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

SINCE the establishment of my family in the college precincts, I had seen very little, in a social way, of my old friend Sanderson. I determined to pay him a visit one evening, and took with me a glass of grape jelly and some hermit cookies, as a remembrance from my wife.

I found him before a heap of blue papers on which were lead pencil scribbles. A look of anxiety was on his face. When he saw me, however, he smiled his pleasure, went over to the hat rack and put on his fez.

“How are you getting along, Sanderson?” I asked.

“Say,” he pleaded, “you couldn’t just run over these reports of mine on your typewriter, could you, Priddy. I’m back about a dozen, and must have them in to get passing marks. It would be such a help!”

“Unfortunately, what with sermons, two prize essays on which I am working, and my own studies, Sanderson, I haven’t a spare minute!”

“Then I’ll have to root out some freshman and give him the job, though a freshman’s so uninformed! Why, I asked one of ’em to just scribble a two-page description of Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and it took the idiot most a week to do it, and I don’t think it can be hard reading, from what the Prof. said about it. Now if I’d had time, I could have read it in a night!”

“Same old Sanderson,” I muttered. “I don’t know how you’d get through without help!”

“Well,” he retorted, “since you brought your wife and boy to town, you’ve done mighty little for me, eh?”

“Oh, you’ll take care of yourself,” I replied.

“Well,” he winked, “I have been lucky, lately. Jimmy’s stuck by me!”

“Who’s your latest benefactor, ‘Jimmy?’” I enquired.

“He’s a medic. who rooms across the campus. The nicest man you ever met: patient—oh, so patient, and motherly—oh, so motherly!”

“Motherly?”

“Yes, can sew patches on, and buttons, like a real endowed maiden aunt, and when I’m out of sorts he reads to me, and when I prick my thumb he brings over a medicine case and drops peroxide on. I sprained my wrist at hand-ball, and Jimmy soaked and painted it with stuff, and made a firm leather brace for it. Oh, you wait till he blows in on the medical profession, he’ll fit in it as no man, before him, ever fitted in it. He looks after me like a regular private physician, if I’ll only let him come in and study with me. You see, his own room’s always so full that he wants to get away.”

Sanderson smiled significantly at me.

“Filled with a lot more soft-soapers like you, eh?” I laughed.

“Well, willing good-nature like Jimmy’s is liable to be imposed on,” he agreed. “He comes to my room for protection. I tell you, my lessons have picked up wonderfully since he came.”

“Will he be in tonight?” I asked.

“He sure will!” said Sanderson. “If he doesn’t I don’t know how I’ll get along with my biology quiz in the morning. I was saving it for him!”

“You fraud! He has his own work to do!”

“Don’t scold, please,” replied Sanderson. “He gets through his work all right. He’d starve if he couldn’t be a benefactor to somebody. He will come in tonight. We’ll have a few minutes’ chat. Then he’ll ask me about the quiz and he’ll let go at me for an hour or so. Then we’ll have another chat and it will be my bedtime, for I never plan to be out of bed after half-past ten except on exceptional occasions. I’ll leave my bedroom door open while I get ready. Jimmy’ll talk to me until I let out a snore,—I’ll tell him to be sure and snap the lock after he leaves. Perhaps an hour later he’ll creep out, and go to his own room. Oh, I swear by Jimmy!”

“And get your marks by him, too, eh?”

“What’s a fellow to do?” asked Sanderson.

As I turned to go, Sanderson yawned,

“Say, Priddy, could you run in with that print on Holbein’s ‘Saint Barbara?’ I failed to get it, and we have to recite on it, in the morning. You might bring me the dope on it, too!”

I entered at last upon the final stretch towards my degree. In the stress of work and the excitement of writing a philosophical and a literary essay, in competition for two senior prizes, the days of winter changed into the brighter aspects of spring almost before I was aware of it. Once more we assembled on the campus for the class “sing,” and this time my wife could enjoy the music with me, as we stood on the corner and let our year-old boy ask, “What?” when the cheers began.

The class elections were held, the photograph of the class was taken, backgrounded against a most rustic wall of stone and arrangement of wild shrubbery. Our caps and gowns soon followed the class pictures, and then we wore them to chapel, in which we marched so slowly and solemnly under the guide of our marshal, that more than one irrepressible spirit in the ranks would burst out with laughter at so much dignity in so youthful a crowd. Through these days I often grew impatient. I was eager, now, with restored health, and with a richer mine of truth, to be in a parish again, doing my chosen work.

But when commencement week arrived with its sentimental spirit,—then I felt the full significance of this last educational experience.

A band, brought from the city, gave concerts on the college club porch, amid a forest of plants and shrubs, and under fairylike illuminations. Class reunions brought crowds of graduates, who donned yellow hats, wore clownish clothes, and paraded up and down seeing how much burlesque they could express. One class engaged an Italian hand-organ artist who had also, perched on his music-box, an intelligent parrot which would pick out fortune slips from a box—for five cents. In some way the class lost the parrot, and I came across the Italian boy, crying bitterly, as he searched a wild gully for the bird, saying, when I asked him what the trouble could be,

“Ah, my parrote, he los’, my God, what I do for live now!”

Meanwhile the renters of the organ sat in an automobile and raced back and forth down the main street while it scattered its wheezy music along the trail of gasolene fumes.

On one corner, a group of distinguished-looking men and women stood in the dry gutter, with slips of paper in their hands, singing with more or less effect, and great seriousness,

Over on the opposite side of the campus a crowd of lawyers, bankers, ministers, and business men, who would shock their neighbors at home if they had a shoe-lace untied, paraded in purple wrappers and sun-bonnets topped with paper roses.

Then the morning of graduation arrived. The mock wrappings were put aside by the visitors, who appeared in frock coats and sedate manners. By nine o’clock I joined my classmates at the fence and found my place in the line. Meanwhile crowds of people in holiday dress thronged the campus once again, members of the faculty with gowns fluttering in the wind, and with scarlet, purple, yellow, and white hoods, gathered at the administration building.

As at the Inauguration the band once more took its place at our head, struck up its vibrant tune, and then at the dropping of the marshal’s baton we took the step and marched around the campus, a black, rhythmical procession of academics. The gay-hooded, but sedate faculty followed, to march through the double line of honor we formed at the entrance to the hall. Then we entered and stood at our seats until the marshal’s baton gave us the signal to be seated.

The deep platform before us was ranged with the faculty, the trustees, the recipients of honorary degrees, and the musicians, including a robed choir of students and the musical director.

But my eyes fell on the table at the head of the centre aisle on which lay a thick, flat heap of sheepskins; mine among them.

Nervously I picked up the program, and, as I looked it through, to see the catalogue of my academic career, it told to all who searched it through that Albert Priddy graduated cum laude, and that he had won four first prizes: two in his junior year and two in his senior year: two essays, a story, and a research in philosophy.

The addresses, the salutatory, valedictory, and the greeting by the faculty were given. The choir sang an impressive anthem. The honorary degrees were conferred with great solemnity. The classmate next to me said:

“Priddy, my heart is beating so fast that if we don’t get our degrees soon, it will burst. Just think if anything should prevent our getting them—now!”

“Don’t mention it,” I suggested, in nervous agitation, “please.”

Finally, however, the dean came down from the platform and we stood. Then we began a very slow walk around the side aisles, down past the platform to pass before the dean and receive our degrees. Slowly, ever too slowly, I drew near, and then, a whispered “Priddy” from the Dean and the sheepskin was in my hand.

Immediately I changed the position of the tassel of my cap for I had, that moment, officially shifted myself from the undergraduate rôle of the college and entered the long, historic ranks of the alumni.

When I got back to my seat, my neighbor, who had expressed the fear that something would occur, whispered with relief:

“I’m not a religious fellow, Priddy, but I do feel like singing the doxology, now that I’ve got this!” He pointed to his diploma.