The Diary of a Freshman

"Would you mind telling me, please, which of these gentlemen is the President of the college?" His voice was so deferential, and there was something so eager and earnest and pure in his expression, I really believe that for a moment the instructor thought he was just a nice fool, and was on the point of kindly explaining what the statues represented. He didn't, though, for one of the fellows in the background tittered and ran out of the room, and the little man leaned back in his chair, examined Berrisford very deliberately, and then remarked in his queer, sarcastic way, —

"'Sir, thy wit is as quick as the greyhound's mouth; but it speeds too fast – 'twill tire!'"

As soon as we got outside, Berrisford said, —

"What a disappointing little creature! I had an idea he would be very angry, and he was n't at all."

"Did you want him to be angry?" I asked, rather surprised.

"Why, yes, of course," he answered. "It's so interesting to watch them; there are so many different ways of losing a temper. Sea-captains are the most satisfactory, I think. I discovered that last spring on my way to Europe. I go up to them when they 're very busy – just getting out of a harbor or something – and exclaim, 'Oh, I say, Captain – shall I steer?' You can't imagine how furious it makes them." I said I thought I could, and we parted. He seems to have a great many friends; he has n't spent a night at home since college opened – a week ago.

Well, I went to see my adviser, who helped me select my studies for the year. That is to say, he hypnotized me into taking a lot of things I really don't see why I should know. However, as I don't seem to have what he called "a startling predilection" for anything (my entrance exams. divulged this), and as he was a pleasant young man who invited me to dinner next week, I allowed myself to be influenced by him. He gave me a lot of little pamphlets with the courses and the hours at which they come marked in red ink. I 've forgotten what some of them are, as we have n't had any real lectures yet – just rigmaroles about what books to buy.

For the first few days the whole college and all the streets and buildings near it seemed to be in such confusion that I couldn't walk a block without feeling terribly excited – the way I used to feel when I was a kid, and we were all going to the State fair or the circus, and mamma would insist on our eating luncheon although we did n't want a thing. Along the sidewalk in the Square there was a barricade of trunks so high that you could n't see over it, to say nothing of huge mounds of travelling bags and dress-suit cases and queer-shaped leather things, with banjos and mandolins and guitars and golf-sticks in them. And from morning till night there were always at least four or five fellows telling the expressmen that it was "perfectly absurd;" that they simply had to have their trunks immediately; that the service was abominable, and that the whole place was a hundred and fifty years behind the times, anyhow. All of which the expressmen may or may not have agreed with, for they hardly ever answered back, and just went on digging steamer trunks and hatboxes out of the ruins and slamming them into wagons to make room for the loads that kept arriving every little while from town.

It was very interesting to watch so many fellows of my own age or a little older hurrying about or standing in groups talking and laughing and looking glad to be here. But at the same time it was sort of unsatisfactory and hopeless. I didn't like to stay in my room much of the time, as I had a feeling (I have n't got over it yet) that if I did I might miss something. Yet, when I went out, I had so few things to do that, unless I took a walk – which of course leads one away from the excitement – there was n't much point in my being around at all. No one stuck his head from an upper window in the Yard and called out, "Ay-y-y-y-y, Tommy Wood, come up here," when I passed by; and no one slipped up behind me, and put his hands over my eyes and waited for me to guess who it was, because, with the exception of Mr. Duggie and Dick Benton and Berrisford, I didn't know a soul. I often saw Mr. Duggie in the Square, but as he was always with a crowd or striding along in a great hurry, and being stopped every few feet by some one who asked him questions that made him laugh and run away, I got a chance to speak to him only once. He nodded his head and smiled in a professional kind of way without in the least remembering who I was. Dick Benton I did n't have any hesitation in going right up to, as at home I had heard him solemnly promise mamma that he would look out for me and keep his eye on me. Of course I don't expect him to do this; but I confess I did feel sort of disappointed for a minute when he said: "Well, Wood" (he calls me Tommy at home), "when did you arrive? Getting settled? Got your courses picked out? Awful bore, is n't it? Well, here 's my car – going to meet some people in town and am late now. How 's Mrs. Wood? So glad. Hunt me up when you 're settled. So long." He swung himself on a passing car and I turned away and stared at a shop window. I must have stood there several minutes before I realized it was a bakery, and that there was absolutely nothing to look at behind the glass except three loaves of bread and a dish of imitation ice cream that had n't been dusted for weeks (it has just this minute occurred to me for the first time that I must have been homesick that day and the next. Isn't it queer, I didn't know what was the matter with me?) I bet I can describe every article in every shop window in the Square; for there was nothing for me to do the first few days except to walk up and down and pretend I was going somewhere. Of course I tried to get the books the various instructors told me about; but every time I asked for them at the three bookstores I found either that the last one had just been sold or that they had n't arrived yet.

Mrs. Muldooney's tables were unfortunately full when I applied and I have been eating around at the most ridiculous places – ice-cream parlors, and dairy restaurants where you sit on high stools and grab things, because you can't get over the feeling that a conductor will stick his head in the door pretty soon and say, "All Abo-urrrd."

On Bloody Monday night the Freshmen reception took place. I scarcely know how to touch on that event, as my part in it (or rather in what followed) was so unexpectedly prominent and terrible.

The old college men at home had let drop all kinds of mysterious hints about Bloody Monday. In their time, apparently, it was the custom for the upper-classmen to send grewsome notices to the Freshmen, telling them what would happen if they did n't have a punch in their rooms on that occasion. These warnings were written in blood and began and ended with a skull and cross-bones. Then in the evening there was a rush in the Yard between the Freshmen and Sophomores. The old graduates knew perfectly well that the punches had been given up long ago; but I don't think they liked to admit it even to themselves – although they do groan a good deal about college days not being what they used to be. From what they said I could not tell whether there really were such things nowadays or not, so I wrote a little note to Mr. Duggie and left it on the stairs, where the postman puts our letters, asking him what to do if I got a notice, and if there was going to be any rush. He answered: "The custom, I am sorry to say, is ausgespielt; it must have been great sport. As for the rush – theoretically we don't have it. By the way, my name (Mrs. Chester to the contrary notwithstanding) is not Mr. Duggie, but Douglas Sherwin."

At that time I did n't know what the second sentence of his note meant, but I understand now; it dawned on me during the speeches at the reception. In some mysterious, indescribable way it was communicated to me as I sat there in the crowded theatre. Whether it came to me most from my classmates – packed into the pew-like seats and standing in rows against the wall – or from the professors who spoke on the stage, I can't say. I simply became aware of the fact that something was going to happen – something that wasn't on the program. It was in the air – it made me restless, and I could n't help thinking of that sultry afternoon out West when the seven pack-horses stampeded just as we were about to start; I knew the little devils were going to do something and they knew it, too, for they all began to buck at the same instant. But I hadn't said anything about it – and neither had they.

It was just like that while the speeches of welcome were being made in Sanders Theatre. They were fine speeches; they really did make you welcome and part of it all – in a way you hadn't thought of before. You couldn't help being proud that you "belonged," and after the President had spoken and the fellow next to me yelled in my ear (he had to yell, the cheering was so loud), "He 's a great man, all right," I felt all over that he was a great man – everybody did. But nevertheless, there was something else tingling through the noise and excitement that we felt just as much. The professors themselves felt it. The elaborate way in which every one of them ignored the subject of Bloody Monday was almost pathetic. The Dean in his speech ignored it so radiantly that the audience actually laughed. Theoretically as (Douglas Sherwin had said) there would be no rush; the speeches made one quite ashamed to think of such a thing.

I was n't there when it started, for after the speeches I went with the crowd into the great dining-hall to be received. It would be nice, I thought, to be introduced to the distinguished men and to get to know some of my classmates. Every one was trying to move toward the further left-hand corner of the vast place, and I soon found myself hemmed in and carried – oh, so slowly – along with the tide. It was very hot, and as I am not particularly tall I would more than once have given a good deal to be out in the fresh night air; but the thought of shaking hands with the President and the gentleman who invented plane geometry (I did n't know whether he had anything to do with solid or not; I never studied it), and another gentleman (a humorist) who wrote a book and called it The Easy Greek Reader, cheered me up. I knew, too, that mamma would be glad to hear I had talked to these men. But when, after at least half an hour of waiting and pushing, I reached the corner of the room, I discovered that it was n't the distinguished men we had all along been gasping and struggling for; it was the ice cream. The distinguished men were lined up away across the room all alone; if it had been rumored beforehand that they were indisposed with the plague, they could n't have been much more detached. Every now and then some young fellow – probably an upperclassman – would snatch a Freshman from the throng, say something in his ear (it looked as if he were murmuring, "They 're all perfectly harmless – only you mustn't prod them or throw things in the cage)", and march him up to be introduced. I watched these proceedings awhile, and then, as the ice cream in the meanwhile had given out, I left and started to walk to my room by way of the Yard.

A sound of confused cheering reached me the moment I got outside, and when I passed through the gate I could see down the long quadrangle what seemed to be a battle of will-o'-the-wisps – a swaying, shifting, meeting, parting, revolving myriad of flickering lights and lurid faces. I ran until I reached the edge of the crowd, and stood for a minute or two staring and listening. The fellows were surging wildly up and down and across the Yard with torches in their hands, cheering and singing. Whenever enough men got together, they would lower their torches and charge the whole length of the Yard – amid a howl of resentment – like a company of lancers. Then by the time they had turned to plough back again, another group would have formed, which usually met the first one half-way with a terrible roar and a clash of tin torches, – a drench of kerosene and a burst of flame. Two German bands that never stopped playing the "Blue Danube" and the "Washington Post" were huddled at either end of the Yard. Now and then a sort of tidal wave of lights and faces and frantic hands would swell rapidly toward them, lap them up, engulf them, and then go swirling back again to the middle. But they never stopped playing, – even when they became hopelessly scattered and horribly reunited.

I saw two policemen fluttering distractedly on the brink – pictures of conscious inefficiency – and felt sorry for the poor things. As I was standing there wondering where I could get a torch, a slim middle-aged man with an iron-gray beard bustled up to them, and the three held a sort of hurried consultation. It ended by the iron-gray man's (he was a professor) suddenly leaving them and mounting the steps of University Hall. His expression as he turned to face the crowd was the kind that tries its best to be persuasive and popular and tremendously resolute all at once, but only succeeds in being wan and furtive. He filled his lungs and began to talk, I suppose, as loud as he could; yet all I heard was an occasional despairing "Now, fellows … It seems to me, fellows … Don't you think it would be better…"

No one paid any attention to him, however, and in an incredibly short time the crowd had crushed itself as far away as it could into the quadrangle's lower end. I made my way over there, and as I was pushing into the thick of things a man next to me exclaimed to no one in particular: "They've sent for Duggie Sherwin, the captain of the team, as a last resort – he's going to say something from the porch of Matthews." I saw I never could get near Matthews by trying to forge straight ahead; so, as I wanted to hear Mr. Duggie (I hadn't known until that minute what he was), I extricated myself and ran around the edge of the crowd. Even then I wasn't very near, and, although I could n't hear a word he said, I could see him – standing on a chair – towering above everybody and smiling a little as if he enjoyed it. I didn't know what he said; to tell the truth, I don't think anybody did, except perhaps the men right around him. Yet in about a minute two or three fellows began to yell, "All over," "The stuff is off," and "Now will you be good;" and the crowd fell back a little, attempting to spread out. The spell somehow was broken; for owing to Mr. Duggie's wonderful influence we would have dispersed quietly if it had n't been for that flighty idiot, Berrisford.

I had picked up a torch that some one had thrown away and was moving along with it when Berrisford dashed up to me with something round – about the size of a football – wrapped in a newspaper. One of the sleeves of his coat was gone; he was breathing hard and seemed to be fearfully excited.

"It's your turn now," he gasped, and thrust the parcel into my hand.

"Why – what is it? – what are we going to do? The rush is over," I answered, for I did n't understand.

"Of course the rush is over – stupid," he said hurriedly. "We're playing a game now – 'The King's Helmet' – and you 're It. I was It – but I'm not any more; you are now. Hurry up, for Heaven's sake, or they'll get it. Here they come – run for all you 're worth; it may mean a lot for the class." This last and the fact of my catching sight just then of some men running toward me decided me. I clutched the parcel to my side and scudded down the Yard. Every one fell back to let me pass, and my progress was followed by screams of delight. I never had attracted so much attention before, and from the things that were shouted at me as I flew along I knew I was doing well. At the end of the Yard I ran smash into a building, but although somewhat dazed I managed to hang on to the parcel, turn, and look back. The only person pursuing me, apparently, was a bareheaded policeman – and he was alarmingly near. But I managed to pass him, and on my return trip I noticed that I received even a greater ovation than the one the fellows had given me at first. I did n't know what it all meant, and I was nearly dead, and suddenly tripped, staggered, and fell into the arms of a second policeman who handled me very roughly and seized Berrisford's package. It contained the helmet of the bareheaded one, who arrived in a moment exceedingly exhausted, but able, nevertheless, to shake his fist in my face.

The parade to the police station must have been several blocks long – I heard about it afterward. First there was me with an escort of two officers, all the muckers in Cambridge, and the Freshman class in a body, who started a collection on the way over with which to bail me out. Then there was a German band playing the "Blue Danube," and after that "a vast concourse" (as Berrisford called it) of Sophomores, upperclassmen, and law students with another German band playing the "Washington Post" in their midst.

I was almost paralyzed with fright, and my head ached dreadfully from the blow I had given it against the building; but although I did n't show it I could n't help feeling furious at Berrisford. He stayed right behind me on the way over and kept saying at intervals, —

"It's all right, old man. Don't worry – there's no use worrying; just leave everything to me."