The Diary of a Freshman

by Charles Macomb Flandrau

To tell the truth, the only thing I knew about the locality of Mr. Hirsch's establishment was that we should never reach it unless we got out and took a car going the other way. This we did, and when I thought we had gone far enough on the return trip and we emerged once more into the daylight, we seemed to be miles from the place—the only place—from which I could have found my way. So we jumped into a cab and told the man to drive as quickly as he could to that place. (I had to describe it at some length, as I don't as yet know the names of many streets here.) He was very intelligent, however, and it was n't his fault that, after we had jolted along for four or five blocks, the horse fell down. We left him lifting one of the poor thing's nervous hind legs in and out of the tangled harness. He looked as if he were trying to solve some kind of a gigantic, hopeless puzzle. We hurried on for about a quarter of a mile, and then I suddenly discovered that we had been in the right street all the time. It was one of those queer streets that never look familiar when you 're going the other way. I confess it took a great deal of courage to impart this discovery to mamma; but she appreciated the fact that we had very little time to lose, and did n't stop to point out to me that if I ever become a business man, I 'll be a failure. The horse was on his feet again when we got back to the cab, so we jumped in once more, and after an interminable drive (half of me was out of the window most of the time, like a Punch-and-Judy doll, directing the cabman) we finally drew up in front of the pawn-shop. It was then that we really distinguished ourselves.

"I've come for my watch," I said to Mr. Hirsch. He gave me the look of a bird of prey. It reminded me of an eagle I had seen once,—an eagle that had been stuffed by an amateur. He held out his hand and spoke a solitary, fateful word. Mamma's face—in the excitement of the moment she had pushed up her veil—became dim with horror; her features for an instant were positively incoherent.

"The ticket?" she whispered gropingly. "It's in the bottom of my trunk."

Mildred and papa and a group of porters, peering up and down the street like a concourse of Sister Annes, were on the curbstone in front of the hotel when we got back. The baggage was piled on a wagon, papa looked haggard and years older than when I had last seen him, and Mildred gave us a haughty stare as we alighted. Mamma was hustled wildly from the cab to the carriage, and I had time merely to peck hastily at their tense faces and gasp good-by. As the carriage swung around the corner, mamma appeared for a moment at the window, exclaiming, "I 'll send it to you in my first letter," and then sank from view. This afternoon, when I returned to my peaceful little abode in Cambridge, who should be in his room but Berri? He was at his desk, bending earnestly over a big pad of thesis paper.

"You've finished it, after all," I said, for the floor near his chair was littered with neat manuscript.

"Yes, it's finished,—fifty beastly pages of it," Berri answered, as he jumped up to meet me. I wanted to ask him all about it,—how he had managed to do it during the gayeties of Washington, and if it had taken much time. But he said rather wearily,—

"Oh, don't let's talk about it; I 'm so sick of it," and began at once to question me about my trip to New York. We chatted for about half an hour, and then I got up to go into my room and unpack my trunk. Thesis paper is n't like the ordinary paper on which themes are written; it has a margin on all four sides, and as I had never used any, I went over to Berri's desk to examine a sheet of his.

"Why, you 've had the thing type-written," I exclaimed; for there was a pile of type-written notes in front of the thesis paper. "Why don't you hand it in that way instead of copying it again? Your hand is so hard to read."

Berri wrinkled his forehead in a queer, annoyed kind of way; then he looked confused and blushed a little, and finally he gave an uncomfortable laugh.

"Oh, Granny, you 're so brutally guileless," he murmured. "Why can't you just see and understand things? It sounds so much worse than it really is, when you make me say it in so many words." Even then I didn't altogether grasp the situation.