WHERE I MET MYSELF
I can thankfully say that I have been on earth twice, once walking on air, when I graduated from college, and again when I, walking across the College campus, with heart lifted up, tenderly recalling the past, saw the jejune young hopeful that I used to be and sat down with him under a birch, the queen of trees,—many savage nations worship trees,—and debated for an hour with this young blonde, that I met, that I used to be, this question, Which is better for the person graduating, the opportunities which were lined up, reaching out their hands to us, that we had, or the greater academic advantages which the students now enjoy. I could not seem to make him see that the present advantages develop opportunities which are quite as acceptable and fruitful as those that in early days came to us ready-made.
The Old and New
Discussion over, this rather immature youngster, that I met, that I used to be, rising up, I getting up, went down town, or perhaps more properly, he went down town and I went with him. He found a man, I did not so easily recognize, that was Sophomoric at about the same period that he was and I experienced a bad quarter of an hour. The situation had in it an uncomfortable pinch. I became self-conscious. I found myself stammering and protesting the past. We had come upon a tall, sparsely-haired, gray-bearded bent figure, with a smooth shiny head, with furrows in his cheeks and forehead, having evidently, as Webster so well said, come down to us from another generation. I knew that he was of my age but I never dreamed that I was of his. This callow stripling then started to show us around, and unlike Elihu, in the days of Job, who apologized for showing his opinion, seeing he was so young, asserted that once we were led by the clergy, then by lawyers, then by business men, but that now everything pointed to a great revival of the college and its influence in affairs. Then he stood right out apart and began to plaster praise on his own institution. I thought that the young man gestured too much, and I told him so, but he dramatically with open mouthed vehemence of adoration told of her spirit, her fellowship. I tried to use the soft pedal, suggesting that perhaps he had too many exciting topics to discuss thus in public, and that we might later adjourn to a restaurant where we could make an afternoon of it. But he was in high spirits and made his talk like a young man who had the world at an advantage. It was June in his personal history and the top tide of his youthful happiness. That part of his existence was so satisfactory to him that he liked to dwell upon it.
Words Pale and Inadequate
I kept noticing that I was much more interesting to this unripe young sprig, who, I thought, had much to learn, and whose mind seemed like an unweeded garden, than he was even to me, for I had seen him before, while I had for him all the interest that is excited by a relic, something designed by Providence to arrest attention, like those that after a great convulsion of nature came out of their graves and went into the city and appeared unto many.
Then this sappy, beardless representative of the rising generation that I met, that I used to be, with the Aurora-spirit, had the effrontery to ask me how it happened that a man had but one youth and then came age and infirmity, while a college, like a nation, seems under favorable administration to have a re-birth and a renewal of the vitality of youth twice or even thrice. I thought that the excess of his knowledge was too much for him and that he was cross examining me, and so side-stepping the main issue, I stammered out something about the excessive beauty of the classic town with embowered streets and sunny gardens, a sort of a metropolis of education, the very capital of a little republic of letters.
There seemed to be equality in all the competitions for the prizes of student life, with no favors and yet no privilege denied. There was fair play and all good feeling, with no caste of wealth, and no apology for the laggard. Even when whipping up a little I flagged miserably in all the conversation. This lad, in his leading strings, was an incomparable gossip. I felt that he had a kind of genius for picking up news. Anyway he used great liberality in the diffusion of it. He was I thought a charitable reporter. While he had breathed the classic atmosphere of the place, yet all the books he had to read had been dumped there, like a sort of terminal moraine. For scholars today the whole stock would be not only a curiosity, but a relic, being little else than folios on serious subjects. They were books that must be reverenced, as members of the eldest liturgical church would reverence the bones of the blessed martyrs. I inquired, Do you participate in athletics? Yes, by dividing cord wood into stove lengths, toying with the spade, coquetting with big bundles of grain. Golf and basket ball were not in his day introduced into the college curriculum. I thought he was flippant. I felt that comparisons were odious, as some one must suffer when a comparison is instituted. So I said with a good deal of voice, My Friend, hear me, I am older than thou. Your question shows what your diploma cannot cover nor absolve. Nobody thinks that you lack courage. I wish now that you would try and be polite.
"Far Away and Long Ago"
So far from gratifying this wish, in another connection he put it right up to me, that I was looking around with complaisance, as though it was a college of this present size and appearance that I graduated from, but that such was not the historic fact. It did not seem nice in the stripling to move right out in the direction of ocular demonstration, and make particular inquiry of me about the library and chapel and training field and gymnasium that I used in that college that I graduated from. His very impudence made him interesting to me. But I wished he would cultivate more repose and serenity. He had sense enough to know better but his resources in that direction were not immediately available.
As we were looking around I observed that this young tyro was all the time tipping his hat and bowing and scraping as often as a pretty face came within the horizon, and so I knew that there was a way I could divert his remarks from poor me, and that was to ask him outright about the girls. I was astonished that I had not named them to the fledgling before. I was amazed that I was capable of passing them by so long. He said that there was nothing like them, that the air was favorable to their elegance and charm, that there was no place of its size in that state or in any other that could show fairer specimens of the various kinds of feminine attractiveness. But in his talk on the comeliness of the young ladies I noticed that he quoted from an actress who seems to have said that three things are necessary for success on the stage, vivacity, ability and beauty, and I told him that I could not be too thankful that the stage of practical life did not insist on these rigid requirements.
Stepping Stones in Recent History
It was a holiday within a holiday to traverse the town with this lambkin. I came to the right place to squarely meet him. Here they introduce people to themselves. This stripling that I used to be seemed bent on hiring a horse and carriage to show me about. That was his only idea of hospitality. On the best streets in town, he did not have far to go, the livery stables were as convenient to the homes of the people as the school-houses and churches. A very convenient location was near the public library. His fear was that all the horses would be already taken as there were a good many visitors in town. If the high steppers were out we would find their keepers in more or less rickety arm chairs tilted back against the side of a wall awaiting their return.
There are two panels placed side by side in the old palace at Potsdam. The left contains Napoleon refusing the queenly Louise favorable terms of peace at Tilsit, the right contains the nephew of that Napoleon receiving notoriously hard terms from the son of the beautiful Louise at Sedan. Entire shifts in history are vividly seen in companion pictures. On the left is a picture of the horse with the caption, The Greatest Pleasure-giver to Man. On the right is the picture of a Ford. All that a man hath will he give in exchange for an automobile. The left exhibits what God made, the right, what man made. No one living in the city will look at a horse. He now shows that he feels that he is something left over. Survey the specimens that remain, low-headed, tail-switching, creatures, with an indolent air, shuffling gait, abject, pitiable objects with mis-shapen, stumbling legs in front. No one doubts but that it takes all day to go anywhere and return with these antique, stunted, gaunt-ribbed, swollen-jointed, knock-kneed, piteous-eyed creatures that now survive. Knowing the pleasure that young people once had in horses and ponies, it seems odd to find that the rising generation has almost forgotten their existence.
