The Diary of a Freshman

by Charles Macomb Flandrau

In a pair of green tights and on horseback, I distributed armfuls of the "smuggled" cigars from Santa Bawthawthawthoth to the inhabitants of Cambridgeport, and when a great crowd had collected around me, delivered a lecture on the evils of smoking. I intercepted at various times many respectable old ladies on their way across the streets, for the purpose of confidentially whispering,—

"Madam, I regret to inform you that you are holding your skirts just a leetle too high."

I also had to stop car after car, put my foot on the step, tie my shoestring, and then stand back, saying to the conductor,—

"Thank you, you may go on now." This is an old game, but it's a great favorite.

Two things happened (and only two) that I liked. One was when I had to call on a girl in town—I had never seen her before—and write all my part of the conversation on a slate. She was very pretty and good to me; for instead of being disgusted at my appearance (she had every reason to be) and having me put out of the house, she made me sit down and ordered tea (I realized, for the first time, how nice tea could be) and was altogether a perfect peach. She said, among other things, that she had been at the theatre the night I made the row. I wrote on the slate, "Which one? The performance was given by special request at three different places," which made her laugh. I stayed talking, or rather writing, to her for more than half an hour. The fellows who had brought me to the door were very angry; for, thinking that I would be chased away by a husky footman at the end of a minute or two, they had n't told me how long to stay and were waiting outside to see what happened. When at last I got up to go, the pretty girl held out her hand very graciously and said,—

"We'll meet again someday, I'm sure," and I wrote on the slate,—

"It will not be my fault if we don't. Good-by!" She took the slate and the pencil, drew a line through the last word, and wrote under it,—

"Au revoir." Then I left. I did meet her again very soon afterwards, at the Beck spread on Class Day. She was the prettiest girl there. She 's going abroad in three days, and as papa let me engage passage for our trip (he and mamma and Mildred will be here to morrow), it did n't take me long to decide on the steamer. When he found that I had picked out, for no apparent reason, one of the old Cunarders sailing from Boston, he was perfectly furious. But it's too late for him to change now.

The other thing I enjoyed during my running was the day that Mr. Fleetwood stole me away from some fellows and took me up to his room overlooking the Yard. He is an old Dickey man himself, and had as much right to my services as any one. I embarrassed him at first, I think. Strangely enough, I appreciated this a little even then, when I had no business to be appreciating anything beyond the fact that I was a mere grovelling worm. He sat down, when we went into his room, and looked at me curiously, diffidently, for a moment, as if he did n't quite know how to begin. Then he said with something of an effort, as if he considered himself a little foolish to say anything,—

"What, pray, is your name?" I gave the required answer, at which he smiled—rather sadly, I thought; although I did n't see what reason he had to look that way. Then he asked me to do several things,—old, old things that neophytes probably had to do when the Dickey was first started; things that have become conventions; the kind of things you are always asked to do by fellows who have n't enough imagination to think of anything new. He gave his commands (with him, however, they became requests) slowly, as if he couldn't remember just how they went. And he didn't always express them the way the fellows do. I could n't help feeling that if Shakespeare had ever tried to torment a neophyte, he had done it in very much the same way. He scarcely noticed my attempts to do what he asked. He was interested, I think, not so much in discovering my feeble talents as in recalling the general situation. But he stopped doing even this in a short time, and got up and went over to the open window and looked out into the wilderness of elm leaves and down at the cool, shady stretches of grass and the yellow paths of the Yard.