Sea-gift: A Novel

by Edwin W. Fuller

I had it on my tongue to tell him that I wished he would, but I restrained myself, and only said that I hoped we could stand it.

Lulie gave me her hand most cordially, and bade us both farewell, and she and Frank walked away—she looking up at him and talking to him as if her life was his, and he walking on as if only a toy hung upon his arm.

Father returned from down town, and, requesting my presence in the library, I left Ned with Carlotta and went in the house. Father was seated at his escritoire and motioned me to a chair near him. “As you leave very early in the morning,” he said, through his teeth, holding between them one end of a tape he was tying around a bundle of papers he had assorted, “I thought we had best arrange our money matters to-night.”

He took a roll of bank bills from a drawer, and, counting out a goodly heap, pushed it towards me, saying, “That will be enough for all your expenses till late in the session. Whenever you find you need more, write and I will remit. I do not want you to be extravagant, my son, neither do I want you to be a niggard; I will, however, trust to your own good sense to regulate your expenditure.”

I folded the money up, and, putting it in my purse, was about to leave, when he closed the desk, and, jingling the keys into his pockets, said:

“Sit down a moment, John, I want to say a few words to you in reference to your conduct while you are away. I am sure your mother has instructed you thoroughly in your Christian duty, and, therefore, I do not fear that I shall ever be mortified by a letter confessing debauch and dissipation. I trust that your early training, with your own sense of propriety, will deter you from anything so ruinous; but I have a word or two of advice in regard to your deportment towards your fellow students and to your instructors. I have been at college myself and know something of what I say. You will, of course, be teased, or ‘devilled,’ as they term it, unmercifully. Every conceivable effort will be made to mortify you, and to present you in most ridiculous attitudes, and every one in the class above you will try his wits at your expense. You will be made the victim of many a practical joke, and will suffer frequent inconvenience from the temporary abstraction of your books or the derangement of your furniture. Bear every thing with quiet dignity, do not attempt to reply to anything that is said, and, if possible, keep from showing in the slightest way that you are teased. If their efforts are without success they will soon desist, and you will be unmolested. It is a most contemptible and barbarous practice, this striving to wound and crush the feelings of another, simply because he is a stranger, as if that fact alone did not entitle him to more consideration. I hope, John, that when you join this privileged class of persecutors you will never indulge in anything so unfeeling.

“To recommend care in the selection of your associates is a piece of advice as important as it is trite. Associates will be forced upon you by the location of your room, by your class and your boarding house. Look well to a student’s moral and social status before you take him as a companion. Do not feel flattered into any concessions of your principles by an intimacy with a member of a higher class. While a Fresh, you would feel quite honored by an invitation to the room of a Senior, and you would find it very hard to refuse a drink with him, lest you should appear squeamish in his eyes. But remember that advancement is only a question of time and study, and possess independence enough to refuse all solicitations to evil, however flattering to your vanity they be. Ned, I am glad to learn, will room with you, and he and your books will be society enough for you, if you study as you now think, and I hope you will.

“In regard to your deportment towards your tutors I have a word to say, and then I have done my rather tedious exhortation. Be polite and dignified in their presence, be attentive in the lecture room, but not ostentatiously so, making a pretence of continually gazing at the professor, being the first to answer fly questions, or selecting a seat very near his desk, as there is nothing more displeasing to him than the endeavor of a student to make up for lack of merit by sycophantic fawning. While it is well to establish a personal acquaintance and good understanding with all those under whose instruction you are placed, yet do not make a display of intimacy with them, as the reputation of a ‘boot-lick’ is easily earned, and is exceedingly odious. The most disagreeable temptation to which you will be exposed is to join rebellion against college authority. You will be continually solicited to aid in schemes to break the laws of the institution, to annoy the professors, and to deface and misplace college property. Every conceivable plan for the defeat of the very objects of the institution will be set on foot, and you will be scoffed at and ridiculed if you refuse to join. Will you have the moral courage to refuse in the face of a jeering class? I hope so, my son. You will find it easy after the first time or two, and you will be respected all the more for your firmness. Write to your mother and myself often, and write freely. Tell us of your trials and difficulties, and express all your feelings without hesitation. But, lest my much advice may seem to evince a doubt of your strength of character, I will cease. Let’s go to Carlotta and Ned.”

He lowered the gas, and as we walked out of the library laid his arm on my shoulder in a tender way, that I have never forgotten—for a caress was a novelty from him.