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

SHORTLY after my return from the dining-hall, Thropper thundered into the room, in his impetuous way, jerked his arms out of his coat, tore at his collar and lifted up the lid of his tin-covered trunk with every evidence of excitement.

“What’s the matter—Jim?” I asked, from my seat near the window.

“Got a date on, that’s what,” he answered, half smothered in his trunk. “Miss Ebberd’s going—church—with me. Lucky—duck, that’s what! Going down the board walk to—New Light revival! Say,” he interrupted, holding up for my inspection a black, puff tie, with an opal stone nesting in the midst of its folds, “How would this go with a choker collar, Priddy?”

“Put it on first, Thropper,” I suggested.

He fastened it around his high choker collar: a collar whose pointed fronts might have been successfully used by Spanish Inquisitors to make heretics look up continually unless they wished to have holes punctured under their chins.

“The reason I wear this tie,” said Thropper, confidentially, “is because it blocks up my shirt bosom; hides it and saves washing, of course. You’ve got to get on to all those sort of tricks when you work your way through school, you’ll find, Priddy. Now, how do I look, eh?”

I thought him a very attractive Lothario indeed, although I did not venture so far with an expression of opinion. I merely said,

“You look slick!”

As he was leaving the room, Thropper suddenly turned and in a very apologetic tone said,

“I had planned, Priddy, to stay with you tonight, but you see how it is, don’t you, old fellow?”

“Why, certainly,” I agreed. “I wouldn’t like to have you miss this chance for anything, Thropper. Go ahead and good luck!”

“Thanks,” he said. “You can lock the door when you go to bed if I’m not back. You must be tired!”

“Yes, I am tired, Thropper. I’ll sit by the window—and think. Good luck to you!”

He was gone. As his feet echoed in the bare hall, I heard him humming, like a happy lover,

“There’ll be no dark valley!”

The evening shadows were gathering outside, as I sat near the window, looking out. From the village centre came the drawn out stroke of a church bell. Then the campus was alive with sounds. The whole University seemed astir. Some one raised up a window in the second story, over my head, and a quiet, vibrant voice called, “Hey, Brother Merritt?” The man in the next room stopped his strumming on a guitar, lifted up his window and replied, “What?” “Going to the service tonight, Brother Merritt?” To which my neighbor answered, “No, I’m afraid I can’t. I’m tired.” A door in the next house burst open and a trio of young women gathered on the porch. “That’s only the first bell,” said one. “We shan’t have to hurry.” “I’m glad of that,” replied another, “for the board walk is just simply terrible in places: full of holes that we might trip in if we had to run.” Then their pattering footfalls could be heard growing dimmer and dimmer in the distance on the board walk. Little groups of young men hummed hymns as they, too, passed Pungo Hall on their way to the revival. Others laughed and argued. I heard the fragment of one discussion in which three earnest-toned young men were indulging: “Saint Paul did make a failure in that Mar’s Hill speech!” said one, loudly. “It all depends on what you mean by ‘failure,’” replied his antagonist; “true, the Greeks might not have been strongly enthusiastic at the time, but it seems to me that God would use that speech for—No!” The argument was swallowed up in the twilight and the distance. A group of young women swept by the gloom which hung like a mystic veil between me and them. I heard only one sentence of their conversation, “Fried potatoes—ugh!” They were succeeded by a procession of late starters who slipped by shrouded in the gloom, a happy, familiar, shadowy procession ignorant of the lonesome lad who sat back of a window and envied them their evening’s excursion. The last of the footsteps died down on the board walk, as if the last of my generation had left me to occupy the world alone. But the stars came out for friendliness, ruling over the silences of the campus and rendering it more silent. The tolls of the church bell announced the beginning of the service. When the double stroke had been given for a last warning, the silence was about me once more. Suddenly the troubled cry of a sheep from the back pasture broke out on the night, a plaintive bleat as if a dog or some prowling beast of prey had been scented. Then, through an open window in the next house, I heard the voice of a girl as it read something, followed by a deeper voice which said, “Oh, yum, I’ve been dozing, Grace!” That was followed by a hand which drew apart the curtains, and soon two girls’ heads were outlined against the golden glow in the room, and one remarked, “Oh, what a stupid night!” I hurriedly dodged my head into the room, drew down the window shade and lighted the flaring, hissing blaze of gas.

The whole room was cheapened when the powerful gas light shone on it. The crowded space, filled with the tawdry effects of my roommate and myself: the rack of dusty photographs of people I had never seen, the stuffed chair, the bed quilt, the water bucket; all those things oppressed me. I turned off the light and threw myself on the bed determined not to undress till Thropper’s return. I felt the need of Thropper. It seemed to me that he would cheer me, hearten me, be a companion. I began to speculate about Thropper in a dreamy sort of way. Overhead, some one began to walk back and forth, back and forth, monotonously, humming a tune unknown to me. I listened for the melody hoping to discover that it would be something with which I was familiar, so that I could hum it too. But it was suddenly interrupted by a terrific yawn. Then the man upstairs said, “Oh, Oh-h-h!” and I heard the clatter as a pair of shoes fell on the floor. The man was going to bed. I began to wonder who it was that had been walking and singing and going to bed over my head. I also speculated on the social value of a speaking tube which should connect our rooms. Then a long, long silence, broken at last by a clatter in the hallway and at last Thropper’s cheery voice,

“Well, you couldn’t wait to undress, eh, Priddy?”

“Oh,” I mumbled, “got back?”

“Yes,” he laughed. “Isn’t it time?”

“What time is it?”

“Nearly ten.”

“I must have been asleep, Thropper. The sounds sent me off.”

“You were homesick, I’ll bet,” he laughed. “That’s a fine description of it.”

“It wouldn’t be surprising, would it?” I asked.

“Not a bit,” he said, “but you just wait till you get to know the folks about here, and you’ll get over that.”

“Did you have a good service, Thropper?”

“Oh, fair,” he replied. “Fair. Miss Ebberds didn’t particularly like the sermon.”

“But she enjoyed the walk to and from it,” I laughed.

“Well,” he said earnestly, “I know I did.”

While he was preparing himself for bed, he said,

“When I went out I forgot to tell you about the Scroll. You might have had a good time with it. Have you ever seen one?”

“Scroll?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

Thropper plunged into the heart of his trunk again, and this time extracted a black, leather case. He opened the front, turned a knob and unfolded a scriptural panorama of chromo pictures, depicting the thrilling events which took place in Eden, first of all, and then continuing through the murder of Abel to the Flood.

“I was agent for this last summer,” said Thropper. “Look through it, Priddy, it’s quite interesting.”

The Scroll had unfolded to Sinai accompanied by a running comment by Thropper, which, itself, was a panorama of the exciting adventures of a Scroll agent, when he heaved a sigh and said,

“Oh, um!”

I looked up in time to see him throw himself on his knees at the bed-side, to bend his head in a cup made by his hands, for his evening prayer.

The Scroll brought before me the Tabernacle, the Temple, the victory of David over the Giant in the midst of a profound silence. Thropper was still engaged in his devotions as devoutly, as deeply, as any Augustinian monk. The panorama of the Divine Plan unfolded the adventures which befell the prophets and came at last to the Birth of Christ, when I looked around again to find Thropper still kneeling at the bed-side. To me it was a display of the prayer-spirit unusual and I was just investing my roommate with all the pious dignity of a Saint, when a loud, long-drawn snore came from him. He had fallen asleep! I shook him. He drawled, as he crept into bed,

“I’m glad you wakened me, Priddy. I fall asleep quite often. One night I nearly got frozen to death. I didn’t have a roommate. Thanks. Turn off the light, won’t you.”

After the Crucifixion I closed the Scroll and snuggled into bed with Thropper. My first day in Evangelical University had ended.