Princeton Stories

by Jesse Lynch Williams

Not many of his audience had understood much of what he had been saying, but that did not matter. The fellows smiled at the right time when he said something about puellas pulchras, and they nodded their heads knowingly when he made the reference to athletics, as he had told them beforehand to do. And he had gotten through without forgetting the paragraph beginning with "Postquam," as he feared he would.

He was mopping his good-looking brow. His nerves were still quivering, but he felt perfectly cool and unafraid of anything, and he sat very still with his eyes half closed, and felt the tension on his nerves soothingly relax. Then for the first time he heard the applause, and it occurred to him that all those many people out there were clapping their hands for him, and that for five minutes they had heard very little else but his voice, and he felt without glancing up that they were still looking at him and very likely thinking, "That is the man that led the class." He told himself all this with an inward smile of wonder at his own importance, and at his not being more impressed by it.

Then he slowly raised his eyes and moved his gaze around over the many fluttering fans to the right. He passed over it once without seeing it, then he found the face he was searching for. She was looking up at him with just the kind of a smile that he knew would be there, and when she caught his eye, the smile became radiant, and he fancied he saw a little look of triumph in it. This he answered with a shrug of his engowned shoulder and an almost imperceptible grimace, and quickly looked away again. No one else saw it, but she saw and she understood.

The applause had ceased, and the next man was introduced and the audience turned their attention to him.

Davis took a long breath and looked about him. There was a fat old lady fanning vigorously, and at every stroke of the fan a ray of light was reflected in his face. Over there on the right of the platform were the venerable trustees. Harry Lawrence's fine looking father, with the handsome head of gray hair, was in the front row, looking grave and indulgently interested. On the left were the faculty in their black gowns. They appeared more or less accustomed to all this. Down in front were his classmates, and back of these the many, many people closely crowded together. Their faces looked like little patches of white with dark marks for features, and nearly all of them seemed to be fanning.

He remembered the lining up under the elms this morning in front of North, and the band that played, and the girls that gazed, and the many classes calling "'82 this way!" and "'61 this way!" and the old-fashioned cheer that '79 gave. Then with the band taking a fresh hold on the air, how the long procession had begun its march under the trees toward the church, between the crowds of visitors who parted to either side and looked at them as they filed by.

First came that member of the faculty who is always grand marshal and carries an orange and black baton, then the august trustees followed by the faculty in their gowns and mortar boards, and behind these trooped the sons of Nassau; each class in the order of graduation, and last of all those who were about to become graduates, over whom all this fuss was being made, and who were somewhat impressed by it and by the length of their gowns.

He remembered the slow, dignified march led by the grand usher and his assistants up the aisle of the old church between the crowded pews of smiling fathers and proud mothers and the girls with bright-colored dresses. He recalled how amused and yet pleased he was at hearing a junior whisper to a girl beside him, "There he is—that's Davis, the one I was telling you about." This he remembered had interrupted the silent rehearsal of the sentence with the ablative absolute in it. But he did not have to rehearse it any more. All the salutatorian had to do was to sit still and hear what the other speakers had to say and feel good.

He was thinking about himself and the four years just past, and having a right good time at it. He recalled how he had been a nobody at the start, and he smiled as he remembered how some of these very fellows in the pews before him had looked down on him in freshman year, and how he had forced their respect and won their liking. He traced the progress of it from the first step when he gained the one freshman position on the Princetonian board and overheard someone say, "What! that poler?" up to the present time when people pointed him out on the campus and said, "There goes Dougal Davis." Few ambitious men graduate with as much to be proud of and as little to regret.

First there was the prize for leading the class in freshman year, then came the sophomore essay prize, and the Washington's birthday debate, and the next year a classical prize and two or three Hall honors, including one of the four appointments for the inter-Hall junior oratorical contest, in which he had won first place, and a number of other prizes of which he did not stop to think in detail, and finally the appointment as first representative of his Hall in the Lynde debate which had taken place the night before, and the result of which would be announced to-day. Intermingled with these were other honors, such as the membership of an elective club, and the presidency of his class in junior year, and the class oratorship on Class Day, and then the Latin salutatory to-day.