Harvard Stories.
by Waldron Kintzing Post.
PREFACE.
I cannot expect any one to be interested in these stories who is not interested in the scenes where they are laid. To you, my cla.s.s-mates and contemporaries, I need make no apology. We always gave each other freely the valuable gift Burns asked of the G.o.ds; my shortcomings I shall learn soon enough--especially if I have written anything false or pretentious.
But I feel sure that anything about Harvard, however imperfect, will not be unwelcome to you--provided it is true. We are scattered far apart and cannot often meet to talk over old times; perhaps these recollections may partially serve at times, in the place of an old chum, to bring back the days when we were all together. They are only yarns and pictures of us boys; but you will think no worse of them for that. The higher traditions of the old place I have dared in only one instance to approach.
"The great and the good in their beautiful prime Through those precincts have musingly trod,"
and for that we reverence, we glory in those precincts; is it profanation to add that we also love them, because we ourselves have rollicked through them, with Jack, Ned, and d.i.c.k?
One thing, however, I must say to you before you begin to read. You will quickly see that I can claim little originality in the following stories. They are almost all founded on actual occurrences of either our own college life, or that of undergrads. before us. Some of the incidents came under my own notice, others happened to men of whom I do not even know the names, but who, I trust, will forgive my use of their experiences. But let no one imagine that, in any of the characters, he recognizes either himself or any one else. No one of us enters into these pages,--though I have tried to draw parts of all.
Among you also, my older brothers, I hope to find readers. There have been changes and developments since you were in college; many old inst.i.tutions have pa.s.sed away and new ones taken their places; there may be features in these sketches that you will not recognize; but in the main, Alma Mater is still the same. Holworthy, with all its memories, still gazes contemplatively down the green leafy Yard; the same old buildings flank it on either hand. The white walls of University still look across to the aged pair, Ma.s.sachusetts and her partner, the head of the family. The latter still rears his sonorous crest (in spite of all your historic efforts to silence it); and is it not Jones who rings the bell? The river is there, the elms are there; above all, the undergraduate is there, and oh, reverend grads., from the tales I have heard ye tell, I opine that the undergraduate is still the same. If I can recall him to you in these sketches, if I can make one of you say, "That is like old times," I shall have done all that I hope.
HARVARD STORIES.
JACK RATTLETON GOES TO SPRINGFIELD AND BACK.
The shadow of Ma.s.sachusetts had reached across the Yard almost to University Hall, which fact, ye who are ignorant of Harvard topography, means that it was late in the afternoon. Hollis Holworthy was stretched in his window seat with a book, of which, however, he was not reading much, as his room was just then in use as a temporary club. It was the month of November, but Holworthy kept the window open to let out the volume of pipe smoke kindled by his gregarious friends. He and his chum Rivers had an attractive room on the Yard, up only one flight of stairs, and these little gatherings were apt to come upon them frequently. The eleven was going to Springfield next day, so the foot-ball practice on that afternoon had been short, and several of Holworthy"s "gang" who had been watching it had dropped into the room on their way back from Jarvis Field. They were a typical set of Harvard men, hailing from various and distant parts of the nation, and of various characters; yet all very much alike in certain respects, after three years together around that Yard. Rivers, part owner of the room, who had been playing foot-ball, came in after the rest and announced joyfully that he had been definitely a.s.signed to the position of guard on the team.
"Sorry to hear it," growled Billy Bender, who was captain of the University crew. "You are sure to get a bad knee or something, and be spoiled for the boat. I lost two good men by foot-ball last year. If I had my way I wouldn"t let any of the rowing men play the confounded game."
"If you had your way, you old crank," said Holworthy, "you"d strap every man in college fast to an oar. Then you would stand over them and crack a whip and have a bully time. You would have made a first-rate galley master."
"I am tired to death of talking and hearing nothing but the game,"
declared Hudson. "I move to lay it on the table. There is nothing new to guess about it. I don"t see how we can lose, and you don"t see how we can lose, and no one sees how we can lose."
"That is apt to be the case at just this time," remarked Holworthy. "Two days from now our vision may be woefully cleared up."
"Shut up, you old croaker," cried Burleigh, throwing a sofa cushion at his host. The cushion knocked the book from Holworthy"s hand and out of the window.
"You go down and get that now, you pretty, playful child," said Holworthy, indignantly. "Oh, thank you, yes, throw it up, please," he continued to someone outside. "Much obliged. No, Rattleton isn"t here. I believe he went out for a ride."
"Who"s that?" asked Randolph, as Holworthy drew in his head, having caught the book.
"Varnum, the c.o.xswain."
"What the deuce does he want with Jack Rattleton?" queried Burleigh.
"I am sure I don"t know," answered Holworthy, "but he and Jack are great pals, you know."
"What!" exclaimed Bender, who was not one of Rattleton"s intimate friends, "Varnum and Rattleton? That is the funniest combination I ever heard of. The quietest, hardest worker in college, and the worst loafer."
"You are wrong there," said Holworthy. "If you knew Jack as well as the rest of us do, you"d know he was the best loafer in college."
"I believe that good-for-nothing chap would get up in the middle of the night to be hanged for any one of us," added Rivers.
"I am not sure about the middle of the night," said Hudson, doubtfully.
"At any rate if he was to be hanged for it himself, he wouldn"t get up before nine in the morning."
"How did he happen to get thick with Varnum?" inquired Bender.
"First they sat next to each other in some course," explained Holworthy.
"One day Jack was out in his dog-cart, I believe, and met Varnum walking and picked him up. Jack was a Soph.o.m.ore then, but a pretty good sort of a Soph., and I think he was rather surprised and interested at discovering that there were men in this University outside of his own little set, and of a new kind."
"That fellow Varnum is a rattler," said Rivers. "Hardly anyone knows him except the crew men, and, I suppose, some of his Y. M. C. A. pals. He has been making an awfully sandy fight of it, I can tell you, working his way all through college. Why, do you know, that chap came up with just two dollars and forty cents in his pocket!"
"There are lots of men doing just that sort of thing," declared Ernest Gray, a sympathetic, enthusiastic little man. "Some day we"ll be proud of having been in the same cla.s.s with some of those fellows. It"s a shame that we don"t know all about all of "em."
"Oh, well," said Burleigh, consolingly, "we can always let people think we were hand in glove with the great men. "Know him? Why he was a cla.s.smate of mine"--all that sort of thing, you know."
"Yes," said d.i.c.k Stoughton, "it"s a comfort to reflect that we can always blow about them without taking the trouble to hunt them up now."
"Awful nuisance to chase up incipient and impecunious merit," added Hudson.
"I suppose that"s why you helped Jack Rattleton take care of Varnum when he was sick. Why do you affected fools always want to cover up the precious little good you have got in you?" demanded Gray, in a mixture of sorrow and anger.
"One reason why they do it," said Holworthy, "is to make you flare up, you little powder keg. Haven"t you got used to it yet, after three years?"
"Varnum is a first-rate c.o.xswain, anyway," said Captain Bender, coming down to his regular estimate of worth. "I ran across him last year when I was looking for a light man to steer. It"s lucky I did, too; for there was a great dearth of rudder-men. This little firebrand Gray would have wrecked the "Varsity crew to a certainty. I watched him in the cla.s.s races last year--he came near grabbing stroke"s oar and trying to pull himself. He nearly killed his men yelling at them in the first mile."
"I should think he did," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Randolph, who had rowed in his cla.s.s crew.
"Well, we won, anyway," said Gray in defence.
"You bet we did," said Randolph, "and we tossed Gray in a blanket during the celebration just to show there was no hard feeling, and give him all the honors due to any c.o.xswain."
"I hope Varnum won"t be too busy to steer this year," said Bender. "He has a lot to do always."
While this conversation was going on in Holworthy"s room, the subject of it, the man who "had a lot to do," continued on his way through the Yard. Varnum"s financial struggles had not been exaggerated by Rivers.
He had come up to college with almost nothing, except the clothes that he wore and a strong heart under them. He had received help at starting from the loan fund; by means of one of the numerous scholarships, tutoring, and careful economy he had succeeded in clearing his debt by his senior year. In the summer vacations he had supported himself and laid up a little money, by all sorts of employments, from that of a clerk in a country store to that of foremast hand on a yacht. Though he worked at his studies hard enough to keep the necessary scholarship, he was not a very high stand man. He was interested in some of the mission work in Boston, and gave a great deal of time to "slumming."
During the last year, too, he had made a little spare time for steering the University crew; for he found this to be a good relaxation from his work, and, besides, it brought him in contact with men whom he would not otherwise have met, many of them well worth knowing. He was not the sort of man to make friends easily, in fact he had no really intimate companion; but the man to whom he had been most attracted was one of entirely opposite character, training, and a.s.sociates. His friendship with Jack Rattleton, which had been the subject of the conversation in Holworthy"s room, was not an uncommon case of the attraction of extremes. Rattleton"s weak nature was easily drawn to a strong one, and on the other hand "Lazy Jack Rat" was a source of amus.e.m.e.nt and interest to Varnum.
The latter once in telling Rattleton about himself had said laughingly, "My father was very much opposed to my trying to work through Harvard.
He had terrible ideas about the old place; said it was a rich man"s college, and if I got through it at all I should learn nothing but extravagance and evil. I have rather changed his notions now, I think; but, Rattleton, I should be afraid to show you to him, as my nearest approach to a friend."