.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 44888
   :PG.Title: The Diary of a Freshman
   :PG.Released: 2014-02-12
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Charles Macomb Flandrau
   :DC.Title: The Diary of a Freshman
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1901
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE DIARY OF A FRESHMAN
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      THE DIARY
      *of a* FRESHMAN

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      *By*

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      CHARLES MACOMB FLANDRAU

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      Author of "Harvard Episodes"

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      *NEW YORK*
      DOUBLEDAY, PAGE AND COMPANY
      *MDCCCCI*

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      *Copyright, 1900, by*
      The Curtis Publishing Co.

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      *Copyright, 1901, by*
      Doubleday, Page & Company

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      University Press
      John Wilson and Son
      Cambridge, U.S.A.

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      *TO THE*
      "*For Ever Panting and For Ever Young.*"

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   *Courteous acknowledgment is here
   made to the Saturday Evening
   Post, Philadelphia, in which these
   papers first saw the light.*

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.. _`I`:

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   *THE*
   DIARY *of a* FRESHMAN

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   \I

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Mamma left for home this
afternoon.  As I want to be perfectly
truthful in my diary, I suppose I
must confess that before she actually
went away I sometimes thought I should
be rather relieved when she was no longer here.
Mamma has a fixed idea that I came to college
for the express purpose of getting my feet wet
by day, and sleeping in a draught by night.
She began the furnishing of my rooms by
investing in a pair of rubber boots,—the kind you
tie around your waist with a string.  The clerk
in the shop asked her if I was fond of
trout-fishing, and she explained to him that I had
always lived in the West where the climate
was dry, and that she did n't know how I would
stand the dampness of the seacoast.  Mamma
thought the clerk was so interested in my last
attack of tonsillitis I didn't have the heart to
tell her that all the time he was looking
sympathetic with his right eye, he was winking at
me with his left.

Now that she is gone, however, I don't see
how I could have thought, even for a moment,
that I should be glad, and I 've been sitting
here for an hour just looking at my room and
all the nice things she advised me about and
helped me to choose—wishing she could see
how cosey it is late at night with the green
lamp lighted and a little fire going.  (It is n't
really cool enough for a fire; I had to take
my coat off for a while, the room got so
warm—but I was anxious to know how the andirons
looked with a blaze behind them.) I suppose
she is lying awake in the sleeping-car thinking
of me.  She made me move my bed to the
other side of the room, so that it would n't be
near the window.  I moved it back again; but
I think now I 'll change it again to the way she
liked it.

Of course I was disappointed last May when
I found I hadn't drawn a room in one of the
college buildings.  I had an idea that if you
did n't live in one of the buildings owned by
the college you would n't feel, somehow, as if
you "belonged."  Before I arrived in
Cambridge I worried a good deal over it.  The
old Harvard men at home were most unsatisfactory
about this when I asked their advice.
The ones who had lived in the Yard when
they were in college seemed to think there
was n't any particular use in going to college
at all unless you could live either in their old
rooms or some in the same building; and the
ones who had lived outside as I am going to
do (this year, anyhow) said the college
buildings were nice enough in their way, but if
I could only get the dear old place (which
was pulled down fifteen years ago) where
James Russell Lowell had scratched his
name on the window-pane, and where somebody
else (I 've forgotten who it was) crawled
up the big chimney when the sheriff came to
arrest him for debt and was discovered
because he did not crawl far enough, I should
be all right.

I don't see how the good times and the
advantages of a place like this hold out for
so long; everybody who has been here speaks
as if he had about used them up.

Well, we found rooms pleading to be
rented; every other house in Cambridge has
a "Student's Room to Let" card in the
window.  Even some of the rooms in the
Yard had been given up at the last minute
by fellows who flunked their exams.  Mamma
said she felt very sorry for the poor boys; and
after that the enormity of my having been
conditioned in physics and solid geometry
decreased considerably.  The trouble (there
were four days full of it) wasn't in finding
a good place, but in trying to decide on some
one place.  For a while it looked as though
I should either have to live in five separate
houses—some of them over a mile apart—or
give up going to college.  We dragged
up and down all the quiet side streets within
a reasonable distance of the Yard, ringing
bells and asking questions until the words
"I should like to look at" and "What is
the price of?" began to sound like some kind
of a silly English Meisterschaft system.
Several times when we were very tired we
wandered by mistake into houses we had been
to before.  This made the landladies
exceedingly peevish; but mamma said it was just
as well, because now we knew what their true
characters really were.

We found that we could rent some of the
rooms lighted and heated; but most of them
were merely "lit and het."

All the houses in Cambridge and many of
the buildings in the Yard seemed to be
disgorging roomfuls of old furniture and
consuming cartloads of new, and everywhere we went
we met strings of cheerful, energetic mothers
with tired, rather cross-looking sons.  I've
seen only one fellow with his father so far,
and they sort of apologized for the fact by
being dressed in deep mourning.

At the end of three days we 'd picked out
five rooms.  Considered in a lump, they
seemed fine; but tackling them separately,
mamma could n't decide which one was least
objectionable.  One was in a part of town
that "looked damp"—a man across the
street unfortunately sneezed just as we were
passing a stone wall covered with green moss.
The second smelt of cooking.  On the steps
of the third a groceryman was waiting to
deliver several gallons of gasoline (this one
was almost struck off the list).  The fourth
was near the river (we had the bad luck to be
in that part of town when the tide was out),
and from the windows of the fifth there was a
merry little view of a graveyard.  We simply
could n't make up our minds, and were
standing in the middle of a narrow, rather shabby
little street two or three blocks below the
Square discussing the matter, when a door
behind us opened and a mother and son (we
turned to look) came out, followed by a
gray-haired woman—evidently the landlady—who
was doing the talking, in a very New England
voice, for all three.  The mother was slim
and pretty, and had on a beautiful dress that
went swish-swash-swish when she walked
away, and the fellow looked like her; he was
very handsome.

"Well, I 'm real glad to know you," the
landlady said to the fellow's mother.  "Jus'
seems 's if I could n't rest till I knew the
young men's folks; dustin' their photographs
every day makes it sort of different.  It
do—don't it?  Oh, yes—I 'll take care of him.
They get real mad at me, the young men do,
sometimes, for makin' them change their shoes
when it's snow-in' and makin' them wear their
rubber coats when it's rai-nin'.  *They 're* in
too much of a hurry, *they* are.  That's what's
the matter with *them*."  She gave the fellow
a roguish look, and he and his mother walked
up the street laughing as if they were very
much pleased.

"I think," said mamma (who had become
strangely animated on hearing of the change
of shoes)—"I think that before we decide on
one of these five rooms we 'll go in there."  So
we went up to the gray-haired woman, who
had lingered outside to talk baby talk to a cat
that was making gothic arches of itself all
over the piazza, and in about seven minutes
by the watch we 'd signed the lease of the last
vacant rooms in the house.

A short, steep staircase like the companionway
of a ship leads up to a landing about the
size of a kitchen table.  The edges of the steps
are covered with tin and are terribly slippery.
The door on the left opens into my study, and
at the end of that is my bedroom, and next to
that is a great big bathroom (it's bigger than
the other two) with a porcelain tub and a
shower which I am to share with the fellow
who lives just across the staircase on the right.
Mrs. Chester, the landlady, says: "All
the young men thinks an awful lot of that
bathroom."

The study is so small that we did n't have
to buy as much furniture as we expected to.
I have an oak desk with a rolling top that
makes a noise like some one shovelling coal
when you open and shut it, and usually sticks
half-way.  Of course, when we finally got it
out from town (Boston is about four miles
from Cambridge, and it takes anywhere from
three days to a week for an express wagon to
make the trip), we found that it was much too
large to go up the staircase.  But
Mrs. Chester said we could take out the back of
the house and have it swung up to the room
on ropes—the "young men" always did that
when they wanted pianos or sofas, or desks
like mine.  I wasn't present at the operation,
as I had to go in town to lunch with mamma,
but it was successfully performed (by "a real
handy gentleman from down Gloucester way,
who used to be a fisherman and is a carpenter
now"), for I found the desk in the room when
I returned and the walls of the house looked
about the same.

Besides the desk I have an oak chair with
a back that lets up and down by means of a
brass rod; its cushions are covered with gray
corduroy.  Then there is another chair, a
revolving one (very painful), that goes with the
desk.  We bought a bookcase at a shop just
off the Square, from an odious little man
who put his hand on my shoulder and said
to mamma, "They *will* grow up, won't
they?"  It looks rather bare, as there aren't
any books in it yet; but mamma would n't
let me fill it, although right next door to the
place where we bought it there were loads
of books in the window for five and ten cents
apiece.

We got some Turkish rugs at an auction in
town.  The man said they never would wear
out.  When they arrived here and I saw them
for the first time by daylight (they had gas at
the sale) I knew what he meant.  However,
mamma darned them very nicely, and as everything
else looks so new, perhaps it's just as
well.

I 've put the photographs of mamma and
papa, and the one of Mildred in the ball dress
and big hat with white ostrich feathers, and
the one of Sidney in his little cart with the
two goats, on the mantelpiece.  I 'm afraid I
never cared much for the goats when I was at
home, but to-night I 've been thinking of all
the funny things they used to do and wondering
if I'll ever see them again.  They're
such cute little beasts.  Over the mantelpiece
I have two crimson flags with the sticks crossed.

This evening while I was sitting in front of
the fire trying to decide whether I ought to
begin my diary now or wait until college
opened to-morrow and things began to happen,
the door downstairs suddenly rattled and
slammed, and some one came clattering up the
tin steps at a great rate.  Then the door across
the landing was unlocked, and I heard whoever
it was falling over chairs and upsetting things in
the dark; and all the time he kept roaring at
the top of his voice: "Oh, Mrs. Chester!
Ay-y-y-y-y, Mrs. Chester, where are
you?"  Mrs. Chester had told me a few minutes
before that she was "just goin' to step up
street to see how Mis' Buckson 's comin'
along with them rooms o' hers," so I called
out that she was n't at home.  Then the voice
answered, "Oh, thank you;" and after a
few more things in the other room had fallen
on the floor and smashed, the fellow who was
making all the fuss came across and stood in
my doorway.

I thought for a second that the reason he
did n't come in was that he was so big he
could n't.  I knew that the ceilings of the
house were low and that my study wasn't
very large, but I had n't realized before how
small it all was.  The fellow blocked up the
whole doorway; his shoulders, in a loose,
shaggy gray coat, stretched clear across.
His face was burned a deep brown, and his
hair was very black and looked rather long, as
it evidently had n't been brushed for a good
while, and he wanted to know if I could let
him have a match.  I could see that he was
taking in my room as he stood there, and I
think he smiled a little at something; but
then he seemed to be smiling anyhow (in a
different way), so I was n't sure.  I jumped
up and got him a box of matches (somehow I
knew at once that he wasn't the other
Freshman who has rooms in the house, although I
can't think why, as he did n't look old), and he
thanked me, saying he was sorry to trouble
me, and went back to his room.

I felt sort of excited and restless after that,
and thought I would sit down and write
mamma all about him; but just as I was
beginning to he stopped humming (I don't
think he can be a member of the Glee Club,
as he only struck the right note once by
accident; still I knew perfectly well what he was
trying to sing) and began to laugh.  Then he
came over to my door again with his hands in
his pockets and said,—

"You did n't happen to see an iron bedstead
lying around the streets anywhere, did you?
The good Chester has evidently spent the last
three months in putting my rooms in order and
I can't find a thing."  I told him I had seen
a bed in the back yard this afternoon, but that
I did n't think it could be his.  He asked me
very seriously why not.  And then all at once
I got horribly rattled.  I didn't like to tell
him that the bed had n't looked nearly big
enough for him (it was a little narrow thing),
for I was afraid he might think me fresh.
Then besides, I found that I had instinctively
stood up when I saw him, and as there wasn't
any particular reason why I should have done
this, I got sort of confused.

"Of course it's a very nice little bed," I
hastened to add.  Whereupon he burst out
laughing with a loud whoop.

"If it 's such a nice one it certainly can't
be mine, and I 'd better go down and swipe
it right away," he said at last, and clattered
downstairs.  I tried again to write to mamma,
but he made such a noise coming upstairs with
pieces of bed and running down again that I
could n't fix my mind.  Then, too, I kept
wondering whether I ought to offer to help
him.  Finally I went out as he was coming
up with a mattress on his shoulder and asked,
"Was it your bed, after all?" which made
him laugh again and say: "I wouldn't tell
you for anything in the world.  If you aren't
too busy, though, I wish you would help me
put the beastly thing together."

We tried for about half an hour to make
the bed stand up.  It looked simple enough,
but whenever we got the sides firm and more
or less parallel, the back and front would
wobble and fall to the floor.  Once we had
all four pieces standing beautifully, but just
as we put on the woven wire business and
Mr. Duggie (that's what Mrs. Chester calls
him—I don't think it 's his real name, though)
exclaimed, "I have the honor to report,
sir, that the allied forces have taken New
Bedford," the whole thing collapsed and
pinched his finger fearfully as it came down.
After that we sat on the floor awhile.  He
smoked a pipe and glanced meditatively at the
ruins of the bed every now and then, and at
last turned to me and said, "Is this your
first year here?"  I didn't let him see how
pleased I was that he had not discovered
I was a Freshman, and merely answered, "Yes."

We talked a long time—about all kinds of
things.  I asked him a string of questions that
had been on my mind for months: whether it
is better to live in a private house, one of the
big private halls, or in the Yard (I called it
the "Campus," and he looked queer for a
moment and said it was known as the Yard
here); where would be a good place to eat;
whether he thought my allowance was big
enough (I told him how much I was going to
have); and what was the best way to make
friends and get on teams and clubs and
musical societies and crews and papers.  He
answered everything, although once or twice he
puffed at his pipe and looked at me a good
while before speaking.  I couldn't tell whether
the questions had n't occurred to him before,
or whether he didn't know just what to tell
me.  Of course I can't remember all he said,
but it sounded so important that afterward I
scribbled as much of it as I could in a notebook.

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   ROOMS IN THE YARD

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   ADVANTAGES

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General Washington may have stabled his
horse (the iron-gray that never put his front
feet to the ground in the presence of an artist)
in your bedroom.

When girls come out to vespers (Thursdays
from November to May) and stop to look at
the Yard, you can stop whatever you happen
to be doing and look at them.

In May and June the morning and evening
views from your windows are different from
and more beautiful than anything in the world.

The Glee Club (weather permitting) sings
under the trees; you lie on your window-seat
in the twilight and wonder whether, after
graduating, you will accept Fame or Fortune.

Proximity to lectures during the annual
inundations of December, January, February,
March, and April.

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   DISADVANTAGES

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Too much effort involved in taking a bath.
What ought to be an innocent pleasure
becomes a morbid family pride.

Accessibility to bores who want to kill time
while waiting for their next lecture.  At first
you think this is Popularity.

Enforced quiet after 9 P.M.—at which hour
you usually close your books and feel like
making a noise.

Enforced activity before 9 A.M.—until
which hour you always close your eyes and
try not to feel at all.

Necessity of burning a kind of coal that
refuses to light (or to stay lighted) for anybody
but the janitor, who is never in the basement,
where you always firmly believe (in spite of
your daily failure) that you are going to find
him.


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   BOARD

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Mrs. Muldooney's is by all means the most
desirable place.  It is crowded, hot, noisy,
expensive, and not particularly nourishing.
Mrs. Muldooney is a tall, grim, steel-armored
old cruiser of sixty-five, with dark-blue hair,
who doles out eleven canned cherries to every
man at luncheon and sends in word from the
kitchen that there aren't any more.  She tries
to collect twenty-five cents when you have a
guest; but as you promptly disown your guest,
she is usually foiled.  Her place, however, is
always crowded with Freshmen, and I ought
to go there.


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   ALLOWANCE

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My allowance is generous.  It ought to
satisfy my every need; but it won't.

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   TEAMS, CREWS, SOCIETIES, PAPERS

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Try enthusiastically but not too seriously to
take part in everything.  In this way you find
out what kind of amusement really amuses
you—which as you grow older is a source of
great content.


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   FRIENDS

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Friends, in the true sense of the word, are
divine accidents beyond all human control.
You will probably meet with four or five such
accidents in your college career.  For the
rest—be polite to everybody, and you will soon
have the satisfaction of knowing that your
position, both in the University and in the
world, is, at least, unique.


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   CLUBS

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*Vide supra*, under "Friends."

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I was just going to ask him something else,
when we heard Mrs. Chester exclaiming,—

"Land sakes, if it ain't Mr. Duggie!  I
saw the light from Mis' Buckson's parlor."

"Hello, you dear old buzzard!  How dare
you turn me out in the cold this way?" he
called to her; and as she came in, he jumped
up and took both her hands.  "I 'm so glad
to see you again."  She gave him a little
push, and looked pleased.

"Law, Mr. Duggie—how you talk!  He's
got real fleshy—ain't he?" she added,
looking at me.  She asked him where he 'd been
all summer, and he told her he 'd been off
shooting in the Rocky Mountains, and had
brought her a breastpin made of an elk's tooth
that she'd have to wear on Sundays when she
went to see her married daughter in Somerville.
I thought I ought to leave, but did not
know how to interrupt them exactly; so I
turned and examined some silver cups on the
mantelpiece.  There were five beauties, but I
could n't make out the inscriptions on them.

"You 've had lots of visitors the last few
days.  They kept a-comin' to find out when
you 'll be back.  The Dean was here to-day—a
real sociable gentleman, aren't he?—and
he wants you to go right 'round and see him
as soon as you can.  And yesterday that little
man—I forget his name—oh, you know, he's
the President of the Crimson—came to find
out about something.  He said you were the
only one who could tell him.  And then
there 've been lots of young men to see about
the football—oh, my, just crowds of them,
and they all left notes.  I 'll run down and
get them, and then I 'll put up your bed."

After she left, I said good-night.  It's
awfully late, and I have to get up early, to be
in time to register.

I wonder who he is.  I hope he didn't think
I was fresh.  I don't believe he did, though,
for as I was going he said,—

"We 're such near neighbors, you must
drop in when you haven't anything better
to do."

Mamma's train must have passed Utica by
this time.





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   II

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Well, I 've learned a lot of things
during the past week, that are n't
advertised in the catalogue.  If
I 've neglected to make a note of
them until now, it has been my misfortune,
and not my fault.

We registered on Wednesday morning—Freshmen
have to register the day before college
really opens—and I confess I was a
little disappointed at the informal way such
an important act of one's life is done.  In the
first place, as you can drop in any time
between nine A.M. and one P.M., you don't see
the whole class together.  Then the room
we registered in might have been in the High
School at home.  I don't know what I expected
exactly, but it certainly was n't a bare,
square room, a desk on a low platform, some
plaster casts, and a lot of plain wooden chairs
arranged in rows on an inclined plane.
However, when I think the matter over, I don't
see what else they could have.

A dissatisfied-looking little man with a red
necktie sat reading a newspaper at the desk
when I went in, and near him—reading a
book—was a younger fellow who looked as
if he might be a student.  There were piles of
registration cards on the desk, and after I had
stood there a moment, not knowing what to
do, the little man looked up absently from his
paper, handed me some cards with a feeble
sort of gesture, and murmured in a melancholy,
slightly trembling, and very sarcastic
voice,—

   |  "... This gentleman is come to me
   |  With commendation from great potentates,
   |  And here he means to spend his time awhile."

Then he yawned, and took up the paper again.
The young man, without apparently thinking
this remark in the least odd, closed his book
on his thumb so as not to lose the place, and
gave me another card, saying in a perfectly
businesslike voice,—

"Please fill this one out, too."  I sat down
at a bench to write, and just then five or six
other fellows came in.  One of them was the
good-looking chap (with the pretty mother)
who rooms in the same house with me.  I
hadn't seen him since the day I signed my
lease.  I listened to hear if the little man at
the desk would spring anything weird on them;
but as they went right up to him, and took
cards as if they knew all about it, and
retreated to the back of the room, he didn't
have time.  They talked and laughed a good
deal, and once they got into a scuffle, but the
instructors didn't even glance up.  I finished
answering the questions on my cards, and was
reading them over, when one of the fellows
behind me said,—

"I'll ask him—we live in the same
house;" and the handsome one came and
sat down beside me.  There was something
they did n't understand in making out the
cards, and the first thing I knew, they were
all gathered around me examining mine.  I
felt quite important.  But the next minute I
felt equally cheap.

The cards that had been given us by the
young man with the book had to be filled out
with one's name and address and religion.
When the good-looking one (whose name I 've
since found out is Berrisford) came to it, he
began to giggle, and after he had written on
it he showed it to the man next to him, who
burst out laughing, and passed it on to the
others.  They all laughed as soon as they
saw it, and I was just about to hold out my
hand to take it, when the young instructor
closed his book, and said in a rather tired,
dry tone,—

"By the way, unless you actually happen
to be Buddhists or Hindus or Mohammedans,
or followers of Confucius, kindly refrain from
saying so on the card; only four men have
indulged in that particular jest this morning,
which, in comparison with former years, is
really very few.  I begin to feel encouraged;
pray don't depress me."

I don't know what Berrisford had written,
but he got very red while the instructor was
speaking, and crumpled the card into a little
lump which he afterward slipped into his
pocket.  The others pretended to be deeply
absorbed in their writing just then; but one
of them snorted hysterically.

If anything like that had happened to me, I
think I should have expired with mortification;
but Berrisford after a minute or two
did n't seem to mind it at all.  I almost think
it encouraged him to do something even more
idiotic.

There are two large, fine statues standing
in the front corners of the room.  One of
them is a Greek athlete in the act of hurling
something not unlike a pancake, and is called,
I believe, The Discus Thrower.  (We have a
little one in the library at home.)  The other
is a venerable old man in flowing
robes—probably Homer or Sophocles or some such
person.  Well, we had all gone up to the
desk with our cards.  Berrisford was first,
and just as he got there he stopped (without
giving his cards to the little man who reached
out for them), and looked inquiringly from
statue to statue.  Berrisford has a beautiful,
silly face with big, innocent eyes, and when
he talks his manner is graceful—almost timid;
you can't help liking it.  I could see that he
impressed the instructors just the way he did
mamma and me the day we saw him with his
mother.  He looked at the statues a moment,
and then said to the little man,—

"Would you mind telling me, please, which
of these gentlemen is the President of the
college?"  His voice was so deferential, and
there was something so eager and earnest and
pure in his expression, I really believe that for
a moment the instructor thought he was just
a nice fool, and was on the point of kindly
explaining what the statues represented.  He
didn't, though, for one of the fellows in the
background tittered and ran out of the room,
and the little man leaned back in his chair,
examined Berrisford very deliberately, and
then remarked in his queer, sarcastic way,—

"'Sir, thy wit is as quick as the
greyhound's mouth; but it speeds too fast—'twill
tire!'"

As soon as we got outside, Berrisford said,—

"What a disappointing little creature!  I
had an idea he would be very angry, and he
was n't at all."

"Did you want him to be angry?" I asked,
rather surprised.

"Why, yes, of course," he answered.  "It's
so interesting to watch them; there are so
many different ways of losing a temper.
Sea-captains are the most satisfactory, I think.  I
discovered that last spring on my way to
Europe.  I go up to them when they 're very
busy—just getting out of a harbor or
something—and exclaim, 'Oh, I say, Captain—shall
I steer?'  You can't imagine how furious
it makes them."  I said I thought I could,
and we parted.  He seems to have a great
many friends; he has n't spent a night at
home since college opened—a week ago.

Well, I went to see my adviser, who helped
me select my studies for the year.  That is to
say, he hypnotized me into taking a lot of
things I really don't see why I should know.
However, as I don't seem to have what he
called "a startling predilection" for anything
(my entrance exams. divulged this), and as he
was a pleasant young man who invited me to
dinner next week, I allowed myself to be
influenced by him.  He gave me a lot of little
pamphlets with the courses and the hours at
which they come marked in red ink.  I 've
forgotten what some of them are, as we have n't
had any real lectures yet—just rigmaroles
about what books to buy.

For the first few days the whole college
and all the streets and buildings near it seemed
to be in such confusion that I couldn't walk
a block without feeling terribly excited—the
way I used to feel when I was a kid, and we
were all going to the State fair or the
circus, and mamma would insist on our eating
luncheon although we did n't want a thing.
Along the sidewalk in the Square there was
a barricade of trunks so high that you could n't
see over it, to say nothing of huge mounds of
travelling bags and dress-suit cases and
queer-shaped leather things, with banjos and
mandolins and guitars and golf-sticks in them.
And from morning till night there were always
at least four or five fellows telling the
expressmen that it was "perfectly absurd;" that
they simply had to have their trunks immediately;
that the service was abominable, and
that the whole place was a hundred and fifty
years behind the times, anyhow.  All of which
the expressmen may or may not have agreed
with, for they hardly ever answered back, and
just went on digging steamer trunks and
hatboxes out of the ruins and slamming them into
wagons to make room for the loads that kept
arriving every little while from town.

It was very interesting to watch so many
fellows of my own age or a little older
hurrying about or standing in groups talking and
laughing and looking glad to be here.  But
at the same time it was sort of unsatisfactory
and hopeless.  I didn't like to stay in my
room much of the time, as I had a feeling (I
have n't got over it yet) that if I did I might
miss something.  Yet, when I went out, I
had so few things to do that, unless I took a
walk—which of course leads one away from
the excitement—there was n't much point in
my being around at all.  No one stuck his
head from an upper window in the Yard and
called out, "Ay-y-y-y-y, Tommy Wood, come
up here," when *I* passed by; and no one
slipped up behind me, and put his hands over
my eyes and waited for me to guess who it
was, because, with the exception of
Mr. Duggie and Dick Benton and Berrisford, I
didn't know a soul.  I often saw Mr. Duggie
in the Square, but as he was always with a
crowd or striding along in a great hurry, and
being stopped every few feet by some one who
asked him questions that made him laugh and
run away, I got a chance to speak to him only
once.  He nodded his head and smiled in a
professional kind of way without in the least
remembering who I was.  Dick Benton I
did n't have any hesitation in going right up
to, as at home I had heard him solemnly
promise mamma that he would look out for
me and keep his eye on me.  Of course I
don't expect him to do this; but I confess I
did feel sort of disappointed for a minute
when he said: "Well, Wood" (he calls me
Tommy at home), "when did you arrive?
Getting settled?  Got your courses picked
out?  Awful bore, is n't it?  Well, here 's my
car—going to meet some people in town and
am late now.  How 's Mrs. Wood?  So glad.
Hunt me up when you 're settled.  So long."  He
swung himself on a passing car and I
turned away and stared at a shop window.  I
must have stood there several minutes before
I realized it was a bakery, and that there was
absolutely nothing to look at behind the glass
except three loaves of bread and a dish of
imitation ice cream that had n't been dusted for
weeks (it has just this minute occurred to me
for the first time that I must have been
homesick that day and the next.  Isn't it queer, I
didn't know what was the matter with me?)  I
bet I can describe every article in every
shop window in the Square; for there was
nothing for me to do the first few days except
to walk up and down and pretend I was going
somewhere.  Of course I tried to get the
books the various instructors told me about;
but every time I asked for them at the three
bookstores I found either that the last one
had just been sold or that they had n't arrived yet.

Mrs. Muldooney's tables were unfortunately
full when I applied and I have been eating
around at the most ridiculous places—ice-cream
parlors, and dairy restaurants where
you sit on high stools and grab things,
because you can't get over the feeling that a
conductor will stick his head in the door
pretty soon and say, "All Abo-urrrd."

On Bloody Monday night the Freshmen
reception took place.  I scarcely know how
to touch on that event, as my part in it (or
rather in what followed) was so unexpectedly
prominent and terrible.

The old college men at home had let drop
all kinds of mysterious hints about Bloody
Monday.  In their time, apparently, it was
the custom for the upper-classmen to send
grewsome notices to the Freshmen, telling
them what would happen if they did n't have
a punch in their rooms on that occasion.
These warnings were written in blood and
began and ended with a skull and cross-bones.
Then in the evening there was a rush in the
Yard between the Freshmen and Sophomores.
The old graduates knew perfectly well that
the punches had been given up long ago; but
I don't think they liked to admit it even to
themselves—although they do groan a good
deal about college days not being what they
used to be.  From what they said I could not
tell whether there really were such things
nowadays or not, so I wrote a little note to
Mr. Duggie and left it on the stairs, where the
postman puts our letters, asking him what to
do if I got a notice, and if there was going to
be any rush.  He answered: "The custom, I
am sorry to say, is *ausgespielt*; it must have
been great sport.  As for the rush—theoretically
we don't have it.  By the way, my name
(Mrs. Chester to the contrary notwithstanding)
is not Mr. Duggie, but Douglas Sherwin."

At that time I did n't know what the second
sentence of his note meant, but I understand
now; it dawned on me during the speeches at
the reception.  In some mysterious, indescribable
way it was communicated to me as I sat
there in the crowded theatre.  Whether it
came to me most from my classmates—packed
into the pew-like seats and standing
in rows against the wall—or from the
professors who spoke on the stage, I can't say.
I simply became aware of the fact that
something was going to happen—something that
wasn't on the program.  It was in the air—it
made me restless, and I could n't help thinking
of that sultry afternoon out West when the
seven pack-horses stampeded just as we were
about to start; I knew the little devils were
going to do something and they knew it, too,
for they all began to buck at the same instant.
But I hadn't said anything about it—and
neither had they.

It was just like that while the speeches of
welcome were being made in Sanders Theatre.
They were fine speeches; they really did
make you welcome and part of it all—in a
way you hadn't thought of before.  You
couldn't help being proud that you "belonged,"
and after the President had spoken
and the fellow next to me yelled in my ear (he
had to yell, the cheering was so loud), "He 's
a great man, all right," I felt all over that
he was a great man—everybody did.  But
nevertheless, there was something else tingling
through the noise and excitement that we felt
just as much.  The professors themselves felt
it.  The elaborate way in which every one of
them ignored the subject of Bloody Monday
was almost pathetic.  The Dean in his speech
ignored it so radiantly that the audience
actually laughed.  Theoretically as (Douglas
Sherwin had said) there would be no rush;
the speeches made one quite ashamed to think
of such a thing.

I was n't there when it started, for after the
speeches I went with the crowd into the great
dining-hall to be received.  It would be nice,
I thought, to be introduced to the
distinguished men and to get to know some of my
classmates.  Every one was trying to move
toward the further left-hand corner of the vast
place, and I soon found myself hemmed in and
carried—oh, so slowly—along with the tide.
It was very hot, and as I am not particularly
tall I would more than once have given a good
deal to be out in the fresh night air; but the
thought of shaking hands with the President
and the gentleman who invented plane
geometry (I did n't know whether he had anything
to do with solid or not; I never studied it),
and another gentleman (a humorist) who wrote
a book and called it The Easy Greek Reader,
cheered me up.  I knew, too, that mamma
would be glad to hear I had talked to these
men.  But when, after at least half an hour
of waiting and pushing, I reached the corner
of the room, I discovered that it was n't the
distinguished men we had all along been
gasping and struggling for; it was the ice cream.
The distinguished men were lined up away
across the room all alone; if it had been
rumored beforehand that they were indisposed
with the plague, they could n't have been much
more detached.  Every now and then some
young fellow—probably an upperclassman—would
snatch a Freshman from the throng,
say something in his ear (it looked as if he
were murmuring, "They 're all perfectly
harmless—only you mustn't prod them or throw
things in the cage)", and march him up to
be introduced.  I watched these proceedings
awhile, and then, as the ice cream in the
meanwhile had given out, I left and started to walk
to my room by way of the Yard.

A sound of confused cheering reached me
the moment I got outside, and when I passed
through the gate I could see down the long
quadrangle what seemed to be a battle of
will-o'-the-wisps—a swaying, shifting, meeting,
parting, revolving myriad of flickering lights
and lurid faces.  I ran until I reached the
edge of the crowd, and stood for a minute or
two staring and listening.  The fellows were
surging wildly up and down and across the
Yard with torches in their hands, cheering and
singing.  Whenever enough men got together,
they would lower their torches and charge
the whole length of the Yard—amid a howl
of resentment—like a company of lancers.
Then by the time they had turned to plough
back again, another group would have formed,
which usually met the first one half-way with
a terrible roar and a clash of tin torches,—a
drench of kerosene and a burst of flame.  Two
German bands that never stopped playing the
"Blue Danube" and the "Washington Post"
were huddled at either end of the Yard.  Now
and then a sort of tidal wave of lights and faces
and frantic hands would swell rapidly toward
them, lap them up, engulf them, and then
go swirling back again to the middle.  But
they never stopped playing,—even when they
became hopelessly scattered and horribly
reunited.

I saw two policemen fluttering distractedly
on the brink—pictures of conscious
inefficiency—and felt sorry for the poor things.
As I was standing there wondering where I
could get a torch, a slim middle-aged man
with an iron-gray beard bustled up to them,
and the three held a sort of hurried consultation.
It ended by the iron-gray man's (he
was a professor) suddenly leaving them and
mounting the steps of University Hall.  His
expression as he turned to face the crowd was
the kind that tries its best to be persuasive and
popular and tremendously resolute all at once,
but only succeeds in being wan and furtive.
He filled his lungs and began to talk, I
suppose, as loud as he could; yet all I heard was
an occasional despairing "Now, fellows
... It seems to me, fellows ... Don't you think
it would be better..."

No one paid any attention to him, however,
and in an incredibly short time the crowd had
crushed itself as far away as it could into the
quadrangle's lower end.  I made my way over
there, and as I was pushing into the thick of
things a man next to me exclaimed to no one in
particular: "They've sent for Duggie Sherwin,
the captain of the team, as a last resort—he's
going to say something from the porch
of Matthews."  I saw I never could get near
Matthews by trying to forge straight ahead;
so, as I wanted to hear Mr. Duggie (I hadn't
known until that minute what he was), I
extricated myself and ran around the edge of the
crowd.  Even then I wasn't very near, and,
although I could n't hear a word he said, I
could see him—standing on a chair—towering
above everybody and smiling a little as if
he enjoyed it.  I didn't know what he said;
to tell the truth, I don't think anybody did,
except perhaps the men right around him.
Yet in about a minute two or three fellows
began to yell, "All over," "The stuff is off,"
and "*Now* will you be good;" and the crowd
fell back a little, attempting to spread out.
The spell somehow was broken; for owing
to Mr. Duggie's wonderful influence we would
have dispersed quietly if it had n't been for
that flighty idiot, Berrisford.

I had picked up a torch that some one
had thrown away and was moving along
with it when Berrisford dashed up to me
with something round—about the size of a
football—wrapped in a newspaper.  One
of the sleeves of his coat was gone; he was
breathing hard and seemed to be fearfully
excited.

"It's your turn now," he gasped, and thrust
the parcel into my hand.

"Why—what is it?—what are we going
to do?  The rush is over," I answered, for I
did n't understand.

"Of course the rush is over—stupid," he
said hurriedly.  "We're playing a game
now—'The King's Helmet'—and you 're It.  I
*was* It—but I'm not any more; you are now.
Hurry up, for Heaven's sake, or they'll get it.
Here they come—run for all you 're worth;
it may mean a lot for the class."  This last
and the fact of my catching sight just then of
some men running toward me decided me.  I
clutched the parcel to my side and scudded
down the Yard.  Every one fell back to let
me pass, and my progress was followed by
screams of delight.  I never had attracted so
much attention before, and from the things
that were shouted at me as I flew along I
knew I was doing well.  At the end of the
Yard I ran smash into a building, but although
somewhat dazed I managed to hang on to the
parcel, turn, and look back.  The only person
pursuing me, apparently, was a bareheaded
policeman—and he was alarmingly near.  But
I managed to pass him, and on my return trip
I noticed that I received even a greater
ovation than the one the fellows had given me at
first.  I did n't know what it all meant, and I
was nearly dead, and suddenly tripped,
staggered, and fell into the arms of a second
policeman who handled me very roughly
and seized Berrisford's package.  It
contained the helmet of the bareheaded one,
who arrived in a moment exceedingly
exhausted, but able, nevertheless, to shake his
fist in my face.

The parade to the police station must have
been several blocks long—I heard about it
afterward.  First there was me with an
escort of two officers, all the muckers in
Cambridge, and the Freshman class in a body, who
started a collection on the way over with
which to bail me out.  Then there was a
German band playing the "Blue Danube,"
and after that "a vast concourse" (as Berrisford
called it) of Sophomores, upperclassmen,
and law students with another German
band playing the "Washington Post" in their
midst.

I was almost paralyzed with fright, and
my head ached dreadfully from the blow I
had given it against the building; but
although I did n't show it I could n't help
feeling furious at Berrisford.  He stayed right
behind me on the way over and kept saying
at intervals,—

"It's all right, old man.  Don't worry—there's
no use worrying; just leave everything to me."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`III`:

.. class:: center large bold

   III

.. vspace:: 2

Perhaps, after all, my troubles were
for the best.  It was not my fault
that I fell into the hands of the law;
nothing was further from my thoughts
than a desire to be disorderly.  Of course the
teasing I have had to endure is pretty hard,
and it is most annoying to acquire a nickname
at the outset (everybody calls me "Trusting
Thomas" or "Tommy Trusting"), and
although I realize now that I was pretty "easy"
to do what Berrisford told me to, my
conscience has been untroubled from the first.
That, after all, is the main thing.

Berrisford, I think, would have tried (as he
said) "to smooth it all over" at the police
station, but very fortunately the arrival of the
Regent and my adviser and the iron-gray man
at once took the matter out of his hands.  I
don't know what they did to the officers, but I
was quickly transferred from the police station
to the room of my adviser.  It was more or
less impossible to return the money that had
been collected from the class to bail me out
with, so just as I left a fellow with a loud
voice proposed amid great cheering to give
it to the Freshman Eleven.

There had been something spectacular and
brilliant about my progress from the Yard to
the lock-up that, terrified though I was, I
could not help appreciating in an abject,
wretched sort of a way.  But the silent walk
down a back street to the hall in which my
adviser lives was just common or garden
melancholy.  The sidewalk was broad, so we
swung along four abreast.  No one followed
us, of course, and we went the entire
distance in almost unbroken silence.  Once the
Regent cleared his throat and said in hard,
cheerful, deliberate tones,—

"I see by the evening paper that Japan
will not accede to the request of the Powers."  No
one answered for about a minute, and I
began to fear that neither my adviser nor the
iron-gray man would take advantage of the
opportunity to exclaim, "What a wonderful
little people they are!"  I was vaguely
disappointed; for of course when the Japanese
are mentioned one instinctively waits for
somebody to say this.  However, just as I
was beginning to lose hope and had almost
made up my mind to risk the comment myself,
the iron-gray man burst out with, "What a
remarkable little people they are!" and my
foolish heart was reassured!

I must say that when we reached our
destination and the inquisition began, they
were—all three of them—mighty fair and square.
The circumstances of my capture were
decidedly against me, and my defence, I
realized, sounded simply foolish.  (At one point
my adviser jumped up abruptly and closed
a window; I think he was afraid he was
going to laugh.)  There was nothing for me
to do but tell my story: how I had watched
the rush from the bottom of the steps; how
I had gone over to hear Mr. Duggie's speech,
and how Berrisford (I didn't give his name,
however) had come up to me with the helmet
in a newspaper and told me we were playing
a game and that I was It.  I felt very earnest
and tremulous when I began, but by the time
I finished I could n't help wanting to shut
a few windows myself.  That—out of the
whole howling mob—they had succeeded in
seizing one miserable, little half-dead
Freshman who had taken no part in the actual
disturbance, struck me as being like something
in an imbecile farce.  It impressed the others,
I think, in much the same way, although the
iron-gray man, after a moment of silence,
said: "Do you really expect us to believe
all this?"

"No, sir," I answered; "I don't see how
you conscientiously can."  But they decided
to believe it, nevertheless.  My adviser asked
me if I knew who gave me the helmet, and
on learning that I did, he intimated that he
would like to know the man's name.  I
preferred, however, not to tell; and they were
very nice about that, too.  (I shouldn't have
told even if they had chosen to be
disagreeable about it.)

As far as I am concerned I don't believe
any action will be taken.  There is no end,
though, to the ominous rumors of what the
Faculty will do in general.  One day we
hear that the two lower classes won't be
allowed to play football this year, and the
next, that all the Freshmen are to be put
on what is called "probation;" everybody,
in an indefinite sort of way, is very indignant.
To tell the truth, I don't see why; but as
all the rest are, I am, too.

Berrisford has been very nice ever since
that Monday night.  At first I think it was
a desire to "make amends" that caused him
to spend so much time in my room and ask
me to do so many things with him and his
friends; but of course he never put it that
way.  He was very much worried when I
told him that my adviser and the Regent had
tried to find out who had given me the helmet,
and he wanted to rush and confess.  It took
me a good while to persuade him not to.  In
fact, I did n't persuade him exactly, but only
got him to agree at length to let Mr. Duggie
decide.  Mr. Duggie thought the matter over
for a moment, and said that as my refusal to
tell hadn't, so far as he could see, made me
a martyr on the altar of friendship, he thought
it would be unnecessarily theatrical for
Berrisford to give himself up.

One day Berrisford asked me where I ate,
and when I told him I had been trying the
places in and about the Square, he said:
"Why, you silly thing—why don't you join
my crowd at Mrs. Brown's?"  He spoke as
if the idea had just occurred to him, but that
same morning when he introduced me to a
man who came up to his room, the fellow
said: "I hear you 're coming to our table.
That's good."  So it must have all been
arranged beforehand.  Berrisford 's awfully
generous and impulsive and kind, only he's
so scatter-brained and eccentric you never
know what he 's going to do next.

I 've done no end of interesting things since
I last wrote in my diary.  I bought a song
called "Love's Sorrow" at a music store, had
the man play it for me five or six times,
learned the words and then attempted to sing
it at the trial of Glee Club candidates.  I 'm
sure I sang all the notes and I remembered
the words without a mistake; but something
was wrong.  For after I stopped singing the
fellow at the piano went on playing the
accompaniment several minutes.  And when I
took my seat I heard one of the judges
murmur as he wrote something on a slip of paper:
"Fourth heat; Tommy Trusting shows heels
to the bunch and wins in a canter."  They
told me I would see my name in the "Crimson"
when they wanted me for rehearsal.  It
hasn't appeared yet and that was some time ago.

Then one morning I borrowed a jersey and
some moleskins from a fellow at our table and
went over to Soldiers' Field to try for the
football team.  First we lined up for short
sprints of twenty yards or so; then they
divided us into squads and made us practise
falling on the ball (I found chloroform
liniment very good for this; but Berrisford
maintains that there's nothing like osteopathy).
Afterward we practised place kicks, drop
kicks and punts; candidates for tackle were
lined up against one another and tried
breaking through; quarter-backs and centre-rushes
practised passing and snapping back the ball.
I tried everything—even the dummy.

The dummy is an imitation man in football
clothes, suspended by pulley from a wire
stretched between posts twenty-five or thirty
feet apart.  It is weighted by sand in a bag
that is supposed to slide up toward the pulley
as you tackle the thing and grind its nose in
the dirt; only it does n't.  What actually
happens is that some one pulls the dummy
rapidly from one post to the other, and while
the creature is spinning through the air you
hurl yourself at it, cling to it desperately with
your finger-nails and teeth for about the tenth
of a second, and are then flicked off—like
a drop of water from a grindstone—into the
next lot.  When you return, the coach says
he thinks "that will do for this morning" and
enrolls your name in "Squad H."  The
members of this squad—it's the largest—are
told to report for practice when they
see their names in the "Crimson."  All the
others have been out every day or so; but
although I've read the "Crimson" carefully
every morning I haven't seen Squad H
notified once.

I 've got so that I don't have to look at
the printed schedule any more to see the
days and hours of my various lectures.  I
just go to the right one when the bell rings
as if I had been doing it all my life.  In
fact the college world has settled down to
a routine of lectures and recitations,
pleasantly broken by football games on
Wednesdays and Saturdays, dining in town now and
then, and the theatre afterward.  Come to
think of it, I 've been to the theatre rather
oftener than "now and then."  At home there
are only two; and the things we have
there—except once in a long time—are pretty
fierce.  But here there are about seven or
eight big ones, and all sorts of continuous
performance places, dime museums and
"nickelodeons" besides.  You simply have
to go pretty often or you miss something good
that everybody 's talking about.  Berrisford
goes every night.

I know now what Mr. Duggie meant when
he said my allowance would not be big enough.
He said it was generous; there, however, I
disagree with him.  I 'm not in the *least*
extravagant, but papa does n't seem to
appreciate how many unexpected things happen
that cost money.  There was my new overcoat,
for instance.  Berrisford was having
one made, and I realized when I saw him
trying it on at the tailor's (it's a great, soft,
loose thing; the kind all the fellows are
wearing now) that my old one wouldn't do
at all.  In fact I had n't cared to put mine
on, although the wind has been pretty sharp
once or twice on the way home from town
late at night.  The tailor said that now
was the time to get a coat like Berrisford's,
as it would be much more expensive
later in the season; so I ordered one.
In a certain way it was real economy to
do so.  Then, I 've gone to town in the
afternoon several times with some of the
fellows who are at our table and stayed at
the last moment to dinner and the theatre.
I did n't have enough money with me to do
all this and was n't going to at first; but I
found that the others did n't, either, and
expected to charge their dinners at the hotel.
You can even charge theatre tickets if you
get them from an agent and pay fifty cents
more.  It's very convenient.  I bought a
few pictures for my study—it looked so bare
(Berrisford has all sorts of queer, interesting
prints and embroideries on his walls that he
brought back from abroad); and I simply
had to get some more chairs.  For I had
only one (the whirligig in front of the desk
doesn't count; it's too uncomfortable), which
made it embarrassing when four or five men
dropped in.  Then I had a dozen shirts made
at a place just off Tremont Street.  The
shirts mamma got me at home are very nice
and all that; but they're not the kind the
fellows are wearing here.  Everybody has
colored ones—pale pinks and blues, or white
with a little stripe of something running
through them.  Mine were all white.  I
really did n't need more than six new ones,
I suppose, but the man said they were
cheaper by the dozen.  He showed me some
really beautiful neckties that had arrived that
day from London.  Against the materials I
had picked out for the shirts they were
stunning, and as they weren't dear—considering
the duty, the originality of the designs and
the heavy silks they were made of—I let
him send me five of them.  There were the
prettiest old pair of brass andirons and a
fender in the window of an "antique" shop
on Beacon Street that I used to stop and
covet whenever I went into town.  They
were just the things for my fireplace, which
looked rather shabby—although comfortable.
I didn't think I could afford them at first;
but one day when I happened to be passing
everything in the window was for sale at a
discount of ten per cent.  The man was
very kind and obliging and let me charge them.

They let you do that at all the shops, it
seems; but I do think they might have a
little more decency about sending in their
bills.  The first of November is three days
off—and yet I 've heard from every cent
I 've spent.  I don't quite know what to do
about it, as my allowance—even when it
comes—won't be nearly enough to pay for
everything; and of course I 'll have to keep
some of it for my board and washing and
schoolbooks, and all the other little expenses
one can't very well steer clear of.  Before
going to bed the last two nights I 've spent
an hour or more in itemizing everything and
adding it all up, and then checking off the
people who have to be paid immediately,
the ones who could wait a short time, and
the ones about whom there is no particular
hurry.  This makes the financial outlook a
little more possible, but not much.  And yet
Duggie had the *nerve* to say he thought my
allowance *generous*!

Another matter that I try not to think of is
the fact that very soon we are to be given what
is called "hour examinations" in all our
studies.  I never imagined they would come
so—well, abruptly; when we began it seemed
as if we would take much longer to learn
enough to be examined in.  To tell the
truth—with the exception of my English
course—I haven't become deeply interested as yet in
the lectures.  After the first few times I gave
up trying to take notes; everything I wrote
seemed so unimportant.  And I haven't done
any of the reading, either.  They expect you
to do a lot of reading at home or in the
library, and hold you responsible for it in the
examination.  The man Berrisford and I have
in history is a dreamy old thing who goes
into thoughtful trances every now and then
in the middle of a sentence, while three
hundred and fifty stylographic pens hang in
mid-air waiting to harpoon the next word.  One
day, after telling us to read a certain work
on the feudal system, he added in a kind of
vague, helpless way,—

"We haven't the book in the library and
I believe it is out of print, so I don't think
you will be able to buy it anywhere; but it's
a singularly perfect exposition of the subject
and I strongly advise you all to read it."  They
say he knows more about fen-drainage
in the thirteenth century than any other living
person except one dreadfully old man in
Germany who 's beginning to forget about it.

We were instructed to make ourselves
familiar with another work that is in the
library, and told that without a knowledge
of it we could not expect to accomplish much
in the examination.

"I don't suppose many of you will read
every word of it," the old man said,
"although it will do you a vast amount of good
if you do."  I privately made up my mind
to plough through the whole thing—even if it
were in two volumes; I thought it would
please him.  So, the other day as it was
raining and there was n't anything in
particular going on, Berrisford suggested that we
run over to the library and glance through
the book.  We'd never been in the library
before and had to ask one of the pages at
the delivery desk where the history alcove
was.  He couldn't attend to us at first, as
there was an angry old gentleman with a
very red face prancing up and down in front
of the desk exclaiming: "It's an outrage—an
outrage!  I shall certainly speak to the
President about this before the sun goes down
upon my wrath!"  Several other pages were
cowering behind the desk, and a terrified
librarian was murmuring: "I can have it here
the first thing in the morning, sir—the first
thing; can you wait that long?"

"But I want it *now*!" the old gentleman
declared; "I shall *not* wait until the first
thing in the morning.  You 're preposterous.
It's an outrage!"  He was so emphatic and
peevish that some of the students in the big
reading-room pushed open the swinging doors
and stuck their heads in to see what the
trouble was.

Well, Berrisford and I found out from the
page that he is the greatest philosopher of
modern times.  He had come in to get a
book that hadn't been asked for in fourteen
years, and had just learned that it had been
carted away to the crypt of Appleton Chapel
to make room for something that seemed to
be rather more universal in its appeal.

The page took us to the alcove we were
looking for, and Berrisford found our book
almost immediately.  My back was toward
him when he discovered it, and I turned
around only because of his unusual and
prolonged silence.  He was standing petrified in
front of eighteen fat, dog-eared volumes, with
his big eyes blinking like an owl confronted
by a dazzling light.

"Is that it?" I inquired after a moment
in a cold, hushed voice.  By way of answer
he merely rolled his eyes and swallowed as
if his throat were dry.

"It's a masterly little thing—isn't it?"
he at length managed to say.  Then without
further comment we removed the volumes
from the shelf and piled them on a table in
the alcove.  They almost covered it.  When
we had finished, Berrisford, with a grim look
about his under lip, opened one of them and
began to read.  I did the same.  It was just
three o'clock.  We read for an hour without
speaking or looking at each other, and at the
end of that time Berrisford took a pencil from
his pocket and began to make calculations on
the back of a letter.  At last he looked up
as if to demand my attention.

"I have read this book conscientiously—footnotes
and everything—for an hour," he
said; he was deliberate and there was an
air of finality in his tone.  "I find that I
have completed five pages—the meaning of
which has since escaped me.  Now, as there
are four hundred pages in this volume and
as many, presumably, in every one of the
other seventeen, it will take me one thousand
four hundred and forty hours—sixty days,
or two months—to 'familiarize' myself with
the whole set.  If we sit here night and day
for the next two months without taking a
second off to eat, sleep, or bathe, we shall
have glanced through this superficial
pamphlet and pleased the old man."

"I think it has stopped raining," I replied.

We have a new inmate at our house.  I
woke up one morning hearing such a strange,
wild, sad little song coming from my study.
At first I thought I must have dreamed it,
but even after I sat up in bed and knew I
was awake, the sound continued.  It was
the queerest, most barbaric little refrain, all
in a minor key with words I could n't make
out, and was the sort of thing one could
imagine a "native" of some kind crooning
to himself in the middle of a rice-field.  I
listened to it awhile—almost afraid to go
in; but when it began to grow louder, and
then was interrupted from time to time by
the most horrible gurgling and strangling
noises, I jumped up and opened my study
door.  At the same moment Berrisford and
Mrs. Chester appeared at the other door.
In the middle of the room was a bristling
brown thing with pointed ears and muzzle
and shrewd little eyes.  It had absurdly big
feet and looked like a baby wolf.  Something
that seemed to be a piece of leather
was dangling from its mouth.  Berrisford
threw himself on the floor, exclaiming: "My
darling—my Saga—what is it—speak to
me!" and pulled gently at the piece of
leather.  The brute rolled his eyes, gagged
a little, and let him have it.  "Why, it's
the thumb of a glove," Berrisford said,
holding up his prize for us to look at, "and he
dess tould n't eat it 'tause it had a nassy tin
button wivetted on uzzer end, so he tould n't,"
he added to the animal.

"That doesn't seem to have stood in the
way of his eating the other one," I remarked
coldly, for there was enough of the chewed
thing in Berrisford's hand to enable me to
identify the remains of a pair of very
expensive gloves I had bought two days before.

"Heavens!—do you suppose he really
did?" Berrisford asked in great alarm.  "Do
you think it will hurt him?"

"Of course he ate it.  I don't see it
anywhere, and they were both together on that
chair.  I hope it *will* hurt him," I said.

"It is n't like you, Wood, to talk that
way about a poor, lonely, foreign thing who 's
never been in a house before in all his life,"
Berrisford muttered resentfully.

"Well, he certainly do make the most
outlandish sounds," Mrs. Chester interposed.

"It isn't outlandish—it's Icelandic,"
Berrisford replied.  "He came all the way from
Reikiavik on a Gloucester fishing-smack.  I
bought him at Gloucester yesterday for a
dollar—didn't I, my booful Saga; ess he
did.  And he dess chewed all de checks often
de trunks in dat nassy old baggage car on
de way up—didn't he, darlin'?  And dat
horrid baggage man was dess crazy 'tause
he did n't know where to put off any baggage
and had to delay de twain like evvysing."  Berrisford
became quite incoherent after this,
so I returned to my bedroom and slammed
the door.

I don't think it's right for any one man to
inflict a whole community with a beast like
Saga, and I 've told Berrisford so several
times; but he always says: "You seem to
forget that I suffer as much, if not more,
than any one.  Do you ever hear *me*
complain when he wallows in the mud and then
snuggles up in *my* bed?  Was there any
outcry when he ate *my* gloves and *my* patent
leather shoes and *my* Russia leather
notebook with hundreds of exhaustive, priceless
notes on the first part of 'Paradise Lost'?
Did I make a violent scene—the way you
and Duggie do every day—when I gave the
tea for my sister and found him just before
the people came—behind the bathtub in a
state of coma from having eaten thirty-six
perfectly *delicious* lettuce sandwiches?  You
might at least admit that you think he 's just
as distinguished and quaint-looking as he can
be; because, of course, you do think so.
You know you love him to follow you through
the Square—with everybody turning to
look—you know you do.  Does n't he, *mon
tou-tou, mon bébé, mon chien de race*?"

One of the fellows at the table invited us
to dine at his house in town last Sunday
evening.  Berrisford was to meet me at a
hotel in the Back Bay at a quarter past seven
and we were to go together.  I took a long
walk that afternoon, and the air was so
delicious and the autumn foliage in the country
so beautiful that I didn't realize how late it
was until I looked at a clock in a jeweller's
window on the way back.  I hurried to my
room to dress, and as I opened the front
door my heart suddenly sank—for upstairs
I heard Saga chanting his terrible little
refrain.  We have all come to dread that
sound at our house, for it invariably means
the loss of a cherished object to somebody.
Berrisford calls it the "Icelandic
Hunger and Death Motif."  I ran upstairs
and found Saga eating one of the tails of
my dress-coat which I had hung over the
back of a chair in my study to get the
creases out.  He had apparently first torn
it off, then divided it into small pieces, and
was consuming them one by one as I came
in.  I was already late for dinner, and as
it was Sunday evening there was no one in
town from whom I could borrow another coat.
For a moment I could n't decide whether to
sit down and cry or to commit Sagacide.





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   IV

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Of course I went to the dinner—and
what is more, I arrived almost on
time.  I can't give myself any
particular credit for this achievement,
however, as it was luck, pure and
simple, that got me there.  There is no
doubt about it, I am marvellously lucky; I
seem to have a knack of falling on my feet,
and although Duggie has taken to worrying
about my "shiftlessness" (as he is pleased
to call it) in money matters, and the calmness
with which I regard the approaching examinations
and the academic side of college in
general, I have a feeling that everything will
come out all right somehow.

It would sound heartless, I suppose, to
speak as if I thought it fortunate that Jerry
Brooks had been stricken with appendicitis
just in time to get me into the dinner, if it
were n't for the fact that he is recovering
so splendidly.  (I went up to the hospital
this afternoon to inquire.)  But under the
circumstances it is hard not to look upon his
sudden seizure rather cheerfully—as I know
he will enjoy hearing about it when he is well
enough to see people.  I was in despair that
evening when his roommate came clattering
up our tin steps and pounded on Berrisford's
door; but the instant I ran into the hall and
saw him my heart gave a great throb of
hope.  He had his dress clothes on; but he
didn't look in the least like a person on the
way to dine in town—and I felt with
indescribable relief that, if this were the case,
I could have his coat.

"Isn't Berrisford here?  Has he gone?"
he exclaimed excitedly.  (I had never seen
him before—although I knew his chum,
Brooks, slightly.)  "We were going to dine
at the same house in town, but my roommate,
Jerry Brooks, got sick just as I was starting
and I can't go, and two doctors have taken
him up to the hospital, and the Hemingtons
haven't a telephone, and I thought I'd let
Berrisford know, for, of course——"

Well, his coat didn't fit me in a way to
make a tailor expire with envy exactly, but
I was mighty glad to get it—and anyhow,
I think people are inclined to take a
dress-suit for granted.  Berrisford attached no
importance whatever to the fact that his
beast had ruined my coat, but merely said
reproachfully: "I hope you let him have
the pieces to play with; he 'll be so lonely
this evening with no one in the house except
Mrs. Chester."

I have mentioned the fact that of late
Duggie has given intimations of having me "on
his mind."  Of course when a man like
Duggie finds time to care one way or the
other about what he thinks you ought to
do, it's a great honor.  He is the busiest,
hardest worked, and most influential person
I ever knew.  He belongs to no end of clubs,
and besides being captain of the team he's
at the head of a lot of other college things.
Almost every day there's a reporter or two
lying in wait for him out here to ask about
the team, and whether he approves of the
athletic committee's latest mandate, and what
he thinks about all sorts of things in regard
to which he hasn't any opinion whatever—and
would n't express it even if he had.
Besides all this he manages in some way
to study awfully hard and to get high marks
in everything he takes.  Furthermore, he's
in training most of the year, and just now
he has to go to bed every night except
Saturday at half-past nine or ten.  He's almost
always amiable and kind to people, and I
think he's great.  I can't help liking the
fact that he drops into my room and sits
down and talks the way he does.  Some of
the fellows at our table found him there the
other day and were scared to death.  But
at the same time I have a feeling that he
does n't think Berrisford and I are just what
we ought to be.  As if people could be
different from the way they 're made!  I know
that sometimes he would like to say things
that, after all, he never quite does.

Of Berrisford, I 'm sure, he doesn't
approve at all.  I don't, of course, believe for
a moment that he was anything but amused
at the way Berrisford conjugated the French
verb for him the other day; but as it is the
sort of thing that Berri takes an uncontrollable
joy in doing, I think Duggie has an
idea that he is n't good for anything else.

Duggie—I can't imagine why—has never
studied French until this year.  He enrolled
in a class only a week or so ago, and though
it's merely an extra course with him and he
could get his degree just as easily without it,
he goes at it as if it were all-important.
Berrisford knows French as well as he knows
English, and volunteered to help him with his
exercises.  The other afternoon Duggie ran
into Berri's room and said: "I 've an idea
that we're going to have '*je suis bon*' in
French to-day; I wish you would write out
a few tenses for me so I can learn them on
the way over—I simply have n't had a minute
to myself for two days."  Naturally
Berrisford seemed delighted to help him, and
gravely wrote something on a piece of paper
that Duggie carried off just as the bell was
ringing.  When he got into the Yard and
slowed up to look at it, this is what he
found:

   |  *Je suis bon*
   |  *Tu es bones*
   |  *Il est beans*
   |  *Nous sommes bonbons*
   |  *Vous êtes bonbonniéres*
   |  *Ils sont bon-ton.*
   |

Of course he did n't actually care; but I
don't think the incident helped in Duggie's
opinion to throw any very dazzling light on
Berrisford's really serious qualities.  Duggie
regarded it, I 'm sure, as about on a par with
the way we get out of sitting through our
history lecture.

One day when the dreamy old gentleman
who conducts the history course was trying
to prove that Charlemagne either was or
was n't surprised (I 've forgotten which) when
the Pope suddenly produced a crown and
stuck it on his head, a ripple of mirth swept
gently across the room, very much as a light
breeze ruffles the surface of a wheatfield.
No one laughed out loud; but when between
three and four hundred men all smile at once,
it makes a curious little disturbance I can't
quite describe.  The old gentleman looked
up from his notes, took off his spectacles,
chose one of the other pairs lying on the
desk in front of him (he has three or four
kinds that he uses for different distances), and
inspected the room.  But by the time he had
got himself properly focused there was nothing
to see; the fellow who had made every one
giggle by climbing out of the window and
down the fire-escape was probably a block
away.  So, after a troubled, inquiring look
from side to side, the dear old man changed
his spectacles again and went on with the
lecture.

Now, although it had never occurred to
any one to crawl down the fire-escape until
that day, every one in our part of the room
has become infatuated with the idea, and
three times a week—shortly after half-past
two—there is a continuous stream of men
backing out the window, down the iron ladder
and into the Yard.  In fact, the struggle to
escape became so universal and there were
so many scraps at the window and in
mid-air on the way down over who should go
first, that Berrisford evolved the idea of
distributing numbers the way they do in
barbershops on Saturday afternoon when everybody
in the world becomes inspired with the desire
to be shaved at the same time.  It works
beautifully; but of late the undertaking is
attended by considerable risk.

At first Professor Kinde stopped lecturing
and fumbled for his other spectacles only
when he heard the class titter; I don't
believe he in the least knew what was going on.
But recently he has become extremely foxy.
Although he has n't spoken of the matter, he
realizes what is happening, and I think the
ambition of his declining years is to catch
somebody in the act of darting toward the
window.  At irregular intervals now, throughout
his lectures, he—apropos of nothing—drops
his notes, seizes a fresh pair of spectacles,
makes a lightning change, and then
peeks craftily about the room while the class
tries hard not to hurt his feelings by
laughing.  Then, disappointed, but with an air
of "I 'll-surely-strike-it-right-next-time," he
changes back again and continues.  The
lectures have become so exciting and fragmentary
that Berrisford and I are torn with the
conflicting desires to stay and see what happens
and to get out into the wonderful autumn
weather.  Usually, however, we leave, and
the last time, just as I was preparing to drop
to the ground, Duggie strode in sight.
Berrisford, half-way down, happened to glance
over his shoulder.  When he saw Duggie he
swung around, struck an Alexandre Dumas
attitude, and exclaimed dramatically,—

"Sire, we have liberated the prisoners, cut
away the portcullis and fired the powder
magazine.  Is 't well?"  Duggie laughed.

"Powder magazines aren't the only things
that get fired around these parts, monsieur,"
he answered as he passed on.

Now, there was nothing disagreeable either
in the remark or the way Duggie made it; he
seemed perfectly good-natured, and, although
in a great hurry, very much amused.  But,
somehow, it was n't quite as if any one else
had said it.  I don't know what "reading
between the lines" is called when there aren't
any lines to read between; but anyhow that's
what I couldn't help doing.  Duggie's little
thrust was made at Berri—but it was
intended for me.  And that 's what I mean
when I say Duggie has me on his mind.  He
would have Berri there, too, if he liked him;
but he does n't.  I think he firmly believes
that he regards us both with the utmost
impartiality; yet I know (this is recorded in all
modesty, merely as a fact) that he likes me,
and that for poor Berri he has no use at
all.  Berrisford is tactless; he had no
business, for instance, to tell Duggie about the
watch.

One Saturday morning when Berrisford had
finished his lectures for the day, and I found
that a cut was to be given in my last one, we
strolled along Massachusetts Avenue, without
really meaning to go anywhere, until we came
to the bridge across the Back Bay.  We
leaned over the rail awhile and watched the
tide clutching viciously at the piers as it
swirled out, and then, farther up, I noticed
a flock of ducks paddling about in a most
delightful little mud-hole left by the falling tide.

"I could hit one of those birdies if I had
a shotgun," I said, closing one eye.  (It just
shows what a trivial remark may sometimes
lead one into.)

"It wouldn't do you any good," Berrisford
yawned; "you couldn't get it."

"I don't see why not.  I could borrow a
boat from the Humane Society and row out,"
I answered, rather irritated by Berrisford's
languid scepticism.

"Well, what on earth would you do with
the poor little beast after you did get him?"
he pursued.

"What do you suppose?" I exclaimed.
"What do people usually do when they shoot
a duck?"

"I think they usually say that they really
hit two, but that the other one managed to
crawl into a dense patch of wild rice growing
near by," Berrisford answered.

"I should have it cooked and then I 'd eat
it," I said, ignoring his remark.

"What an extremely piggish performance!
There would not be enough for any one but
yourself.  I would much rather go into town
with somebody and have one apiece at the
Touraine."

"Oh, Berrisford," I murmured; "this is
so sudden!"

When we reached the other side of the
bridge we got on a passing car, and after we
sat down Berrisford said, "You 'll have to
pay for me; I have n't any money either here
or in Cambridge."  As I had just eight cents
in the world and had taken it for granted that
Berri was going to pay for me, we jumped
out before the conductor came around, and
resumed our walk.

"If you have n't any money and I haven't
any money, I 'm inclined to think the ducks
will not fly well to-day," I mused; for the
last time we had been to the Touraine the
head waiter—a most tiresome person—told
me we could n't charge anything more there
until we paid our bills.

"I suppose you would just sit on the
curbstone and starve," Berrisford sniffed.
And as we walked along I saw that he had
some kind of a plan.  He took me through
one of the queer little alleys with which
Boston is honeycombed and out into a noisy,
narrow, foreign-looking street, lined with
shabby second-hand stores and snuffy
restaurants,—the kind that have red tablecloths.
At first I thought it was Berri's intention
to get luncheon in one of these places,
although I did n't see how even he could
manage it very well on eight cents.
However, I asked no questions.  Suddenly he
stopped and took off his sleeve-links.  Then
we walked on a few steps and went into a
pawnbroker's.

It sounds absurd, but when I discovered
what Berrisford was about to do I felt
curiously excited and embarrassed.  Of course I
knew that lots of people pawn things, but I
had never seen it done before, and like most
of the things you can think about and read
about in cold blood, I found that it made my
heart beat a good deal faster actually to do it.
In fact, I did n't care to do it at all, and told
Berrisford so in an undertone; but he said,—

"Why not?  There 's nothing wrong in it.
You own something more or less valuable and
you happen for the moment to need something
else; why should n't you exchange them?  If
the soiled vampire who runs this place (what's
become of him, anyhow?) would give me two
small roasted ducks and some bread and
butter and currant jelly and two little cups
of coffee and a waiter to serve them, and a
mediæval banquet hall to eat them in, and a
perfectly awful orchestra behind a thicket of
imitation palm-trees to play Hungarian
rhapsodies while we ate—instead of five dollars
and a half, I should be just as well pleased;
because it will amount to about the same
thing in the end."

Just then the proprietor of the shop emerged
from behind a mound of trousers and overcoats
and shuffled toward us very unwillingly, it
seemed to me.  But Berrisford said he was
always like that.

"You can't expect a display of pleasing
emotions for a paltry five per cent a month,"
Berrisford whispered in my ear.  I don't
think, however, that the pawnbroker could
have looked pleasant no matter what per cent
he got.  He took Berri's beautiful sleeve-links
(they 're made of four antique Japanese gold
pieces), went into a sort of glass cage built
around a high desk and a safe, and did all
sorts of queer things to them.  He scratched
the under side of two of the coins with a small
file; then he dabbed some kind of a liquid
that he got out of a tiny bottle on the rough
places and examined them through one of
those inane spool things that jewellers hang
on their eyeballs just before telling you that
you 've busted your mainspring.  Next he
weighed them in a pair of scales that he
fished out of a drawer in the desk, and finally
he held up his claw of a hand with all the
fingers distended, for us to inspect through
the glass.

"Why, you dreadful old man!" Berrisford
exclaimed indignantly.  "You gave me five
and a half last time.  I wouldn't think of
taking less."

For a moment I supposed that the game
was up and we 'd have to walk all the way
back to Cambridge and be too late for
luncheon when we got there; for Berrisford
took his sleeve-links and strolled over to the
door, saying in a loud voice,—

"Come on, Tommy; there 's a better one
across the street."  But just as we were
leaving, "the soiled vampire" made a
guttural sound that Berrisford seemed to
understand, and we went back and got the amount
Berri considered himself entitled to.

"The quality of mercy is a little strained
this morning," he said when Mr. Hirsch went
into the glass cage again to make out the
ticket.  I always had an idea that a pawn
ticket was a piece of blue cardboard—something
like a return theatre ticket.  But it is n't,
at all.  It's simply a thin slip of paper
resembling a check—only smaller.

Well, we had a delightful luncheon.  After
luncheon we thought of going to the matinée
and sitting in the gallery, but Berri all at
once exclaimed, as if the idea were a sort of
inspiration,—

"I 'll tell you what we 'll do; let 's
economize.  I 've always wanted to; they say you
can be awfully nice and contented if you never
spend a cent, but just think noble thoughts."

"We might go and look at the pictures in
the Public Library and then cross over to the
Art Museum," I suggested.  "It's free on
Saturdays, you know."  Berri thought that
would be charming, so we walked up Boylston
Street, stopping at a florist's on the way to
send some American beauties and some violets
to Mrs. Hemington, at whose house we dined
that Sunday night.  (She was thrown out of a
carriage the other day and sprained her thumb,
and we thought we ought to take some notice
of it, as she was very nice about asking us
to come to Sunday luncheon whenever we
wanted to.)

Berrisford did n't care much for the Puvis
de Chavannes pictures in the library,—that is,
after he found out that they were as finished
as they were ever going to be.  At first he
was inclined to think them rather promising,
and said that by the time they got the second
and third coats of paint on they would no
doubt do very nicely.

"But the artist is dead," I explained.
"And anyhow, he always painted like that."

"Why did n't some one speak to him about
it?" said Berri.

"There would n't have been any use; he
painted that way on purpose.  It was his
style—his individuality," I said.

"Do you like it?" he suddenly demanded.
He was looking at me very intently, and I
did n't know just what to say; for although
I 've gone to see the pictures several times, it
never occurred to me to ask myself whether
I really liked them or not.  I supposed—as
every one says they are so fine—that I did.

"I don't mean do you know how much
they cost, or what people said about them in
the backs of magazines when they were first
put up.  What I want to know is—  Does
looking at them give you great pleasure?"

"I think they 're simply preposterous," I
said; and then we went outdoors again and
over to the Art Museum.

We spent the rest of the afternoon there,
sitting in front of a painting by Turner called
The Slave Ship, and listening to what the
people who passed by said about it.  I did n't
think there was very much to it—it's merely
some small, dark brown legs in a storm at sea
with a fire burning.  But the people who
came to look at it murmured all sorts of things
in low, sad voices, and several of them read
long extracts from a book that Berri said was
by Ruskin.  When I asked him how he knew,
he answered that it could n't well be by any
one else.  (A great many people say that
Berri's a fool, but I think he knows an awful lot.)

It makes one tired and hungry to criticise
pictures all afternoon, and when we left the
gallery Berri sat down on the steps and
said he could never walk all the way to
Cambridge in his exhausted condition; so
once more we found ourselves confronted by famine.

Now, if mamma were only here I know
I could explain everything to her, and she
would n't think me so lacking in respect for
my ancestors—so utterly lost—as she
evidently does.  But until she gets my letter
(and perhaps even afterward) she will be
unhappy over the crude, unqualified fact that I
pawned my watch.

It belonged to my great-grandfather and is
a fine old thing with a wreath of gold and
platinum roses on its round gold face.  I got
twenty-five dollars on it.  Nobody but Berri
would have known, and there would n't have
been the least fuss if Uncle Peter had n't come
to town.

He was in Boston on business and appeared
in my room one afternoon a few days
afterward.  I was ever so glad to see somebody
from home, and I introduced him to Berri,
who helped me show him the gym and Soldiers'
Field and the glass flowers and pretty
much everything open to visitors.  He had
a lovely time and asked us to dinner in the
evening.

We had a pleasant dinner—only Uncle
Peter kept glancing at his watch every few
minutes (he was leaving on an early train).
Finally he said: "What time is it, Tommy?
I 'm afraid I 'm slow."

From force of habit I felt for my watch,
and then, I suppose, I must have looked
queer, for Berrisford began to chuckle, and
Uncle Peter, after a moment of mystification,
jumped hastily to a conclusion that,
I am sorry to say, happened to be correct.
He rubbed it in all through dinner
and on the way to the station, and I
suppose when he reached home he told mamma
the first thing.  For the evening of the day
he arrived I got a telegram from mamma
that said: "Redeem watch immediately.
Keep this from your father; it would kill him."

Of course Berri had to elaborate the thing
in his best style and keep Duggie awake for
half an hour while he told him about it.

"I made it very graphic," he said to me
gloomily, "but somehow or other it didn't
seem to take."





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.. _`V`:

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   V

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The crash has come, and the Dean
and my adviser, two or three
instructors, some of the fellows at the
table, and even Berrisford (this last
is a little too much), have all taken occasion
to inform me regretfully that they foresaw it
from the first.  This is the sort of thing that
makes a man bitter.  How did I know what
was ahead of me?  If they all realized so well
that I was going to flunk the hour exams,
why did n't they let me know then?  It might
have done some good if they had told me three
weeks ago that they thought me stupid; but
I fail to see the point of their giving me to
understand at this stage of the game that they
themselves all along have been so awfully
clever.  Yet, that's just what they've done;
all except Duggie.  And strangely enough it
was Duggie that I most dreaded.  As a
matter of fact he has scarcely mentioned the
subject.  When I went into his room one
night and stood around for a while without
knowing how to begin and finally came out with,—

"Well, I suppose Berri 's told you that
I didn't get through a single exam?"—he
merely said,—

"That 's tough luck; I 'm darned sorry;"
and then after a moment he added: "Oh,
well, there 'll be some more coming along in
February; it is n't as if they were n't going
to let you have another whack at things."

"Of course I know it is n't my last chance,"
I answered drearily; "but I can't help feeling
that the fact of its being my first makes it
almost as bad.  It starts me all wrong in the
opinion of the Dean and my adviser and the
college generally."  Somehow I could n't bring
myself to tell Duggie what I thought, and
what, in a measure, I still think—namely,
that the marks I got were most unjust.
There 's something about Duggie—I don't
know what it is exactly—that always makes
you try to take the tone, when you 're telling
him anything, that you feel he would take if
he were telling the same thing to you.  This
sounds rather complicated, but what I mean,
for instance, is that if he got E in all his exams
and thought the instructors had been unjust,
he would probably go and have it out with
them, but he would n't complain to any one
else.  Of course it 's simply nonsense even to
pretend, for the sake of argument, that Duggie
could flunk in anything; but, anyhow, that 's
what I mean.

However, I did n't have the same hesitation
in saying to Berrisford that I considered
myself pretty badly treated.

"I know, of course, that I didn't write
clever papers," I told him, "but I at least
wrote long ones.  They ought to give me
some credit for that; enough to squeeze
through on, anyhow."  Berri agreed with me
perfectly that all the instructors were unjust,
yet at the same time he said, with a peculiarly
irritating, judicial manner that he sometimes
assumes when you least expect it,—

"But I can understand—I can understand.
It's most unfortunate—but it 's very
human—very natural.  As long as we employ
this primitive, inadequate method of
determining the amount of a man's knowledge, we
must expect to collide every now and then
with the personal equation."  This sounded
like a new superintendent addressing the
village school board for the first time, but I
did n't say anything, as I knew there was
something behind it that Berri did n't care
just then to make more clear.  Berri has
exceedingly definite ideas about things, but he
"aims to please;" he finds it hard to express
himself and at the same time to make everything
come out pleasantly in the end.

"What you say is no doubt important and
true," I answered; "but I don't know what
it means."

"Why, I simply mean that in thinking the
matter over one can't get around the fact
that ever since college opened you 've
been—what shall I say?  People have been more
aware of you than your size would seem to
justify; you 've been, as it were, a cinder in
the public eye."  Berrisford stopped abruptly,
and for a moment looked sort of aghast.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," he exclaimed,
more in his natural tone; "I had n't any
idea it was coming out that way; that's the
trouble with metaphors."

"I don't see how I 've been more of a
cinder than any one else—than you've been,
for instance," I objected.  "I 've seen more
of you than I 've seen of any one, and I 've
been seen more with you," I added.

"That's the frightful injustice of it,"
Berrisford put in triumphantly.  "That's what
I 'm trying to get at."  (I don't believe he
was at all, but I let him continue.)  "We 've
always done about the same things—but fate
has ordained that in every instance you were
to leave your impress upon the wax of hostile
opinion, while I was as the house of sand,
effaced by Neptune's briny hand.  (Doesn't
that last sound exactly like Pope at his
worst?)  You see, you got yourself arrested
at the very beginning of things.  Of course,
socially speaking, it was a brilliant move; it
simply made you.  But on the other hand,
I don't think it helped very much to—to—well,
to bring you thoroughly in touch with
the Faculty; and one has to look out for that.
Then, you know, of all the hundreds that
swarmed down the fire-escape during
Professor Kinde's lectures, you were the only
one who had the misfortune to be caught.
This naturally made the fire-escape
impossible from then on, and once more turned the
garish light of publicity upon you.  And to
cap all—you were inspired to give
Mr. Much the fine arts book.  Why, my dear
child, your name is a household word!"

The incident of the fine arts book, I
confess, was enough to make a man just give up
and turn cynical.

Mr. Much is a Boston architect who comes
out from town twice a week to lecture on
ancient art.  They think a great deal of him
in Boston.  He stands at the head of his
profession there, because, as he's never built
anything, even the most critical have no
grounds for complaint.  Berri says there are
lots of people like that in Boston,—painters
and writers and musicians who are really very
great, but think it more refined just to "live"
their works.  He meets them at his aunt's
house, where they often gather to talk it all
over.  Well, at the first lecture Much told
us to buy and read carefully a certain treatise
on ancient art and always bring it to the
lectures, as he would refer to it frequently.
I acted on his advice to the extent of
examining the book in the co-operative store one
day; but it was large and heavy and the
illustrations were rather old-fashioned, and it
cost two dollars, so I decided I could get
along without it.  Most of the fellows did
the same thing, and the impulsive few who
actually bought it got tired after a while
of lugging it to the lectures, as Much did n't
show any intention of ever referring to it.

One morning as I was strolling over to hear
him tell about the influence of Greek
something or other on something else, and the
deplorable decadence it had undergone later
at the hands of the Romans, Hemington
darted out of a bookstore in the Square and
said: "If you 're going to Fine Arts, just
take this book and give it to Bertie
Stockbridge."  (Bertie is his roommate.)  "I 'm
going to cut; I have to meet my father in
town."  I took the book and pursued my way.

Now, that morning, for the first time, Much,
after lecturing for about half an hour,
surprised every one by breaking off abruptly and
saying,—

"There's a very helpful note on page
eighteen of Geschmitzenmenger's Ancient Art
that I wish you would all turn to."  Then
after a moment he added: "As some of us
may have failed to bring the book this morning,
I think I shall read the note in question
aloud."  He came to the edge of the platform
and with a solicitous smile held out his
hand; but no one in the front row had a book
to lend him.  His smile changed to an
expression of mild disgust, and he glanced along
the second row of seats.  No one responded,
however, and he swept the room with a look
of annoyance, exclaiming, "Come—come,"
and snapping his fingers impatiently.  Just
then the fellow next to me murmured: "Will
any lady or gentleman in the audience kindly
lend me a high hat, three rabbits, and a dozen
fresh eggs?" and I laughed.  And as I
laughed, I leaned over to hide my face—and
there on my lap was Geschmitzenmenger's
Ancient Art; after Hemington had given it
to me I was so interested in whether he
would catch his car or not that I had never
looked at it at all.

"Is it possible that no one has provided
himself with the book I requested you to
procure?" Mr. Much was asking incredulously.
I saw my chance to make a hit, and after a
moment of impressive silence I arose and
walked to the platform.  There was a gust
of dumfounded laughter, followed by
prolonged applause.  As I went back to my seat
all the fellows who could reach me insisted
on patting me on the back and grasping me
by the hand.  It was most embarrassing.  But
the really sickening part of it was to come.

Mr. Much made a little speech about me,
saying, "I am glad that there is at least one,
etc., etc., etc.," and when he had finished he
opened the book with a flourish and found, as
was quite natural, that none of the leaves had
been cut.  I suppose this was in the nature
of a last straw, for he simply stood there a
minute, fingering the pages helplessly and
smiling the pitiful, philosophic smile of one
who has lived long enough to have had even
his most conservative illusions dispelled; then
he turned the book around and held it open
for every one to howl at, and finally he
dismissed us with a hopeless gesture that
expressed the unutterable.  Whereupon I was
seized by strong, willing hands and borne aloft
all over the Yard, followed by the whole class
hooting and jeering.

It was this that led Berri to say that my
name had become a household word.

"You see," Berri went on, "when an
instructor reads my examination book, for
instance, the signature of the writer conveys
nothing to him; but when he strikes yours—he
stops and exclaims, 'Where have I seen
that name before?'  Then he sharpens his
pencil to its finest possible point and gives
you E."

"But you do agree with me that it's
terribly unjust?" I asked him; for that, after
all, seemed to be the main thing.

"Why, of course it's unjust," Berrisford
answered decidedly.  "It 's one of the worst
cases that has ever come to my notice."

It did n't occur to me until afterward that,
as these were our first examinations,
Berrisford's "notice" had not been particularly
extensive.  For I felt so badly about the
whole thing that it was agreeable to know
that an intelligent person like Berrisford
believed I had been shabbily treated.  It was
his moral support, I think, that gave me nerve
enough to complain to my adviser.

My adviser is a young man and seems like
an appreciative, well-disposed sort of person
(he offered me a cigar after I had sat down in
his study), so I did n't have any difficulty in
telling him right off what I had come for.

"I 've heard from my hour examinations," I
said, "and I find that I have been given E
in all of them."  (I was careful not to say
that I had failed or flunked, or had n't passed,
as that was not the impression I wished to
convey.)

"We have met the enemy and we are
theirs," he answered pleasantly.  "Yes, I
heard about that," he went on, "and I hoped
you would come in to see me."  Then he
waited awhile—until the clock began to get
noisy—and at last he glanced up and said,—

"What was it doing when you came in?
It looked like snow this afternoon."  But I
had n't gone there to discuss meteorology, so
I ignored his remark.

"I can scarcely think I could have failed in
everything," I suggested.

"It is somewhat incredible, isn't it?" the
young man murmured.

"I never stopped writing from the time an
examination began until it stopped," I said.

"What did you think it was—a strength
test?" he asked brutally.

"I told all I knew."

"Yes," he acknowledged; "your instructors
were convinced of that."

"And I don't think I got enough credit for
it.  If I had the books here, I feel sure I
could make this plain."

"Well, let 's look them over," he answered
readily; and much to my astonishment he
went to his desk and brought back all my
blue-books.

I confess I had n't expected anything quite
so definite as this, but I tried to appear as if
I had hoped that it was just what might
happen.  We sat down side by side and read
aloud—first an examination question (he had
provided himself with a full set of the papers)
and then my answer to it.

"'Explain polarized light,'" he read.

"'The subject of polarized light, as I
understand it, is not very well understood,'"
I began; at which my adviser put his hands
to his head and rocked to and fro.

"If you don't mind," I said, "I think I'd
rather begin on one of the others; this physics
course is merely to make up a condition, and
perhaps I 've not devoted very much time to
it; it isn't a fair test."  So we took up the
history paper and read the first question, which
was: "What was the Lombard League?"  My
answer I considered rather neat, for I had
written: "The Lombard League was a coalition
formed by the Lombards."  I paused
after reading it and glanced at my adviser.

"It was a simple question, and I gave it a
simple answer," I murmured.

"I 'm afraid you depreciate yourself,
Mr. Wood," he replied.  "Your use of the word
'coalition' is masterly."

"But what more could I have said?" I
protested.

"I don't think you could have said
anything more," he answered inscrutably.

I read on and on, and he interrupted me
only twice—once in the philosophy course to
point out politely that what I constantly
referred to as "Hobbe's Octopus" ought to
be "Hobbe's Leviathan," and once in the
questions in English Literature, to explain
that somebody or other's "Apologia Pro Vita
Sua" was not—as I had translated it—"an
apology for living in a sewer."  (I could have
killed Berrisford for that—and it sounded so
plausible, too; for any one who lived in a
sewer would naturally apologize.)  He let me
proceed, and after a time I could n't even
bring myself to stop and contest the decisions
as I had done at first; for I dreaded the way
he had of making my most serious remarks
sound rather childish.  So I rattled on, faster
and faster, until I found myself mumbling in
a low tone, without pronouncing half the
words; and then I suddenly stopped and put
the blue-book on the table and stared across
the room at the wall.  He did n't express any
surprise, which, on the whole, was very decent
of him, and after a minute or two of silence,
during which he gathered up the evidence and
put it back in his desk, we began to talk
football and our chances of winning the big game.
He said some nice things about Duggie,
and hoped the rumor that he was overtrained
was n't true.  I told him that I lived in the
same house with Duggie and knew him very
well, and feared it was true.  He seemed glad
that I knew Duggie.  I stayed for about
fifteen minutes so as not to seem abrupt or
angry at the way my visit had turned out, and
then left.  We did n't refer to the exams
again, so I don't see exactly how I can ever
right the wrong they have done me.  If my
adviser were a different kind of man, I could
have managed it, I think.

I have n't seen very much of the fellows
lately, except, of course, at meals—that is
to say, at luncheon and dinner, for I can't
stand their comments at breakfast.  They
greet me with "Hello, old man—what's this
I hear about your trying for the Phi Beta
Kappa?"  "Is it true that you're going
to get your degree in three years?"  "I
should n't go in for a *summa cum* if I were
you; a *magna* is just as good;" and all that
sort of thing.  They evidently find it very
humorous, for it never fails to make them all
laugh.  I 've taken to breakfasting at The
Holly Tree, as I don't often meet any one I
know there.  I did one morning, however,
come across the little instructor who had
charge of the Freshman registration and
made quavering remarks at me in a kind of
Elizabethan dialect.  He's a most
extraordinary person.  As he does n't say more
than half he means, and as I don't understand
more than half he says, I find
conversation with him very exhausting.  But I like
him, somehow.

I was reading a newspaper when he came in
and did n't realize that he was standing near
me until I heard a slow, tremulous, reproachful
voice saying,—

"Who's been sitting in my chair?"  It
seems that he always has his breakfast at the
same table in the chair that I, in my
ignorance, had taken.  I jumped up, of course,
and after he had sat down and leaned back,
he murmured feebly, "I 'm an old man; but
I know my place."  I did n't know why he
said this, as he is n't an old man at all; he
can't be more than thirty-six or thirty-seven.

"I'm a young man, but I seem to know
your place, too," I laughed, as I looked
around for another chair.

"You clever boys chaff me so," he replied
mournfully.  "You mustn't chaff me; I'm
only a simple villager."  Just then the
waitress appeared at a hole in the buff-colored
fence that deludes itself into thinking it
differentiates the kitchen from the dining-room,
and the little man pounded softly and gently
on the table, exclaiming,—

"What ho—Katy; some sack—some
sack!"  A request that Katy evidently understood
better than I did, for she withdrew and
came back in a moment with a cup of tea.

"How now, Sir John—is not my hostess
of the tavern a most sweet wench?" the
instructor inquired of me; which caused
Katy—who had lingered to hear what we wanted
for breakfast—to twist a corner of her apron
around her finger and gurgle ecstatically,—

"Now, Mr. Fleetwood, you stop."

We sat there talking for more than an hour,
and I don't know when I 've had so improving
a conversation.  We talked mostly about
books and plays.  Mr. Fleetwood seems to
care a great deal about both and discussed
them differently from the way most people do.
At our table at Mrs. Brown's, for instance,
a book or a play is always either "rotten" or
a "corker."  But Fleetwood has no end of
things to tell about them.  He seems to know
all the people who do the writing and acting,
and remembers all the clever remarks they 've
made to him at various times, and the even
cleverer ones he made in reply.  Finally,
when I got up to go he relapsed suddenly into
his more doleful manner and said,—

"You will come to my Wednesday
Evenings—won't you?"  I felt as if I ought
to have known what they were; but I 'd
never heard of them, so I suppose I looked
mystified.

"The lions roar at my Wednesday Evenings,"
he explained, turning on the tremolo
in his voice, "but they won't hurt you—because
they like me.  They 'll like you, too,
if you 'll come."  I said I should like to
come very much.

"When do you have your Wednesday Evenings?"
I asked; for he was so dreadfully
vague.  He looked at me vacantly and then
stared at the ceiling awhile, as if trying to
think.

"On Wednesday evenings," he at last petulantly
quavered; and I left, for I began to
think I was losing my mind.

With the exception of Fleetwood that
morning I have n't met any one else I know
at The Holly Tree.  To tell the truth, I
haven't been very sociable of late.  The
result of the exams was rather depressing,
and besides—I can't help realizing that
solitude is inexpensive, if nothing else.  I
don't like to go in town unless I can pay
my share, and, as I have n't been able as yet
even to get my watch out of hock, in spite of
mamma's urgent telegram, I don't see my
way to going to the theatre and eating around
at expensive hotels.  Of course I could have
the tickets charged—but they 're the least
of it.  And anyhow I owe so much already I
hate to make it worse.  Berri advised me to
pawn the old-fashioned fob that belongs to
my watch and get the watch back.  (The
fob has a huge topaz or some such thing in it
that ought to bring a lot.)  But I 'm tired of
disposing of heirlooms.

I went to the first Symphony in Sanders'
Theatre the other night.  Duggie gave me
his ticket, as the head coach, and the doctor
who looks after the team told him he was n't
feeling well and made him go to bed instead.
It was a wonderful concert, and I enjoyed it
very much, although I could n't help wondering
all the time why I was enjoying it; for a
man who looked like a Skye terrier played
beautiful, sad things on the 'cello until I felt
so lonely and homesick and as if I had wasted
my life and broken my mother's heart, that I
began to sniff; and the lady who was sitting
next to me (she had a huge music book on her
lap and was following every note with her
finger and swaying from side to side like a
cobra) turned and glared at me.

On Saturday afternoon they would n't let
Duggie play in the game, and advised him to
go home for Sunday.  He came into my room
where I was sitting by the fire feeling pretty
blue, and after talking awhile said he wanted
me to go with him.  Berrisford came in while
I was getting ready, and when he saw how
little I was taking with me he exclaimed:
"Good Heavens, man—you can't go that
way!  Duggie wouldn't mind, and neither
would his family; but you must show *some*
consideration for the servants.  And you 'd
better take a piece of bread in your pocket, to
munch when nobody 's looking, as you 'll get
there too late for tea, and they don't dine
until sometime during the middle of the
night."  He made me pack my dress-clothes
(they've been mended) and gave me his
hairbrushes, as they have ivory backs with black
monograms on them.  I can't feel thankful
enough that he warned me in time; for everything
turned out just as he said.  (Berri *is*
clever; there's no getting around it.)

I can't write about my visit to-night; it's
too late to do justice to the novel and delightful
time I had.  I enjoyed every minute of it;
even the thing that Duggie told me on Sunday
morning did n't spoil it.  (Berri said he
probably took me home with him in order to break
the news gently.)

We had been sitting on the rocks in the
sun, looking out to sea and listening to the
lazy waves break over the beach about half a
mile away (at that distance they looked like
a flock of sheep playing on the sand), when
Duggie told me in as nice a way as one
possibly can tell disagreeable news that the
Administrative Board had decided to put me
on probation.





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   VI

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It's curious how little you know, after
all, about the fellows here of whom
you know most.  As time goes on I
suppose you gradually learn more—although
I 've been told by upperclassmen
that they 've seen certain fellows every day
for years, and, while apparently intimate with
them, have never taken the trouble to find out
their real names—their first names, that is to
say.  And as for knowing what their families
are like—what they 've been used to before
they came to college—you can only guess;
and you usually guess wrong.  At least, I do.
Berrisford, however, is very wonderful.  He
has a mind as comprehensive in its scope as
the last seventy-five pages of an unabridged
dictionary, and his talent for sizing people
up and telling you all about them is really
remarkable.  He is the last person in the
world, though, that I should have picked out
as a citizen of Salem, and one day I told him
so.  He explained himself by saying that his
mother had made an unfortunate marriage.
I felt very sorry, as the only time I saw his
mother I thought her lovely.

"He was very handsome and had a great
deal of money, and was the best and most
delightful man I ever knew," Berri went on.

"Well, I don't see anything so dreadfully
unfortunate in all that," I ventured.

"Ah, but he was n't from Salem," Berri
explained simply.  "He didn't even have any
cousins there, although for a time mamma's
family tried to delude themselves into
believing they were on the track of some.  They
traced him back to Humphrey de Bohun and
Elizabeth Plantagenet, but there they lost
the scent; and as mamma's people—perhaps
you know—came from the King of Navarre
and Urracca, Heiress of Arragon, why—of
course—well, you know how people talk.  It
was all very sad.  Naturally mamma never
cared to live in Salem after that, and I think
my grandparents were rather relieved that
she preferred to stay most of the time in
France.  They used to come over and see
us every few years, but of course no one in
Salem ever knew about that; every one
believed that grandfather had to take a cure at
Carlsbad—at least that was what was given
out whenever he went abroad.  I suppose I
can't help seeming somewhat crude now and
then," he mused dismally; "dilute the strain
and it's bound to show sooner or later.  But
there—I don't know why I've told you all
this; it is n't the sort of thing one can discuss
with everybody."

"All this" was intensely interesting and
mysterious to me, but I don't think I can ever
get on to it entirely; just when I 'm beginning
to feel that I 've mastered the details I
collide with a perfectly new phase and find I
don't know anything at all.  My ignorance
has led to several discussions with Berri—the
heated kind that always result in coldness.
When I told him, for instance, that I 'd met
Billy in town one morning and he 'd taken me
home for luncheon, Berri said, "How nice,"
and proceeded to effect a union of his
eyebrows and the top of his head.

"Now what on earth is the matter with
Billy?" I exclaimed indignantly, for I 'd
enjoyed my luncheon exceedingly, and the
house was the biggest thing I had ever seen.

"Oh, Billy 's all right.  He 's really very
nice, I imagine—although, of course, I don't
know him very well," said Berri.  "Why do
you ask?"

"Who wouldn't ask when you hang your
eyebrows on your front hair that way at the
mere mention of his name?" I demanded.
"Why do you say 'of course,' and why
do you always make a point of the fact
that you don't know him well?  Who cares
whether you do or not?" I pursued, for I
wanted to clear this mystery up once and
for all.

"Well, you seem to care a good deal,"
Berrisford laughed.

"Oh, not personally," I assured him, "only
in the interest of science."

We squabbled for an hour, and at the end
of that time I had discovered that (1) Billy's
family spell their name with an *e*—a most
incriminating thing to do, apparently, and (2)
their house is on the left-hand side of the
street as you go up, which (3) makes it easier
for a rich man to pass through the moat into
Heaven than to draw a beam of recognition
from the eye of his neighbor.  It was all very
confusing—especially as Berrisford insisted
that no one had ever told him these things—he
had known that they were so when he
came into the world.

"Well, I don't see how you 've allowed
yourself to be so friendly with me," I
wondered sarcastically.  "You 've been pretty
reckless, it strikes me.  How do you know
what side of the street our house is on in
Perugia, Wisconsin—or whether, indeed, we
live in a house at all?"

"Oh, you 're different," Berri laughed.

"Different from what?"

"From everything; that's why I 'm
willing to run the risk.  You 're a strange,
barbarous thing, and I like you immensely."

That was all the satisfaction I got.  The
reason I thought of this was because Duggie
and I discussed it among other things that
Sunday morning on the rocks.

It was perfectly evident that Duggie's family
lived on the right side of the street, and didn't
"spell their name with an e," although I
should never have seen them in this light if
Berrisford hadn't opened my eyes ("poisoned
my mind," Duggie called it).  Duggie's
father resembles the Duke in Little Lord
Fauntleroy, and his mother—well, his mother
is like Duggie; one could n't say very much
more than that.  My impression of them is
that they are between nineteen and twenty
feet high, and when they and Duggie and his
elder sister and two younger brothers were
assembled, they looked the way family groups
of crowned heads ought to look and don't.

The sister met us at the station with a cart
and two ponies.

"They told me to take care of myself,"
Duggie said to her sort of doubtfully.

"He 's afraid of my nags," she explained
to me as I clambered up beside her.

"I 'm afraid of your driving," Duggie
answered.  "I brought Jack Hollis down
here to rest one Saturday and Sunday," he
said to me, "and after she'd whirled him
around the country for several hours on two
wheels and run into a few trees and spilled
him over a cliff, the poor thing went back to
town with heart disease and has never been
the same since."

Now, of course, Duggie merely meant to
give me an exaggerated idea of his sister's
driving, and she, of course, knew that his
remark was quite innocent; but nevertheless
she began to blush (it was then, I think, that
I first noticed how pretty she was) and
abruptly gave one of the horses a slap with
the whip that sent us plunging and nearly
snapped my head off.

"Hold on, Tommy," Duggie called to me.
"This is what I go through every time I
come home."  Then, as a flock of terrified
hens scuttled shrieking from under the ponies'
feet, he added: "Tell them I was very brave
and hopeful to the end and that my last words
were about the team."  But pretty soon the
horses settled down into a fast, steady trot,
and we bowled along the prettiest road I 've
ever seen—between thick woods, and, farther
on, great, uneven meadows marked off in
irregular shapes with low fences of rough stone.
The meadows to the right ran back to the
woods, but the ones on the left stretched away
ahead of us into a vast plain.  It gave me a
queer, happy feeling that I can't explain—as
if I were going to soar out of the cart and
over the meadows—straight on into space.
I could n't imagine where such a sweep of
luminous horizon led to—it seemed extraordinary
to come across anything so much like
a prairie in New England.  The air, too, had
a lot to do with the way I felt.  It was
wonderful air—not cold exactly, and not wet;
although I thought every minute that it was
going to be both.  It had a peculiar smell to
it that, without knowing why, I liked.  I filled
my lungs with it, and somehow it made me
feel bigger than I usually do.  Then all at
once the ponies scampered over the top of a
little incline, and, although Miss Sherwin was
telling me something, I gasped out:

"Oh-h-h-h—it's the ocean!" and forgot
what she was saying, and even that she and
Duggie and the cart were with me at all.
For I had never seen it before; and it was
right there in front of me—brimming over in
long, slow, green, pillowy things that rolled
forward and slipped back, forward and back,
until all at once they got top heavy and lost
control of themselves and tumbled over the
edge in a delirious white and green confusion
that slid across the sand in swift, foamy
triangles almost up to our wheels and made the
ponies shrink to the other side of the road in a
sort of coquettish dance.  Then there was a
very slim, refined-looking lighthouse on a gray
rock bordered by a little white frill where it
touched the water, and beyond that, putting
out to sea, was a great ship with bulging sails,
and a steamer that left a lonely trail of black
smoke sagging after it for miles.

I don't know how long I stared at these
things, or how long I should have kept on
staring at them, if I had n't happened to
glance up and see that Miss Sherwin was
looking down at me and laughing.  I think she
expected me to say something, but I couldn't
bring myself to come out with either of the
only two things that occurred to me—one of
which was that as it looked so exactly as I
always thought it was going to, I did n't see
why I felt almost like bursting into tears when
we came over the hill-top and actually saw it;
and the other was—that I should have very
much liked to get down and taste it.
However, Miss Sherwin had about all she could
do to attend to the horses and did n't insist on
an explanation; so we said hardly anything
all the rest of the way, and just let the wind
blow in our faces and watched the waves
tumble across the hard sand for miles.

At first nothing at the Sherwins' seemed in
the least real to me.  Even Duggie struck me
as altogether different, although he was, of
course, just the same—only seen in unexpected
surroundings.

First of all, when we arrived, a groom
popped up from behind a hedge and took the
horses; then two young men in dark green
clothes with brass buttons and yellow
waistcoats bustled down from the piazza to get our
things out of the cart.  They were rather
handsome, but had very troubled expressions,
and looked as if they worried a good deal
for fear they shouldn't do it right.  Duggie
nodded to them over his shoulder, and I think
they were secretly gratified at this—although
I suspect them of having worried terribly for
fear they might betray it.  They helped us
off with our coats and hats when we got
inside, which is all well enough, and makes you
feel as grand as you do in a barber-shop, but
has its disadvantages, for they run away with
everything you have, and lock them up
somewhere in a safe, and when you want to go out
to play with the dogs or take a walk and think
it all over, you usually have to tell Vincent to
tell Dempsey to tell Chamberlain that you
would like a hat.

Miss Sherwin led me through some beautiful
rooms, and as we walked along she turned
to me and exclaimed,—

"Aren't you fearfully keen for your tea?"

I really don't care in the least for tea; in
fact, I rather dislike it.  But she seemed to
take it so for granted that I should be in a
sort of tea-guzzling frenzy by half-past five
o'clock that I hated to disappoint her, and
was going to say, "Oh, yes—fearfully,"
when it flashed through me that I could make
my reply more elaborate and interesting than
this, and thought it would be rather effective
to murmur, "One gets so out of the habit
in Cambridge."  Then (all this took only
about a second) it occurred to me that I 'd
never in my whole life drunk a cup of tea in
the afternoon with the exception of the time
that Berrisford had some people out to his
rooms.  So I merely said—which was
perfectly true: "I don't like tea; but I like
those thin, round cakes that are brown at the
edges and yellow in the middle."  This made
her laugh, and I was glad I had n't said the
other thing, because she 's very pretty when
she laughs.

One corner of the piazza is enclosed in
glass, and we had tea out there where we
could watch the sunset and the pink lights on
the water as it rolled up almost to the lawn in
the front yard.  The two younger brothers
came in—one of them has a tutor and the
other goes to St. Timothy's—and while we
were waiting for the tea things to be brought,
Mr. and Mrs. Sherwin sauntered across the
grass.  I forget whether they had been
gathering orchids in the conservatory or merely
feeding the peacocks, but they were both
exceedingly gracious and glad to see me.  Yet
their very way of taking me so for granted
(just as Miss Sherwin had about the tea) made
me uncomfortable at first.  They could n't, of
course, have asked me to explain myself—to
tell them what right I had to consume cakes
in their crystal palace and enjoy their sunset;
but the mere fact that they did n't seem to
expect me to justify myself in any way made
me feel like an impostor.

The man who brought in the tea things had
a good deal to do with this.  I 'm quite sure
that he disapproved of me from the first.  He
was older than the two who met us at the
door, and I think he had probably long since
ceased to worry on his own account; but he
worried a lot over me.  Later—at dinner—he
just gave up all his other duties and stood
behind my chair, mentally calculating the
chances of my coming out even or behind
the game in the matter of knives and forks.
Whenever I used too many or too few (which
I did constantly) he would glide away and
remedy the defect, or craftily remove the
damning evidence of my inattention.  In
writing to mamma about my visit I ended my
letter by saying: "I had a delightful time—but
it would take me years to get used to their
butler."  To which mamma replied: "I'm
glad you enjoyed yourself, dear; they must
live charmingly.  But I simply can't see why
they should n't have good butter.  It's so
easy to get it now almost anywhere.  Perhaps
they don't eat it themselves and don't realize
that they are being imposed upon."  (This
will be one of the greatest triumphs of papa's
declining years, as he is always blowing me up
about my handwriting.)  Whenever Dempsey
(the other servants call him "Mr. Dempsey")
came into the glass place I waited in a sort
of trembling eagerness, half expecting him to
announce "Lord and Lady Belgrave and Miss
Muriel Fitz Desmond," but the only person
who dropped in was an old man named Snagg,
and although Dempsey made as much out of
his arrival as any one possibly could—you
can't, after all, do miracles with a name like
Snagg.  However, I was grateful to Mr. Snagg
for coming, as it brought me back to
earth again.

To tell the truth, before the evening was
finished I began to get over the unreal
sensation I had at first, and saw very plainly that
whether or not I felt at home depended
entirely on me.  Duggie and his family—poor
things—did n't have any idea that their
Dempsey paralyzed me with fright, or that
(just as Berri had predicted) by the time
dinner was ready I was shaky in the knees with
hunger.  They assumed that a friend of
Duggie's naturally would feel at home and
know beforehand what was going to happen.
This dawned on me when I realized that
Duggie was exactly as he always is, and that
the others were probably exactly as they
always were, and I couldn't help appreciating
after a time that if they took me so calmly, it
was rather unreasonable of me not to feel the
same way about them.  No one made any
effort to entertain me, which is very nice—after
you get used to it.  Mrs. Sherwin played
solitaire after dinner, while Duggie and his
sister (she was embroidering something) and
I sat around a fire that Miss Sherwin said
was built of driftwood from an old whaler,
and Duggie declared was manufactured with
chemicals by a shrewd person in Maine.  I
don't know who was right, but with the sea
murmuring just outside the windows and
coming down every now and then with a great thud
on the little beach at the end of the lawn, I
preferred to believe in the old whaler theory.
Mr. Sherwin would appear every few minutes
to read us something he had come across in a
volume of literary reminiscences which
reminded him of something entirely different
that had happened to Thoreau or Emerson or
Hawthorne or Margaret Fuller—all of whom
he had, as a young man, known very well,
indeed.  He was delightful.

The next day was Sunday, and as no one
awoke me, I found when I got downstairs
that it was after ten o'clock and that
everybody, with the exception of Duggie, had gone
to church.  Duggie had been up for hours
taking a long walk with the dogs.  He came
into the glass place on the piazza, where I had
breakfast, and read aloud about the game of
the day before.  Out-of-doors it was almost
as warm as in summer, so we took some books
and strolled along a cliff to a sheltered place
on the rocks, and sat down in the sun.  I
did n't feel much like reading, although when
you 're sitting out-of-doors in the sun I think
it's rather pleasanter, somehow, to have a
book on your lap.  Duggie had a shabby little
volume that he read for a minute or two at a
time; then he would stop for five or ten and
look at the sea swirling around a rock away
below us.  After a while I became curious to
know what the book was, and the next time
he closed it over his finger I reached out and
took it.  The name of it was M. Aurelius
Antoninus, and it seemed to be a series of
short, disconnected paragraphs with a great
many footnotes.  A good many of the
paragraphs were marked.  The only one I can
remember went something like this,—

"Don't act as if thou wert going to live
ten thousand years.  Death hangs over thee.
While thou livest—while it is in thy power,
be good."

"I suppose you 're studying this for some
course," I remarked after I had read the
extract aloud.  "It's so solemn I didn't think
you could be reading it for fun," I added.

"I don't suppose I am reading it for fun
exactly," Duggie laughed.  "It isn't very funny
to realize the force of that paragraph when
there are so many things you hope to do."

"Well, of course I know I 'm not going
to live ten thousand years, but it's so lovely
down here that I don't feel a bit as if I
were n't," I said, lying back in the sun and
closing my eyes.

"That's why I read the book," answered
Duggie; "it's tremendously easy to feel that
way almost anywhere—down here particularly."  He
was more serious, I think, than he looked.

"Why should n't one?" I asked.  But he
only laughed and told me I 'd better read the
book, too, and find out.

"It might be a short cut—a sort of revelation.
It took me a good while to arrive at
it by myself," he added.  "Why, when I first
went to Cambridge I had an idea that if a
man's family were what's called 'nice,' and
well known, and if he had good manners and
knew a lot of other fellows whose families
were nice and well known, and people went
around saying that he 'd make the first ten of
the Dickey, and be elected into some club or
other—I had an idea that he really amounted
to a great deal."

"Well, does n't he?" I asked boldly, for
all that seemed to me pretty fine.

I think Duggie was going to answer rather
sharply, but he must have decided not to, for
after a moment he said:

"I suppose whether he does or not depends
on the point of view."

"From yours, I take it, he doesn't?" I mused.

"He has a lot in his favor—all sorts of
opportunities that other people have n't,"
Duggie admitted, "but I 've come to look
at him as quite unimportant until he tries at
least to take some advantage of them.  Good
Heavens! the wheels of the world are clogged
with 'nice' people," said Duggie.

"But what on earth can a person do in a
place like college, for instance?" I objected.
"You 're there, and you know your own crowd,
and you 're satisfied with it because it's
awfully—awfully——"  I hesitated.

"Awfully nice," Duggie laughed; "and
you never see any one else, and they 're all
more or less like you—and the rest of your
class is composed of grinds, muckers, and
'probably very decent sort of chaps,
*but*'——"  Here Duggie reached over and gave me a
push that nearly sent me into the sea.  "But
dontche care—I didn't mean to get started.
And anyhow there 's plenty of time."

"Only ten thousand years," I replied.

"Fleetwood's Wednesday Evenings begin
next week.  If you want to remove your
infamous towhead from its richly upholstered
barrel for a minute, you 'd better come
around," he suggested.  "Fleetwood had his
Wednesday Evenings on Friday last year
because he thought it was more quaint—but I
see he 's changed back."

"He told me if I came I should hear a lion
roar," I said, trying to remember my talk
with Fleetwood at The Holly Tree.  At this
Duggie lay back and shrieked aloud.

"That man will be found some day torn into
small, neat shreds," he managed to say at last.

"Why?" I asked—for I knew he liked Fleetwood.

"Why, because I'm the lion," Duggie giggled.





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   VII

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It must be several weeks since I 've
written a word in my diary.  To tell
the truth, I spend so much time writing
other things—things that are printed
and sold—actually—at the bookstores—that
somehow my own every-day affairs don't
seem so important as they did.  In a word—I 've
been made an editor of the Advocate.  It
seems so wonderful to be an anything of
anything with my name in print on the front page
just above the editorials—the editorials that,
as Duggie says sarcastically, have made the
President and the University what they are.
Mamma was delighted at my success, and
so was Mildred—although she tried to be
funny over my triolet, When Gladys Sings, in
the last number, and wrote me that, unless
Gladys were the name of a quadruped of some
kind, amputation here and there would have
improved her.  Even papa was pleased, I
think, although my first story made him very
angry and he wrote me a terrible letter about
it.  I had simply described, as accurately as
I could remember it, the time he went as
"The Silver-Tongued Orator from Perugia"
to make a political speech in the country and
took Mildred and me with him.  I told about
the people at whose house we stayed,
described the house and recorded our conversations
at dinner and supper.  That was really
all there was to it.  I considered it quite
harmless.  The Crimson in criticising it said:
"The Jimsons—a humorous sketch by a
new writer—is the only ray of sunlight in a
number devoted almost exclusively to battle,
murder, and sudden death;" a Boston paper
reprinted it in full, and papa was perfectly
furious.  He wrote to me saying (among
several pages of other things): "While admitting
that your description of my friends is
photographic and, in an inexpensive and altogether
odious fashion, rather amusing, I take
occasion to call your attention to the fact—it
seems to have escaped you—that they are,
after all, my friends.  Furthermore (passing
from the purely ethical to the sternly practical),
it is among just these people that you will, in
the not very distant future, be engaged in
making (or trying to make) a living.  Kindly
snatch a moment or two from your literary
pursuits and think this over in some of its
more grim possibilities."  He also rather
superfluously informed me that I would "be
older some day" than I am now.  (This
remark, by the way, seems to have a peculiar
fascination for men who have passed the age
of fifty.)  I showed the letter to Berri, and
when he had finished it he said thoughtfully:
"A few communications like this, and the
keen edge of one's humor would become a
trifle dulled."

My election to the Advocate came about in
the most unexpected way possible.  It's queer
how things happen.  Berri was sitting in my
room one afternoon apparently reading by the
fire.  Suddenly he looked up and exclaimed:

"Do you realize, Tommy, that failure is
staring us in the face?"

"Why, I was in hopes that it had begun
to—to avert its gaze somewhat," I answered,
for I thought of course he was referring to the
hour exams—and I 've studied a little every
day since that calamity.  "Besides," I added,
"I don't see why you need complain; you
got through."

"Oh, I'm not talking about our studies,"
Berri said impatiently; "they 're a detail.
I mean that we don't seem to be getting
anywhere; we 're not turning our accomplishments
to any practical account; we 're not
helping the college any and making ourselves
prominent—prominent in a lawful sense, I
mean."

"But we haven't any accomplishments," I
objected.  "We both tried for the Glee Club
and they would n't have us; and everybody
agreed that we couldn't play football—although
we went out and did everything they
told us to.  We can't play the banjo or
mandolin, and it's too early in the year to find out
whether we 're any good at rowing or track
athletics or baseball; so there 's nothing left.
What on earth can a person do who has n't
any talent or skill or ability of any kind?" I
demanded gloomily.

"He can always write," Berri answered,
"and he can always be an editor."

"Oh! you mean we ought to try for the
Crimson or something."

"Well, not the Crimson exactly," Berrisford
mused; "they say you have to work like
anything on the Crimson; they make you
rush about finding out when things are going
to happen, or why they didn't happen when
they said they would.  That would be awfully
tiresome—because of course you wouldn't
care whether they happened or not.  I 'd just
like to sit around and edit; any one could do
that."

"I should think you 'd go in for the
Lampoon," I suggested; for I remembered that
one of the Lampoon men had drawn a picture
of something Berri had done.  Professor
Snook, who knows such a lot about folk-lore,
was going to give a lecture in Sever Hall
on The Devil.  It was announced on all the
bulletin boards by means of printed placards
that read like this: "Thursday, November 10,
Professor John Snook will deliver a lecture
on The Devil;" and under the one outside
of University, Berri wrote in pencil: "The
first of a series on personalities that have
influenced me."  If he got himself noticed by
the Lampoon without trying, I thought there
was no telling what he could do if he put his
mind to it.  We discussed the matter awhile
without, however, deciding on any definite plan.

That night we went to Fleetwood's first
Wednesday Evening, and there I was
introduced to—  But I 'm going too fast.  I 'd
better tell about the Wednesday Evening first.

When I suggested going Berri was n't
particularly enthusiastic about it.  He said he
was afraid it would resemble one of his aunt's
receptions where everybody was so cultivated
that it was just like reading Half Hours with
the Best Authors on a warm Sunday afternoon.
I had an idea that it might be something
like that myself, but I finally persuaded
Berri to go with me notwithstanding.

I don't know what to make of myself
sometimes.  When I 'm with Duggie I 'm inclined
to take things rather seriously; but when I 'm
with Berri it all seems like a joke.  They 're
so different, and yet I feel as if I were so
much a friend of both.  When all three of us
happen to be together I find it most
uncomfortable.  Of course Berri thought the
Wednesday Evening highly amusing.

It was rather late when we arrived, and
the room was crowded with fellows, very few
of whom I had ever seen before.  Fleetwood
opened the door for us, with a Shakespearian
quotation trembling aptly on his lips, and led
us through the crowd to his inside room, where
we left our coats and hats.

"You must come and meet my lions and
hear them roar," Fleetwood said to us; and
was about to take us across the study to
where Duggie was standing against the wall
with a semicircle of Freshmen in front of
him drinking in his every word.

"Good gracious, man—you don't mean to
say you got me away over here on a cold
night to hear Duggie Sherwin drool about
football," Berri exclaimed to me.  Mr. Fleetwood
laughed, and seemed to think this was
very funny.

"Just look how glad of the chance all those
others are, you unappreciative boy," he said
reproachfully to Berri.

"Oh, well—he doesn't wake them up at
a horrible hour every morning yelling like a
fiend under a shower-bath," Berri explained.
"You see, the lion and I occupy the same
lair—or do lions live in a den?  I never can
remember."

"Perhaps Mr. Ranny knows," said Fleetwood
to a tall, studious-looking fellow who
had evidently planned his escape and was in
the act of shyly carrying it out when
Fleetwood detained him.  Fleetwood introduced
him to Berri and slid away to greet another
man who had just opened the door.  As I
moved off to join Duggie's group, Berri gave
me a queer look; but a few minutes later I
happened to glance across at him, and as the
tall fellow was laughing at everything Berri
said I knew that Berri was enjoying himself.

Duggie shook hands with me and said good-evening
just as if he had n't been in my room
sprawling on the floor in front of the fire an
hour and a half before, and then went on with
what he was saying to the fellows nearest
him—some polite looking little chaps; Freshmen,
although I had never seen them before.

The talk was mostly about football; the
games that had been played and the ones still
to come—comparative scores and the merits
and defects of players at other colleges.  Of
course Duggie could discuss only with the
fellows just in front of him.  I think he
realized how embarrassing it would be to any of
the others if he were to single them out and
address remarks to them.  Besides, it might
have sounded patronizing.  Yet every now
and then, when whoever was talking happened
to say something funny, Duggie somehow
included the whole crowd in the laugh that
followed.  I think he managed it by catching
everybody's eye at just the right time; I know
that—although I was merely standing there
looking on—whenever he caught mine, I felt
as if I were right in the game.  This often
had the effect of causing a fellow to say
something to the fellow next to him, and so it
frequently happened that people who had
joined the group merely to rubber in
embarrassed silence at Duggie, found themselves
making acquaintances and talking on their
own account.  I learned afterward that this
was precisely what Fleetwood and Duggie
counted on.  It was Fleetwood's chief reason
for having Duggie as often as he could at
his Wednesday Evenings, and Duggie's only
reason for going.

Across the room there was another centre
of attraction in the person of a fine but rather
pompous-looking old gentleman with a pink
face and a snowy beard.  His audience was
more talkative than Duggie's, but not so
large.  It was n't composed entirely of
Freshmen, either.  As I was standing there making
up my mind to slide through the intervening
crowd and find out what he was talking about,
Berri, who had been standing with a rapt
expression on the outskirts of the second group,
detached himself and came over to me.  "You
simply must come and listen to him; it's
perfectly thrilling," he said.

"I was just going over to investigate," I
answered.  "What 's his specialty?"

"I don't know how to describe it exactly,"
Berri replied; "he's a kind of connecting
link with the literary past; he 's what
phonographs will be when we get them perfected.
Dickens once borrowed his opera-glasses on
the evening of the twelfth of June years ago,
and some years later Thackeray stepped on his
foot at a dinner-party.  He remembers what
they said perfectly, and gets asked out a lot.
I 've heard him tell the Thackeray thing twice
now, and he 's going to do it again in a minute
if there 's enough of a crowd."

We went over and listened to him for ever
so long, and although Dickens *had* borrowed
his opera-glasses and Thackeray *had* stepped
on his foot, he was n't in the least what Berri
had led me to expect.  I found him delightful
and was sorry when he had to leave.  (Berri
insisted that he was driven rapidly to town to
the Palace Theatre, where he was due to
appear at 10.50—between a trick bicyclist and
a Dutch comedian.)

When we had said good-by to him, Fleetwood
came up bringing a pleasant-looking
chap with spectacles.  (I had often seen him
in the Yard.)

"This is Mr. Paul," Fleetwood said to me,
"and he wants to have words with you."

Mr. Paul talked about the old gentleman
for a minute or two, and then said quite
abruptly,—

"We 've been reading your stuff in English
83, Mr. Wood, and the fellows think it's
darned good.  I wish you 'd let us have some
of it for the Advocate."

I was so astonished I just looked at him.
Then he went on to say that he wanted
to print two of my themes—The Jimsons,
and a description of something I saw one
night in town—and that if I wrote a third
and it turned out to be good, they would make
me an editor!  He had said that the Monthly
had designs on me (imagine), and that
although the Advocate did n't often do things so
hastily, it (I wonder if it's silly of me to write
this down?) didn't want to lose me.  I told
him that I 'd never dreamed of getting on one
of the papers and felt as if he were making
fun of me.  But he assured me he was n't.

Duggie and Berrisford and I walked home
together, and when we reached my room
Duggie and Berri began to squabble over
Fleetwood's Wednesday Evenings, and talked
and talked until Duggie, seeing how late it
was, got undressed (talking all the time) and
left his clothes on my floor, and continued the
conversation even after he had gone into his
own room, turned out the lights and got into
bed.

Berri, of course, started out by saying,—

"Well, I don't see what 's the good of it,"
and Duggie immediately undertook to
enlighten him.  Whereupon Berri—fearing that
the attempt might be successful—took
another tack and exclaimed,—

"I should think you'd feel so ridiculous
backed up there against the wall making
conversation—or perhaps you enjoy being an
object of curiosity."  Duggie got very red,
and I think he considered Berri unusually
cheeky and impertinent, but he did n't snub
him and I 'm sure Berri was disappointed; he
loves to irritate people.

"I don't think my feelings in the matter
are particularly important," Duggie answered.
"I don't see why you haul them in."

"Oh! but they are," Berri insisted.  "I
was n't in the least interested in you when
you were over there doing your stunts; but
here, at home—in the bosom of the family,
so to speak—you 're perfectly absorbing.
Now, honestly, Duggie, don't you think that in
the end it 'll do you a lot of harm—exhibiting
yourself this way, and sort of saying to
yourself: 'I am the only Duggie Sherwin; when
Fleetwood tells the Freshmen that I am going
to be there, the room is jammed'—and all
that sort of thing.  For of course that's what
it amounts to."

Duggie threw back his head and laughed.
Then he leaned forward and gave Berrisford
(who was sitting on the floor with his hands
clasped around his knees), a neat little push
that rolled him back until he seemed to be
standing on his neck and groping for the
ceiling with his feet.

"Berrisford, sometimes you make me very,
very sick," Duggie said to him.

"But own up like a man—isn't that the
way you look at it?" Berri pursued after he
had collected himself.

"Of course it is n't—idiot!" Duggie
declared indignantly.  "Fleetwood can't do the
whole thing himself; he can't turn a lot of
shy kids into a pen and say, 'Now talk and
get to know one another.'  So he asks other
people to help him.  Once in a while he asks
me.  To-night there were two of us."

"Two Little Evas—two Uncle Toms—two
side-splitting Topsies," Berri giggled.

"Heaven knows I can talk about other
things than football," Duggie went on, "but
I like to talk about it, and they do, too—so
why shouldn't we?  And when they have
enough of me they get to talking with some
one else—some one in their own class, very
likely—or maybe to two or three.  Then
they come back again next week, and after a
few times they find that they 've made a lot
of acquaintances, and perhaps some friends.
And there you are!  Their whole four years
is probably changed for them and made
infinitely more worth while, merely because
Fleetwood takes the trouble to round them
up and make them feel that somebody really
wants them.  It's perfectly natural that you
should think his Wednesdays funny and
boresome; you always had dozens of rooms to go
to from the first day you came here, and some
one in every room who was glad to see you
when you went.  But I tell you it isn't that
way with everybody, and you 're not the kind
that Fleetwood tries to get at."

"Why did he invite me, then?" Berri asked.

"Upon my soul, I don't know," Duggie
declared sarcastically, "but I 'd be willing to
bet that if I see him first he won't invite you
again," he laughed.

Then Berri admitted that Fleetwood's idea
was well enough in theory, but doubted if it
really worked.

"That tall spook I jollied this evening
for a while was exceedingly nice; but I
sha'n't dash off and call on him to-morrow.
I don't suppose I'll ever see him again,"
Berri said.

"No, probably not," Duggie assented,
"but it's altogether likely that after time has
healed the wound left by your indifference, he
may find consolation in the companionship of
some one else.  You may not be able to grasp
the fact, Berri, but it is a fact that 'there are
others.'"  It was in the midst of this that he
began to get ready for bed.

"Why don't you open a salon yourself if
you think they 're such 'life-sweeteners'?"
Berri called after him when he went into his
own room.

"When I come to the Law School next
year, I'm going to," Duggie shouted back,
"but *you 'll* never see the inside of it; I 'll
tell you that right now."

I did n't join in the discussion at all, for I
got to thinking how lucky I had been from the
first.  Mamma overheard an old woman on a
piazza say that she made the "young men"
change their shoes when it was "snow-in'"—and
that was all there was to it.  That chance
remark led to my living in the same house
with Duggie and Berri; and what a difference
it has made!  Without Berri I never in
the world should have known such a lot of
people in so short a time; and without
Duggie—well, I think I understand what my adviser
meant when he said he was glad I knew Duggie.

There has been one Advocate meeting since
my election and I thought it was great.  All
the editors meet in the Advocate President's
room on Tuesday evening to hear the
Secretary read the manuscripts that have been sent
in or collected from the English courses
during the week.  It took them a long time to
settle down to business; in fact no one seemed
to want to hear the manuscripts at all—although
I secretly thought this would be very
interesting—and several fellows made
remarks and tried to interrupt (the poetry
especially) all the time the Secretary was reading.
But he read on in a businesslike voice and never
paid any attention to them except once, when
he grabbed a college catalogue from the table,
and without looking away from the page shied
it at a fellow who was repeating the verses the
Secretary was trying to read—only
repeating them all wrong and making them sound
ridiculous.  In the case of most of the
contributions the fellows began to vote "no" before
they had read them half through; but several
of them were hard to decide on, and the board
had a lively time making up its mind.  After
the reading we sat around the fire and had
beer and crackers and cheese while (as several
of the manuscripts expressed it) "the storm
howled without."

A few afternoons ago the Secretary (he has
such a queer name—it's Duncan Duncan),
came to my room to see how much I had done
on a story I was writing.  It was a little after
six o'clock when he got up to go, and as he
was on his way to dinner at Memorial he
asked me to dine with him.  I had never been
to Memorial at meal time and was glad of the
chance to go.  It's a very interesting
experience, although I think I prefer the
comparative peacefulness of Mrs. Brown's as a usual
thing.

We were joined in the Yard by a friend of
Duncan's who sits at the same table.  Duncan
is a thoughtful, rather dreamy kind of person
(he writes a lot of poetry for the Advocate),
and on the way over he told me how much he
enjoyed living at Memorial—that he never
got tired of looking up at the stained-glass
windows and the severe portraits.

"Even with the crowd and clatter there 's
always something inspiring about its length
and height," he said.  "It has a calmness
and dignity that quite transcend the fact of
people's eating there.  It's so academic."

"It's so cheap," the other fellow amended;
but Duncan did n't mind him and became
almost sentimental on the subject.

Well, I felt sorry for Duncan.  We had
hardly begun on our turkey and cranberry
sauce when two of the colored waiters got
into the most dreadful fight and rushed at
each other with drawn forks.  All the men
jumped up on their chairs and waved their
napkins and yelled: "Down in front—down
in front!" and "Trun him out!"  As the
newspapers say of the Chamber of Deputies,
"A scene of indescribable confusion ensued."  It
was several minutes before the combatants
were hustled off to the kitchen and we could
go on with our dinner.  Then a party
appeared in the visitors' gallery—a middle-aged
man, two women, and some girls.  One
of the girls was decidedly pretty and attracted
everybody's attention the moment she leaned
over the rail.  The man, however, was what
caused the demonstration in the first place.
He didn't take his hat off, which Duncan
says always makes trouble.  I don't think
anybody really cares one way or the other,
but it furnishes an excuse for noise.  A
murmur of disapproval travelled across the room
and grew louder and louder until the man
with a genial air of "Ah—these boys have
recognized me," came to the front of the
gallery and bowed.  He took off his hat, which
produced a burst of applause from below, and
then put it on again, which changed the
clapping of hands to ominous groans.  The poor
thing looked mystified and embarrassed, and I
don't know how it would have ended if the
pretty girl hadn't just at that instant been
inspired to pluck a big rose from her belt and
toss it over the rail.  It fell with a thud in the
middle of our table and twenty-four eager
hands shot out to seize it.  I grabbed
instinctively with the others, and with the others
I 'm exceedingly ashamed of what happened.
The tablecloth and all the dishes were swept
off, and in the scrimmage that followed the
table was overturned.  I have a terrifying,
hideous recollection of everybody in the world
kneeling on my chest and of something warm
and wet on my face and neck.  Then Duncan
was saying,—

"It's all right, old man—lie perfectly
still; you 've cut yourself a little, but it
doesn't amount to anything.  Only don't
exert yourself."  He looked so scared and white
that I began to be frightened myself and tried
to get up.  But he and some of the other
fellows very gently restrained me, saying that
I was all right in the peculiar, hurried fashion
that, more than anything else, convinces you
that you're all wrong.  Duncan's friend and
another fellow were mumbling somewhere
near me; I caught these fragments of their
conversation: "It *must* be an artery—eight
or ten minutes if it is n't attended to—Doctor
Banning and Doctor Merrick—telephoned—don't
talk so loud—he might hear."

Then I lay quite still and closed my eyes
and tried to think.





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.. _`VIII`:

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   VIII

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Looked at in one way, it was a
humiliating thing to have happen;
but on the other hand, after it was
all over, I was able to derive
considerable satisfaction from the fact that I
had n't lost my presence of mind.  The
remarks I overheard as I lay on the floor of
Memorial were anything but reassuring.  I
realized that in the scrimmage for the rose
I had been submerged in china, glass, and
cutlery,—that some of these things had
severed one of my arteries and that the worst
might happen.  Of course I was very much
frightened at first, and it was then that I tried
to get up; but after they restrained me, I
sank back and began to think of poor mamma.
I was on the point of asking for writing
materials, but on remembering that an accident of
this kind was always attended by a sort of
dreamy weakness, I became—actually—so
languid that I recall telling myself that it
would be of no use—I would n't have
strength with which to write, even if a pen
were thrust into my hand.  So I went on
thinking about mamma until suddenly a man
with a pointed beard (I have since learned he
was a medical student who happened to be
dining with some friends at Memorial) dropped
on one knee beside me and with rapid, skilful
fingers began to open my shirt.  Then he
stopped very abruptly, and with the most
disgusted expression I ever saw, turned toward
the light and examined his fingers.  After
which he got up, brushed the dust from his
knee, and said in a loud, peevish voice,—

"Tell that child to get up and go home and
wash the cranberry-sauce off his face and
neck and put on clean clothes," which I did
as quickly as possible without even waiting to
say good-bye to Duncan.

They don't call me "Tommy Trusting"
any more.  It became "Cranberry" for a
day or two, then it was shortened to "Cranny,"
and now it's "Granny"—"Granny Wood."  Berri
says that it has a ring of finality to it,
and that I 'll never be known by any other name.

Since the great game (I don't believe I 've
touched upon the great game), the college
seems to have settled down once more to an
every-day sort of existence, with the
Christmas holidays looming up now and then in
letters from home.  (As I was going out this
morning, the postman met me at the gate and
gave me four letters with the Perugia
postmark.  It 's funny how my feelings toward
that poor man vary.  When he hands me
letters from home, I think he 's one of the
nicest-looking persons I ever saw, but when he doles
out a lot of bills, he seems to have a hard,
cynical expression that I hate.  I meet him at
The Holly Tree occasionally, where he goes to
snatch a nourishing breakfast of coffee and
lemon-pie.)

I have n't alluded to the great game for
several reasons—the chief one being that (as
Berri says when people explain why they
didn't pass certain exams), "I dislike
post-mortems."  I suppose it might have been, in
various ways, a more distressing event than it
actually was.  The seats, for instance, might
have collapsed and killed all the spectators;
there might have been a railway collision on
the way down; there might have been an
earthquake or a tidal-wave.  That none of
these things happened is, of course, cause for
congratulation—if not for bonfires and red
lights on Holmes' Field.  It is always well, I
suppose, to have something definite to rejoice
over.  The long trip in the train back to
Boston after the game, with every one hoarse
and tired out and cross and depressed, was—  But
I had determined not to mention it at all.

Poor Duggie!  I know it nearly killed him.
He has tried to refer to it philosophically and
calmly in my room once or twice since then;
but he never gets very far.  He knows what
he wants to say and ought to say, but he 's so
intimate with Berri and me that I don't think
he altogether trusts himself to say it.  I
imagine he finds it easier to talk to comparative
strangers.  I was afraid at first that Berri
was going to find in the subject a sort of
inexhaustible opportunity for the exercise of his
genius for making people uncomfortable; but
instead of that, I 've never known him to be
so nice.  For the first time he has allowed
himself to show some of the admiration for
Duggie that, all along, I 've felt sure he really
has, and Duggie appreciates his delicacy—although
in one way it grates on him almost
as much, I think, as if Berri were just as he
always is.

The other day mamma said in one of her
letters, "I often wonder how you spend
your days; just what you do from the time
you go out to breakfast until you go to bed
at—I hesitate to think *what* o'clock."  So
when I answered her letter I tried to put in
everything I did that day, and here it is:—

8.30 A.M.—Woke up in the midst of a
terrible dream in which a burglar was
pressing a revolver to my temple, and found that
beast, Saga, standing by my bed with his
cold, moist nose against my cheek.  I threw
shoes at him until he ran away yelping, which
hurt Berri's feelings and made him very
disagreeable to Duggie and me about the
bathtub.  He said we ought to let him have his
bath first, as it took him so much longer!

9.15.  Breakfast at The Holly Tree.  Berri
came with me, as he said he disliked last
chapters, and it was Mrs. Brown's day for
concluding her great serial story entitled
"Corned Beef."  At The Holly Tree we
found Mr. Fleetwood, who hid coquettishly
behind a newspaper when he saw us coming
and exclaimed,—

"Go away,—go away, you unreverend,
clever boy.  You—you!" he added,
shaking his finger at Berri.  "I don't mind the
other one—the little one," he went on when
we had hung up our coats and hats and went
over to his table; "but you have 'a tongue
with a tang.'  I sha'n't ask you again to my
Wednesday Evenings."  Of course this was
perfect fruit for Berri, who sat down at once
and implored Fleetwood with tears in his eyes
to tell him what he had done, and begged him
not to blight his (Berri's) career at the outset
by denying him admission to the Wednesday
Evenings.  He vowed that he felt ever so
much "older" and "broader" and "thoughtfuller,"
and all sorts of things that he never
in the world will feel, just for going that once.
But Fleetwood pretended not to listen to him,
and went on reading the paper, interrupting
Berri every now and then with: "Viper—viper!"
or "Serpent—serpent!"  I think
he really likes Berri immensely, but is shrewd
enough to know that he never can get at him
by being serious.  We had a very jolly breakfast,
and Berri left declaring that he would n't
rest until he had induced some famous man to
step on his feet.

"Then I 'll be a lion myself and I sha'n't go
to your Wednesday Evenings, no matter how
much you ask me," he said.  At which
Fleetwood held his head with one hand and waved
toward the door with the other, moaning,—

"Go away,—go away, both of you!
You 've caused me to drink four cups of tea
without knowing what I was doing.  I think
you want to drive me mad."

10.30.  Neither of us had a lecture until
eleven o'clock, and we were looking at some
new books in a window on the Square when
Hemington appeared.  He touched us on the
shoulders in a confidential kind of way, and then,
looking furtively at the people who were waiting
near by for a car, lowered his voice mysteriously,
and asked us to go with him to his room.

"I have something over there that I don't
mind letting you in on," he said.  "Only
you must n't of course speak of it; it might
get us into a good deal of trouble with the
government."

This sounded rather exciting, so we hurried
to Hemington's room without talking much
on the way over, as Hemington did n't
communicate anything further and we, of course,
could n't help wondering what he was going
to show us.  When we got into his study, he
gave a peculiar rap on his bedroom door and
out came a strange-looking little person,—short
and plump, with black, curly hair and
big black eyes and a sallow, almost dusky
skin.  A bright red handkerchief knotted
loosely around his neck gave him a picturesque,
a tropical air, that, considering we
were in Hemington's prosaic study in Stoughton
Hall, thrilled us from the first.

"This is Amadéo," said Hemington.  (Hemi
is taking Spanish I., and I think he enjoyed
as much as anything pronouncing the name
in a deep, rich, careless sort of way; he
hauled it in every other second.)  "It's all
right, Amadéo," he went on, for although
Amadéo smiled a most beautiful smile full of
very regular and dazzling teeth, he turned to
Hemington with a look intended to express
inquiry and misgiving.  "You can trust these
men; they are your friends."

At this Amadéo flashed his teeth again and
kissed Berri's hands.  Berri looked exceedingly
shocked, and I craftily put mine in my pocket.

"He 's a deserter," Hemington explained;
for Berri began to rub his knuckles with a
handkerchief, Amadéo looked hurt, and there
was a moment of embarrassment all round.
"He escaped from a merchantman that got
in a few days ago from ——"  (As I don't
take Spanish I., it's impossible for me to give
the luscious name of the island that Amadéo's
boat had come from.  It sounded something
like Santa Bawthawthawthoth.)  "The
skipper was a brute—a regular old timer, and
Amadéo could n't stand it any longer.  He
and a pal swam ashore with all their worldly
possessions on their backs done up in
tarpaulins (they were fired at six times when they
were in the water), and his possessions" (here
Hemington lowered his voice and Amadéo
glanced sharply at the door) "consisted of
three or four hundred of the best cigars you
ever smoked in your life.  He got them at
Santa Bawthawthawthoth, and as he has n't a
cent, of course he wants to sell them.  He
asks about a fourth as much as you have to
pay for a perfectly wretched cigar at any place
in town.  They naturally did n't go through
the custom house, and that's why you have to
keep it all so quiet."

Amadéo went into Hemington's bedroom
and returned with an oil-skin bundle that
looked like those round, flat cheeses you see
under cages of green wire in grocery stores.
He untied it (glancing apprehensively at the
door from time to time, and once clasping it to
his breast when he heard a step in the hall
outside), and disclosed the smuggled treasure.
I have n't begun to smoke yet, but Berri and
Hemington each took a cigar, and after puffing
away for several seconds, Berri said his was
simply delicious.  It certainly smelled very
good, and I was very sorry I had to run away
in a few minutes to my eleven o'clock lecture,
for Amadéo began to tell of some of his
experiences on the merchantman, and they were
pretty fierce.  Berri cut his lecture, and I
should have, if I were n't on probation.  One
of the penalties of probation is that you can't
cut without an excuse that holds water at
every pore.

11-12 M.  Listened to a lecture—with
experiments—on physics.  The experiments
did n't turn out well, and the instructor seemed
much annoyed.  I don't think he has the right
idea.  My experiments in the laboratory
always give beautiful results.  I find out first
of all from the book what Nature is expected
to do; and then I see that she does it.  I 'm
one of the most successful little experimenters
in the class.

12 M.  Ran back to Hemington's room.
Amadéo had gone, but Berri and Hemington
had bought all the cigars.  Berri had learned
a lot of Spanish in my absence, and could say
"Amadéo" and "Santa Bawthawthawthoth"
with almost as fluent a hot-mush effect as
Hemington could.  He packed his share of
the cigars in Hemi's dress-suit case, and we
took them over to our house.

1 P.M.  Went to luncheon at Mrs. Brown's,
and tried to borrow a shirt from everybody
at the table, but without success.  Duncan
Duncan asked me to a tea in his rooms this
afternoon to meet his mother and sisters and
some girls from town.  I promised to go, but
Miss Shedd, my washerwoman, slipped on the
ice and hurt herself and has n't been able to
do my clothes for more than two weeks, and I
discovered this morning that there were no
more shirts in my drawer.  Berri or Duggie
would lend me one, but Berri unfortunately
hasn't any, either, as Miss Shedd does his
washing too, and of course anything of
Duggie's on me is ridiculous.  I wore a suit
of his pajamas one night when I had a cold,
as they 're thicker than mine, and the
shoulders hung down around my elbows.  Well,
nobody would lend me a shirt—for no reason
in the world except that they realized I
simply had to have one and thought it would be
amusing not to.

While we were at luncheon, Berri and
Hemington gave every one two or three cigars,
and Berri said knowingly: "I wish you
fellows would try these and tell me what you
think of them.  I happened to get hold of
them in a rather odd way; I can't tell you
how exactly—at least not for a few days.
They 're not the usual thing you buy at a
store.  They come from Santa Bawthawthawthoth."

We went on talking and forgot all about
the cigars, until Berri, who is very sensitive
to any kind of scent or odor, suddenly looked
up and said,—

"What a perfectly excruciating smell!  It's
like overshoes on a hot register, only much
worse.  What on earth is it?"  At this the
rest of us at the table began to sniff the air,
and I confess it was pretty bad.  Bertie
Stockbridge had finished his luncheon while
we were still eating, and had taken his chair
over to the window, where he was reading
something for a half-past one recitation and
smoking one of Amadéo's cigars.  He was
too absorbed in his book to hear the rest of
us, but all at once he looked up with a very
pained expression and exclaimed,—

"What a beastly cigar!  I was reading and
did n't notice how queer it was; it 's made
me very sick."  Then of course we all
discovered at once where the hot rubbery fumes
came from,—all but Berri and Hemington,
that is to say; they refused to believe it.
So everybody began to light cigars, and in a
minute or two the room was simply unendurable.
Stockbridge said they were like the
trick cigars you see advertised sometimes;
the kind that "explode with a red light,—killing
the smoker and amusing the spectators."  We
dissected several of them; they seemed to
contain a little of everything except tobacco.
The fellows insisted on knowing all the details
of the colossal sell, and although Berri and
Hemington felt awfully cheap about their
part in it, they finally told.  Duggie says an
Amadéo or a Manuele or a Luigi or an
Anselmo appears in Cambridge every year at
about this time, and invariably returns to
Santa Bawthawthawthoth laden with Freshman gold.

1.25 P.M.  Rushed home; got a shirt and
took it to a Chinese laundry just off
Mt. Auburn Street and implored the proprietor to
wash it and have it ready for me by five
o'clock.  He seemed to think me somewhat
insane, and said in a soothing, fatherly kind
of way,—

"You come back day aftle to-mollel."  Then
I explained the situation and told him I would
give him anything he asked if he would do me
this favor.  He made strange Oriental sounds,
at which sleepy, gibbering things tumbled out
of a shelf behind a green calico curtain, and
from a black hole in the partition at the end
of the shelf there began a tremendous grunting
and snuffling, pierced by squeaks of rage
and anguish.  Then five Chinamen swarmed
about my shirt, gesticulating murderously, and
uttering raucous cries like impossible birds.
I wanted to stay and see how it all turned
out; but the bell had rung for my half-past
one o'clock, and I hurried away.

The Oriental temperament is an impassive,
deliberative, sphinx-like, inscrutable thing.

1.40-2.30 P.M.  This hour I spent in class
listening to a lecture on narration.  I enjoyed
it very much, and the hour went by so quickly
that when the instructor dismissed us, I
thought he had made a mistake.  He gave us
short scenes from various famous books in
illustration of his points; and ended, as usual,
by reading a lot of daily themes written by
the class.  Two of them were mine.  He said
they were good, but pointed out how they
could have been better.  One of his suggestions
I agree with perfectly, but I think he 's
all off in regard to the other.  I 'll talk it over
with him at his next consultation hour.  Some
of the fellows thought the whole thing perfect
drool; but I confess it interested me very
much.  I never feel like cutting this course,
somehow.

2.30.  Went to my room with the intention
of reading history until it was time to go for
my shirt, and—if it was done up—get ready
for the tea.  I had read only part of a chapter
when some fellows, passing by, yelled at my
windows.  I had made up my mind, when I
began to read, not to answer any one, as it 's
impossible to accomplish anything if you do.
But of course I forgot and yelled back, and
in a minute three fellows clattered up the
stairs and I realized that they were good for
the rest of the afternoon.

It's a queer thing about going to see people
here.  I don't think that any one ever goes
with the intention of staying any length of
time, or even of sitting down; you merely
drop in as you 're passing by and happen to
think of it.  You would n't believe it if
somebody told you you were destined to stay for
several hours.  But that's what usually
happens.  Another queer thing is that very few
fellows admit that they 're studying when you
come in, unless of course it's in the midst
of the exams.  If you find a man at a desk
with a note-book and several large open
volumes spread out before him, and you say to
him, "Don't mind me—go on with your
grinding," nine times out of ten he'll answer,
"Oh, I wasn't grinding; I was just glancing
over these notes."  The tenth man fixes you
with a determined eye and replies: "You get
out of here, or take a book and go into a
corner and shut up."

3.45.  We all took a walk up Brattle Street
past the Longfellow house as far as James
Russell Lowell's place and back.  It's a
great old street, even with the leaves all
gone—which makes ordinary places so dreary.
Duggie pointed out the most famous houses
to me one day and told me who had lived in
them.  I tried to do it this afternoon, but the
fellows said they did n't care.

5.  Got my shirt at the Chinaman's.  It
looked all right, but it was still damp in
spots—wet, in fact.  I went prepared to pay
almost any price after all the excitement I had
caused; but the proprietor was surprisingly
moderate in his demands.  I gave him
something more than he asked, but he would n't
take it until I accepted some poisonous-looking
dried berries done up in a piece of oiled
paper.  He seemed to have grasped the idea
of a tea, for he kept saying over and over
again with a delighted smile: "You go see
girl—you go see girl."

5.20.  Went to Duncan's tea and "saw
girl"—lots of them.  They were very nice,
and pretended they were dreadfully excited at
being in a college room.  They asked all sorts
of silly questions, and the fellows replied with
even sillier answers.  Duncan had taken them
to see the museums and the glass flowers and
Memorial and the Gym, and had done the
honors of Cambridge generally.

6.30.  Went to dinner at Mrs. Brown's, but
as I had just come from Duncan's, where I
had drunk two cups of tea (I don't know why,
as I hate it) and had eaten several kinds
of little cakes, I had no appetite whatever.
Somebody had put a chocolate cigar on Berri's
and Hemington's plate,—the kind that has a
piece of gilt paper glued to the large end.
Berri and Hemington had to stand a good
deal of guying during dinner, but were
consoled by the fact that Amadéo's pal had
worked precisely the same game on some
other men we know slightly at the very
moment that Amadéo himself was doing us.

7.15.  Went to my room and made a big
fire, as I had a curious kind of chill, although
the house was warm and it was n't cold
outside.  I had just decided to stay at home and
read, when I came across an Advocate postal
card on my desk, and remembered that there
was a meeting of the board in the Secretary's
room at eight o'clock.

8.11.  Listened to manuscripts and voted on
them, and then sat around and talked
afterwards.  It's rather embarrassing sometimes
when a story happens to be by one of the
editors and isn't good.  This evening we had a
long, terribly sentimental passage from the
life of a member of the board.  We all knew
who had written it, and although it was ever
so much worse than the tale that had just
been read (which had been most unmercifully
jumped on), the criticisms were painfully
cautious and generously sprinkled with the praise
that damns.  Of course it isn't always this
way when the editors submit things; they 're
often made more fun of than anybody else.
But this man for some reason is n't the kind
with whom that sort of thing goes down.  He
has been known to refer to writing for the
Advocate as "My Art."

One thing that happened during the evening
made a good deal of fun.  The advertisers
have kicked about our not having the leaves
of the paper cut.  They say that the subscribers
cut the leaves of the reading matter only,
and never get a chance to see the advertisements
at all.  We think it is ever so much
nicer not to have it done by machinery, for
when the subscribers do it themselves with a
paper-cutter, the effect on the thick paper is
very rough and artistic.  Well, we discussed
this for a long time, until some one exclaimed:
"I don't see why we shouldn't have it done
by hand.  It would take a little longer, but
the expense would n't amount to much, and in
that way we could have our rough edges and
appease the advertisers at the same time."
So after some more talk it was voted on and
carried unanimously.  Then the President got
up, and turning to a solemn person who had
been very much in favor of the motion, said:

"It has been moved and carried that the
leaves of the Advocate be cut henceforth by
Hand.  Mr. Hand, you will kindly see that
the work is done on time; I think there are
only eight or nine hundred copies printed this
year."

11.  On the way home from the Advocate
meeting I saw the most gorgeous northern
lights I ever imagined,—great shafts of deep
pink that shot up from the horizon and all
joined at the middle of the sky like a glorious
umbrella.  I ran upstairs to get Duggie and
Berri, but neither of them was in; so, as I
simply had to have some one to marvel with, I
called Mrs. Chester.  She and another old
crone—Mis' Buckson—were having a cup
of tea in the kitchen, and did n't seem
particularly enthusiastic over my invitation to come
out and see the display, but they finally
bundled up in shawls and followed me to the
piazza.  We stood there a minute or two
looking up in silence, and I thought at first
that they were as much impressed as I was.
Finally, however, Mrs. Chester gave a little
society cough and remarked,—

"It's real chilly, aren't it?" and Mis'
Buckson, drawing her shawl more tightly
about her bent shoulders, jerked her chin in
an omnipotent, blasé kind of fashion towards
the heavens, and croaked,—

"That there's a sign o' war."  Then they
both limped back to the house.

11.30.  Made a big blaze in the fireplace, as
I was cold again and did n't feel well at all.
I sat down to write to mamma, and was just
finishing when Duggie came in on his way to
bed.  He 's not in training now and can stay
up as long as he pleases.  He asked me how
often I wrote to mamma, and I told him that
I had written twice a week at first because
there was so much to tell, but that now since
things had settled down and I did n't have so
much to say, I write about once a week.  He
answered that there was just as much to say
now as there ever was, and told me to write
twice a week or he 'd know the reason why.

Then I went to bed and had a chill.  And
that's how a whole day was spent from half-past
eight in the morning until half-past twelve
at night.

The next morning I woke up with a very
bad sore throat and a stiff neck and pains all
over.  Duggie and Berri made me send for a
doctor, and signed off for me at the office.  I
can't imagine how I caught cold, unless,
perhaps, it was from wearing that wet shirt.





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   IX

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I was very sick for about three days,
and just sick for three or four days
more.  When Berri signed off for me
at the office, the college doctor bustled
around to my room at noon to see what was
the matter.  His motives in doing this are
somewhat mixed, I believe.  He has not only
the health but the veracity of the undergraduate
very much at heart.  If you are laid up,
of course he has to know about it; and if
you are n't well enough to attend lectures
but manage with a heroic effort to go
skating,—well, he likes to know about that too.

"Of course you haven't measles," Duggie
said when he came in a few minutes after
Dr. Tush had gone, "but equally, of course, he
said you had,—did n't he?"

"Yes, he did," I answered dismally; for
he had told me this at considerable length,
and I remembered that measles a good many
years before had almost been the end of me.

"Well, *that*'s a relief," Duggie went on
cheerfully.  "You may have all sorts of
things, but it's a cinch that you have n't
measles.  Tush is a conservative old soul; he
always gambles on measles, and of course
every now and then he wins.  It pleases him
immensely.  He usually celebrates his
success by writing a paper on 'The University's
Health,' and getting it printed in the
Graduates' Magazine."

When the other doctor—the real one—came,
he found that I was threatened with
pneumonia.

Oh, I had a perfectly miserable time of it
at first.  The feeling dreadfully all over and
not being able to breathe was bad enough,
but I think the far-away-from-homeness and
the worrying about mamma were worse.  I
was afraid all the time that she would hear
(although I could n't imagine how that would
be possible), and then in the middle of the
night I lay awake hoping and praying that
she *would* hear and leave for Cambridge by
the next train.  I don't suppose I realized just
then how wonderfully good Duggie and Berri
and Mrs. Chester were to me.  Duggie and
Berri took turns in sitting up all night and
putting flannel soaked in hot mustard-water
on my chest (ugh! how I loathe the smell of
mustard), and when they had to go to lectures
during the day,—I think, as a matter of fact,
they cut a great many of them,—Mrs. Chester
would come in and hem endless dish-cloths
by the window.  Berri says that he ceased to
worry about me from the time I looked over
at Mrs. Chester after about half an hour's
silence and exclaimed,—

"Sew some more with the crisscross pattern;
I 'm tired of those dingy white ones."

As I began to get better, I appreciated how
much trouble I 'd given them all and tried to
thank them; but Berri said,—

"Why, your illness has been a perfect
god-send to me.  I 've done more grinding lately
between midnight and six in the morning
than I ever thought would be possible.  I 've
caught up with almost everything."  And
Duggie stopped me with,—

"But if it had n't been Berri and I, it
would have been someone else—which we're
very glad it was n't."

Old Mrs. Chester is a jewel.  I didn't pay
much attention to her at first, but was just
glad to know she was in the room.  Later,
however, when I began to want to get up and
she devoted the whole of her marvellous art
to keeping me amused, I appreciated her.
She is wonderful.  I was going to assert that
she inspires the kind of affection one can't
help feeling for a person who is all heart and
no intelligence; but that, somehow, misses
the mark.  She has intelligence—lots of
it—only it's different.  And before my recovery
was complete I began to wonder if it wasn't
the only kind that is, after all, worth while.
For it's the kind with which books and
newspapers and "going a journey" and other
mechanical aids have nothing to do.  (Perhaps
I should concede something to the influence
of foreign travel, as there was a very
memorable expedition "to Goshen in New York
State" some time in the early sixties.)  Mrs. Chester's
intelligence gushes undefiled from
the rock, and then flows along in a limpid,
ungrammatical stream that soothes at first
and then enslaves.  Her gift for narrative
of the detailed, photographic, New England
variety positively out-Wilkins Mary, and I am
to-day, perhaps, the greatest living male
authority on what Berri calls *la cronique
scandaleuse* of Cambridge.  One of her studies in
the life of the town forty years ago (it was a
sort of epic trilogy that lasted all morning
and afternoon and part of the evening with
intermissions for luncheon and dinner) I mean
to write some time for the Advocate.  It all
leads up to the New Year's Eve on which
"old Mrs. Burlap passed away," but it
includes several new and startling theories as to
the real cause of the Civil War, an impartial
account of the war itself, a magnificent tribute
to the late General Butler, a description of
Mrs. Chester's wedding,—the gifts and floral
tributes displayed on that occasion together
with a dreamy surmise as to their probable
cost,—a brief history of religion from the
point of view of one who is at times assailed by
doubt,—but who doesn't make a practice of
"rushin' around town tellin' folks who'd only
be too glad to have it to say" (this last I
assumed to be a thrust at Mis' Buckson),—a
spirited word picture of the festivities that
took place when Cambridge celebrated its
fiftieth anniversary as a city, and at the end a
brilliant comparison between Cambridge and
"Goshen in New York State."  There was,
I believe, some mention of the passing away
of old Mrs. Burlap on New Year's Eve, but
of this I am not sure.

One thing I discovered that rather astonished
me in this part of the world (a locality
that Berri in one of his themes called "a cold
hot-bed of erudition"), and that is—Mrs. Chester
doesn't know how to read.  I never
would have found it out but for an embarrassing
little miscalculation on her part, in the
method by which until then she had delightfully
concealed the fact.  More than once
while I was sick, she sat by the lamp
apparently enjoying the evening paper that Duggie
subscribes to, and I had n't the slightest
suspicion that she was probably holding it upside
down, even when I would ask her what the
news was and she would reply,—

"Oh, shaw—these papers!  They 're every
one of 'em alike.  They don't seem to be any
news to 'em.  I don't see why you young
gentlemen waste your good money a-buyin' 'em."

Often on the way upstairs she takes the
letters that the postman leaves between the
banisters in the little hall below, and
manages to distribute them with more or less
accuracy.

"I 've got somethin' for you, and it 's
from your mother too, you naughty little man,
you," is her usual way of handing me a
communication from mamma.  I did n't realise
until the other day that, as mamma's letters
always came in the same kind of gray-blue
envelopes, it doesn't take a chirographic
expert to tell whom they are from.  Nor did I
recall that, when Mrs. Chester appears with
a whole handful of things, she invariably stops
short in the middle of the room and artlessly
exclaims,—

"Well, now, if that does n't beat all!
Here I 've climbed up them steep stairs again
and forgotten my specs.  Who 's gettin' all
these letters anyhow?"

A few mornings ago, however,—when they
let me sit up for the first time,—Mrs. Chester
appeared with two letters.  One of them was
unmistakably gray-blue, but the other was
white and oblong and non-committal.  She
paused at the door as if about to examine the
address, and then suddenly,—

"If I ain't the most careless woman in the
world," she said.  "I 've gone and brought up
the letters again, and forgotten—"  But just
at this point we both became aware that her
steel-rimmed spectacles were dangling in her
other hand.  They not only dangled, but they
seemed to me a moment later to dangle almost
spitefully; for Mrs. Chester's worn cheeks
became very pink.  She looked at the spectacles
and at the white envelope and at me.  Then
she said with a sort of wistful lightness,—

"Maybe you can make it out; your eyes are
younger than mine.  I never seen such a
letter; it's so—so—it's so flung together like."

"It is—isn't it?" I agreed hastily, as I
stretched out my hand, to receive a letter from
papa with the address in type-writing.

Just as I thought would happen, mamma
heard I was sick and was, of course, very
much worried.  Dick Benton—who has never
come near me, and whom I 've only seen twice
on the street since College opened—mentioned
the fact of my illness in a letter home.
(I suppose he did it in a despairing effort to
make his sentences reach the middle of page
two.)  Of course Mrs. Benton had to throw
a shawl around her meddling old back and
waddle across the street to our house, to find
out the latest news; and as there had n't been
any news, mamma's letter to me expressed a
"state of mind."  But I fixed her (and
incidentally Dick Benton) with a telegram.

By the way, I really must speak to mamma
about her recent letters to me.  Mildred has
been away from home, and as mamma writes
very regularly to both of us, she often refers to
things she remembers having written to
somebody, but without pausing to consider how
maddening they are when the somebody doesn't
happen to be myself.  From her last, for
instance, I gleaned these interesting items
without having the vaguest idea what they belong
to:—

"Your father and I have just got back from
the funeral.  I suppose, when one arrives at
such a great age, death is a relief.  But it is
always solemn.

"Is n't it nice about the Tilestons?  I
don't know when—in a purely impersonal
way—I 've been so pleased.  They 've struggled
so long and so bravely and now it seems as
if their ship had come in at last.  Of course,
I should n't care to spend so much time in
South America myself, (Guatemala *is* in South
America, is n't it?) but they all seem delighted
at the prospect."

Now would n't that jar you?

My acquaintances generally found out that
I was sick about the time that Duggie and
Berri and Mrs. Chester discharged me, so to
speak, as well.  I could n't go out, and the
doctor made me stay in bed longer than was
really necessary, as the bottom of the furnace
fell to pieces one morning and it was impossible
to heat the house for several days.  But I
felt pretty well.  By that time, as I say, there
was all at once a ripple of interest among my
friends over the fact that I was sick.  They
were awfully kind, and came to my room from
early in the morning—right after breakfast—until
late at night, when they would drop in
on their way back from the theatre.  My
desk was a perfect news-stand of illustrated
magazines and funny papers, and I had left
in my book-case, probably, the queerest
collection of novels that was ever assembled
outside of a city hospital.  Duggie had a fit
over them, and as he read out the titles one
evening, he kept exclaiming, "What, oh,
what are the children coming to!"  The only
volume that was n't fiction was a thing called
"The Statesman's Year Book," and was
brought by a queer sort of chap who is very
much interested in sociology.  I know him
pretty well; so after I thanked him, I
could n't help saying,—

"What on earth did you lug this thing up
here for?—it looks like an almanac."  To
which he replied,—

"Well, it's darned interesting, I can tell
you.  Until I got it I never knew, for instance,
how many quarts of alcohol per head were
consumed annually in Finland."

Although Duggie did n't say anything, I
don't think he was particularly pleased at the
fellows dropping in so often and staying so
long.  They played cards a lot, and smoked
all the time until you could hardly see across
the room; and sometimes when night came I
felt rather tired and my eyes and throat hurt
a good deal.  But I confess I liked it, even if
Duggie and Mrs. Chester did n't.

Only one change of any importance took
place while I was laid up: Berri's Icelandic
dog—Saga—has been removed from our
midst.  I was aware that an unusual spirit of
peace and order reigned in the house as soon
as I began to be about once more, but I
attributed it vaguely to the chastening
influence of my illness.  However, one morning,
when on my way to a lecture I remembered
that I had noticed my best hat lying on a
chair in my study as I came away, and ran
back to save it from being eaten, it occurred
to me that I had n't seen Saga for days.  So,
while Berri and I were strolling home from
luncheon, I asked him what had happened.

"He 's gone—gone, poor old darling!"
said Berri; "I hate to speak of it."

"He was n't stolen or run over or anything,
was he?" I asked sympathetically; for now
that Saga was no longer an hourly source of
anxiety and conflict, I felt reasonably safe
in expressing some regret.  "Did he run away?"

"No, he did n't leave me," Berri answered
sadly; "I gave him up.  You see—I found
out that there is a law against bringing them
into the State; they always go mad as soon
as the warm weather comes.  So I gave him
to one of the little Cabot girls on her
birthday.  She was awfully pleased."

I am rather worried over something that I
got into lately without stopping to think how
much it might involve.  Berri and that tall
spook, named Ranny, that he met at Fleetwood's
Wednesday Evening, struck up quite
an intimacy not long ago, although I can't for
the life of me see how they managed it.  He
isn't a Freshman, as we thought, but a
Sophomore.  Berri was waiting in a bookstore in
town one day to go to a matinée with a fellow
who did n't turn up; and while he was
standing there, Ranny came in and began to drive
the clerks insane over some Greek and
Sanscrit books he had ordered weeks before and
that no one had ever heard of.  Berri looked
on for a while, and, as his friend did n't come
and it was getting late and he—Berri—did n't
like to waste the extra ticket, he invited
Ranny to go with him.  Well, they not only
went to the matinée, they dined in town
together and went again to another show in
the evening.  Between the acts Ranny
explained to him just wherein the wit of "The
Girl from Oskosh" differed from the comedies
of Aristophanes, and Berri says that before
they parted he had learned all about the
Greek drama from A to Izzard.  Since then
Ranny has been to our house several times,
and although Berri likes him, he usually finds
after about an hour that he isn't equal to the
intellectual strain; so he lures Ranny into my
room and then gracefully fades away.

Now I like Ranny too.  He has, in his
ponderous, bespectacled way, an enthusiasm for
several bespectacled, ponderous subjects that
is simply irresistible.  One of them is
Egyptology and the study of hieroglyphics.  Of
course I don't know anything about this, any
more than Berri knew about the Greek drama,—not
as much even; for he did, at least,
pretend to play a pagan instrument of some kind
in a play they gave at school once, while a
Frenchman behind the scenes toodled away
on a flute.  But when Ranny gets to talking
about dynasties and cartouches and draws
fascinating little pictures of gods and
goddesses named Ma and Pa, and explains how
the whole business was deciphered by means
of a piece of stone somebody picked up in
the mud one day,—a regular old Sherlock
Holmes, he must have been,—you simply
can't help being carried away and wishing
you could discover something on your own
account.  He talked so much about it and
made it all seem so real and important that
one day when he exclaimed,—

"And the mystery is that the University
ignores this subject—ignores it!"  I really
felt that the Faculty was treating us rather
shabbily and that we were n't, somehow,
getting our money's worth.  We talked the
matter over very seriously, and decided at last
that it could n't be stinginess on the part of
the Corporation,—for why should it allow
courses in higher mathematics and philosophy
and Italian literature, to which only three or
four fellows went, if it wanted to save the
pennies?  It was more likely just ignorance
of the importance of hieroglyphics, and the
growing demand for a thorough course of it.

"We probably could get a course all right
if we showed them how some of us feel about
it," Ranny mused.  "There's a chap in
Latin 47 who'd join, I think—you've seen
that middle-aged man with the long sandy
beard, have n't you?  He tries almost everything."

The person Ranny referred to did n't seem
very promising to me.  We sleep next each
other in a history course.  He never wears a
necktie, and the last time I saw him there
were a lot of dead maple leaves tangled up in
his beard.  No one seems to know why he is here.

"Well, that makes three right away,"
Ranny declared enthusiastically.  "Perhaps
Berrisford will join; but even if he does n't
three 's enough."

The very next morning after this Ranny
appeared to say he was going to consult
Professor Pallas about the new course, and
wanted me to go along and put in a word
now and then.  This seemed a little sudden
to me, and I said that perhaps I ought to
consult my adviser before taking up a new study,
as I had n't done particularly well in the old
ones.  However, Ranny said that my adviser
ought to be thankful at my showing so much
interest and public spirit.  So we went over
to Professor Pallas's little private room in
Sever.  He was very glad to see us, and when
Ranny began to explain the subject of our
coming, his old eyes just glittered.  He kept
smiling to himself and nodding his head in
assent, and once, when Ranny paused for
breath, he brought his fist down on the table,
exclaiming,

"I predicted this—predicted it."  Then
he thrust his hands in his pockets and paced
excitedly up and down the room.  Ranny was
of course tremendously encouraged, and I
was somewhat horrified a moment later, to
have him turn toward me and with a wave of
his hand declare,—

"My friend, Mr. Wood, feels this weakness
in the curriculum more, perhaps, than any of
us; for long before he entered college with
the purpose of specialising in the subject, he
surrounded himself with a collection of Egyptian
antiquities that far excels anything of the
kind on this side of the British Museum."  (He
was referring in his intense way to a
handful of imitation scarabs and a
dissipated-looking old mummified parrot that Uncle
Peter brought home from his trip up the Nile.
I had indiscreetly mentioned them one
afternoon.)  "We are sure of four earnest
workers, and there are, no doubt, many more."

Now the thing that worries me about all
this is that Professor Pallas seemed so
gratified and eager to help the cause.  His
attitude toward us was that of a scholar among
scholars,—deep calling unto deep.  He said
that he would love to conduct a course in
hieroglyphics himself, but feared he was n't
competent, as he had merely taken up the
subject as a kind of recreation at odd
moments during the last six or eight years.  He
could n't recall any one in the United States
who was competent, in fact, but he knew of
a splendid authority in Germany,—just the
man for the place,—and he would speak to
the President about him at the next Faculty
meeting.  Ranny and I thanked him profusely,
and that at present is where the matter
stands.  I wake up in the night sometimes,
positively cold at the thought of having added
hieroglyphics to my other worries.  Think of
a course for which you could n't buy
typewritten notes,—a course the very lectures of
which would be in German,—a course so
terrible that no one in the United States
would dare undertake to tutor you in it when
you got stuck.

The Christmas holidays are almost here,
but it has not been decided yet whether or
not I am to spend them at home.  Mildred is
still gadding about, and papa may have to go
to New York on business.  If he does, mamma
will, no doubt, go with him, and I'll join them
there, and we'll all have thin slabs of Christmas
turkey surrounded by bird bath-tubs at a
hotel.  Berri has invited me to spend the
vacation with him (his mother is living in
Washington this winter), but as he remarks
dolefully every now and then that he has to
stay in Cambridge to write a thesis that is
due immediately after the holidays, I don't
see how he means to manage.  He's been
putting off that thesis from day to day until
I don't see how he can possibly do all the
reading and writing and note-taking it necessitates.
I 've tried to get him started once or
twice, but he has merely groaned and said,—

"You 're a nice one to preach industry,
are n't you?"  So I've given up.  Well, it's
none of my business if he gets fired from the
course.





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I might have spared myself my anxiety
in regard to the course in hieroglyphics.
My adviser overtook me in the yard a
day or so after our interview with
Professor Pallas, and after walking along with
me for a while he said,—

"Well, Wood, I 'm glad to see you looking
about as usual; I had almost come to the
conclusion that you 'd gone stark mad."  I
asked him what he meant, and it seems that
old Pallas had made a speech at a Faculty
meeting in which he declared that the deep
and ever-growing interest throughout the
undergraduate body in the subject of Egyptology
had reached a climax that demanded a course
of some kind.  He was very eloquent, and
caused a good deal of mild excitement.  Then
some one got up and asked who were
concerned in the movement, and Pallas, after
fumbling in his side pocket, finally produced
a memorandum and said,—

"The names of those imbued with a spirit
for serious archaeological research are many,
but I think that the youth who by his zeal in
collecting and preserving valuable antiquities
has done more than any one else to further
this study among his fellows is Mr. Thomas
Wood, of the class of ——"  But the poor
old man did n't get any further, my adviser
says, for everybody in the room began to
roar and the meeting broke up in confusion.
Well, that 's off my mind, anyhow; although
I don't see why they should have taken it the
way they did.  There 's nothing so very
extraordinary in acquiring a love for study when
that's what you 're supposed to come here for.

Berri and I discovered the most fascinating
little place the other evening.  We had been
in town all afternoon on the trail of an express
package of Berri's that had been lost for days,
and were running along Tremont Street on
the way to the Cambridge car, when Berri
suddenly stopped in front of a sort of alley
and clutched me.  From the other end came
the sound of music,—a harp, a flute, and a
violin playing one of those Neapolitan
yayayama songs that always, somehow, make you
feel as if you 'd been abroad, even when
you 've never been nearer Naples than waving
good-by to your sister from a North German
Lloyd dock in Hoboken.

"Let 's go see what it is," Berri said.  So
we skipped to the other end of the alley, and
found a brightly lighted little restaurant with
the music wailing away in the vestibule.  We
stood listening for a time and watching the
people who went in.  They all stopped to
peer through a glass door, and then after a
moment of indecision passed on—up a flight
of steep stairs.  Berri, of course, could n't be
satisfied until he had solved the mystery of
the glass door, and it was n't long before we
were doing just as every one else did.  We
saw a long, narrow room with three rows of
little tables reaching from end to end.  The
walls were covered with gay frescos of some
kind (I could n't make them out, the tobacco
smoke was so thick); foreign-looking waiters
were tearing in and out among the tables;
flower girls were wandering up and down with
great-armfuls of roses and carnations for sale,
and everybody was laughing and gesticulating
and having such a good time, apparently,—the
music was so shrill and the clatter of
dishes so incessant,—that Berri and I turned
and gazed at each other, as much as to say,
"After all these years we 've found it at
last."  But a moment later we realized why the
people we had seen go in had, after a glance,
turned away and climbed the stairs; all the
tables were occupied.  I think we must have
looked as dissatisfied as the others, for we
felt that nothing upstairs could equal the
scene we had just discovered.  And we were
right.  The upper rooms were comparatively
empty and quiet and rather dreary.  So we
came down again and were about to take a
farewell look and start for home, when Berri,
with his nose flattened against the glass,
suddenly exclaimed, "Saved!  Saved!" and
pushing open the door, made his way across
the room.  Who should be there but
Mr. Fleetwood, dining alone at a table in the
corner?  Berri, after shaking hands with him,
beckoned to me, and in a moment we had both
seated ourselves at Fleetwood's table.

"This is almost as nice as if we 'd really
been invited, isn't it?" said Berri, in his
easy way.  "You know we were just on the
point of giving up and going home."

"Why didn't you go upstairs?" Fleetwood
inquired.  (He pretended all through
dinner that we had spoiled his evening.)  "It
is n't too late even now," he suggested; "it's
much nicer up there; there 's more air."

"There's plenty of air, but no atmosphere,"
Berri answered.  "This is what we enjoy,"
he added with a wave of his hand.

"I 'm glad you like my Bohemia," Fleetwood quavered.

"Oh, Bohemia's all right," replied Berri.
"Bohemia would be perfect—if it weren't
for the Bohemians."

"What are 'Bohemians'?" I asked, for
I 'd often heard people called that without
understanding just what it meant.

"Bohemians?" Berri repeated.  "Why,
Bohemians are perfectly horrid things who
exist exclusively on Welsh rabbits and use
the word 'conventional' as a term of
reproach.  My aunt knows hundreds of them."

"I wrote a paper once on 'What is a
Bohemian?'" Fleetwood put in.  "If you would
really like to know—but of course you
would n't," he broke off sadly; "no one does
any more.  You clever boys know everything
before you come."

"Oh, Mr. Fleetwood, please let us read
your paper," we both begged him enthusiastically.
I think he was a little flattered, for we
would n't allow him to talk about anything
else until he had promised to tell me where I
could find his article.  Berri, however, he
refused absolutely, and made me promise, in
turn, not to let him know where to look for it
and never to quote from it in Berri's presence.

"I know him," he muttered dolefully; "I
know these memories that 'turn again and
rend you;' I 'm an old man; '*Ich habe gelebt*'
and ge-suffered."

Well, we had a most delightful dinner.
Fleetwood, when he saw that he was n't going
to get rid of us, cheered up and made himself
very agreeable.  He can be charming when
he wants to be.  He and Berri did most of
the talking, although his remarks, as a rule,
were addressed to me.  The fact is, he likes
me because I 'm sympathetic and a good
listener, but Berri he finds vastly more
interesting.  Berri has travelled such a lot, and,
besides, he has the knack (I haven't it at all)
of being able to discuss things of which he
knows nothing in a way that commands not
only attention but respect.  For instance, they
got into a perfectly absorbing squabble over
the novelist Henry James, in which Fleetwood
deplored and Berri defended what Fleetwood
called his "later manner."  Fleetwood
ended up with,—

"I 've read everything he 's ever done—some
of them many times over—and I wrote
a paper on him for Lesper's not long ago;
but I could n't, conscientiously, come to any
other conclusion."  To which Berri replied, as
he smiled indulgently to himself and broke a
bit of bread with his slim brown fingers,—

"I often wonder if you people over here
who write things about Harry James from
time to time, really comprehend the man at
all—notice that I say 'James the man,' not
'James the writer.'  '*Le style c'est l'homme*,'
you know; is n't it Bossuet who tells us that?"

"No, it is n't," said Fleetwood, rather
peevishly; "it's Buffon—and he probably stole
it from the Latin, '*Stylus virum arguit*.'"  Fleetwood,
of course, knows what he 's talking
about.  But, nevertheless, I could see
that Berri's general air of being foreign and
detached and knowing James from the inside—or
rather from the other side—impressed
him; and as for me, I was simply paralyzed.
For I could have testified under oath that
Berri had never read a word of Henry James'
in his life, and that he 'd never laid eyes on
the man.  I spoke to him about it afterward
and asked him how he dared to do such things.

"Have you ever read anything by James—have
you ever seen 'Harry James the man,'
as you called him?" I inquired.

"No; of course not," Berri answered.
"What difference does it make?"

"But you went on as if you knew more
about him than even Fleetwood; and I think
that toward the end Fleetwood almost thought
you did himself."

"Oh—that," Berri shrugged, after trying
to recall the conversation.  "That was merely
what an old frump of a woman said at my
aunt's one day when I dropped in for luncheon.
She and Aunt Josephine gabbled and gabbled,
and never paid the slightest attention to me,
and although they were both unusually tiresome,
I suppose I could n't avoid remembering
some of the things they said.  But it would
have been impossible for me to dwell any
longer on that particular topic with Fleetwood,
even if my life had depended on it, because
that day at luncheon, just as my aunt's friend
got started on 'James the man,' I happened
to glance up and notice that she was wearing
an entirely different kind of wig from the ratty
old thing she 'd flourished in before she went
abroad.  She had brought back a new one
that was—why, it was an architectural
marvel; it looked like the dome of a mosque, and
covered her whole head, from eyebrows to
neck, with little cut-out places for her ears to
peek through.  It hypnotized me all through
luncheon, and I never heard a word about
'James the man,'—so of course when I got
that far with Fleetwood I had to change the
subject.  Don't you remember that we began
to discuss Bernhardt's conception of Hamlet
rather abruptly?  I 'll never trust that old
woman again—after making the mistake about
Buffon.  Why, she's positively illiterate!"

Fleetwood told me a lot about Mazuret's—that 's
the name of the restaurant—which
made me glad that we had come across it
accidentally,—found it out for ourselves.  It's
very famous.  All sorts of people—writers
and painters and actors and exiled noblemen—used
to make a kind of headquarters of it and
dine there whenever they happened to be in
town.  Fleetwood has been going there for
years, and always sits at the same table.
(That's the proper thing to do; you must
have a favorite table, and when you come in
and find it occupied, you must scowl and
shrug and complain to the waiters in a loud
voice that the place is going to the dogs.
Then everybody in the room takes it for
granted that you 're a writer or a painter, an
actor or an exiled nobleman, and looks
interested and sympathetic.  We saw several
performances of this kind.)  But the place, of
course, "isn't what it used to be."  I'm
seven or eight years too late, as usual.  Some
of the poets have become very successful—which
means, Fleetwood says, that they 're
doing newspaper work in New York; some
of the painters and actors are beyond the
reach of criticism—which means that they 're
dead; and some of the noblemen are confident
that their respective governments are
about to recall them to posts of responsibility
and honor—which means that they are in jail.

It was more entertaining, Fleetwood says,
in the days of Leontine,—the shrewd,
vivacious, businesslike Frenchwoman who, when
Monsieur Mazuret became too ill, and Madame
too old, used to make change and scold
the waiters and say good evening to you, and
whose red-striped gingham shirt-waists fitted
her like models from Paquin.  It was Leontine
who brought back the wonderful wall-paper
from Paris (through the glass door it looked
like a painting) that represents a hunting
scene, with willowy ladies in preposterous
pink velvet riding-habits and waving plumes,
and gentlemen blowing tasselled horns, and
hounds and stags—all plunging through a
perfectly impenetrable forest, whose
improbable luxuriance Berri brilliantly accounted
for by saying that it was evidently "Paris
green."

"Attend now—I tell you something,"
Leontine used to say confidentially when the
evening was drawing to a close, and but one
or two stragglers were left in the dining-room.

"These peoples—they stay so long sometimes;
I tell to them that they must go.  But
*non*—they will not go; and they stay, and
they stay, and they stay.  And all at once
the—what you call?—the *chasse*—she begin to
move!  The horses—he gallop; the ladies—she
scream of laughing; the gentlemen—he
make toot, toot, toot, tooooo!  The dogs—Ah-h
h-h!  The—the—*cet animal-là*—the
deer?—the deer—Ah-h-h-h!"  Carried
away by these midnight memories, Leontine
would become a galloping horse, a screaming
lady, a master of hounds, a savage pack, and
a terrified monarch of the glen—all at once.
Then, overpowered by the weird horror of it,
she would cover her face with her apron and
run coquettishly as if for protection to another
table.

There was another tale—the description
of a thunderstorm—a regular cloud-burst, it
must have been—that, one afternoon,
overtook Madame and Leontine in the Place de
la Madeleine, Leontine personifying the truly
Gallic elements—the lightning (reels
backward—eyes covered with hands)—the
thunder (fingers in ears—eyes rolling—mouth
open and emitting groans)—the rain hissing
back from the asphalt in a million silver
bubbles (skirts lifted—tip-toes—mon
dieus—shrieks—hasty exit to kitchen)—Leontine
bringing this incoherent scene vividly before
one, was worth one's eating a worse dinner,
Fleetwood says, than the dinner at Mazuret's.
But Monsieur is dead, and Madame just dried
up and blew away, and Leontine is married,
and—although I don't know when I 've
enjoyed a dinner so much—"the place isn't
what it used to be."

While Fleetwood was telling me all this, I
noticed that Berri called one of the waiters
and spoke to him in French.  I don't know
what he said, as he talked very fast—and
anyhow it did n't sound much like the kind of
French I 've been used to.  The waiter
disappeared, and in half an hour or so a messenger
boy came in and gave Berri a little envelope
which he put in his pocket without saying
anything.  Then, when we had finished dinner
and were just about to push away from the
table, Berri exclaimed,—

"Now we 'll all go to the theatre."

"My dear young man, if you could see
the work I have to do this night," Fleetwood
protested with a gesture that seemed to
express mountains of uncorrected themes, "you
would realize, for once in your life, what work
really is."

"But I have the tickets," Berri explained;
and he brought forth the little envelope that
the messenger boy had given him.

"No—no—no!" Fleetwood answered decidedly,
and started for the door.  But Berri
detained him.

"By inflicting our company on you we 've
spoiled the evening for you, I know; but
you won't spoil it for me by depriving us of
yours," he begged in his engaging way.

"'Sweet invocation of a child: most pretty
and pathetical,'" Fleetwood laughed, and
backed into the vestibule.  We followed and
surrounded him, so to speak, each taking
hold of an arm.  Then we all walked through
the alley toward Tremont Street, Fleetwood
quavering apprehensively from time to time,
"Now you 'll take me to my car and then bid
me adieu, like two good boys, won't you?"
while we agreed to everything he said and
clung to him like sheriffs.  Berri was giggling
hysterically, but although I thought the
situation rather amusing, I did n't see anything so
terribly funny about it until we got to the
parting of the ways and Fleetwood stopped.
Then I noticed that, in addition to the three
great red roses that Berri had bought for our
button-holes, Fleetwood had a fourth one, with
a long, flexible stem, growing apparently out of
the top of his head.  He was so unconscious
of the absurd, lanky thing nodding solemnly
over him whenever he spoke, that when he
held out his hand, exclaiming tremulously,—

"'And so,' in the words of Jessica, 'Farewell;
I will not have my father see me talk
with thee,'" and the rose emphasized every
word as if it were imitating him, I gave an
uncontrollable whoop, and Berri doubled up
on a near-by doorstep.

"I only would that my father were alive at
the present moment to see me talking with
thee," Berri gasped.  "I don't know
anything he would have enjoyed more."

Fleetwood looked hurt and mystified and
vaguely suspicious, and he stood there merely
long enough to say,—

"'You break jests as braggarts do their
blades, which, God be thanked, hurt not.'"  Then,
as Berri was still sitting on the doorstep
and I was leaning against the wall, he
made a sudden dash for the other side of the
street.  We caught him, of course, grasped
his arms once more, and walked him off to
the theatre, pretending all the time that we
did n't notice his struggles and how furious he
was at having to go with us.  Berri kept up
an incessant stream of conversation, saying
things that, to an outsider, would have given
the impression that the theatre-party was
Fleetwood's, and that we were the ones who
were being dragged reluctantly away from the
Cambridge car.  Just before we got to the
theatre the solemn rose in Fleetwood's hat
toppled over and dangled against his face.
This also we pretended not to see, and as we
had him firmly by the arms, he was unable
to reach up and throw it away; so we made
a spectacular entrance through the brightly
lighted doorway, with Fleetwood ineffectually
blowing at the rose and shaking his head like
an angry bull.  A party of four or five
fellows—students—who had been unable to get
tickets were turning away from the box-office
as we appeared, and they naturally stopped to
look at us.

This was in the nature of a last straw, for
Fleetwood almost tearfully broke out with,—

"You dreadful, dreadful boys, my reputation
is ruined; they 'll think I 've been
drinking."  Even Berri began to see that we had
gone somewhat far, for he plucked the rose
from Fleetwood's cheek, exclaiming,—

"Good gracious, man! where did you get
this?  You must n't go to the theatre looking
that way.  Just because Bernhardt plays
Hamlet is no reason why you should undertake
to do Ophelia;" and then he threw it
on the floor.  Fleetwood rolled his eyes
hopelessly.

Well, we never got home until almost four
in the morning.  A man whose seat was
behind ours at the play tapped Fleetwood on
the shoulder as soon as we had sat down, and
after a whispered conversation he got up and
went away.  Then Fleetwood told us the
man was a dramatic critic—an acquaintance
of his—who had been sent to write up the
play for a morning paper, but that, as he
did n't understand French and was n't much
of a Shakespearian scholar and wanted to go
to a progressive peanut party in West
Roxbury anyhow, he had asked Fleetwood to do
the thing for him.  Fleetwood used to be on
a paper himself, and was delighted to renew
old times.

So all during the performance he made
notes on the margin of his program and
chuckled to himself.  The occupation, I think,
diverted his mind from Berri and me and
helped him to forgive us.

Afterward we went to Newspaper Row and
waited for hours in a bare, rather dirty little
room while Fleetwood, standing at a high desk
under an electric light in the corner, wrote his
review.  He spent much more time in
groaning, "My facility is gone—my hand has
lost its cunning," than in actual writing.  By
the time he was ready to leave we were all
famished; so before catching the owl car from
Bowdoin Square we stopped at an all-night
restaurant that Fleetwood used to patronize
when he was a reporter, and had buckwheat
cakes and maple syrup.  I 've never tasted
anything so good.

The Cambridge car was interesting, but
fearful.  It was jammed with people, and I
wondered where so many could have come
from that hour of the morning.  They could n't
all have been dramatic critics.  The majority
of those who got seats went sound asleep, and
as the conductor could n't very well wake
them up at every street, he found out
beforehand where they wanted to get off, and then
hung little tags on their coats that told their
destination.

When we were saying good-by to Fleetwood
in the Square, Berri laughed and
asked,—

"Have you decided yet what you 're going
to do to me, Mr. Fleetwood?  I know you
would like to give me E on my thesis, but I
don't think I deserve quite that."  Instead of
answering him, however, Mr. Fleetwood ran
away, exclaiming,—

"Don't talk shop,—don't talk shop;
good-night,—good-night!"

Berri has begun to get awfully scared about
the thesis,—not that he's afraid that
Fleetwood will give it a low mark, but because it
does n't look at present as if there would be
anything to mark at all.  I found him in his
room the other day with a pile of books and
a scratch-block on his table.  But he had n't
taken a note, and his attitude was one of utter
despair.  Of course he can't possibly write it
unless he stays here during the holidays, for
they begin day after to-morrow.





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I don't think I 've had a pen in my
hand, except when I wrote a note to
Berri, for more than two weeks.  In
the first place I left in such a hurry
to meet the family in New York that, among
the various things I forgot to pack at the last
minute, my diary was one.  (Even if I had
taken it, I probably shouldn't have found time
to record all we did.)  Then, as I was with
mamma and papa and Mildred during the
entire vacation, there was no necessity for
writing letters.

I did n't go to Washington with Berri for
two reasons.  The family naturally wanted
me to spend the holidays with them, and I
could n't help feeling that, if I refused Berri's
kind invitation, he would be much more likely
to stay, part of the time at least, in
Cambridge and write his thesis.  In a way I was
right; for when I told him I simply could n't
go with him, he said sort of listlessly,—

"Well, then I suppose I ought to stay here
and finish that thing, oughtn't I?" which
was an optimistic way of letting me know
that it had n't even been begun.  I did n't
know what to answer exactly, because if I 'd
agreed with him he would have thought me
unsympathetic and looked hurt, and if I had
advised him to let the whole matter slide, and
forget about it, and have a good time (which
was, of course, what he wanted me to do), I
felt sure that he would eventually blame me
for giving him bad advice.  That's Berri all
over.  So I merely remarked, "You 'll have
to be the judge; it 's too serious a matter for
any one else to meddle with," and felt like a
nasty little prig as I said it.  He was restless
and gloomy after that, and took a long walk
all alone, during which I 'm convinced that
he very nearly made up his mind to stay in
Cambridge and slave.  I say very nearly,
because he didn't bring himself quite to the
point of telling anybody about it.  But the
next afternoon (college closed with the last
lecture of that day), when I turned into our
street on the way to my room, there was a
cab with a steamer trunk on it standing in
front of our house; and as I opened the front
door, Berri and a dress-suit case clattered
down the stairs.  He stopped just long enough
to shake hands and exclaim, "Good-by,
Granny—have a good time—I left a note
for you on your desk.  The train goes in less
than an hour."  Then he rushed out of the
gate and jumped into the cab, slamming the
door after him with that sharp, thrilling "Now
they're off" clack that cabs, and cabs only,
possess.  That was the last I saw of him.

New York was a pleasing delirium of
theatres and operas and automobile rides up and
down Fifth Avenue, with just enough rows
between Mildred and me, and papa and me
and Mildred and mamma (the other possible
combinations never scrap), to make us realize
that the family tie was the same dear old
family tie and had n't been in any way severed
by my long absence.  It took us three days
to persuade mamma to ride in an automobile,—a
triumph that we all lived bitterly to
repent; for she ever afterwards refused to be
transported from place to place by any other
means,—which was not only inconvenient,
but ruinous.  She justified her extravagance
by declaring that in an emergency she
preferred to be the smasher to the smashed.  I
met lots of fellows I knew on the street, and
some of them took me home with them to
luncheon or to that curious
five-o'clock-sit-around-and-don't-know-what-to-do-with-the-cup
meal they call "tea."  Meeting their
families was very nice, and I felt as if I knew
the fellows ever so much better than I did in
Cambridge.

One incident might have ended in a tragedy
if I hadn't happened to preserve a certain
letter of mamma's.  ("Never write anything
and never burn anything—isn't it Talleyrand
who tells us that?" as the friend of Berri's
aunt would say.)  It was the real reason of
our spending the last two days of the vacation
in Boston, and came about in the following way.

One day at luncheon (we were going to a
matinée afterwards) I glanced at my watch
to see how late we were, and mamma noticed,
for the first time, that I was carrying a cheap
nickel-plated alarm-clock sort of an affair
instead of the gold-faced heirloom that has been
reposing for lo! these many weeks in
Mr. Hirsch's pawn-shop.  Since our meeting she
hadn't referred to this painful subject, and as
I had become used to the dollar watch on the
end of my chain, it never occurred to me to
say anything about it.  That day she looked
at the watch and then at me, and finally she
murmured, "Why, Tommy!" with the
expression of one who seems to see the
foundations of Truth, Respectability, and Honor
crumbling to dust; and she finished her
luncheon in silence, breathing in a resigned kind
of way and studying the table-cloth with eyes
like smitten forget-me nots.  On the way
upstairs I lagged behind, and Mildred said to me,—

"Mamma has on her early-Christian-martyr
look.  What on earth's the matter now?"  But
I was unable to enlighten her.  Mamma
had known from the first that the watch had
been pawned; I could n't imagine why she
was so upset.

All was explained, however, when I went
to her room.  Some time ago she had sent
me a draft for thirty dollars.  It came in a
cheerful letter (no letter containing a draft
for thirty dollars is sad) about nothing in
particular.  I remembered that at the time
the postscript had puzzled me, for it said,
"Of course I have told your father nothing
about this," and there was no clew in the
body of the letter to what "this" referred.
The draft wasn't mentioned.  It seems that
mamma was under the impression she had
written me several pages on the evils of
extravagance, the horrors of debt, and the
general desirability of redeeming one's watch as
soon as possible,—which she hadn't at all.
Not being a mind-reader, I assumed that her
draft was a spontaneous outburst of maternal
esteem, had it cashed with a loving grateful
heart, and spent the money in three days.
Therefore, when she caught sight of my tin
timepiece (it keeps much better time, by the
way, than the heirloom ever did), she had
distressing visions of me indulging in a perfect
carnival of embezzlement, and finally ending
up with shorn locks, striped clothes, and a
chain on my leg.

I never realized before that the human brain
is perfectly capable, under certain circumstances,
of harboring two distinct beliefs at
the same time,—the truth of either one of
which necessarily excludes the other.  (There
is probably a more technical way of stating
this, but I haven't got that far in my
philosophy course as yet.)  Now, when I solemnly
declared to mamma that she had never
mentioned her check in connection with my watch
or anything else in fact, I am sure she believed
me.  She said she believed me, and seemed
greatly relieved.  But, on the other hand,
although she knew I was telling the truth,
and rejoiced in the fact, I am certain that she
was unable at the same time to abandon her
equally strong conviction that she had written
and sent precisely the letter she had intended
to.  I don't pretend to explain this mental
phenomenon, and I discreetly refrained from
discussing it with mamma, for in the midst of
our talk I began to have a dim, delicious
suspicion that her letter was at that moment
reposing in my inside pocket.  (When I am
away from home, I always carry several
plainly addressed letters in order that there
may be as little trouble as possible in case
anything should happen to me.  I remembered
having put the letter with the postscript into
my coat-pocket instead of my desk, as I
wished to refer to it when I next wrote
home.)  So, when mamma finally said, "Well, I
believe you," and then added with an air of
abstraction, "But I wish you had saved that
letter," I thrust my hand into my pocket,
glanced at several envelopes, and exclaimed
dramatically as I showed her one of them,—

"Madam, your most idle whim is my
inexorable law."  Then we all went to the
matinée.

But that wasn't the end of the watch.
Mamma made me give her the pawn-ticket,
and insisted on going home by way of
Boston for the purpose of redeeming it herself.
The reason of this change in the family plans
was not explained to Mildred and papa; but
they were docile, and seemed to think it would
be very nice to see my rooms before leaving
for home.

There was no opportunity to visit Mr. Hirsch
when we arrived yesterday, as we spent most
of the day in exploring Cambridge.  But this
morning (they all left for the West this
afternoon), while Mildred was packing and papa
had gone to see about tickets, mamma, with
her head swathed in a thick black veil, and I
slipped out to go to the pawnbroker's.  I have
an idea that by going herself instead of simply
sending me mamma had a vague but noble
belief that she was rescuing me somehow from
moral shipwreck.  And then, no doubt, the
mere fact of one's venturing out incognito, as
it were, to wrest ancestral relics from usurious
fingers is not without a certain charm.

Well, of course we met papa at the door of
the hotel.  The ticket-office was just around
the corner, and he had engaged berths and
tickets with a rapidity that was as unfortunate
as it was incredible, for he greeted us with,
"Starting for a walk?  I'm just in time,"
and proceeded to join the expedition with
evident pleasure.  Mamma lingered uneasily
on the sidewalk a moment, and then said,—

"We 're not going for amusement, dear;
we 're going to shop.  You know how that
always tires you."  But papa, who was in
good spirits at the prospect of leaving for
home, quite unsuspiciously ignored the
suggestion and replied cheerily,—

"Well, I think I 'll go along, I might
want to buy something myself."

I exclaimed, "How jolly!" in a sepulchral
tone, and we started.

Now, mamma in the role of a gay deceiver
is sublime.  The fact that she is trying to
play a part and perhaps setting "an awful
example" makes her miserable, although she
sometimes succeeds in concealing the fact
until afterwards.  I saw that we were in for a
delightful morning, and would probably end
by missing the train.  We loitered unscrupulously
in front of shop windows, apparently
entranced by everything from hardware to cigars.
We sauntered in and out of countless
dry-goods places in quest of dark-blue ribbon of
such an unusual shade that Boston had never
seen its like; we paused for half an hour,
now and then, to inquire the price of diamond
tiaras and alabaster clocks set with
rhinestones; we bought a bouquet of frost-bitten
roses (I had to carry it) from a one-armed
man, and tarried to hear his reminiscences of
life in a sawmill; we went to pianola recitals,
phonograph exhibits, and assisted at an
auction sale of bar-room furniture.  And papa
wearied not.  Mamma and I were nearly dead,
but he not only wasn't bored,—he seemed to
be having the time of his life.  We could n't
devise anything too silly and futile and
tiresome for him to enjoy, and as the time before
the train left was beginning to grow ominously
short, mamma at last resorted to heroic
measures.

I don't think she had formed any definite
plan when she abruptly led us into the
subway; but our going there was probably not
unconnected in her imagination with the
boundless opportunities for losing oneself in the
sewers of Paris and the catacombs of Rome.
The subway may or may not resemble these
historic places,—I'm sure I don't know,—but,
at any rate, after we had been there five
or six minutes we lost papa.

We all three had stood aimlessly watching
the cars whizz up to the platform and away
again into the subterranean dusk, until papa
(this was his first sign of impatience) mildly
remarked, "I think, dear, that as you and
Tommy seem to be rather attached to this
place, I 'll buy a newspaper."  Then he
strolled off, and mamma clutched me.  We
watched him approach the news-stand and
pick up a magazine.  His back was partly
turned.

"It 's our only chance," said mamma
hoarsely, with a half-guilty, half-affectionate
glance towards the news-stand.  I understood
and, seizing her hand, ran with her to
the nearest car.  An instant later we were
buzzing through the bowels of the earth in
quite the opposite direction from the pawn-shop.

To tell the truth, the only thing I knew
about the locality of Mr. Hirsch's establishment
was that we should never reach it unless
we got out and took a car going the other
way.  This we did, and when I thought we
had gone far enough on the return trip and
we emerged once more into the daylight, we
seemed to be miles from the place—the only
place—from which I could have found my
way.  So we jumped into a cab and told the
man to drive as quickly as he could to that
place.  (I had to describe it at some length,
as I don't as yet know the names of many
streets here.)  He was very intelligent,
however, and it was n't his fault that, after we
had jolted along for four or five blocks, the
horse fell down.  We left him lifting one of
the poor thing's nervous hind legs in and out
of the tangled harness.  He looked as if he
were trying to solve some kind of a gigantic,
hopeless puzzle.  We hurried on for about
a quarter of a mile, and then I suddenly
discovered that we had been in the right street
all the time.  It was one of those queer streets
that never look familiar when you 're going
the other way.  I confess it took a great deal
of courage to impart this discovery to mamma;
but she appreciated the fact that we had very
little time to lose, and did n't stop to point out
to me that if I ever become a business man,
I 'll be a failure.  The horse was on his feet
again when we got back to the cab, so we
jumped in once more, and after an interminable
drive (half of me was out of the window
most of the time, like a Punch-and-Judy doll,
directing the cabman) we finally drew up in
front of the pawn-shop.  It was then that we
really distinguished ourselves.

"I've come for my watch," I said to
Mr. Hirsch.  He gave me the look of a bird of
prey.  It reminded me of an eagle I had seen
once,—an eagle that had been stuffed by an
amateur.  He held out his hand and spoke
a solitary, fateful word.  Mamma's face—in
the excitement of the moment she had
pushed up her veil—became dim with horror;
her features for an instant were positively
incoherent.

"The ticket?" she whispered gropingly.
"It's in the bottom of my trunk."

Mildred and papa and a group of porters,
peering up and down the street like a
concourse of Sister Annes, were on the curbstone
in front of the hotel when we got back.  The
baggage was piled on a wagon, papa looked
haggard and years older than when I had last
seen him, and Mildred gave us a haughty
stare as we alighted.  Mamma was hustled
wildly from the cab to the carriage, and I
had time merely to peck hastily at their tense
faces and gasp good-by.  As the carriage
swung around the corner, mamma appeared
for a moment at the window, exclaiming,
"I 'll send it to you in my first letter," and
then sank from view.  This afternoon, when I
returned to my peaceful little abode in
Cambridge, who should be in his room but Berri?
He was at his desk, bending earnestly over a
big pad of thesis paper.

"You've finished it, after all," I said, for
the floor near his chair was littered with neat
manuscript.

"Yes, it's finished,—fifty beastly pages
of it," Berri answered, as he jumped up to
meet me.  I wanted to ask him all about
it,—how he had managed to do it during the
gayeties of Washington, and if it had taken
much time.  But he said rather wearily,—

"Oh, don't let's talk about it; I 'm so sick
of it," and began at once to question me about
my trip to New York.  We chatted for about
half an hour, and then I got up to go into my
room and unpack my trunk.  Thesis paper
is n't like the ordinary paper on which themes
are written; it has a margin on all four sides,
and as I had never used any, I went over to
Berri's desk to examine a sheet of his.

"Why, you 've had the thing type-written,"
I exclaimed; for there was a pile of
type-written notes in front of the thesis paper.
"Why don't you hand it in that way instead
of copying it again?  Your hand is so hard to
read."

Berri wrinkled his forehead in a queer,
annoyed kind of way; then he looked confused
and blushed a little, and finally he gave an
uncomfortable laugh.

"Oh, Granny, you 're so brutally guileless,"
he murmured.  "Why can't you just see and
understand things?  It sounds so much worse
than it really is, when you make me say it in
so many words."  Even then I didn't altogether
grasp the situation.

"You mean that somebody helped you?"
I asked.  That did n't seem to me worth
making such a fuss about, somehow.

"Well, that's a very refined and ladylike
way of putting it," he answered.  "I got a
man in the Law School to write it for me,
and paid him ten dollars for his trouble."

I had never thought much about this sort
of thing, and it was impossible all at once to
know just where I stood in the matter.  I
didn't know what to say, and I think I blurted
out,—

"Oh, Berri, I 'm so sorry."

"Well, I 'm sorry you know about it,"
Berri mused drearily.  "No, I 'm not, either,"
he added quickly, after a moment; "I 'm
darned glad,—for now that you know, you
can do what you like; I 'm not playing the
hypocrite, anyhow.  Only, don't talk to me
about it.  I 've thought the whole thing over
from every point of view; it's the only thing
I can do.  I 'm willing to run the risks, and
I 'm going to do it."

It was impossible to go back to other topics
after that, so I went into my room and
unpacked my trunk.  I don't believe I ever
unpacked so carefully and put everything
away so neatly before.  Mrs. Chester came
in and complimented me as I was finishing.
It must have been because I was thinking.

With all my thinking, however, I can't say
that I 've got much farther than I was when
Berri first told me.  I simply know that he
oughtn't to have done it, and am very, very
sorry that he has.  If he tried to defend
himself in any way, I could have it out with him;
but he does n't.  When he finished copying
the thesis, he came into my room and said,
"I 'm going over to drop this through
Fleetwood's door; do you want to go along?" and
I went with him, hoping that at the last
minute he might, in his unexpected way, change
his mind.  On the way over he did burst out
with,—

"You see, it's this way: If I didn't know
Fleetwood so well, I should n't do it; I
shouldn't care.  But he'll think, if I fail to
hand in the written work, that I'm presuming
on the fact that we 've breakfasted together
at The Holly Tree and gone to the theatre
and all that.  I hate that kind of thing."  I
tried to make him see that Fleetwood would n't
look at it in this way at all, and that even if
he did it would be his fault, not Berri's.  But
Berri answered: "You need n't go on to tell
me how dishonest it is,—I know all that.
I 'm not worse than lots of other people,
though;" and by that time we had reached
Fleetwood's door.  I put my hand on his
arm as he was about to drop the thesis
through Fleetwood's letter-slide and said,
"Please don't, Berri; wait until to-morrow
morning, anyhow;" but he pushed the roll
through the door, and as it fell with a thud
inside, he laughed and answered,—

"Too late.  Now I'm going to forget
about it."  He went to town for dinner, and I
had mine about an hour ago at Mrs. Brown's.
I was the only one there.  In a few minutes
I have to go out again, as I promised——

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.. class:: noindent

   *Later*.

.. vspace:: 2

Just as I had written that far, the front
door opened and slammed and the tin steps
clattered as they only do when Duggie is
coming up.  The loneliness of the house, and
the feeling that college opened to-morrow, and
Duggie on the stairs all took me back to my
first evening in Cambridge.  The only difference
was that instead of going to his own room
Duggie this time came bursting into mine.

"I came to say good-by," he exclaimed;
and when I got over my astonishment, he
went on to tell me that he had decided during
the vacation to go away—to Europe—and
stay until Class Day.  He had never told me
before that he had taken his degree in three
years, and that it would n't have been
necessary for him to come back this year at all if
he had n't wanted to.  He has been entitled
to his degree for months; but of course he is
anxious to graduate with his own class in the
spring.  He has n't talked to any one about
going abroad, as he was n't sure of it until a
few days ago.

"I 'm leaving on the midnight train
to-night," he said, "and I came out here on the
chance of your having got back.  My family
are all in the country, I left them this
afternoon."  I wanted to tell him how sorry I was
that he was leaving us, and how glad I was
that he could go; but somehow I don't think
I showed what I really felt.  The time was
so short (I had promised Duncan Duncan to
help him with some Advocate editorials at
half past eight), and those things never seem
to sound the way I should like to have
them.  But in a way I had an opportunity
to let him know how I felt toward him, for
while we were sitting there, he laughed and
said,—

"As you won't stay and talk to me, I think
you might at least do the next best thing.
You know I 've always wanted to read this,
and now that I 'm going away, you ought to
let me."  Then he took my diary from the
mantelpiece and pretended to read the first
page.

My first impulse was to ask him not to.  If
he had been going to stay in Cambridge, I
should n't have let him, of course; but as he
was leaving in a few hours and seemed anxious
to read the thing, and as it really did n't make
any difference whether he did or not, I finally
let him.

"I don't see why you want to, and you
probably won't get beyond the first few pages,
but you may," I said.

So I left him by the fire with the diary in
his hand.  I thought perhaps I should find a
note about it when I got back this evening,
but I didn't.





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.. _`XII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   XII

.. vspace:: 2

Poor Berri!  I felt so sorry for him.
I do yet, in fact; for although things
can't possibly turn out in the way he
thinks they may, I can't tell him so,
and he lives in a state of perpetual dread.
But it won't last long now; Duggie's steamer
must have almost reached Southampton by
this time, and it won't take more than a week
or eight days for Berri to hear from Duggie
himself.  I came very near giving the thing
away at one time.  It's hard not to,
although I realize that Duggie was wise when
he asked me to let matters take their course.

It just happened that the next day after
Berri had delivered his thesis, the talk at
luncheon turned on cheating at exams and
handing in written work that is n't your own.
The sentiment against cheating seemed to be
strong, partly from a sense of honor and partly
from a sense of risk.  As a matter of fact, I
don't see how fellows can very well manage to
cheat here—during an examination, that is
to say—even if they want to.  There are
always a lot of proctors prowling up and down
the room, ready to jump on anybody who has
suspicious-looking bits of paper on his desk,
or who seems to be unduly interested in his
lap or the condition of his cuffs.  And then,
besides, assuming that the instructor occasionally
gets absorbed in a newspaper and the
proctors stroll to the windows to watch the
muckers throwing snowballs in the Yard, how
could a student prepare himself for this rare
opportunity?  It may be different in courses
that involve the exact sciences, where certain
definite formulas copied on a small bit of
paper might be of use; but in the sort of
things I take, one would have to conceal upon
oneself the Encyclopædia Britannica, Ploetz's
Epitome of History, Geschmitzenmenger's
Ancient Art, or the Dictionary of Biography,
in order to accomplish any really effective
deception.

With written work it seems to be easier.
If a man hands in a theme or a thesis in his
own hand, the instructors are more or less
forced to accept it as original, unless of course
it was taken outright from a book and they
happen to be familiar with the book.  From
what the fellows at the table said, there must
be more of this sort of thing done than I had
imagined; although, since Berri opened my
eyes, I could believe almost anything.  One
of the fellows told about a student—a Junior—he
had heard of who succeeded in getting
himself fired two or three years ago in a rather
complicated way.  He was engaged, and his
lady-love sent him a poem in one of her letters,
saying that she had written it for him.  The
letter arrived while he was struggling with a
daily theme; so he murmured to himself,
"Tush!  I 'll copy Araminta's pretty verses
and send them in as my own; as they have
just gushed from her surcharged heart into
her letter, no one will be the wiser."  A few
days later the omnivorous Advocate asked
permission to print them, and as they had
received words of praise from the instructor,
and as the fellow by that time had no doubt
begun to believe he had written them himself,
he allowed them to be published under his
name.  Somebody sent a copy of the
Advocate to Araminta, who replied with an
indignant letter to her *futur*; and while he was
trying to think up an explanation of the
matter with which to pacify her, somebody else
came out in the Crimson with a most withering
communication, asking how the Advocate
dared to print as original a poem that had
been written by his grandfather, the late
Donovan H. Dennison, whose complete
poetical works ("Dan Cupid and other Idyls")
could be found in the college library at any
time.  Whereupon the student, disgusted at
his lady-love's dishonesty in palming off the
late Donovan H. Dennison's verses as
original, broke his engagement; and the college,
disgusted with the student for precisely the
same reason, "separated" him (to use the
suave official phrase) from the University.

There was, as I said, a great deal of talk
at luncheon that day about cheating.  Some
of the men seemed to think the presence of
proctors during an exam was insulting; but,
as Bertie Stockbridge remarked,—and this
struck me as unanswerable,—"If you don't
cheat yourself and don't want to, what
difference does it make whether they 're there or
not?  And if you do cheat, why, of course,
proctors are necessary."  In the matter of
dishonest written work the same honorable
sentiments were expressed.  Everybody was
sincere, but I could n't help realizing a little
that they could not have had very much temptation
as yet.  If it had n't been for Berri, I
probably should have laid down the law as
loudly as the rest.  But he sat there eating in
silence, irritated and oppressed by so much
high-minded babbling, and I hated to hurt him
by adding to it.  Usually he is one of the last
to leave the table.  That day, however, he
hurried through his luncheon and slipped away
alone.

Oh dear!  (How silly those two words
look written down, and yet it was what was
passing through my mind as I wrote them.)  I
suppose that what I really mean is, How
tiresome it is that a person's acts don't begin
and end with himself!  There doesn't seem
to be any limit to the reach of their influence.
It would be so much more simple and easy if
you knew just where the consequences of a
mistake or an indiscretion, or whatever you
choose to call it, began and ended.  Now,
for instance, take Berri and the thesis.  Of
course, I think it was all wrong, and was
sorry he handed it in; but I wasn't going
to let it make any difference in my feelings
toward Berri.  As far as I am concerned, I
don't think it has made a difference.  Yet the
beastly thing cast a sort of gloom over the
house.  For Berri after luncheon that day
rather avoided the table in general and me in
particular.  What his object was in doing
this, I don't know.  It was probably just a
feeling on his part; but it made me feel as if
I 'd been putting myself on a moral pedestal
somehow, and that Berri saw in me a
perpetual accusation.  Our relations became
indescribably changed and sort of formal, and I
did n't see how I could make them different.
What could I have done?  There was nothing,
under the circumstances, for me to say.
He stopped in my room that night to warm
himself for a minute before going to bed, but
I don't think he said anything except that it
was snowing outside.

The next day we had the blizzard.  People
here usually assume that in the part of the
country I come from we have nine months
of winter and three of cold weather.  But
nevertheless I had to come to the staid and
temperate East to see the kind of a winter
storm you read about in books,—the regular
old "Wreck of the Hesperus" kind, in which
the crew are "swept like icicles from the
deck," and able-bodied men get hopelessly
lost and are frozen to death in their own front
yards.  I was to have dined in town that night
with Hemington, who had tickets for a
Paderewski recital.  But he did n't turn up, so I
joined some fellows who found me in the
restaurant eating alone, and afterwards went to
the theatre with them.  It was snowing when
we left the restaurant; in fact, great, wet
cottony flakes had been falling at intervals all
day.  (It reminded me of those marvellous
paper weights I haven't seen for years and
years,—glass globes filled with water in
which a white, powdery sediment swirls and
drifts and finally settles in the most lifelike
way on a beautiful little tin landscape.
What's become of them all, I wonder?)  But
there was no wind, and it was n't particularly
cold, so I don't think that anybody suspected
what was going to happen before the show
was over.

It took an unusually long time to get out
of the theatre that night; the people in the
aisles hardly moved at all.  But after we
had forced our way through the crowd, and
climbed over seats, and finally reached the
narrow corridor leading to the entrance, we
saw why it was.  The ones who had got to
the door first were afraid to leave.  Within
an hour or two the wind had risen and risen
until it screamed through the streets, blasting
up the fallen snow in wild bewildering spirals
and then fiercely slapping it back again in
slants of hard, biting cold.  From the door
of the theatre it was impossible to see beyond
the curbstone, except when the half-obliterated
lights of a cab lurched by over the drifts.
The rumor went through the crowd that the
wires were down and that all the cars had
stopped.  No one seemed to know quite what
to do.  Just as the people nearest the door
would make up their minds to start bravely
out, a thick hurricane would strike erratically
in at them, causing the ladies to shrink back
with little exclamations of dismay.  Nobody's
carriage had arrived, and the few cabs that
appeared ploughed laboriously past us.  Our
crowd waited a few moments,—more to share
the excitement of the others than for anything
else; then we turned up our collars and
plunged out.

Standing at the door of the theatre, the
world outside had seemed to me to be in a
sort of insane uproar; but as soon as we got
away from the human babble, and I lifted my
head and opened my eyes and deliberately
relaxed my ears, so to speak, I found the city
almost solemnly silent.  Every now and then,
when we came to a cross street or turned a
corner, there was, it is true, a sudden shriek
and a sort of rattle of fine stinging ice
particles; but as long as I could keep myself from
being confused inside of me, while we were
floundering over drifts and burrowing with
our heads through the walls of wind that
blocked the way and seemed to be falling
on us, I could n't help noticing the terrible
muffledness of everything.  It was as if the
place were being swamped, blotted out,
suffocated.

When we reached the hotel where we had
dined earlier in the evening, the other fellows
went in to have something to eat, but for
several reasons I decided not to.  In the
first place, I promised papa that I would try
to economize, and I had already unexpectedly
squandered two dollars on a theatre ticket,
owing to Hemington's failure to appear.
Then I felt that if I did n't make a dash for
Cambridge right away, I should n't get there
at all.  (As a matter of fact, I never did
reach there until nine the next morning, but
it was n't because I did n't try hard enough.
The other fellows put up at the hotel.)  So
I just shouted that I was going on, and as we
were all about half frozen, no one stopped to
persuade me not to.

Well, I found a string of cars about a mile
long that were rapidly turning into Esquimau
huts, and was told by one of the conductors
that something had broken down ahead, and
that, as the snow-plough could n't get by, they
probably would n't move again until morning.
He thought, however, that the other line was
running; and I started to grope my way to
Bowdoin Square.

I would n't go through that experience again
for gold and precious stones; and I can't
imagine now why I did it in the first place,
except that I had acquired by that time a kind
of pig-headed determination to reach
Cambridge, and did n't know what I was in for.
It was n't so bad while I was staggering along
by the side of the blocked cars; they were
lighted, and I knew that if I changed my
mind about going on, I could pop into one of
them and be safe.  But when I passed the
last one and found myself after a while among
back streets choked with drifts, and could n't
see my way, and fell down twice, and got
snow up my sleeves, and my face and hands
and feet pained so with cold that I could n't
help crying (actually), and I realized at last
that I did n't in the least know where I was,
I began to be panic-stricken.  I 'm not the
huskiest person in the world, and all at once
the wind blew me smash against an iron
railing and almost into a basement of some kind.
I think I should have hunted for a door-bell
and tried to get into a house if I hadn't a
moment later collided with a policeman (fell
down again), who helped me up and led me
to a sheltered place behind a wall, where I
managed to collect myself and tell him what
I was looking for.  He too was on his way to
Bowdoin Square; so after that I just hung
on to his coat most of the time, and tried to
keep my legs in motion without really knowing
much where he was leading me or whether we
were making any progress.  Once there was a
rip-tearing crash over our heads.  The
policeman jumped aside, and then stopped to
exclaim, "Well, I never seen the likes o' that."  I
think a sign had blown off a building through
a plate-glass window.  Farther on a dangling
wire romped in the wind.  It spat dazzling blue
and purple at us until we retreated and went
around another way, muttering strange
Hibernian mutters.  When I opened my eyes again,
we were in front of the hotel in Bowdoin
Square and the policeman was advising me
through his frozen mustache not to go to
Cambridge.  He said the cars had stopped
long ago.  So I said good-by to him and was
just stumbling into the café, when who should
come out but Berri and a cabman?  They
had gone in to get warm before starting across
the bridge.

"I 'm not sure that we can make it," Berri
said, "but the man says he's willing to try.
I 'll tell you why I don't want to stay at the
hotel when we get inside.  Look out—look
out!" he cried to me, as I opened the cab
door and was about to jump in.  I drew back,
expecting at least to be decapitated or
electrocuted, and then Berri explained that he
was afraid I might "sit on the pigeons."  He
entered the cab first, and removed some
indistinguishable objects from the back seat to
the narrow seat that lifts up in front.  "That's
why I can't very well stay at the hotel," he
went on.  "As soon as these poor exhausted
little darlings begin to thaw, they 'll fly around
and make a dreadful fuss.  I 'd rather have
them in my own room."  He had picked up
four half frozen pigeons in the street on his
way to the Square, and had carried them—two
in his pockets and two in the bosom of
his overcoat—until he came across the cab.
After we got started, he lighted matches every
now and then to see how they were getting
along, and we took turns at blowing on their
pink feet, all shrivelled with cold.  One of
them, to Berri's grief, was dead, but by the
time the cab stopped suddenly and for the
last time in the middle of the bridge (it had
been going slower and slower and tipping
more perilously over mounds of snow as we
proceeded), the other three looked scared and
intelligent and began to feel warm under their
wings.

The driver opened the door and said he
could n't go on, as a fallen wire was sagging
across the street in front of the horse's nose.
We jumped out, and Berri was just about
to seize the thing and try to lift it over the
horse's head, when I remembered the murderous
ecstasy of the other one and jerked him
back.  Ahead of us there was a drift almost
as high as the cab itself, and the man said
that even without the wire we never could
drive over or through it.  So, after a short
consultation, he decided to blanket his nag
and spend the rest of the night in the cab;
the horse was "dead beat," he said, and he
very much doubted if it could pull back to
town against the wind even after turning
around, which was a more or less impossible
undertaking in itself.  Berri and I packed up
the pigeons—the dead one included, as Berri
remembered having read in the paper that
morning of a case of "suspended animation"
somewhere in Texas—and pushed on to the
waiting-station at the other end of the bridge.

That was a queer night.  I was simply
played out when I got inside the waiting-room,
and I had n't been there more than a
few minutes when I discovered that my ear
was frozen.  A kind, officious woman all but
broke it off rubbing snow on it; but though
it pained excruciatingly during the night and
is still sensitive and has a tendency to stick
out at right angles from my head, I think it
will recover.  There must have been fifteen
or twenty people cooped up in the waiting-room
and the cigar-stand (with hot soda-water
and candy facilities) next door.  Some of
them were cross and unhappy, and some of
them were facetious.  One of them had a
small dog.  Berri's pigeons created a
sensation.  The cigar-man gave us a box to put
them under, and Berri bought them popcorn
for fear they might be hungry during the
night.  The warmth of the room revived them
completely, all but the dead one.

We talked for a while; but as Berri
remembered, now that the excitement was over,
to be formal and impersonal once more, it was
rather dreary.  We could have slept, I
think,—in fact we were asleep, when one of the
facetious refugees woke us up to ask if we
did n't want to join him "and some other
gentlemen in a game of euchre."  Disappointed
at his unsuccessful efforts to interest
people in this diversion, he chased the little
dog about the room, declaring that he
intended to tie a glass of chocolate around its
neck and send it out in the storm to look for
travellers who had lost their way.  It was
impossible after that to get to sleep again.

We had been sitting with our heads against
the wall for almost an hour, waiting for
daylight, when Berri, who hadn't said anything
for ever so long, suddenly came out with,—

"Oh, Granny, I 'm so sorry I did it!"  I
knew what he meant at once, although the
thesis had n't been in my mind at all, and I
was just about to advise him to have a talk
with Fleetwood and tell him everything, when
he added that he would have to stand by
himself now, as it was too late to draw back.

The worst of the storm was over, the
cabman had come in to get warm and tell us that
his horse had frozen to death, and the windows
of the waiting-room had begun to look pale
instead of black, by the time I convinced
Berri that it wasn't too late, and that as soon
as we got to Cambridge he ought to go to
The Holly Tree and wait until Fleetwood
came in for his breakfast.  When he finally
made up his mind to do this, I never saw
any one in such a state of impatience.  He
could n't sit still, and kept running to the door
every other minute to see if the snow-plough
was coming over the bridge.  Once he
suggested that we should walk; but although
the morning was clear and beautiful, I had
had enough of struggling through mountains
of snow the night before, and refused.  The
plough appeared at last, preceded by a
whirling cloud and followed by a car.  We set the
pigeons free (Berri told them all to return
with olive branches as quickly as possible)
and watched them fly to the nearest
telegraph-pole and proceed to make their toilets
for the day.

It must have been about half an hour after
I parted with Berri (he went on to The Holly
Tree and I came to my room) that he bounded
up the stairs, pale with excitement.  He had
met Fleetwood, and after a few preliminary
remarks about the blizzard (the whole place
was submerged) he had blurted out,—

"Mr. Fleetwood, I want to tell you something
about my thesis; I did n't write it."  To which
the instructor replied almost indifferently,—

"Yes, I noticed that.  What was the
trouble?"  Berri just looked at him in amazement.

"I said I did n't write it," he faltered.

"Well, I know that," Fleetwood replied a
trifle sharply.  He was inclined to be
"peevish," Berri said, because the morning papers
had n't been delivered.

"But I want to tell you how sorry I am,"
Berri added; the situation was much worse,
Berri says, than it would have been if
Fleetwood had seemed more impressed by his
dishonesty.  As a matter of fact, Fleetwood
merely smiled.

"Oh, I never had the vaguest idea that you
*would* write it," he remarked airily.  "But if
you don't care, I don't.  It's much easier for
me to give you an E for having failed to hand
it in, than it is to read fifty or sixty pages of
your impossible writing."

At this Berri said he almost reeled from
his chair.

"Did n't I hand it in?" he asked, while his
heart thumped painfully.  Fleetwood glanced
up from his oatmeal only long enough to say,—

"I wish you would go some place else to
eat; you bother me."  But Berri insisted.

"Dear Mr. Fleetwood," he pleaded eagerly,
"please answer me just that one thing.  Did n't
you find my thesis pushed through your door?"  At
this Fleetwood put his hands to his head,
as he always does when he 's pretending that
we 're trying to drive him mad, and moaned,—

"First you tell me you have n't written your
thesis and then you ask me if I 've picked it
up on my floor.  Oh, go away, go away!  I
shall never be able to finish my breakfast and
get back through all that ghastly snow to my
ten-o'clock lecture."  Then Berri dashed out,
forgetting to pay for his breakfast, and came
to find me.

Fleetwood must think that Berri isn't quite
right; for he followed the instructor around
all day more or less, waiting for him at the
doors of lecture halls, intercepting him in
front of the Colonial Club at lunch-time,
running after him in the Square, and calling on
him twice at his room, to ask if the thesis had
turned up yet.  But of course it never had.
At that time neither of us could account for
its disappearance, and Berri can't yet.  He
is existing in a state of nervous dread for fear
it "may have fallen behind something" in
the dark vestibule and will eventually turn
up.  Well, it will turn up, but not in
Fleetwood's room.

Berri spent most of the time in which he
wasn't dogging Fleetwood's footsteps
discussing the thing with me.  But I could n't help
him much beyond hoping that the thesis—like
the love-letter or the lost will in dramas
at the Bowdoin Square Theatre—wouldn't
be found until the fifth act, after an elapse
of twenty years.

I had to leave him alone part of the
afternoon.  Duncan Duncan sent me word that
he was sick and that the Advocate was in
dire need.  So I floundered through the alley
to the printing-office, and learned from the
proof-reader that they had to have six inches
of poetry immediately or the paper would be
very much delayed.  I did n't know what to
do, as we had n't any poems of that length in
stock, so to speak.  While I was sitting there
in despair, one of the printers gave me a piece
of paper and a pencil, and said,—

"Here, hurry up and write a couple of
sticks of po'try; I want to go home."  He
was quite serious; so I got to work, and in
about fifteen minutes had written twenty lines
about the pigeons in the blizzard; only I
referred to them, for various technical reasons,
as doves.  There was a heavenly smell of
printer's ink in the place which made it easier
to write somehow.

No letters came that day from any direction
on account of the storm.  The next afternoon
I met the postman on the steps.  He stopped
to chat, and I thought I should grab the
letters from his hand before he finished, as I
caught sight of one in Duggie's handwriting
addressed to me.  I thought of course that he
had postponed his trip and had written to tell
me why.  The postman talked on and on, but
he told me one tale that interested me in spite
of myself.

One Sunday morning old Professor Pallas
(my ally in the hieroglyphics course) went
over to the post-office for his letters.  He
must have been thinking very deeply about
recent discoveries or cuneiform inscriptions or
some such thing, because when he went up
to the window he could n't remember whose
letters he had come for.  So he said to the
clerk,—

"Young man, do you know who I am?"

The clerk unfortunately was a new one, and
had to confess, with regret, that he did n't.
So Professor Pallas, after a moment or two
of reflection, looked up and murmured through
the window,—

"I ask you this because I am equally at a
loss myself; but perhaps if I take a little
walk it may come to me."  Then he strolled
away, and in about ten minutes returned, very
much pleased, with a slip of paper in his hand.

"I remembered it all by myself," he
exclaimed, "and wrote it down."

I got Duggie's letter at last, and ran
upstairs to read it.  This is what it said:—

.. vspace:: 2

DEAR GRANNY,—We are steaming slowly out of
the harbor, and I am sitting in a sheltered corner of
the deck writing you this note for the pilot to take
back with him.  My fingers are stiff with cold, but as
the air down below is thick with what Mrs. Chester
calls "floral tributes."  I 'd rather stay here and say
good-by to you and the Goddess of Liberty at the same
time.

What I wish particularly to do, however, is to thank
you for letting me read your diary last night (I have
some things to say about it—the parts where I come
in, I mean—but that can wait) and to make a
confession.  When I got to the last page, where the ink
was scarcely dry, I dashed over to Fleetwood's room,
although I had lingered so long in your room I did n't
have any too much time in which to catch my train.
Fortunately there was a light in Fleetwood's window.
While I was talking to him I saw out of the corner
of my eye the great pile of—is the plural "theses"
or "thesises"?—on his desk, and when he went into
his bedroom for a minute to get a book for me to read
going over, I sniped Berri's performance from the top
of the pile and stuck it in my pocket.  I did it on the
impulse of the moment, and I may have been all
wrong—I don't know; the whole thing worries me.  But
don't say anything to Berri about it.  I should n't care
to get you and the diary into trouble.  When I reach
Southampton I 'll send the thing back to him with a
letter.  Good-by, Granny.  Take care of yourself and
write often.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent

   DUGGIE.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   XIII

.. vspace:: 2

Some day I 'm going to write a book
about Boston, because it's the most
wonderful place in the world.  I
suppose I really mean by this that it is
so different from Perugia.  Berri, of course,
would have to help me,—that is, he would
unless I lived here fifty or sixty years for the
purpose of gathering notes.  It would take
about that long to understand everything and
be able to write intelligently and sympathetically.
Anybody, of course, may sojourn for
a time among the Bostonians—just as he may
among the Chinese or the strange races of the
Pacific islands—and record his impressions
of them.  But I don't think his remarks would
be more valuable than the ordinary travel
book that tells you merely the things you
could tell yourself if you were on the spot
with a pencil and a strong right arm.  Really
to know the place you have to be born and
brought up here; which in itself amounts to
saying that Boston will never, never be
understood.  For the people who were born and
brought up here know and won't tell,—"know
and can't tell," Berri declares.  "It
would take a genius to do the thing properly,"
he says, "and Boston went out of the genius
business some thirty or forty years ago."

Now, Berri was born in Paris ("Paa-is,
France—or Paa-is, Kentucky?" as a Southern
girl once asked him), and I don't suppose
he's a genius, actually.  But as he has, on
his mother's side, more cousins and aunts and
things in Boston than anybody I 'm ever likely
to know so very intimately, and as he seems
more like a genius than anybody I 've ever
seen before, what he tells me always sounds
somehow as if it were the real thing.  He
laughed, though, the other day—we were
taking a long walk—when I said this to him,
and answered that it was very evident I did n't
know what the real thing was.

"*I'm* not," he added, "if for no other
reason than that I am able, quite seriously at
times, to consider going some place else to live
after I finish with all this."  And he fluttered
his hand in the direction of Cambridge.

"Does n't anybody else?" I asked.

"Mercy, no—how you talk!" he
exclaimed.  "Why should they?"

"I suppose I was thinking of papa," I
replied meekly.  "He believes it's better for
most young men to get away from home and
start life for themselves as soon as they grow
up; they 're always boys to somebody unless
they do, he says.  Then, besides, he has great
faith in perfectly new places.  He 's often told
me that even Perugia was too old and crowded
for a young man.  Perugia was fifty-three
years old last spring."  Berri laughed.

"That's important, if true," he answered,
"but what has it to do with Boston?"

"Why, I merely imagined that some one in
this part of the world might have the same
idea," I suggested.  "Now, take Duggie,
for instance.  Don't you think that Duggie
wants to get out and try to do something?"

"Oh, Duggie!" said Berri, with a shrug.
"He thinks he does now, but he really doesn't.
Of course Duggie is simply slopping over with
strenuousness and that sort of thing.  But he
gets most of it out of books,—Fleetwood's
books at that.  And after all, as I say, he slops
over; it 'll just run into the sand without
making even a silly little hole.  After a while,
when he gets tired of reading, and thinking
how unworthy everybody else is, it won't do
even that.  Duggie in college is stunning and
a leader of men; but Duggie at forty will be
leading nothing but a beautiful purple life
down there at his country-place,—unless, of
course, he gets fat; if he gets fat, he 'll be a
stockbroker."

"Say, Berri, how old are you, anyhow?" I
asked.  I know he is older than I am, but he
never will tell me how much,—he didn't this
time,—he just laughs, and says his early
education was grossly neglected over there in
Europe, or he would have been classes and
classes ahead of me.  I did n't like what he
said about Duggie, and told him so.  He
answered that I 'd brought it on myself, and I
suppose I had.

"Maybe we'd better talk about Bertie
Stockbridge," he added.  "He's my third
cousin, you know—but, dear me, if people
begin to be loyal to third cousins, Boston
would turn into a sort of gigantic asylum for
deaf mutes.  I don't mind *what* you say about
Bertie.  Besides, he 's a more perfect
specimen than Duggie, because Duggie is passing
through a phase.  Even Bostonians sometimes
pass through phases when they 're very
young.  It doesn't happen often, though.
The truth is, Duggie can't decide whether
to be a Greek god or a college settlement.
He'd really rather be a Greek god, only it's
so immoral.  He 'll probably end, you know,
by coming out of his trance some June
morning and finding himself married.  Then it will
be too late to be either one or the other.
But what was it we were talking about?  Oh,
yes—Bertie.  Now, Bertie isn't passing
through a phase.  Not on your life.  Bertie
just rose Venus-like in a state of hopeless
completion from the crystal waters of the
Back Bay.  He never disappoints."

"But I like Bertie," I protested; "not
as much as I do Duggie, of course.  But I
do like him; he's so—so—sensible."

"Sensible!" Berri screamed.  "Why,
child, the Stockbridge family is *all* sense.
With trousers bagging at the knee and Adam's
apples rising and falling above their abashed
collars, Bertie's ancestors came into a lovely
foolish world and *created* sense.  That's all
they ever do now,—just create one another
and sense.  So, the next time you hear some
old thing groaning about the scarcity of
common-sense, you 'll know that it's because the
Stockbridges have it all,—they and a few
friends who live in the same street during the
winter and share several thousand front feet
of the Atlantic Ocean from May to
November.  But you mustn't think I don't like
Bertie and his family,—perhaps I should
simply say 'Bertie,' for Bertie is his
family,—because I do, you know.  I admire him
very much," Berri added after a moment.
"He radiates a sort of atmosphere of modest
infallibility that makes me feel exactly as I
should feel if I suddenly went into Appleton
Chapel and found the Pope there reading the
Boston Transcript.  Calmly and without the
slightest tinge of bitterness, I admit that
Bertie is always right.

"You heard what he said to Bobbie
Colburn, didn't you?  It was after the hour
exam in English 68, and we were all in
Bobbie's room comparing notes.  Now, Bertie
had passed, of course, because he 'll always
pass in everything, whether he has any talent
for it or not; but he had n't passed
particularly well.  It takes a person of some
imagination to get a good mark in that course.
Bobbie Colburn, on the other hand, who
apparently hadn't studied at all and who'd been
having a fierce time the night before the exam,
just sailed into the examination-room with a
dress-suit on under his overcoat, and got
through brilliantly, which worried Bertie to
death.  We 'd all made some comment on the
matter, and finally Colburn, as if to end it,
said in his breezy way, 'Well, you know the
old proverb,—He laughs best who drinks
most!'  Whereupon Bertie fixed him with
his fine gray eyes and remarked, 'That is n't
the way it goes, Colburn; you 've got it
mixed.'  Then he repeated the words
correctly,—not with triumph exactly, but with
the cold joy of one whose life is spent in
righting unimportant wrongs.

"And yet I can't help confessing," Berri
mused, "that I 'm exceedingly glad to
acknowledge my relationship to Bertie and his
tribe.  They madden me at times; they have
such clear, narrow, unelastic, admirable
intellects.  Their attitude toward all questions,
public or private, is so definite and
uncompromising; they 're so dog-gonned *right*.
Why, American history is just one glad, sweet
testimonial to the fact that they 're never
wrong.  They 're not always on the popular
side, or the successful; they 're merely right.
Any other human beings would keep on
trying to make use of such a splendid faculty.
Years and years ago they did make use of it;
but nowadays it's enough just to know that
they have it, and pretty much all to themselves.

"But, as I was saying, I 'm secretly darned
glad that Bertie and I belong to each other,
so to speak.  Is n't it funny—I'm not a bit
loyal to Bertie, but he 's perfectly loyal to me.
He does n't in the least understand me.  I
don't think he even likes me, although that
disturbing thought probably has n't occurred
to him yet; but there's no getting around
the fact that I 'm one of his relatives, and
he accepts me,—accepts me in a way he
never will accept *you*, no matter how well he
gets to know you and like you.  There's
something rather fine in that, don't you think?
Of course, it might be a good deal of a bore
if he took a fancy to me; but as he won't,
it's really a great comfort.  The fact that
that plain, but healthy-looking, silent person
in the very badly made dark gray suit
accepts me and will always accept me, is
equivalent to an illuminated address of welcome
and the freedom of the city.

"You really can't imagine how it simplifies
things," Berri continued.  "It's such a
relief, such an absolution!  It leaves me, as
some one says, 'with nothing on my mind
but my hair and my hat;' and even they
don't have to be brushed as long as people
consider me a Stockbridge at heart.  Why,
if I didn't feel like it, I shouldn't have to
be even polite.  Of course I am polite.  But
it's a mere habit with me; I dare say I 'll
get out of it.  You've noticed, haven't you,
how brusque and sort of primitive Bertie's
manner is as a rule?  Well, they 're all more
or less like that.  People who like them say
it arises from shyness and simplicity, and
people who don't like them declare that it's
just common or domestic rudeness; but it
really is n't one or the other, and I think I
ought to know.  The family manner comes
from a curious conviction that politeness,
grace, tact—the practice of making oneself
agreeable free of charge, so to speak—has
to do with the emotions; which is perfectly
absurd.  The habit of politeness is about as
emotional as the habit of brushing one's teeth.
But Bertie's tribe does n't think so; and
emotion with them is simply another word for
effeminacy.  You see, they 're so sure of
coming up to the scratch in the big things
that they let the little ones slide.  I think
they always vaguely associate politeness
with French waiters and Neapolitan cripples.
So, in a way, they 'll rather expect it
of you; they like all foreigners to seem
foreign."

Bertie gabbled about no end of things that
afternoon.  He had what he calls a "dry
jag," and hardly ever stopped talking from
the time we left our house just after luncheon
until we came down Brattle Street on the way
back and went into Mrs. Brown's for dinner.
Once he and a lot of kids coming out of a
schoolhouse away across the river somewhere,
pasted one another with snowballs (I joined
them) until a policeman made us stop, and
for a few minutes the torrent of talk was
interrupted.  But he made up for it by yelling
every time he hit any one or got hit himself.
He told me all sorts of tales, and I could n't
help thinking how different everything was
from Perugia.

It had never occurred to me before that
Perugia was so happy-go-lucky and uncivilized.
Why, out there we just seem to grow
up like those great round weeds on the prairie
that suddenly let go for no particular reason
and then bound along in the breeze through
the wide flat streets until they run against a
fence or a house and, for a while, stick there.
It does n't seem to me that anything much is
decided for us in advance.  I did n't know
even that I was coming to college until about
a year and a half beforehand,—which made
it simply awful, as I had to study everything
at once and did n't learn much of anything.
Now, Berri says that, with the exception of
himself, who was "grossly neglected" and
never studied anything but French and
German, his entire family for generations has
lived by a sort of educational and social
calendar from which they never deviate except
in the event of a civil war.  He says he
should n't be a bit surprised to learn that
there were certain definite, unalterable dates
at which the little boys began and left off tin
soldiers and the breeding of guinea-pigs, and
the little girls began and left off paper-dolls
and "dressing up."  He declares that,
providing the laws of nature are reasonably
consistent, they all know exactly what they 'll be
doing at any period of their lives; that even
matrimony has ceased to be a lottery with
them, as they go in for marrying, not individuals,
but types.  Isn't it perfectly wonderful?

"Now, take Bertie," he said.  "Bertie
knew who his classmates in college were
going to be, at the age of five.  They 're the
same chaps he's been going to school with,
and to the kid dancing-classes, you know, the
Saturday Mornings and Thursday Afternoons
or whatever they are, all these years.  They
go to the Friday Evenings this year, and next
year they 'll go to the Saturday Evenings, and
at all these morns and noons and dewy eves
they dance with the same girls that two years
from now they 'll meet in society and
subsequently marry, just because it's part of the
routine.  After they get out of college they 'll
all go abroad for a few months in groups of
three and four, and when they get back they 'll
be taken into the same club (their names will
have been on the waiting list some twenty-odd
years), and they 'll join a lunch club down
town in order not to miss seeing one another
every day at noon for the rest of their lives."

Then Berri told me about the girls.  Really
my heart bleeds for the girls, because
apparently, unless they are terribly pretty or
terribly clever or terribly rich, they must have a
devil of a time.  Berri says that although they
all "come out," they don't all stay out; that
after about a year or so a good many of them
sort of slink in again by unanimous consent.
(Imagine such a thing in Perugia!  Why,
every girl has a good time there for just as
long as she wants to.)  The pretty ones,
however, never go in again; because, if you once
get a reputation for beauty here, Berri says it
never leaves you (the reputation, I mean), and
that 's why an evening party in Boston often
strikes a stranger as being so largely a
matter of physical traditions.  At a dance the
rich plain girls, he says, have a good time too,
but only for the first part of the evening.  The
men speak of them as "pills" (a quaint,
chivalrous custom, is it not?), and try to dance
with them as early in the evening as possible,
because everybody else is trying to do the
same thing and there isn't so great a chance
of getting stuck for an hour or so.  But later
on they ask only the ones they really want to
dance with, and the plain rich girl finds
herself spending a cozy eternity with some one
who is inwardly moaning because he delayed
until the rush was over.

The girls too are born into a sort of rut,
Berri says.  It takes the form of sewing-circles.
Berri can discourse for hours at a
time on these institutions.  His aunt
Josephine has been going to the same one every
week for fifty years.  He said that once when
he was a little child he heard an Englishman
who had lived in India telling about the
mysterious rapidity with which a piece of news
spread among the natives of that country.
Within half a day, this man declared, a
rumor would sort of leap through the air from
Calcutta to the most obscure villages on the
Afghan frontier, and no one could explain
how it was done.  Berri used to fall asleep
at night worrying over it.  But now, even in
India romance is dead, Berri says; he 's
convinced that the whole thing was nothing but
just sewing-circles.

"Why, Granny, if I were to lock myself
up in my room in Cambridge and draw the
curtains and stuff the keyhole and then
murmur in a low voice that—well, for instance,
that you and Sarah Bernhardt had been
quietly married at the First Baptist Church in
Somerville that afternoon, and then dash in
to my aunt Josephine's as fast as a car could
take me, she would greet me in the library
with: 'My dear, *have* you heard!  I 've just
come from the sewing-circle, and they say—of
course I don't believe it'—and so on.  And
this is n't any idle jest, either; it's a fact."

He was just beginning to tell me something
else about them—I forget what—when we
both realized that it was rather late, and that
if we expected to get back in time for dinner
we should have to find a shorter way or take
the car.  We neither of us knew where we
were, although Berri said the place looked
as if it might be called "Upper-West-Newtonville-Centre
Corners."  So we stopped a
little girl who was trudging along with a
pitcher of milk in her hand.

"Little girl, can you tell me where we
are?" Berri asked her solemnly.  She stared
at us for a moment with great round eyes
(Berri admitted afterwards that the question
was a stupid one), and finally answered in a
high, scornful little voice,—

"Main Street."

Berri refused to ask again after that, and
we strolled about for a time until we caught
sight of the tower of Memorial,—it suddenly
appeared against the sky in quite the wrong
direction,—and then of course getting home
was easy enough.

We were rather confidential on the way
back, and talked about the "Dickey," which
we had never discussed before.  The Dickey
is the great Sophomore secret society.  I don't
remember just how the subject came up, but
something reminded Berri of one night earlier
in the year,—one of the nights on which the
society takes on ten new members.  They choose
them from the Sophomore class always except
late in the spring, just before college closes,
when ten—the "First Ten"—are elected
from among the Freshmen.  However, by that
time the Freshmen are almost Sophomores,
so it amounts to about the same thing.  When
a ten is taken on, the whole club marches
through the streets at about eleven o'clock at
night, singing a song that has no words but
"Tra la la la, la la, la la."  It's a
wonderful little tune; it's very short and simple,
and after you 've heard it once it sticks in
your head, you can't forget it.  Unlike other
catchy airs, though, you somehow don't get
tired of it.  I 've heard it over and over again
since I 've been here,—on pianos as I passed
under the windows of upper classmen, whistled
by muckers in the Yard, and sung by the club
at night,—and it always gives me a thrill; I
suppose it 's because it means such a lot,
and because you realize that no one (except
the muckers) would play it or sing it or
whistle it who was n't entitled to.

On the night that Berri referred to, the club
must have been half a mile away when we first
heard it.  Berri was in my room reading, and
I was writing a letter.  My back was toward
him, and we neither of us said anything when
the vague musical "tra la la las" floated up
from away down by the river somewhere.
They were very faint, and after a minute or
two stopped entirely.  Then, just as I had
forgotten about it, the song began again,—a
little louder and more distinct this time and
getting louder every second.  Then it
suddenly broke off once more.  But I didn't
forget it, for I knew that the club had stopped to
take some one out of his room—some one
who had just been elected—and march him
along with the others, and I waited kind of
nervously for the refrain to begin again; it
never gets started quite evenly,—only a few
voices at first, the rest joining in as the crowd
turns away from the door of the "neophyte's"
house and starts along the street.  They came
nearer and nearer,—the song grew louder
and louder.  Some of the fellows were singing
a clear tenor that made the last few notes
of every verse die away in a kind of high, sad
wail.  It seemed ridiculous for me to be
sitting there pretending to write a letter, with
Berri reading in such elaborate unconsciousness
by the fire, when the ears of both of us
were strained to catch every note, and the
hoarse, fierce shouts that suddenly broke
through the song as the Dickey turned into
our street; but neither of us knew what to
say exactly.  At last, however, I could n't
stand it any longer, and jumped up and blew
out both the lamps.  With the room dark we
could stand at the window and not be seen.
Freshmen are n't expected to show any
particular interest in the proceedings of the
Dickey; it's considered fresh.  They were
just tramping past our house when we leaned
out,—a singing, shouting, irresistible
mob,—and Berri and I looked down at them in
silence.  We were both excited, and I felt
chilly all over—but that may have been on
account of the open window.  The crowd
did not pass on, as we thought it would, but
stopped at a house across the street a few
doors down.  Once more the song ceased;
men formed in a double line that reached from
the piazza to the street, and there were hoarse
cries of "Pull him out—pull him out!"  Then
the front door burst open, and a fellow—he
seemed to be half dressed—came
hurtling through the air between the double row
waiting for him.  There was a moment of
confusion and savage yells, during which it
looked as if the whole crowd was trying to
get its hands on him.  We lost sight of him
in the shuffle, and in another instant the song
began, louder than before, and the Dickey
swayed away into the darkness.  We stood at
the window until the clearness and energy of
the "Tra la la la, la la, la la," faded to a
thin, dim, uncertain rhythm,—a suggestion
of tenor that all but lost itself in the pearly
fog rolling up from the marshes.

I fumbled for a match when we turned at
last to the room.  But before I found one,
Berri said, "I think I 'll go to bed, Granny,"
and by the time I got the lamp lighted he had
slipped away.  I don't know why exactly, but
I was rather glad he hadn't waited.  After
that I tried to finish my letter, but I could n't
make myself end the sentence I had been
writing the way I had meant to end it in the
first place.  So I put the thing in the fire and
sat there awhile, thinking, and then went to
bed myself.





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.. _`XIV`:

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   XIV

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Well, as I said, something
reminded Berri of that night, and
as we were on a deserted road
far from Cambridge, he referred
to it,—indirectly at first, and afterwards right
out in so many words.  But he didn't talk in
the same free and airy strain he had been
talking in before, and although I wanted to
hear what he said and ask questions and say
a few things myself, I had a feeling all the
time that perhaps we ought to change the
subject; it made me uncomfortable.  Then
I thought of the way I had talked to Duggie
the first evening, away back in September,
and positively blushed when I remembered
that I had asked him, outright, how one ought
to go about getting on clubs.  Why, that was
enough to sewer me with almost anybody in
the world but Duggie.  Imagine my doing
such a thing now!  No one ever thinks of
mentioning the clubs in general conversation.
Of course once in a while some fresh kid who
happens to live next door to one of them comes
out with an allusion of some kind, and
embarrasses everybody to death; and I 've had
one or two upper classmen—Juniors or
Seniors—who hadn't made the Dickey and
didn't belong to a club talk to me quite
freely about the whole matter in a tone that
implied that such things were all very well,
no doubt, but did n't interest them
particularly.  You can get a good deal of
information from upper classmen of this
kind,—fellows who are n't on clubs and have given
up expecting to be; they don't think you
fresh.  But it would never do to ask for any
from a Dickey man; that would be awful.
Why, you 'd never be taken on if you did that.

Even Berri does n't seem to know much
about the Dickey, or, if he does, he did n't
tell me anything very definite.  He said,
though, that if you didn't make it, you might
just as well pack up and go home; that
Dickey men kind of flocked together and
did n't go outside much for their friends, and
that the fellows you wanted to know usually
were on the Dickey.  Then, too, he said
that if a man did n't make the Dickey, he
wasn't likely to be taken into a club.  Berri
seemed to know a lot about the clubs.  I knew
hardly anything at all; in fact, I thought the
Dickey was a club, but he says it isn't,—that
it's a society.  The clubs, he says, are
great.  His uncle took him to one for
breakfast once before he—Berri—got into college.
(Of course he couldn't be taken to one now.)  He
said he did n't notice anything particularly
secret about it; it was just like one of the
good clubs in town.  I found out the names
of most of them from him—they seem to
have Greek names, yet are called by queer
nicknames as a rule—and where they are.
This last, however, I knew pretty well before,
but I did n't know which was which, and
could n't ask exactly.  I had often seen
fellows going in and out of certain houses along
Mount Auburn Street that did n't look like
residences somehow, although they might have
been, and wondered just what they were.  At
night, even with the shades down, they were
always lighted from top to bottom.  No
matter how late it was, the lights were there,
cheerful and inviting,—which in itself seemed
remarkable when I considered how early
Cambridge (the town, I mean) goes to bed.
But one morning when I was hurrying to a
lecture, two fellows came out of Claverly
Hall, and one of them said to the other,
"Hold up a minute; I left my note-book at
the club," and dashed across the street.
Then it suddenly dawned on me.  Of course
I never look curiously at them any more, but
just walk right on with my eyes fixed on
something in the distance as if they were
ordinary houses.  I can't help wondering,
sometimes, whether anybody ever noticed me
staring at them and at the fellows going in
and out—before I knew.  I hope not.

When I asked Duggie about getting into
clubs that time, I remember he evaded the
subject (which was darned good of him, it
seems to me now) by saying something about
being polite to everybody.

"That's all very well," Berri answered,
when I laughed a little and told him about it,
"but there's such a thing as being too polite.
You see, there are fellows right now in our
class—you know who they are and I do
too—who are, even as early as this, being
considered for the First Ten.  If you
suddenly turned in and tried to make yourself
nice to them, why, everybody would say you
were 'swiping;' and so you would be.  The
First Ten elects the Second Ten, you know."

"Duggie did n't mean that you ought to
be polite only to the fellows you think are
going to help you along," I answered.  "It
was exactly the reverse of that.  What he
meant was that you ought to be the same to
everybody."

"I wonder if *he* was," Berri mused.  "It's
so easy, after you 've once got to the top
yourself, to think you did it all with the help of
the Scriptures.  It's like these old vultures
who 've stolen everything in sight ever since
they were born, beginning their magazine
articles on 'How to Get Rich' with: 'Honesty
and Industry must be the motto of him who
would attain wealth!'"

I refused to see any connection between
Duggie and the old vultures, and tried to get
back to the clubs.  However, we did n't say
much more about them, and squabbled most of
the way home over the subject of popularity.
It does seem queer that some fellows have so
many friends, while others who start with about
the same opportunities and even greater
natural advantages now and then have so few.  I
suggested that when a fellow was tremendously
popular and "in" everything—and I
could n't see why it was exactly—he probably
had very interesting or fascinating qualities
that I had n't perhaps discovered.  Berri,
however, maintained that popularity was often
nothing but an idiotic fashion, and mentioned
several popular fellows he did n't like, to
prove it.

"Now look at Tucker Ludlow," he burst
out.  "What is he?  A dissipated little
beast; you know he is, everybody knows he is.
Not that I should mind his being dissipated
and a beast, if he were ever anything else;
but he isn't.  He's stupid, and he 's ignorant,
and he is n't even good-looking, yet he moves
in a crowd,—a nice crowd too; and when he
moves, the crowd moves with him.  That's
nothing but fashion.  It is n't possible that
anybody can really like the creature.  But it
amounts to the same thing; I 've already
heard it kind of whispered around that he 'll
be on the First Ten."

What Berri said interested me very much,
for Ludlow and I had agreed, a few days
before, to grind together on a course for the
mid-year exams.  I had intended to remind
him of it, but now that Berri said he was
spoken of for the First Ten I don't like to;
people might think I was swiping.  I don't
care much for Ludlow myself; but he doesn't
irritate me the way he does Berri, and I do
think there must be something to him.

After the freaks of fashion, Berri seemed to
think that the most popular men—in one's
Freshman year anyhow—were the fellows
whose opportunities for making friends were
good to begin with, and who were n't in any
way particularly startling,—athletics, of
course, always excepted; athletes never lack
a following.  But it does n't do, he says, to
be different, or to excel at first in much of
anything else.  You may with perfect safety
have the reputation for knowing things or being
clever, but that 's very different from really
knowing or being.  The man who actually
knows or is, is doomed.

"What about Reggie Howard, then?" I
asked.  Everybody likes Howard, and yet he
knows a fearful amount and is as clever as
any one could be.  I knew Berri thought so,
and wondered how he would get out of it.

"Yes, Reggie's wise,—very wise," he
admitted, "but with the exception of you and
me, almost no one suspects it.  He does n't
object to my knowing, because he feels sure I
don't mind; and you 're safe because you 're
so kind.  But he takes care that people
generally don't get on to it.  That's part of his
wisdom."

One thing I 've learned here that surprised
me a good deal, and that is—popularity has
nothing to do with money.  I always had an
idea that people with money to throw to the
birds could n't help being liked; but that
evidently is n't the case.  And Berri did n't have
to tell me; I found it out for myself.  Of
course it's nice to be able to live in
comfortable rooms and have plenty to eat and wear
decent clothes.  No one objects to that, and
no one objects, apparently, to a fellow's doing
more than that,—to spending, indeed, a good
deal of money if he has it to spend.  But the
mere fact of a man's having a record-breaking
allowance does n't seem to interest people in
the least, and if some frightfully rich fellow
comes to college with a flourish of trumpets
in the Sunday papers about his father's
income, and how many horses he intends to
keep, and how much the furnishing of his
rooms will probably cost, it 's decidedly
against him.  I was thinking, I suppose, of
Tony Earle in our class.  His father makes
millions and millions out of safety-matches—I
believe it is.  Anyhow, everybody speaks
of Tony as "His Matchesty," and has very
little to do with him.  The fellows are simply
prejudiced against him because the papers
said he had so much money.  And he 's really
a perfectly harmless, rather quiet sort of
person who plays well on the piano.  Berri and I
spent an evening with him once.  We were
dining in town, and Earle was all alone across
the room.  He looked so dreary that Berri
finally exclaimed,—

"For heaven's sake, why doesn't some one
take pity on that poor wretched millionaire?
It's positively pathetic!"

I suggested asking him to come over and
have his dinner with us.  But Berri, like
every one else, objected.

"He 'd probably order nightingales or peacocks
or some such thing, and then insist on
paying for us," he said.

"Well, let's ask him and see," I urged.
"We'll make that the test.  If he tries to
pay the whole bill, he won't do."  So Berri
went over and asked him to join us, and he
turned out just as I said,—quiet and not
especially interesting, but a good deal nicer
than a lot of fellows who won't know him.
When it came to paying the waiter, Berri
kicked me under the table and spent an
indecently long time in looking over the check.
I think he was actually disappointed when
Earle glanced across the table and merely
said,—

"By the way, what's my share?"

When we got to Cambridge he asked us
over to his rooms.  They certainly are dreams;
even Berri could n't find anything wrong with
them.  He bangs the box like a wizard.

"I was afraid he was going to say he was
lonely, or something melodramatic like that,
when we got up to leave and he asked us to
come again," Berri remarked on the way
home.  "Of course he is horribly lonely, and
it was very considerate of him not to spoil
everything by saying so.  I think we 'll have
to go back.  To-morrow at luncheon we can
start a society for the prevention of cruelty to
millionaires."

Well, if I 'm ever ostracized it won't be
because people are scared at my allowance.
Papa and I have been having an exceedingly
brisk correspondence lately.  Just after the
family got back to Perugia, Mildred wrote
me that papa had won an important lawsuit
and was going to get an unusually large fee.
So I bought some clothes and a few things
I really needed on the strength of it and had
the bill sent home, as he made me promise to
let him know just what I spent.  He replied
at some length, declaring, among other things,
that I reminded him of what Charles Lamb
says of a poor relation; Lamb's remark being,
"A poor relation is a preposterous shadow
lengthening in the noontide of your
prosperity."  I expostulated, and told him about
Willie Jackson.  Willie's elder brother passed
through Boston not long ago, and when Willie
went in to see him he asked for money with
which to buy a dress-suit case and some shoes
he needed badly.  No one knows exactly how
it happened,—some think that Willie had
been brooding over the Fine Arts course he
is taking and the instructor's plea for more
beauty in one's every-day environment.
Anyhow, when Willie stepped off the car in
Cambridge, he had—not the shoes and the
dress-suit case, but a palm and a canary-bird.

To this papa replied that he didn't see why
I had taken the trouble to record for his
benefit the exploits of Willie Jackson, as he never
for a moment had doubted that there were as
many fools in college as elsewhere.  That is
where the matter rests at present.

As there is nothing doing now that you can
watch in the afternoon as you can the football
practice in the autumn and the baseball and
crews in the spring, some of us at the table
have become athletes on our own account.
We go to the gym every day at about five,
and work with chest-weights and dumbbells,
and are put through all sorts of agonizing
performances in a large class of hard students
who never take any other kind of exercise.
Then we run up North Avenue as far as the
railway-station and back to our rooms.  I
don't know how far it is, but the return trip
at first seemed to be about a hundred miles;
it's a little shorter now, and gets shorter every
day.  After a hot shower-bath and then a cold
one you feel eight or ten feet high, and walk
through the Square to dinner, sticking out
your chest.  It's queer you don't catch cold,
running in the icy wind with literally nothing
on but a pair of tennis shoes, loose short cotton
drawers, and a thin sleeveless undershirt; but
you never seem to.  The gym made me stiff
all over for a day or two, but I feel fine now,
and wonder why we never thought of it before.
The muckers on the Avenue bother us a good
deal with snowballs when we run.  Hemington
very foolishly chased one of them not long ago
and washed his face with snow.  The paternal
mucker has since sued Hemi for assault and
battery.  Hemi is in a great state about it,
and we are all looking forward to cutting a
morningful of lectures and testifying in court.

The mid-years are almost here, and I feel
as if it were only about the day before
yesterday that I was failing in the hour exams.  I
simply must do well in the mid-years, for if I
don't they will probably change my probation
to "special probation" (as it is called), which
is the limit, my adviser says, of everything
obnoxious.  I should have to report—to him
most likely—every morning at half-past eight,
just to show that I was up bright and early
and "in sympathy with the work," so to
speak.  Then at ten or eleven in the evening
I should have to drop in again, which of course
would make it impossible to go to the theatre
without permission.  An extra-sharp lookout
would be kept on my work, and altogether
special probation is easily a consummation
devoutly to be avoided.  I suppose I 'll have
to grind and grind night and day in order to
get everything down cold.  I wish now that I
had kept on studying an hour or two every day,
as I did for about a week after my encounter
with the exams in October.  I should n't be
well prepared even then, but it would n't all
seem so perfectly hopeless as it does now.
It's so hard, though, to do anything regularly
when the front door is unlocked most of the
time, as ours is.  And there 's no use in
locking the door of my room, as the fellows don't
knock once and go away, but pound and rattle
and shout insulting remarks through the
keyhole.  All of which makes me feel disagreeable
and rather affected,—locking myself up
when other people get along so well without
that sort of thing.  I have n't done it more than
once or twice.

Anyhow I 'll probably get a good mark in
my English Composition.  The instructor
seems to like my themes and reads a good
many of them in class.  Lately, however, he
has developed the unnecessary trick of
pronouncing the words, when he is reading,
exactly as they are spelled, which is extremely
trying for me and not fair to the theme.  It
has made several really good ones sound
ridiculous.  Spelling is n't my strong point, I
know; but I draw the line at Berri's guying
me about it,—Berri, whose spelling, unless
he digs every other word out of the dictionary,
looks like some kind of absurd French dialect.
He has recently taken to getting off a
rigmarole (it's supposed to be about me) that
begins something like this,—

"'Berri, how do you spell "parallel"?'

"'Why, p-a-r-a-l-l-e-l, of course.'

"'Thank you; that's the way I have it.'  (Then
nothing was heard but the scratching
of a penknife.)"

I think they 're rather fussy about details
here.  On the back of my last theme the
instructor wrote: "By the way, dotting one's
*i*'s and crossing one's *t*'s are charming
literary habits when once acquired."

However, I think I shall get a good mark
in this course, notwithstanding.  But life isn't
all English Composition, and I have a terrible
amount of work to do in the other things.
Berri and I began, in a way, to prepare for the
ordeal by going to the theatre for the last time
until the mid-year period is at an end.  We
made an occasion of it, and ended by doing
something that I had never dreamed we were
going to do when we started out.  It was
foolish, I suppose, and I don't know exactly
what mamma would think about it.  I should
like to tell her and find out, but I 'm afraid
papa might get hold of it, and my idea of his
opinion on the subject is somewhat less vague.
What we did was to invite one of the girls in
the show to supper.

Berri proposed it.  We were sitting in the
front row away to one side, and when the
second act was about half over, he exclaimed
to me,—

"There, she 's done it again; that's the
third time."  I asked him what he meant,
and he replied that one of the girls on our
side of the stage had winked at us.  The
attention, he explained, must have been meant
for us.  And for a variety of reasons it did n't
seem as if it could have been intended for any
one else.  In the first place our seats were the
last in the row.  Behind us were some ladies,
and on the other side of Berri was a very old
man who sat half turned away from the stage,
holding a great black tin trumpet to his ear,
as if he were expecting the actors to lean over
the footlights and pour something into it.

"I don't want to appear vain," Berri went
on, "but as a mere matter of geographical
position I think that we 're It."  The comedian
was singing a song in the middle of the stage,
and on either side of him was a row of
girls—convent girls they were supposed to
be—who joined in the chorus at the end of every
verse and shook their fingers at him reprovingly.
They were all dressed in tights.  This
was n't the convent uniform (they had
appeared in that during the first act), and was
explained by the fact that they had been
rehearsing for private theatricals when the
comedian fell in through the window.  The
comedian was a burglar, and *his* tights were
merely a clever disguise.  He was making
the girls believe that he was a professional
actor hired by the mother superior to teach
them how to sing and dance.  This was the
plot, and it was really rather complicated,
for when they all decided to leave the convent
with the burglar and spend the evening at a
roof-garden, they rushed in dressed as
policemen, pretending that they had come to arrest
the burglar.  The mother superior did n't
recognize them, of course, and was naturally
glad to have the burglar taken away.  Then,
at the roof-garden—in the third act—they
appeared as waiters; all of which made it
hard for me to keep track of them very well.
But Berri could spot our girl every time, and
by carefully examining the program and
comparing the names of the chorus with the
various changes of costume she went through,
he managed in some way, by the end of the
second act, to discover her name.  It was
Miss Mae Ysobelle.  To tell the truth, I
did n't think her particularly pretty.  She
was tall and not a bit graceful, and when she
danced she looked as if it were hard work to
move her arms and legs the right number of
times and finish with the others.  She smiled
a great deal, but the moment she stopped
dancing her mouth sort of snapped back to
place as if it were made of stiff red rubber.
I found, after watching her for a long time,
that my own mouth got very tired.  I told
Berri this; also that her clothes looked as
if they had been made for some one else.  But
Berri somehow seemed to think she might be
unusually agreeable if one knew her.

"Very often, you know, really pretty
people don't make up well at all; and as for her
clothes looking as if they did n't belong to her,
why, she can't help that, poor thing! they
probably don't.  She is a little knock-kneed,
but you would n't notice that if she had a skirt on."

"Well, there doesn't seem to be any immediate
danger of our seeing her with a skirt,"
I answered, for some of the convent girls—Mae
Ysobelle among them—had suddenly
changed their minds about being waiters and
had decided to give the interrupted private
theatricals right there on the roof-garden
stage.  They came prancing in dressed as
jockeys, while the man in the orchestra who,
as Berri says, supplies music with local color,
slapped two thin boards together to imitate
the crack of a whip.

"Oh, I don't know," Berri mused; "we
might manage to meet her after the show,—ask
her to supper or something.  She seems
friendly enough," he added; for, as he was
speaking, the jockeys drew up at the edge of
the stage, touched their caps, then leaned over,
and *all* winked.  Miss Ysobelle was unmistakably
looking at us as she did it.

I did n't believe she would go with us even
if we asked her, but Berri said we 'd rush out
after the third act and buy her some flowers
and send an usher behind the scenes with them.
We ended by doing this—we got her a big
box of roses—and writing a note asking her
to meet us at the stage door when the
performance was ended.  Berri signed it "Front
row—extreme left."

We did n't get an answer to it, at least not
in words; but when the curtain went up
again on a scene in the convent garden, Miss
Ysobelle had one of our roses in her hair and
another at her belt, and I began to feel excited
at the prospect of meeting her.  In fact, the
whole last act had a personal interest for us
that the others had not.  It was almost like
being on the stage and enjoying everything
from the inside.  I even felt rather sorry for
the rest of the audience who were sitting there
perfectly oblivious to the intrigue going on in
the blaze of the footlights, before their
unsuspecting eyes.  One thing struck us both as
rather odd at first.  Miss Ysobelle, except
for the roses, scrupulously ignored us through
the entire act.  She not only never winked at
us, she never even looked at us.  In fact, she
gave us both the impression that she had
become absorbed in something at the other side
of the house.  I could n't understand this, and
neither could Berri, although he said there
was probably some theatrical etiquette
connected with her averted gaze, or perhaps the
stage-manager had told her to be more
dignified.  We decided to ask her about it at
supper.  Well, we never got a chance to
ask her, but we found out soon enough for
ourselves.

As we had the last seats on the left side of
the front row, we were naturally the last to get
into the middle aisle on the way out, or, rather,
we and the people who had the corresponding
seats on the other side of the house were the
last.  We met them when we reached the end
of our row, and had to stop a moment as they
stood there putting on their overcoats and
blocking the way.  One of them I noticed
particularly,—a great, big thug of a creature
who had shiny black hair slicked up in front
with a barbery flourish, and a very fancy
waistcoat and cravat.  They kept just ahead of us
on the way out, and laughed a good deal.
Berri and I were unusually silent.

We did n't go quite to the stage door, as
the electric light fizzing right over it made
everything in the little alley as bright as day.
Neither of us was very keen to join the group
loitering near by, so we stood a little back in
the shadow and waited.  Finally some men
with their collars turned up came out; then
two women with thick veils on.  They seemed
to be in a great hurry, and for a few seconds
we were afraid that one of them might be
Miss Ysobelle; but we remembered how tall
she was and did n't run after them.  Then
more men came, and more girls,—some of
whom were joined by men waiting at the door.
It seemed at last as if the whole company
must have come out, and Berri and I were
beginning to think that Miss Mae Ysobelle
must have left before we arrived, when the
door opened once more and she appeared with
our box of flowers in her arms.  For a
moment she stood on the step and looked around
expectantly.

"I think we ought to go up," Berri
murmured nervously; but I thought it would be
better to wait and join her as she passed by.

Then a queer thing happened.  Just as she
decided to leave the step, who should go up
to her but the big thug with the shiny hair
and loud waistcoat?  He lifted his hat and
shook hands with her very cordially, then took
the box of flowers—our flowers—and strolled
away with her out of the alley to the street.
As they passed by, we heard her exclaim,
"Say, it was awful nice of you to send those
Jacques.  When Myrtle seen me open the
box—"  The rest of the sentence was lost in
the rattle of a cab.

Berri and I waited a moment before
coming out of the shadow.  Then we looked at
each other, and Berri shrieked with laughter.
We laughed all the way back to Cambridge.
The people in the car must have thought—I
don't know what they could have thought.
For a long time we could n't imagine why
things had turned out as they had until Berri
remembered that he had signed the note
"Front row—extreme left."  He had meant
our left, but Miss Ysobelle no doubt thought
that it referred to her left,—which was quite
another matter.





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.. _`XV`:

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   XV

.. vspace:: 2

I've been dead to the world for more
than a month; it seems about a year.
Yet when I came to look at the
situation squarely, there wasn't anything
else to do exactly.  It was a case of getting
the drop on my exams or letting them get the
drop on me.  Of course, I could have sort of
fooled with them and thought I was learning
something about them and then perhaps have
scraped through in one or two and failed in
the others.  And this, as a matter of fact, was
the way in which Tucker Ludlow and I did
go at them at first.  Tucker came up to my
room two or three times, armed with some
type-written notes on Greek architecture that
he had bought at one of the book stores in
the Square.  The first time he came was
rather late in the afternoon.  He examined
everything in my room, and we talked a good
deal; he had been out West once, and seemed
to know much more about that part of the
country than I did.  However, we finally got
to work and had read about two pages of the
notes when Hemington came in.  He saw
that we were grinding, and said he would n't
sit down and interrupt us, especially as he
ought to be in his own room, grinding himself.
He did n't actually sit down, but leaned
against the mantelpiece and smoked for a
while, and then compromised by half sitting
on the arm of a chair in a temporary way and
swinging his leg.  When at last he got up to
leave, it was so near dinner that Ludlow went
with him, and said he would continue some
other time.  He left the notes with me, and
at first I thought I should study them alone,
but as Ludlow and I had agreed to grind the
course up together, there did n't seem to be
any point in getting ahead of him; so in a
few minutes I went to dinner myself.

The next time Ludlow came to study was
in the evening.  He proposed that I should
read the notes aloud, as he found the
architectural terms so hard to pronounce; we were
to stop and talk over anything we did n't
understand.  I made myself comfortable in a
chair near the lamp, and Ludlow drew up to
the fire.  After droning along for about ten
minutes about triglyphs and epistyles and
entablatures and all that sort of thing, I
suddenly had a jealous feeling that he was getting
more good from the performance than I was,
for he had n't asked a question, while I had n't
understood a single sentence.  Finally,
without looking up, I said,—

"Tucker, if you really know what 'pseudo-peripteral'
means, I wish you would tell me."  Tucker
didn't answer, and I thought he was
probably trying to get at a definition simple
enough for me to grasp.  But when I glanced
over toward the fireplace, I saw that he was
asleep with his mouth open.  Well, I felt
rather angry at first,—it all seemed such a
waste of time; but it struck me, too, as being
funny, so I did n't wake him.  He must have
slept for at least ten minutes longer (of course
I did n't bother about reading aloud any
more), and then he came to, exclaiming,—

"Read that about the ground plan once
more; I don't think I quite got that."  As
the ground plan was almost the first topic
mentioned, I suppose he had dozed off almost
immediately.  After that I made him do the
reading, but he had n't stumbled through many
pages before he put down the notes and
said,—

"Granny, don't you think that if we tackled
this beastly drivel in the daytime, our heads
would be clearer?"

That was the end of our grinding together.
He came to my room once more, but I was
out.  It was after this experience that I
thought the matter over and decided I should
have to do the thing differently, and for the
most part alone.  My most brilliant stroke
was getting the key of Duggie's room from
Mrs. Chester; I could lock myself up there
and be perfectly safe.  When fellows saw my
own door wide open and no one at home, they
went away at once without making a row.
Of course I had to let Berri into the game;
but as he began to be scared about some of
his own exams, he was grateful for the refuge
and did n't give it away.

I went to work at the whole business
scientifically, determined not to leave a single thing,
however unimportant, to chance.  And I 'm
convinced now that if I have the nerve always
to do this, I can get through any examination
I 'm ever likely to have,—not brilliantly,
perhaps, but very respectably.  First of all, I
spent a day in the library and got hold of a
lot of books that gave my various courses in
their simplest, clearest form.  For the Fine
Arts course I found that a copy of the notes
that Ludlow had was better than anything.
They stated facts in a condensed way that
made it possible to keep in your head a bird's-eye
view of the entire course, as far as we had
gone.  Then I made a list of the number of
pages of general reading we had to accomplish
in every course, and split them up so as to be
able to get through them all—taking notes as
I read—by reading a certain number of pages
a day.  I left a margin at the end for review
and in case of accidents.  And finally, after I
had made these preparations and collected as
many of the necessary books as I could (I had
to do some of my reading in the library), I
locked Duggie's door one morning after breakfast,
and sat down at his desk, and stayed there
until luncheon; and after luncheon I went
back and stayed until it was time to go to the
gym and take a run; and after dinner I went
back and stayed until bedtime.  And I did
this every day with very few interruptions until
I could pick up any of the text-books, turn
to the alphabetical index, and plough right
through it, describing in detail every darned
thing it mentioned; and an alphabetical index
mentions a good deal.  If I slipped up on
anything, I would mark it with a pencil, go back
and learn it.  Oh, it was perfectly awful!  I
got so tired and discouraged and maudlin at
times that I would have to lean back and close
my eyes and let my bursting mind become a
throbbing blank for a few minutes, in order to
keep from screaming.  But after the gym and
the run and the shower-bath, I felt all right
again,—just as if nothing had happened.

Two courses—the physics and philosophy—I
had to tutor in for a while.  There was
no use pegging away at them by myself, for I
simply did n't understand some of the experiments,
and logic I could n't make head or tail
of.  A Senior who lived in College House
explained them to me in simple golden words
(three dollars an hour were his terms), and
when I once saw through it all and had it
down on paper in my own language, I could
let it soak in at home.  The other things—the
ones I did understand, like History and
Fine Arts—were merely a matter of incessant
repetition and memory.

The night before the Fine Arts exam I went
to what is called a "Seminar" in that
subject.  I could have got along very well
without it after my days and days of slavery, but
about every one I knew was going, and I
wanted to see what it was like.  There are
several men here who make a business of
boiling popular courses down to their most
painlessly swallowable dimensions, and then giving
the thing the evening before the examination
in a kind of lecture, for which they charge an
admittance fee of three or four dollars.  This
performance is a seminar,—a kind of royal
road, if not to learning at least to passing
examinations.  They say that fellows who
never look at a book or take a note in class
often go to a seminar and, providing they have
good memories, are able to answer enough
questions on the exam paper the next morning
to get through with colors flying.  A certain
number of questions on almost every paper
simply have to deal with cold, isolated facts
rather than with the generalities, comparisons,
and discussions that necessitate a real
knowledge of the subject, and it is with these
facts—pounded in at a seminar—that one puts up
a successful bluff.  The authorities naturally
object to all this.  As Berri remarked about
the seminar we went to,—

"After a professor has earnestly expounded
a subject for half a year, it must make him
rather sore to have a cheeky parrot get up and
do the whole thing much better in four hours."

The Fine Arts seminar was held in a huge
room, almost a hall, in a kind of office
building near the Square.  It was advertised to
begin at half-past seven, and pretty much
every one was there on time,—all the sports
of the Freshman and Sophomore classes, some
Juniors, and even a few Seniors.  It was
what the society reporter refers to as "a large
and fashionable gathering."  It certainly was
a mighty nice-looking crowd of fellows; clean,
well dressed, and (to quote Berri) "much
more intelligent in appearance than we
actually are, or we should n't be here at all."  As
every man came in, he was given a large sheet
of stiff paper on which was printed a synopsis
of the course, with all the subjects that had
been touched on methodically arranged, and
a list of definitions, simple and easily
remembered, but adequate.  It was Greek art in a
nutshell,—a perfect marvel of clearness and
condensation.  The little folding chairs had
been neatly arranged in a semicircle at first,
but by the time the fellows had taken
possession of them, they looked as if they had been
thrown in at random.  A good many men who
were evidently old hands at the business
arranged themselves comfortably in two chairs,
leaning back in one with their legs stretched
across another, as if prepared to spend the
night.  A lot of them took off their coats and
waistcoats—the crowd and the gas made the
already overheated room unbearably warm—and
I 've never seen so many pretty shirts in
my life as I did that evening.

After every one was settled, the man who
was giving the seminar took a chair on a little
platform in front of us, and began—not to
talk exactly, but to drone.  He had a harsh
monotonous voice—une voix trainante, Berri
called it—and spoke with painful slowness, as
if trying not to emphasize any one topic to the
exclusion of the others,—which had the effect
of making his entire discourse, from beginning
to end, horribly important.  Except for this
crawling sound, the room was absolutely
silent; for once nobody seemed conscious of
himself or of any one else.  Even when the
man on the platform pronounced Greek words
in a novel fashion that was all his own, there
was n't a smile.  I don't think we realized
the intense strain of attention we were
undergoing until, at the end of an hour and three
quarters, Tucker Ludlow, who had gone to
sleep, fell off his chair.  The second or two
of relaxation that followed the crash was
exquisite.  We stretched our arms and swabbed
our foreheads with our handkerchiefs, and
then sank back again for another hour and
fifteen minutes, until the bell in the tower
of Memorial boomed out ten o'clock.  This
seemed to be the signal for a short vacation;
for the fact-machine on the platform
finished the sentence he had begun and then
stood up.

There was a general shuffling of chairs and
a babbling of voices, and the crowd divided
into chattering groups.  Some of the fellows
did n't seem to know anybody, and they either
went out and strolled up and down the
corridor or sat studying the synopsis.  The host
of the evening had provided beer and ginger
ale and cheese and crackers with which to
sustain life until the ordeal was over.  He
could well afford it, as there were at least
seventy-five men in the room, every one of
whom would deposit three dollars and a half
before he left.

While Berri and I and most of our table
were talking in a corner, a fellow named Smith,
a Sophomore, sauntered over to us.  Berri
and I were the only ones who knew him, so
of course he must have come just to speak to
us.  I don't remember what he said exactly,
as the conversation of the others sort of faded
away when he approached, and Berri and I
were fearfully rattled.  He 's very prominent
and belongs to everything.  After we had
stood there for a minute or two, Hemington
and Bertie Stockbridge and the others drifted
off, leaving us three together, and in a moment
more Berri said, "I 'm going over to get
another cracker," and also left us.  I
happened to notice that he did n't go near the
crackers, and furthermore he never came back.
This seemed so queer and unlike Berri that I
spoke to him about it on the way home and
asked him why he had done it.  He answered
by saying,—

"You don't have to be much of a fox to
know when you 're wanted and when you 're
not; and that happened to be one of the times
when I wasn't."  This struck me as absurd,
and does still.  Berri knew Smith every bit as
well as I did, for the only other time he had
ever spoken to us we happened to be together
just as we were the night of the seminar.  I
reminded Berri of this; but he only laughed
a little and replied,—

"Well, as Fleetwood says, 'I 'm an old
man and I know my place.'"  Since then
Smith has joined me twice when I was
walking through the Yard and seemed very friendly
in a distant kind of way.  I mean that his
joining me at all was friendly; he is n't much
of a talker, and I never know quite what to
say to him.  Of course it's very nice in him
to do it, but it makes me rather uncomfortable;
for both times we stopped a moment
on the steps of Sever—the bell had n't rung
yet—and although there were a lot of fellows
I knew waiting to go in, they merely nodded
to me and then looked away.

But I 'm forgetting about the seminar.  We
went back to our chairs again, and once more
tuned our ears to the monotonous voice of
the lecturer, that dragged on and on till
midnight.  It became harder and harder to take
in everything he said.  The air was heavy
with the smoke of Egyptian cigarettes, and
I counted nine men who were sound asleep.
I suppose that, even though asleep, they were
more likely to acquire a fact or two than if
they hadn't been there at all.  Just at the
end—I can hear him now—the man on the
platform leaned back wearily with closed eyes
and chanted in the same hopeless tone,—

"Let me once more urge upon you the
importance of expressing in your examination
papers sympathy with the Greek life, the
Greek art, and the Greek ideals of the best
period.  A page or two of sincere regret that
we moderns do not possess the innate sense
of beauty, the joy of life, civic pride, harmony,
and all the other things that the Greeks went
in for will help you to get a passing mark.
Remember what I told you about [Greek: sophrosúne].
Refer to [Greek: sophrosúne] constantly.  John
Addington Symonds calls it 'that truly Greek
virtue; the correlative in morals to the
passion for beauty.'  S-y-m-o-n-d-s, and there
are two *d*\s in Addington.  If you get stuck,
make use of the quotation I gave you from
Goethe—G-o-e-t-h-e—it comes in well
almost anywhere.  Good-night and good luck."  He
stood at the door as we passed out, holding
a box in his hand, into which every one
dropped three Plunks and a half.  I was
tired when we got home and went right to
bed.  But Berri sat up almost until morning,
studying the synopsis and going over his notes.

It must have been some time before this
that Berri's thesis arrived from England one
morning with a long letter from Duggie.  I
have kept a sort of lookout for it right along,
but that morning Berri saw the postman from
my window and ran downstairs to meet him.
As he was coming up, he exclaimed in a
surprised voice, "What on earth do you
suppose—" and then broke off abruptly.  He
passed quickly through my room, dropping a
bill on my desk as he went, and after that the
house for about half an hour was very silent.
I had so often wondered what Berri would
do, what he would say, how he would take
Duggie's letter when it came, that I instinctively
knew it had at last arrived, and asked
no questions.

He surprised me by neither saying nor doing
anything; and for two days I had no reason
to suppose that the thesis had wandered back
to Cambridge at all beyond the feeling in my
bones that it had.  On the third day, however,
Berri, who was just starting off to spend
Sunday at his aunt's, stopped in my room
with a letter in his hand.  He looked at it
doubtfully for a moment, as if making up his
mind about something, and then tossed it into
my lap.

"I got that from Sherwin the other day,"
he said; and then added, as he made for the
door and I drew the letter from its envelope,—

"Well, it may be all for the best."

I don't think anybody could read Duggie's
letter and not feel that it was for the best.
Berri has n't said anything more about it, and
neither have I.  There really is n't anything
to say.

I passed all my exams.  My marks are n't
anything to be stuck up about, but they let
me through decently, and in three courses
were even a little better than they actually
had to be,—which is a comfort in a way.
For my adviser says he thinks that in a few
weeks it would n't do any harm to petition the
administrative board (or whatever it is that has
charge of such things) to let me off probation.
He says he can't promise anything, of course,
but that stranger things have happened; all
of which seems to me rather to explode Berri's
conviction that every adviser in college spends
all his odd moments in devising fiendish
schemes for the destruction of his Freshmen
charges.  But then Berri was unfortunate in
his adviser.  He is n't young and does n't try
to be sympathetic like mine, and he annoys
Berri extremely by glaring at him over a pair
of steel-rimmed spectacles and exclaiming *à
propos* of nothing,—

"You can't fool me—you can't fool me!"

My adviser has had me to dinner twice at
the professors' club.  He invites his Freshmen,
four or five at a time, to dinner, in order,
I suppose, to get to know them better.  Of
course, he never really does get to know us
better by having these stiff little parties, but
it's awfully kind of him to ask us, and he thinks
he does; so it's all right.  I dreaded the first
one, but my dread was n't a patch on the
dread with which I dreaded the second,
because I 'd been to the first.  Naturally I
did n't dare refuse to go to either of them.
Nobody does.  The dinner itself is good, and
my adviser not only lays himself out to be just
as nice as possible,—he succeeds.  Yet the
fellows don't feel altogether at their ease
somehow and are n't themselves.  They want
to be and try to be, and once in a while they
put up a pretty good bluff at it, but they never
quite are.  I don't know how to explain it
exactly, but when you can't help feeling that
your host is sizing you up and talking only
about the things he thinks you like to talk
about—even if you do like to talk about
them, why, you just can't.  (I've read that
sentence over six times and it means a little
less every time.)  After dinner he takes the
fellows up to his room and asks them to
smoke, and they never know which would be
the better swipe,—to accept or to refuse.
Some decide one way and some the other;
but whether they want to smoke or not has
very little to do with the decision.  The best
part of the evening comes when somebody
gets up enough nerve to murmur that he is
very sorry he has to say good-night, as he has
a lot of studying to do.  This usually makes
the others laugh, and it always breaks up the
party.  Then the fellows get together in
somebody's room—if they know one another
well enough—and talk the thing over.

Oh, I wish spring would come!  This
seems to be the time of year when nothing
much happens.  As long as we were all
grinding most of the day for the mid-years,
I didn't think much about the weather,
except that when it was bad there wasn't so
much temptation to idle out of doors.  Now,
however, everybody wants the weather to be
good, and it's vile.  It always manages to
do four or five different things in the course
of a day, and the walking is unspeakable.
To a certain extent, though, this is the fault
of the town itself.  Most of the residence
streets have dirt sidewalks and curbstones
that might be very picturesque in Egypt or
some place where it did n't rain and snow and
freeze and melt all in the course of a few
hours; but here they turn into troughs full
of mud and slush, and the curbstones keep
the mixture from running into the gutter.  I
know I ought n't to criticise such a fine old
town.  So many great people have, all their
lives, floundered uncomplainingly through
Cambridge mud that I suppose it's cheeky
of me to notice it.  But in wet weather the
sidewalks are really not nice.  In front of a
few houses the owners put down temporary
wooden walks,—three boards wide, running
lengthwise,—but you invariably meet a lady
in the middle of them and have to jump gracefully
into the nearest puddle, looking as if you
considered this the dearest privilege of your
young life.

The candidates for the track team are crazy
to get out of doors and begin regular practice
on the Soldiers' Field cinder track, but it 's
too soft yet to be raked and rolled, and they
have to keep working in the gym and on the
tiresome old board track behind it.  Dick
Smith was talking about this not long ago
when he joined me in the Yard.  He says
it's great on a warm spring morning to go
across the river and sit on the bleachers and
watch the fellows practise starting and short
sprints.

Well, there's nothing like that now.  I
hardly know how the days go by.





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   XVI

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I notice that when I last wrote in my
diary I was wishing for spring, and here
it is almost the end of June!  Where
did all those slow days I complained of
go to so quickly, I wonder?  How did I spend
them, and why haven't I tried to tell about
them?  I don't know unless it was because
they were so slow and did go so quickly.
Nothing ever happened, really, until just at
the end; but to-day with Cambridge sizzling
hot (I can smell the asphalt on the main
street even here in my room) and perfectly
deserted, except for its inhabitants (who
don't count) and the kids who have come to
take their entrance exams, the last three
months and a half seem like a dream.
The spring is scarcely over, and yet I 've
already begun to look forward to it again
next year.

I liked it so much, I suppose, because in
Perugia we don't, as a rule, have any.  Out
there it's very much like what you read about
Russia: for a long time it's winter, and then
you wake up some morning feeling as if you
had spent the night in a Turkish bath, and
know that it is summer; you know that the
soda-fountains are hissing, that a watering-cart
is jolting past, leaving behind it a damp,
earthy sensation (something between an odor
and a faint breeze), that an Italian is leaning
over the fence languidly calling out, "Bananos—bananos,"
that a scissors-grinder is ding-donging
in the distance, and that, of course,
a lawn-mower is whirring sharply back and
forth under your windows.

Here warm weather comes slowly and shyly,
as if it could n't quite make up its mind to
come at all.  There are many days that from
the other side of a pane of glass look all blue
and white and gold, and tempt you to snatch
up a cap and run out.  You do this, and stand
undecidedly on the sidewalk for a moment;
then you go in again and put on your
overcoat and gloves.

Somehow the leaves don't seem to burst
out all at once, as they do with us.  You
notice first, on Brattle Street and in the Yard,
that the trees have undergone a change.  That
is, you think they have; the change is so slight
you aren't sure, and may have only imagined
it, after all.  But in a few days—I can't now
remember how many—you know that you
were right; the branches and twigs that have
stood out so hard and definite against all the
winter sunsets have blurred a little,—they
are no longer altogether in focus.  They blur
more and more as the days go by, until—shall
I ever forget it?—you cease to think of them
as trees, and only know that over and beyond
you there is a faint, uncertain mist of tenderest
green,—so faint, so uncertain that you almost
glance up to see whether it has drifted away on
a slow, pungent gust from the marshes.  But
instead of doing that, it grows denser and
greener against the rain-washed blue, until it
is no longer a mist, but a cloud.  Then at last
there is a delicious crinkling, and the leaves
have come.  In May and June bleak, shabby
Cambridge covers all its angles and corners.
They are softened and filled with billows and
jets and sprays and garlands,—green, gold,
silver, mauve, and—what is the color of apple
blossoms?  They are such a tremor of white
and pink that I never really know.  The wind
loses its bite, and then its chill.  The air is
moist and warm, and as you walk slowly
through the quiet leafy streets at night, the
damp, fresh lilacs stretch out to dabble against
your face, and something—it may be the
stillness and sweetness of it all, or it may be
just the penetrating smell of the box
hedges—something makes you very sad and very happy
at the same time.

During the day, between lectures, we loafed
a good deal,—on Brattle Street chiefly; and
often in the afternoon, when we were beginning
to think of thinking of grinding for the
finals, Berri and I and occasionally Hemington
used to take a book or some notes and go up
to the vacant lot across the street from the
Longfellow house.  At the further end of this
open space—a meadow during the poet's
lifetime, but now, unfortunately, a rather ugly
little park—there is a stone terrace with a
short flight of steps and two broad stone seats
against the wall below.  Passionate pilgrims
come there for a moment, once in a while, but
as a rule it is deserted.  We pretended to
study here; but dates and formulas and
Geschmitzenmenger's reflections on the
building materials of ancient Rome always got
mixed up in Hemington's tobacco smoke, or
we forgot about them in watching the sun
sparkle on the pools left by the falling tide.
Berri said that even Italy had very little more
to offer one than a stone bench soaked in
sunlight and the delusion that one was accomplishing
something.  Now and then we strolled in
Longfellow's garden.  The family were out
of town, and Berri inherits the privilege of
doing this from his aunt.

I can't get away from the idea that although
the days were getting longer and slower as
Class Day drew near, they went ever so much
more quickly than they had at first; notwithstanding,
also, the fact that I got up earlier.
I happened to do this the first time by
accident.  Bertie Stockbridge was the only
person at breakfast, and when I asked him not
to leave me alone, he said he had to or he
would be late for Chapel.  I had n't known
before that he went to Chapel, but he told me
he never missed a morning.  I had n't been
there myself at all, but that morning I went
with him.  It was very nice.  The President
was there, and the Dean, and several of the
professors, and a good many students—some
of whom I would n't have suspected of even
knowing where the Chapel was.  The music
was fine; the little boys in the choir sang like
angels,—the same little boys who used to
paste us with snowballs during the winter.
After that I went to Chapel almost every
morning until college closed.  It was a good
way to begin the day, somehow.  Berri began
to go too after a while, but he said he did it
to give him luck in his exams.

On Saturday afternoons and Sundays we
bicycled a great deal when the roads began to
get into shape.  The whole table would start
off and explore the park system, and once we
made a historical tour of Lexington and
Concord, which Berri wrote up for the Lampoon.
I think Berri will make the Lampoon next
year if he keeps on.  His way of going about
it is killing.  He writes things, and then
comes into my room with a solemn, anxious
face, and says,—

"Do you think this is funny?  Glance
through it carelessly and tell me just how it
strikes you.  I think it's perfectly side-splitting
myself,—I do really; but it mightn't
strike anybody else that way."

Then there was Riverside, where the
Charles all but loses itself between steep,
cool, shady banks, under trees that peer over
the edges all through the long, drowsy
summer, or flows brimming across a meadow
where a man ploughs a rich black border and
talks to his horses and sings.  It takes just
the amount of effort you like to make, to
follow in a canoe the course of this lazy stream.
Riverside is another place to which you like
to take all the essentials for study except the
power of will.

As the board decided to let me off probation
late in the spring, I could cut lectures
once more without anything very terrible
happening, and it was great on a warm morning
to walk into town for luncheon and keep our
hats off while we were on the bridge.  There 's
almost always a sea-breeze on the bridge.

I hardly know how to write of the surprising
and wonderful thing that happened to me
at the end of May.  It came so unexpectedly
that even now I sometimes stop to wonder if
it ever happened at all, and if I can be really
I.  But when I think it all over carefully,
remembering a few of the situations that led up
to it,—trifling incidents that were inexplicable
at the time and worried me very much,—I
see now that I wasn't very intelligent in
not suspecting a little what they meant.  I
never did, though, not in the least.

The thing that happened—how little the
simple statement would mean to papa, for
instance, and how much it really does mean!—the
thing that happened was, that I made
the First Ten of the Dickey.

As long ago as April, the First Ten began
to be—well, it began to be very much on
people's minds, although, of course, hardly
anything was said about it.  Berri and I
used to talk about it a little; Hemington and
I mentioned it once in a while; I suppose
there are about four men in our class that I
knew well enough to discuss it with.  But
naturally we spoke of it only when we were
absolutely alone.  If any one else came into
the room, we began to talk about something
else.  Yet, although the subject could n't
come up in general conversation, I often knew
that it was there—in everybody's thoughts—in
the atmosphere.  Every day some little
thing would happen that almost made you
jump, as it suddenly brought the question into
your mind, "Who is going to make the First
Ten?" things, for instance, like seeing some
one in our class walking through the Square
with a Dickey man who was in the Sophomore
class.  That always looked as if it meant
something, because—well, because it very
often *did* mean something.  One night Berri
told me (in the strictest confidence, of course)
that Phil Blackwood—an upper classman—had
met a girl cousin of his in town at a tea,
and had said to her that he liked Berri, and
thought he was great fun to talk to.  She had
told this to Berri's aunt, who had repeated
the remark to Berri, who was in a great state
about it, and wondered how much importance
he ought to attach to it.  It really did sound
to me as if something might come of it.

We made lists of names and bet on them,
and then locked them up in our desks.  I put
Berri's name on my list; but whether or not
he put mine on his, I don't know, for after the
crash came, we forgot to compare notes.

As the time grew near, not only Berri, but
a good many fellows I knew well began to
treat me in a way I did n't understand and
did n't like.  I don't know just how to describe
the gradual change in their manner toward me,
because it was the sort of thing you feel
without being able to put your finger on the cause,
or even on the change itself, without seeming
morbid and exaggerated.  But I could n't
help realizing that they treated me rather
coolly.  They stopped coming to my room as
often as they had been in the habit of coming,
they left me out of all sorts of little things I
had always been in before as a matter of course,
and more than once, as I took my seat at the
table or went into somebody's room, I could
see that my appearance made the fellows
uncomfortable for a moment, or at least gave the
talk a different turn.  All this hurt my feelings
terribly, and I tried to think what I could have
done to make the fellows I liked best and
considered my friends treat me this way.  But I
could n't think of a thing.  I supposed I must
have done something without appreciating
what the consequences would be.  It made
me feel pretty badly, I can tell you, and
several times I was on the point of demanding an
explanation; but they were all so polite and
distant and reserved that I never could bring
myself to.

Of course, now I understand exactly why
it was, and see how hopelessly stupid I
must have been not to have suspected
anything.  The whole situation arose from the
fact that there was a rumor in the class to
the effect that I was being considered for the
First Ten,—a rumor that was apparently
given foundation by my being seen several
times with Dick Smith.  This made the
fellows instinctively avoid me a little, from a
feeling that I and the class generally might
imagine that they were trying to swipe if they
went around much with me.  It seems to me
now particularly dense on my part not to have
had a glimmer of this, because it was just the
way I felt myself toward Tucker Ludlow,
who had gone to the theatre one night with
Phil Blackwood, and two or three other men
who were spoken of for the First Ten.  Yet
I never dreamed that any one could look at
me in this way.

Well, things went on, getting more
whispery and panicky and uncomfortable, until
finally one night at the end of last month the
crash came.  Just how anybody really knew
that the Dickey was having its great spring
meeting for the purpose of electing the First
Ten it would be impossible to say, for I can't
believe that it was breathed in so many words,
but we did know it, and we knew that it lasted
for three days and three nights before the
decision was reached.  Then——

In the afternoon Dick Smith overtook me
in the street, and after walking along for half
a block, said abruptly,—

"By the way, Wood, stay in your room
to-night," and then disappeared in a doorway.

I think my heart stopped beating.  I did n't
dare let myself dwell on the meaning of his
words, but stumbled to my lecture and sat
there, simply dazed.  At the end of the hour
I ran back to my room.  When I heard Berri
come in, I grabbed a book and stared at it
blindly, without seeing a word; but Berri
passed along the hall to his own study without
so much as stopping at my open door.  I
did n't go to our table for luncheon; I slipped
into The Holly Tree later instead.  But I
could n't eat anything; I was so excited and
nervous and full of doubt and fright that I
don't remember just how I got through the
afternoon.  I know I tried to sit in my room,
but gave it up and buried myself for a while
in one of the alcoves of the library.  Later I
walked in back streets, and then ran all the
way home, when the light began to fade,
fearing that something—I could n't bring myself
to think just what—might happen in my
absence.  By that time I was painfully hungry,
and managed to swallow a cup of tea and a
piece of toast at The Holly Tree.

The evening was endless.  I tried to read,
but by the time I reached the end of a
sentence I had forgotten the beginning of it.
Then I tried to write a letter to mamma, but
my hand trembled so that the writing scarcely
looked like mine at all, and anyhow I couldn't
think of enough to fill the first page.  It was
as if I were two distinct persons,—one
trying to write a calm letter to mamma, and the
other in an agony of apprehension and
uncertainty.  I don't know which was worse,—the
feeling that the Dickey was coming for
me, or the feeling that perhaps it wasn't.
Could Dick Smith have merely meant that he
might drop in to see me that evening?  He
had never been in my room, and it seemed
unlikely that he should come in that way.
His manner, too, of telling me to stay at home
had been so odd, his leave-taking so abrupt.
I turned these things over in my mind
interminably; then I would glance at the clock
and find the hands glued to the same old place.

To make things worse, Berri had come
home almost as soon as I had, and was in his
room with the door shut.  I longed to go in,
but the feeling that I wouldn't have anything
to say if I did, kept me back.  He made me
even more nervous than I really was by
walking up and down, up and down, and occasionally
moving a chair as if he had run into it in
his restless promenade and were pushing it
viciously out of the way.  If his manner
hadn't been so strained and queer, I think
I should have gone in anyhow and relieved
my mind.  I did n't intend to do quite this,
but at the end of about two hours I could n't
endure the lonely suspense any longer, and
decided at least to knock on his door and
borrow something—I did n't know what when
I started.  Mrs. Chester had forgotten to light
the lamp in the hall, and as I was feeling my
way through the darkness and deciding that a
match would be the most plausible excuse
for going in and then going out again almost
immediately, I bumped into somebody coming
the other way.  We both jumped back, and
I thought for a second that I was about to
collapse at the knees.

"Oh, it's you!" Berri exclaimed in a
voice that I just recognized as his.  "Heavens! but
you scared me.  I was on my way to your
room to borrow your—your—your—to
borrow—  Oh, Granny!"  He broke off with a
kind of gulp, and threw his arms around me.
"Isn't this ghastly!"  Then I knew that he
had been told to stay in his room too, and had
been suffering the same horrors.  Ever since
dinner he had been pacing the floor unable,
just as I had been, to make up his mind as
to the exact significance of the advice to be
at home that evening.  He could n't help
feeling that it might have been a mistake, that
something would go wrong; and that again,
if nothing *did* go wrong, there was the hideous
conjecture as to what would happen to you
to look forward to.

We sat down in my study,—Berri on the
edge of a chair, his hands folded with desperate
calmness on his lap; I at my desk, where
I found, after a minute or two of strained
silence, that I had dug a great hole in my
blotter and ruined a stylographic pen.

"If they do come," Berri at last whispered,
"how do you think we ought to be found?  I
don't know that it would be altogether the
thing to be so—so dressed and apparently
waiting."  Our extreme preparedness did seem
rather assuming, now that he spoke of it; I
was far from wanting to appear cock-sure of
my election or of anything else to a fiendish
mob such as we had watched from my window
that night in the autumn.

"And yet," I answered, "if we took off
very much, I don't suppose they would wait
for us to dress; in fact, I don't think I *could*
dress, and when I came in, it seemed to be
getting cool outsi—"

"Ssssshh!  I thought I heard something,"
Berri broke in.  He leaned toward the window,
and as the lamplight fell on his face, I saw for
the first time how pale he was.  We listened.
The clock ticked with a queer little hum on
two notes that I had never known it to make
before; the student-lamp grumbled twice, and
each time the flame rose and fell; I had never
noticed this, either.

"I was perfectly sure," Berri whispered.
His whisper was several times louder than his
ordinary tone.

"How do you think it would do to take off
our coats and neckties?" I suggested.  "That
would look as if we had begun to get ready
for bed without any suspicion of—of—It;
and at the same time we would have pretty
much everything on."

"You talk now as if you had made up your
mind that they were coming," Berri said
nervously.  "Do you think they are?"  The fact
of his asking me this dropped me back once
more into all the sickening doubt from which
for a minute or two I had been unconsciously
lifted.

"I don't know," I faltered.  "What do
you think?"  But instead of telling me Berri
exclaimed,—

"Oh, this is awful!" and began to walk up
and down the room.  As he walked he took
off his coat and threw it in a corner; then he
gave the end of his necktie a jerk that not only
undid the knot but ripped his shirt open from
his neck to his shoulders, for he had forgotten
that on one side the thing was pinned.  I don't
think he realized what he was doing, as he
went on pulling and pulling until he had torn
out a narrow strip of linen at least a foot and
a half long.  Berri, pacing the floor and
tearing himself to pieces in a nervous frenzy as he
paced, struck me all at once as the funniest
thing I had ever seen, and I began, first to
giggle, and then to laugh with the kind of
laughter that takes possession of you all over
and leaves you helpless.

I was leaning back in my chair, weak and
hysterical, when Berri stopped as abruptly as
if he had been shot, and stood petrified in the
middle of the room.  Away in the distance
the chanting cry of the Dickey had begun to
rise and fall, die with a tenor wail and begin
again; my laughter died with it, and as I
lay there, hypnotized by the sound, I think I
must have forgotten to close my mouth, for
when Berri spoke again, my throat was
parched and rough.  Perhaps he did n't
speak—I think he just made a feeble motion with
his hand that I interpreted as a sign to take
off my coat and necktie.  But I couldn't act
on it; I could n't do anything but lean back
with my eyes fixed, and listen to the approaching
song.  It grew louder and louder, clearer
and clearer, fiercer and fiercer, until it broke
all at once into a great roar, and I knew that
they had turned the corner and were coming
down our little street.  Then I felt Berri's
hand in mine,—it was cold and wet,—and
he was saying incoherently,—

"Good by, Granny—I mustn't be found
in your room—good-by—I must be found in
my own room—reading a book—yes—reading
a book—good-by."  Then the exultant
song and the heavy rhythm of feet under my
window suddenly stopped; there was a
moment almost of silence, followed by a hoarse
yell from what seemed like a thousand savage
throats.  In the pandemonium my ears
distinguished here and there the sound of my
own name shouted and shrieked in various
tones of impatient, unbridled, vindictive
eagerness, and for a second my thoughts flashed
back to the night Berri and I had seen some
one else pulled out.  That had thrilled me,
but this reduced me to a quaking pulp.

The door downstairs crashed back—there
was a deafening scramble on the tin steps—my
own door burst open—the room was full
of greedy hands and vengeful faces.  I was
lifted—hurled through the air out into the
hall and down the stairs in two thuds—across
the piazza, down the steps, along the walk,
out of the gate between a double line of
executioners into the hungry mob that dragged
me this way and that, tore at my hair and
clothes, rolled me in the dirt, and finally jerked
me upright, linked my arms in those of some
other neophytes (I could n't see who they
were), and started me down the street with a
kick.  We swayed off—a million devils
behind us—roaring the Dickey song, as we had
been commanded to, at the top of our lungs.





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   XVII[#]

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[#] For obvious reasons, certain parts of Granny Wood's diary
have not been printed.  Of the passages that refer to the Dickey,
only those describing the society's public practices have been
retained.—The Editor.

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Most of the time I was on my
knees.  There were only two
moments of relief in the painful
march; they came when the
crowd stopped to pull out two other
unfortunates and hurl them, as I had been hurled,
from their respective front doors.  For the
time being (it was a very short time, however)
the rest of us were neglected; but as soon
as the arms of our fellow neophyte were linked
in ours, the irresistible impetus from behind
began once more and we continued our perilous way.

At last all ten of us were shoved—a dazed
and gasping semicircle—up the steps of
Claverly Hall, and our names were cheered
in the order of our election.  With the
exception of Berri, I had n't known before who
the others were.  In the darkness and
excitement it had been impossible to see.  There
was something ominous and depressing in the
cheers they gave us.  Berri said, in talking
about it the week afterward, that it was as
if the cannibal band should cheer the
missionary.  Then the crowd melted away with
vague threats as to what was to come, and I
was taken back to my room, weary and stupid,
by Dick Smith.  He was to be my guide and
only friend during the week that was to follow.
Before he left me, he told me the conditions
of my servitude.

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That week was the longest and most absolutely
wretched of my life, I think; although
now that it is over, I would n't give up the
memory of it for almost anything.  Even in
the midst of it the idea of chucking the whole
thing, as I suppose I might have done, never
occurred to me.  I could at times conceive of
my giving out, but never of my giving up.
The first day of my "running," as it is called,
from six in the morning until ten o'clock at
night, was one long embarrassment, mortification,
and mental agony to me.  I set my teeth
and forced myself through it doggedly.  The
days that followed were just as bad,—even
worse, perhaps,—but I did n't have to compel
myself to do things.  I went through them
mechanically; where almost everything was
a hideous nightmare, no one incident, after a
time, had the power to overwhelm me as at
first.  I was too tired and dirty and unshaven
and cowed to care particularly what they made
me do, or to have a feeling of any kind, other
than one of hopeless submission.  In the
morning after an early breakfast at The Holly
Tree * * * * * * * * * * *

Then some one, usually three or four, would
get hold of me and make me do perfectly
awful things in the College Yard or on the
streets.  I had to perform so many crazy acts
that I can't remember them all, or on what
days they came, and, as I said, I grew
perfectly indifferent to what I had to do or who
saw me do it.

One warm afternoon they made me put on
three soft, thick sweaters and then took me
to a drug-store in the Square, where they
poured over me half the contents of a long
line of perfumery bottles on the
counter,—white-rose, heliotrope, patchouly, musk,
ylangylang, violet, bay-rum, and several kinds
of cologne,—all the deadly scents that one
investigates while waiting for a prescription
to be put up.  Then we got on an electric
car,—the fellows who were running me at
one end, and I at the other.  They of course
(after instructing me to snuggle up to my
fellow passengers,—refined old ladies and
peevish middle-aged gentlemen in particular)
pretended to ignore me.  But the other
passengers did n't.  Everybody I sat next to
would turn, after about three seconds, look at
me with a slight contraction of the nostrils,
and then move away; in less than ten seconds
more they would be on the other side of the
car.  It was not long before I had one side
of the car all to myself.  Then—this also I
had been ordered to do—when we reached
the edge of the bridge, I jumped up and, as a
sort of climax, "threw a fit."  Passengers in
street cars always find this very trying,
especially if you fall down in the aisle foaming at
the mouth and clutch at their feet.  Before my
five days of running were over, I grew exceedingly
expert at throwing fits.  I certainly had
enough practice at it.  Well, when we got
across the bridge I was hustled out of the car
into a drug-store, where I recovered in time
to catch the next car back—and do the whole
thing over again.

It was on the evening of that day, I think,
that they took me to the theatre—or, I should
say, the theatres, as we visited several.  (They
had in the mean time taken off the perfume-soaked
garments, not through consideration
for my feelings, but for their own.)  One
might think that, under the circumstances,
going to the theatre would have been a
delightful rest.  But it wasn't.  I had a seat
all to myself down in front, and the fellows
who took me sat ten or twelve rows back.
Beyond the fact that the first play we went to
was a nice, staid performance that had attracted
a large and very "dressy" audience, I have no
recollection of it; for my thoughts were all
centred on the dreadful thing that was going
to happen at the end of the first act.

The curtain went down; there was a polite
flutter of applause, and then, while the
orchestra was getting ready and the house was
perfectly quiet except for a murmur of talk, I
stood up, facing everybody, and exclaimed in
a loud, distinct voice,—

"This show is bum, and I want my money back."

The effect was electrical.  All conversation
stopped instantly, and I could actually hear
the craning of necks from one end of the
theatre to the other.

"This show is bum, and I want my money
back," I declared again, louder than before.
Some men near me began to laugh; the
ladies looked scared to death, and from the
gallery came a wild clapping of hands and
yells of, "That's no lie," and "He's all
right."  Whereupon (as per instructions) I
began to yell the thing over and over again at
the top of my voice, and kept it up until four
ushers skated down the aisle and threw me
out, still yelling.  I had visions, as I flew
along toward the exit, of white-faced women
indulging in hysterics.  I did this at two other
shows, and the fellows regretted very much
that there didn't happen to be any five-act
plays in town, for they said my technique got
better and better as the evening went on.

Then I spent whole afternoons in creeping
up behind the sparrows in the Square and
endeavoring to put salt on their tails; in going
from shop to shop trying to get the clerks to
change a cent; in holding up baby carriages,
kissing the occupants and then remarking that
I was "passionately fond of animals."  (I
kissed fifty-six babies on Commonwealth
Avenue in one afternoon.)  I stalked Indians
with a little bow and arrow in the Yard one
morning between lectures (cutting lectures
is n't allowed), craftily creeping from tree to
tree, hiding a moment, peeping out warily, and
finally exclaiming as I shot an arrow and
dashed into the open,—

"Bang—and another red-skin bit the dust."

This was one of the few times (except in the
evening) that I saw Berri during the entire
week.  He was walking up and down the
stone parapet of Matthews with a silly little
false red fringe of beard around his neck,
proclaiming to all the passers-by,—

"Listen to me; I am a Berrisford of Salem."

In a pair of green tights and on horseback,
I distributed armfuls of the "smuggled"
cigars from Santa Bawthawthawthoth to the
inhabitants of Cambridgeport, and when a great
crowd had collected around me, delivered a
lecture on the evils of smoking.  I intercepted
at various times many respectable old ladies
on their way across the streets, for the purpose
of confidentially whispering,—

"Madam, I regret to inform you that you
are holding your skirts just a leetle too high."

I also had to stop car after car, put my foot
on the step, tie my shoestring, and then stand
back, saying to the conductor,—

"Thank you, you may go on now."  This
is an old game, but it's a great favorite.

Two things happened (and only two) that
I liked.  One was when I had to call on a
girl in town—I had never seen her before—and
write all my part of the conversation on
a slate.  She was very pretty and good to
me; for instead of being disgusted at my
appearance (she had every reason to be) and
having me put out of the house, she made me
sit down and ordered tea (I realized, for the
first time, how nice tea could be) and was
altogether a perfect peach.  She said, among
other things, that she had been at the theatre
the night I made the row.  I wrote on the
slate, "Which one?  The performance was
given by special request at three different
places," which made her laugh.  I stayed
talking, or rather writing, to her for more than
half an hour.  The fellows who had brought
me to the door were very angry; for, thinking
that I would be chased away by a husky footman
at the end of a minute or two, they had n't
told me how long to stay and were waiting
outside to see what happened.  When at last
I got up to go, the pretty girl held out her
hand very graciously and said,—

"We'll meet again someday, I'm sure,"
and I wrote on the slate,—

"It will not be my fault if we don't.
Good-by!"  She took the slate and the pencil,
drew a line through the last word, and wrote
under it,—

"Au revoir."  Then I left.  I *did* meet
her again very soon afterwards, at the Beck
spread on Class Day.  She was the prettiest
girl there.  She 's going abroad in three days,
and as papa let me engage passage for our
trip (he and mamma and Mildred will be
here to morrow), it did n't take me long to
decide on the steamer.  When he found that
I had picked out, for no apparent reason, one
of the old Cunarders sailing from Boston, he
was perfectly furious.  But it's too late for
him to change now.

The other thing I enjoyed during my
running was the day that Mr. Fleetwood stole
me away from some fellows and took me up
to his room overlooking the Yard.  He is an
old Dickey man himself, and had as much
right to my services as any one.  I embarrassed
him at first, I think.  Strangely enough,
I appreciated this a little even then, when I
had no business to be appreciating anything
beyond the fact that I was a mere grovelling
worm.  He sat down, when we went into his
room, and looked at me curiously, diffidently,
for a moment, as if he did n't quite know how
to begin.  Then he said with something of an
effort, as if he considered himself a little
foolish to say anything,—

"What, pray, is your name?"  I gave the
required answer, at which he smiled—rather
sadly, I thought; although I did n't see what
reason *he* had to look that way.  Then he
asked me to do several things,—old, old
things that neophytes probably had to do
when the Dickey was first started; things that
have become conventions; the kind of things
you are always asked to do by fellows who
have n't enough imagination to think of
anything new.  He gave his commands (with him,
however, they became requests) slowly, as if
he couldn't remember just how they went.
And he didn't always express them the way
the fellows do.  I could n't help feeling that
if Shakespeare had ever tried to torment a
neophyte, he had done it in very much the
same way.  He scarcely noticed my attempts
to do what he asked.  He was interested, I
think, not so much in discovering my feeble
talents as in recalling the general situation.
But he stopped doing even this in a short time,
and got up and went over to the open window
and looked out into the wilderness of elm
leaves and down at the cool, shady stretches
of grass and the yellow paths of the Yard.

I really think he forgot all about me, for I
stood there an interminable time waiting for
him to turn around.  Just before he did turn,
he yawned and said listlessly to himself,—

"Well, I suppose it's as it should be."  He
must have said this to himself, as he
seemed surprised to find me standing patiently
in the middle of the room where he had left me.

"My dear boy, sit down, sit down," he
exclaimed,—"that is, unless you would rather
go away."  I answered that I should rather
stay there if he did n't mind.  It was so cool
and quiet and safe in his room; I knew that
no one could ever find me, and I was very tired.

"I have some themes to read," Fleetwood
went on, "but you won't disturb me.  Do
whatever you want to, and if you feel like it,
talk."

We did talk a little.  Then I stretched out
on his divan and tried to read; but before I
had finished half a chapter I drifted away into
the most blissful sleep I 've ever had.  I can
just remember the whispering sound of footsteps
on the pavement under the windows, and
the rustle of the crisp new leaves.  When I
awoke the room was dark.  There was a sheet
of paper pinned to my coat, and when I got
into the lighted corridor I saw written on it,—

"In reply to any questions as to your
disappearance, you may truthfully explain that
you did a difficult and important bit of work
for W. J. Fleetwood."  I don't know yet
what he meant.  Some day next year I think
I 'll ask him.  I don't believe I know any one
who is so very clever and so very kind.

The next night—the last—the night of
the * * * * * * * * * * * *





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   XVIII

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It was only natural, I suppose, that for
a week or so after we had become
full-fledged Dickey men the First Ten
should have stuck pretty close together.
We had such a lot to talk about,—things
that we could n't very well talk about to
outsiders.  To tell the truth, the rest of the class
for a time seemed like outsiders to me.  They
had n't been through what we had, and I
confess that I could n't help looking on our little
crowd as something apart from the others and,
taken all in all, rather extraordinary.  I don't
know that I thought this in so many words,
but I did feel it; and it was Berri—of all
persons—who brought me back to earth one
day with a jerk.  I forget just what I said to
call forth his remarks, but it was something
in the nature of a complaint that the fellows
at the table did n't seem to have as much time
for me, so to speak, as they once had.  Berri
puffed at his pipe for a while and stared at
the ceiling, and finally said,—

"Of course, I see what you mean; but it's
not them, you know—it's us."

"I'm sure I don't think—" I began defensively.

"No, I don't believe you do realize the true
state of affairs," Berri interrupted.  "Lots
of fellows would, and then pretend all the
time that they did n't; that's what I do.
But you don't.  You just have the big-head
from pure delight, and go around swelled up
like a hop-toad without in the least knowing
it.  Your old friends know it, though, and it
naturally makes them a dash tired.  And
besides, what do you expect them to do,
anyhow?  Run after us?  Of course they won't
do that.  In the first place, we 've both
become rather obnoxious; I don't mind it in
myself, but with you it's scarcely in character.
And in the second place, none of the fellows
at our table are swipes, and if any advances
are made, well, they won't make them.  So
there you are!"

There was nothing much to say to this,
because, after a few minutes of resentment, I felt
all over that it was perfectly true.  I did n't
say anything, but you bet it was n't more than
a day or two before the fellows seemed to me
just the way they always had seemed.  I think
I had a pretty close call; I might have turned
into a Dick Benton.

Three days before Class Day, who should
blow in but Duggie?  He literally did blow
in, come to think of it, as he crossed from
Cadiz in a sailing-vessel and was as brown as
a Spaniard.  He brought Mrs. Chester a black
lace shawl, and told her that if she 'd drape it
around her head and sit at her upstairs window
some evening, he 'd come and serenade her.
To which the old girl responded with one
of her roguish little digs at Duggie's ribs,
and exclaimed,—

"Land sakes, Mr. Duggie, you can't sing,
and never could."

Duggie wanted Berri and me to dine with
him that evening, but Berri's last examination
was to come the next morning (I had finished
all of mine) and he could n't.  I did, though,
and we walked out to Cambridge afterwards
in the moonlight.  He told me all about his
trip, and when I let him know that we were
going abroad for the summer and that Berri
was going over with us to join his mother at
Dinard, he said,—

"I had a letter from Berri in answer to
mine.  I don't often keep letters, but I 've
kept his.  I suppose you know I did n't think
much of Berri at first, but I don't mind
confessing that I sized him up all wrong."

It was such a beautiful night that when we
got to our gate, it seemed like wasting
something to go in the house.  Berri had finished
his grind and was leaning out of my window.
He said that his brain felt like a dead
jellyfish (I think that was the pretty simile), and
told us not to go in, as he would put on his
coat and come down to us.  So we strolled, all
three, over to the Yard, and sat on the steps
in front of one of the Holworthy entries.  It
was very late, but the finals were not yet
over, and the yellow of many windows blurred
through the trees.  The long quadrangle was
flecked with moonlight, and little groups like
our own were sitting in front of almost every
doorway.  The Yard, except on great occasions,
is rarely noisy, and that night it seemed
particularly quiet,—a kind of lull before the
crash of Class Day and Commencement.

Duggie and Berri and I sat there talking
until the air and the sky had changed from
summer night to summer morning.  Even then
a few of the windows were still glowing.

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   THE END.

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