The utter confusion of ideas consequent upon my loss of consciousness, and the miserable feelings I was enduring, rendered this assertion not at all improbable to me, and I would not have been very much surprised to have seen the brazen gate flung open, and the aimless chasers of the giddy flag the great Guelph saw in his Inferno, racing around the arid sand. At this point, however, some one said that I had had enough for one time, and offered to show me the way back to my room. Supported by his arm I staggered along the hall to my own room, which had been deserted and opened, to allow the smoke to clear out. The door was open, the windows raised, and the breeze, like a kind housewife, had swept the smoke away, but its disgusting smell still clung to the curtains and the walls.
Poor Ned was lying on the bed in a profound sleep. His corpse-like paleness, however, showed how much he had suffered, and the bucket near the bed side bore testimony to his sickness. It would have been cruel to have aroused him, so I lay gently down beside him and slept till morning.
A sick headache next day, and an intense smell of tobacco clinging to everything tangible, alone told us of the night’s scene, and it slipped back, with the ever passing pains and pleasures of life, into memory’s great reservoir.
[CHAPTER XXI.]
At last we were fairly inducted into college life, and commenced a regular routine of daily duties. Our room was pleasantly situated, and all our neighbors agreeable. As new victims continued to arrive we were forsaken by the Sophs, much to our delight, and were permitted to enjoy a good meal at the table unmolested.
Ned and I had formed as yet no circle of acquaintance. We were together nearly all the time, and having made up our minds, according to the invariable rule, to study harder than anybody ever did, we did not care much for the society of others. We both studied hard, and our progress in the various branches of instruction was, we thought, satisfactory. There was this difference between us, however—Ned studied uniformly, while I studied by impulse. The result was that while many of my daily lessons exceeded Ned’s in preparation and recitation, yet his average was far greater than mine. Ned studied to learn all his lesson—to know every part of it; while I often picked over those points on which I thought I should most likely be examined. He studied to master the subject—to become acquainted with a language or to understand a problem; I studied to make a good recitation. He stored up for the future; I looked no farther ahead than the next morning’s lecture.
I remember well, when we got to reading Homer, Ned would worry a whole morning over an idiom; and passages that I found no difficulty at all in rendering would afford him an hour’s work with lexicon and grammar. I had a shorter way of doing things. I would take my Anthon’s Edition—great friend of the student!—and, with the aid of its voluminous references, and the notes in Kühner, I would easily cram all that it was probable the professor would touch upon. Simple, easy parts, that I was sure he would not notice, had to take care of themselves. When we went in to recite, all the portions I had prepared so carefully were given to others to render or construe, while I would be taken up on some part I had thought too simple for my attention, and would be found woefully ignorant. So, about twice a month I would make a brilliant recitation, the balance of the time failures.
I suffered, too, from that great cheat of life, the self-promise to “turn over a new leaf.” Regularly every Monday morning, in accordance with the previous week’s resolve, I would start afresh, and, after tremendous application and intense mental effort, would go to the section room and pass the hour without being noticed. Leaving it without having had an opportunity to manifest my diligence, I would feel a little less careful about Tuesday’s preparation. After another day of silence I would merely glance at Wednesday’s lessons; and Thursday, with just a peep between the pages, I would be called to recite, and fail signally. The mortification would then evoke the firm resolve to “turn over a new leaf,” but, inasmuch as the next day was Friday, I would conclude to wait till Monday. So Friday would go without study, and the next week would come and join the retreating line of its predecessors, and nothing would be accomplished but a slowly increasing indifference to failure, and a growing inability to reform. And in all my life since then there has still predominated that fault, turning over new leaves, and letting the very first breeze of difficulty flutter them lightly back again!