Chapter XL (4)

The evening of the contest arrived and with it the seating of seasoned, experienced, graceful, prize-winning orators, in comparison with whom I knew I should not and could not under any stretch of the imagination be placed. I wanted to give a speech in public, that was the height to which my expectancy went, but, of course, I had to set before me the prizes that were offered and be prepared for “accidents.” When my turn came and I faced that illimitable sea of white faces, I felt my feet slip from under me while I seemed to float above this conscious world. Then I picked out an interested face in the far, far corner of the church. At him I threw my strident voice, determined to make him hear what I had to say. The result was, in Thropper’s words, “Priddy, it seemed that you placed your pitch on top of the highest mountain in the world, and after that it was a scream, that’s all, old fellow. That was due to inexperience.”

But this failure was atoned for when the judges especially commented on the “careful thought,” “the good English,” and “the excellent form of the written oration” and when they marked me in second place on the literary side of the matter, I felt repaid with my first adventure into public speech. I felt that I had vindicated the struggles I had set before me, through the long years, to go through the school.

_Chapter XII. The Personnel of “The Clamorous Eight” and other Social Matters. The “Blepoes” and the “Boulomaies” Invite me into Fellowship with a Protest from Jason. Epics and Lyrics of Love. “Pa” Borden Speaks for the Benedicts on a Momentous Matter. How the Magic Tree Lured Some Unfaithful Ones from their Sworn Duty_

The routine of that winter’s work was embroidered with many interesting social experiences. For though many of the students were stern in religious doctrine and practise, hearts were youthful and recreation was sought. Thropper belonged to a “Bachelor’s Club,” a facetious group of married and unmarried male students who met every now and then for the avowed purpose of upholding the dignity of bachelordom! Thropper also joined a “Moustache Club,” whose members met and compared lip sprouts and looked forward to the day when they would be sufficiently mature to be called “moustaches.” These two institutions were more satirical than practical; outlets for the humor resident in the students. But the “Clamorous Eight” was a real institution of the noisiest, most untamed spirits of the school, seven of whom were young men and the eighth member a young, gum-chewing, blondish, hobbledehoy girl in the Business department. What we knew of the charter of the “Clamorous Eight” was in their shoutings, their numerous practical jokes, their songs, and their rebellions against the University rules. If anything of an unlawful nature occurred, like the throwing of a live rooster into the sleeping room of a sedate female monitor or the placing near the chapel door of a stuffed dummy, suspicion of its own, fluent accord fixed itself first of all on the “Clamorous Eight,” and hung there with tenacity until every member had been through a “Faculty sweat.”

There were two rival literary societies in the University and the students were supposed to be portioned out between them. The “Blepoes” or “The Seers” and the “Boulomaies”--“The Willers” sent their agents after me and made a bid for my membership. These were not secret organizations, for such an institution was considered sinful by the University authorities. Their gatherings were open to the public and each student was supposed to attend the different meetings before deciding which society he would join. Jason, who considered even these literary meetings harmful to the morale of the students, on hearing that I had been asked to join one of them, sought me out and for a long mournful hour tried to make me promise to keep my name off their rolls, “For,” he whined, “they are of the Devil, brother Priddy!”

“What makes you think so?” I demanded.

“They joke in their meetings and tell light things and for every idle word God will hold us accountable!”

“But jokes and light conversation have their places in life, haven’t they?” I persisted.

Jason looked at me with his round, poet’s eyes growing rounder in wonderment.

“Lincoln couldn’t have borne the weight of the Civil War if it had not been for jokes and fun--at times,” I concluded.

“But the Bible says that for every idle word we shall have to give a full account,” said Jason. “Are not jokes idle words?”

“They don’t--eh--” I stammered, limply.

“The Bible is true, isn’t it?” went on the logician.

I gave up in desperation.

“Look here, Jason,” I cried, “you might get me to give up wearing a watch-chain and a tie-pin, but you aren’t going to stop me from joining one of these societies. I want social life and I’m going to have it, jokes or no jokes. I’m not so good as you on logic or Bible, but you aren’t going to stand between me and a few pleasures. Don’t some of the faculty belong to the Blepoes and the Boulomaies? If they can join without scruples--and they are Christian men and women--I can join. So it’s no use arguing the matter with me, Jason. I think I’ll send in my name to the Blepoes for the next meeting.”

And I did join myself to the Blepoes and partook of their suppers, their programs, and even went so far one night as to appear on the platform myself, before a blackboard on which I drew sketches to illustrate a temperance address, and at the conclusion of which I recited with great fervor and many gestures, Kipling’s “Recessional.”

That winter, too, though far outside of love, and even the thoughts of love, in the seriousness of my tasks, I looked on little epics and little lyrics of love between man and woman. Thropper himself had Cupid’s dart in his heart and his rhapsodies concerning his “luck” and his “happiness” and “her wonderful sweet spirit” were only a few of many indications of the depth to which he had fallen in love. Those of us who were not enamored of love had to be diplomatic in making engagements to walk or exercise with the boys, for there were times and seasons when Thropper and his fellow-lovers devoted themselves exclusively to their fiancées. For instance, there was lecture night in Pubbets Junction, six miles away, and on that evening, under chaperonage, the couples would seat themselves in carriages and not be back till midnight, returning to tell the bachelors and maidens the next morning the expressive points of the lecture and any exciting episodes of the trip, like the adventure of the wheels up to the axles in mud and a plunging horse pulled out by a nearby farmer, the adventure which befell Thropper and his love when they were on their way to hear Sam Small lecture. Those among us, like myself, who were not concerned with sentiment, held various speculative conferences, on Sunday evenings, as to how this and that student would mate. We had precedent to argue from, for we had seen Donald Bryce, a laughing-eyed Evangelist-to-be, pick out Clara Trine, an athletic and extremely conscientious Missionary-to-be. We had seen one of the “Clamorous Eight,” a light-haired, flush-cheeked banker-to-be, sort out and become deeply attached to the female member of the “Eight,” the blondish hobbledehoy, whom we judged, like grocery store sages, would at least fit herself to spend quickly enough what money he should chance to make as a banker.

These loving couples considerably colored our social life and often made the University picnics problems. When the first touch of spring pervaded the gassy atmosphere and, at least, suggested the scent of coming flowers and grassy banks, notice was given out by Brock one Saturday morning that the usual spring trip to the river would be undertaken and that each one who went should go to the kitchen and prepare a lunch from materials that would be furnished by the cooks.

After the breakfast a meeting of the excursionists was held in the reception room, presided over by Brock, who announced,

“Now, friends, this year--mind you, this year, we are going to keep together. In the past, on our excursions, there has been altogether too much coupling up and going off alone. That has spoiled more than one excursion and it is not the fair thing. Is it?”

A chorus of “Noes” gave emphasis to his protest and appeal.

“This time, though,” he went on to explain, “we are to keep together. No matter if you are in love with the sweetest girl on earth and can’t be alone much under the University rules, you are not to wander off when we get out of bounds and not come around to the main party again until lunch time and then go off and not return till it is time to come home. What have you to say about it, Brother Borden?”

“Pa” Borden, thus appealed to, raised his pompous head, cleared his throat after the best mode of the orator, and said,

“I’m married myself and maybe shouldn’t have much to say on the matter. I agree with everything’s been said: agree with it hard!” and to give oratorical force to his last word, he brought his plump fist down on the centre table, thereby spilling half the water out of the glass which held in it a sprig of geranium.

A representative of the Benedicts having been heard, Thropper, as representing the unmarried was asked for his opinion. He replied,

“Of course we ought to keep together. I’m certain of it, Mr. Chairman. That’s all I need to say!”

At nine o’clock the excursionists started for the river forty-five people strong. To prove the sincerity of the social aspect of the excursion, Thropper and the other lovers separated themselves from their beloveds and walked, sacrificially, either with other young women or mingled freely with the male members of the party! Thus two by two and three by three we walked down the rutted, soggy lane past the root-fenced sheep pastures where the woolly young lambs squeaked and bleated like crying children, down past the grove where the wood-choppers were measuring cord wood; past dismal, wind-swept forests of burnt stumps and rusty underbrush, over which desolation huge vultures soared, and pivoted themselves in wait for prey; past clayey roads over which mud boats were dragged by struggling horses and oxen, past pig-pastures torn up by the sniffing snouts of the ruminants. Then we entered a fresh, dampish wood-path which led us along the rocky bed of a river over which a thin stream of water churned with great energy as if to impress us with its importance. At last we entered a cleared grass space over which the sun held itself and lighted gloriously the deep pool of water the river had become. Here we deposited our lunch boxes and began to arrange our games. So far the party had remained one, much to the admiration of Brock. But now, after the lunch boxes had been unloaded, a rearrangement of the party began to take place. Thropper, who had been walking and talking with me, hurried over to the side of his beloved, and said:

“There’s a magic tree farther along the path, growing right through a big boulder, about which there’s a legend of Indians. I’ll tell you about it!”

That was all. They two passed out of sight while the angry Brock gazed speechlessly after them. That was the signal for other couples who wanted to see the “magic tree,” and to such an extent did the defection of the lovers take place, that before long only two couples remained with the bachelors to share the games we tried to play.

By the lunch hour, however, they came from their expeditions from this side and that, unapologetic for leaving us, came to eat their lunches and then go off again, paying no heed to Brock’s impassioned appeal to their _esprit de corps_. When the hour for the return to the University arrived, the couples returned and then either went ahead, arm in arm, or loafed behind, immersed in their own thoughts; leaving us bachelors to amuse ourselves by bantering flings at them, which, however, were no more than peas aimed at the mailed shell of an armadillo.

“It’ll be the same over again next time!” growled Brock. “These lovers--oh!”

_Chapter XIII. How One Dollar and a Half Secured “The Devil in Society.” The Medicine Chest which Became a Tract Depository under the Teachings of a New Creed. How I Stuck to Orthodoxy_

The spring was full upon us, with the return of the birds, the tang of the new plowed soil in the sugar-field where the “University Mare” tugged listlessly at the plow whose blade sliced through the clayey earth leaving back of it shiny, damp slices on which the birds stood and pecked up the exposed grubs and worms. The dynamite wagon with its frail springs and its dangerous load jogged by along the turnpike on its way to newly-bored oil-wells. Flocks of sheep with an accompanying host of maximum-legged lamblets passed over the turnpike on their way to the railroad-cars, to be followed by grunting packs of hogs directed by sapling-armed drovers who in one minute of speech profaned the whole English language. Chugging traction-engines, hauling plows and harrows and on their way to hundred-acred wheat and corn fields, passed in the night-time with their shrill whistle-screams for water and their explosive puffing and puffing as if no breath in their steel bodies could successfully spurt them through the soft mire.

Thropper said to me, one afternoon,

“Priddy, how would you like to sell books?”

“Sell books, Thropper?”

Thropper nodded.

“What for?” I asked, interestedly.

“For money, of course, Priddy! What do you think?”

“It takes talk to sell books, Thropper!”

“Then you ought to make a success at the business, Priddy!”

“What’s the book?”

“‘The Devil in Society, or High Life in Washington by an Ex-Congressman,’” quoted Thropper.

“Sensational, then?”

“A moral book--with a lesson,” laughed Thropper, “pepper to make you know that it stings, you see, Priddy. Fifty per cent on each one. Buy them for seventy-five cents, sell for dollar and a half. Easy money, everybody wants the book on sight. I’ll loan you three dollars for four if you want. Sure to sell them!”

“Anything to get some cash,” I cried. “Besides this would take me on Saturday trips into the surrounding towns. That would be quite an adventure after staying here throughout the winter. Will you show me the book?”

“‘Pa’ Borden will bring one around tonight. He’s the general agent,” declared my roommate.

In the evening, before the half-past seven bell had signalled silence and study, “Pa” Borden had displayed the book to us. It was a lurid green cloth-bound affair in which the glue showed in the web of the cloth, printed with blotched, worn type on the cheapest of cheap paper and interspersed with amateurish wood-cuts of which I recall a drunken revel in a ball-room and some ballet-dancer-garbed women on a seashore with wooden waves indicated by wavy lines. I was no connoisseur of literature at the time and took as solemn truth “Pa” Borden’s words that “anything that was of the Devil ought to be showed up, even if it cost a dollar and a half!” I allowed Thropper to get me four of the books and placed myself under his instructions for a week during which time I learned how to point out the chief items of interest in the illustrations when they were upside down, to give a kinetoscopic view of the table of contents, and to end by flashing the record of previous sales before the astonished housewife’s eyes before she could make up her mind whether she wanted the book or not.

The following week, then, after engaging a substitute waiter for the day I accompanied Thropper to Pubbets Junction to place “The Devil in Society.” The first door on which I knocked chanced to be that of a Christian Science Reader, a very highly cultivated and sweet-spirited woman who, the minute I announced that I was agent for a book entitled “The Devil in Society” immediately knocked my “patter” _hors de combat_ by announcing, firmly, that there was no such thing as a Devil and that it was all a delusion of mortal mind, adding various other remonstrances of a philosophical, semi-philosophical, and dogmatic nature which I was in no mood or mind to combat. Besides bewildering me in the intellectual meshes of that new doctrine, the woman made me sit in her office and listen to a fascinating recital of her household’s progress from a drug-store of drugs to an empty medicine chest: to a radical change in the family temper from semi-pessimism into a real sunburst of glorious, mellowing optimism: to an intricate and involved interpretation of the Old Testament and then in a very cloudy but, to me, excitingly suggestive denial of all facts that men and books had told me were positive and real. All this, of course, was the precursor to an attempt to proselyte me to the faith of Christian Science. After she had shown me the empty medicine chest, which she was then using as a store-house for all sorts of Christian Science literature, I told her that I had learned a great deal that was both new and novel, that I would think it over seriously, but that I should never believe in anything but orthodoxy. Then I called at the next house and many other houses, so that by noon, when I met Thropper at a candy store, where we lunched on a glass of milk and some Washington pie, I had sold two books and earned one dollar and a half. In the flush of that success, I returned to the University, ready to repeat the excursion the following and several other Saturday mornings. According to Thropper’s epigram, “The Devil in Society” meant dollars in our pockets!

_Chapter XIV. A Chapter Depicting how Strife Existed Between the Pro-Gymnasiums and the Anti-Gymnasiums and Showing how Baseball, Debates and an Epidemic Determined Matters This Way and That_

Next to its faith in religion an extreme abhorrence of matched athletic games pervaded the ruling spirits of the University and found its sanction in the charter of the institution. In the Bleponian and Boulomanian literary societies the characteristic discussion for heated and vigorous debate, next to the eternal question: Does Love or Money Rule the World? was: Are Athletic Contests Moral? The charter and advertisements of the University said very emphatically that they were not and should not be tolerated by Christian people. Jason and his Board of Pharisees agreed with the University. On the other hand, there were many young men and women who had an opposite mind and took issue on every occasion with Jason and the authorities. Thus one could find them on every occasion in the springtime when the fields and the paved paths lured forth whatever sporting proclivities nature had deposited in the blood, Jason and his followers firmly insisting that under no consideration should a contest of any sort--even a game of checkers or “Pit” be countenanced, as it led to gambling, and, if not to gambling, then to unchristian feeling. This feeling became acute when the students began to discuss the necessity for an athletic field and a gymnasium: a very hypothetical discussion remote and probably ever to remain remote, for the University had need of money for more impending goods than gymnasiums. But Jason’s party argued as if the gymnasium were about to be built, and said that it would only lead young men into racing for prizes!--and competing for wagers! The party was called the Anti-Gymnasiums.

Thropper and I aligned ourselves to the Pro-Gymnasiums, for, as Thropper said to me:

“My kneecaps fairly creak for need of stretching. As for my arm joints and muscles, they pain me on the least provocation. I need proper, systematic exercise.”

The Pro-Gymnasiums were thoroughly represented by “The Clamorous Eight,” whose faces and veins throbbed with healthy, well-exercised blood; in fact, they were eight who cared for little else beyond exercise of muscles.

The program of the Blepoes one Friday evening was devoted to the debate of the question: “Resolved: That the Bible Prohibits Athletic Contests.” Larry Thomas, who debated for the Pro’s and who was almost as well versed in biblical lore as was Jason, argued well, basing his strongest rhetoric on Paul’s words: “I so run that I may receive a prize,” and “I box, not as beating the air,” but, as Larry paraphrased it, freely, “to give a knock-out, pure and simple, a plain indication that Paul believed in the prize-ring and the running-track!” The Anti’s, realizing the force of these quotations, attempted to minimize their power by arguing, “Oh, Paul was only using the common terms of his day; the ordinary experiences of unchristian men, to represent to them the Christian life. That was all. He was not giving sanction to sports.” This explanation, the judges informed us, considerably helped the Anti’s, but the debate was declared a draw.

One Saturday morning when the air was crammed with the warmth and lassitude of early summer, and a considerable number of Pro-Gymnasiums were playing scrub baseball, one of the “Clamorous Eight,” in a fit of healthy rebellion against the University, proposed:

“Say, fellows, this knocking out a ball is too tame. Let’s choose up sides. There’s no harm in it!”

Thropper, who was not working that day, and myself, were among those enjoying the sport, and in the excitement and thoughtlessness of the minute we consented. I was placed in the field, Thropper went in the catcher’s box. We even engaged the services of an umpire, though few were found from whom we could select a capable official. Many of the Pro’s dared not come into the game, but stood off ready to look on an incident that should become historic, like a Civil War or a French Revolution: the first matched game ever played on the University grounds!

Jason looked on the opening of the game with horror. To him it seemed that the Evil One had just made his bold appearance in the morale of the institution. When he heard the umpire’s decisions and saw the sides changing positions, and realized at last that the whole event had actually developed into a matched game, he hurried to the home of the Dean and gave notice of the rebellion that he had scented. Instantly the authorities came, ordered the game disbanded, took our names for Faculty discipline, and we left the field to the Anti’s, who sincerely believed that Satan himself had been flouted.

But even the anti-match spirit of Jason and his band could not eliminate from their joints and muscles the need of exercise, and while they argued against the advent of contested sports, they could be found on the cinder walk after supper, previous to the evening prayer-service, leaping, bounding, twisting, and jumping, Jason in competition manifesting the grace of a rheumatic frog.

Shortly after this an epidemic of disease broke out in the village. The University was quarantined--even from attendance at the village church services. The momentousness of this is plainly evident when it is remembered that it was these church services which gave to the University lovers their chance to walk together, sit together, sing and pray and talk together; consequently the quarantine imposed a severe restriction upon the poor unfortunates.

When Sunday dawned, glorious with the summer sun, some of the members of Jason’s clique together with their young ladies took their black-bound Bibles and sat under the campus saplings for Bible study: two in a class and every sapling shade occupied.

But the Dean, who hated sham of every sort, interrupted these classes and the next morning in chapel he had some very emphatic and pointed remarks to make on the subject: “The Sacrilege of Pretending to Study the Bible when You are Doing Nothing but Make Love!”

It was the Pro-gymnasiums’ turn to laugh then.

_Chapter XV. A Ph.D. in a Clay Ditch and the Futility of it. A Can of Beans at the Conclusion of a Morbid Meditation. How Thropper and I Played David and Jonathan_

The first summer vacation brought joy to a majority of the students, but to me it merely meant a lonely isolation for three months on the campus where I was accustomed to watch my friends move back and forth hour after hour through the day. They went out with tents: the Evangelists. They went out with books: the canvassers. They went out with brawn and health: the miners and farmers. They left me alone to share the solitude of the campus with the few professors who were not going to conferences, and with the superintendent of grounds, whose assistant I was to be.

The winter’s struggle, though pleasant, had left me tired and listless. I needed a rest, but saw no possibility of any. I had few good clothes and no money. Any adventure into the world would have been utter folly. So I began to scrub floors in the University building, to mow the grass, and trim the flowers. I painted and scraped and hung wall paper, all in the silences of the dormitories once full of merry sounds, the recollections of which doubled the loneliness I suffered from.

Meanwhile I made my home in the little room where we had held our feast in honor of Queen Victoria’s birthday. In it stood the stove on which I cooked my own meals: canned goods, tea, and sundry fries of bacon, eggs, ham, and potatoes. Here, too, I washed my clothes.

During a lull in the work, one of the married students, who had been given his Ph.B. at commencement asked me to go with him to the outskirts of the village where some eight-inch gas pipes were to be laid. He wanted me to join him at the shovel! At the time I weighed but one hundred and twenty pounds. The foreman put us in a clay ditch under a scalding July sun with a gang of knotted-muscled, tanned Irishmen to whom the picking of dried lumps of clay and the shovelling of heaps of it were mere items of a day’s work to be done mechanically, but for my friend and myself tasks for Titans. The Irishmen at my heels kept passing me, doubling on me, until, after a two days’ attempt, with the lure of twenty-five cents an hour for the prize, my friend with his Ph.B. and I with my ambitions fell out of the race and rode wearily back to the village and to the University, where for days neither of us was fit for even so simple a task as lifting a pound weight; the excessive strain had undermined our strength.

While recuperating, I was given food by the superintendent and spent most of my time wandering into the woods or through the sheep pastures where my uppermost thought was: “What is the use of all this? It is weariness and a vanity of the flesh. Give up your education! You must have money and strength, money and strength, money and strength!” And then the thought of my classmates would obtrude itself and I saw them in visions at their tasks, at their homes, in the full enjoyment of work, companionship, and wages. I seemed to hear, borne on the summer wind, above the bleating of the sheep, the exhortations of the evangelists in their tents which were crowded with farmers, paying heed to the gospel, and I was envious of them. I thought of the miners deep under the earth, black with their toil but happy in earning a substantial wage; strong, oh, so strong! My fight for an education, when contrasted with their natural endowments of strength and friendships, seemed puny, futile. In such a way did the black demon Despair lay its sharp claws on my spirit and make it bleed. I would start back across the field, not heeding the innocent, questioning gaze of the sheep as they packed off and watched me go, not watching the swift circlings of the sombre vultures high above my head, but going back to my lonely room feeling that I should never have another flash of happiness flood my life again. Then I would get out the can-opener, uncover a can of beans, and warm them on the stove for supper.

But everything has its end, even as my homesickness and discouragement had their ending when the students came back once more, bringing others with them. They came back flushed with eagerness for another year’s work; eager once more to invest themselves in sacred ties of friendship. Thropper came back with a hundred dollars: his summer’s earnings. I reported that I had just managed to pay my last year’s tuition and my summer’s board: I could enter upon my second year of education with a clean slate.

Once more the round of studies, prayer-meetings, and chores commenced: this time with less of novelty. The approach to winter brought with it the same questions of how to earn cash. To this end I went into the woods for a day and tried to chop down trees, but my arms were not attuned to axe swinging; after my first cord had been cut I had to abandon the quest for dollars in that healthful but too vigorous work. I returned to the University and assisted the baker with bread and pies and the janitor with the university floors; the money to be credited against my account on the books.

But I realized at last that I was in the midst of inestimable privileges. The studies awakened me to the possibilities of culture and mental fitness. Some of my last year’s friends had entered upon the pleasant vocations of teaching and business for which they received a moderate, but, as it appeared to me, a flattering compensation. Thropper--ever on the alert with inspiration--comforted me one night when my empty pockets had induced a pessimistic frame of mind, by saying:

“Now look here, Priddy. Suppose you don’t have any money and have to scrimp on things. Here you are privileged to take extra studies every day; a millionaire’s son couldn’t do more. You don’t have to lose a term of study, either. You are going along through the schedule about as comfortably as any one. That’s worth a good deal. There’s Harry Lane--got plenty of money, but you know he was compelled to drop out for a term on account of bad eyes. You’re lucky, old fellow!” and the good-natured fellow gave me a staggering, but well-meant, clap on the shoulder that knocked every ounce of pessimism out of my system.

“I am in luck, Thropper. I know it!” I declared, and then went to my study with new courage. “The only trouble about the whole matter, Thropper,” I declared, after some moments of quietness, “is that I am making the fight alone--no one to rely on if I get stuck, you know. The other fellows can depend upon more or less from friends--I can’t; all those bridges are cut behind me!”

Thropper closed his book with an energetic snap.

“You Chump!” he exclaimed, with a melting light in his clear eyes, “what do you think? That you haven’t won any friends since coming to the University? That’s where you’re wrong: sadly out of tune! All you have to do, any day, is to say the word and you can get any amount I have on hand!”

I jumped to my feet and said, very gently, “Thropper, you’re all right!”

Then, without another word, for the situation was getting close to the edge of tears, Thropper threw himself in his stuffed chair and I sat on the edge of the bed, under the hissing flare of the gas, both of us as busy as could be with the next day’s lessons.

_Chapter XVI. Visions, Hysteria, Dogma, and Poor Lessons to the Front when the Revivalists Arrived. How Natural it Sounded when “Bird” Thurlow Asked a Flippant Question_

Then the annual winter revival was announced. Upon this event the University centered all its prayers, its hopes, its attention, as the banner event of the year. In the church papers where the advertisement of the University appeared, the annual revival was featured. Several of the students had been sent to the institution by their parents principally for the spiritual benefits that might come to them in the atmosphere of the revival.

The whole air began to stir with the throb of revival preparation. A spiritual census of the students was taken, not officially or in any stereotyped way, and all the energy of Christian effort was brought to bear on creating the right, psychological mood for the time the evangelists should arrive. The prayer bands wove in extra meetings and increased their unction. Neglected, after-supper prayer-services were suddenly filled. Bands of earnest, zealous men and women roamed from room to room holding spiritual inquisitions over “The Clamorous Eight” and any others who were thought to need special portions of grace.

“I’m heartily in favor of Christian effort,” I said to Jason, one day, when we were talking over the coming revival, “but take last year and think how many hours were lost to study and given to the meetings! I should think that those things might be left to camp-meetings and churches--there were three long revivals in the village last winter--and we ought to center our precious time on study!”

Jason declared, emphatically and finally, “Brother Priddy, what are _heads_ compared to _souls_?”

“Oh, I don’t object to any sort of efforts being indulged if people are to be made Christian, Jason, but according to what you said in the prayer-meeting last night, there are only three in the whole University who do not make any profession of religious faith: just three, and yet two whole weeks are to be set apart to the Evangelists who will come and preach the ‘third-birth doctrine’ and other dogmatic matters. That is what I protest against.”

Again Jason answered with his inclusive, “Brother Priddy, what are _heads_ compared to _souls_?”

By the time the revivalists appeared it had been announced in the prayer-service that not one of the students stood “outside the Christian fold.” The revivalists had a clear chance, then, to preach the special doctrine of “the third-birth,” without any further parley.

The revivalists were a man and his wife, both of them uneducated, whose chief claim to merit in their field lay in the fact that they were said to be “filled with the Spirit.” In spite of the bad grammar, the mixed figures of rhetoric, traces of demagogism, and an excessive _ex cathedra_ tone, the revivalists were given full power in the meetings. All interests in pure scholarship were crowded aside. The valedictorian, the temperance orator who had won the interstate oratorical prize, the professors, and the humble seeker after knowledge were subordinated to the zealot, the exhorter, the unctuous pleader.

In morning chapel the time was generously lengthened to accommodate the doctrinal exhortations of the revivalist and his wife, who spake not so much of practical concerns, but entered into a bewildering maze of Scripture quibblings, text jugglings, super-rational conclusions, and a daze of fantastic analogies. When the closing bell sounded, the speaker would turn to the President and say, familiarly--even commandingly, “Well, brother, studies can wait on the Lord, can’t they?” and the President had nothing to say but, “Yes.” The morning exhortations infringed on our nine o’clock classes so that often they had to be discontinued; much to the reluctance of the professors who had to bear the brunt of the intellectual disqualifications of students at graduation time.

As the meetings continued, in the evenings, the enthusiasm increased. When emotions were running at flood the meetings were carried well into the night and Thropper and I often did not reach our room until eleven o’clock--with all opportunity for study taken away. But again the professors had to lose, for if any of us were backward with lessons the next morning, by saying, “Professor, I was at the meeting last night. I did not have any opportunity to study,” a proper adjustment was made in our favor. For, as Jason had said, the theory at that time was, “What are heads compared to souls?”

At the conclusion of the first Thursday evening’s meeting, the revivalist and his wife let it be known that “At last God is blessing us!” High tide had been reached. That meeting had been given into the hands of the students after the leader had preached for an hour on a doctrinal theme. A hymn was started by a young woman. She stood while she led the singing and at the conclusion she still stood erect, with her eyes fixed on the ceiling. She had thrown herself into a trance and spoke in a jumble some words nobody could decipher but which were understood to be a “revelation.” That was the signal for a wild demonstration. Jason leaped to his feet and after shouting, “God is with us! Emmanuel!” he sat shivering in his seat as if his body were in the grasp of angry spirits. A group of young women paraded down the aisles and before the pulpit waving their handkerchiefs and shouting in shrill ecstasy. Suddenly one of the young men near me burst into lamentations and tears, moaning as if his heart would break. Meanwhile the evangelists knelt at the front of the platform in prayer; praying for people by name. Then the young man who had been crying suddenly darted to his feet and broke into a torrent of wild, hysterical laughter and ran to the upper end of the room clapping his hands. Hymns of different sorts and tunes had broken out in different parts of the room, making a musical Babel. The young woman who had had the trance came into consciousness again, and, on the urgence of the revivalists, ascended the platform from whence she described a vision fit to be framed in Miltonic verse. At eleven o’clock hands were joined, a hymn was sung, and after a benediction from “Pa” Borden, we went back to our rooms.

Then the revivalists with their honors full on them departed, and the emotional tension left us. It was a distinct relief, like a bit of bird’s chatter after the epic storm, to hear “Bird” Thurlow shout across the walk, one morning, “Hey, Paddy, going to take Miss Adee to the lecture next Wednesday?”

_Chapter XVII. My Presidential Pose and its Central Place in “The Record.” A Wistful Glance and Some Practical Plans towards Eastern Education. How the Little Sparrow Brought my Class Colors to me as I Gave the Class “Oration.” Ends in a Fight_

In the spring, when announcements of Commencement and Graduation were in the air, a gathering of four members of the collegiate department, as many members of the preparatory division, two business students, and five who could not be classified by reason of their slowness to master their studies, met in response to a call, sent out by the Seniors, for the members of the Freshmen Class to elect officers, and after due deliberation made me their president.

With this honor thrust on me, I was immediately in a dilemma, for the main purpose of the class organization was to have each member’s photograph in the Senior’s “Record,” a souvenir book of the University life. Had I been other than the president, I should not have fretted about my inability to afford a visit to the picture gallery, but there I was: due to have my picture in the middle of the group. I was in despair until finally I thought of little Jack Borden, who owned a three-dollar camera. I told him my predicament and he consented to make a snap-shot of me for ten cents that should be fit to be in the center of a group of “gallery ones” as he termed those that the official photographer would take.

As Jack had no photographer’s background, he snapped me with my back to the flowered wall paper, and when the finished picture was handed me, there I sat, outlined against a mass of conventional crocus leaves and a picture of “Pa” Borden hung on the wall above my head! I was told by one of “The Record” Committee that the picture would never be fit to reproduce with such a background: that it should be in relief against a plain one. I returned to my room in despair, but finally resolved to cut my picture out from the wall paper and paste it on a piece of plain, black pasteboard. After going over the outline with the scissors I finally succeeded in accomplishing the feat and the picture went in the middle of the group, an undignified, flat, ill-posed, and somewhat jagged outline of myself, most conspicuous as “the president.”

As the year drew to an end, and the students began to talk so emotionally of home and friends, I began to feel that I had been long enough in exile from my eastern home and friendships. I also began to wonder if now that I had learned the art of working a way through school I should not be more comfortable in Massachusetts. I had heard the graduating students talk of “Dartmouth” and “Boston University” and “Yale” and “Harvard,” with a sort of worshipful accent, not far short of reverence. One or two graduates in the past, so the local legend ran, had even attained to post-graduate work in Yale and Harvard! Therefore, as I heard this talk, listened to this semi-worship of New England education, and realized that it was my home, my own environment, I also asked myself the question: “Why not go and complete your education in that atmosphere?”

I mentioned this fact to Thropper. He said to me:

“I have often wondered, Priddy, why you came away out here for your education when you have such good schools in New England. I should think you’d be able to work your way along out there and get some mighty fine chances. I just wish I had been an Easterner!”

“I’ve a good mind to go East when school closes, Thropper, and try. I must confess I feel lonesome, homesick out here. I miss the ocean and the hills. I can’t help it. I suppose I run the risk of not getting to school next year, though, if I break off now!”

“Not if you’re willing to work as you have,” said Thropper. “Though I’d hate to have you go. I thought you might be my right hand man when I marry, next fall!”

“Marry?”

“Yes, in September. Oh, you’ll get an invitation even if you won’t be able to attend, Priddy,” he added, solemnly, “I wouldn’t try to keep you from going East even with my wedding. Try it, old fellow. You owe it to yourself, now that you’ve got such a good start here. This place doesn’t pretend to be in competition with the big Eastern institutions. Evangelical University is concerned mostly with giving a fellow a start towards them. The faculty would be only too glad to have you leave here, if they knew you were going to stick to your education in the East.”

“I’ll do it, Thropper!” I replied.

The busy season of Commencement was ushered in: a busy time even for those of us who were far, very far from graduation. My “class” voted that I represent them with an oration on “Class Day.” No classic, intellectual, or sentimental event was Class Day at Evangelical University, but, rather, a Western outflow of burlesque and banter. Every day for a week I practised my “oration” in the attic of the University building. In this speech I had put, as all previous Class Day orators had made a practise of putting, puns, alliterations, pompous passages, personalities, and much bathos. I tried to perfect myself in its delivery, not knowing just what experiences I should encounter on the day I should speak it.

A wild, untamed, yelling, crowding procession filled the chapel hall, each class in a section by itself and the “orators” seated on the platform.

It came my turn. I stepped to the front and raised my hand for the first word when suddenly the class next above mine yelled, poked up slang signs, and then from the square ventilator hole high above my head darted a sparrow with a trailing streamer of our class ribbon fluttering from its tail. At every sentence, nearly every word, I had to pause on account of the yellings, the banter, and the interruptions caused by flying hats and scudding pieces of pasteboard. After about a half hour of disciplined posing, I finally concluded the “oration” amid the admiring plaudits of my class. Thus orator followed orator, each one outdoing the other with satire, pun, and rhetorical nonsense. To the accompaniment of a thudding fight which was taking place between the representatives of two classes over our heads where the bird had been sent down, Class Day came to an end, and my active life at Evangelical University likewise.

_Chapter XVIII. Thropper Unfolds Something Better than Canned Foods. A Lesson with the Flat Iron. Thropper Proposes that I Chaperone Horses_

“How are you going to get back to Massachusetts, Priddy?” asked Thropper when I was shuffling some photographs which I had taken down from a wire rack on the wall.

“Oh, I’ll have to try to get work in a factory or on a farm about here,” I answered, “until I earn my fare!”

“Have you any definite work planned for, yet?”

“No, but I thought I’d go out this afternoon and see what I might pick up. I could keep this room and board myself, Thropper.”

He made a wry face, and blurted out:

“Warmed over canned beans, ugh!”

“What do you mean, old fellow?”

“Boarding yourself--canned soups, canned meats, canned everything--ugh!”

“That’s what your wife will feed you on--at first, while she learns to cook, Thropper,” I laughed. “Perhaps you’ll prefer canned things!”

“Is that so?” he retorted, with some show of heat. “Well, that’s all you know about things. _She_ can cook already: you just wait till you taste some of her cooking. Canned things--ugh!”

“Well,” I sighed, “I’ve little choice!”

“How would you like to spend the summer at a neat little hotel in Michigan?”

“Thropper!”

“And room in a little cottage in the midst of a little grove of pines, near little sandhills, among a little group of the finest fellows in the world--college students?” continued Thropper, with a smile.

“A little bit too much imagination in your little talk, my dear little fellow!” I retorted.

“And go down to the beach every day for a bath among the big waves, and go boating and fishing; seeing the great crowds of excursionists and vacationists!”

“Go on,” I gasped, “have it out, Thropper, if you particularly enjoy the stunt!”

“Food,” continued my roommate, “well, let me see: strawberry shortcake à la much, mutton chops with bacon à la juicy, calves’ brains on toast à la delicious, hashed browned potatoes à la second helping, and for desserts: cream and jellies, sherberts and pies--”

“--À la imagination, eh, Thropper,” I interrupted.

My roommate’s rugged face was overspread with a grin. He clapped me over the shoulder and said, continuing his whim:

“To enjoy many beautiful, moon-lit hours, watching the glint of the phosphorescent waves as they twinkle like fairy lights over the broad expanse of Lake Michigan; to--”

“Look out, Thropper,” I exclaimed at this poetic outburst, “or you’ll be crowding the spring poets out of a job!”

“To roam at will through the shady groves, over the sand dunes, to hear the orchestral music, the light plash of the waves against the pier while you hold a fish-line in the water; to loll on the fragrant pine needles and read, muse, rest, and be inspired: what do you think of that for a program for the next three months, Priddy?”

“Ask a Mohammedan what he thinks of Paradise or an exiled Prince what he thinks of a Kingdom, Thropper?”

“Then,” continued Thropper, “the whole experience not to cost you a cent: rather you are to be paid at the rate of four dollars a week: wages for a treat like that, Priddy: what do you think of _that_?”

“It is impossible for me to think about such a prospect, Thropper, my imagination is intoxicated!”

“Then you will go!”

I looked at Thropper as if he had parted with his senses.

“What an actor you are, Thropper. One would imagine you serious in all this!”

“Of course I’m serious!” he announced. “I am merely offering you the chance to go with Brook and myself to Macatawa, Michigan, to wait on table at one of the hotels there.”

“Oh!”

“But all the things I have enumerated, Priddy, are facts and not dreams. The work is very easy: six hours a day; two hours a meal, with the interims filled with all sorts of good times. What do you say? Our railway fares and steamer passages will be sent and later will be deducted from our wages. Will you go?”

“Do they let the waiters eat calves’ brains on toast, Thropper?” I asked, seriously.

“Extra orders which are not taken,” he responded.

“Of course I’ll go, old fellow. It will be a wonderful chance, won’t it?”

“It will give you a good chance to get a rest, Priddy,” he averred, solemnly. “Your poor, pinched body needs it!”

“When do we leave?”

“In two days; soon as Brock gets word to the hotel that we are coming. I can lend you some collars and things till we get there.”

“The first month’s wages are to go for clothes,” I announced. “All aboard for Ma-cat-a-wa: last call for dinner!” I cried, and then Thropper and I, sharers of confidences and of dreams, linked arms and waltzed crazily around the room--for sheer joy.

One week after having waltzed with Thropper over the creaky boards of the dormitory, I found myself adjusted to a new phase of existence, delicious and inspiring in its every aspect. After a lifetime spent in the midst of places where toil and only toil held the boards: after twenty years’ vision of strenuous tasks done by those about me, in mills, shops, and on the street, at last I found myself in the midst of a place set apart to idleness: where the indolent were given the palm branch, and where work, for a wonder, found itself, even by honorable people, spurned as a thing out of place.

The six hours’ work a day put at my command all the recreational advantages of the resort: the shapely sand dunes, the boardwalks through cool, shaded pine groves, the smooth, sandy, slippery beach down which one walked past artists’ studios, soap box shanties, and pretentious pillared cottages. And the water! We bathed by day and by night. In it we fished and raced. Over it we rowed in boats that were tossed like light corks from engulfing wave to engulfing waves, while the life-boat man from the pier kept a sharp eye on our adventure. By its edge on a moon-light night we built a chain of fires and in the flames of them we roasted marshmallows, sang songs, and passed all sorts of banter.

In the dining-hall I met my fellow waiters and waitresses: college students, all of them, from different parts of the country. The orchestra, at dinner, played complimentary college tunes in our honor: our guests broke down all perfunctory relations and intimately entered into our ambitions. While waiting for the arrival of guests at breakfast the waiters stood under a wooden canopy in the hotel yard and ironed napkins and towels. Of course neither Thropper nor I were very expert in the laundry, but that did not excuse us from it. One day the Irishwoman, who was proprietor of the hotel, came and investigated the laundry. She paid particular attention to the manner in which I conducted the flat-iron over the towels. After watching me for some moments, during which, for a woman, she maintained a severe and terrible silence, during which perspiration poured down my face, she suddenly exploded with laughter and said:

“Ah, ah! You should see Mister Priddy use his iron. It’s a rale treat. He is that gentle on the cloths! I want you all to come around and take a lesson. You girls now,” she indicated some of the college girls, “have been doing it wrong all the time!” She laughed loudly, as they gathered about my board.

Taking the iron gingerly in her massive, red, and scarred hand, the Irishwoman very gently tipped the back edge of it on a towel and deliberately, though exactly, drew the iron backward several times, lifting it from the board to carry it forward.