A Princetonian/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
WORK, STUFF, AND NONSENSE.
A week went by; a week that meant a great deal to many members of the freshman class, but to none more than it did to Newton Hart. Much to his surprise he found that he had passed all of his examinations with the exception of one, in which he had received a partial condition. He was congratulated by Franklin and by all of the young men whom he had met upon the Glee Club trip, finding to his delight that they remembered him and apparently were glad to see him.
He thought of telegraphing the news of his having passed the examinations to Oakland, but he remembered that possibly Mabel would not understand,—and then rates were high. So he wrote a long letter, which, if it had been read between the lines, would have decided one that Mr. Hart had not altogether settled the question whether he had done wisely or foolishly in coming to college. Another thing would have been apparent—that he was really rather homesick.
The expenses that he found he had to incur were much less than he had had any idea of, but friends had been working for him, and he found that Franklin and Tommy Wilson had secured for him an eating club (where he did not have to wait on the table, but only kept the accounts), and for this small trouble his boarding dues were remitted.
The rent of the small room at Edwards amounted to very little; and the furniture had been purchased fifth or sixth hand at one of the college shops.
Hart was the first in the recitation rooms and the last to leave. He took notes of the professors' lectures with a seriousness that was flattering and which in a freshman is bound to attract attention. In fact, merely on account of his age and personal appearance he had been discussed by the members of the faculty, and it might be said that they as a body had their eyes upon him.
Another thing had happened which was of great importance. He was now president of his class. This was the result of rather unusual circumstances. At the first class meeting, the freshmen, not knowing one another, were generally disturbed by the sophomores, who crept in to upset the proceedings, if possible. Hart's figure and his age marked him at once, as we have said, among his classmates. He had entered the room in which the meeting was being held and found perfect pandemonium. Young men were jumping up all over the room, some standing on chairs. The meeting was presided over by a junior, who lacked the qualifications necessary to enforce either silence or respect. He was rapping upon the desk with a blackboard eraser, which only sufficed to enclose him in a chalky cloud.
Hart stood in the background for a minute until something that was being said got his ear. He was well up in parliamentary law.
"That's not the way to go about it," he remarked to a slim, pale-featured youth alongside of him. "Why don't they stop all this talk and propose nominations and organize. Let some one have the floor."
"Get up and tell them," said the slim youth, "you can do it."
Hart stood on a chair. "Gentlemen!" he began.
The effect was quite wonderful. He hushed the gathering as if they had been children (which some of them really were), and to his surprise Hart found himself talking in a low voice, but with intense determination in every gesture of his heavy hand. Order began to reign, and when three or four intruding sophomores, who had been the cause of the uproar, had been unceremoniously bundled out of the room, the chairman announced that nominations were in order for President. Three or four jumped to their feet at once.
"I nominate that man," said a little shrill-voiced boy who managed to get the word in first. He pointed his finger at Hart. "I don't know the gentleman's name," he said, "but it seems to me he'll do."
There was a stamping of feet and an incoherent cheer.
And thus it happened that Newton Wilberforce Hart, of Oakland, Nebraska, had to carry upon his shoulders what he considered a tremendous responsibility, for he took it as a most serious matter.
An hour after the meeting, as he was puzzling over a Greek verb in his room, he stopped and thought. It was not a conceited thought that had flashed across his mind; but it was this: He might be here for something after all! He could see that his experience was bound to help him. He had felt somehow that these lads, so much younger than himself, were looking to him to help them through, for he had come to regard the freshman year as a very difficult term of service. He longed in truth for the comforts that upper-class men seemed to possess in being able to mind their own business, if nothing else. Yet, although a great deal of the hubbub appeared froth and foolishness to him, he had ceased to hold it all in such contempt.
Since his first night in college no one had attempted to haze or interfere with him. A few whistlings and remarks upon the campus he had ignored entirely. But he was to indulge in one little escapade (which was long afterwards remembered, by the way), and as this makes a story in itself, it may be brought in without really being a digression, before we go deeply into any one's personal history.
Congreve, Golatly, and L. Putney Betts, who had attached themselves to Hart, and who apparently were glad to be seen with him, lived in University Hall. If there was any trouble or mischief afoot in the freshman class, Matt, the proctor, had learned by short experience to put their names down first on his list of suspects. Their motto was happily expressed by Mr. Golatly when he said: "What is the use of living, if you are not in it?"
But all this brings us to a night when the class of 189– was only three weeks old. There was dead silence down the corridors at University Hall, when suddenly it was broken by the sound of a low thick voice:
"Ged oop! Ged oop! in dere."
Then followed some incoherent words, and there was a rapping on freshman Congreve's door. It was Steve, the old German nightwatchman, ally of all the freshmen in University Hall.
Hearing the racket, Congreve started up in bed. "Heavens! What's happened?" he said to himself, throwing off the blankets.
"Ged oop quivickly," came in mumbling accents from the hallway. "Vat is de matter in dere! Vy dond you ged oop, Mr. Congreve?"
"It may be a fire," Congreve said to himself, his heart beginning to thump loudly.
It was pitch dark and two o'clock in the morning—the clock struck the hour just as he opened the door.
"De sophomores are gedding out the proglamations," said Steve in a whisper that could be heard at the end of the corridor.
At first the meaning did not penetrate Congreve's sleep-muddled brain. Finally, however, he remembered what it meant. He, Betts, Terence, Golatly, and Jimmie James, freshmen of course, and as yet in good standing before the faculty, had gone down to Trenton three or four times in the last week to see about the printing of their own class utterances of defiance; wherein the members of the class above them were decried and slurred upon in a jumble of incoherent and turgid English. The sophomores generally began this little game and the printers profited.
As these notices were addressed to the world in general, and often pasted upon long-distance freight cars, they probably had puzzled many who had never heard of the College of New Jersey.
"Have you told Mr. Betts?" inquired Congreve, putting his suspenders over his night-robe.
"He is oop, yes, ten minutes," said Steve; "told me to come and vake you—if I could."
Congreve hurried into a coat, and going down the hallway found Setts' dressing in the dark.
"Now get the others out," the latter said without a word of greeting, "you know the juniors told us to do it quietly. Let's go over and get old 'Cave Canum' and make him fuss for us."
"Have you got the procs?" inquired Congreve.
"Here's a bale of 'em," said Betts, hauling out a long bundle from under the bed. "I have made fresh stickum every night for the last three days, and I have got it in the bathroom, by the great horn spoon!"
He disappeared, and Congreve heard him stumbling about. Suddenly there was a howl, a plash, and the sound of muttering.
Betts's bathroom consisted of a closet, on the floor of which was a big hat tub. In the darkness he had stepped upon the edge, and the tub had sprung up at him.
Congreve began to laugh. "You're a prize jay," he remarked into the depths of the closet.
"Feel me, I'm soaking wet," was all Betts said when he emerged.
Congreve went off into another fit of laughter. "Hadn't you better mop it up?" he asked.
"No, let it go," replied Betts; "we haven't time. Here, take the magoo."
After producing a complete bill-poster's outfit from the lower bureau drawer, the two conspirators stole down the stairway.
It was a mild September night. There was a deal of dampness in the air, and so dark was it that they could hardly see the path before them as they walked across the campus.
"When we get over to 'Gentle' Hart's, we will divide our forces," said freshman Betts. "Always divide your forces, you know, for strategy's sake."
They entered the hallway at Edwards and stole carefully down to the room that had the legend in green paint, "Cave canum!" upon the panels. Congreve knocked softly with the back of his finger nails and they were admitted.
Three or four of their classmates had gathered there. The gas was burning low, and a blanket had been tacked up at the narrow little window. Charles Townes, a pursy youth from Washington, D.C., was seated on the edge of the bed. He was yawning. "Gentle" Hart was drawing on a pair of cowhide boots. Jimmie James, "the Hawk-Faced Man," as he was called, was pulling away at a corncob pipe. As the others entered the room questions were fired and answered in hoarse whispers.
The sophomores had been seen a half hour ago, and one of their proclamations was pasted on the side of the railway station. Charlie Townes had read it himself with the aid of a match.
"Why didn't you tear it down?" asked Terence Golatly, who had just come in.
"It had such a good thing on you, McFadden, my boy."
"I would not take your judgment," said Golatly, "you have no wit."
"It's time we were starting, don't you guess?" said Hart, who treated the whole expedition very seriously. He had, the day after his talk with Franklin, received politely a long lecture from a condescending junior upon proclamation posting and clapper stealing, and seeing that it was placed before him in the light of a duty, he had determined to enter into the venture because it was expected of him; but his expressed opinion was that it was "stuff and nonsense."
L. Putney Betts was chosen to lay out the plan of campaign, and at once sent one of the group around to rouse up a dozen or so of the larger freshmen and tear down the proclamations of the enemy, while he and his party devoted themselves to placing the counter-irritant in conspicuous places.
On the top of the hill to the southward of the Theological Seminary was the iron water-tower of Princeton. It stretched upwards like a huge stove-pipe on a tripod of iron beams and was not an ornament in reckoning up the beauties of the landscape. But it had its uses.
Some time before, an adventurous freshman had been lowered by his companions at the end of a rope, and had painted his class numerals in huge orange and black letters on the side of the iron tank some eighty or ninety feet above the ground. Since then it had become the custom for the succeeding classes to paste their proclamations on each side of the huge letters, and every fall some zealot risked his life to perform this sacred duty.
Down the road in the direction of the water-tower tramped the party in Indian file. On the fence at the roadside near the little church they saw something white and halted.
After several attempts to strike a light, Betts at last succeeded with the last match in the party, and then read the notice aloud. The nonsensical combinations of words and the comical vituperation appeared to anger him.
"Tear it down! Tear the devilish thing down!" he said, and as it had been but freshly pasted up it came off readily.
"Save it," said some one, "as an example of dense ignorance." The proclamation began in the same way as did their own:
"To whom it may concern: Whereas——"
Then on went the little party down the road once more.
"And born without mark, we all see in the dark,
Like owls in a gooseberry tree,"
hummed Mr. Golatly, as they climbed a fence and went across the meadow.
"Hush! " said the ex-deputy, suddenly; "Don't you hear voices?" They listened. Sure enough. Some one was talking, and the sound came from up in the air, above their heads. Before them loomed the great shape of the iron tower.
"They are at work now," said Congreve, in an excited whisper. Just then a light was struck by some one standing at the bottom of the ladder, which climbed a leg of the tripod and then stretched along the perpendicular sides of the great cylinder itself. The match was used to light a pipe, and the watchers by the fence saw that there was only one figure at the bottom.
"If we could only get hold of him," said Betts, "without the others knowing it, eh!"
"Let's try it," said Hart, in a whisper.
All at once the conversation between the top of the tower and the figure at the bottom of the ladder became more audible.
"Send up that paste, Reddy," called a voice from the sky.
"Y-y-you've got it y-y-yourself," stuttered the voice from below.
"No, we haven't," from the top of the tower.
"W-w-well, I-I haven't s-s-seen it," came from below again.
There was some consultation, and a few angry words from the top. Then another hail.
"Chump says he left it at the fence. I've got half a mind to throw him off." There were some more words.
"Th-th-throw him off," said the figure at the bottom. There was no answer to this, and a long silence followed.
"That's the little red-headed Smart Aleck that was at the 'Prep' with me two years ago," whispered Golatly. "Hush! they're speaking again."
"Go find that paste, Reddy, you jackass!" came the order in the voice that had done all the talking from the sky.
The short figure with the pipe stammered something in reply, and grumblingly stumbled down the path to where the party of freshmen were lying beneath the fence. As he threw his leg over the top rail he was grasped in a pair of mighty arms.
It was one of the peculiarities of the red-headed one's impediment of speech that when excited he became absolutely tongue-tied, and he carefully avoided allowing his feelings to get the better of him. For this same reason now he was so surprised that he could not utter a word, and the freshman from Nebraska, taking him at such a disadvantage, hurried down the road. He carried the little sophomore as if he were a bag of meal.
Then led by freshman Betts, the rest of the party stepped quickly forward to the base of the water-tower. A white bundle was lying there on the ground.
"Jove! It's their own proclamations," whispered Golatly in Congreve's ear.
"Are you down there, Reddy? Where's that paste?"
"A-a-all right!" answered Golatly, with a good imitation of the stutterer, "S-s-send down a r-r-rope."
"It's hanging alongside the ladder, you bally idiot!" said the voice.
There, sure enough, was a stout cord reaching almost to the ground, and within easy reach.
"P-p-paste on s-s-six," stammered Mr. Golatly, tying a bundle of his own class proclamations at the end of the string. Then he attached the freshman paste-pot, and the party on top hauled them up. In the darkness the papers looked much alike, the only difference being that the sophomore effusion was printed in dark-green ink, instead of black.
"All O.K.," came the answer from the top of the tower.
"Say, you fellows, I-I-I'm going back to the college," stuttered Golatly, nudging Congreve, and taking up the bundle of papers from the ground. There were some observations from above, but Mr. Golatly vouchsafed no reply, and in the darkness the party stole back to the road.
When they reached it, the success of the exploit was too much for them, and Betts fairly rolled in the dirt.
"McFadden," he said to Golatly, "come to me arms, you're a jewel!"
"I say, you chaps," said Congreve, "let's tear up their 'procs,' and leave a trail along the road. Oh ! vote me a piano!"
It was no sooner said than done, and one of the bundles was divided and the fragments scattered by the roadside.
They had found the sophomores' bucket of paste at the fence corner, and had also found Hart and his captive seated on the railing of a small bridge across a little brook a full mile down the road.
"What shall we do with him?" questioned Hart, removing his arm from the sophomore's shoulder.
"Make him carry the paste. That's what they would do to one of us," said Congreve.
"Don't you trust him with it," put in Golatly; "just have him walk along with us for fun. He's real good company."
The red-headed one was so angry, and had been so frightened at his captor's seriousness, that he did not reply. They were standing just then beside a high board fence which guarded the property of one of the professors.
"Let's begin to put them here," said Congreve.
Under the branches of the great pines which extended above the wall, it was darker than ever. They could hardly see the printing. Golatly smothered one with the "stickum," and put it on the boards. A few yards farther down he did the same thing again. The captive meahwhile had been standing close to the fence, smoking furiously, the ember in his pipe glowing like a fierce red eye. A dozen or so of the big pasters were distributed in this manner without any comment.
"Where shall we put the rest?" said Congreve, turning to the group, for they had come to the end of the fence.
"I-I-know a good place," stammered the red-headed one, suddenly. "If you will l-l-let go of my hand, you g-g-great big stuff, I'll tell you where it is."
Hart had been leading him along much as a nurse would take an unruly child out for an airing.
"Where is it ? " asked Golatly, surprised.
"T-t-other side of town. You will have to hurry. It's where we were going to p-p-put ours."
The big fellow dropped his hand at this traitorous speech, and the prisoner pulled each of his fingers separately to be sure they were in place, then, with a "Come on, you Fresh!" he turned down a lane that led them back along the road.
"I-I-I give you my word of honor, I-I-won't run away," he said, breaking the silence (Hart had transferred his grasp to the collar of his coat); "I-I-like you fellows anyhow," he added.
Truth was, there was a bare chance just then of Reddy's joining their ranks and losing his sophomoric standing through a process of faculty conclusions. But this was not in his mind at the present speaking.
"It's a great place. We'd have never thought of looking here for them," said Congreve, as their pilot stopped before a building on the right of the road. "By Jove! How dark it is! Take care! This is barbed wire!"
The sophomore now appeared quite as eager as the rest at the success of the venture. He held up the strand of sharp points and pointed out good places to paste the proclamation. So black was it that these desecrators of the township seat of learning had to feel their way, but they pasted six of the big papers in conspicuous positions and went back into the road.
"Now there are as-as good places all the way along t-t-toward t-t-town. Please let me go now, I've done the best I could," said the sophomore.
So at every fence and every gate post they left a memento of their journeying. It was growing a bit lighter and they could discern faint streaks in the eastern sky, when suddenly Freshman Simeon Tolker Congreve started as he smoothed out the last poster.
"Fellows!" he exclaimed, "they are all printed in green; they're the sophomores'! Those were our 'procs' we tore up! Great Peter! Aren't we Lulus!"
"Where 's that red-headed, stuttering rascal?" said Golatly.
"I don't know," said Hart, from the top of a fence. "He was here a minute ago."
Then he laughed, but he was the only one who viewed matters in a comical light.
"We are a pack of fools," said Golatly, seriously. "I'm going to send a bill for my services."
Congreve half smiled. "Let's go back and tear them all down," he said.
"You don't catch me, "said Hart; "I'm going back to bed."
In the bright morning light the six freshman manifestoes upon the water-tower were the only ones to be seen, but the roadsides were covered with the screeds of their natural and hereditary enemies, only half obliterated.
The red-headed sophomore, whose name was Mudge, publicly stated that he had compelled the freshmen to follow his orders by the mere effect of his commanding voice and gesture.
"M-m-mind over m-m-matter," he said.
Terence Golatly celebrated the affair at the water-tower in blank verse, and a member of the faculty related the story with gusto at a meeting of that august body, where, strange to relate, they often crack jokes and often laugh at such nonsensical foolishness as this.