HOW HE STAYED IN COLLEGE
"Business is the systematic supplying of wants. When all visible wants are supplied, you must simply create new wants to satisfy. Patient willingness to do whatever turns up will only bring success when things turn up. Under the conditions of modern competition things seldom turn up of themselves."
Mr. Lee, Lucky's father, had said this one evening after dinner during the happy holidays; and Will remembered every word of it, not only because he had great respect for successful Mr. Lee's opinions, but because what he said seemed to apply to his own quandary. Mr. Lee seemed to have taken a fancy to Young, and talked to him frequently. Mrs. Lee liked him, too. She seemed to consider his preferring to eat his peas with a spoon a very small matter (though Will himself blushed scarlet when he discovered his mistake). She said she was glad her son had chosen for one of his intimate friends a young man with so much maturity and character—this she said to Young himself—"And I know you will look after him," she said; "he's such an impressionable boy, but he admires you so much that you can influence him any way you desire."
The Deacon blushed and said he would try, but what Lucky's father said made more impression upon him at the time.
"When all the wants are satisfied you must simply create new wants." It seemed to Young that this ought to apply to the little world of college quite as well as to the big world of commerce of which Mr. Lee spoke. Every day as he walked to and from recitations through the campus, now muddy and monotonous after a wet snow, Young tried and tried and tried to think of some new want to satisfy.
Lucky said he was trying, too; but generally he forgot as soon as anyone yelled, "Hold up, there, Lucky!" and joined him on the walk. It did not mean so much to him.
The Deacon was walking past Old Jimmy, the peanut-and fruit-vender, when the idea came to him. He suddenly stopped short, slapped his thigh, and said: "I've got it! I've got it!" That night he unfolded his scheme to Lucky, whose eyes grew big.
"Deacon, you're a dandy! But, say, are you sure it'll work?"
"Sure? No, I'm not sure it'll make much. But I'm sure I'll have to leave college, anyway, if I don't do something, and——"
"But why go to all the expense of the posters?"
"To advertise it, get 'em talking, create the want! That's the way to do business. And just now everything is dull in the college world—no athletics to distract attention."
"Well, I'll help you stick 'em up. It'll remind us of pasting procs, eh?"
One morning, a few days later, the whole University, on its way to and from recitations and lectures, saw a poster on the Bulletin Elm. It had two black letters on it, C. C. There was nothing else there. They glanced at it, wondered what it meant, and passed on.
The next day a new one was there in letters twice as big, C. C. Again the college wondered what it meant; but this time some of them did not pass on until they had asked someone else, "What's that thing for?" "What's the meaning of that?" No one could answer.
A snow-storm washed it off during the afternoon.
A fresh one was put up the next morning.
"Here's that queer poster again," said the passers-by. "What's it for, anyway?"
"Nobody seems to know."
The next morning the same letters on larger-sized paper were found not only on the bulletin-board, but tacked up on all the available trees of the campus, and in the town on all the billboards, old barrels, tumble-down sheds, and stalled wagons. On the way to recitation, or lectures, every one saw C. C. half a dozen times. They saw it on the tree-boxes along the street. When they took walks they saw it on old barns down toward Kingston.
Now at Princeton, what there is of a town is little more than a setting for the University. There are no outside distractions, such as theatres and the like, as at most large institutions of learning. The campus life is the only life, and the college students are dependent upon the college world for all their amusements and between-hour interests. Everyone keeps in touch with everything that is going on.
So when this poster with its brief legend continued to appear and reappear every day, and no one deciphered its meaning, the college began to get interested—all the more so because it was midwinter, and therefore neither football nor baseball was absorbing the undergraduate interest.
"What's going to happen?" everyone asked. "What's the meaning of this mystery?" And no one could answer.
The thing had now kept up for over a week. The Daily Princetonian commented upon it. Even the faculty began to inquire, in a dignified way, as to "the meaning of those cabalistic symbols." The undergraduates had begun to make up words to fit, and rumors floated about the campus. "C. C.—college clowns," said someone; "it's to be a horse minstrel troupe."
"No, that's not it," said another, "it's Curious Customs:—a new book by a member of the faculty."
"What nonsense!" sneered a wise Senior, "it's only a hoax perpetrated by some under-classmen who think themselves funny; it isn't worth talking about," and he went on down to the club and talked half through dinner about it himself.
Those who considered themselves humorous began to make jokes about it. "Look, here," one would say, and the other would reply, "I C. C."
And now suddenly the posters disappeared. None could be found in any part of the town; Bronson, a Junior, paid half a dollar for one to put in his scrap-book. "What's become of it!" they asked.
"C. C.—can't come," answered a funny man.
They were still talking about its disappearance when, a few days later, the posters again appeared, more of them than ever, and this time it was a poster to make the undergraduate world excited. It was in the college colors, for one thing, the paper being orange and the letters black. That alone was enough to lend fresh interest, but that was not the most important change. Under the letters C. C. were the words:
"TO-MORROW, THE 12TH, AT NOON, BY THE CANNON."
The Cannon is the centre of the front quadrangle and the hub of the campus life. At half-past twelve o'clock all the morning lectures and recitations of both upper and lower classes are over, and no one has anything immediate to attend to. The next day, by the time the bell in the Old North had finished announcing the noon hour, nearly the whole university found it convenient to be in the neighborhood of the Cannon.
Old Jimmy Johnson, the ancient negro fruit-and peanut-vender, stood beside the Cannon, against which leaned his wheelbarrow heaped high with a mass of small orange-and-black objects, and over them waved an orange banner on which were two big black letters, C. C. That was all there was to look at; and old Jimmy was as silent and bored-looking as ever.
The crowd drew nearer. The orange-and-black things were small pasteboard boxes, shaped like miniature bricks. On one side of them was printed these words, "Made from the purest materials, in the most careful manner, by a secret receipt in the possession of Fraulein Hummel of New York." On the other side appeared the words, "Delicious College Caramels, five cents a box," and on either end, "C. C." Old Jimmy kept on looking solemn and silent.
At first the crowd seemed inclined to laugh—not at Jimmy or his load so much as at themselves, for being so worked up over a small affair. "Is that all it is?" everyone thought, and some noisy Sophomores began to shout, in loud voices, "Sold!" "Leg-pull! Leg-pull!" "Let's go," said someone else; "all over!"
But curiosity had been whetted too strongly during the past fortnight not to have it satisfied as fully as possible. Besides, the boxes looked very neat, and the simple inscription on them sounded very attractive. Also it was several hours since breakfast; a number of fellows were observed to swallow something when reading the word "delicious."
First, three jocular Juniors, who prided themselves on always doing as they pleased, strode over to Jimmy's wheelbarrow, arm in arm, announcing to everybody as they did so, "We are going to have some C. C. We must have C. C.," and bought a box, which they proceeded to open, and the contents of which they ostentatiously and with much smacking of lips devoured before the assembled crowed.
"Oh, we like C. C.!" shouted the three Juniors. "Give us some more, Jimmy," and then they marched through the crowd munching and saying, "We are the first to see C. C. We are the first to see C. C. Three cheers for C. C.!"
By this time several other Juniors, grinning to show they, too, were joking, went over to the wheelbarrow and put down five cents each.
Then other Juniors, then some of the Sophomores—who always like to do what Juniors do—and after that a few Freshmen, made bold to approach the wheelbarrow, and finally even a Senior or two, "just to see what they were like, anyway," sampled C. C., and they immediately stopped looking superior and remarked, "By Jove, they are good! Try them."
That was what everybody seemed to think, for within half an hour old black Jimmy, who almost turned white making change, found his wheelbarrow empty, and went toddling off to have it replenished; while the undergraduate body of the University of Princeton strolled off to its mid-day meal, chewing.
Two of the crowd who lagged behind seemed pleased about something, and one was quietly punching the other in the ribs, and saying: "Well, well! Deacon, well, well! Your little scheme is certainly working, in spite of my prediction. I hope it will keep on working."
"Stop punching me, Lucky!" the Deacon said, but he laughed excitedly in spite of himself. "It'll keep on working all right, you see if it doesn't. There wasn't any good candy here, and all this needed was an introduction."
"Aren't you glad now you went home Christmas with me?" said Lucky, exultingly; "otherwise you wouldn't have heard us talking about that old woman and her bully caramels."
For a week or so C. C.'s were sold as fast as they could be supplied. They had become "the thing." Students munched them in their rooms, during their walks, on the way to lecture-rooms, and even inside. They sent them home to their sisters and to their roommates' sisters. They told the story in their letters, and their friends sent stamps and requests for other packages of "those delicious things."
Of course the first boom died down, as Young knew it would; but there remained a good, steady, normal demand for them, and before long he had cleared, in all, $150.
"Now," thought Will Young, "I am going to lean back and enjoy life like Todd and the rest of them. Seems to me I have a right to."
Of course it had leaked out by this time, as such things always do, who was at the bottom of the C. C. business, and the college said: "What! that big, sober-looking green Freshman that did up Ballard? He's quite a boy, isn't he?"
Now, when this got around to the Invincibles, and so to Will Young, he only scowled and thought: "I don't see why they still call me green. I should think by this time"—then he looked down the table. "Are you coming up to get in the game this evening?" he heard Billy Drew murmur to Minerva Powelton.
They did not ask the Deacon, and for some reason the Deacon resented it. Why? A few months ago he would have resented it if they had asked him.
One wet, muddy day toward the end of the winter two dignified Juniors, Jimmy Linton, the philosopher, and Billy Nolan, the football man, were walking across the quadrangle to a four o'clock lecture.
"Billy," said Linton, "a Freshman is a funny thing. You never can tell how they are going to turn out. See that fellow ahead there?"
"Why, that's Young the Freshman guard. Say, Jim, that boy's going to make the Varsity before he gets out of college."
Linton said, "He may make the team, but he's going to make a fool of himself first."
"How do you mean?"
"Oh, it's the same old story," Linton smiled. "He's in with a sporty crowd and is beginning to try to act the way they do. He's a Freshman."
Nolan shook his head. "You're stuck on your ability to size people up, but I don't believe Young's that sort of a fool."
"No, and he doesn't, either. That's just the trouble. It's coming on him unconsciously. You see he's heard his table-mates talk so much about things he used to abhor that he's got accustomed to them, and he's ceased to abhor them. But he doesn't stop there; they seldom do, you know. You can tell by his walk that his way of looking at things has changed."
"But, Jim, Young's not such a kid."
"He wouldn't be, but, you see, he's had too much success in too many ways—it has dazzled and rattled the young man from the country. Success has turned his head. He's flattered at being taken up by these prominent young sporty Freshmen, and he doesn't know how to let well enough alone."
"You mean——"
"I mean that he wants to get clear 'in it.' He doesn't want to be considered a big, green giant. He wants to make himself like the rest of the—Invincibles, I think they call themselves. That is the way to be a college man, he thinks."
"Well," said Nolan, "can you account for the way people in general, not only here in college, but in the big, outside world—people that ought to know better, people you'd never expect it of—can you account for their making fools of 'emselves to stand in with the crowd? Asses!"
Then these two moralizers changed the subject to baseball. Both thought of taking an early opportunity of giving the big Freshman a friendly tip, for they knew him well enough by this time. And both went off and forgot; and if it recurred to them, they put it off till they "felt more like it."
What had Deacon Young actually done? Oh, nothing at all, or next to nothing. Billy Drew one morning at breakfast was telling about his experience of the night before, and then stopped suddenly when Young entered the room.
"Go on, I want to hear the rest of it," said the Deacon, smiling broadly. "I heard the first part while I was taking off my coat in the hall. Go on." So Drew went on in the grinning, boastful way of a certain sort of Freshman, with his account of how he fell upstairs, and how he tried to catch the bed as it whirled around.
Some of them began to chuckle. Lucky Lee looked at Young; so did one or two of the others. Young knew they were looking at him. Here was his chance to show them he was not so stiff and sober and green as they imagined. He leaned back in his chair and laughed heartily. Then Lucky Lee and the rest of the table laughed heartily.
And after that no one took pains to keep things away from the Deacon again. That seems a very little thing, but, as Linton said, he was not very likely to stop there.