Through the school: The experiences of a mill boy in securing an education

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

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

“What makes you think so?” I demanded.

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

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

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

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

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

“They don’t—eh—” I stammered, limply.

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

I gave up in desperation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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