“The system is certainly unique,” mused Hewitt.
“Yes,” answered Robinson, “other colleges have societies; whereas Harvard unquestionably has Society.”
“Do you consider the place snobbish then?” asked Horace.
The graduate thought a moment before answering. “I object to the word,” he said at last; “it’s as easy to say, as vague and denunciatory, as ‘vulgar’ or ‘selfish’ or any of those hardworked terms we apply to other people; you can only say that, making some necessary allowances for a few purely local customs, Harvard society is influenced, or guided, or governed, as you please to express it, by about the same conventions that obtain in other civilised communities. Lots of people who have only a newspaper acquaintance with the place think that wealth is the only requisite here. They have an affection for the phrase ‘a rich man’s college,’—whatever that may mean. But of course all that is absurd to any one who has spent four years in the place, and has known all the fellows with no allowances to speak of who are welcome in pretty much everything; and has seen all the bemillioned nonentities who languish through college in a sort of richly upholstered isolation. ‘Birth’ is certainly not the open sesame; a superficial inquiry into the shop and inn keeping antecedents of some of our most prominent and altogether charming brothers, smashes that little illusion. I’m not a sociologist, and I don’t pretend to know what constitutes society with a big S—to put it vulgarly—here or any place else. But there is such a thing here more than in any other college. An outsider, hearing me talk this way, would say I was making an unnecessarily large mountain out of a very ordinary molehill. But that’s because he wouldn’t understand that Society at Harvard is really the most important issue in undergraduate life. The comparatively few men who compose it, have it in their power to take hold of anything they choose to be interested in, and run it according to their own ideas—which shows the value of even a rather vague form of organisation. Fortunately, their ideas are good ones,—clean and manly. You all find out the truth of this, sooner or later. Then if you haven’t a good time, I suppose you can go away and call the place snobbish—lots of people do.”
“I don’t think that’s my style exactly, and I wish you wouldn’t take that tone about it. I want to know fellows, of course: fellows like Philip Haydock and Endicott Davis and Philip Irving and ‘Peter’ Bradley and Sherman and Prescott,” said Hewitt, frankly, naming six of the most prominent men in his class; “but I can’t imagine myself thinking worse of any of them if—if—”
“If you never do get to know them,” Curtiss broke in; “if your chance fails to materialise—if, after all, you are not the ‘tenth man.’” He got up as if to leave.
“I wish you wouldn’t go,” said the other, earnestly; “there ’re lots of things I want to ask you about. What have men like Bradley and Davis ever done here to be what they are?” he went on hurriedly.
“Ask me something hard,” laughed Curtiss, giving Hewitt his overcoat to hold for him. “They haven’t ‘done’ anything,” he continued, struggling into his sleeves; “I don’t suppose they would know how to. Fellows like Bradley and Davis simply arrive at Harvard when they are due, to fill, in their characteristic way, the various pleasant places that have been waiting the last two hundred and fifty years for them. From the little I’ve seen of them, I should say that these particular two happen to be the kind it would be a pleasure to know anywhere, which isn’t always the case with the ‘Bradleys’ and the ‘Davises’ of college. So, of course, you want to know them,” he ended, emphatically. “What we’ve been calling your ‘chance’ literally consists in fellows like these holding out their hands and saying simply, ‘Come and see me.’” As Curtiss said this, he impressively extended his own hand; Hewitt shook it, absently, and began with some abruptness to talk of other things.
He was, all at once, exceedingly glad that his guest was saying good-night. It was a positive relief to hear his footsteps resounding in the long corridor outside, and to feel the slight tremor of the building as the massive front door closed with a thump; for Curtiss had become, although perhaps unwillingly, that most objectionable person, the recipient of one’s impulsive confidence.
After he had gone, Hewitt stood a moment, looking undecidedly at the glass clock on his mantelpiece. It was long after midnight, and he was in the state of mind when even the oblivion of bed is numbered among sweet but unattainable ambitions. He was tired of his own room; the good taste that had been expended on it had, of late, begun to strike him as inexpressibly futile. Yet there was scarcely any one on whom he could drop in, even at a reasonable time of night, with the objectless familiarity of college intercourse, to say nothing of calling out under a lighted window in the small hours of the morning. He, of course, belonged to no college club, so his evening expeditions were of necessity limited by the theatres in town, or the listless thoroughfares of Cambridge. He often took long, aimless strolls through streets he barely looked at, and whose names he didn’t know. It was with the intention of walking now, that he put on a cap, turned out the lights, and left his room.