Princeton Stories

by Jesse Lynch Williams

WHEN GIRLS COME TO PRINCETON

If you would like to see a college campus as it really is, with students walking along with the gait and the manner and the clothes they usually wear, and to hear the old bell ring, the hall and dormitory stairs rattle, the entries echo and the feet scrape along the stone walks as on ordinary occasions, and see the quadrangle become crowded and noisy, then suddenly empty and quiet again, and if you wish to have a view of your brother's room in its average state of order and ornamentation, do not come to Princeton for one of the class dances, or on the day of a big game, when everyone is excited and well dressed, and even the old elms are in an abnormal flutter, but come down in a small party some quiet day in an ordinary week, when there are no extra cars on the small informal train which jolts up from the junction. Tell your brother that you are coming, or his roommate, who will gladly cut a lecture or two and show you about the campus. Then you may see the college world in its normal state, and the undergraduate in his characteristic settings—any number of him with a pipe in his mouth or a song, slouching across the campus with the Princeton gait, wearing something disreputable upon his head, corduroys and sweaters or flannels and cheviots upon his body, and an air of ownership combined with irresponsibility all over. In short, if you prefer to get some idea of college life, and learn, as far as a girl can, why college days are the best of a lifetime, visit Princeton on some day that is not a special occasion. But very likely this is not what you prefer.

Most girls would rather hurry down with a big trunk in a crowded special train, and go to four teas, meet a score of men apiece whom they will never see again, dance all night, and then, in a few minutes, arise looking as fresh as they did on Easter Sunday, and smile good-byes at the depot to the breakfastless young men whom they leave forsaken and sleepy to try to go on where they left off, while they themselves hurry back to town, and to another dance the next night.

A college dance is generally considered very good fun. There is an adventurous zest in journeying to a college, and exploring it, and meeting crowds of people you never saw before, and there is something wild and reckless in being quartered in an odd little boarding-house, or, more delicious still, in some room in University Hall borrowed by your entertainer for the occasion, with the owner's photographs and souvenirs hanging about just as he left them. Then, too, the young men themselves, some of whom you have met or heard of before, try to be very agreeable, and do everything in their power to make you have a good time, if for no other reason, in order that you may see how superior their college is to any other, so that even several-seasoned society girls consider it worth their while to run down to a college dance, and be amused by these fresh-faced young fellows. Some of them have been coming off and on for several generations of college men, and could talk interestingly of your brother in the class of '88 should they be so inclined. They know all about these hops. This is written for you who have yet to attend one.

There are three regular dances each year, and they are given by the three upper classes. One takes place at the close of the mid-year examinations, to usher in the new term. Another is given at a more beautiful time of the year, usually occurring on the eve of some great baseball game. The third one, the most splendid and most jammed, is the sophomores' reception, given on the night before Commencement to the class which graduates the following day.

Each class has a dance committee, who fly around and work hard to make their dance finer than the last one, and generally succeed. They procure a fine patroness list to engrave on their invitations, containing several of the sort of names that appear in connection with Patriarchs' balls and Philadelphia assemblies, together with those of two or three professors' wives, to lend a tone. The committee get hold of the Gymnasium, pull down the bars and draw the trapeze to one side; then have a lot of pink and white cheese-cloth tacked up, hang some athletic trophies over the rafters, string a few hundred incandescent lights here and there, and send to one of the neighboring cities for a smart caterer and a large high-priced orchestra to come for the night. Then they are ready for you.

Before the dance, however, you are taken to a few teas which are given by some of the clubs. You saw the club-houses when you were shown about earlier in the day. Some of them are very handsome, and they are all nice, and the nicest is the one to which your brother belongs, or whoever owns the club-pin you carry home with you. At the teas the rooms are crowded, the air is hot, the flowers are tumbled over, you become hoarse, and in most features it is similar to any tea, except that there are enough men. You will here meet several of those whose names you have on your dance-card, and you may make up your mind whether to remember that fact or not.

After the round of teas there remain but two hours in which to dress. When you have hurried on those things which make up "a dream," "a creation," or "a symphony," whichever it is that you bring, and have had, if you feel like it, a bit of dinner, you are taken, at a little after eight o'clock, to church. The Glee, Banjo, and Mandolin clubs give a very good concert here, and it is a good place to have your escort point out the various men who are fortunate enough to be on your card, and gives you a good opportunity to notice the taste displayed by other girls in their costumes, and feel pleased with your own. There are all sorts of gowns, made of many sorts of materials with interesting names.

When the concert is at last over—much as you enjoyed it, it seemed rather long to you, who were thinking of what was to follow—you are taken to University Hall, which is across the street, or to the Gymnasium, if the dance is to be there, which is a little farther back on the campus, and you are shown to the dressing-room, where those last fluttering finishing touches are put on. Those calm, assured-looking young women who came in ahead of you are a little excited too, as is that laughing girl who was pointed out to you as a flirt.

When you are quite ready, and are pulling and smoothing your gloves while waiting for the chaperon to start your party, you catch a glimpse of something, as the door opens for an instant, which extends from the door all along the dimly lighted passage to the very stairs beyond—something which looks like a great black bank with gleaming white patches here and there. This is made up of young men, whose collars are stiff and straight. When your chaperon stalks forth with a sort of flourish, several members of the black and white bank come forward to meet your party, and the rest make inaudible comments upon your appearance, probably to the effect that you are "smooth." But all that you are sure of is that your escort offers you his arm with a smile and a stiff bow, that you walk nervously up the winding stairs, step into a dazzle of light, where members of the dance committee are running hither and thither with dance-cards and girls, and where patronesses are smiling, bowing, looking stately, holding their fans, and doing whatever patronesses usually do. Then the orchestra plays a promenade, to which a few impatient couples try to waltz, and you begin what you have talked about and thought about and dreamed about for a month.