Princeton Stories

by Jesse Lynch Williams

And this spoiled the salutatorian's day of triumph. He did not glance back now to where his sister and aunt were sitting. He forgot to unroll his sheepskin as the others did when they came down from the stage with them. He blew his breath through it against the palm of his hand and looked absent-mindedly at the scratched paint of the old-fashioned pew. He remained thus all through Smith's valedictory, except once when the speaker stretched out both arms and the class arose; then he listened for a moment and said, "Biff!" under his breath. When it was all over he passed out with his class and through the gazing throng, thinking not of the much that he had won, but only of the one thing he had lost, and this was unfortunate, because much people were looking at him and thinking how fine it was to be Davis, and that is fame, and it was too bad to miss it.

Linton had no ambition and he colored meerschaum beautifully. He was usually mum in a crowd, but he was fine company on a long cross-country walk, and he knew more about ordering a dinner than any man on the campus, except one of the faculty.

When he did not want you in his room he told you so, and he was the kind of a fellow you would do anything for after you came to know him.

He had a very efficient sense of humor, which does not mean that he said funny things at the table. Some people thought him sarcastic. But many fellows went to him for advice or sympathy, and it was not only because he could keep his mouth absolutely closed.

Linton had a walking acquaintance with every road, lane, and pathway within a radius of twenty miles of the campus. He knew how long it took to cover any route, and where there were good places to stop and rest, especially the quaint ones where they served it in mugs.

Here he used to sit and sip and smoke the golden afternoon away, dreaming of how it all must have been years ago in the old stage coach days when the horses drew up on the clattering cobble-stones and the passengers alighted and looked about and asked how many more miles it was, and the red-faced driver jumped down from the box and swaggered into the tap-room, and called for a pint of ale, and told the landlord how bad the pike was near New Brunswick.

He considered himself somewhat of an artist. There were ever so many bits that he was fond of showing you if he thought you could appreciate them; like the bend in the canal up toward Baker's basin, with peculiar water and willow-coloring in springtime. Linton said it was like a French water-color. He used to carry a gun over his shoulder, and say he was going snipe-shooting; really it was to look for things like this, and get up a big appetite for dinner. He could also point out a view of gentle hills and rolling green fields on the way to Kingston that was a good imitation of English landscape, he said, and he knew just where the tower of the School of Science ought to make an effect through treetops, like the view of Magdalen tower from a point in Addison's walk, if it were only beautiful Gothic instead of ugly Renaissance. But perhaps all this was merely to show that he had once canoed down the Thames from Oxford to London.

He was very well up in the ancient history of the town, also. He knew all about most of the old houses, and he had sketches of the best of the old brass-knockers and colonial doorways. It is said that he used to prowl about on moonlight nights for this purpose. Small window-panes were another thing he was insane over. He had substituted for the ordinary panes of his windows, dingy little square ones with thick frames painted black. Some of the fellows said the reason he did this was to be odd. Linton blew smoke, and said yes, that was the reason.

But it was the old campus that he loved the most. He knew just about all there was to find out about it, and dreamed a great deal more.

He had ever so many favorite aspects, such as the one of the back of the Dean's house—with small, square window-panes—from away over at a point between Whig and Clio Halls, and the rear view of Prospect across the stretch of sloping meadow toward the canal, and a number of congenial little spots that meant something to him, like the stone buttress at the bottom of the tower of Witherspoon, a great place to warm your back against in spring sunshine, with the blue smoke trickling lazily from your mouth and the fellows batting up flies on the old diamond; and then for midnight chats there were the smooth steps of chapel with the elms saying things in low tones overhead. But those midnight chats were all over now. It was Commencement Day, and it was the saddest thing that had ever happened to Linton.