In morning chapel the time was generously lengthened to accommodate the doctrinal exhortations of the revivalist and his wife, who spake not so much of practical concerns, but entered into a bewildering maze of Scripture quibblings, text jugglings, super-rational conclusions, and a daze of fantastic analogies. When the closing bell sounded, the speaker would turn to the President and say, familiarly—even commandingly, “Well, brother, studies can wait on the Lord, can’t they?” and the President had nothing to say but, “Yes.” The morning exhortations infringed on our nine o’clock classes so that often they had to be discontinued; much to the reluctance of the professors who had to bear the brunt of the intellectual disqualifications of students at graduation time.
As the meetings continued, in the evenings, the enthusiasm increased. When emotions were running at flood the meetings were carried well into the night and Thropper and I often did not reach our room until eleven o’clock—with all opportunity for study taken away. But again the professors had to lose, for if any of us were backward with lessons the next morning, by saying, “Professor, I was at the meeting last night. I did not have any opportunity to study,” a proper adjustment was made in our favor. For, as Jason had said, the theory at that time was, “What are heads compared to souls?”
At the conclusion of the first Thursday evening’s meeting, the revivalist and his wife let it be known that “At last God is blessing us!” High tide had been reached. That meeting had been given into the hands of the students after the leader had preached for an hour on a doctrinal theme. A hymn was started by a young woman. She stood while she led the singing and at the conclusion she still stood erect, with her eyes fixed on the ceiling. She had thrown herself into a trance and spoke in a jumble some words nobody could decipher but which were understood to be a “revelation.” That was the signal for a wild demonstration. Jason leaped to his feet and after shouting, “God is with us! Emmanuel!” he sat shivering in his seat as if his body were in the grasp of angry spirits. A group of young women paraded down the aisles and before the pulpit waving their handkerchiefs and shouting in shrill ecstasy. Suddenly one of the young men near me burst into lamentations and tears, moaning as if his heart would break. Meanwhile the evangelists knelt at the front of the platform in prayer; praying for people by name. Then the young man who had been crying suddenly darted to his feet and broke into a torrent of wild, hysterical laughter and ran to the upper end of the room clapping his hands. Hymns of different sorts and tunes had broken out in different parts of the room, making a musical Babel. The young woman who had had the trance came into consciousness again, and, on the urgence of the revivalists, ascended the platform from whence she described a vision fit to be framed in Miltonic verse. At eleven o’clock hands were joined, a hymn was sung, and after a benediction from “Pa” Borden, we went back to our rooms.
Then the revivalists with their honors full on them departed, and the emotional tension left us. It was a distinct relief, like a bit of bird’s chatter after the epic storm, to hear “Bird” Thurlow shout across the walk, one morning, “Hey, Paddy, going to take Miss Adee to the lecture next Wednesday?”
Chapter XVII. My Presidential
Pose and its Central Place in “The
Record.” A Wistful Glance and
Some Practical Plans towards
Eastern Education. How the
Little Sparrow Brought my Class
Colors to me as I Gave the Class
“Oration.” Ends in a Fight
IN the spring, when announcements of Commencement and Graduation were in the air, a gathering of four members of the collegiate department, as many members of the preparatory division, two business students, and five who could not be classified by reason of their slowness to master their studies, met in response to a call, sent out by the Seniors, for the members of the Freshmen Class to elect officers, and after due deliberation made me their president.
With this honor thrust on me, I was immediately in a dilemma, for the main purpose of the class organization was to have each member’s photograph in the Senior’s “Record,” a souvenir book of the University life. Had I been other than the president, I should not have fretted about my inability to afford a visit to the picture gallery, but there I was: due to have my picture in the middle of the group. I was in despair until finally I thought of little Jack Borden, who owned a three-dollar camera. I told him my predicament and he consented to make a snap-shot of me for ten cents that should be fit to be in the center of a group of “gallery ones” as he termed those that the official photographer would take.
As Jack had no photographer’s background, he snapped me with my back to the flowered wall paper, and when the finished picture was handed me, there I sat, outlined against a mass of conventional crocus leaves and a picture of “Pa” Borden hung on the wall above my head! I was told by one of “The Record” Committee that the picture would never be fit to reproduce with such a background: that it should be in relief against a plain one. I returned to my room in despair, but finally resolved to cut my picture out from the wall paper and paste it on a piece of plain, black pasteboard. After going over the outline with the scissors I finally succeeded in accomplishing the feat and the picture went in the middle of the group, an undignified, flat, ill-posed, and somewhat jagged outline of myself, most conspicuous as “the president.”
As the year drew to an end, and the students began to talk so emotionally of home and friends, I began to feel that I had been long enough in exile from my eastern home and friendships. I also began to wonder if now that I had learned the art of working a way through school I should not be more comfortable in Massachusetts. I had heard the graduating students talk of “Dartmouth” and “Boston University” and “Yale” and “Harvard,” with a sort of worshipful accent, not far short of reverence. One or two graduates in the past, so the local legend ran, had even attained to post-graduate work in Yale and Harvard! Therefore, as I heard this talk, listened to this semi-worship of New England education, and realized that it was my home, my own environment, I also asked myself the question: “Why not go and complete your education in that atmosphere?”
I mentioned this fact to Thropper. He said to me: