We continued to board ourselves,—now here, now there, and always to the effect of being starved out by Friday night, but we kept well and active even on doughnuts and pie, and were grateful of any camping place in town.
Once Burton left a soup-bone to simmer on the stove while we went away to morning recitations, and when we reached home, smoke was leaking from every keyhole. The room was solid with the remains of our bone. It took six months to get the horrid smell of charred beef out of our wardrobe. The girls all sniffed and wondered as we came near.
On Fridays we went home and during the winter months very generally attended the Lyceum which met in the Burr Oak school-house. We often debated, and on one occasion I attained to the honor of being called upon to preside over the session. Another memorable evening is that in which I read with what seemed to me distinguished success Joaquin Miller's magnificent new poem, Kit Carson's Ride and in the splendid roar and trample of its lines discovered a new and powerful American poet. His spirit appealed to me. He was at once American and western. I read every line of his verse which the newspapers or magazines brought to me, and was profoundly influenced by its epic quality.
And so, term by term, in growing joy and strength, in expanding knowledge of life, we hurried toward the end of our four years' course at this modest little school, finding in it all the essential elements of an education, for we caught at every chance quotation from the scientists, every fleeting literary allusion in the magazines, attaining, at last, a dim knowledge of what was going on in the great outside world of letters and discovery. Of course there were elections and tariff reforms and other comparatively unimportant matters taking place in the state but they made only the most transient impression on our minds.
During the last winter of our stay at the Seminary, my associate in housekeeping was one Adelbert Jones, the son of a well-to-do farmer who lived directly east of town. "Del," as we called him, always alluded to himself as "Ferguson." He was tall, with a very large blond face inclined to freckle and his first care of a morning was to scrutinize himself most anxiously to see whether the troublesome brown flecks were increasing or diminishing in number. Often upon reaching the open air he would sniff the east wind and say lugubriously, "This is the kind of day that brings out the freckles on your Uncle Ferg."
He was one of the best dressed men in the school, and especially finicky about his collars and ties,—was, indeed, one of the earliest to purchase linen. He also parted his yellow hair in the middle (which was a very noticeable thing in those days) and was always talking of taking a girl to a social or to prayer meeting. But, like Burton, he never did. So far as I knew he never "went double," and most of the girls looked upon him as more or less of a rustic, notwithstanding his fine figure and careful dress.
As for me I did once hire a horse and carriage of a friend and took Alice for a drive! More than thirty-five years have passed since that adventure and yet I can see every turn in that road! I can hear the crackle of my starched shirt and the creak of my suspender buckles as I write.
Alice, being quite as bashful as myself, kept our conversation to the high plane of Hawthorne and Poe and Schiller with an occasional tired droop to the weather, hence I infer that she was as much relieved as I when we reached her boarding house some two hours later. It was my first and only attempt at this, the most common of all ways of entertaining one's best girl.
The youth who furnished the carriage betrayed me, and the outcry of my friends so intimidated me that I dared not look Alice in the face. My only comfort was that no one but ourselves could possibly know what an erratic conversationalist I had been. However, she did not seem to lay it up against me. I think she was as much astonished as I and I am persuaded that she valued the compliment of my extravagant gallantry.