The Diary of a Freshman

Well, of course we met papa at the door of the hotel. The ticket-office was just around the corner, and he had engaged berths and tickets with a rapidity that was as unfortunate as it was incredible, for he greeted us with, "Starting for a walk? I'm just in time," and proceeded to join the expedition with evident pleasure. Mamma lingered uneasily on the sidewalk a moment, and then said, —

"We 're not going for amusement, dear; we 're going to shop. You know how that always tires you." But papa, who was in good spirits at the prospect of leaving for home, quite unsuspiciously ignored the suggestion and replied cheerily, —

"Well, I think I 'll go along, I might want to buy something myself."

I exclaimed, "How jolly!" in a sepulchral tone, and we started.

Now, mamma in the role of a gay deceiver is sublime. The fact that she is trying to play a part and perhaps setting "an awful example" makes her miserable, although she sometimes succeeds in concealing the fact until afterwards. I saw that we were in for a delightful morning, and would probably end by missing the train. We loitered unscrupulously in front of shop windows, apparently entranced by everything from hardware to cigars. We sauntered in and out of countless dry-goods places in quest of dark-blue ribbon of such an unusual shade that Boston had never seen its like; we paused for half an hour, now and then, to inquire the price of diamond tiaras and alabaster clocks set with rhinestones; we bought a bouquet of frost-bitten roses (I had to carry it) from a one-armed man, and tarried to hear his reminiscences of life in a sawmill; we went to pianola recitals, phonograph exhibits, and assisted at an auction sale of bar-room furniture. And papa wearied not. Mamma and I were nearly dead, but he not only wasn't bored, – he seemed to be having the time of his life. We could n't devise anything too silly and futile and tiresome for him to enjoy, and as the time before the train left was beginning to grow ominously short, mamma at last resorted to heroic measures.

I don't think she had formed any definite plan when she abruptly led us into the subway; but our going there was probably not unconnected in her imagination with the boundless opportunities for losing oneself in the sewers of Paris and the catacombs of Rome. The subway may or may not resemble these historic places, – I'm sure I don't know, – but, at any rate, after we had been there five or six minutes we lost papa.

We all three had stood aimlessly watching the cars whizz up to the platform and away again into the subterranean dusk, until papa (this was his first sign of impatience) mildly remarked, "I think, dear, that as you and Tommy seem to be rather attached to this place, I 'll buy a newspaper." Then he strolled off, and mamma clutched me. We watched him approach the news-stand and pick up a magazine. His back was partly turned.

"It 's our only chance," said mamma hoarsely, with a half-guilty, half-affectionate glance towards the news-stand. I understood and, seizing her hand, ran with her to the nearest car. An instant later we were buzzing through the bowels of the earth in quite the opposite direction from the pawn-shop.

To tell the truth, the only thing I knew about the locality of Mr. Hirsch's establishment was that we should never reach it unless we got out and took a car going the other way. This we did, and when I thought we had gone far enough on the return trip and we emerged once more into the daylight, we seemed to be miles from the place – the only place – from which I could have found my way. So we jumped into a cab and told the man to drive as quickly as he could to that place. (I had to describe it at some length, as I don't as yet know the names of many streets here.) He was very intelligent, however, and it was n't his fault that, after we had jolted along for four or five blocks, the horse fell down. We left him lifting one of the poor thing's nervous hind legs in and out of the tangled harness. He looked as if he were trying to solve some kind of a gigantic, hopeless puzzle. We hurried on for about a quarter of a mile, and then I suddenly discovered that we had been in the right street all the time. It was one of those queer streets that never look familiar when you 're going the other way. I confess it took a great deal of courage to impart this discovery to mamma; but she appreciated the fact that we had very little time to lose, and did n't stop to point out to me that if I ever become a business man, I 'll be a failure. The horse was on his feet again when we got back to the cab, so we jumped in once more, and after an interminable drive (half of me was out of the window most of the time, like a Punch-and-Judy doll, directing the cabman) we finally drew up in front of the pawn-shop. It was then that we really distinguished ourselves.

"I've come for my watch," I said to Mr. Hirsch. He gave me the look of a bird of prey. It reminded me of an eagle I had seen once, – an eagle that had been stuffed by an amateur. He held out his hand and spoke a solitary, fateful word. Mamma's face – in the excitement of the moment she had pushed up her veil – became dim with horror; her features for an instant were positively incoherent.

"The ticket?" she whispered gropingly. "It's in the bottom of my trunk."

Mildred and papa and a group of porters, peering up and down the street like a concourse of Sister Annes, were on the curbstone in front of the hotel when we got back. The baggage was piled on a wagon, papa looked haggard and years older than when I had last seen him, and Mildred gave us a haughty stare as we alighted. Mamma was hustled wildly from the cab to the carriage, and I had time merely to peck hastily at their tense faces and gasp good-by. As the carriage swung around the corner, mamma appeared for a moment at the window, exclaiming, "I 'll send it to you in my first letter," and then sank from view. This afternoon, when I returned to my peaceful little abode in Cambridge, who should be in his room but Berri? He was at his desk, bending earnestly over a big pad of thesis paper.

"You've finished it, after all," I said, for the floor near his chair was littered with neat manuscript.

"Yes, it's finished, – fifty beastly pages of it," Berri answered, as he jumped up to meet me. I wanted to ask him all about it, – how he had managed to do it during the gayeties of Washington, and if it had taken much time. But he said rather wearily, —

"Oh, don't let's talk about it; I 'm so sick of it," and began at once to question me about my trip to New York. We chatted for about half an hour, and then I got up to go into my room and unpack my trunk. Thesis paper is n't like the ordinary paper on which themes are written; it has a margin on all four sides, and as I had never used any, I went over to Berri's desk to examine a sheet of his.

"Why, you 've had the thing type-written," I exclaimed; for there was a pile of type-written notes in front of the thesis paper. "Why don't you hand it in that way instead of copying it again? Your hand is so hard to read."

Berri wrinkled his forehead in a queer, annoyed kind of way; then he looked confused and blushed a little, and finally he gave an uncomfortable laugh.

"Oh, Granny, you 're so brutally guileless," he murmured. "Why can't you just see and understand things? It sounds so much worse than it really is, when you make me say it in so many words." Even then I didn't altogether grasp the situation.

"You mean that somebody helped you?" I asked. That did n't seem to me worth making such a fuss about, somehow.

"Well, that's a very refined and ladylike way of putting it," he answered. "I got a man in the Law School to write it for me, and paid him ten dollars for his trouble."

I had never thought much about this sort of thing, and it was impossible all at once to know just where I stood in the matter. I didn't know what to say, and I think I blurted out, —

"Oh, Berri, I 'm so sorry."

"Well, I 'm sorry you know about it," Berri mused drearily. "No, I 'm not, either," he added quickly, after a moment; "I 'm darned glad, – for now that you know, you can do what you like; I 'm not playing the hypocrite, anyhow. Only, don't talk to me about it. I 've thought the whole thing over from every point of view; it's the only thing I can do. I 'm willing to run the risks, and I 'm going to do it."

It was impossible to go back to other topics after that, so I went into my room and unpacked my trunk. I don't believe I ever unpacked so carefully and put everything away so neatly before. Mrs. Chester came in and complimented me as I was finishing. It must have been because I was thinking.

With all my thinking, however, I can't say that I 've got much farther than I was when Berri first told me. I simply know that he oughtn't to have done it, and am very, very sorry that he has. If he tried to defend himself in any way, I could have it out with him; but he does n't. When he finished copying the thesis, he came into my room and said, "I 'm going over to drop this through Fleetwood's door; do you want to go along?" and I went with him, hoping that at the last minute he might, in his unexpected way, change his mind. On the way over he did burst out with, —

"You see, it's this way: If I didn't know Fleetwood so well, I should n't do it; I shouldn't care. But he'll think, if I fail to hand in the written work, that I'm presuming on the fact that we 've breakfasted together at The Holly Tree and gone to the theatre and all that. I hate that kind of thing." I tried to make him see that Fleetwood would n't look at it in this way at all, and that even if he did it would be his fault, not Berri's. But Berri answered: "You need n't go on to tell me how dishonest it is, – I know all that. I 'm not worse than lots of other people, though;" and by that time we had reached Fleetwood's door. I put my hand on his arm as he was about to drop the thesis through Fleetwood's letter-slide and said, "Please don't, Berri; wait until to-morrow morning, anyhow;" but he pushed the roll through the door, and as it fell with a thud inside, he laughed and answered, —

"Too late. Now I'm going to forget about it." He went to town for dinner, and I had mine about an hour ago at Mrs. Brown's. I was the only one there. In a few minutes I have to go out again, as I promised —

Later.

Just as I had written that far, the front door opened and slammed and the tin steps clattered as they only do when Duggie is coming up. The loneliness of the house, and the feeling that college opened to-morrow, and Duggie on the stairs all took me back to my first evening in Cambridge. The only difference was that instead of going to his own room Duggie this time came bursting into mine.

"I came to say good-by," he exclaimed; and when I got over my astonishment, he went on to tell me that he had decided during the vacation to go away – to Europe – and stay until Class Day. He had never told me before that he had taken his degree in three years, and that it would n't have been necessary for him to come back this year at all if he had n't wanted to. He has been entitled to his degree for months; but of course he is anxious to graduate with his own class in the spring. He has n't talked to any one about going abroad, as he was n't sure of it until a few days ago.

"I 'm leaving on the midnight train to-night," he said, "and I came out here on the chance of your having got back. My family are all in the country, I left them this afternoon." I wanted to tell him how sorry I was that he was leaving us, and how glad I was that he could go; but somehow I don't think I showed what I really felt. The time was so short (I had promised Duncan Duncan to help him with some Advocate editorials at half past eight), and those things never seem to sound the way I should like to have them. But in a way I had an opportunity to let him know how I felt toward him, for while we were sitting there, he laughed and said, —

"As you won't stay and talk to me, I think you might at least do the next best thing. You know I 've always wanted to read this, and now that I 'm going away, you ought to let me." Then he took my diary from the mantelpiece and pretended to read the first page.

My first impulse was to ask him not to. If he had been going to stay in Cambridge, I should n't have let him, of course; but as he was leaving in a few hours and seemed anxious to read the thing, and as it really did n't make any difference whether he did or not, I finally let him.

"I don't see why you want to, and you probably won't get beyond the first few pages, but you may," I said.

So I left him by the fire with the diary in his hand. I thought perhaps I should find a note about it when I got back this evening, but I didn't.

XII

Poor Berri! I felt so sorry for him. I do yet, in fact; for although things can't possibly turn out in the way he thinks they may, I can't tell him so, and he lives in a state of perpetual dread. But it won't last long now; Duggie's steamer must have almost reached Southampton by this time, and it won't take more than a week or eight days for Berri to hear from Duggie himself. I came very near giving the thing away at one time. It's hard not to, although I realize that Duggie was wise when he asked me to let matters take their course.

It just happened that the next day after Berri had delivered his thesis, the talk at luncheon turned on cheating at exams and handing in written work that is n't your own. The sentiment against cheating seemed to be strong, partly from a sense of honor and partly from a sense of risk. As a matter of fact, I don't see how fellows can very well manage to cheat here – during an examination, that is to say – even if they want to. There are always a lot of proctors prowling up and down the room, ready to jump on anybody who has suspicious-looking bits of paper on his desk, or who seems to be unduly interested in his lap or the condition of his cuffs. And then, besides, assuming that the instructor occasionally gets absorbed in a newspaper and the proctors stroll to the windows to watch the muckers throwing snowballs in the Yard, how could a student prepare himself for this rare opportunity? It may be different in courses that involve the exact sciences, where certain definite formulas copied on a small bit of paper might be of use; but in the sort of things I take, one would have to conceal upon oneself the Encyclopædia Britannica, Ploetz's Epitome of History, Geschmitzenmenger's Ancient Art, or the Dictionary of Biography, in order to accomplish any really effective deception.

With written work it seems to be easier. If a man hands in a theme or a thesis in his own hand, the instructors are more or less forced to accept it as original, unless of course it was taken outright from a book and they happen to be familiar with the book. From what the fellows at the table said, there must be more of this sort of thing done than I had imagined; although, since Berri opened my eyes, I could believe almost anything. One of the fellows told about a student – a Junior – he had heard of who succeeded in getting himself fired two or three years ago in a rather complicated way. He was engaged, and his lady-love sent him a poem in one of her letters, saying that she had written it for him. The letter arrived while he was struggling with a daily theme; so he murmured to himself, "Tush! I 'll copy Araminta's pretty verses and send them in as my own; as they have just gushed from her surcharged heart into her letter, no one will be the wiser." A few days later the omnivorous Advocate asked permission to print them, and as they had received words of praise from the instructor, and as the fellow by that time had no doubt begun to believe he had written them himself, he allowed them to be published under his name. Somebody sent a copy of the Advocate to Araminta, who replied with an indignant letter to her futur; and while he was trying to think up an explanation of the matter with which to pacify her, somebody else came out in the Crimson with a most withering communication, asking how the Advocate dared to print as original a poem that had been written by his grandfather, the late Donovan H. Dennison, whose complete poetical works ("Dan Cupid and other Idyls") could be found in the college library at any time. Whereupon the student, disgusted at his lady-love's dishonesty in palming off the late Donovan H. Dennison's verses as original, broke his engagement; and the college, disgusted with the student for precisely the same reason, "separated" him (to use the suave official phrase) from the University.

There was, as I said, a great deal of talk at luncheon that day about cheating. Some of the men seemed to think the presence of proctors during an exam was insulting; but, as Bertie Stockbridge remarked, – and this struck me as unanswerable, – "If you don't cheat yourself and don't want to, what difference does it make whether they 're there or not? And if you do cheat, why, of course, proctors are necessary." In the matter of dishonest written work the same honorable sentiments were expressed. Everybody was sincere, but I could n't help realizing a little that they could not have had very much temptation as yet. If it had n't been for Berri, I probably should have laid down the law as loudly as the rest. But he sat there eating in silence, irritated and oppressed by so much high-minded babbling, and I hated to hurt him by adding to it. Usually he is one of the last to leave the table. That day, however, he hurried through his luncheon and slipped away alone.

Oh dear! (How silly those two words look written down, and yet it was what was passing through my mind as I wrote them.) I suppose that what I really mean is, How tiresome it is that a person's acts don't begin and end with himself! There doesn't seem to be any limit to the reach of their influence. It would be so much more simple and easy if you knew just where the consequences of a mistake or an indiscretion, or whatever you choose to call it, began and ended. Now, for instance, take Berri and the thesis. Of course, I think it was all wrong, and was sorry he handed it in; but I wasn't going to let it make any difference in my feelings toward Berri. As far as I am concerned, I don't think it has made a difference. Yet the beastly thing cast a sort of gloom over the house. For Berri after luncheon that day rather avoided the table in general and me in particular. What his object was in doing this, I don't know. It was probably just a feeling on his part; but it made me feel as if I 'd been putting myself on a moral pedestal somehow, and that Berri saw in me a perpetual accusation. Our relations became indescribably changed and sort of formal, and I did n't see how I could make them different. What could I have done? There was nothing, under the circumstances, for me to say. He stopped in my room that night to warm himself for a minute before going to bed, but I don't think he said anything except that it was snowing outside.

The next day we had the blizzard. People here usually assume that in the part of the country I come from we have nine months of winter and three of cold weather. But nevertheless I had to come to the staid and temperate East to see the kind of a winter storm you read about in books, – the regular old "Wreck of the Hesperus" kind, in which the crew are "swept like icicles from the deck," and able-bodied men get hopelessly lost and are frozen to death in their own front yards. I was to have dined in town that night with Hemington, who had tickets for a Paderewski recital. But he did n't turn up, so I joined some fellows who found me in the restaurant eating alone, and afterwards went to the theatre with them. It was snowing when we left the restaurant; in fact, great, wet cottony flakes had been falling at intervals all day. (It reminded me of those marvellous paper weights I haven't seen for years and years, – glass globes filled with water in which a white, powdery sediment swirls and drifts and finally settles in the most lifelike way on a beautiful little tin landscape. What's become of them all, I wonder?) But there was no wind, and it was n't particularly cold, so I don't think that anybody suspected what was going to happen before the show was over.

It took an unusually long time to get out of the theatre that night; the people in the aisles hardly moved at all. But after we had forced our way through the crowd, and climbed over seats, and finally reached the narrow corridor leading to the entrance, we saw why it was. The ones who had got to the door first were afraid to leave. Within an hour or two the wind had risen and risen until it screamed through the streets, blasting up the fallen snow in wild bewildering spirals and then fiercely slapping it back again in slants of hard, biting cold. From the door of the theatre it was impossible to see beyond the curbstone, except when the half-obliterated lights of a cab lurched by over the drifts. The rumor went through the crowd that the wires were down and that all the cars had stopped. No one seemed to know quite what to do. Just as the people nearest the door would make up their minds to start bravely out, a thick hurricane would strike erratically in at them, causing the ladies to shrink back with little exclamations of dismay. Nobody's carriage had arrived, and the few cabs that appeared ploughed laboriously past us. Our crowd waited a few moments, – more to share the excitement of the others than for anything else; then we turned up our collars and plunged out.

Standing at the door of the theatre, the world outside had seemed to me to be in a sort of insane uproar; but as soon as we got away from the human babble, and I lifted my head and opened my eyes and deliberately relaxed my ears, so to speak, I found the city almost solemnly silent. Every now and then, when we came to a cross street or turned a corner, there was, it is true, a sudden shriek and a sort of rattle of fine stinging ice particles; but as long as I could keep myself from being confused inside of me, while we were floundering over drifts and burrowing with our heads through the walls of wind that blocked the way and seemed to be falling on us, I could n't help noticing the terrible muffledness of everything. It was as if the place were being swamped, blotted out, suffocated.

When we reached the hotel where we had dined earlier in the evening, the other fellows went in to have something to eat, but for several reasons I decided not to. In the first place, I promised papa that I would try to economize, and I had already unexpectedly squandered two dollars on a theatre ticket, owing to Hemington's failure to appear. Then I felt that if I did n't make a dash for Cambridge right away, I should n't get there at all. (As a matter of fact, I never did reach there until nine the next morning, but it was n't because I did n't try hard enough. The other fellows put up at the hotel.) So I just shouted that I was going on, and as we were all about half frozen, no one stopped to persuade me not to.

Well, I found a string of cars about a mile long that were rapidly turning into Esquimau huts, and was told by one of the conductors that something had broken down ahead, and that, as the snow-plough could n't get by, they probably would n't move again until morning. He thought, however, that the other line was running; and I started to grope my way to Bowdoin Square.

I would n't go through that experience again for gold and precious stones; and I can't imagine now why I did it in the first place, except that I had acquired by that time a kind of pig-headed determination to reach Cambridge, and did n't know what I was in for. It was n't so bad while I was staggering along by the side of the blocked cars; they were lighted, and I knew that if I changed my mind about going on, I could pop into one of them and be safe. But when I passed the last one and found myself after a while among back streets choked with drifts, and could n't see my way, and fell down twice, and got snow up my sleeves, and my face and hands and feet pained so with cold that I could n't help crying (actually), and I realized at last that I did n't in the least know where I was, I began to be panic-stricken. I 'm not the huskiest person in the world, and all at once the wind blew me smash against an iron railing and almost into a basement of some kind. I think I should have hunted for a door-bell and tried to get into a house if I hadn't a moment later collided with a policeman (fell down again), who helped me up and led me to a sheltered place behind a wall, where I managed to collect myself and tell him what I was looking for. He too was on his way to Bowdoin Square; so after that I just hung on to his coat most of the time, and tried to keep my legs in motion without really knowing much where he was leading me or whether we were making any progress. Once there was a rip-tearing crash over our heads. The policeman jumped aside, and then stopped to exclaim, "Well, I never seen the likes o' that." I think a sign had blown off a building through a plate-glass window. Farther on a dangling wire romped in the wind. It spat dazzling blue and purple at us until we retreated and went around another way, muttering strange Hibernian mutters. When I opened my eyes again, we were in front of the hotel in Bowdoin Square and the policeman was advising me through his frozen mustache not to go to Cambridge. He said the cars had stopped long ago. So I said good-by to him and was just stumbling into the café, when who should come out but Berri and a cabman? They had gone in to get warm before starting across the bridge.