Princeton Stories

by Jesse Lynch Williams

It was not at all characteristic of the "little Stacy" of college days to become so despondent, for he was of a hopeful, trusting disposition, and it was all because he had no friend to talk to, no kindred spirit for his confiding nature, or any other kind for that matter.

His discouragement took the form of indignation in the end, but not before he had several times taken hope and smiled in his old trustful way, only to find that it was a blind lead.

For instance when that young Wheaton in his rhetoric class appeared to be striking up a friendship with him, and even walked through the campus several times with him, the chances of having a friend had seemed fair and he began to think that at last he was being appreciated by one fellow, and a nice fellow too. But after young Wheaton had obtained an extension of time on the essay he was to write his manifestations of friendliness suddenly ceased. And the little tutor wondered how he had offended his pupil.

Then there was the time he was invited to a certain annual reception that is always given. The little tutor knew that he was asked only by reason of his position, but he remembered accepting with a good deal of pleasure, and the anticipation of his entrée into the society of the town was a matter of no small excitement to him: a good deal depended on it, he had told himself. He meditated considerably over the manner of conducting himself in his first appearance in society as an instructor: what was becoming to a tutor, and just how dignified he ought to appear, and he even found himself practising remarks in his room and examining in the glass the expression of his face and all those old failings of his self-conscious nature of which he was so ashamed. He remembered how excited he was as he rang the door-bell, and how awkwardly he bowed when he had come down-stairs, and how little the people restrained their curiosity in examining him. He did not mingle with the younger people any more than he could help, for he always hated young ladies, but stayed with a group of women who were talking about Emerson.

These ladies were members of a literary club, which thought itself very literary and tried to be Bostonian; and no doubt it was. Stacy had some very good ideas, and would have been willing to express them, and could have quoted readily from an essay he had once written, but somehow they did not seem to be expecting anything from him except to smile and say, "Yes, certainly," now and then, as those two young assistants were doing, and so he tried to pick up a low-toned conversation with one of them on the edge of the circle. But they made themselves so obnoxious by their air of superiority that he boldly made some allusion to the athletic insignificance on the part of their college in comparison with his own. One of them immediately made some answer which brought in something about Yale (at which the other laughed loudly), and then drew up his brow and looked complacent, as if he had made a splendid shot. The poor little tutor turned on his heel furious, and felt a strange desire to swear, something that he had never done in all his innocent life.

He came to the conclusion that the fault of this whole matter lay not in himself, but in them. This is what he conceived to be the reason: Nearly everyone in the little city, students, faculty and townspeople, were New Englanders by blood or birth. That part of the country, like other sections of the West, happened to have been settled entirely by New Englanders. Perhaps they were not all of the best sort of New England extraction either. At any rate no one knew anything but New England ways of doing things and looking at things, and to the little tutor, whose environments had not been such as to cause him to bow down and worship the Pilgrim fathers, or to think that the sun rose and set on Plymouth Rock, all this was at first a matter of surprise, then of wonder, and finally of hate.

Every day in chapel the President spoke in his cold tones of character moulding, and held up before his hearers Puritan models. On Sundays the little tutor went to the principal church of the place, and a kind of essay that seemed to him nothing but washed-out New Englandism was thrown out to him. The text-books were all those of New England writers; all the manners and customs about the college were copied after New England colleges; the very compositions that he had to correct contained allusions to the Pilgrim Fathers and sturdy New England character and noble Puritan traits until the little tutor began to wish that there never had been a Plymouth Rock. He wondered how everyone else seemed to stand it so well. But they had been brought up on it and never knew anything different, and could not conceive of any one's not thinking as they did and as their fathers did and as their great-grandfathers had done, and pitied (only Stacy doubted if they could pity) any family that did not have a piece of the Mayflower to worship.

The most aggravating feature of it, to the little tutor, was that they were so very self-satisfied about it all, never dreaming that there could be anyone so barbarous as not to envy their New England blood, and it was this attitude that used to make the little tutor indignant and cause him to wish he could be sarcastic, as one of his professors used to be: how he would pitch into them! But the worst of it was that he realized his diminutiveness and his boyishness; so he felt helpless and baffled, and he had to submit to the cold indifference and haughty air of superiority worn by those two young assistants not much older than himself, who graduated from such a miserable little unheard-of college. Stacy thought that if they had gone to his college they would have had some of the conceit taken out of them. He thought he might stand it all as far as he was concerned, but he felt somehow as if they were insulting his college in their treatment of himself, her representative. He blushed to think how poor a representative he was.

It was just at this point in his discouragement that he had an opportunity which he had often longed for. At last he would have a chance to show them what was in him. This would be his final stroke, he told himself, and he staked his all upon it. He was to lead the prayer-meeting. These prayer-meetings were attended by the college, the academy, and even the professors.

Like many excessively shy men, the little tutor was not abashed before a crowd when he appeared in some identity other than his own. At college he had always done well in his orations, because unconsciously he merged his own personality into that of an imaginary orator. So on this occasion he was perfectly cool; indeed, he was surprised at himself. The subject was, "Help one another." He had thought, in preparing it, that it was a singular coincidence, his having that subject. He thought he could talk to them from his heart on such a subject. And he did.