The Diary of a Freshman

I 've got so that I don't have to look at the printed schedule any more to see the days and hours of my various lectures. I just go to the right one when the bell rings as if I had been doing it all my life. In fact the college world has settled down to a routine of lectures and recitations, pleasantly broken by football games on Wednesdays and Saturdays, dining in town now and then, and the theatre afterward. Come to think of it, I 've been to the theatre rather oftener than "now and then." At home there are only two; and the things we have there – except once in a long time – are pretty fierce. But here there are about seven or eight big ones, and all sorts of continuous performance places, dime museums and "nickelodeons" besides. You simply have to go pretty often or you miss something good that everybody 's talking about. Berrisford goes every night.

I know now what Mr. Duggie meant when he said my allowance would not be big enough. He said it was generous; there, however, I disagree with him. I 'm not in the leastextravagant, but papa does n't seem to appreciate how many unexpected things happen that cost money. There was my new overcoat, for instance. Berrisford was having one made, and I realized when I saw him trying it on at the tailor's (it's a great, soft, loose thing; the kind all the fellows are wearing now) that my old one wouldn't do at all. In fact I had n't cared to put mine on, although the wind has been pretty sharp once or twice on the way home from town late at night. The tailor said that now was the time to get a coat like Berrisford's, as it would be much more expensive later in the season; so I ordered one. In a certain way it was real economy to do so. Then, I 've gone to town in the afternoon several times with some of the fellows who are at our table and stayed at the last moment to dinner and the theatre. I did n't have enough money with me to do all this and was n't going to at first; but I found that the others did n't, either, and expected to charge their dinners at the hotel. You can even charge theatre tickets if you get them from an agent and pay fifty cents more. It's very convenient. I bought a few pictures for my study – it looked so bare (Berrisford has all sorts of queer, interesting prints and embroideries on his walls that he brought back from abroad); and I simply had to get some more chairs. For I had only one (the whirligig in front of the desk doesn't count; it's too uncomfortable), which made it embarrassing when four or five men dropped in. Then I had a dozen shirts made at a place just off Tremont Street. The shirts mamma got me at home are very nice and all that; but they're not the kind the fellows are wearing here. Everybody has colored ones – pale pinks and blues, or white with a little stripe of something running through them. Mine were all white. I really did n't need more than six new ones, I suppose, but the man said they were cheaper by the dozen. He showed me some really beautiful neckties that had arrived that day from London. Against the materials I had picked out for the shirts they were stunning, and as they weren't dear – considering the duty, the originality of the designs and the heavy silks they were made of – I let him send me five of them. There were the prettiest old pair of brass andirons and a fender in the window of an "antique" shop on Beacon Street that I used to stop and covet whenever I went into town. They were just the things for my fireplace, which looked rather shabby – although comfortable. I didn't think I could afford them at first; but one day when I happened to be passing everything in the window was for sale at a discount of ten per cent. The man was very kind and obliging and let me charge them.

They let you do that at all the shops, it seems; but I do think they might have a little more decency about sending in their bills. The first of November is three days off – and yet I 've heard from every cent I 've spent. I don't quite know what to do about it, as my allowance – even when it comes – won't be nearly enough to pay for everything; and of course I 'll have to keep some of it for my board and washing and schoolbooks, and all the other little expenses one can't very well steer clear of. Before going to bed the last two nights I 've spent an hour or more in itemizing everything and adding it all up, and then checking off the people who have to be paid immediately, the ones who could wait a short time, and the ones about whom there is no particular hurry. This makes the financial outlook a little more possible, but not much. And yet Duggie had the nerve to say he thought my allowance generous!

Another matter that I try not to think of is the fact that very soon we are to be given what is called "hour examinations" in all our studies. I never imagined they would come so – well, abruptly; when we began it seemed as if we would take much longer to learn enough to be examined in. To tell the truth – with the exception of my English course – I haven't become deeply interested as yet in the lectures. After the first few times I gave up trying to take notes; everything I wrote seemed so unimportant. And I haven't done any of the reading, either. They expect you to do a lot of reading at home or in the library, and hold you responsible for it in the examination. The man Berrisford and I have in history is a dreamy old thing who goes into thoughtful trances every now and then in the middle of a sentence, while three hundred and fifty stylographic pens hang in mid-air waiting to harpoon the next word. One day, after telling us to read a certain work on the feudal system, he added in a kind of vague, helpless way, —

"We haven't the book in the library and I believe it is out of print, so I don't think you will be able to buy it anywhere; but it's a singularly perfect exposition of the subject and I strongly advise you all to read it." They say he knows more about fen-drainage in the thirteenth century than any other living person except one dreadfully old man in Germany who 's beginning to forget about it.

We were instructed to make ourselves familiar with another work that is in the library, and told that without a knowledge of it we could not expect to accomplish much in the examination.

"I don't suppose many of you will read every word of it," the old man said, "although it will do you a vast amount of good if you do." I privately made up my mind to plough through the whole thing – even if it were in two volumes; I thought it would please him. So, the other day as it was raining and there was n't anything in particular going on, Berrisford suggested that we run over to the library and glance through the book. We'd never been in the library before and had to ask one of the pages at the delivery desk where the history alcove was. He couldn't attend to us at first, as there was an angry old gentleman with a very red face prancing up and down in front of the desk exclaiming: "It's an outrage – an outrage! I shall certainly speak to the President about this before the sun goes down upon my wrath!" Several other pages were cowering behind the desk, and a terrified librarian was murmuring: "I can have it here the first thing in the morning, sir – the first thing; can you wait that long?"

"But I want it now!" the old gentleman declared; "I shall not wait until the first thing in the morning. You 're preposterous. It's an outrage!" He was so emphatic and peevish that some of the students in the big reading-room pushed open the swinging doors and stuck their heads in to see what the trouble was.

Well, Berrisford and I found out from the page that he is the greatest philosopher of modern times. He had come in to get a book that hadn't been asked for in fourteen years, and had just learned that it had been carted away to the crypt of Appleton Chapel to make room for something that seemed to be rather more universal in its appeal.

The page took us to the alcove we were looking for, and Berrisford found our book almost immediately. My back was toward him when he discovered it, and I turned around only because of his unusual and prolonged silence. He was standing petrified in front of eighteen fat, dog-eared volumes, with his big eyes blinking like an owl confronted by a dazzling light.

"Is that it?" I inquired after a moment in a cold, hushed voice. By way of answer he merely rolled his eyes and swallowed as if his throat were dry.

"It's a masterly little thing – isn't it?" he at length managed to say. Then without further comment we removed the volumes from the shelf and piled them on a table in the alcove. They almost covered it. When we had finished, Berrisford, with a grim look about his under lip, opened one of them and began to read. I did the same. It was just three o'clock. We read for an hour without speaking or looking at each other, and at the end of that time Berrisford took a pencil from his pocket and began to make calculations on the back of a letter. At last he looked up as if to demand my attention.

"I have read this book conscientiously – footnotes and everything – for an hour," he said; he was deliberate and there was an air of finality in his tone. "I find that I have completed five pages – the meaning of which has since escaped me. Now, as there are four hundred pages in this volume and as many, presumably, in every one of the other seventeen, it will take me one thousand four hundred and forty hours – sixty days, or two months – to 'familiarize' myself with the whole set. If we sit here night and day for the next two months without taking a second off to eat, sleep, or bathe, we shall have glanced through this superficial pamphlet and pleased the old man."

"I think it has stopped raining," I replied.

We have a new inmate at our house. I woke up one morning hearing such a strange, wild, sad little song coming from my study. At first I thought I must have dreamed it, but even after I sat up in bed and knew I was awake, the sound continued. It was the queerest, most barbaric little refrain, all in a minor key with words I could n't make out, and was the sort of thing one could imagine a "native" of some kind crooning to himself in the middle of a rice-field. I listened to it awhile – almost afraid to go in; but when it began to grow louder, and then was interrupted from time to time by the most horrible gurgling and strangling noises, I jumped up and opened my study door. At the same moment Berrisford and Mrs. Chester appeared at the other door. In the middle of the room was a bristling brown thing with pointed ears and muzzle and shrewd little eyes. It had absurdly big feet and looked like a baby wolf. Something that seemed to be a piece of leather was dangling from its mouth. Berrisford threw himself on the floor, exclaiming: "My darling – my Saga – what is it – speak to me!" and pulled gently at the piece of leather. The brute rolled his eyes, gagged a little, and let him have it. "Why, it's the thumb of a glove," Berrisford said, holding up his prize for us to look at, "and he dess tould n't eat it 'tause it had a nassy tin button wivetted on uzzer end, so he tould n't," he added to the animal.

"That doesn't seem to have stood in the way of his eating the other one," I remarked coldly, for there was enough of the chewed thing in Berrisford's hand to enable me to identify the remains of a pair of very expensive gloves I had bought two days before.

"Heavens! – do you suppose he really did?" Berrisford asked in great alarm. "Do you think it will hurt him?"

"Of course he ate it. I don't see it anywhere, and they were both together on that chair. I hope it will hurt him," I said.

"It is n't like you, Wood, to talk that way about a poor, lonely, foreign thing who 's never been in a house before in all his life," Berrisford muttered resentfully.

"Well, he certainly do make the most outlandish sounds," Mrs. Chester interposed.

"It isn't outlandish – it's Icelandic," Berrisford replied. "He came all the way from Reikiavik on a Gloucester fishing-smack. I bought him at Gloucester yesterday for a dollar – didn't I, my booful Saga; ess he did. And he dess chewed all de checks often de trunks in dat nassy old baggage car on de way up – didn't he, darlin'? And dat horrid baggage man was dess crazy 'tause he did n't know where to put off any baggage and had to delay de twain like evvysing." Berrisford became quite incoherent after this, so I returned to my bedroom and slammed the door.

I don't think it's right for any one man to inflict a whole community with a beast like Saga, and I 've told Berrisford so several times; but he always says: "You seem to forget that I suffer as much, if not more, than any one. Do you ever hear mecomplain when he wallows in the mud and then snuggles up in my bed? Was there any outcry when he ate my gloves and my patent leather shoes and my Russia leather notebook with hundreds of exhaustive, priceless notes on the first part of 'Paradise Lost'? Did I make a violent scene – the way you and Duggie do every day – when I gave the tea for my sister and found him just before the people came – behind the bathtub in a state of coma from having eaten thirty-six perfectly delicious lettuce sandwiches? You might at least admit that you think he 's just as distinguished and quaint-looking as he can be; because, of course, you do think so. You know you love him to follow you through the Square – with everybody turning to look – you know you do. Does n't he, mon tou-tou, mon bébé, mon chien de race?"

One of the fellows at the table invited us to dine at his house in town last Sunday evening. Berrisford was to meet me at a hotel in the Back Bay at a quarter past seven and we were to go together. I took a long walk that afternoon, and the air was so delicious and the autumn foliage in the country so beautiful that I didn't realize how late it was until I looked at a clock in a jeweller's window on the way back. I hurried to my room to dress, and as I opened the front door my heart suddenly sank – for upstairs I heard Saga chanting his terrible little refrain. We have all come to dread that sound at our house, for it invariably means the loss of a cherished object to somebody. Berrisford calls it the "Icelandic Hunger and Death Motif." I ran upstairs and found Saga eating one of the tails of my dress-coat which I had hung over the back of a chair in my study to get the creases out. He had apparently first torn it off, then divided it into small pieces, and was consuming them one by one as I came in. I was already late for dinner, and as it was Sunday evening there was no one in town from whom I could borrow another coat. For a moment I could n't decide whether to sit down and cry or to commit Sagacide.