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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

“I will, Priddy. I certainly will!”

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

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

“What’s that?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Garvin’s eyes twinkled at his next question.

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

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

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

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

“For an education, Priddy.”

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

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

“How do you argue that?”

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

“What do you mean?”

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

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

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

“No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even down to so technical a consideration as the language of hoods, the undergraduates manifested fully as much interest as they had been wont to give to baseball batters’ averages. Garvin’s paper came out with a color list by which the college presidents, university chancellors, international statesmen, state officials, seminary heads and the host of lesser academics could be fully interpreted through the colors on the gowns they would wear in the procession: white signifying arts and letters, scarlet theology, purple for philosophy, blue for science, brown for music and so on through the list, which Garvin editorially advised each student to either cut out and have in his hand when the procession moved, or, better still, to carefully memorize it.

The dignity of the impending, classic, stately event; the sorting of gowns, the whispers and queries concerning what world-famous shoulders were to receive the highest degrees: all this sobered the students and stimulated imaginations, days before the actual event transpired. To me it promised to be the opportunity to see, face to face, the men of culture and administrative power whose names were familiar in the far corners of the country: men who not only figured as authors, administrators, lecturers, scientists, travelers, and moral leaders, but, among them, potential Presidents of the nation, honored citizens of public reputation, men whose names were already merged with civic movements, patriotic events, and national political advances. It meant that history, successful ambition, leadership, and moral fibre were to be personified for me in their highest types.

The morning of the inauguration brought with it a great excitement. The Seniors were to wear gowns that morning for the first time. On leaving the house, after breakfast, and taking my position near the Senior Fence, to wait for the formation of the line, a sunburst of silken scarlet gown dazzled my eyes, as a sedate man of sixty, with a white beard, hurried along the path, his head topped by a black velvet bonnet. He was followed by others, in the silken glares of Oxford and Cambridge, and a continual procession of black-draped figures whose multi-colored hoods were like lurid gashes cut in the mourning by a deftly wielded blade.

By nine o’clock the campus was astir with visitors, faculty, alumni, undergraduates, the band and the sight-seers. Ellis marshalled us into a double line, so that to the beholder, in our black gowns and black caps, we resembled a very mournful, if dignified, procession of upright ravens.

Then the band blared forth a martial thunderclap which pulled our feet into time. Slowly, led by the musicians, we filed on our way around the outer edge of the campus, dragging after us the faculty and distinguished visitors whose chief distinction in the procession lay in their inability or unwillingness to keep to the step we fixed. Our two hundred and odd pairs of hands swished against the sides of our flapping gowns in rhythmic evenness. Not even the precision of a Black Watch drill could have been finer rendered than was our Senior march. The heads and bodies swept from side to side like the orderly attack of a straight, long wave beating backwards and forwards against a cliff. Then, at Assembly Hall, our double line divided and we stood with heads uncovered: a lane of honor, while the recipients of honors, the visiting presidents, the faculty and the alumni threaded their way between our lines into the hall.

Deeper and deeper into formalism we plunged: all the traditions of scholarship were called up: all the esthetic possibilities of academic show and etiquette passed in review before us, cap tipping, hood placing, and the summing up of the achievements of a lifetime in two sentences as an honorary degree was bestowed. The trappings and medievalism of scholarship added a new dignity to the college atmosphere. The very air we breathed was musty with the scholar’s tradition.

The only modernness in the event came in the moments of hand-clapping, as addresses, investiture and degrees followed one another. The undergraduate chorus, massed in the rear of the enormous carpeted platform, added to the impressive solemnity of the exercises by its sonorous harmonies. Then came the event of the occasion, and Ellis, knight of valor and skill on the football field, was the central figure in the event. He had been assigned the address representing the undergraduates. He stalked his way to the platform and stood before us, backed by the massed greatness of America’s university world. But he paid no heed to that, as he had not been wont to pay much heed to the thousands of on-lookers who admired his skill in the games. He took fire, and was the first to disturb the quiet soberness of the program by putting vivid gesture and loud, vibrant voice into play. The effect on the visitors and the undergraduates was electrical. Each one bent forward as, in no stately rhetoric or formal phrase, Ellis opened his heart which, at the moment, comprehended the loyalty of all the student body. As he concluded, the students stood in a mass, and after the prolonged applause—the finest applause of the event—our cheer-leader dragged a husky, but thrilling college cheer from our throats, while Ellis modestly found his place in our midst. As we filed out into the light of the noon sun, and could easily discover the towering, broad shoulders of Ellis, our leader, at the head of the line, I thought of the honor he had brought to the college in his four years’ presence in it, and saw in him the union of all that is best in American college life and those qualities which the college aims to invest in every willing student’s life: loyalty to one’s fellows, physical fitness, moral alertness, humility in success, and a respect for the law that governs men and nations.