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

IN the spring, when announcements of Commencement and Graduation were in the air, a gathering of four members of the collegiate department, as many members of the preparatory division, two business students, and five who could not be classified by reason of their slowness to master their studies, met in response to a call, sent out by the Seniors, for the members of the Freshmen Class to elect officers, and after due deliberation made me their president.

With this honor thrust on me, I was immediately in a dilemma, for the main purpose of the class organization was to have each member’s photograph in the Senior’s “Record,” a souvenir book of the University life. Had I been other than the president, I should not have fretted about my inability to afford a visit to the picture gallery, but there I was: due to have my picture in the middle of the group. I was in despair until finally I thought of little Jack Borden, who owned a three-dollar camera. I told him my predicament and he consented to make a snap-shot of me for ten cents that should be fit to be in the center of a group of “gallery ones” as he termed those that the official photographer would take.

As Jack had no photographer’s background, he snapped me with my back to the flowered wall paper, and when the finished picture was handed me, there I sat, outlined against a mass of conventional crocus leaves and a picture of “Pa” Borden hung on the wall above my head! I was told by one of “The Record” Committee that the picture would never be fit to reproduce with such a background: that it should be in relief against a plain one. I returned to my room in despair, but finally resolved to cut my picture out from the wall paper and paste it on a piece of plain, black pasteboard. After going over the outline with the scissors I finally succeeded in accomplishing the feat and the picture went in the middle of the group, an undignified, flat, ill-posed, and somewhat jagged outline of myself, most conspicuous as “the president.”

As the year drew to an end, and the students began to talk so emotionally of home and friends, I began to feel that I had been long enough in exile from my eastern home and friendships. I also began to wonder if now that I had learned the art of working a way through school I should not be more comfortable in Massachusetts. I had heard the graduating students talk of “Dartmouth” and “Boston University” and “Yale” and “Harvard,” with a sort of worshipful accent, not far short of reverence. One or two graduates in the past, so the local legend ran, had even attained to post-graduate work in Yale and Harvard! Therefore, as I heard this talk, listened to this semi-worship of New England education, and realized that it was my home, my own environment, I also asked myself the question: “Why not go and complete your education in that atmosphere?”

I mentioned this fact to Thropper. He said to me:

“I have often wondered, Priddy, why you came away out here for your education when you have such good schools in New England. I should think you’d be able to work your way along out there and get some mighty fine chances. I just wish I had been an Easterner!”

“I’ve a good mind to go East when school closes, Thropper, and try. I must confess I feel lonesome, homesick out here. I miss the ocean and the hills. I can’t help it. I suppose I run the risk of not getting to school next year, though, if I break off now!”

“Not if you’re willing to work as you have,” said Thropper. “Though I’d hate to have you go. I thought you might be my right hand man when I marry, next fall!”

“Marry?”

“Yes, in September. Oh, you’ll get an invitation even if you won’t be able to attend, Priddy,” he added, solemnly, “I wouldn’t try to keep you from going East even with my wedding. Try it, old fellow. You owe it to yourself, now that you’ve got such a good start here. This place doesn’t pretend to be in competition with the big Eastern institutions. Evangelical University is concerned mostly with giving a fellow a start towards them. The faculty would be only too glad to have you leave here, if they knew you were going to stick to your education in the East.”

“I’ll do it, Thropper!” I replied.

The busy season of Commencement was ushered in: a busy time even for those of us who were far, very far from graduation. My “class” voted that I represent them with an oration on “Class Day.” No classic, intellectual, or sentimental event was Class Day at Evangelical University, but, rather, a Western outflow of burlesque and banter. Every day for a week I practised my “oration” in the attic of the University building. In this speech I had put, as all previous Class Day orators had made a practise of putting, puns, alliterations, pompous passages, personalities, and much bathos. I tried to perfect myself in its delivery, not knowing just what experiences I should encounter on the day I should speak it.

A wild, untamed, yelling, crowding procession filled the chapel hall, each class in a section by itself and the “orators” seated on the platform.

It came my turn. I stepped to the front and raised my hand for the first word when suddenly the class next above mine yelled, poked up slang signs, and then from the square ventilator hole high above my head darted a sparrow with a trailing streamer of our class ribbon fluttering from its tail. At every sentence, nearly every word, I had to pause on account of the yellings, the banter, and the interruptions caused by flying hats and scudding pieces of pasteboard. After about a half hour of disciplined posing, I finally concluded the “oration” amid the admiring plaudits of my class. Thus orator followed orator, each one outdoing the other with satire, pun, and rhetorical nonsense. To the accompaniment of a thudding fight which was taking place between the representatives of two classes over our heads where the bird had been sent down, Class Day came to an end, and my active life at Evangelical University likewise.