Part 2 (2/2)

One of the strong teachers this, one not afraid of a departure, and one of those who, within the last quarter of a century, have laid the foundations of new American universities deep and wide, and given to the youth facilities for a learning not creed-bound, nor school-bound, but both liberal and of all utility.

It was well for the particular freshman whose examination is here described that his first experience with a professor was with such a man. It gave confidence, and set him thinking. With others of the examiners he did not, in each instance, fare so happily. What thousands of men of the world there are to-day who remember with something like a shudder still the inquisition of Prof. ----, whose works on Greek are text-books in many a college; or the ferocity of Prof. ----, to whom calculus was grander than Homer! But the woes of freshmen are pa.s.sing things.

What Grant Harlson did in college need not be told at any length. He but plucked the fruit within his reach, not over-wisely in some instances, yet with some industry. He had, at least, the intelligence to feel that it is better to know all of some things than a little of all things, and so surpa.s.sed, in such branches as were his by gift and inclination, and but barely pa.s.sed in those which went against the mental grain.

It may be the professor of English literature had something to do with this. Between Grant and him there grew up a friends.h.i.+p somewhat unusual under all the circ.u.mstances. One day the professor was overtaken by the student upon a by-way of the campus, and asked some questions regarding certain changed hours of certain recitations, and, having answered, detained the questioner carelessly in general conversation. The elder became interested--perhaps because it was a relief to him to talk with such a healthy animal--and, at the termination of the interview, invited him to call. There grew up rapidly, binding these two, between whose ages a difference of twenty years existed, a friends.h.i.+p which was never broken, and which doubtless affected to an extent the student's ways, for he at least accepted suggestions as to studies and specialties. This relations.h.i.+p resulted naturally in transplanting to the mind of the youth some of the fancies and, possibly, the foibles of the man. One incident will ill.u.s.trate.

The student, during a summer vacation, had devoted himself largely to the copying of Macaulay's essays, for, in his teens, one is much impressed by the rolling sentences of that great writer. Upon his return Harlson told of his summer not entirely wasted, and expressed the hope that he might have absorbed some trifle of the writer's style.

The professor of English literature laughed.

”Better have taken Carlyle's 'French Revolution' or any one of half a dozen books which might be named. Let me tell a little story. Some time ago a fellow professor of mine was shown by a Swedish servant girl in his employ a letter she had just written, with the request that he would correct it. He found nothing to correct. It was a wonderfully clear bit of epistolary literature. He was surprised, and questioned the girl. He learned that, though well educated, she knew but little English, and had sought the dictionary, revising her own letter by selecting the shortest words to express the idea. Hence the letter's strength and clearness. Stick to the Saxon closely. Macaulay will wear off in time.” And this was better teaching than one sometimes gets in cla.s.s.

This is no tale of the inner life of an American university. It is but a brief summary of young Harlson's ways there. But some day, I hope, a Thomas Hughes will come who will write the story, which can be made as healthful as ”Tom Brown,” though it will have a different flavor. What a chance for character study! What opportunity for an Iliad of many a gallant struggle! Valuable only in a lesser degree than what is learned from books is what is learned from men in college, that is, from young men, and herein lies the greater merit of the greater place.

In the little college, however high the grade of study, there is a lack of one thing broadening, a lack of acquaintance with the youth of many regions. The living together of a thousand hailing from Maine or California, or Oregon or Florida, or Canada or England, young men of the same general grade and having the same general object, is a great thing for them all. It obliterates the prejudice of locality, and gives to each the key-note of the region of another. It builds up an acquaintance among those who will be regulating a land's affairs from different vantage-grounds in years to come, and has its most practical utility in this. When men meet to nominate a President this fact comes out most strongly. The man from Texas makes a combination with the man from Michigan, and two delegations swing together, for have not these two men well known each other since the day their cla.s.ses met in a rush upon the campus twenty years ago?

No studious recluse was Harlson. His backwoods training would not allow of that. In every cla.s.s encounter, in every fray with townsmen, it is to be feared in almost every hazing, after his own gruesome experience--for they hazed then vigorously--he was a factor, and beefsteak had been bound upon his cheek on more than one occasion. A rollicking cla.s.s was his, though not below the average in its scholars.h.i.+p, and the sometimes reckless mood of it just suited him.

”There were three men of Babylon, of Babylon, of Babylon.”

There is what some claim is an aristocracy in American colleges. It is a.s.serted that the leading Greek fraternities are this, and that the existence of Alpha Delta Phi, Psi Upsilon or Delta Kappa Epsilon, or others of the secret groups, is not a good thing for the students as a whole. Yet in the existence of these societies is forged another of the links of life to come outside, and all the good things to be gained in college are not the ratings won in cla.s.ses. Harlson was one of those with badges and deep in college politics. He never had occasion to repent it.

And so, with study, some rough encounter and much scheming and much dreaming, time pa.s.sed until the world outside loomed up again at close quarters. The present view was a new struggle. The great money question intervened. There had come a blight upon his father's dollar crop, and when Grant Harlson left the university he was so nearly penniless that the books he owned were sold to pay his railroad fare.

CHAPTER IX.

MRS. POTIPHAR.

It must have been some person aged, say, twenty, who expressed to Noah the opinion that there wasn't going to be much of a shower. At twenty tomorrow is ever a clear day, and notes are easy things to meet, and friends and women are faithful, and Welsh rarebit is digestible, and sleep is rest, and air is ever good to breathe. Grant Harlson was not particularly troubled by the condition of his finances. That the money available had lasted till his schooling ended, was, at least, a good thing, and, as for the future, was it not his business to attend to that presently? Meanwhile he would dawdle for a week or two.

So the young man stretched his big limbs and lounged in hammocks and advised or domineered over his sisters, as the case might be, and read in a desultory way, and fished and shot, and ate with an appet.i.te which threatened to bring famine to the family. Your lakeside small town is a fair place in July. He would loaf, he said, for a week or two. The loafing was destined to have character, perhaps to change a character.

There had come to Harlson in college, as to most young men, occasional packages from home, and in one of these he had found a pretty thing, a man's silk tie, worked wonderfully in green and gold, and evidently the product of great needlecraft. It was to his fancy, and he had thought to thank whichever of his sisters had wasted such time upon him, but had forgotten it when next he wrote, and so the incident had pa.s.sed.

One day, wearing this same tie, he bethought him of his negligence lying supine on the gra.s.s, while his sister Bess was meanwhile reading in the immediate vicinity. He would be grateful, as a brother should.

”I say, Bess,” he called, ”I forgot to write about this tie and thank you. Which of you did it?”

Bess looked up, interested.

”I thought I wrote you when I sent the other things. None of us did it. It was Mrs. Rolfston.”

”Mrs. Rolfston?”

”Certainly. She was here one day, when we were making up a lot of things for you, and said that she'd make something herself to go with the next lot. A week or two later she brought me that tie, and I inclosed it. Pretty, isn't it?”

”Very pretty.”

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