The Girl and the Game and Other College Stories/Talks with a Kid Brother/Concerning the "Nicest Fellows"
CONCERNING THE "NICEST FELLOWS"
When I entered college I thought about half my classmates were freaks. Before graduation I found something to admire and a good deal to like in about all of them. Since then I've gone on the principle that a freak is a man I don't know. Familiarity breeds contempt—occasionally. But propinquity produces appreciation—more frequently.
Now, of course, I don't mean that every man you run up against is likely to prove just your sort. On the contrary, I will go so far as to say with Stevenson of an occasional type that bobs up now and then in business or play time—what was it Stevenson said of a certain prig? "I don't know what it is about that man, but somehow he arouses within me passions that would shame hell!" But these are merely the exceptions to prove the generalization that, however fastidious you may be, there are rather few human beings in this interesting world who are not worth knowing, and still fewer, however they grate upon you at times, who do not become more and morelikable the better you become acquainted with them.
Every family is a unit. Each one of these classmates of yours represents a household which has just as well-established traditions and as much-worshipped Penates as in the ancient times, referred to in that open book there on the table which you ought to be reading now instead of indulging in the pleasure of hearing me talk. And of all the beneficial effects of college association, I sometimes think the best is that your moral, as well as your mental and social, horizon is broadened, your eyes are opened, your sympathies are extended by knowing and liking so many different sorts of fellows. Even if your family views of life and conduct are not modified, you are at least made to appreciate and tolerate the family views of other fellows. I do not say our way of looking at and doing things at home is not the best in the world, but, like almost every other family in the land, we are inclined to forget that there are other opinions, likewise regarded as the highest product of Christian civilization. Certainly it is worth while to take a look at other traditions, other Penates, other portraits—even though ours are, of course, the handsomest and most distinguished. Think of all the fellows who never would have the benefit of knowing—in the sense of understanding and appreciating—any but that small segment of society in which they happen to be born, if it were not for the propinquity and familiarity of college life. Take the case of young Dashwood.
Being a Philadelphian, Dashwood had been brought up to think it not only dangerous but wrong to know any but the sort of people his mother invited to her annual ball in January. When he came to college he quietly took for granted that he would receive his due just as he had at home from the boys at school, who were also Philadelphians. There was nothing arrogant about it: he was a rather modest fellow, a younger brother of superior Dashwoods, but he could not forget, even if he wanted to, that he, too, was a Dashwood. In this case it took more than mere hazing to readjust his ego; hazing he looked upon as a tribute to his being a Dashwood. "Naturally I have been horsed a good deal," he wrote home.
When the Sophomores had finished with him he still went on the assumption that his own classmates would accord him what he considered no more than his just deserts—his full share, for instance, of the honors by popular election so dear to undergraduates. Why not? Had not the Dashwoods always been sought out for distinctions in Philadelphia? But would you believe it? many of these fellows had never heard of the Dashwoods before, and did not fancy the way this one said How-do-you-do. He was not even elected to the dance committee, though this was just the sort of thing he was suited for. All the earlier Dashwoods in college had been prominent socially, if in no other way.
His mother—she used to warn him every week against letting any but "the nicest fellows" cultivate his acquaintance—began to feel sorry, not for her Willie, of course, but grieved for the deplorable ignorance of his classmates who did not seem to know a Dashwood when they saw one. What was the college coming to! She was interested in the college; the Dashwoods had always honored it with their patronage.
But note what happened. This shows that not all the sturdy stuff in the Dashwood blood had been spilt in the historic struggle to prove that all men were born free and equal. Instead of throwing a bluff at liking his loneliness, and doing the proudly exclusive act, after the manner of some of his kind, it occurred to him that possibly the fault lay in himself instead of in his classmates.
"To be sure—why should they like me?" he said. And then "a great light broke in upon him," as the lady novelists say, and he saw himself and other boys as they really were and not as they seemed to be. Then he began cultivating the society of the quiet fellows who really counted; and gained it in time, when he deserved it. Became ambitious and industrious, took a high standing in his class, won respect by his independence, tried for some more honors, missed one or two, worked harder and earned several. By the time he was graduated last year he was one of the "big men" of the college, as I believe you call them, and withal a great upholder of the democratic spirit. That is the most interesting phase of his development to me. I understand that he used to take down home for the week-end not those classmates whom his sisters would call the "nicest men," but friends of his who he thought would most enjoy and benefit by a Sunday at his mother's very complete country place, worthy fellows in most cases, but sometimes rather astonishing. His sisters used to laugh about it with their friends and blame it to his sociological fad, but his mother took the blow pretty hard, wondered which side of the family was to blame for the taint of common blood, and prayed for patience till the time of her son's graduation—with which was to begin the gradual reformation of the prodigal.
It would be diverting to observe how this reformation business proceeds. Sooner or later, I suppose, he will be reimprisoned in Philadelphia society. But whether his mother makes him live down his past or not, he has learned a few things at college he would have acquired at no other place and in no other way, and they can't hurt him, whatever he decides to do with his God-given life.
You can see all sorts of people in travel, you can find out about their history and habits in books, but what you cannot get by travel or reading is the close, personal touch, the intimate first-hand impression. You can only get at the personal equation by personal contact. All of which might have been summed up by repeating that the best study of man is man, except that I wanted to bring out the idea that, owing to the conditions of your life and the age of those living it, you have a great opportunity, here on this campus, in these dormitories, for laying down a good working foundation of a knowledge of human nature—including your own. Do not miss the opportunity. When you get settled down in the world most of you will fence yourselves off from one another by office hours, business principles, worldly sophistication and wives. Now is the time.
I'm reminding you of this, because, you see, you are by way of becoming one of "the big men" of the college yourself and having arrived by a different route, I sometimes wonder if you are getting all that's coming to you out of your college course. No, I'm not going to jump on you for catching that condition in Physics. That's shop, and I promised not to talk shop any more. (Instead, I write it to you once a month or so.)
What do I refer to? Well, Little Tompkins isn't one of the "big men," like you; I know; he didn't even make a club, but his brother is a dear friend of mine, and if the kid Tompkins is anything like George, I'm sorry you've missed each other. What's that? You say you have nothing against Tommy? A nice little chap? Only you haven't time this year for anything. Well, I hardly hoped that George's brother and my brother would hit it off together. Somehow the younger generation of friends seldom do. It's like the marriages that young mothers plan together over their babies' clothes; they never take place. But remember that just because you happen to be in with the important push is not necessarily a proof that you deserved it any more than Tompkins. You may consider yourself in your quiet, carefully unconceited way an awfully nice fellow, but how do you know that Tompkins, or that quiet poler in the seat next to yours in chapel, does not consider himself a still nicer fellow? Possibly you'll think so, too, eventually. Who knows? You may be asking Tompkins for a job some day, like Henry Haskell, the great baseball player. He was a very big man in college, so big that it took him years to get out.
After graduation he kept on coming back to coach the team, kept on being known as "Haskell, the great catcher"—and as nothing else. It's hard for you to realize it from where you stand, with your nose up against athletics, so to speak, but it's hard luck for a grown man who has been out of college a tenth of a century to have no other identity than the one he had as a yawping undergraduate.
Well, in desperation, Haskell dropped in at Alfred Mortimer's one day and, after waiting his turn in line, was shown into Mortimer's private office. They weren't friends, but had been in college at the same time.
"For Heaven's sake, Mortimer," said Haskell in his direct manner, "isn't there something you can give me to do to earn a living?"
Now Mortimer was a very inconspicuous looking little man and had a soft, thin voice. "Why, Mr. Haskell," he said with a queer gleam in his eye, "I didn't suppose you knew my name. You never seemed to be aware of my existence in college."
Haskell, laughed. "I am now," he said, looking about at the impressive Wall Street office.
Then the soft, thin voice replied: "Mr. Haskell, I don't suppose you remember this but I have never forgotten it. One day when I first arrived at college I was passing inoffensively down the street, minding my business and not saying a word to anybody. You stuck your head out of an eating-club window and said to me, without a smile or any introduction, 'You dd Freshman!' Do you remember?"
"No, I don't recall it," said Haskell, laughing uncomfortably.
"I do." He had resolved to revenge himself some day. This seemed to be the day, so he said, "Mr. Haskell, when would you care to get to work?"
Haskell took the position, and they eventually became the best of friends.
Now, it isn't necessary for me to remind you how I should feel if I heard of a brother of mine deliberately "getting in with" anybody for what he could "get out of it." That is the limit—not so much because of the lie in it, but because it is the prostitution of friendship, and friendship is one of the best things we are allowed on earth.
I remember once when a man, who might better be called a person, left the room where a gang of us were loafing. "Yes," said the owner of the room in answer to the eloquent silence which followed the closing of the door, "I admit that he is an unmitigated ass, but I keep in with him because he may be useful to me later in New York society." This, by the way, produced another eloquent silence. I, for one, had ignorantly supposed that our host was so invariably decent to the ass because so few of the rest of us ever were. Our host was in many ways a bully fellow, but after that we never felt so comfortable in his presence again. We couldn't help wondering how we were to be useful to him.