Chapter XX: The Candles Are Lighted 181 (2)

We did much more drilling than studying. Though nearly all of us intended to go to college, our school day was confined to about three hours at the most--and under teachers who were always surly, sneering and uncouth. The standard of work in the classroom was very low. At first I did not have any trouble at all in leading the entire school in scholarship; but gradually, under the careless and relaxed conditions, I grew unambitious, lazy--and found myself failing among a class of boys who, I secretly knew, were my mental inferiors. It is so much a matter of competition, of environment.

Of friends I made few: even of those schoolboy friends who are your "pals" one day, your sworn enemies the next. I had one or two sentimental encounters with a brewer's son--a great, beefy ox of a boy who lorded it over all of us because he kept his own private horse in the town livery stable and had his room furnished with real mission furniture. But he had no use for me when he realized that I was a Jew, and took particular pains to transfer me from the company of which he was first sergeant into the band.

The band, so-called in spite of the fact that it was composed of only fifes, drums and bugles, was a sadly amateurish thing. The little knowledge of music that I had was just so much more than that possessed by any other member of the organization. As a result I soon rose to the magnificence of cadet drum-major, an office which involved a tall, silvered stick and a shako of sweltering bear-skin. Thus, my military training consisted mostly of learning to twirl the baton; and when semi-annual examinations resulted in disaster for me, I was reduced to the humility of a private without having gained more than the knack of sending a silvered rod in rapid circles about my stiff and sorely-tried thumb.

At that, I was glad to return to the ranks. There had been plenty of criticism of the fact that a "plebe" should have risen so quickly to an officership. And, of course, as Jewish boys always do, I imagined that the demonstration was just another evidence of race prejudice. Undoubtedly it was, to some extent--but I know that I have always been too suspicious in that direction. Had I been braver about it, I should have been less suspicious.

One friend I did make: a lieutenant-adjutant whose first name was Sydney and who was in charge of the punishment marks that were allotted us for our various misdemeanors. Many a time did Sydney, for my sake, forget to record the two or four marks which some crabbed teacher had charged against me for inattention or disorderly conduct.

He was a big, handsome chap, with the most attractive manners I have ever met. He was a scholarship boy--so that he had begun his school year with a hundred and one unpleasant tasks to perform. But somehow or other he had managed to be rid of them all excepting this dignified one of "keeping the books"--and I am sure it must have been a lucrative one, in a small way, for Sydney's room was full of pictures which had been given him from other boys' rooms, of canes and banners--even of a half dozen pair of patent leather shoes--which may or may not have come to him in return for his apt juggling of those hated punishment marks.

I am not attempting to judge him--and I will tell you much more of him later on--but I must remember him as one of the most wonderful of friends: always smiling, always ready to join in upon whatever lark was planning--a bit of a daredevil, very much of a protector when the bullies of the school were pressing too close for comfort.

During the year, of course, I saw or heard nothing that could remind me of my Faith. We had to go to church on Sunday mornings. I was given my choice, and tried accompanying one squad after another. I went to the Episcopal, the Methodist, the Presbyterian--and it was the last that I finally selected for good. There was a splendid old pastor there; his white hair and trumpeting voice gave him venerableness, even when he spoke of things that seemed to me very childish and obvious.

Once the commandant, twirling his mustaches, asked me whether I should not like to go to the synagogue on Friday nights (there was a small one at the edge of the town). I did not care much about the religious inspiration to be gained from the Hebrew service, but I did think it would be jolly fun to be allowed to go down into the town at night. And yet I knew that some of my schoolmates would come to know why I went, and what sort of services I attended, and--reluctantly--I declined the opportunity.

I do not know what the bumptious commandant thought of it, but he pulled his mustaches very, very hard.

VI

MY STEERFORTH

I wish I could write this episode in quite a different tone from all the others. I wish I could summon all the tenderness of which boyhood has--and which it loses--and put it into the lines of the recital that is now due. Because, then, perhaps, you would have some knowledge and appreciation of what the last few months of my stay at the military school meant for me.

David Copperfield had his Steerforth. Every boy must have one. Certainly, _I_ did. And I worshipped him with all the ardor and unquestioning devotion that could come fresh from a boy-heart which had never yet given itself to friendship. Steerforth was a villain; but in David's eye he was always, unalterably, a glorious hero. This is how it was, perhaps, with Sydney--though he was no villain, I am sure.

I spoke of him in my last chapter: told you that he was a poor student, much in favor with the commandant for his good services. I have told you, he was tall, fair-haired, with locks that waved back from his white forehead (as Steerforth's did, as I remember) and merry, blue eyes.

He befriended me because it was of his generous nature to befriend all the lonelier boys. He used to pal with all the school "freaks," to counsel them, to drill them privately, so that they should be more proficient on parade. He used to make me very jealous of his large circle of small worshippers. I thought that privilege ought to be kept for me alone.

He used to read with me, on spring nights, in the school's dingy library. We read "David Copperfield" together; and would glance up from the page to watch, from the windows, the pale but glowing battle of sunset colors over the hills and mirrored in the darkling stretch of the Hudson. And sometimes, when the story would not give us respite, he would smuggle the book up into the dormitory--and when all was dark there, and the proctor slept, we would creep into the hall and read by its dusky light until long into the night. I have read "David Copperfield" again since then--but not with so exquisite a thrill.

And reading of Steerforth, I used to look up at Sydney and imagine that he was that fine, attractive fellow--and that I, dumb but ecstatic in my pride of friendship, was little David.

It seemed so wonderful to me, especially, that he was a Christian and I a Jew, and yet there had never been any question of difference between us. Other boys who had given me something of their friendship had made such a brave point of telling me that they didn't mind my being a Jew--that there were just as many good Jews as there were bad ones--and all those other stupid and inevitable remarks that we must swallow and forget. But with Sydney it was not like that. He had never mentioned it, and it seemed as if he knew that I dreaded the subject--and so kept silent on it out of kindness.

Sometimes, when the days were warm and the trees were budding, we went off together on long walks through the country. Sydney taught me to smoke cigarettes, and we would stop on our way at a little village store that lay at the end of a hilly road.

An old man, who was an invalid, owned the store. But he sat all day at his little card table in the dark, untidy rear, playing solitaire; and it was his young daughter who would wait on us behind the counter.

She was a thin, dull-looking girl, scarcely pretty, yet with large, sombre eyes that her lonely task explained. She was ignorant, I am sure, and knew little of what went on in the town at the river's edge or in the big city, fifty-odd miles away. But there was something pathetic about her position--and when Sydney made it more and more a custom to talk to her, to make friendly advances, I thought it only the big generosity of his heart pouring out to succor another such shy soul as mine.

Once or twice it was not until evening that we could steal "off bounds," and then we would make straight for the little store, as if we knew that, if we did not hurry, it would be closed for the night. And we would have only a few hurried words, but laughing, with the girl--and she would look up at Sydney with a light in those big eyes of hers that I had never seen before in any woman's. She left her counter, once, and walked all the way home with us; and I saw, in the blue of the gloaming, that her hand was tightly clasped in Sydney's, and that he whispered things to her under his breath, as soon as I was gone a little way ahead of them, and that they both laughed--and she looked up at him as a dumb animal to its master. She came as far as the school gate; and after I had gotten within, they stood for a moment together--and I thought I could hear the sound of kissing. It was only then that I began to be troubled.

Sydney, who was a lieutenant in the cadet battalion, had more privileges than I. He could leave the premises when he pleased. He never had to sign the big book in the hall when leaving and arriving back. He needed never to give account of what he did "off bounds." It was an easy matter for him--and there were many times, now, that he went off alone. No one knew why he used to take that little country road that led up the hill towards a stupid old country store. No one, that is, but me.

At first I did not think much of the girl's side of it. I was bitterly disappointed that some one else had come between my friend and me. I was jealous of all the time he spent with her, of the hours of reading and walking and jesting that once were mine--and of which the lure of her had robbed me.

But once, when we were at the store, and I stood aside from them, watching the humped back of her old father, bent over his card table, and saw the feeble shaking of his hand, I began to comprehend what it might mean to him if anything should happen. Not that I knew what might happen. I was still very young--but I felt the chill foreboding of tragedy lurking somewhere in the background of it all. The dingy little shop, with its flyspecked glass cases and its dusty rows of untouched stock; the lights dimmed and blackened by clusters of whirling insects; the old father with his bent back--and the two of them standing there and laughing, gazing into each other's faces with the look of youth and the Springtime.

And I went out quickly and stumbled my way home alone, leaving Sydney to follow after.

When Sydney came in, after taps, I stole from my bed to his to speak to him of it. But the words would not form themselves suitably, and he laughed at my poor stammerings, and sent me off to bed again.

But one night, just before "tattoo," when the fruit trees were frothing with light blossoms and the scent of lilacs was heavy in the air, Sydney sent for me. He was officer-of-the-day, today, and could not leave the premises. He wanted me to go in his place, to meet the girl and to explain why he could not keep his appointment.

I looked at him in amazement. "Do you mean to say, you've been meeting her every night. As late as this? Alone?"

He was playing with the tassel at the end of the red sash which the officer-of-the-day wears about his waist. He let it drop and gave me a quick glance.

"Yes," he said, "and mind you don't tell anybody, either. You'll have to sneak off bounds--but I'll see you don't run much of a risk. You can leave that part to me."

Then, when he saw me hesitate, he began to plead. "Oh, say, you won't go back on me, will you? I've been a good friend to you and done you lots of favors--and now when I ask you to take a little risk for me...."

I smiled. "You don't understand, Sydney," I said. "It isn't the risk."

"Then what is it?"

"It's--it's the girl."

He stepped back from me, and his face took on a coldness I had never seen before. "Don't worry about that," he exclaimed. "That's my business."

Then, as I hesitated, he burst out: "Hurry up, now, you little Jew!"

I stood very still for a minute. Then I felt my face flush hot and I flung away from him.

It had come at last. He, my best friend--my only friend--he had called me a Jew!

I wanted to scream back at him, to beat him with my fist, to denounce him and curse him. I felt betrayed, degraded as I had never been before. Then I gulped hard and controlled myself.

I said nothing. I merely saluted and set off upon his errand.

But I did not find the girl at the street corner he had mentioned. I went on, only a few hundred yards, to the store. There was a dim blue light in one of its windows, and I crept up and pressed my face against the glass, knowing that she was probably sitting up and waiting.

Yes, she was there--behind the counter with her shawl still over her head and her eyes fixed on the cheap wall clock. She could not see me in the darkness outside--not even when she turned her head and gave me a full view of her face, so that I could see how strangely pale and set it was, and how deeply lurking in her eyes was the fear of the moment.

I did not go in and tell her anything. I could not. The sight of her and the appeal of her thin, tragic little body sent me hurrying back with my errand uncompleted--and glad, madly glad that it was so.

I crept up to bed as soon as I was "in bounds" again. I wanted to avoid Sydney. Nor would I give him a chance to speak to me the next morning. I felt that I knew now, almost in its entirety, the scheme he was laying--and the climax which was fast approaching. And, after having seen her, as I did last night, I knew that I could never go walking with him again or have more to do with him, and that I must go back to her, some day soon, traitor-wise, and warn her against him who had been my best friend.

In the afternoon, after school was done, a crowd of us obtained permission to go swimming in a nearby lake. Sydney was among us: the leader of us, in fact. He tried to speak to me--perhaps he was going to apologize to me for having called me a Jew--I do not know. But, though I did not give him the chance, I remember well how tall and brave he looked, and how his hair waved back from his forehead like Steerforth's.

And like Steerforth, too, he was drowned.

Schoolboys are careless of their swimming. We did not notice until it was long too late that Sydney had disappeared. When his body was recovered, the doctors worked over it for fully two hours. But it was no use.

* * * * *

His funeral was held in the school parlor the next morning. But it had been a night of terrors, of whispering groups, of Death's shadow over us all--and we were but children. His empty bed, his dress uniform tossed carelessly over the back of a chair, the knowledge of his insensible presence in the undertaker's shop at the other end of town ... brought fear and wakefulness to us all.

And as for me, I sat all night at the dormitory window and listening to the creak and groan of the old Revolutionary oak in the quadrangle, thought of many things: of the walks we had taken, of the hundred smiling adventures we had shared, of all the glad things he had taught me--and then, of the girl--and of the tragic face of her--as I had seen it last.

And I wished that he had lived only a few minutes longer so that I might have pleaded with him and shown him where he was wrong. And, perhaps, in those few minutes he would have reached out his hand to me, and begged forgiveness for having called me what he did--perhaps he might have done so--and oh, I wanted with all my heart to forgive him and tell him it did not matter--and to wish him God-speed.

But in a few days, when I summoned enough courage to go up the hilly road in search of the little old store, I found it closed. The cracked shades were down before the windows, and a "For Sale" sign was on the door. The father and daughter had moved away, I heard in the town; but no one knew where--or why.

But when I was back in the dormitory, I took the book of "David Copperfield" from under my pillow, and put it back in the library, and did not attempt to read further in it, then.

VII

FRESHMAN YEAR

New adventures must be prefaced by new hopes. My entering college meant the starting of a thousand new dreams, ambitions--and seemed to me an opening gate to a land stronger than any I had yet heard of: a land of real men, virile, courteous and kind, whose thoughts were never petty, whose breadth of mind unfailing.

It was only a few weeks after Sydney's death that I took my college entrance examinations. I had taken the "preliminaries" the year before, and I entered upon these "finals" low in spirit, disinterested, very much aware of how poor a training for them this last year at military school had given me.

Nevertheless, I managed to pass them. Not brilliantly, to be sure, but by a small margin which left no doubt but that I should be accepted in the freshman class of the city's university.

I have not called my alma mater by any other name than this: I do not wish, out of a sense of loyalty, to define it more closely. You will say, before I am through, that I am perverse in that loyalty; perhaps so--but I do not wish to transgress upon it. Suffice it then, that my college days were spent at one of the two universities which New York has within its borders.

I shall never forget how my heart bounded when I received, through the mail, that little leather covered book which college men know as the "Freshman Bible." It is the directory of undergraduate activities issued by the university Y. M. C. A., and is sent to all members of the incoming class. I read each little page and its small, fine print as if my life depended upon its reading. When I came to understand that freshman must wear a black, green-buttoned cap upon the campus, a deep awe of collegiate law and order came over me. When I saw the little half-tone prints of the chapel, the gymnasium, the baseball field, I felt that I was glimpsing, before my proper time, the sacred precincts of a land which would be magical, splendid with an eternal sunlight, peopled only with a chivalrous and knightly manhood. I suppose that college was to me, as to most subfreshman, a place of green swards and track meets and those musical harmonies which glee clubs can so throatily accomplish.

I was at the hotel in New Hampshire when this book arrived. The very same mail brought me the definite results of my college entrance examinations. I remember that I was just starting to walk down to the lake with my aunt when they arrived. I knew what was in the big ominous envelope--and I was afraid to open it. I crammed it into my coat pocket, careful not to let my Aunt Selina see it, and went on to the boat house, hired a boat and rowed her dutifully around the lake for a full two hours. She remarked upon my silence--but I did not tell her that my fate was in my pocket--and that I dared not look upon it.

But when I was back at the hotel, I went straightway to my room and opened the envelope, stripped out the blue, bank-note sheet and read--yes, I had passed every examination. And I was a regularly enrolled student at the university.

I told my aunt of it at lunch, as if it were a casual thing--and she treated it as such, too. If I had had any doubts of her lack of genuine interest in me, I knew it now for certain. It was just a matter of course to her--this entrance into college--and to me, in turn, it meant so much: a new work, a new land, a life entirely new and shot through with hopes. I did not tell her that, but let her change the topic quickly. She was intent upon talking fashions with Mrs. Fleming-Cohen.

I had hated to come to this hotel for another year. The people persisted in making things graciously unpleasant for us. I was beginning to be old enough to feel it keenly--and not old enough to overlook. I wonder, for that matter, if Jews are ever old enough to overlook it?

But Aunt Selina was dictatress of my destinies. She had declared I must either come along to the hotel or else I would not be allowed to enter college. In the face of such an alternative I had yielded quickly. But there had already begun between my aunt and me a chasm that grew daily wider, deeper, more hopelessly incapable of bridging. When one has been away for a year, one returns to find grim truths. I had met other people, seen other lives and other souls since I had been in boarding school: I was not clouded now by my blood relationship to Mrs. Haberman or by day after day of close but unintimate companionship. I saw her as she was: a shallow, flighty woman whose thoughts were always upon that sort of society which spells itself with a capital S, whose petulance found no ease--always restless, always ambitious for petty things, wanting only what she could not have--an idle woman, foolish in her idleness.

In spite of her taking it as a matter of course, she spent the whole day, after she had learned my news, in spreading it about the porch and parlors of the hotel. She seemed to imagine that it would interest every one--even Mrs. Van Brunt, the arbiter of elegance of the mountain clique, who, on hearing it, sniffed, patted her lorgnette with a lace handkerchief, and inquired if a great many Jews did not attend this particular university.

"Really, I should not think of sending any relative of mine there," she sniffed. "Not that I have a prejudice against Jews, of course--in fact, I consider myself very democratic. I have many Jewish acquaintances. Many of my best friends are Jews."

My aunt, who had undoubtedly had to listen to these catchwords as often as any other Jew or Jewess must, attempted not to understand why Mrs. Van Brunt had spoken them. A few minutes later she made a few unblinking and pointed remarks about having to attend a convention of Christian Science workers in the fall--as if to protest that Mrs. Van Brunt had made a grievous and embarrassing error.

I asked my aunt, a few days later, if I was not to be allowed to live in one of the university dormitories. Whether or not his college is in his home town, every boy wants the full flavor of undergraduate life--wants to live on the campus, to throw himself heart and soul into the college games and customs. I could not see how college would mean anything to me if I were to go on living at home in that dull, comfortless apartment of Aunt Selina's.

Youth is always eager for emancipation--always a little too thoughtless in its eagerness.

Perhaps I was wrong in forgetting what I owed Aunt Selina. She took great offense at my wish. She spoke, her voice choked with tears, of the many years that she had cared for me, fostered me, guarded me from a world of foreign things--"ruffians and kikes and niggers," was the way she described it.

At any rate, I remember that I spent a whole day in thinking it out for myself upon a lonely walk, and that, at the end of it, I came to tell her that she was right and that I was ashamed of wanting to leave her--that I would live home with her, and try to gain the best of college in that way. Privately, I knew that I could never gain as much--but I had made up my mind not to pain her, confident that it would be worth the sacrifice.

The days lagged slowly to the end of that summer. I was preparing in a hundred little ways for the great adventure: sending for all sorts of stereotyped books on the moral conduct of college men, on the art of making friends, on the history and traditions of my university. I was prepared to be its most loyal son. I could hardly wait for the stupid weeks at this mountain hotel to pass by, for the opening day to arrive.

And then, when the trees were beginning to fleck with scarlet and the summer heather streaked with goldenrod, we did depart for the city. It was only a week before college would begin.

Then five days, four days, three, two, one. And on the night before registration day, which would commence the college year, I sat for a long while at my table-desk, dreaming high things--hope and fear mingling with my dreams, charging them with an exquisite uncertainty, making them pulse with the things that were innermost in me.

I was old enough, I thought, to review all the past--to see myself with youth's over-harsh criticism of itself--to realize that, so far, I had made a miserable, cringing, cowardly botch of my conduct and convictions. Some day, soon, I seemed to feel, there would come a moment of crisis--a moment when all the shy, stammering manhood that I knew to be in my heart would fling itself suddenly into the open and make me strong and confident, helpful to myself and many others. I had always longed to be a leader--as every boy does--and so far I had been a slave--slave, most abjectly of all, to my own fears and prejudices. But it would be different at college: there would be something--I did not know what--which would fling courage into me, fill my veins with flame--and it troubled me to wonder what that thing would be. Had any one told me, then, that it would be Judaism, I should have either laughed or been insulted.

For I was just as much afraid as ever of what hardships my religion might work for me at college. I had as much fear, as much abhorrence of the truth, in that regard. I wanted so much to forget it--to be one of the other sort, little caring for creed in any form, but wishing I were safe in the comfort of having been born into the faith of the majority. As I looked at it then, I was going into these new four years with a tremendous handicap scored against me. It seemed so unfair: I cared so little for Jewish things, yet I would have to be identified with them throughout my entire course. I had learned, by now, that I could not escape them.

I went into college with a deeper sense of the injustice of it all than I had ever had. I was going with the feeling that, come what may, I should have to bow before the inevitable stigma of my race--And yet, I hoped so yearningly that it would be otherwise. I hoped--and dreamed--and laughed at my dreams, and told myself that college men were only boys, after all: boys as bigoted, as cruel in their prejudices as any that I had met at high school or military academy.

And perhaps I was justified in this last opinion. For, when I appeared on the campus the next morning, headed for the dean's office to file my registration, I was met by a ratty, little sophomore who made me buy a second-hand freshman cap from him at four times its original value.

And when he had my money in his pocket, and was a safe distance across the green from me, he began to laugh and shout:

"Oi, oi! oi, oi!"

So that this was my introduction into college life.

VIII

WITHIN THE GATES

This initial experience did not frighten me. I came up to the first day of college in the firm and joyous belief that here, if anywhere, that old bugbear of my past school days would be absent. I came into sight of buildings that were new to me, and oh, how stately to my freshman eyes! I came across a campus that was golden with the autumn grass, where red leaves filtered down from old elms, and where, from heights, I caught glimpses of the university's private parks, still green and soft, and of the river beyond--and of the clean flanks of white stone buildings and marble colonnades, half hidden in the trees. It was all so beautiful. It was the promised land and I was within its gates.

The giddy knowledge of it buoyed me up and sent me across the campus humming to myself one of the alma mater songs which I had so religiously learned from that "Freshman Bible." I was on my way to my first class. Directly ahead of me was the broad, lofty door of the recitation building and, a little to the left, a fountain's water spilled itself singingly over into a shallow marble basin.

Suddenly a trio of sophomores bounded out from behind a clump of bushes. They came about me in a whooping circle, took me by the head and feet and tossed me into the fountain.

I clambered out, dripping, spluttering, but--be it said to my credit--still smiling. I had heard that this was the customary hazing which all freshmen must endure--and I knew enough to take it with as good a grace as they gave it.

I started on my way to the recitation hall again, my clothes leaving a trickling line behind me on the walk. But they pulled me back and thumped me into the water again. It happened a third time before they let me go. And then one of them--a big, stocky fellow who wore a thick, rolling sweater on which the college letter was emblazoned--laughed heartily and thwacked me on the back and roared that I was a good kid, even for a Jew!

The kindness of his remark was perhaps deeply meant. I've no doubt, he thought to be paying me a compliment--but I went away, wetter than ever, fast contracting a cold--and with a lump in my throat for which the cold was not at all responsible.

In the class room I found a number of my new classmates in quite as damp a condition as I. I was glad to be among them, to know that I had not been singled out--and, being miserable, enjoyed their company. The instructor seemed to be making a point of paying no attention to our wetness. It made me wonder how the faculty felt about hazing. Evidently they shut their eyes to it.

The class was soon over, since we were only kept for a preliminary explanation of the course and a few words of supercilious greeting on behalf of the young instructor. We came out upon the campus again, locked arm in wet arm, paradoxically proud of what we had suffered.

But some more sophomores were waiting for us. We had to go into the fountain over and over again. My own personal score was nine times. Nor did my good nature--kept at what a cost!--serve to bring me any leniency.

In fact it was only when I showed a trace of anger that the sophomores finally released me and took me over to the gymnasium to give me a sweater and a pair of old pants, much too big for me, to wear until my other suit was dry.

I went home from that first day jubilant, excited, sure of my coming four years. I had proven to myself and to all these others that I was ready to take a joke, to share it and enjoy it even when it was "on me." I had come out of it all with a tame but conclusive triumph of patience and good nature.

I told my aunt of what had happened, when we sat down to dinner. She was shocked at the recital. She wanted to know what sort of boys these sophomores were--were they of good family and all that? Otherwise, if they were ruffians, common street boys--she was going to write a letter of complaint to the Dean of the university. I had a hard time restraining her from it: I only did succeed by maintaining stoutly that hazing was part of the social scheme, and was indulged in only by "boys of the best families!"

The next morning, when I had traveled uptown to the college site, I was met by more than one sophomore and upper classman who gave me a broad smile or a humorous wink. The story of my dousings had probably gone the rounds of the campus.

That night there was to be a reception given to the freshman class by the college Y. M. C. A. I had arranged with Aunt Selina that I would not be home until late.

There was a baseball game between the two classes in the afternoon. The sophomores won, of course--as I believe they almost always do in that first game. But after that there was a class rush around the flag pole. I was light enough to climb up, stockinged-feet, upon the shoulders of some of the taller classmates. I managed, somehow or other, to reach that silly little flag and to tear it down, and then to dive down into the twisting, jammed crowd below me, hugging the rag to my breast in bulwarked hiding. And when the whistle blew I was still in possession of it.

Popularity is a heady wine--and I had my fill of it that day and evening. I--little I--had won the class rush for the freshmen. Everybody seemed to know my name, to recognize me, to want to speak to me. At the reception, later on, I was surrounded by a great group of freshmen too shy to stand by themselves. Under ordinary circumstances, of course, I should have been more shy than any of them--but these were not ordinary circumstances. I was a suddenly awakened hero, a wolf who had thrown off his meek lamb's outfit.

As I was leaving for home, full of ice cream, punch and much self-conceit, a junior came toward me hesitatingly. He seemed to be near-sighted, for he groped rather pitifully for my sleeve, and thrust his face close to mine.

"Aren't you the freshman that won the rush?" he asked me.

I told him promptly that I was.

"Well, won't you come around for lunch tomorrow at our fraternity house? We'll be mighty glad to have you."

I had learned a little of fraternities at school. They had not amounted to anything there; but I knew that college fraternities were different--were big, powerful organizations which could make or break a man's college career. My aunt had spoken to me of fraternities, too; she wanted me to join one which should give me--and her--a deal of social prestige. And I, hungering for new experiences and--as every boy does--for things that are mysterious and secretive, wanted, too, the distinction and glory of making a fraternity. It seemed to my freshman mind the most important thing upon the horizon.

And so, when this upper classman invited me to luncheon, my heart bounded high with expectation. I knew from other college men that an invitation to lunch was but the beginning of the usual system of "rushing" a prospective member: the preliminary skirmish of festivities which would prelude the final invitation to join the fraternity. And I was going to lunch at one of the most influential and exclusive of the university's fraternities.

It is needless to say, I was dressed in my Sunday-best the next morning. And, after my 11 o'clock recitation, I hurried out to find the upper classman waiting for me by the side of the fountain which had been the scene of my yesterday's wetting. I smiled indulgently at the thought of it. How changed everything was since then! The upper classman waited for me to come up to him. I saw that he did not recognize me at once, and a tremor of suspicion came over me. What if it were all a hoax--another bit of hazing?

He was immensely cordial; took me by the arm and marched me across the campus, down a side street and into the palatial, pillared house of his fraternity. On the way, his genial face full of a stupid, expansive smile, and his near-sighted eyes twinkling vacantly, he told me of the men I should meet.

Inside, in the magnificent hall, with its weathered oak beams and mission furniture and bronze plaques upon the tapestried walls, I met a host of good-looking, well-dressed men. There was evidently a "rushing committee" of upper classmen, who took me about and introduced me to all the others. There were one or two freshmen, too, whom I recognized; and these were wearing in their lapels a strange, gleaming little button. I was to learn later than this was the "pledge button" which announced that these men had been offered membership to the fraternity and had accepted it.

When we went into luncheon the near-sighted junior sat me next to him. He seemed tremendously embarrassed. Once or twice he leaned over to whisper to other men; then he would steal a glance at me and blush a brick red, his inefficient eyes puckering to squint closely.

The other men, for the most part, disregarded me. A classmate--one of the pledged freshmen--spoke to me now and then, but loftily and as if it were an effort of hospitality.

As I felt the coldness increase, I grew glum and silent. My new-found confidence oozed out into bewilderment. What had I done? What had I said to insult them all, to hurt my chances of election to their midst? I could not figure it out.

They were courteous enough. They were what they claimed to be: a crowd of young gentlemen. But I could sense, electric in the air, the disapproval and amusement which they felt.

And after lunch was over, I did not join the others in the big, leather-walled smoking room. I made a mumbled apology and went. They accepted it blandly, smiling, smirking a little, and let me go.

I had just gone down the steps and towards the campus when the near-sighted junior came after me, redder than ever of face, his eyes, blinking very hard. He hurried up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder.

"See here, 'fresh,'" he said thickly, "I owe you an explanation. I don't want the other fellows to see me giving it to you. Come on, walk along with me."

At the corner, out of range of the windows of his fraternity house, he began his hurried, jumbling speech.

"I could see," he said, "how uncomfortable they made you. They tried to be decent, honestly they did. But they--they've never had--never had to entertain a--one of your sort before, don't you see? We--we don't ever take--well, it's all my fault. I'm so darn near-sighted that I didn't realize. I couldn't see--I didn't know--"

He could not go on, for his dull, honest face was fearfully distressed.

"What didn't you know?" I demanded.

"That you were--now, don't get sore, because I like Jews as much as any folks--and I can't see why we don't take them in our fraternity. Only--"

"Only you didn't realize I was a Jew," I said hotly.

"That's it--I'm so near-sighted that I--"

I did not wait for his stammered finish. I went swiftly away and home, my heart well-nigh bursting.

IX

MY AUNT AND I

"It isn't true," snapped my aunt, when I told her of what had happened at the fraternity house. "I can't imagine that young gentlemen of such an aristocratic set could act so meanly. You must have done something wrong. You must have insulted them personally, yourself. I'll wager, you're to blame--not they."

I was too sickened by it all to protest. I repeated to her slowly the words of apology which the near-sighted junior had spoken to me at our parting, and, when they did not convince her, gave up the task and went to bed without any supper. I was old enough to have cured myself of the habit of tears--though, as a matter of fact, no men ever do quite want to cure themselves of it--but I remember that my pillow was damp the next morning, and the grey, foggy sky, through the window, seemed in sad tune with my spirits.

I dressed and went up to college, fearful to meet any of that fraternity crowd again, wondering how they would act towards me, trying to be indignant, but succeeding only in a shriveled self-debasement. Because I was a Jew--that was their one and only reason for showing me the door in so polite and gentlemanly a fashion.

But when, at the chapel entrance, I bumped into one of the pledged freshmen, he simply did not pay any attention to me at all. He appeared not to know me, murmured an unhurried and general, "Excuse me," and went on. A few yards further on, I met with one of the seniors at whose fraternity table I had been sitting the noon before. He bowed hastily and walked past.

Neither one nor the other of them seemed to be much perturbed by the meeting, nor to notice my own discomfiture. I could not imagine that such incidents as mine of yesterday were common occurrences and yet they seemed to take it so much as a matter of course.

I fought with my pride in the matter for a long while. Then, at the end of a noon-time recitation, I spoke of it to a freshman with whom I had struck up a friendship two days old. The friendship ended there. He seemed scandalized at my mentioning fraternities at all: it was a subject far too sacred for discussion, evidently. He merely snapped back stiffly that he expected to be pledged to another fraternity sometime during the day, and that he did not care to hurt his chances by talking too freely. It made me see the secretiveness of the system from another angle.

I received no more invitations to lunch. I contented myself henceforth with a humble sandwich and glass of milk at the "Commons" eating hall. It was galling to see classmates being escorted across the campus to the fraternity houses, to overhear them accepting invitations to theater in the evening, to watch the process of their conversion to this fraternity or that one. It was like being in a bustling crowd with hands tied and mouth gagged--and the sullen rage of a disappointed boyhood in my heart.

Aunt Selina did not know how to comfort me. I think she tried to, in her superfluous way. At first she wanted to make light of the fraternities, gibing at them whenever opportunity arose at the dinner table. But she did not feel lightly about it--and her disappointment was too great to be laughed away. She still had a dim suspicion that I had made some fearful misstep--had brought the failure on myself. And so, after a while, she kept silent on the subject, and would not speak of it at all. But her silence was more harshly eloquent than all her foolish talk had been.

It seems that Paul Fleming, a nephew of Mrs. Fleming-Cohen, had belonged to a fraternity at college; and Mrs. Fleming-Cohen was always alluding to it, as if it gave her a social security which my own aunt could never attain. Aunt Selina wanted me to make a fraternity to prove to Mrs. Fleming-Cohen how easy a matter it was. She had implied as much, when we had first come back from the country.

Our life together as days went by, seemed to be going peacefully and smoothly into some sort of a makeshift groove. I knew well enough that she and I would never grow to be genuinely fond of each other. Our aims were different; and the beginning of college had given me some inkling of what my aims were going to be. I was only eighteen, to be sure; but I was older, more settled than most youths of twenty or more. I blamed myself a little for my impatience with her, for my hasty conclusions concerning those friends of hers who came up from Washington square to eat her meals and to fill her with senseless chatter of art and literature. And yet I could not help loathing them. Whenever they came to dinner, I made an excuse of studying at the house of another freshman for the evening, and thus escaped them.

The first month of college was not yet over when I went, on one of those evenings, to hear an extra-curriculum lecture on the social duties of a college man. I had expected to hear a fop of some sort deliver dicta on the proper angle of holding a fork or inside information as to the most aristocratic set in college. It was that word _social_ that misled me.

Instead, the speaker was a rough, business-like man, rather shabbily dressed, who heaped fiery anathema upon the idle rich. And he spoke of the true social duties. He spoke mainly--because he knew most about it--concerning the opportunities for college men in settlement work.

I had never heard of settlement work before. It was a new thing to me--and perhaps it was its newness that at first attracted me so strongly. I waited until the end of the lecture, and joined a little group of listeners who gathered around the man with eager questions. I had a few of my own to ask, too--and he answered mine as he answered all of them, simply, kindly, directly.

The speaker was Lawrence Richards, director of one of the largest settlement societies in New York. There was something powerful, magnetically enthusiastic about him--and his face was tremendously keen and happy.

He was gathering up his papers to depart when he chanced to remark to me:

"See here, will you come over to my fraternity house with me and talk things over? We can sit in the library, and I'll tell you lots more that I know will interest you. We'll be comfortable--and fairly alone."

Mr. Richards, it seems, had gone to my university ten years ago. I asked him the name of the fraternity. When he told me it, I shook my head, No.

It was the house at which I had had that memorable luncheon--and whither I was not to be invited any more.

"Why not?" he persisted. "I want you down in my settlement. I want to show you how you can be of help to us. Won't you come over to the fraternity house?" And when I again declined, he insisted on knowing why.

But I did not tell him. "Perhaps some of the members of your active chapter will tell you," I replied, "but I will not."

He looked at me sharply, and his face grew grim. "I see," he said warmly. "The nasty little cads. Well, it's harder for me to excuse them than it is for you--and I'm their sworn brother!"

So I made an appointment to come down to the settlement, instead, and to take supper with him there some evening. He wanted to show me the splendid organization of things there: the club rooms, the dance hall, the gymnasium and reading room. He wanted to introduce me to the resident leaders. He wanted to persuade me to become a leader, myself: to attend one of the clubs of young boys, to join with them in their meetings, their debates, their entertainments and studies, to help them by friendliness and example.

"I suppose," he said, when he left me at a subway kiosk, "that you feel mighty sorry that you didn't make a fraternity, don't you? Well, I'm offering you a membership in a bigger and better one than ever had a chapter in a college--the brotherhood of humanity. You'll be proud of it, little fellow, if you'll join. So come along down and let us 'rush' you!"

It was so good-natured a joke that I could not resent it. I had had my eyes opened, tonight, by some of the things that Mr. Richards had told me. I had learned that the city has its poor, its sick and wicked, its boys and girls embroiled in wrong environments, its lonely and unambitious, who must be comraded and wakened. And I had learned that I, young as I was, was able to help, to foster, to do good for such as these.

On the way home, I passed a street corner where boys a few years younger than myself were loitering in obscene play. A little further on I came to a girl, not more than fifteen or sixteen, who was being followed by some toughs. She was a Jewish girl, too, I noticed--and she was crying with fright. I put her on a street car to get her out of harm's way.

It was of just such as these, both boys and girls, that Mr. Richards had spoken this evening. Perhaps he was right--and what a noble thing to be able to join in the help and companionship which the settlement could give them. I resolved to go down to him the very next evening.

When I reached home, Aunt Selina was just getting ready for bed. She came out into the hall in a pink silk dressing-gown, all frills and ruffles, and asked me complainingly where I had been so long. She was angry at my abrupt departure when her evening's guests arrived.

"I have been to hear a lecture delivered by a Mr. Lawrence Richards," I told her.

"Oh! That settlement man?" she asked.

"Yes."

She almost snorted. "I met him once at a meeting of our Ladies' Auxiliary. He is such a plain, undistinguished fellow!"

I hesitated a moment. "Aunt Selina," I said, "I am going down tomorrow night to have supper with him. He wants me to become a leader in one of the settlement clubs. It would take only one night a week, he says----"

My aunt was so affected by the announcement that I had to run and fetch her smelling salts. "Oh, oh, down into that awful tenement house district? Down among those dreadful people? Indeed, you shan't go. If you do, I shall never allow you to come back! Think of the diseases you might spread!"

And she carried on so hysterically that, after a while, I gave in and promised I would not go--not for a while, anyhow.

"Why aren't you like other boys of your class?" she demanded. "Why aren't you content to make the best of things and be satisfied with the splendid opportunities you have?"

"That's just what I'm trying to do, Aunt Selina," I told her. "Trying to make the best--the really best of everything that comes into my life!"

But she was unimpressed, and went off sobbing to bed.

X

THE RULES OF THE GAME