Chapter XL (3)

But it was not long before I had to realize that I had put myself under an exacting discipline by coming to Evangelical University. We had a dean who in effectiveness and as a sleuth would have been the dean of deans had an international society of them existed. The presence of young men and women on the campus rendered the Dean’s duties doubly hard. The rules were rules of a Mede. His surveillance was that of a man who felt an austere obligation to over a hundred anxious parents. No one, except by special permission, could be out of his room after half-past seven in the evening, save on society nights or on Sundays. For the enforcement of this rule, the Dean depended upon the reports of student monitors, but mainly upon his own vigilance. Every dormitory was always in danger of a visit from the Dean, and as the students in the dormitories were prevailingly men and women considerably beyond their ’teens, there was no inconsiderable disobedience of this rule; it made us feel too much like little children who are put to bed while the daylight lingers on the earth. I soon had a taste of the common experience. One evening three students met with Thropper and me to indulge in a heated and loud discussion on the question: “That it is best for a man to marry his first love!” We started it at half-past six and once on the line of our pros and cons all sense of time and existence went out of mind. We heard not the inrush of students as the last bell rang, nor heeded the brooding silence that had come over the campus. We lived only in our arguments on that “love” issue, and Thropper was in the midst of a very final story of first love coming out happily when tested by marriage, when three knocks were heard on our wall, given by the student in the next room: That was the signal that the Dean was stirring. Instantly the window was opened, our three visitors leaped out, and a few seconds later, when the Dean knocked on the door, Thropper met him innocently with the proposal, “Have a chair, sir?” and the Dean, glancing about merely said, with a pleasant smile, “I just thought I’d look in, that’s all.” When he left, we knew that when he went to the rooms of our three friends, upstairs, he would find them in their shirtsleeves poring over their books. I often saw him in the twilight or under the glow of lighted windows, this Dean performing his duty which, to a man of his fine, academic temper, must have been so incompatible: a tall, ungeared, gaunt-faced, tight-lipped man, stooped and stealthy, searching the campus with his glinting eyes, squaring his jaws as he approached windows where law-breakers were gathered, post-haste after delinquents!

I chanced to be one among a half-dozen stout English hearts; at least they were English hearts when somebody proposed that it might be a patriotic act for us to celebrate, in a fitting, English manner, the birthday of Queen Victoria. On account of the un-American aspect of the proposed celebration it was deemed injudicious to ask the consent of the Dean, for we felt sure he would prohibit it. We were determined, however, to conduct a celebration that would be quiet, dignified, and memorable, without having in it any semblance of disorder. We also resolved to hold it on a Saturday evening, when the rules were not so strictly upheld. To this end, then, we persuaded the master of the dining-hall, who was also chef and baker, to fall into our scheme, though he was a loyal American. We engaged him to fry the steaks, and also gave him an English recipe for chipped potatoes.

On the night of the celebration we met in a student’s room in the ell of Pungo Hall, in the rear: a quiet, isolated room which also had the double virtue of being a wash-room with a stove in it! Over this the chef worked, quietly. We blanketed the windows so that no one could peep on the scene. The table was spread and the seats occupied. Before us, on a white platter and in white dishes, were the steaks and the chips, surrounded by coffee, cake, and candy. After the meal, the chairman proposed speeches which had for their theme the greatness, the majesty, and the high repute of the “glorious Queen.” At the conclusion of these speeches, we tried to sing a reminiscent snatch of “Rule Britannia,” but had, finally, to compromise on “God Save the Queen.” The college bell had struck eleven when one of the party proposed that it might waken us up if we went out on the campus and exercised ourselves by holding a jumping contest. On account of the lavishness of the feast and the heartiness with which we had partaken, we were ready to fall in with this proposal.

In front of a little cottage in which a few students had double rooms, we leaped and jumped very quietly for some minutes, speaking in whispers, for it was nearly midnight, on the verge of the Sabbath. But suddenly we were startled by a loud voice calling from one of the windows, “I have your names!” The heartless monitor had spied on us. We were undone. Heartlessly, guiltily, we went back to our rooms. The damage had been done. We had been caught breaking the dread laws of the University. Nothing could keep us from the wrath of the Dean.

We indulged in our prayers and our Bible study and our church attendance the following day with little enthusiasm, for when we chanced to meet one another we asked the same question, over and over, “What will he say?” For we had our heart in it. We were not flagrant despisers of order. We cared for the respect of our Dean.

On Monday morning we assembled in chapel for the usual morning service. The Dean led the service. We were expecting that during the notices he would say, reading from his book, “I wish to see Mr. Priddy and Mr. this and Mr. that,” and so on through the list of Englishmen, “at the conclusion of chapel.” But not so. In place of the customary sermon of ten minutes, he delivered a very Patrick-Henryish philippic against certain unnamed students who had so far forgotten themselves as not only to be unpatriotic towards their adopted country, and had not only demeaned themselves by an unlawful “_revelry_,” but had even been indulging in sports at midnight, on the verge of the Sabbath, and thereby rendered themselves unfit to give God the highest, most efficient service on the holy day. The unexpectedness of it, the fierceness of it, the lurid interpretations put on our innocent feast, its coloring into a “night revel,” and the charge of impiety, unnerved me. I sat riveted to my chair, in a cold sweat. I felt as must a murderer in his sober moments when he realizes to the full the enormity of his deed. The Dean concluded his philippic, during which he had not mentioned a name, by this oracular notice:

“I want each one of those revelers to meet me after chapel, in my office.”

All eyes were sympathetic towards the Englishmen as we gathered at the Dean’s door. In his sanctuary he further explained to us the extent of our crime, making it, to the mind of Jerry Birch, a stubby, vigorous-minded Briton, treason. Jerry flared forth in an attempt to prove to the Dean that he (the Dean) was an enemy to the Queen, and that an appeal might properly be made to the British ambassador, and--but here we cautioned Jerry to stop. We finally tamed him into quietness, and the Dean dismissed us with the warning to show ourselves peace-respecting Americans from then on.

_Chapter VIII. The Doctrinal Temper of the University and Thropper’s Talk about it. Introduces the Select Board of the Pharisees. Prayer-Meeting Monopoly Combated by Independents. Jason on my Track and How it Came out_

Evangelical University was founded by a minister of intense religious convictions and its policy was directed by a Board composed of men characterized by religious zeal. The University stood committed, also, to the Christianization as well as to the education of its students. In its advertisements, special emphasis was laid on “annual revivals,” “personal, religious work of students,” and other evidences of a flourishing religious atmosphere.

Now in this, Evangelical University stood in line with hundreds of efficient institutions, but it went a step farther, and not only made its boast in regard to its Christian background, but it also gained repute as the exponent of a particular, very sectarian, very dogmatic, and intense doctrine; namely, that not until a particular emotional experience had been secured was a Christian a substantial and serviceable Christian. “The triple-birth doctrine,” as Thropper christened it, “being natural birth, spiritual birth, and extra-spiritual birth.”

There were several students in the University who were there merely for its intellectual privileges and who did not believe in this intense doctrine of “the triple-birth.”

Thropper said to me, one night, when we were discussing this matter:

“Priddy, I’ll guarantee that out of all the students here, you will not find more than five in all that do not profess to have a religious experience. Now that ought to satisfy the University, but it won’t. That isn’t enough. Until every one believes heart and soul in its doctrine of the ‘triple-birth,’ and gets emotionalized, the whole place will be turned upside down. Now I have always thought myself a religious fellow. I belong to the church. I am trying to live a Christian life. I have a Christian home in which I have always been trained piously and well. But they have given me no rest since I came here. They pray for me every year and struggle with me, and quibble about me, all in order to get me to go through the ‘triple-birth,’ which may be all right for them, but does not appeal to me. Yet, because I don’t go over to their way of thinking, they can’t regard me as a religious man. I’m not the only one, either. There are others whom they bother in the same way. If we were out and out heathen, they couldn’t be more alarmed over us. If we were unsocial atheists and immoral beings, their enthusiasm and concern would be worth while, but when some of us are to be preachers and respect everything that is true and helpful and yet have to be prayed for in public and hounded from pillar to post by them, why--”

“Who do you mean by ‘they’ and ‘them,’ Thropper?” I asked.

“Oh, certain of the students who are enthusiasts on the ‘triple-birth’ doctrine,” he replied. “They mean well enough, and are good folks, but I can’t agree with their peculiar doctrines and I tell them so, right out.”

“But a few students can’t carry off the whole situation, Thropper.”

“Can’t, eh? Well, you see, as this is the particular doctrine for which the University officially stands, the few aggressive students who preach the idea are really in the majority. There’s a little set of them, led by Jason, the Poet, who roam through the life of this University like a little group of heretic hunters in some medieval community, with all power and authority back of them.” He sighed, deeply. “They make life miserable for many,” he said.

I laughed at him.

“Why, Thropper, don’t take it to heart so; just go along your own way, tolerantly, knowing that if some of us can’t actually agree, we can respect one another’s differences--if they’re not vicious.”

He regarded me as if I had lost my wit.

“That sounds nice, that does, Priddy, and it is good sense, too, but it’s wasted here, old boy. You and I and some others may find consolation in it, but Jason and his Board of Pharisees would have their tongues cut out and their right hands severed before they would rest easy with us differing from them, standing outside their particular doctrines. You don’t know Jason. Besides, wait till you have been here a year and then you will see so many things take place under the direction of the University that it will be impossible for you not to know that you are _persona grata_ here only when you swing over to a full acceptance of the doctrine of the ‘triple-birth’: there’ll be the annual revival when a whole, intense week will be devoted to hardly anything else but a propaganda of that doctrine. There will come the weekly prayer-meetings, the talks from visiting exponents of the doctrine; oh, they won’t let you rest easy in your differences, Priddy. Wait till Jason and his crowd get on your track!”

“You talk as if they were going to be the worst sort of meddlers, Thropper.”

“Didn’t you hear me call them the Board of the Pharisees? Did you think I didn’t mean that for a good description, Priddy? Well, what were Pharisees always doing? Meddling. Telling the people to be holy by washing the dinner plates thus and so; telling the people that God was found by wearing this and that. Well, that’s what Jason and his crowd are busy doing about here, through the year. The sight of a gold ring on my finger fairly dilated the nostrils of one of them; he set about praying for me and urging me day after day to stop wearing it because it was the symbol of ‘carnal pride,’ and he quoted ever so much Scripture, too.”

After that I noted with especial interest the monopoly exercised by Jason and a small number of the students--male and female--over the multitude of religious meetings that embroidered the week of study. The two noon prayer-meetings, the after-supper services, the Thursday evening university service, the many missionary meetings, the Bible study classes, the Sunday morning “search” services: in all these the tone was given by the fervid and dogmatic Jason and his followers. Wherever a religious interest of any sort chanced to be organized, one was certain to find on its list of officers some representative of Jason, the Poet. Thropper and I, and several others among the students, formed “independent” circles for prayer and Bible study, where we could, for once a week, at least, have our own, special beliefs prevail.

One November morning, as I was leaving the dining-hall, Jason met me at the door.

“I should like to have a word with you, Brother Priddy,” he announced.

“Certainly,” I replied.

“I have been considerably burdened for you, lately, Brother Priddy.”

“Eh?”

“You have been the subject of my prayers.”

“How is that?”

“Because I think, though you may not realize it, that Satan is trying to lead you astray,” he answered, solemnly.

“That’s interesting, I’m sure.”

“It’s terrible!” he half shuddered.

“But--er--what especial act of mine, Jason, has brought out this--er--burden for me?”

“Carnal pride!” he exclaimed.

“Pride?” I gasped. “I didn’t think I had anything or had done anything to be proud over--that I know of.”

“I thought you did not see it,” he announced; “that is the deceitfulness of sin, it blinds us. That is why I came to you--to warn, you understand.”

“Then you will relieve the tension I am suffering from at this minute,” I retorted, “by telling me just what it is to which I am blind, and which is sinful. I am sure I stand ready to renounce anything that is liable to stand between me and God, Jason.”

His severe, but intensely spiritualized features relaxed at that declaration. He nodded his head and rubbed his pale hands.

“I am glad that you are open to the truth, Brother Priddy,” he crooned, with satisfaction. “I have especial reference to that watch-chain of yours and to that scarf-pin.”

“What!”

“That and that,” he reiterated, pointing first to my watch-chain and then to my scarf-pin.

“Nonsense,” I exclaimed. “What in the world are you making this bother over?”

“That watch-chain and the pin are ornaments and personal adornments, not necessary to the person. They are expressions of pride which lies in the heart to corrupt it. Therefore you will never find peace with God until you have discarded them.”

“Those things expressions of pride?” I gasped, “why, that chain is gold-plated and didn’t cost more than a dollar and a half, and as for the tie-pin!” I laughed. “Well, I paid ten cents for it, opals and all, in a Five and Ten Cent Store, Jason. Not much to grow proud over.”

“It is not the price, Brother Priddy, but the principle.”

“But I swear to you, Jason, that I don’t give those things a thought.”

“No, granting that they don’t hurt you,” went on Jason, persistently, “they are liable to lead others into pride. It is the weak brother you must think of.”

“I don’t think there’s much danger of others finding much to emulate in my jewelry or dress,” I answered. “I do recognize the force of what you have to say about the weak brother, Jason, and if, for a minute, I imagined I was doing anything or wearing anything that would hurt the life of another in any appreciable degree, why I’d renounce it quickly enough, you can wager!”

“I never indulge in wagers,” protested the literalist, “it is ungodly. I still persist in asking you to give up that jewelry on the ground that in all things we should walk soberly, as the Bible enjoins.”

“Well, I’ll think it over, Jason,” I said, walking hurriedly away.

When Thropper returned from his trigonometry, I recounted my experience with Jason.

“Well, your days of quietness are gone now, Priddy,” he declared. “You’ve got a Pharisee on your trail who will keep it until your days are made miserable.”

“But why doesn’t he cut off his beautiful curls and be consistent?” I protested. “Why doesn’t he throw off that peculiar vest and that military coat? He’d be consistent if he did! Talk about offending the weak brother! If a dude wouldn’t be jealous of those finely cultivated curls, I don’t know a dude. I’ll wager Jason is always looking in the glass, at himself!”

“Oh,” smiled my roommate, “you just tell him about his coat and his curls and he’ll have his explanation ready. Those curls are sent by the Lord. As for his coat and vest; they are simple, without the fancy incidents common to our coats! Don’t try to beat him in a quibble, Priddy. He’s got you before you start. Can you quote over half the Bible word for word without once looking at it?”

“No-o!”

“Jason can! Are you able to read it in Hebrew and in Greek?”

“No-o-o!”

“Jason is! He’s got you when it comes to Biblical quotation and can fit a passage even to so common an act as eating a dish of creamed toast!”

“But I shan’t give in to him--that is, unless I really see the force of his arguments, Thropper.”

“Oh,” smiled Thropper, “he’ll give you forceful arguments enough, that’s the hang of the fellow. He knows so much! I tell you, Priddy, when you employ logic, biblical lore, and a fanatical sincerity in trying to persuade an innocent little greenhorn like you--to give up a watch-chain and a tie-pin, why, the greenhorn is bound to go under!”

“We’ll see!” I declared, as the conclusion of the subject.

The next day, Jason found me in a corner of the library busy with my Latin. Without a word he edged over to me, pulled a little black book from his pocket, opened it at a marked place, fixed it on the chair handle before me, indicated the marked passage with one of his long, white fingers and left me to myself. I put aside my Latin and investigated.

The book was the writing of John Wesley, and the place marked was a passage in a sermon on “The Wearing of Ornaments” or some such theme. In any case, that was the subject treated in the marked passage. It was a reiteration of the arguments Jason had advanced, but coming from so noted and often quoted an authority as the founder of the Methodists, it considerably sobered my impressionable senses. I had no sooner closed the book, than out of the unseen the Poet flitted to my side, and with a whispered, “Forceful, isn’t it?” Jason took up the book and returned to his study.

A day or two later he brought into the dining-hall a little green bound book, printed on cheap paper and entitled, “The Victory of Selina Bostwick--Evangelist.” As he handed it to me, Jason said,

“Sister Bostwick is well known to me. I have sung for her in tent meetings, near Chicago. She is a saint of God. I want you to read the place I have marked, if you cannot find time to go through the whole book.”

In the privacy of my room, when Thropper chanced not to be around--for I did not want him to see me reading Jason’s book--I read the extract. It recounted, in a very rambling manner, the “third-birth” of Miss Bostwick--who, by the way, had been so inconsiderable a person as a seamstress who exhorted in revival services. The tale went on to show how, as a young girl, Selina had been especially addicted to wearing gaudy jewelry: stone-tipped hat-pins, glass ornamented combs, two rings, one with a cluster of imitation rubies, the other a plain band, which had been her mother’s wedding-ring, and various brooches and fancy studs. These, it seemed, had entirely prevented Selina from entering into the deeper faith in God, and for proof argued that so long as she fastened her heart on those trinkets she had never once been able to preach or exhort in meeting or revival. Then the day came when she plucked them from her and threw them in her trunk. From that day on, she had gone into the world preaching and exhorting successfully!

When I returned the book to Jason, he entered into a long discussion with me, and by the subconscious seriousness he had created in my heart over the question of ornaments and the kingdom, and because I was getting weary of the theme, and also because the tie-pin and the watch-chain were becoming eyesores to me, I finally said,

“Oh, I’ll stop wearing them, I guess!”

Jason rubbed his white hands and patted me on the shoulders.

“There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth,” he quoted.

“I’m not a sin--Oh, don’t let us get into any more arguments over the matter,” I corrected, eager to be out of the reach of my persecutor. “Here they are; both of them to be put in a drawer--or something.”

I pulled out the tie-pin and unfastened the watch-chain. Then I was perplexed.

“But, Jason,” I remonstrated, “I have to carry this watch, you know. The watch-chain was handy. It kept me from losing the watch. What am I to do, if I don’t have this chain? It seems to me that I had best keep wearing it. What do you do for your watch?”

As he pulled out a gold Waltham I felt like asking him if it would not be more consistent for him to wear a nickel-plated one, but remembering Thropper’s comments, I expected Jason would argue that it was more economical to buy a gold watch on account of its wearing qualities and reliability, so I kept the protest to myself. Jason’s watch was attached to a woven black chain, which, he said, he had made from a long shoe-lace!

“I’ll make one for you, too,” he added generously, “if you’ll get a long lace.”

The next day I gave him the lace, and after dinner, we sat in the reception room, where in ten minutes, he wove for my watch a chain as artistic as a shoe-string chain may be. After he had fastened it in my button-hole and to my watch, he said:

“Well, Brother Priddy, the weak brother will not have cause to stumble now, will he?”

_Chapter IX. My Trip into the Magic World of the Past. How Appreciation is sometimes Worth More than Money. Jason and his Coterie on Scent of Terrible Heresies. How God Takes Care of His Orators. How a Big Soul can go through Annoyances_

The strangeness of my life had worn off by winter. I knew every man and woman by name and character, and they knew me. The daily routine of class work and waiting on table more and more took the novelty from my existence. I was getting the maximum of inspiration from my studies. Leaning back in my chair, under the hissing, flaring gas flame, with drowsy Thropper opposite me in his sheepskin upholstered chair, I went forth into the new worlds where Cæsar led his mailed Romans and his following of slave kings, where the gaudy coronations and noisy wars of ancient England were enacted; into the world whereon Christ scattered the seed of faith out of which grew, stone by stone, dipped in martyrs’ blood, the magnificent cathedral Universal Church. With the guidance of the professors, I pierced into the living, animal world where tooth and fang and claw were in contest and where the divine finger was busy sorting moral law out of it. I was being daily disciplined in the use of language and in the finer esthetic appreciations of it, under the direction of the English teachers and the Oratorical Professor.

There were many, who with me, went in confidence to our teachers and gave them our thanks for their sacrificial services. Of all the service that I have seen men and women render, that done by the faculty of Evangelical University measured up to the finest. They were men and women of liberal culture; trained, many of them, in our most prominent institutions. Every day that they lingered at the University teaching us was a sacrifice. They were sadly underpaid. There was no endowment from which to guarantee them their salaries. Some of them worked with us, out of sheer enthusiasm, claiming that their wages were the gold of our thanks and outspoken appreciations. They were willing to economize and live in poorly furnished homes, in order to awaken in those of us who had had little opportunity, the first spark of intellectual response.

One of our teachers took me aside, in the privacy of his empty classroom, for the purpose of assisting me with a back lesson. I had occasion to remark,

“Professor, you aren’t giving yourself a fair chance, here, are you? Some of the students have been saying that you have had more than one opportunity to better yourself.”

The kindly eyes of the man glistened with tears, for he was very readily responsive to his feelings, and he said,

“Albert, I cannot better myself. There is no higher privilege in this world than to invest what God has seen fit to give us in the way of privilege or attainment in other lives that thirst for what we have! There are men in colleges, whom I know, surrounded by their books in pleasant college communities, fitted to a delightful social and intellectual life, teaching in classrooms filled with students who do not have to fight for a living as do the students here, yet they are not happy men; not one-tenth so happy as I am teaching you boys and girls! No, sir! All that those positions that have been offered me could have done would have been to ease me from financial worries, and relieve me from a few hours of instruction; but there is nothing in this wide world, Albert, can equal the work I am privileged to do with such as you, to inspire you for useful service. It is missionary work; but missionary work pays the highest wages. I have the first chance at men in the making!”

It was not alone the poverty of the university equipment and the inadequate compensation they received which intensified the nobleness of our teachers’ characters, but also their endurance of some of the petty, trivial annoyances they suffered from the dogmatic Jason and his few followers. For even into the classrooms religious, doctrinal quibbles were carried by those stern and unyielding students. The little coterie went on strike in the English department when the Professor refused to debar Shakespere and Burns from the reading courses, in response to the charges drawn up and presented by Jason’s clique that those writers had unreadable passages in their works. Some one replied, that on this basis, Jason had better stop reading the Bible for the same reasons. To this Jason replied that “The Bible is the Bible, but Shakespere is only Shakespere!” But the more acute issues between Jason and his followers and the curriculum were to be found in the scientific and theological classrooms. Here the conflict between “science and religion” as the Church History termed it, became pointed, tragical. I can still see them, the two followers of Jason, standing before the scientific professor after class had been dismissed. They are on scent of a terrible heresy! Aggressively they quiz the able exponent of science, as follows:

“You said in this recitation, professor, that the world was created in millions of years?”

“I did!”

“But the Bible says plainly, that God created it in six days and that He rested from his labors on the seventh day!”

“Oh, the Bible, in that part is not to be taken literally--it--”

But he could get no further. Two shocked faces were before him, and one of the students interjected,

“Why, we have to believe the Bible!”

“We shall stick to the Bible!” added the other in support.

“But let me explain,” began the professor, patiently, “you see the early Hebrews possessed no real science--”

“But, professor,” interrupted one of the students, “God revealed it to them and--”

“We will not discuss the matter further at this time,” interrupted the teacher.

“But what shall we do when the examination comes around,” asked the first speaker, “if you tell us to give the age of the earth, we shall either have to say that it is millions of years old or that it was made in six days?”

“Of course,” added the second student, with finality, “we shall have to stick to the Bible statement, even if you mark us down!”

“Rest easy in your minds, young men,” retorted the severely tried professor, “I don’t think I shall call on you to undergo such a martyrdom!”

Even the professor of elocution was not exempt from this little band of literalists. Some of this band had so firm a confidence in God that they “could leave with Him” what they were to speak, how they were to speak it, and the sort of gestures that should accompany their exhortations, for they were preparing themselves for the church. “Pa” Borden was the leader in this sort of thought. He had done some exhorting before becoming a member of the University, and he summed up the case quite well when he said, in his heavy, sober way,

“What right has any man, I don’t care who he is, to improve on what God has done, I’d like to know? It will be given us in that day, says the Bible, what we shall say and how we shall say it. What more do you want?”

So this little band of the sons of the prophets stood apart from the kindly and helpful criticisms of the professor of elocution, and continued their old practise of yanking their stiff arms, standing on their awkward feet, speaking from tight throats, in stubborn loyalty to their faith in God’s oratorical interest in them.

The patience, the Christian patience, of the professors carried them past such trivial, but real annoyances with the same nobleness with which a true-compassed ship goes straight to its port despite the little chips that tap against it. For every one of these quibblers over doctrine, there were several appreciative, awakening minds, leaping at the truth. The professors centered their real efforts on the majority of those who could face the truth no matter in how startling a dress it first presented itself. In such, these deep-hearted, sacrificing teachers found their real reward: lasting gratitude.

_Chapter X. The Magnitude of a Postage Stamp. Showing how Desperate the Thirst of Money made me. Brock’s Rosy Nose and its Possibilities as a Fireplace. How Brock thought he was Fooling me and the Other Way About. The Barrow that Became our Enemy and how Brock was Revenged on it_

It was a morning in early December. An unsealed letter lay on my table, a Christmas greeting to a mill friend. I had written it the previous night. When the morning dawned, I realized that I had not enough money with which to purchase a stamp for it. A feeling of utter miserableness took hold of me. There I stood, working my way through school successfully, from week to week without any difficulty, and yet when it came to forwarding a message of greeting to the outside world I was a pauper! That strong term mastered me. I knew that for the mere asking Thropper had a stamp waiting for me, but I resented the thought of charity, the humiliation of asking for the gift of a postage stamp. After chapel I went into the President’s office and on being shown in, made the following announcement.

“Please, Doctor, I think I had better leave the University. It is no use!”

“What is the matter now, young man?” he enquired, gently.

“I’ve got to earn some cash, sir. You know that I shall never have any by working for the University; it all goes on my account. I need some clothes, and just at present I need a stamp. I haven’t handled any money since my three dollars was spent; it is almost three months since then.”

“But you don’t have to run away from your education, do you?” asked the President, bending on me his searching eyes. “I thought you would stick to it!”

“But what can I do, sir?” I demanded, “I am busy waiting on the table, and cannot leave the campus to earn money. I give all my spare time to the University. If I could work a week or two at outside tasks I might get some money on hand.”

“There need be no trouble about that,” agreed the President. “Get some one to take your place in the dining-hall on Saturdays, and I will see if there are any jobs you can do.”

The following morning, in chapel, the Dean read off my name as one of the students that the President wished to see, in his office.

“There is a load of bricks on a siding of the brick-mill--you know where that is, of course,” he said. “Brock has taken the contract for loading a car at something or other a thousand--which means about twenty cents an hour, I believe. He is quite willing to take you with him on Saturday, if you care for the work.”

Inwardly I thought of my frail muscles hurling rows of brick through the air on a winter’s day--and felt doubtful about the adventure, but the President was waiting for his answer, so I said hastily,

“Anything at all, sir, that will bring me in a real, substantial piece of money. It will look big enough when I do see it, sir!”

Thropper was eager to take a day off from the glass factory and so was able to take my place at the tables. I had a conference with Brock, relative to the proposed loading of the car of bricks.

“Can you manage it?” he asked dubiously, scanning his eyes doubtfully over my frail physique.

I was in a desperate mood just then, and with an accent in my voice that scorned even the suggestion of any mental, physical, or moral incapacity, I declared,

“Can I?”

Then scanning Brock’s ungeared physique, I asked in turn,

“How about yourself? Seems to me you are a near rival to a centre-pole yourself, Brock!”

He grinned, guiltily.

“I used to exercise with dumb-bells--once upon a time. It is long since. I am afraid that the daily exercise of pressing the button of the call bell hasn’t done well by my muscles.”

“I’ve watched the Portuguese load schooners with bricks many a time,” I affirmed.

“Your experience might help--some,” he declared, “the man who engaged me told me how to place them in the car and all about the number of rows and the count. I’ll be able to manage that part of it. I hope that you and I, Priddy, will be able to succeed with the brick end of it.”

“The way the brick loaders do,” I explained, “is to pass them from hand to hand four or five bricks at a time--just like passing ball, you know!”

“Um, um!” nodded Brock. “But what about the sharp ends of the bricks? They cut gashes in soft hands, of course.”

“Oh, we’ll wear thick gloves,” I explained, “something to protect the hands.”

“We should have to wear gloves under any circumstances,” said Brock, “the weather we’re getting is very far from a summer day!”

“Oh, we’ll manage all right,” I affirmed, for the mere thought of a possible dollar and a half in cash set my brain in a whirl of incaution and illogical optimism. In that mood, if the President had offered me his place for a week--for a cash wage--it is doubtful if I should have refused him.

By half-past seven the following Saturday morning, Brock and I, bundled in the oldest garments we had been able to borrow or beg, with quadruple thicknesses of old socks covering our hands, for mittens, and with lunches put up in pasteboard boxes, left the village center, walked down a frozen turnpike, until we came to the lonesome, neglected brickyard with its Egyptian tombs of piled brick, yet unsold. A covered freight car had been left on the rusty siding; the car stood off from the nearest brick-pile separated by a gap of two yards. It was a dreary and very cold prospect, for the north wind surged down over the frozen pastures, and hummed and wailed through the black latticework of an abandoned oil-well on the opposite side of the track.

“Your face is blue to begin with,” mumbled my companion from behind the folds of his cap.

“And your nose would make an excellent danger signal on the rear end of a train,” I retorted. “When my hands get cold, which they are rapidly doing, I’ll warm them over your nose!”

“Better get to work,” suggested Brock, “before we freeze to death in this miserable place. Worth twenty cents an hour for this work, eh?”

“Worth a dollar an hour, I think,” I replied.

We fixed some stout planks into a run-way between the top of a brick-pile and the freight car, after the door had been unbarred. We found a shallow and creaky barrow under a shed. After helping me fill it with the first load, Brock tried to wheel into the car what we had put in. He gained the edge of the plank, and the ill-balanced load dumped over on the ground.

“We put in too many, to begin with,” suggested Brock. “Next time we’ll reduce the load by half. I forgot they were so heavy. I was too ambitious.”

The next load went across the planks successfully, and after they had been dumped on the floor of the car, Brock said,

“I’ll pack these in the car the way the man told me, and then when the load is properly started, we can take turns with the barrow.”

At first it was exciting and warm work, but after the first warm glow had died down in the blood, my body began to stiffen with the exposure. Then my muscles, ill-treated by excessive and continuous lifting of the loads, began to tighten and shoot with pain. But at first, I did not care to let Brock know, Brock, who was snugly shielded from the wind, with the easier and less straining task. But he must have noticed me gasp in with a load for he suddenly leaped to his feet and said,

“Your turn here, now, Priddy. Give me the barrow!”

I flung myself to the dusty floor of the car when he relieved me of the barrow and never lifted a hand until I heard him coming with his first load. Then I picked up a brick and fitted it in one of the rows, and tried to say cheerfully, when he entered,

“Is that placed right, Brock?”

“All right, Priddy,” he replied, and then went out whistling with the barrow.

With the change in the task, I recuperated somewhat, and worked on with the thought warming me, that every hour added twenty cents in cash to my credit. When the first twenty cents had been earned, I took heart and said to myself,

“Well, I shall be able to buy that stamp for the letter!”

Brock ceased whistling after his fourth load. I took a look at his face. It was pale and strained.

“Hadn’t you better take a breathing spell, Brock?” I suggested. “It comes hard when one isn’t used to it. That barrow wheels hard, too. We ought to have brought some wheel grease.”

“I guess I will sit down a few seconds,” agreed Brock. “It’s quite a lift--at first, but I think we’ll manage the job, don’t you?”

“We’ll try!” I commented, grimly.

So we passed the barrow from hand to hand, the loads growing smaller and smaller as the noon hour approached, and the need of rest and change becoming more and more imperative. When half-past eleven arrived I proposed that we eat our lunches; not so much for the mere satisfaction of hunger, but for the opportunity of absolute rest for an hour. Brock assented to the proposition the instant it had left my lips. In fact, he dropped his barrow in the middle of the plank; an act on which I commented by that fragment of an old song:

“For I’ve worked four hours this day, this day,
For I’ve worked four hours this day.
Keep your whiskers on, till the morning, John,
For I shan’t work another minute longer!”

We closed the doors of the car, sat in a far corner and munched our bread and cold meat as if it had been a luxury from a king’s banquet table. Then after our meal, in spite of the chilliness of the car, we stretched ourselves on our backs and gave our strained, worn muscles the opportunity of relaxation.

“How do you feel?” Brock demanded after an interminable silence.

“Cold, tired, weary and sick!” I replied, throwing the mask off. “Let us either wheel that old barrow again or go back to the University.”

“Well,” muttered Brock, dispiritedly, “our backs can’t really get much worse, Priddy. We might as well finish a day’s work. If we leave now we’ll be unfit for work for another week anyway. We might as well get all we can out of it while we are about it.”

“Oh, that barrow! If it were a thing of flesh I’d stab it for my worst enemy!” I cried.

“We worked too steadily,” suggested Brock. “We were too ambitious. We’ll loaf along this afternoon and take more frequent rests. You pack the bricks for awhile. I’ll wheel!”

“Lucky you proposed to wheel first,” I muttered, “for I’d have gone on strike if I’d been the first.”

Brock looked knowingly at me, showed me the blisters on his hands and said,

“I know just how you feel!”

Numb, dispirited, weary and backsore, we worked until four o’clock in the afternoon. At that time, Brock was just coming across the bridge with a reduced load, staggering under it. I called out to him,

“I’ll not handle another brick!”

“Neither will I!” he replied, losing his grip and the handles of the barrow so that it fell to the frozen ground with a resounding thud. “I’m done!”

When we reported at the office of the brickyard owner, and Brock had given the computations of the work we had done, my heart throbbed warmly for the first time since early morning when we were each handed a dollar and ten cents in real cash!

“This is the first money I have handled for three months!” I could not help exclaiming in the office.

“Do you mean it?” asked the contractor, interestedly.

“I do, sir!”

“Then any time between now and the end of the month that you want to earn a dollar or two come to this office and I’ll have some more bricks for you to load.”

I looked with a smile towards Brock. Brock returned my gaze with a hearty laugh. Then he said, holding out his swollen hands, for the man to view,

“No, thanks!”

And I, I said,

“Cash is good and I need it, but I think I’ll leave the handling of bricks to the Portuguese.”

_Chapter XI. How I Competed with Patrick Henry and was made Aware of an Uneconomical Waste of the Eighth Letter of the Alphabet. How I Condensed all my Studies into an Oration. How the Populace Greeted my Rehearsal. Striking the Top Pitch_

By the middle of the year I had obtained such a grip on study that I was bold enough to incorporate two extra subjects in the week’s routine. Besides that, I conceived the idea of reading English history outside of class and then securing permission to pass an examination on it, a scheme in which the teacher acquiesced. I felt that I must make up for lost time and hungrily, voraciously threw myself at the privilege which fortune had brought me. I began to realize in my own mind what men called “enthusiasm in his work.” Every day seemed to me a momentous day of opportunity: a day in which I might atone for the educational privilege I had missed up to my twentieth birthday. When I saw Aborn, stately, gifted, and on his way towards his Master’s degree at twenty, I was made to realize how long a road I had before me and how energetic I should have to be in order to get anywhere in education from my elementary and preparatory studies. So I put in my studies an investment of interest and patient attention which I had put in no other work that I had ever done.

The most outstanding interest that I had was the class in oratory. This class met on the top floor, under the rafters, in a room directly off from the chapel. It resembled the studio of a poor artist with its gray northern skylight and little windows high above the bare floor. The class included young men and women. Nearly all were preparing for religious work, as ministers, missionaries, and evangelists. One student, a shock-haired young Westerner with “temperament” and “personality,” who generally sat in the pose of an actor, was planning for the career of a public reader.

After the preliminary weeks of physical gymnastics and throat clearing, and after we were able to say “Oh!” without making the flame of a candle flicker, we began on the real excitement of speaking Orations; I began with the traditional Patrick Henry, of course, and naturally, after long and patient rehearsals in my room credited myself with the fact that if the author of that thriller should chance to come into the oratorical studio on the morning when I planned to recite it before my professor, he would feel that his forceful utterance had passed into no mean mouth!

The morning on which I was scheduled to speak duly arrived and with it an increase in my confidence that I should do well with it: the confidence without which no orator yet--in school--ever did much. I stood out before the class, struck my pose--left foot at an angle from the right and slightly in front with the weight on the right foot to maintain balance--and attempted to recreate the atmosphere, the thrill, and the historic eloquence of the Virginia Convention where the oration had had its birth, before the innumerable army of school lads had passed it on from generation to generation. Applause greeted my effort and I sat down in a flush of happiness. However, the professor, after crediting me several points of excellence, brought up a criticism that plunged me into a sweat of guilty self-consciousness. He said,

“Mr. Priddy, why is it that you aspirate your words so? I know you were born in England, but you have been in this country for some time now. There were several places in the oration where you placed ‘h’s’ where they should not have been placed, and where you left them off when they should have been retained!”

It was the first time in my whole life that anybody had called my attention to that fault. I said,

“Will you please give me samples, sir?”

“Well,” replied the professor, consulting his tablet, “you said ‘w’ile’ instead of ‘while,’ and ‘_H_i’ instead of the pronoun ‘I.’ And ‘w’at’ instead of ‘what,’ and ‘Forbid it, _H_almighty God,’ and you declaimed that passage, ‘Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?’ became ‘_H_is life so dear _h_or peace so sweet _h_as to be bought _h_at the price of chains and slavery?’”

I felt angry at myself, chagrined. There trooped into my guilt-smitten consciousness the innumerable times I must have put ‘h’s’ where they had not belonged and left them off where they should have been retained.

“Nobody ever told me--about it before, sir!” I exclaimed.

“This is just the place to get rid of the habit,” replied the professor. “I am here to help you. I think that when you get rid of that habit you will make a fair showing in public speech. Now that you are aware of it, you will be on your guard.”

I made known my discovery at the waiter’s table at noon, and instantly my friends poured out for my consideration a whole museum of sentences I had originated in their hearing and over which they had secretly smiled. It seems I had said, “’Ave you got your ’at, Brock?” and “Will you ’ave another _H_egg, please?” and “Look _h_out for this ’ot water!” When the waiters saw that I took the criticism in good part and was eagerly anxious to rid my speech of that defect, they were instant and sometimes severe in their criticisms; with the result that in a very short while I gained the advantage over my “h’s” and somewhat tamed them.

With the mastery of my “h’s” and the daily discipline in the oratorical class came an overmastering desire to make a public speech. I thought that if I could accomplish that I should vindicate myself so far as I had gone in my education. It should be the first milestone in my school career. The opportunity was given in a proposed oratorical contest to be held in the village church. I took Thropper into my confidence as I prepared my original oration. Into this I tried to exemplify every admirable rule of rhetoric and every stern rule of logic and every manner of long, short, periodic, balanced, and climactic sentence I was then learning in Rhetoric. I marshalled historical allusions, read widely in the library hour after hour. Then, when I had put myself through this profitable discipline and had typewritten my manuscript--the final triumph of my educational career thus far--I was ready for rehearsals. After I had practised alone and as the evening of the contest drew near, I asked Thropper if each evening after supper he would accompany me into the woods and listen while I delivered my oration. He consented, cheerfully enough. That same evening he accompanied me to the pastures in the rear of the University. I poised myself seriously on a stump, while Thropper stood with his back to the wind in a waiting attitude. I had not delivered more than two paragraphs of my speech before there came a yell from behind me and a half-dozen students ran shouting, applauding and screaming before me. When the crowd of interrupters had exhausted their animal spirits, I said to them, addressing them from the stump,

“I’ve a good mind to invite you to stand out there near Thropper and listen!”

“Why not?” they demanded.

“If you can’t address a bunch of farmers like these,” smiled Thropper, “you won’t be able to stand up in church before three hundred people and give it. Go ahead!”

I did, and the result was that the students rallied about me at the end, carried me on their shoulders, shouting, mockingly,

“Hail to the new Webster!” and to show their approval of me, they sat me astride a rail and would have given me a ride home on that conveyance had not Thropper prevented it.