I had been spending the largest proportion of my time in literary composition, for my wife, my sermon critic, had found that in my pulpit address I needed rhetorical clearness, so I determined to discipline myself to that end. When the English professor gave out exercises, like editorials, descriptions, book reviews, or short stories, I resolved to put the burden of my time in such writings with no other thought than to remedy my pulpit faults. When some of these exercises were returned, after examination by the professor, I found red pencil notes, suggesting that this or that be submitted for publication in the college periodicals. These red pencil suggestions were common in the class, and gave great inspiration to the other students, as they gave inspiration to me. One day, when I arrived late at class, I found the professor reading aloud a description I had written. This was followed by a request for a conference in the teacher’s office.
“I have been watching your work,” said the professor, kindly, “and think that you might try for the junior essay prize and also for the prize offered for the best piece of college fiction. I have been advising several others in the class to compete, and hope that you will find time for the work. These prize competitions are real tests as to the value of classroom work. I hope you and the others will try!”
On account of the professor’s kindly suggestion, I began to work on the essay and the story, and kept my typewriter clattering hour after hour when not in class. For all the lure of authorship was before me. The lure of substantial prizes. The lure of contest. The lure of doing something, in composition, that seemed real.
When I entered upon this special literary adventure I found that I was part of a considerable fellowship, whose interest in the work was kept alive by the wise, far-seeing, personal interest of our different literary instructors. I found one student who confidentially informed me that he was making a special research in the library concerning some wild, unknown pirates who once infested the New England coast. He meant to write at length upon that subject for the gratification of his own literary curiosity. Another student was busy, like the youthful Stevenson, in imitating, deliberately, the styles of the world-famous authors, and just then, on our first acquaintance, was in the wild morals, but cameo-cut phrases of Maupassant!
By the end of spring, in fact, I found myself in as inspiring a literary atmosphere as, probably, ever an undergraduate experienced. For I had been made a member of the editorial board of the college magazine, and even wrote comic doggerel and attempts at descriptive wit for the now thoroughly established comic monthly. I have been in a magazine board meeting, held in a student’s room, when the conversation would rise into debatable heights, and would excite the whole company, over such questions as:
“Are there more than seven types of plot possible in fiction?”
“Is the supernatural in Shakespere scientific?”
“Was Poe a plagiarist?”
“Will any of the present-day six best sellers become classic?”
Not only did we have these conversations among ourselves, but one of the professors invited a group of us into his home, once a week, where seated in his snug library amid his choice editions, we would take up the technical study of literature, enter into interesting debates about it, and then sit back in our chairs as our generous host rang for the refreshments: a home touch which we appreciated thoroughly.