Harvard Stories Part 9

"Where had he been?"

"Well, you see, Jack Randolph carried him off yesterday evening to a meeting of the Southern Club, as an invited guest, to span the b.l.o.o.d.y chasm with him. They spanned it a good many times there, I guess, and then as it was a beautiful moonlight night and perfect sleighing, they decided that the b.l.o.o.d.y chasm ought to be spanned in Brookline and other neighboring towns. So they got a cutter, and must have conducted spanning operations on a wide scale all over the country, for they didn't get back until dawn. George Smith, the policeman, says he saw them sitting on the steps of Harvard Hall, singing 'John Brown's Body'

and 'Dixie,' and hymns of peace while the sun rose."

"I deny the aspersion on the Southern Club," exclaimed 'Colonel' Dixey, from the other end of the long sofa. "I was present at the meeting, and we had nothing to induce sunrise hymns. I don't know what Jack and Ned did afterwards, but they didn't get it at the Southern Club."

This somewhat veiled a.s.sertion raised an incredulous chorus: "Oh, Dixey, may you be forgiven." "Come, come, Colonel, do you mean to persuade us that an organization containing at least three members from Kentucky is run on a cold-water basis?" "Where is the glory of your old commonwealth?" "Bet the meeting was full of rum--rum and rebellion!

Don't deny it, Colonel." "Drink and treason!"

"Neither, sir, neither," replied Dixey to this chaff. "I grieve to hear such narrow-minded accusations. Prexy was there and made a speech.--Oh, Holworthy! You know that man we saw yesterday in the Transept of Memorial? He was at the Southern Club with Prexy."

"Oh, yes," said Holworthy, "who was he?"

"A grad. from Georgia. I have forgotten his name."

"I thought he was a grad., and not a stranger, for he didn't have a guide book, and didn't ask us to show him the "_campus_." Had he been a soldier?"

"Didn't say. If so, he was probably a Confed."

"Well, he looked like an interesting old c.o.c.k anyway," said Holworthy to the others. "He was standing before one of the tablets with his hat off.

Somehow, when we saw him, our own hats felt so uncomfortable that we took them off, too, as we pa.s.sed through."

"Holly made up all sorts of poetry about him," added Dixey.

"No, I didn't; but I do think he did the right thing in uncovering."

"Of course he did," said Ernest Gray, emphatically. "No man ought to keep his hat on in that transept."

"Oh, now you've done it, Hol," groaned Stoughton. "You have started the 'Only Serious.'"

"We get too careless going back and forth in it every day," continued Gray. "We don't fully appreciate it, or we forget what it means."

"Forget what it means! Great Scott, Ernest, have you never heard a Cla.s.s Day oration or poem? What would our inspired youths do without the poor, hard-worked old transept? How did they ever get inspired before it was built? Don't we have our hearts fired all up at least once a year on that subject?"

"Except those of us who may have been previously fired by the Dean," put in Rattleton, with a contemplative sigh over eminent possibilities.

"Well, it is a pity then that the Cla.s.s Day conflagration doesn't last a little longer. I don't believe in keeping sentiment for special occasions. It would be better for all hands to preserve a little of it throughout the year, and in this place, of all others, I should think at least a little reverence for the past might be kept alive. But one might suppose that there was no such thing as reverence at Harvard nowadays."

"Hooray!" "Hear, hear!" "Go it, old man!" "Good for the Only Serious!"

"Pegasus in a canter!"

"That's right," answered Gray warmly, to this burst of invidious encouragement. "Laugh at anything that is serious or the least approach to feeling; it is the fas.h.i.+on."

"Brought on by over-doses of gush," remarked Stoughton, knocking the ashes contemptuously out of Mary Jane.

"Of course, there is a lot of twaddle talked about such things,"

answered Gray, "and I acknowledge that exaggeration tends to cheapen patriotism, but the existence of a lot of tinsel in the world doesn't make gold less valuable, does it?"

"Quite true," a.s.sented Hudson, "and because d.i.c.k Stoughton smokes such a pipe as Mary Jane, there is no reason why we should all give up tobacco.

That is a better simile than yours."

"Well, it is a good thing that Harvard men have not always been so afraid of appearing in earnest," growled Gray. "I don't believe there was so much brilliant wit wasted when men were leaving college every day to join their regiments. I wish I had been here then."

"So do I," drawled Rattleton; "what a bully excuse a fellow would have had for not getting his degree."

"What an excitement there must have been," went on Gray, without noticing the interruption. "Just think of being cheered out of the Yard when you left for the war, and then perhaps distinguis.h.i.+ng yourself, and coming back to Cla.s.s Day with your arm in a sling."

"Just think of coming back in a pine-box," added Hudson, graphically.

"Well, suppose you did? You have got to die some time, and your name would have been put on a tablet in memorial."

"Yes, but you wouldn't have been tickled by seeing it there," said the irritating Stoughton. "Half your patriotism is vanity, Ernest, you shallow theatrical poser."

"It would do you men good to read the _Memorial Biographies_," Gray continued, now thoroughly aroused, and paying no attention to the side remarks. "They ought to be part of the prescribed work for a degree."

"Yes, but as Hudson says, you couldn't do that if you were a biographee," reasoned Dane Austin, the law-school man, taking a hand in the baiting.

"It would be perfectly disgusting to hear you fellows talk this way,"

Gray declared, "if one didn't know that it was all affectation. I am not sure that that fact does not make it worse. You all really feel just as I do, but you are afraid to say so."

"Another appalling case of Harvard indifference," observed Stoughton.

"The modern dilettante has no n.o.ble desire for red war."

"He likes to make people believe that he has no n.o.ble desire for anything, and he has a morbid fear of being a hypocrite. As a matter of fact, you are all of you the worst kind of hypocrites, for you try to appear worse than you are."

"Oh, dear, no," Rattleton protested, lazily, "that would be too hard work for any of this crowd--except me."

"A war would be a good thing to stir you up. I almost wish the war times would come again," exclaimed Gray, hotly.

"Now you are getting right down to work," laughed Hudson. "What a rise we are getting out of our earnest young man to-night."

"You let your feelings get away with you, Gray," added Holworthy. "I don't believe it was all glory and enthusiasm in those days. You forget there was another side to it. For instance, Jack Randolph's governor was not cheered out of the Yard when _he_ left for the war."

"Yes, there _was_ another side to it," came a voice from the other end of the room, and a big arm-chair, that had been facing the fire with its back to the knot of men, was pushed around so as show its occupant. He was evidently one of that wide cla.s.s known to the undergraduate as the "Old Grads." An old grad. attains his t.i.tle as soon as he ceases to be a very young grad.; there is no transition degree. In this case he seemed about middle aged, perhaps fifty, with hair turning gray, and a rather deeply marked brown face. The latter was just then a little flushed, and had the expression often seen on a face that has just been looking a long time into a fire and a long way through it.

The lounging students started a little at this sudden interruption, and stirred as young men do on finding themselves suddenly in the presence of an older one. Rattleton took his long legs down from their supporting chair, Hudson pushed his hat back from his nose to its proper place, Dixey took his hands out of his pockets and sat up straight, while d.i.c.k Stoughton paused in the act of relighting Mary Jane, and when the match burnt his fingers forbore to swear. As the cause of the disturbance rose and came towards them they stood up. Hollis Holworthy showed signs of positive uneasiness. He turned bright red in the face, as he recognized the man whom he had just described as "an interesting old c.o.c.k."

"I--I beg your pardon, sir," he began, "I had no idea----"

"That the old c.o.c.k was present?" laughed the older man. "I a.s.sure you, my boy, that I was not in the least offended, and even had I cause for offence, I deserved it. Your remark was a retribution, a striking repet.i.tion of history. I remember once asking Holworthy of '61 who the bully old boy in the beaver hat was, and the bully old boy proved to be Holworthy '32. Thirty years are like a spy-gla.s.s--your views depend upon the end through which you look."

The thirty years melted at once beneath the laugh that followed this introduction, and, as the stranger took a chair among the group, the smoke went up again from Mary Jane and other pipes.

"Then you were in college with my father?" asked Holworthy. "You must have been here just in the time of which we were speaking."

"That is the reason why I took the liberty of joining so abruptly in your conversation," said the graduate. "I want to tell you young men a story. I have never told it before, and would not tell it to any other audience, but I know that it can be fully appreciated by you, and it belongs to your traditions. So I am going to give it to you, if you do not mind being bored for a while by an old grad."

"I don't think any of us will raise any serious objections," said Stoughton, as he paused.