alling he lost the one
really enjoyable teacher he had had. The others were conscientious,
more or less competent, but there was little enthusiasm in their
teaching, nothing to make a freshman eager either to attend their
classes or to study the lessons they assigned. They did not make the
acquiring of knowledge a thrilling experience; they made it a duty--and
Hugh found that duty exceedingly irksome.
He attended neither the fraternity dance nor the Prom. He had looked
forward enthusiastically to the "house dance," but after he had, along
with the other men in his delegation, cleaned the house from garret to
basement, he suddenly took to his bed with grippe. He groaned with
despair when Carl gave him glowing accounts of the dance and the
"janes." Carl for once, however, was circumspect; he did not tell Hugh
all that happened. He would have been hard put to explain his own
reticence, but although he thought "the jane who got pie-eyed" had been
enormously funny, he decided not to tell Hugh about her or the pie-eyed
brothers.
No freshman was allowed to attend the Prom, but along with the other men
who weren't "dragging women" Hugh walked the streets and watched the
girls. There was a tea-dance at the fraternity house during Prom week.
Hugh said that he got a great kick out of it, but, as a matter of fact,
he remained only a short time; there was a hectic quality to both the
girls and the talk that confused him. For some reason he didn't like the
atmosphere; and he didn't know why. His excuse to the brothers and to
himself for leaving early was that he was in training and not supposed
to dance.
Track above all things was absorbing his interest. He could hardly think
of anything else. He lay awake nights dreaming of the race he would run
against Raleigh. Sanford had three dual track meets a year, but the
first two were with small colleges and considered of little importance.
Only a point winner in the Raleigh meet was granted his letter.
Hugh won the hundred in the sophomore-freshman meet and in a meet with
the Raleigh freshmen, so that he was given his class numerals. He did
nothing, however, in the Raleigh meet; he was much too nervous to run
well, breaking three times at the mark. He was set back two yards and
was never able to regain them. For a time he was bitterly despondent,
but he soon cheered up when he thought of the three years ahead of him.
Spring brought first rain and slush and then the "sings." There was a
fine stretch of lawn in the center of the campus, and on clear nights
the students gathered there for a sing, one class on each side of the
lawn. First the seniors sang a college song, then the juniors, then the
sophomores, and then the freshmen. After each song, the other classes
cheered the singers, except when the sophomores and freshmen sang: they
always "razzed" each other. Hugh led the freshmen, and he never failed
to get a thrill out of singing a clear note and hearing his classmates
take it up.
After each class had sung three or four songs, the boys gathered in the
center of the lawn, sang the college hymn, gave a cheer, and the sing
was over.
On such nights, however, the singing really continued for hours. The
Glee Club often sang from the Union steps; groups of boys wandered arm
in arm around the campus singing; on every fraternity steps there were
youths strumming banjos and others "harmonizing": here, there,
everywhere young voices were lifted in song--not joyous nor jazzy but
plaintive and sentimental. Adeline's sweetness was extolled by unsure
barytones and "whisky" tenors; and the charms of Rosie O'Grady were
chanted in "close harmony" in every corner of the campus:
"Sweet Rosie O'Grady,
She's my pretty rose;
She's my pretty lady,
As every one knows.
And when we are married,
Oh, how happy we'll be,
For I love sweet Rosie O'Grady
And Rosie O'Grady loves me."
Hugh loved those nights: the shadows of the elms, the soft spring
moonlight, the twanging banjos, the happy singing. He would never, so
long as he lived, hear "Rosie O'Grady" without surrendering to a tender,
sentimental mood; that song would always mean the campus and singing
youth.
Suddenly examinations threw their baleful influence over the campus
again. Once more the excitement, but not so great this time, the
cramming, the rumors of examinations "getting out," the seminars, the
tutoring sections, the nervousness, the fear.
Hugh, however, was surer of himself than he had been the first term, and
although he had no reason to be proud of the grades he received, he was
not particularly ashamed of them.
He and Carl left the same day but by different trains. They had agreed
to room together again in Surrey 19; so they didn't feel that the
parting for the summer was very important.
"You'll write, won't you, old man?"
"Sure, Hugh--surest thing you know. Say, it don't seem possible that our
freshman year's over already. Why, hell, Hugh, we're sophomores."
"So we are! What do you know about that?" Hugh's eyes shone. "Gosh!"
Carl looked at his watch. "Hell, I've got to beat it." He picked up his
suit-case, dropped it, shook hands vigorously with Hugh, snatched up his
suit-case, and was off with a final, "Good-by, Hugh, old boy," sounding
behind him.
Hugh settled back into a chair. He had half an hour to wait.
"A sophomore.... Gosh!"