The Girl and the Game and Other College Stories/Talks with a Kid Brother/The First Day at College
TALKS WITH A KID BROTHER
THE FIRST DAY AT COLLEGE
Look at that one! No, the fellow in the flannel suit out in the middle of the street. Seems to be having a nice quiet time of it, doesn't he?—walking along there with that pipe in his mouth, kicking up the dust, all alone. What? Oh, he's simply glad to get back to college, that's all. From the way he swings his shoulders and wears that slouchy, faded hat you might think he owned the place. Well, I suppose he does; he's a Senior. Now he's beginning to sing a little—oh, just because he feels like singing, and has a right to do as he pleases, knows there is no one about to criticise, and wouldn't care if there was. Look at this other chap running at him from behind. Jumped out of that hack there, didn't he? Drops his suit-case in the gutter because he doesn't want it just now. See him grit his teeth and sneak up behind. Watch him jump up in the air and land on his back with a yell. Look at 'em now, will you! They haven't seen each other for three months. If they want to express it that way they've got a right to. Hear them giving each other excuses for not writing letters. Yes, they do look pretty glad, that's a fact.
Now that you've got off your conditional examination and have matriculated you are part of the show. Of course you are, and are actually on your way to the opening exercises in chapel. It'll be a long time before you are boss of the whole thing, like those fellows, but you are part of it, you have a right here, you are a College Man at last! a member of the privileged leisure class—the real thing. Don't grin that way; I'm not guying you. This is a very serious conversation, to last all the way to the chapel door. After that you'll have to shift for yourself. Did you observe those youngsters sitting on the fence with brand-new swagger on their faces under that brand-new brilliant head-gear? Of course, you knew they were Sophomores—you modern Freshmen are always so sophisticated. I was only going to say that they will give you all the guying you need, I fancy, without me: "horsing," they call it nowadays. They will soon convince you of your relative unimportance to the world in general, and to this little world in particular. It's too bad I'm with you, for they might have begun on you now. I was in hopes they would take me for a Freshman too. Last year I was here at the opening and was asked to take off my hat by a little boy of about nineteen—what did I do? As I was told, of course, and tried to look frightened, hoping to get some fun out of it, but unfortunately another Sophomore came along just then and said, "Shut up, you fool; that's an old graduate."
"Oh, are you?" said my hazer amazed and blushing.
"Not so very old," said I.
"But you're a graduate!" said he, stammering.
"I very much fear," said I, "that I was graduated from college before you were graduated from kilts." And then he began to get abject.
"Oh, don't," said I; "please don't apologize; you can't imagine how you have flattered me," and of course he couldn't, for he was only a Sophomore. You don't seem to appreciate it, either; some day you will. And now I want to say to you—oh, no wonder you can't pay attention to the words of wisdom. Yes, that's he! You must have very good eyes, boy, for he doesn't look anything like this in his football clothes. Oh, by his photograph in the papers! I see. To be sure, and you study those pictures with more care than your Greek, no doubt. Does he seem to me to have put on flesh? Really, I have no idea, but I'll ask him. Yes, I have the honor; he is a member of my club. "Hello, Hammie, how are you? Hammie, this is my Freshman brother Dick. He's very anxious to know how much you weigh.… Ah, then you have put on flesh? No? Indeed! How remarkable! Golf did it, eh? Dick, we were hopelessly ignorant, weren't we? Good-by, Hammie; glad to have seen you. Yes, the boy is going to try for the Freshman eleven."
There, now, Dick. You have met him! You have held the hand that held the football that won that never-to-be-forgotten victory. And he has spoken to you, addressed a whole sentence all to you alone, and run his eye over your Freshman figure—not altogether disapprovingly either. No wonder you mop your brow; it was a mighty moment. Now aren't you glad I instead of your father came with you? Your father gives you some of the advantages of a college education, but he couldn't have done that. I believe you respect me more than you ever did before. A proud moment, Dick; only bear up to-morrow if he forgets all about it, for all Freshmen look alike to Seniors, and think of how many more important things such a Senior has on his mighty mind. Just think, Dick, some day you will be a Senior yourself, but never, even if your wildest dreams are fulfilled, will you feel so great and grand as that plump boy seems to you at this moment. Oh, well, there are worse ideals.
Here we are on the campus. Makes you feel all sorts of queer things just to walk along under these elms, doesn't it? Does me every time I come back. At some colleges they call it yard, but it's a goodly place whether there's enough of it to call it a campus or not. Look at 'em all scurrying along with their fathers and mothers.
They do look alike somehow, even if you can't see it. That is because they are all alike in being Freshmen. There are the people we saw while getting your lamp-shade. The father is giving the boys some advice. I saw him this morning while they were up in Examination Hall. I don't know how the boys were making out, but the old man's hand shook so he couldn't light his cigar; I had to help him; that's how we got acquainted. He says he's a 'sixty-one man, a Southerner; left college to fight for the Confederacy like lots of others; hasn't been back since; and now he can't get away—meant to go home Monday, been putting it off at every train since. The combination of seeing his Alma Mater and leaving his sons—they are all he's got left, he says—is too much for him. Oh, there'll be some pretty homesick parents to-night, I tell you, whether their boys are homesick or not. Think of the prayers that will be going up all over the country to-night, so many different prayers—all so much alike. But, of course, I can't make you think about that just now. I don't blame you; it is pretty fine, walking up under these groined arches and through this echoing courtway, with the remarkable feeling that your feet have a right to echo there.
And now, Dick, now that you are here at last, what are you going to do with yourself?—be a young fool or brace up and be a credit to the family? Oh, I just wanted to know; you needn't drop your eyes and look that way. I may be an old grad., but I'm young enough to know it wouldn't do any good to give you gratuitous advice. Turn around and look back at your classmates. Some of these fellows—perhaps that little chap with the big brow—are to be your close companions for four years, and you may as well begin to get acquainted with their faces at once. Some of those you hate in Freshman year will be your best friends before you get through with each other. You'll never get so well acquainted with any other set of men throughout all your life as with this variegated assortment now passing by.
Yes, that's your bell, but you've plenty of time. It'll ring for seven minutes. In a few weeks you'll be so hardened to it that when it rings for morning chapel you'll stay in bed until it's half-way through ringing, then jump into a sweater and a pair of trousers and run downstairs three steps at a time and swing on your coat on the way down; tie your necktie on the way across the quadrangle and your boots during the prayer. Some people think that's very sloppy, and no doubt it is, but they thought it picturesque when they read about the same thing in "Verdant Green." But he was at Oxford, and the book is a classic. There are worse things than being slightly sloppy during these four years. They ought to be quite distinct from all other years before and after, whatever else they are or are not. The chances are you'll be influenced quite enough by conventionality and what people think when you get away from here; besides, if four years of rollicking freedom such as you get at college can spoil you, the chances are that you aren't much good anyhow.
Look at them from away back there by the gate, big fellows and little fellows, dark ones and light ones, fine-looking lads and young men who are very otherwise, provincial city youths from New York and green jays from the West. Here comes a matured-looking young man who has knocked about the big world a bit before coming to this little world to get what the big one could not give him. And look, here comes a mere child, so young that his body has not grown up to his colt-like legs and his features haven't found themselves. And they all have something to teach you, Dickie, every one of them. Who was it—Emerson?—who said a boy comes to teachers for his education, but it's the other pupils who educate him? And I hope—but you aren't thinking about their teaching possibilities; you are hoping that they will like you. That's all right; it's a worthy ambition. Every normal man in this procession shares it. I always look askance at people who profess to despise popularity. I knew a man in college who used to say he did, though how he was in a position to judge of popularity I couldn't see. He tried to make himself as well as the rest of us think he meant it, but I noticed that when any one out of pity took him up for a while he liked it so much that it always ended by his proving a nuisance to the one who tried to be decent to him—gave more than was bargained for, like a lonely dog which jumps up and licks you in the face when you only wanted to pat him. But remember, Dick, that it's much better to be loved by a few firm friends for what you really are than to be liked by many acquaintances for what you seem to be.
No, that stalwart young man is not an upper-classman—you'll learn to tell at a glance what class they belong to in a few days; he's a Freshman like yourself. Only, he's an important Freshman, and you are not. He's from a large prep. school near by, and has learned a great many things about college life, a course which is not taught by the masters or laid down in the curriculum. He is an athlete and a promising career for him is already outlined, in theory, but look out! A little prominence is a dangerous thing. In Freshman year a man's position is given to him by his reputation; in Senior year he takes his proper place with his character. What a man seems to be cuts lots of ice at first; but what he really is wins out at the finish.
Ah, here is an upper-classman—of a certain sort. What do you think of him, Dick? Why do you smile? That Norfolk jacket is a corker; don't you like those padded shoulders? Don't you admire his bulldog? And certainly he has a pretty face despite the deep, dark, devilish look of dissipation. "A paper sport" you call him? A good phrase, and I'm glad you are so discriminating. I'm afraid it would gall him if he knew a mere Freshman saw through him. I hope you'll keep on smiling at this sort, and I believe you will, but at the same time after you have been here for a while and have begun to feel your oats you will begin to feel like sowing a few wild ones. I don't believe it will be because you are "in with a fast crowd and cannot say No." Most of that talk is such Tommy-rot. I never found it hard to say No, nor will you nor any one else but the weakest weaklings. What nonsense! "Evil companions," moreover, respect you for it—if you say it out loud. They are a pretty manly lot, even the worst of them. When I did things I was not sent to college for it was because I wanted to, and Dick—well, never mind, I'll speak of that later.
Here comes another upper-classman, a man of high and holy purpose, I'll bet; earning his own way through college, no doubt, to become a missionary or something good. You probably wish his back wasn't so awfully stiff. He does look as though he felt disappointed at not being considered a hero for the "grim determination" with which he sticks to his "high purpose despite adversity," but so many fellows earn their living in college that they are no longer treated as heroes or want to be.
And here, closing up behind him and making a convenient contrast for me to preach about, is young Dashwood, of the famous Dashwood family. You may recognize the nose. Watch the contrast now as he passes the high and holy purpose. Dashwood has the complacency and conceit of all that snobbish—hello, er—well, that's one on me, isn't it, Dick? I beg their pardons, both of them. I really had no idea the democratic spirit of the place was potent enough to affect a Dashwood. It's only temporary, though, I fear. When he is graduated the outside world will produce its effect upon him. I fear it has to some degree on me, Dick. It'll do me good to get back here oftener, I believe. Didn't I tell you they were a pretty fine lot on the whole, these clean-cut, straight-from-the-shoulder American young men? I've simply been picking out the exceptional, bad ones so as to point a moral. You can't blame me for that altogether.
Here we are at chapel already. And here comes the academic procession. Stand aside and let them pass in first. A certain amount of pomp and ceremony are necessary, even in America, to the plain living and high thinking of cloistered seclusion. It must be fun to wear those impressive gowns and pretty colored hoods, and they do no harm to you or me. Well, well, here you are, about to begin your Freshman year, and somehow I haven't been able to say anything to you. Yes, that's the President. I hope you will study a little, Dick, even if you desire to devote yourself to graceful loafing. You can do it so much more gracefully and comfortably if, first, you study hard in Freshman year. That will give you a start and a reputation which will last you through the other three. But if you should loaf this year you'd have a handicap and a reputation—that you might never shake off. There was Charlie MacMurdoch, the old baseball captain; he braced up wonderfully and became the hardest student in the class but he was a baseball player, and one of the professors of science—there he is with the doctor's hood—kept on conditioning him out of habit. They try to be fair, but professors are human, many of them. There was the old General of my day, professor of German. He's dead now, lasted through two foreign revolutions and one American war, with narrow escapes from prison on the eve of execution and all that sort of thing, only to die of apoplexy one day on a New York ferry-boat, like a mere corpulent commuter. The old General was very human, and the way Jimmy Westerfield, a classmate of mine, used to get around him was beautiful. There was an offensively studious man in the class, who wasn't human at all; used to spring from his seat energetically when called upon to recite and rattle off declensions in a glib, self-righteous manner which was very irritating to all of us, especially the low-stand men. Jimmy saw that the manner and the strident voice bothered the General as much as any of us. So whenever the glib man made a slight mistake, which was easy enough to tell from the expression on the General's face, Jimmy would look suddenly pained and swear in a sad, discouraged way, most captivating to the virile old campaigner, who would beam on Jimmy and say, "You must bear wiz him, Mr. Festerveld; you must bear wiz him!" Westerfield was invariably given a first and was offered an instructorship in German at the end of the year, and—
Yes, that was the last of the academic procession. I don't know why I am telling you stories. It's time for you to go in. I'll have to take my train back to the city. You are now your own master. You have more freedom than you ever had in your life. What are you going to do with it? As sure as you and I are looking at each other's eyes you are going to do things you'll wish you had not done before the final academic procession of your college course. They may be little, harmless things, they may be rather big and black. If you have a sincere desire to make a fool of yourself you now have copious opportunities; and nothing I can say could keep you from it. So all I have to say to you is this: Make a fool of yourself if you must, but for Heaven's sake do it honestly. Don't pretend to be what you are not. Don't be a paper sport. You won't fool anybody, not even yourself. And you won't get any fun out of it. Do something or other for all you are worth. That is the only way men make the football team. That's the only way anybody gets any zest or any fun out of anything in college life or any other kind of life. Wake up, be alive, get busy. I'd almost rather have you sow wild oats than none at all. Good-by; I'll take a trip from town to talk it over with you any time you want me to—maybe I'll come before you send for me. Good-by, good-luck, run along, get busy, God bless you.