As I waited my turn, I experienced that sense of nausea, that numbness which always preceded my platform trials, but as my name was called I contrived to reach the proper place behind the footlights, and to bow to the audience. My opening paragraph perplexed my fellows, and naturally, for it was exceedingly florid, filled with phrases like "the lure of the sunset," "the westward urge of men," and was neither prose nor verse. Nevertheless I detected a slight current of sympathy coming up to me, and in the midst of the vast expanse of faces, I began to detect here and there a friendly smile. Mother and father were near but their faces were very serious.
After a few moments the blood began to circulate through my limbs and I was able to move about a little on the stage. My courage came back, but alas!—just in proportion as I attained confidence my emotional chant mounted too high! Since the writing was extremely ornate, my manner should have been studiedly cold and simple. This I knew perfectly well, but I could not check the perfervid rush of my song. I ranted deplorably, and though I closed amid fairly generous applause, no flowers were handed up to me. The only praise I received came from Charles Lohr, the man who had warned me against becoming a lawyer's hack. He, meeting me in the wings of the stage as I came off, remarked with ironic significance, "Well, that was an original piece of business!"
This delighted me exceedingly, for I had written with special deliberate intent to go outside the conventional grind of graduating orations. Feeling dimly, but sincerely, the epic march of the American pioneer I had tried to express it in an address which was in fact a sloppy poem. I should not like to have that manuscript printed precisely as it came from my pen, and a phonographic record of my voice would serve admirably as an instrument of blackmail. However, I thought at the time that I had done moderately well, and my mother's shy smile confirmed me in the belief.
Burton was white with stage-fright as he stepped from the wings but he got through very well, better than I, for he attempted no oratorical flights.
Now came the usual hurried and painful farewells of classmates. With fervid hand-clasp we separated, some of us never again to meet. Our beloved principal (who was even then shadowed by the illness which brought about his death) clung to us as if he hated to see us go, and some of us could not utter a word as we took his hand in parting. What I said to Alice and Maud and Ethel I do not know, but I do recall that I had an uncomfortable lump in my throat while saying it.
As a truthful historian, I must add that Burton and I, immediately after this highly emotional close of our school career, were both called upon to climb into the family carriage and drive away into the black night, back to the farm,—an experience which seemed to us at the time a sad anticlimax. When we entered our ugly attic rooms and tumbled wearily into our hard beds, we retained very little of our momentary sense of victory. Our carefree school life was ended. Our stern education in life had begun.