He mumbled the name of some strange-sounding history, and then returned to his work, for which I was paying him twenty cents an hour. That legend had cost me fifteen cents; it had taken him a full three-quarters of an hour to recount it with its frills and the many interjections.
Then my wife and I, feeling like the first man and woman leaving Eden, bade a tearful good-bye to the house, to the parish, and went forth to a new educational adventure, one that would have its own peculiar hardships, pain, and pleasures.
Chapter XXXIII. Of a Village
where Locomotive Whistles
Sounded like Lingering Music: of
the Esthetic Possibilities in a College
Catalogue: of a Journey over
the Hills to the College where we
find, besides a Wonderful Array
of Structures, a Large Room and
the Junior with his Barnful of
Furniture
TO a bird the north New England hill country whither our adventure took us might have resembled in shape a crumpled pie crust. In one of the depressions lay our new parish: the horizons high and lifted up by reason of the hills which girt it closely about. All the exits from the village were over roads that sloped upward. Only the river had an even course as its shallow body bruised itself in rushing over the sharp, white rocks which tried to hold it back.
The village was composed of groups of neatly painted cottages branching from an elm-shaded green around which stood the town buildings: the drab-painted pillared church, the post-office and general store, the glaring red brick townhouse, the mill-like school building, the parsonage, the doctor’s residence, the postmaster’s house, and the farm of the first select-man.
The two fine contributions to the national reputation that a majority of our parishioners were sending into the markets, were golden bars of butter and finely-fed beef. Very quietly the people were giving themselves to these tasks, having but little touch with the great world outside.
It was difficult for me, in the midst of such rustic peace and isolated civilization, to realize that twelve miles back of the hills lay a famous college whose traditions had gone out into every part of the country during the century and a half of its existence. Its name had been reverently spoken in so far away a place as Evangelical University. The history of the United States cannot be written without mention and eulogy of some of its noted graduates. During those July days, while we were establishing our household goods in the parsonage, I caught myself sniffing the east wind, as if eager to slake my curiosity by catching the flavor of the college. My enthusiasm was unbounded over the possibility of at last attaining unto a college education: the trade-mark of American culture. My wife and I had promised ourselves to drive over the hills as soon as the house had been established, so that together we might have our first view of the institution and that I might confer with the dean and arrange my schedule of studies for the first term. I waited impatiently for that day to come.
Meanwhile, during the lulls in house settling, I took the college catalogue and selected a course of studies. It was an enticing feast before which I sat: I felt like a lad having to choose from fifteen nectar flavors of ice cream, only the courses of study from which I had the privilege of choosing went into the hundreds. Almost every theme of my desire was spread before me; explorations into literature, social life, fine arts, science, language, and economics. Old yearnings could be abundantly gratified at last: a formidable list of professors and a more formidable list of studies awaited my option. Evangelical University had given me the foundations of an education, the Seminary had given me the technical knowledge of my profession, at last I had come to the studies that should broaden my outlook, extend my habits of thought beyond the narrow groove of my vocation, and link me to the great world-thought. I put down Italian so that at last I might, with my own ears, hear Dante speak to me through his euphonious and inspired Cantos, and I chose a course in which Goethe should at last be met face to face. I also determined to test my theology in a science course to find out for myself if God and the forces of Nature were actually engaged in undying warfare. I chose, also, a course in composition, which had in it all the lure towards authorship and the fascination of literary creation. My technical studies in the Seminary had prepared me to secure from the college the highest inspiration I should ever receive from books.
Early in the month of August, my wife and I started from the village in a buggy for a drive over the hill roads to the college. My wife reminded me, during the drive, of the strangeness of the situation: of the fact that five years previously she had received her degree from her alma mater and that she was now on the way to witness the matriculation of her husband. Midway on the route we drove through an abandoned village, past a once commodious church, a mill, and several houses, all storm bent and in forsaken ruin. We rode along sand-rutted highways which seemed to take us farther and farther away from living creatures. We passed acres and acres of stumps showing where the axes and saws of woodsmen had left a permanent scar in the forestry of the back-roads. Then we emerged on the first street of a quaint, slumberous town whose green and drab-shuttered white houses hid demurely behind screens of elm and of maple. On the outskirts of this village we found ourselves on a sandy plain which sloped down towards a wide river. On the opposite bank, set like gleaming red and white flowers in a bed of green, were towers, windows, houses, chimneys: acres of them, a mile distant, scattered over a narrow elevated plain behind which rolled hills far to the North, to the East and to the South, their sky-lines lost in clouds.
“It’s the college!” I exclaimed, dropping the reins for further, excited contemplation. The patches of red and the hundreds of gleaming, sun-blazing windows, were dormitories and academic halls. The white blotches were innumerable houses surrounding the college buildings. One had to pick them out from the lavish clusters of shade trees whose leaves left cool, dark shadows on the buildings.