Chapter XL (9)

“Set?” muttered Thurber, “even a vice, tight locked, is loose by comparison with the prejudices my father has against a liberal education. Well, I came this way and started in to sport it and expected to be tutored through my courses by the narrowest passing marks. I spent most of my time either in the fraternity house chugging at a piano or sitting in my room with my feet perched on the table gazing into space. Then I got the--the glimpse, Priddy, and that changed it all.”

“The glimpse, what was that?”

“Well, I can’t exactly define it or locate where it first began, but I do recall that one day, in the classroom--it was in Sociology--the professor set me thinking on a line I had never considered before. I can’t tell what it was that he said explicitly, but he implicitly suggested to my mind that there are such things as dividends-not-of-money. Of course having been used to the other sort of dividends all my life, I was attracted to the idea that there were other dividends. I kept thinking about it and one thing led to another. The president spoke one day, in chapel, of the educated man’s duty to his generation. I linked that to ‘dividends-not-of-money’ and worked it out to my satisfaction that there was for me, the son of a wealthy manufacturer, a place of usefulness and service in the world.”

“You had a call to the ministry, then, Thurber?” I demanded.

“Gracious, no: not that!” he exclaimed, in a tone that implied I had proposed something too extravagant for fancy. “I a clergyman! I respect the cloth, Priddy, and I am glad that you are making it your profession, but really, that’s not my line. Perhaps I’m not cut out for it. I know I’m not.”

“You planned to go into settlement or Y.M.C.A. work, probably,” I hinted, “so many college fellows give themselves to that form of service in these days, Thurber.”

“I know they do, Priddy, but I didn’t work it out in those directions, either, but in a more vital way: one that has aroused every bit of latent enthusiasm for service and helpfulness that might have been hidden away in so pampered a body as mine. It’s what I call the glimpse, Priddy. Want me to explain it?”

“Certainly I do.”

“Well, I really was put in a fix by so much talk in the classrooms from the faculty and in the chapel by the President about ‘moral leadership’ and all that, and really thought at first that they were asking me to go into definite self-sacrificing avocations like settlement work and the other forms of social service, and I had no hankering for that, either. I hated to leave father alone in his old age and wanted, eventually, to succeed him in the ownership and direction of his mills. I imagined myself a callow materialist, opposed to spiritual forms of influence, but I did not want to give up the business. You can probably imagine how heathenish I felt when I contrasted father’s industrial policy with the call to be a social servant. I began to think back to what father’s self-education had done for him and had done for his employees. I faced the truth for the first time: how his narrow-minded policy had brought him great wealth at the expense of his self-respect and the happiness of so many of the people who worked for him. For years and years and years, he had been just paying wages for work done: that was all. He had paid no attention to the moral or social welfare of his people: the hundreds of families under his control. He did not go to their church, attend their lodges, go into their homes, or ever make it his policy to inquire about their welfare. He was just simply using them as tools towards the securing of a fortune--for me, that was all. I saw it all, how he had been creating in his little corner of our American industry, labor hostility, unsanitary conditions, poor types of ignorant, drunken, loafing citizens until the tenements belonging to his firm formed a perfect slum. But he had not the eyes to see, nor has he yet; but he goes on in the darkness and in the groove of his own selfishness, intensifying the disloyalty of his employees and incidentally hurting his own reputation. Yet I could not bring myself to give up desiring to take on that industry. It was right then that the glimpse came.” Thurber paused for a moment and then continued:

“Like the breaking of day, it flashed into my soul one morning in Ethics class, that if I could only go to work in that industry and reform it, that I should be doing a public service: that I should be following the advice of the college and giving moral service. But I realized that I should have to train myself in the science of ethics and morals; the history of economics and the deeper things of social science in order to reform the business intelligently, constructively and profitably to myself and the employees.”

“Oh,” I commented, “you want to make your type of social service earn money?--is not that an unusual sort of social service?”

Thurber smiled and said:

“It does sound worldly, especially to a minister, Priddy, but the strange thing about it is, as I have figured it out, that if I do take an educated, intelligent, thoroughly scientific interest in my employees, and manage to clean up their tenements, their morals and their minds through welfare work, I shall, in the same stroke, be increasing their loyalty to the business, be redoubling their efficiency, be preparing a higher grade of workman: all of which will increase the earnings of my plant.”

“In other words, Thurber, you are going to work on the principle that humanity and welfare work are good business policy?”

“Yes,” nodded Thurber. “If you, as a minister, were phrasing it you would say, ‘Godliness is profitable in all things’--even in good industrial management--to mix in Shakspeare, it is ‘twice blessed, it blesseth him that giveth’--the employer--‘and him that receiveth’--the worker. That’s what I call ‘the glimpse’ and you may imagine how eagerly I am tugging at the strings in order to be working it out practically.”

“But it may turn out to be fine theory: mere dreaming, Thurber?”

“Oh no,” he protested. “Read the countless numbers of sociological works that I have and follow the countless numbers of experiments that have been made in this direction and you will agree that it is the most sane procedure.”

“College has meant something very definite to you, then, Thurber?”

“I should say it had. I tell you I believe I understand, now, the tremendous suggestion that lies behind the college emphasis that its students stand in their businesses and interests against mere commercialism and flood them with intelligent, moral service. Besides, think what significance lies in my studies now: the whole course seems bent to broaden me towards the intelligent, economical use of human beings: psychology will give me trained insight, a course or two in physiology helps me to understand the limits of workingmen’s endurance and wide reading in literature will aid me to intelligently work out a policy of self-culture in the workingmen’s libraries I shall form. Oh, I have come to realize that a business education is a thousand times more than learning bookkeeping, the names of the tools, and a little mathematics from which to compute wages. It demands, in my estimation, the broadest college culture and I mean to secure it.”

“Just the antithesis of your father’s theory,” I suggested.

“Yes, and think, too, how much he has lost by it. You would understand how enthusiastic I am about it, Priddy, if you could have one glimpse of the people and tenements around father’s mill. I feel that right there is my call.”

“I know something about the waste, the riot and the ruin that have followed in the wake of narrow-minded, selfish, uncultured and unsympathetic manufacturers, Thurber. If the college only manages to send out a hundred thousand graduates filled like you with this spirit of humane statesmanship, what a revolution would take place in labor conditions!”

“It would be the front door of God’s kingdom, Priddy,” affirmed Thurber, “sure enough!”

Throughout that year, from the seriousness with which Thurber asked questions in his classes, from the eagerness with which he was ready to talk about welfare work, from the diligence with which he fastened himself to the library alcoves marked: Economics and Sociology, and from the pervading seriousness of his manner, one might easily have guessed that in him one looked on a youth aflame with a consuming, zealous ambition to make his stewardship of men and his college culture yield the highest per cent of moral earnings. I felt proud to call him my friend.

Another of my companions during the senior year was “Quiet” Sanderson, the student who had introduced me to Quarles. “Quiet” was one of those illogical and fanciful appellations in which the students delighted, and was paradoxically twisted from Sanderson’s fluent tendencies.

Sanderson occupied a corner room in one of the newer dormitories. In it was a piano on which he played Beethoven and rag-time with equal ease. The mission bookcase was topped by a very large, felt college streamer and a “perpetual care” sign, which in his Freshman wildness he had taken from a cemetery. As he was a literary man with a pronounced taste for Poe and the French short story writers, there were various evidences of “atmosphere” in the orderings of the room. For instance, some old swords, which might have been discovered in the ruins of Troy, but which, in fact, were clever imitations bought for a song in Boston, hung over the door. A Turkish fez, which Sanderson would wear when company was present, usually hung from the clothes post in a corner of the room, over a quaint, full-length lounging robe made from scarlet cloth and embroidered with Mohammed’s crescent. An oriental scent lingered on those habits of dress; a scent which I have seen Sanderson compound from barks and minerals bought at the druggist’s and of which he would never give me the names. When he held a spread or a meeting of any sort, Sanderson’s room would be thick with the fumes of joss which he kept burning from a blue Chinese bowl. If any one complained, Sanderson would have no scruples in telling the complainant that perhaps the smoke would be even denser and more sulphurous in a later destination!

It was fortunate that I did not catch, like some insidious fever, Sanderson’s habit of procrastination, for while his dreams were in the present tense, real, and vivid, his deeds lingered in the nebulous future. Thus, one night while he lounged on his couch wearing his fez, he informed me that he had the plot of an exciting tale that a publisher might make a fortune by. There was a secret staircase in the first chapter, and between that and the twenty-eighth--a distance of eight thousand words, for he had measured them--enough blood was shed in the numerous duels, alley encounters and small riots with the watch, to stain a miniature Waterloo.

“What are you wasting your time with those blood and thunder yarns for?” I exclaimed, for the utmost frankness was the rule between us.

“Blood and thunder!” he echoed. “Why, it’s thoroughly exciting, whatever you may say about it, Priddy. In my best style, too. Racy, full of tender sentiment at the love passages, and written with an iron pen, whose tip was flaming hot!”

“Let me see this epic of thunder then,” I demanded. “I should like to look it over.”

“Oh,” yawned Sanderson, “I haven’t had time to put it on paper--yet. I have my studies you know!”

Thus it was not only with his literary dreams, but also with his studies. He never seemed to be in his books, but I knew that at some secret hour he must work hard, for his recitations were generally brilliant.

He was a sly fellow, at times, especially when he chanced to be back with work. It was his habit then to get me in his room, when he would yawn and say:

“Priddy, what did the professor conclude about that Lochner fellow?”

Stephen Lochner was one of the Dutch painters we were studying.

I would tell him as well as I could. Then he would drawl:

“Uh, I didn’t follow the professor at all when he said that the early Dutch school, Van Eyck and the others--let’s see, how many were there?”

I would tell him, exactly, with names and dates, and then he would drawl:

“Sure you got them all, Priddy?”

“Yes, I have.”

“I’ll bet you’re grafting the course, Priddy, and haven’t been near the references in the library, eh?”

“Sanderson, I’ve got every note of importance, and have worked up every single picture!”

Then the yawning fellow would turn over to me, lift up his fez in the politest manner and say, with his endearing smile:

“Oh, is that so! Then Priddy, I shan’t need to bother much myself, shall I? You can give me some fine dope on the course!”

Seeing that I was caught, there was no way out of it but to become the unofficial tutor to his lazy highness; a duty, however, which was pleasant enough, for we had so many things in common. There was a sense of embarrassment, however, in the fact that Sanderson would go into the examinations of the course, after I had prompted him, and by some freak of the angel of Providence, his guardian spirit, he would out-top me with marks!

One Monday morning I dropped into his room, on my way across the campus, when he came from his bedroom arrayed in his bath-robe, for he had been oversleeping, and he said to me,

“Congratulations, Priddy!”

“What’s this for?” I exclaimed.

“For the honorable winner of two literary prizes!” he exclaimed.

“Two?” I gasped.

“Yes, and firsts, my friend! I want to get in on the ground floor and get a college ice on the prize money,” he smiled.

“And how do you know this?” I asked.

“The announcements were posted Saturday, after you had left, Priddy.”

“Then you shall have the treat, Sanderson.”

The two prize checks--beautifully decorated with the college seal and ornamental borders--were used to pay for the winter’s supply of wood, at home, and to clear off a store bill. I felt that my first adventure into literature had amply repaid me in fellowships, discipline, and cash: a well-rounded reward.

When I arrived home, for the long summer vacation, I began to ride over the hills to outlying farm-houses in a canvass of fellowship among my parishioners, whom I had never seen in church. My bicycle rides exhausted me in this work, as the summer was excessively hot. Between the village services, on Sundays, I trundled my bicycle up a long hill until I came to a crossroad schoolhouse to which I had invited the isolated people, for services. The people who came to this service would not sing, so that part of the time they were treated to vocal solos by me, to which I had to play my own accompaniment on the little parlor organ I had secured. As my skill on the organ keys was limited to hymns up to the limits of two sharps or as many flats, my repertory, like that of a hand-organ, was easily exhausted. But the people seemed thankful for this interruption of the monotony of their back-road life, and though I never took up an offering or asked them to do anything more than attend the services, which they did with increasing enthusiasm, I knew from their thanks and their faces that it had been a profitable venture, an appreciated service.

But the strain of such a responsibility in addition to my college work was bound to ruin my health, so I resolved that the parish should be free to engage a permanent, resident pastor, and to that end I resigned and sought out a place nearer the college, where I could go through the next year as a pulpit supply and have my wife with me, in my own home, near the college campus.

My new parish, which I visited only on Sundays, was a most delightful village, where an unusual number of interesting people made their homes. Though, at first sight, the village appeared an isolated, sleepy place, yet a plunge into its activities and a catching of its spirit meant the discovery of a number of enterprising, intellectual, and social efforts, of which any large community would have been proud.

There was a village nature club. This club was composed entirely of the townspeople, yet one of the members had been the co-author with a scientist in the study of fresh-water algæ, another member had made an exhaustive study of grasses and minerals in such a scientific manner that his work had received the commendation of the state botanist. The club had expert bird students and a butterfly collector. Another of its members had discovered a rare fern, hitherto never found east of the Mississippi. The members of this club, surrounded as they were by the riches of summer and winter beauty, lived in a glorious world of adventure. When one family drove home, up the long road to its pine groves and isolated farm-house, it counted the varieties of flowers growing by the wayside and made a report of great interest to the other members of the society. Another member watched the stars and gave reports on the newer astronomical happenings.

Then, too, such intellectual interests reacted upon the social life of the little community, and a tennis court for the boys, clubs and sports for the girls, village improvement undertakings, and very interesting and rare lectures through the long winter, were the rule, backed by trained, interested people. This type of community, also, made the church a very desirable and interesting one, and made it easier for me to be away from Sunday to Sunday, for the social concerns were certain to go on under efficient and responsible management.

Meanwhile, my wife and I had brought our little boy to the college town, and had established ourselves in three rooms under the roof of a very tiny cottage. Though we had our dining-table near the kitchen stove and were otherwise crowded almost to discomfort, yet the last year of my educational career meant less anxiety and more inspiration because I could have my home in the midst of it.

_Chapter XXXVII. Teiresias, the Blind Prophet, and Squeem, the Student in the Back-waters of College Life. A Night of Grim Fate_

One winter afternoon as I approached Quarles’ room, to take him for a walk, I heard a loud voice raised in angry altercation, as I thought. I paused on the dormitory stairs, and there came to my ears the blind student’s voice, raised high, as if he were spitting fire. I hurried to his door and entered the room to see what the quarrel between my friend and his enemy could be.

“Priddy, sit down!” quoth Quarles, pausing in his strange heat of jargon. “Listen,” and then, standing in the center of the room, he declaimed this strange-sounding sentence:

“_Eipo ti deta kall, in orgitze pleon!_” and attended it with a fierce and angry thrust of his fist, as if he were thrusting red-hot bolts down the unwilling throat of a helpless foe.

“Well, of all the strange jumbles, Quarles!” I exclaimed, “what is the baby talk, please?”

“_Soo de athlios ge taut oneiditzon, a soi oudeis os ouxi tond oneidiei taxi!_” he continued, scowling frightfully and staring with his expressionless eyes as if he would have his stored up wrath break through to flash like fierce lightning on the pride of his unseen opponent.

“Taxi?” I mused, “that means automobile riding at ten dollars a minute--what is the rest?”

“It’s Greek,” he explained, sitting down. “I am the blind Prophet Teiresias, in the Greek drama ‘King Œdipus,’ to be given by the college. Let me translate!”

He sprang to the middle of the floor, and, in English, attended by the same angry gestures, he declaimed to the scoffing King whom he was warning:

“‘Shall I speak something more, to feed thy wrath?’” and then he paused to explain, “and when you called it baby talk, I recited the line which I am to use when the King slanders me for being blind, ‘O miserable reproach, which all who now behold thee, soon shall thunder forth on thee!’ and,” went on Quarles, “you are to know, if you do not know it now, how that later the King does blind himself with hot irons and fulfils the prophecy I hurl at his coward lips!”

“Horrible, it must be!” I shuddered. “What a dark tragedy to lighten a college stage!”

“But,” mused Quarles, “think of the achievement, in these days, when the college critics are charging the college with immersing itself in practical concerns so as to forego the classics. My work is cut out for me, Priddy,” he went on. “If they are to have a real blind man for Teiresias, they must also have fair acting of the lines, for it is all to be given in Greek, not a word of English; for barbarians like you, who will probably be mystified, there will be an English line-for-line translation.”

“Oh,” I retorted, “I have studied some Greek. I have read the New Testament!”

Quarles laughed,

“That is only the introduction to Greek. Listen!”

He stood before me and recited the fluid, rounded, Greek lines of the blind Prophet, as he leaves the King,

“‘Ere I depart, I will declare the word
For which I came, not daunted by thy frown.
Thou hast no power to ruin me.’”

“You will have to have a clear brain for the storing of so much pure, classic speech, Quarles,” I said. “Come out for a walk over the four-mile road with me and you may talk King Œdipus to me till I faint!”

So, arm in arm, over the ruts of the four-mile road, which first took us up a steep hill and then around to the west through some dark, cool woods, the blind student and I walked, and talked of the Greek tragedy in which he was to play so realistic a part.

On our way back, as we neared the campus, Quarles said:

“Priddy, have you ever met ‘Squeem’ Hirshey? I’ve got to see him before supper, if you’ll take me to him. He’s one of the old men of the chorus, in the play, and wants me to help him with pronunciation.”

“No, I haven’t met him,” I said.

“A poor Georgian,” explained Quarles, “lives in a stuffy bit of a room with an Irish family, down at The Alley; you know where that is, of course.”

So while we walked in the direction of “Squeem’s” lodging, Quarles gave me full information about this student, one who lived in the back-waters of college life.

“In some unaccountable way,” said Quarles, “Squeem managed to get a decent preparatory education in the South, in a place where most of the people lived in huts. Missionary education, I think. However, he came here, passed entrance exams all right, and was awarded a couple of scholarships that bring him in about a hundred and fifty dollars a year. He tells me that he manages to get enough work to support him: that he earns his room rent with the Gibboneys by doing chores, though what chores such a poor family can have for him to perform, I cannot understand. He cooks his own meals on an oil stove, and, for that purpose tries never to go over seventy-five cents a week for his food. As for clothes, well--he patronizes ‘Eddie’, the old clothes-man, and manages to get cast-off shoes and clothes at ridiculously low prices. A suit for four dollars and a decent pair of shoes, not much worn, for fifty cents!”

“I must have seen him,” I explained, “but of course, I cannot place the name. A queer one, too; reminds one of Dickens’ Squeers, the ugly schoolmaster.”

Quarles smiled.

“That name was tacked on a year ago, when he was a Freshman. It seems that he kept himself to his room and never mixed in things, sort of a timid, bashful chap, but full of energy when it comes to study. A down-at-the-heels fellow, I have heard him called. Well, he was squeamish about everything, and it was natural for the Freshies to tack him with ‘Squeem’ and by that name he will always be known to the future generations of college men.”

“Here’s the alley!” I announced, after a few minutes more of talk. We had passed down an outlying road where, on the very outskirts of the village, stood a row of cheap tenements. Between these, at an angle, lay an alley filled with ashes, tin cans and broken bottles. This alley led up to two ill-looking shanties, so small that by comparison with the houses farther in the town they seemed no more than half-ruined doll houses.

“It’s the blackest house,” whispered my companion. “Go around to the rear. His room is up the back stairs.”

As we rounded the black shanty the sound of gurgling and churning reached our ears, and then, back of a line of flapping, wet clothes, we came on a middle-sized, but excessively gaunt youth, wearing an oil-cloth apron, such as we wore in the chemistry classes when we performed experiments, with a bib that fitted close to his neck. He wore under it a ragged, red sweater, and was churning a washing machine full of clothes, while, at his back, a stout, red-faced Irishwoman was engaged in taking clothes from a basket and hanging them on lines. Hanging from a row of nails on the outside of the house were all shades and colors of students’ laundry bags. Underneath them, wriggling in a broken and dirty clothes basket, lay a six-months-old baby, sucking a soiled thumb and apparently finding it nourishing.

“Hello, Quarles!” greeted the washerman, in great embarrassment at our discovery of him, “I didn’t expect you!” A Southern drawl was evident in his speech. He was about to take off his apron, when the Irishwoman, throwing a frown of dissatisfaction in my direction, growled:

“Mister Hirshey, an’ don’t you be lavin’, mind you. Them things’ve got to be done. You can talk while you work; but work you must, and the young gentlemen can go hang till you’ve time, if they care!”

Squeem’s waxen cheeks, which seemed before to have no signs of blood about them, flushed, and he said, apologetically, as he resumed his churning,

“Only ten minutes more, Quarles. We can talk, and then we can go to the room.”

I was introduced to the student and recognized in him the one whom I had passed on the campus, time and time again in the winter, with his shivering body fitted to ill-measured clothes, and his goose-fleshed wrists and ungloved hands hanging like dead weights from below his coat sleeves.

Ten minutes later, after I had watched the Southerner dip out the dripping mass of laundry and put it through the wringer, we were conducted into the dark kitchen with its odor of cabbage, and ascended by a wabbly stairway to the loft, one half of which was given to Squeems for his abode. A greasy, sour odor of cooking permeated the room. It was lighted by two narrow panes of glass fitted to a makeshift frame, and covered by a curtain of imitation tapestry, with the design of a red Swiss house half buried amid gray bushes and a row of stiff, brown poplars. A cot bed stood in a corner with a bundle of warm quilts in confusion on it, for evidently our host had little skill in his housekeeping. A packing case, on end, with the open side towards us, had been skilfully transformed into book shelf, storage place and desk. A short row of text books was ranged on the packing case. Besides a kitchen chair there was no other seat, save a tin-covered trunk from which Squeem had to take a few dishes, an oil stove and a bread tin,--his dining apparatus,--before it could be utilized for a seat.

The following half hour was spent by Quarles and the Southerner in the pronunciation, the translation, and oratorical interpretation, not only of the chorus part of the play, which would be sung, but of the Blind Prophet’s thrilling lines, which Quarles recited before Squeem with even more spirit than he had to me, for, he explained, as we left the house:

“That poor fellow may be in the back-waters of college, but he’s got a really excellent mind. It wouldn’t surprise me to see him come near to leading his class in scholarship. I like him--that Squeem,” and then my blind companion quoted, with great impressiveness, “‘Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon his throne, a sceptred hermit, wrapped in the solitude of his ... originality.’”

Then the night of the Greek play arrived in which Quarles and his strange friend were to appear.

My wife and I sat in the gallery, in Assembly Hall, amongst the vast throng of spectators.

A dark, green curtain covered the stage. The white interior of the hall, with soaring ceiling panels, dotted with flaming rows of electric lights, the paintings on the gallery walls of presidents and benefactors of the college, the ushers in evening dress, fine, manly samples of youth, the well-dressed women in their opera costumes: all this was a glorious show to look upon, in itself. But when a group of gowned students took their places, in chairs, near the stage, and were followed by the orchestra, and the musical director,--then the programs fluttered, expectantly, even in the hands of the professors and invited guests from other colleges, who had come to enjoy the literary treat of the much-heralded play.

The leader, with a gentle tap on his rack, brought the musicians into position. A stroke of the wand in the air, and the instruments began with the introductory theme, a droning chant, with wild whisperings in the background, as the violins tried to paint for our senses the chatter of the fierce Fates that were to hound King Œdipus to his horrid death, in payment to their stern laws for his unconscious sin.

Then, as the haunting prelude paused on a wailing minor, as if to tell us that forever and forever man’s despair should continue--under the rule of the Fates, the lights in the hall were darkened, amidst a silence. There was a pause, and then, as the heavy curtains were drawn aside while the drums crashed forth a suggestion of impending strife, we looked upon a marvelous palace front in ancient Boeotian Thebes. Austere gloom, the fluted, pillared doorway with the brazen door bespoke, though the sky was tinted as if for a sunrise, or sunset. Then before our eyes, in that ancient world was unfolded the grim lesson that even unconscious sin must pay at last the uttermost farthing.

Quarles, transformed into a bearded, led prophet, spake his lines with heart-ringing pathos. But as for “Squeem” among the bearded men, who chanted their parrotish gossip, I could not distinguish him.

Heaps on heaps of color were massed on the stage, with a studied effort to inflame the imaginations of the audience. When it seemed that the finest effects of grouping and harmonies of color had been obtained, other actors would suddenly appear and make the splendor of the setting pass belief.

Word by word, gesture by gesture, chant by chant, we followed the dismal but dramatic tale from its air of glory and freedom into the darker shadows of dread which Teiresias foretold. Moods of king and queen, of the old men who stood by the temple, of the priest and the shepherd changed slowly and steadily from scoffing to belief, from belief to alarm, from alarm to fear, from fear to resistance, from resistance to submission, from submission to final reparation. Woven into the shudderings of the old men, witnesses of death and grewsome penalties, were the musical whisperings, to keep our minds upon the unseen spirits of the vengeful gods who were directing the grim tragedy until all the sobs that men and women could give were ended, until the last dreg of a tear remained, and until only the merest whisper of a cry could sound in the chambers of a suffering heart!

We went into the night, from it, feeling that our hearts had been smitten heavy blows, that our life had fastened itself to leaden anchors. The terrible reality, the magnificence of Fate, the classic splendor of sufferings in epic girth had been staged before us.

Teiresias’ words hung in the air, everywhere, even under the dark sky outside:

“O miserable reproach! which shall soon
Thunder forth on thee!”

_Chapter XXXVIII. How Ellis, the Captain, Taught me the Spirit of Contest. I Turn Pamphleteer on Behalf of Scholarship. But Find from Garvin that Scholarship and Education may be Separate Matters. Account of a Truly Classic Event, which Makes the Students Study Color Schemes and Gives us a Chance to Appear in Gowns_

One afternoon I was sitting on the senior fence, watching two fraternity teams wage a contest in baseball, when I saw Ellis, the football captain approaching, with his finger upraised to draw my attention.

Ellis was an impressive fellow with his towering shoulders, oak-like limbs, and ruddy cheeks. In his flannels, tan oxfords, and varsity cap he spelled in large capitals, “Exercise.” For Ellis was known preëminently, in the athletic world, as one of the year’s gods who sit on the pinnacle of Olympus, the revered of freshmen, the applauded of sophomores, and the envied of fellow seniors. By the newspapers he was heralded as the best player of football in his position in all America. His name, through the years of his playing, when he appeared with nose guard and canvas suit, had been on the lips of admiring multitudes. His photographs, showing him catching a football, or in pose for a scramble, had been spread on many city papers that year.

In the college, more than in the outside world, Ellis’ fame had won the highest respect. He was the marked man: marked for friendships, for class honors, and for the respect of the faculty. A freshman, given the merest smile or word by Ellis, immediately ran to his room and wrote a burning letter about it to his mother or his sister. The fraternities and senior societies had vied with one another to secure him for a comrade. He was the college “boss” in a good sense, for if a group of excited students broke the public peace, by an unruly demonstration before the town jail, where one of the students had been immolated for throwing a snowball at the village justice, it was Ellis who jumped on a flour barrel, which he had ordered brought from the back door of a nearby grocery, and at a word, commanded the incipient riot to break up; which it did without a murmur.

“Take a walk, Priddy?” asked Ellis, as he drew near.

“Certainly,” I said, jumping from my perch and measuring my stride to his.

“Priddy,” he said, “you know about the Bristow Oratorical Prize for seniors?”

“Yes.”

“The trials come off soon. Why don’t you go into it?”

“I hadn’t thought of it,” I admitted. “Besides, I don’t think it would be wise. I am no orator; I mean that I do not use finished gestures, and my throat trouble has taken the spirit from my voice. In addition to that, Ellis, when one is used to the pulpit, it is really a different proposition to speak in an exhibition.”

“But you will have a chance with the literary side. That counts one half,” persisted Ellis.

“Now look here,” I smiled, turning on him, suddenly, “why don’t you go into it?”

“I will, Priddy. I certainly will!”

“You’ve made your record in football, and you ought to go into this oratorical contest, Ellis.”

“I’m going into it,” he replied, “not so much for the mere idea of trying for the prize, but for a purpose.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, Priddy,” he continued, seriously, “I’ve been up against it ever since I indulged in sports. It has eaten up much of my time, and there have been days and days when the grind of training and practise and of having to go to bed early, and all that, have been wearing and uninspiring. If it hadn’t been that I felt that I was maintaining the honor of the college by my playing, I should have quit the game long ago. Well, there are a lot of folks that think of college athletics as a waste of the student’s time and as a feature of college life not good in itself, but which must be endured, if men are to be won to college. Of course you know that’s not the truth; at least in this place.”

“Of course it’s not so,” I insisted, just as earnestly. “College sports are the cleanest, most honorable of sports. They teach the students in this college to be manly in losing, to hold their tongues when the visiting team makes a fumble, and to cheer one for the other. It’s so different from the national game, outside of the college, where the crowds in the bleachers throw pop bottles at the umpire, insult the players, and nag one another bitterly. Our college sports teach the students moral control and self-restraint.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that, Priddy,” agreed Ellis, warmly. “If the game had been otherwise, I would not have wasted my time with it. Well, there are a lot of folks, even in college,” he continued, “who really think that because a man makes good on a football team that he’s not capable with his studies, or with the literary features of the college.”

“There again,” I agreed, “they don’t know all the facts. Think of the fellows on your team, this year. Several of your best players are making excellent records in class work.” I enumerated three of the brightest players who had maintained a rank of over eighty-five, in spite of the great amount of time given to sports.

“Yes, Priddy,” replied Ellis, “that’s so, but the public at large don’t think of it in that way. Well, that is why I want to go into the oratorical contest; just to show folks that a fellow interested in athletics is also able to manifest an interest in literary matters!”

“Good!” I exclaimed, won by his sincere earnestness. “But why do you want me to go in, too, as a competitor? I should think you wouldn’t care to increase the competition, merely as a matter of self-interest.”

“Oh,” he laughed, “the more, the merrier. I thought you ought to go in, too, for I think you would stand a good chance, Priddy.”

Finally I agreed to go in with him. On the walk we advised about subjects and the next day Ellis came to my room for some material I had promised him on his proposed theme.

Then began the strangest preparation for a contest in which I had ever indulged. We conferred with one another about the points we were to make, and prodded one another on, when either became slothful. Finally, when our speeches were memorized, we took afternoon walks into a field where we shaped our orations into some definite spoken form before each other. Ellis would hear me through, suggest how this gesture and that thought might be improved. Then I would criticize him in the same way. We hid nothing from one another, though we were to be rivals on the platform. He knew every turn of my speech and I knew every turn of his. He added force to mine by thinking out for me a new analogy that I could insert at a weak part. I altered a misquotation in his which would have lost him a point. It was an inspiring experience for me. I was witnessing, in Ellis, a sportsmanship of which there could be no more refined example. I did not wonder, then, at the praise the college had given him.

But this was not all, for on the afternoon when the trials took place,--in the big, dim room of empty seats, with a few judges scattered lonesomely about,--as I took my turn and was walking to the platform, I felt a hearty clap on the shoulder and heard Ellis whisper, “Good luck to you, Priddy!” exactly the way in which he had encouraged his men in the big football contests. I walked to the platform thrilled through by the magnificence of Ellis’ sporting spirit. I felt that if any other man won, it should be Ellis.

I did not do well with my oration. I was marked down. Ellis’ turn came. I watched him, admiringly, as he strode to the platform in his masterful way. His gestures, over which we had worked with patience, were still undisciplined, and at times his voice thundered too much. But he came down with the consciousness of having done his best. He was declared eligible for the final contest.

Later, when the final contest took place, Ellis, who had gone into it with the loftiest ideal of all the contestants, had the thrill of knowing that he was the winner of the prize. He had won both sides of the medal, the athletic and literary.

“At least,” he said to me, in bashful comment on his victory, “I think that some folks will be persuaded that a football man may have some interest in scholarship.”

Garvin, a fellow Senior, illustrates another phase of college life and thought. He was a clever individual and one of the editors of the college newspaper. His “den,” as he loved to term his narrow room in Wise Hall, had been made to resemble as much as possible an editorial sanctum. Galley proofs, daubed black with corrections, revisions and proof marks, had been hung over his desk, as if to forever remind him that the true function of an editor is revision, as it is the true function of life. Original artists’ drawings, in charcoal, pen and ink and pencil, were mixed in with Gibson Girl sketches on the walls. Three samples of “the worst contributions ever sent into the paper” were framed in _passe partout_ and hung over the brick of the fireplace where the curious might read them; one was a Freshman poem whose theme had never been understood and for the interpretation of which Garvin had a standing offer of a box of cigars. The “poem” said something about “the ancient cow, sitting munchingly on the steep broadside of green, fertile country,” and then went on to irrelevantly bring in various other cattle, scenes, and people in such an unexplained matter-of-fact way that the mind was in a whirl at the end. The other two contributions were attempts at stories, and judged from the first pages of manuscript exhibited, ended in being nothing more than attempts.

I had visited Garvin to speak on a matter to which I was giving considerable thought at the time: the curious disparagement of scholarship by so many of the students. I had even gone to the pains of having published in Garvin’s paper my undergraduate protest against the universal tendency to despise the “plugger” and to esteem the “grafter”; two terms which marked the antipodes of scholarship. My article, entitled, “On the Spirit of Work in College,” had been printed and followed by a parody, written by an unknown student and entitled: “Priddy Has A Grouch,” in which the writer had openly given all the honors of the college to the student who refrained from seeking a salutatory, vying with his classmates for the valedictory or hastening after academic honors of whatever sort.

“Blatant heresy!” I announced, pointing out the anonymous article.

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Garvin. “I rather like it!”

I regarded him in astonishment for a moment and then protested,

“But think of it, man! Denouncing scholarship! A student in a college denouncing the very charter of the college. It’s incredible: audacious and heretical: undermining the very foundations of the college! And to think that you, an editor, interested in culture and education, support such a paradox. You ought to be tortured in a Smithfield fire or have your thumbs twisted with Inquisition screws!”

“Oh, I don’t know!” smiled Garvin. “I’m not the only one that scoffs somewhat at the scholars: there are hundreds of us on the campus: hundreds of us.”

“Yes,” I replied, “sour grapes, probably.”

“Now look here, Priddy. I’m no loafer. You know me. I believe in education or I would not be spending my four years here. If I were to put all my time in study: the time which I invest in my editor’s duty, for instance, and in the mandolin club, I think there is in me a potential honor man at least, even as there is in Sanderson a potential valedictorian, and in Ellis a potential Phi Beta Kappa (if he left off athletics), and in Forrest a potential magna, triple X, summa, double-barrelled cum lauda if he didn’t put so much effort into the evening classes for the Italian laborers down at the Reservoir. But the truth is--these men, like myself, aren’t very enthusiastic about high marks, or the honors that high marks and class rankings bring to the undergraduate.”

“No wonder the professors get discouraged, Garvin. It’s enough to make the college founder place dynamite under the campus and blow us to kingdom come!”

Garvin’s eyes twinkled at his next question.

“Hear about Scholarship Night, Priddy? I know you weren’t there for you went home that day.”

“Hear about it?” I gasped. “I should say I had. They say that there was about as much enthusiasm over the reading of the honor roll that night, in assembly hall, before the students and invited guests, as there is enthusiasm over--well, say a book entitled, ‘The Thesaurus of Diction--or Recent Explorations into the Vocabulary of Monkeys.’”

“Enthusiasm!” repeated Garvin, “it was ten miles away that night. Just a handful of students, lonesomely huddled in the first few rows of seats and behind them a lighted vacancy. I tell you, Priddy, the students aren’t interested very much in pure scholarship: even many of the men who are here for a serious purpose.”

“Then why do they come here, Garvin, tell me that?” I demanded.

“For an education, Priddy.”

“But how can they secure an education unless they are solicitous about scholarship, Garvin?”

“Oh, I see what is the matter, Priddy. You imagine that because so many of us aren’t interested in scholarship, pure scholarship, we aren’t interested in education. Education and scholarship are two very different things.”

“How do you argue that?”

“You have the old-fashioned idea of a college,” continued Garvin.

“What do you mean?”

“The old New England college: the representative college of olden days, injected a love of books and the wisdom of books in their students: reams of the classic poets and prose writers: encyclopædic furnishings of the mind with the contents of a few good, stimulating books. Those were the hey-days of pure scholarship. They have existed here: but we students, today, are illustrations of an evolution in educational ideals, even if most of us don’t seem to realize it. We represent the changed temper of higher education. If I may phrase, offhand, my idea of the change,--it is that the older generation considered pure scholarship, in itself, the central aim of a college course, and to an ideal of that sort, Scholarship Nights, Phi Beta Kappas, and all such educational fashions were not only in keeping but were producers of tremendous enthusiasms. On the other hand, what seems to me to lie in the heart of the students now is the demand for scholarship,--plus _accomplishment_. It is due, no doubt, to the practical turn of the world during the last few years. I am interested mightily in scholarship when it helps towards actual accomplishment: when like a gold coin it purchases something; unlike the old notion that scholarship was a gold or silver medal, good only to decorate or dignify the person, or to be kept on exhibition.”

“Are you sincere in that, Garvin?” I demanded. “If so, you should write it out in editorials, for the criticism of the professors: if you could substantiate it by concrete facts.”

“Concrete facts, Priddy! Why, it would carry us into the small hours of the morning if I were to begin their enumeration. Take Ellis, for instance. You tell me that he went into the medal contest to vindicate the athletes. There is one example of the coin of scholarship purchasing something: one concrete expression of the student interest in scholarship when it leads to something practical and concrete. Can you imagine Ellis going into a literary contest that would wind up in itself, without relation to something practical to be gained by it?”

“No.”

“You go around the campus with a test like that, Priddy, and you will find that scholarship is highly respected wherever it has resulted in accomplishment. Don’t we respect Professor Florette? I should say we did. One of the most perfect scholars in the college and yet even the grafters among the students would throw their caps in the air at any time for the Professor, and why is it? It is because his scholarship has actually made him accomplish something. He is president of the National Science Division of College Instruction and is known and quoted abroad as an authority in his line. That’s why the students like him. On the other hand you might pick out a professor here and a professor there who is very erudite--notice my vocabulary, Priddy--and who is a perfect scholar in his department, and yet who never translates his knowledge into life: never writes a useful book, or influences thought abroad, or is asked to address even a Kindergarten Teachers’ Convention. All we know of him is that ‘he is a scholar.’ You don’t catch us shouting much for that man, do you? He has not accomplished anything tangible, ergo--his scholarship is merely an esthetic satisfaction. That’s why we fellows prefer old Florette.”

“But that’s a very youthful and shallow way of judging, Garvin,” I replied.

“Well, whether you call it youthful, shallow, or what not, that is the way most of the students seem to regard scholarship. They are only interested in it when it means contact with life and the enlargement of the scholar’s ability for civic usefulness. That is the outcome of practical America, I suppose. But for the ‘grind’ who slaves for big marks and the sheer worship of books--and nothing else, why, I don’t have much use for him. On the other hand, if a fellow grinds out big marks to play on the football team in security: why, that’s the fellow that gets the cheer. It’s scholarship plus, with my crowd, and I think you’d better come in the band-wagon with us, Priddy, for whether the professors like it or not, and choose to cling to the seventeenth century exaltation of scholarship _per se_--note my Latin, Priddy--why, it won’t change matters any.”

“That’s something to think about, Garvin, at any rate.”

“If you observe the students closely, Priddy, I think you’ll find that they do respect scholarship; put it in the very highest possible place of influence--when it has led to something.”

“I am glad I had this talk with you, Garvin. I think I understand the fellows a little better,--I can even forgive the unknown who wrote: Priddy Has A Grouch!”

“Thank you, Al,” replied the editor. “I am the chap!”

If the failure of Scholarship Night--and a dismal one it was--had seemed to indicate little respect for pure academic accomplishment at the College, there soon took place an event which swallowed up that failure in its overwhelming scholarly success and aroused, in the student heart, every last atom of admiration for the academical ideal. Our new President was inaugurated.

Inauguration Day was pre-eminently the real Scholarship Day with the links closely forged between what Garvin called scholarship and accomplishment. The President we were to honor represented the close tie between scholarship and accomplishment. His learning had brought him a world reputation as a scientist, and it was extremely interesting, after the talk with Garvin, to note with what unction the students lingered on the reputation of the President, and how deferentially they spoke the names of this Royal Society and that Foreign Body which had honored him for his work.

Garvin’s paper, weeks before the event, teemed with anticipatory gossip concerning the stellar names in education that were to be printed on the list of college guests. The campus was to be the show ground for the American academic peerage; come to honor our chief! At last even such a loafer in the college as Bridden, who was in danger of losing his degree by reason of his overindulgence in pool: even he expressed a pride and interest in the coming of the scholars: the scholars _par excellence_.