The tall German went into the hall, raised his voice in a great, resounding shout:
“The wash tub! Who has it?”
A door at the end of the hallway opened and a voice replied:
“Just rinsing out my shirt, Brock. Have it in a jiffy!”
A few minutes later Brock called to me from his room. When I presented myself before him, I discovered him with his sleeves rolled up, busily engaged in pouring hot water from a kettle over some shirts and handkerchiefs.
“Any white things of yours, handkerchiefs or shirts, Priddy,” he announced, “might just as well go in with mine.”
So we shared the wash that morning. After they had been rinsed, I carried them to the rear of the building and hung them on a double wire line where the gas-laden air from the sheep pastures hummed through them and the sun burned them dry in an hour.
That same afternoon, after having expressed to Brock my desire for extra work in the hours when I was not on duty in the dining-hall, I found myself standing over an immense cauldron under which blazed a hot camp-fire. In the cauldron were bushels of tomatoes and many pounds of sugar. With a long ladle I stirred the concoction until nine o’clock that night, save for the interruption of supper, and by that time I had the satisfaction of seeing it turn from a vivid pink to a dark red until it turned into a tarty, pasty preserve, not unlike strawberry damson in appearance. That night there went on the University records, against my name, “To seven hours’ labor, at 12 cents, .84.” I had paid that much, that week, towards my tuition.
Chapter VII. An Academic Ride
in Five Carriages at Once. A
Business Appeal Mixed in with
the Order of Creation. Is it Best
for a Man to Marry his First
Love. A Sleuth-Dean. A Queen’s
Birthday Supper with an Athletic
Conclusion. Jerry Birch Stands
up for Albion. How we Tamed
him
THE terror that at first had been imposed upon me by the sense of my own ignorance, a terror which had led me to think that at twenty years of age no ambitious youth could at all fit into the educational scheme, died down quite rapidly at Evangelical University. The curriculum there was no arbitrary imposition, as it is so commonly in the Four-Hundred-Dollar-a-Year University, into which a student must fit himself willy-nilly, and to which he must either conform or not approach. The Evangelical University curriculum was made to bend to the needs of an illiterate man of forty and to the advanced demands of the graduate who sought his doctorate in Philosophy. Its principle was that of intellectual service to fit the needs of all who come whether poorly fitted, old or poor. Estes, “Pa” Borden, myself and many others, who certainly would not have had the chance for inspiration offered us in hundreds of dignified schools, especially on such terms, were given our lifetime’s chance in Evangelical University.