XII
Behold me now, a duly enrolled “subfreshman” of the College of the City of New York; a part of the city’s free educational system, not very good, but convenient for the son of a straw-hat salesman addicted to periodical “sprees.” It was a combination of high school and college, awarding a bachelor’s degree after a five-year course. I passed my entrance examinations in the spring of 1892, and I was only thirteen, but my public-school teacher and principal entered me as fourteen. The college work did not begin until September 15, and five days later I would be of the required age, so really it was but a wee little lie.
The college was situated in an old brick building on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street. It was a firetrap, but I did not know it, and fortunately never had to learn it. There were about a thousand students in its four or five stories, and we trooped from one classroom to another and learned by rote what our bored instructors laid out for us. I began Latin, algebra, and solid geometry, physics, drawing, and a course called English, which was the most dreadful ordeal I ever had to endure. We had a list of sentences containing errors, which we were supposed to correct. The course was necessary for most of the class because they were immigrants or the sons of immigrants. For me it was unnecessary, but the wretched teacher was affronted in his dignity, and would set traps for me by calling on me when my mind had wandered.
The professor of chemistry and physics was R. Ogden Doremus, a name well known to the public because he testified as an expert in murder trials. He had snowy white mustaches, one arm, and a peppery temper. His assistant was his son, whom he persisted in referring to as Charlie, which amused us, because Charlie was a big man with a flourishing black beard. I managed early in the course to get on the elderly scientist’s nerves by my tendency to take the physical phenomena of the universe without due reverence. The old gentleman would explain to us that scientific caution required us to accept nothing on his authority, but to insist upon proving everything for ourselves. Soon afterward he produced a little vial of white powder, remarking, “Now, gentlemen, this vial contains arsenic, and a little pinch of it would be sufficient to kill all the members of this class.” Said I, “You try that, Professor!”
Really, he might have joined in the laugh. But what he did was to call me an “insolent young puppy,” and to predict that I was going to “flunk” his course, in which event he would see to it that I did not get promoted to the next class. This roused my sporting spirit, and I decided to “flunk” his course and get such high marks in all the other courses that I could not be held back. This I did.
The top floor of our building was a big auditorium, where we met every morning for chapel. Our “prexy” read a passage from the Bible, and three of us produced efforts in English composition, directed and staged by a teacher of elocution, who had marked our manuscripts in the margin with three mystic symbols: rg, lg, and gbh. The first meant a gesture with the right hand, the second a gesture with the left hand, and the third a gesture with both hands—imploring the audience, or in extreme emergencies lifted into the air, imploring the deity. In a row, upstage, facing the assembled students, sat our honorable faculty, elderly gentlemen with whiskers, doing their best not to show signs of boredom. Our “prexy” was a white-bearded Civil War veteran, General Webb; and when it was my turn to prepare a composition, I made my debut as a revolutionary agitator with an encomium of my fathers favorite hero, Robert E. Lee. My bombshell proved a dud, because General Webb, who had commanded a brigade at Gettysburg, remarked mildly that it was a good paper, and Lee had been a great man. Soldiers, I learned, take a professional attitude to their jobs, and confine their fighting to the field of battle.