The Diary of a Freshman

"I suppose you 're studying this for some course," I remarked after I had read the extract aloud. "It's so solemn I didn't think you could be reading it for fun," I added.

"I don't suppose I am reading it for fun exactly," Duggie laughed. "It isn't very funny to realize the force of that paragraph when there are so many things you hope to do."

"Well, of course I know I 'm not going to live ten thousand years, but it's so lovely down here that I don't feel a bit as if I were n't," I said, lying back in the sun and closing my eyes.

"That's why I read the book," answered Duggie; "it's tremendously easy to feel that way almost anywhere – down here particularly." He was more serious, I think, than he looked.

"Why should n't one?" I asked. But he only laughed and told me I 'd better read the book, too, and find out.

"It might be a short cut – a sort of revelation. It took me a good while to arrive at it by myself," he added. "Why, when I first went to Cambridge I had an idea that if a man's family were what's called 'nice,' and well known, and if he had good manners and knew a lot of other fellows whose families were nice and well known, and people went around saying that he 'd make the first ten of the Dickey, and be elected into some club or other – I had an idea that he really amounted to a great deal."

"Well, does n't he?" I asked boldly, for all that seemed to me pretty fine.

I think Duggie was going to answer rather sharply, but he must have decided not to, for after a moment he said:

"I suppose whether he does or not depends on the point of view."

"From yours, I take it, he doesn't?" I mused.

"He has a lot in his favor – all sorts of opportunities that other people have n't," Duggie admitted, "but I 've come to look at him as quite unimportant until he tries at least to take some advantage of them. Good Heavens! the wheels of the world are clogged with 'nice' people," said Duggie.

"But what on earth can a person do in a place like college, for instance?" I objected. "You 're there, and you know your own crowd, and you 're satisfied with it because it's awfully – awfully – " I hesitated.

"Awfully nice," Duggie laughed; "and you never see any one else, and they 're all more or less like you – and the rest of your class is composed of grinds, muckers, and 'probably very decent sort of chaps, but' – " Here Duggie reached over and gave me a push that nearly sent me into the sea. "But dontche care – I didn't mean to get started. And anyhow there 's plenty of time."

"Only ten thousand years," I replied.

"Fleetwood's Wednesday Evenings begin next week. If you want to remove your infamous towhead from its richly upholstered barrel for a minute, you 'd better come around," he suggested. "Fleetwood had his Wednesday Evenings on Friday last year because he thought it was more quaint – but I see he 's changed back."

"He told me if I came I should hear a lion roar," I said, trying to remember my talk with Fleetwood at The Holly Tree. At this Duggie lay back and shrieked aloud.

"That man will be found some day torn into small, neat shreds," he managed to say at last.

"Why?" I asked – for I knew he liked Fleetwood.

"Why, because I'm the lion," Duggie giggled.

VII

It must be several weeks since I 've written a word in my diary. To tell the truth, I spend so much time writing other things – things that are printed and sold – actually – at the bookstores – that somehow my own every-day affairs don't seem so important as they did. In a word – I 've been made an editor of the Advocate. It seems so wonderful to be an anything of anything with my name in print on the front page just above the editorials – the editorials that, as Duggie says sarcastically, have made the President and the University what they are. Mamma was delighted at my success, and so was Mildred – although she tried to be funny over my triolet, When Gladys Sings, in the last number, and wrote me that, unless Gladys were the name of a quadruped of some kind, amputation here and there would have improved her. Even papa was pleased, I think, although my first story made him very angry and he wrote me a terrible letter about it. I had simply described, as accurately as I could remember it, the time he went as "The Silver-Tongued Orator from Perugia" to make a political speech in the country and took Mildred and me with him. I told about the people at whose house we stayed, described the house and recorded our conversations at dinner and supper. That was really all there was to it. I considered it quite harmless. The Crimson in criticising it said: "The Jimsons – a humorous sketch by a new writer – is the only ray of sunlight in a number devoted almost exclusively to battle, murder, and sudden death;" a Boston paper reprinted it in full, and papa was perfectly furious. He wrote to me saying (among several pages of other things): "While admitting that your description of my friends is photographic and, in an inexpensive and altogether odious fashion, rather amusing, I take occasion to call your attention to the fact – it seems to have escaped you – that they are, after all, my friends. Furthermore (passing from the purely ethical to the sternly practical), it is among just these people that you will, in the not very distant future, be engaged in making (or trying to make) a living. Kindly snatch a moment or two from your literary pursuits and think this over in some of its more grim possibilities." He also rather superfluously informed me that I would "be older some day" than I am now. (This remark, by the way, seems to have a peculiar fascination for men who have passed the age of fifty.) I showed the letter to Berri, and when he had finished it he said thoughtfully: "A few communications like this, and the keen edge of one's humor would become a trifle dulled."

My election to the Advocate came about in the most unexpected way possible. It's queer how things happen. Berri was sitting in my room one afternoon apparently reading by the fire. Suddenly he looked up and exclaimed:

"Do you realize, Tommy, that failure is staring us in the face?"

"Why, I was in hopes that it had begun to – to avert its gaze somewhat," I answered, for I thought of course he was referring to the hour exams – and I 've studied a little every day since that calamity. "Besides," I added, "I don't see why you need complain; you got through."

"Oh, I'm not talking about our studies," Berri said impatiently; "they 're a detail. I mean that we don't seem to be getting anywhere; we 're not turning our accomplishments to any practical account; we 're not helping the college any and making ourselves prominent – prominent in a lawful sense, I mean."

"But we haven't any accomplishments," I objected. "We both tried for the Glee Club and they would n't have us; and everybody agreed that we couldn't play football – although we went out and did everything they told us to. We can't play the banjo or mandolin, and it's too early in the year to find out whether we 're any good at rowing or track athletics or baseball; so there 's nothing left. What on earth can a person do who has n't any talent or skill or ability of any kind?" I demanded gloomily.

"He can always write," Berri answered, "and he can always be an editor."

"Oh! you mean we ought to try for the Crimson or something."

"Well, not the Crimson exactly," Berrisford mused; "they say you have to work like anything on the Crimson; they make you rush about finding out when things are going to happen, or why they didn't happen when they said they would. That would be awfully tiresome – because of course you wouldn't care whether they happened or not. I 'd just like to sit around and edit; any one could do that."

"I should think you 'd go in for the Lampoon," I suggested; for I remembered that one of the Lampoon men had drawn a picture of something Berri had done. Professor Snook, who knows such a lot about folk-lore, was going to give a lecture in Sever Hall on The Devil. It was announced on all the bulletin boards by means of printed placards that read like this: "Thursday, November 10, Professor John Snook will deliver a lecture on The Devil;" and under the one outside of University, Berri wrote in pencil: "The first of a series on personalities that have influenced me." If he got himself noticed by the Lampoon without trying, I thought there was no telling what he could do if he put his mind to it. We discussed the matter awhile without, however, deciding on any definite plan.

That night we went to Fleetwood's first Wednesday Evening, and there I was introduced to – But I 'm going too fast. I 'd better tell about the Wednesday Evening first.

When I suggested going Berri was n't particularly enthusiastic about it. He said he was afraid it would resemble one of his aunt's receptions where everybody was so cultivated that it was just like reading Half Hours with the Best Authors on a warm Sunday afternoon. I had an idea that it might be something like that myself, but I finally persuaded Berri to go with me notwithstanding.

I don't know what to make of myself sometimes. When I 'm with Duggie I 'm inclined to take things rather seriously; but when I 'm with Berri it all seems like a joke. They 're so different, and yet I feel as if I were so much a friend of both. When all three of us happen to be together I find it most uncomfortable. Of course Berri thought the Wednesday Evening highly amusing.

It was rather late when we arrived, and the room was crowded with fellows, very few of whom I had ever seen before. Fleetwood opened the door for us, with a Shakespearian quotation trembling aptly on his lips, and led us through the crowd to his inside room, where we left our coats and hats.

"You must come and meet my lions and hear them roar," Fleetwood said to us; and was about to take us across the study to where Duggie was standing against the wall with a semicircle of Freshmen in front of him drinking in his every word.

"Good gracious, man – you don't mean to say you got me away over here on a cold night to hear Duggie Sherwin drool about football," Berri exclaimed to me. Mr. Fleetwood laughed, and seemed to think this was very funny.

"Just look how glad of the chance all those others are, you unappreciative boy," he said reproachfully to Berri.

"Oh, well – he doesn't wake them up at a horrible hour every morning yelling like a fiend under a shower-bath," Berri explained. "You see, the lion and I occupy the same lair – or do lions live in a den? I never can remember."

"Perhaps Mr. Ranny knows," said Fleetwood to a tall, studious-looking fellow who had evidently planned his escape and was in the act of shyly carrying it out when Fleetwood detained him. Fleetwood introduced him to Berri and slid away to greet another man who had just opened the door. As I moved off to join Duggie's group, Berri gave me a queer look; but a few minutes later I happened to glance across at him, and as the tall fellow was laughing at everything Berri said I knew that Berri was enjoying himself.

Duggie shook hands with me and said good-evening just as if he had n't been in my room sprawling on the floor in front of the fire an hour and a half before, and then went on with what he was saying to the fellows nearest him – some polite looking little chaps; Freshmen, although I had never seen them before.

The talk was mostly about football; the games that had been played and the ones still to come – comparative scores and the merits and defects of players at other colleges. Of course Duggie could discuss only with the fellows just in front of him. I think he realized how embarrassing it would be to any of the others if he were to single them out and address remarks to them. Besides, it might have sounded patronizing. Yet every now and then, when whoever was talking happened to say something funny, Duggie somehow included the whole crowd in the laugh that followed. I think he managed it by catching everybody's eye at just the right time; I know that – although I was merely standing there looking on – whenever he caught mine, I felt as if I were right in the game. This often had the effect of causing a fellow to say something to the fellow next to him, and so it frequently happened that people who had joined the group merely to rubber in embarrassed silence at Duggie, found themselves making acquaintances and talking on their own account. I learned afterward that this was precisely what Fleetwood and Duggie counted on. It was Fleetwood's chief reason for having Duggie as often as he could at his Wednesday Evenings, and Duggie's only reason for going.

Across the room there was another centre of attraction in the person of a fine but rather pompous-looking old gentleman with a pink face and a snowy beard. His audience was more talkative than Duggie's, but not so large. It was n't composed entirely of Freshmen, either. As I was standing there making up my mind to slide through the intervening crowd and find out what he was talking about, Berri, who had been standing with a rapt expression on the outskirts of the second group, detached himself and came over to me. "You simply must come and listen to him; it's perfectly thrilling," he said.

"I was just going over to investigate," I answered. "What 's his specialty?"

"I don't know how to describe it exactly," Berri replied; "he's a kind of connecting link with the literary past; he 's what phonographs will be when we get them perfected. Dickens once borrowed his opera-glasses on the evening of the twelfth of June years ago, and some years later Thackeray stepped on his foot at a dinner-party. He remembers what they said perfectly, and gets asked out a lot. I 've heard him tell the Thackeray thing twice now, and he 's going to do it again in a minute if there 's enough of a crowd."

We went over and listened to him for ever so long, and although Dickens had borrowed his opera-glasses and Thackeray had stepped on his foot, he was n't in the least what Berri had led me to expect. I found him delightful and was sorry when he had to leave. (Berri insisted that he was driven rapidly to town to the Palace Theatre, where he was due to appear at 10.50 – between a trick bicyclist and a Dutch comedian.)

When we had said good-by to him, Fleetwood came up bringing a pleasant-looking chap with spectacles. (I had often seen him in the Yard.)

"This is Mr. Paul," Fleetwood said to me, "and he wants to have words with you."

Mr. Paul talked about the old gentleman for a minute or two, and then said quite abruptly, —

"We 've been reading your stuff in English 83, Mr. Wood, and the fellows think it's darned good. I wish you 'd let us have some of it for the Advocate."

I was so astonished I just looked at him. Then he went on to say that he wanted to print two of my themes – The Jimsons, and a description of something I saw one night in town – and that if I wrote a third and it turned out to be good, they would make me an editor! He had said that the Monthly had designs on me (imagine), and that although the Advocate did n't often do things so hastily, it (I wonder if it's silly of me to write this down?) didn't want to lose me. I told him that I 'd never dreamed of getting on one of the papers and felt as if he were making fun of me. But he assured me he was n't.

Duggie and Berrisford and I walked home together, and when we reached my room Duggie and Berri began to squabble over Fleetwood's Wednesday Evenings, and talked and talked until Duggie, seeing how late it was, got undressed (talking all the time) and left his clothes on my floor, and continued the conversation even after he had gone into his own room, turned out the lights and got into bed.

Berri, of course, started out by saying, —

"Well, I don't see what 's the good of it," and Duggie immediately undertook to enlighten him. Whereupon Berri – fearing that the attempt might be successful – took another tack and exclaimed, —

"I should think you'd feel so ridiculous backed up there against the wall making conversation – or perhaps you enjoy being an object of curiosity." Duggie got very red, and I think he considered Berri unusually cheeky and impertinent, but he did n't snub him and I 'm sure Berri was disappointed; he loves to irritate people.

"I don't think my feelings in the matter are particularly important," Duggie answered. "I don't see why you haul them in."

"Oh! but they are," Berri insisted. "I was n't in the least interested in you when you were over there doing your stunts; but here, at home – in the bosom of the family, so to speak – you 're perfectly absorbing. Now, honestly, Duggie, don't you think that in the end it 'll do you a lot of harm – exhibiting yourself this way, and sort of saying to yourself: 'I am the only Duggie Sherwin; when Fleetwood tells the Freshmen that I am going to be there, the room is jammed' – and all that sort of thing. For of course that's what it amounts to."

Duggie threw back his head and laughed. Then he leaned forward and gave Berrisford (who was sitting on the floor with his hands clasped around his knees), a neat little push that rolled him back until he seemed to be standing on his neck and groping for the ceiling with his feet.

"Berrisford, sometimes you make me very, very sick," Duggie said to him.

"But own up like a man – isn't that the way you look at it?" Berri pursued after he had collected himself.

"Of course it is n't – idiot!" Duggie declared indignantly. "Fleetwood can't do the whole thing himself; he can't turn a lot of shy kids into a pen and say, 'Now talk and get to know one another.' So he asks other people to help him. Once in a while he asks me. To-night there were two of us."

"Two Little Evas – two Uncle Toms – two side-splitting Topsies," Berri giggled.

"Heaven knows I can talk about other things than football," Duggie went on, "but I like to talk about it, and they do, too – so why shouldn't we? And when they have enough of me they get to talking with some one else – some one in their own class, very likely – or maybe to two or three. Then they come back again next week, and after a few times they find that they 've made a lot of acquaintances, and perhaps some friends. And there you are! Their whole four years is probably changed for them and made infinitely more worth while, merely because Fleetwood takes the trouble to round them up and make them feel that somebody really wants them. It's perfectly natural that you should think his Wednesdays funny and boresome; you always had dozens of rooms to go to from the first day you came here, and some one in every room who was glad to see you when you went. But I tell you it isn't that way with everybody, and you 're not the kind that Fleetwood tries to get at."

"Why did he invite me, then?" Berri asked.

"Upon my soul, I don't know," Duggie declared sarcastically, "but I 'd be willing to bet that if I see him first he won't invite you again," he laughed.

Then Berri admitted that Fleetwood's idea was well enough in theory, but doubted if it really worked.

"That tall spook I jollied this evening for a while was exceedingly nice; but I sha'n't dash off and call on him to-morrow. I don't suppose I'll ever see him again," Berri said.

"No, probably not," Duggie assented, "but it's altogether likely that after time has healed the wound left by your indifference, he may find consolation in the companionship of some one else. You may not be able to grasp the fact, Berri, but it is a fact that 'there are others.'" It was in the midst of this that he began to get ready for bed.

"Why don't you open a salon yourself if you think they 're such 'life-sweeteners'?" Berri called after him when he went into his own room.

"When I come to the Law School next year, I'm going to," Duggie shouted back, "but you 'll never see the inside of it; I 'll tell you that right now."

I did n't join in the discussion at all, for I got to thinking how lucky I had been from the first. Mamma overheard an old woman on a piazza say that she made the "young men" change their shoes when it was "snow-in'" – and that was all there was to it. That chance remark led to my living in the same house with Duggie and Berri; and what a difference it has made! Without Berri I never in the world should have known such a lot of people in so short a time; and without Duggie – well, I think I understand what my adviser meant when he said he was glad I knew Duggie.

There has been one Advocate meeting since my election and I thought it was great. All the editors meet in the Advocate President's room on Tuesday evening to hear the Secretary read the manuscripts that have been sent in or collected from the English courses during the week. It took them a long time to settle down to business; in fact no one seemed to want to hear the manuscripts at all – although I secretly thought this would be very interesting – and several fellows made remarks and tried to interrupt (the poetry especially) all the time the Secretary was reading. But he read on in a businesslike voice and never paid any attention to them except once, when he grabbed a college catalogue from the table, and without looking away from the page shied it at a fellow who was repeating the verses the Secretary was trying to read – only repeating them all wrong and making them sound ridiculous. In the case of most of the contributions the fellows began to vote "no" before they had read them half through; but several of them were hard to decide on, and the board had a lively time making up its mind. After the reading we sat around the fire and had beer and crackers and cheese while (as several of the manuscripts expressed it) "the storm howled without."

A few afternoons ago the Secretary (he has such a queer name – it's Duncan Duncan), came to my room to see how much I had done on a story I was writing. It was a little after six o'clock when he got up to go, and as he was on his way to dinner at Memorial he asked me to dine with him. I had never been to Memorial at meal time and was glad of the chance to go. It's a very interesting experience, although I think I prefer the comparative peacefulness of Mrs. Brown's as a usual thing.

We were joined in the Yard by a friend of Duncan's who sits at the same table. Duncan is a thoughtful, rather dreamy kind of person (he writes a lot of poetry for the Advocate), and on the way over he told me how much he enjoyed living at Memorial – that he never got tired of looking up at the stained-glass windows and the severe portraits.

"Even with the crowd and clatter there 's always something inspiring about its length and height," he said. "It has a calmness and dignity that quite transcend the fact of people's eating there. It's so academic."

"It's so cheap," the other fellow amended; but Duncan did n't mind him and became almost sentimental on the subject.

Well, I felt sorry for Duncan. We had hardly begun on our turkey and cranberry sauce when two of the colored waiters got into the most dreadful fight and rushed at each other with drawn forks. All the men jumped up on their chairs and waved their napkins and yelled: "Down in front – down in front!" and "Trun him out!" As the newspapers say of the Chamber of Deputies, "A scene of indescribable confusion ensued." It was several minutes before the combatants were hustled off to the kitchen and we could go on with our dinner. Then a party appeared in the visitors' gallery – a middle-aged man, two women, and some girls. One of the girls was decidedly pretty and attracted everybody's attention the moment she leaned over the rail. The man, however, was what caused the demonstration in the first place. He didn't take his hat off, which Duncan says always makes trouble. I don't think anybody really cares one way or the other, but it furnishes an excuse for noise. A murmur of disapproval travelled across the room and grew louder and louder until the man with a genial air of "Ah – these boys have recognized me," came to the front of the gallery and bowed. He took off his hat, which produced a burst of applause from below, and then put it on again, which changed the clapping of hands to ominous groans. The poor thing looked mystified and embarrassed, and I don't know how it would have ended if the pretty girl hadn't just at that instant been inspired to pluck a big rose from her belt and toss it over the rail. It fell with a thud in the middle of our table and twenty-four eager hands shot out to seize it. I grabbed instinctively with the others, and with the others I 'm exceedingly ashamed of what happened. The tablecloth and all the dishes were swept off, and in the scrimmage that followed the table was overturned. I have a terrifying, hideous recollection of everybody in the world kneeling on my chest and of something warm and wet on my face and neck. Then Duncan was saying, —