"Tucker, if you really know what 'pseudo-peripteral' means, I wish you would tell me." Tucker didn't answer, and I thought he was probably trying to get at a definition simple enough for me to grasp. But when I glanced over toward the fireplace, I saw that he was asleep with his mouth open. Well, I felt rather angry at first,—it all seemed such a waste of time; but it struck me, too, as being funny, so I did n't wake him. He must have slept for at least ten minutes longer (of course I did n't bother about reading aloud any more), and then he came to, exclaiming,—
"Read that about the ground plan once more; I don't think I quite got that." As the ground plan was almost the first topic mentioned, I suppose he had dozed off almost immediately. After that I made him do the reading, but he had n't stumbled through many pages before he put down the notes and said,—
"Granny, don't you think that if we tackled this beastly drivel in the daytime, our heads would be clearer?"
That was the end of our grinding together. He came to my room once more, but I was out. It was after this experience that I thought the matter over and decided I should have to do the thing differently, and for the most part alone. My most brilliant stroke was getting the key of Duggie's room from Mrs. Chester; I could lock myself up there and be perfectly safe. When fellows saw my own door wide open and no one at home, they went away at once without making a row. Of course I had to let Berri into the game; but as he began to be scared about some of his own exams, he was grateful for the refuge and did n't give it away.
I went to work at the whole business scientifically, determined not to leave a single thing, however unimportant, to chance. And I 'm convinced now that if I have the nerve always to do this, I can get through any examination I 'm ever likely to have,—not brilliantly, perhaps, but very respectably. First of all, I spent a day in the library and got hold of a lot of books that gave my various courses in their simplest, clearest form. For the Fine Arts course I found that a copy of the notes that Ludlow had was better than anything. They stated facts in a condensed way that made it possible to keep in your head a bird's-eye view of the entire course, as far as we had gone. Then I made a list of the number of pages of general reading we had to accomplish in every course, and split them up so as to be able to get through them all—taking notes as I read—by reading a certain number of pages a day. I left a margin at the end for review and in case of accidents. And finally, after I had made these preparations and collected as many of the necessary books as I could (I had to do some of my reading in the library), I locked Duggie's door one morning after breakfast, and sat down at his desk, and stayed there until luncheon; and after luncheon I went back and stayed until it was time to go to the gym and take a run; and after dinner I went back and stayed until bedtime. And I did this every day with very few interruptions until I could pick up any of the text-books, turn to the alphabetical index, and plough right through it, describing in detail every darned thing it mentioned; and an alphabetical index mentions a good deal. If I slipped up on anything, I would mark it with a pencil, go back and learn it. Oh, it was perfectly awful! I got so tired and discouraged and maudlin at times that I would have to lean back and close my eyes and let my bursting mind become a throbbing blank for a few minutes, in order to keep from screaming. But after the gym and the run and the shower-bath, I felt all right again,—just as if nothing had happened.
Two courses—the physics and philosophy—I had to tutor in for a while. There was no use pegging away at them by myself, for I simply did n't understand some of the experiments, and logic I could n't make head or tail of. A Senior who lived in College House explained them to me in simple golden words (three dollars an hour were his terms), and when I once saw through it all and had it down on paper in my own language, I could let it soak in at home. The other things—the ones I did understand, like History and Fine Arts—were merely a matter of incessant repetition and memory.
The night before the Fine Arts exam I went to what is called a "Seminar" in that subject. I could have got along very well without it after my days and days of slavery, but about every one I knew was going, and I wanted to see what it was like. There are several men here who make a business of boiling popular courses down to their most painlessly swallowable dimensions, and then giving the thing the evening before the examination in a kind of lecture, for which they charge an admittance fee of three or four dollars. This performance is a seminar,—a kind of royal road, if not to learning at least to passing examinations. They say that fellows who never look at a book or take a note in class often go to a seminar and, providing they have good memories, are able to answer enough questions on the exam paper the next morning to get through with colors flying. A certain number of questions on almost every paper simply have to deal with cold, isolated facts rather than with the generalities, comparisons, and discussions that necessitate a real knowledge of the subject, and it is with these facts—pounded in at a seminar—that one puts up a successful bluff. The authorities naturally object to all this. As Berri remarked about the seminar we went to,—
"After a professor has earnestly expounded a subject for half a year, it must make him rather sore to have a cheeky parrot get up and do the whole thing much better in four hours."
The Fine Arts seminar was held in a huge room, almost a hall, in a kind of office building near the Square. It was advertised to begin at half-past seven, and pretty much every one was there on time,—all the sports of the Freshman and Sophomore classes, some Juniors, and even a few Seniors. It was what the society reporter refers to as "a large and fashionable gathering." It certainly was a mighty nice-looking crowd of fellows; clean, well dressed, and (to quote Berri) "much more intelligent in appearance than we actually are, or we should n't be here at all." As every man came in, he was given a large sheet of stiff paper on which was printed a synopsis of the course, with all the subjects that had been touched on methodically arranged, and a list of definitions, simple and easily remembered, but adequate. It was Greek art in a nutshell,—a perfect marvel of clearness and condensation. The little folding chairs had been neatly arranged in a semicircle at first, but by the time the fellows had taken possession of them, they looked as if they had been thrown in at random. A good many men who were evidently old hands at the business arranged themselves comfortably in two chairs, leaning back in one with their legs stretched across another, as if prepared to spend the night. A lot of them took off their coats and waistcoats—the crowd and the gas made the already overheated room unbearably warm—and I 've never seen so many pretty shirts in my life as I did that evening.
After every one was settled, the man who was giving the seminar took a chair on a little platform in front of us, and began—not to talk exactly, but to drone. He had a harsh monotonous voice—une voix trainante, Berri called it—and spoke with painful slowness, as if trying not to emphasize any one topic to the exclusion of the others,—which had the effect of making his entire discourse, from beginning to end, horribly important. Except for this crawling sound, the room was absolutely silent; for once nobody seemed conscious of himself or of any one else. Even when the man on the platform pronounced Greek words in a novel fashion that was all his own, there was n't a smile. I don't think we realized the intense strain of attention we were undergoing until, at the end of an hour and three quarters, Tucker Ludlow, who had gone to sleep, fell off his chair. The second or two of relaxation that followed the crash was exquisite. We stretched our arms and swabbed our foreheads with our handkerchiefs, and then sank back again for another hour and fifteen minutes, until the bell in the tower of Memorial boomed out ten o'clock. This seemed to be the signal for a short vacation; for the fact-machine on the platform finished the sentence he had begun and then stood up.