The Adventures of a Freshman

by Jesse Lynch Williams

"Isn't Mr. Young present?" said the professor in a tone loud and clear, and Young fairly jumped out of his seat, exclaiming, "Yes, marm—yes, sir, I mean."

He added it quickly but it was too late. Everyone had heard and everyone was laughing, and even the professor joined in, though he did not mean it unkindly, and then they all laughed still more. The walls fairly echoed with it. Even after the professor had rapped for order and the laughter had quieted down, someone in the front row tittered and that set them all off again. A new class is always somewhat hysterical. Some of those in the front rows turned and stared at him in their laughter.

It was a natural mistake. This freshman had prepared for college at a high school, and most of the High School teachers were women. Young should have joined in the laughter, but he only stood there, scarlet and serious-looking and wishing he could disappear forever.

Finally the professor said, kindly, "Now then, Mr. Young."

But Mr. Young was confused, and though he had been over the passage until he had it nearly by heart, he now became all tangled up and excited and finally took his seat dripping with perspiration and wishing he had never come to college. Instead of being perfect his first college recitation was a flat failure. But the professor did not count this failure against him because he saw that the fellow was rattled and because the next time he came in he made the best recitation of the day.

But that was not the trouble. The fellows would not forget it and would not let up on it. "Thank you, marm," they whispered as he arose to recite, and "Thank you, marm," they shouted to him on the crowded campus. The Sophomores took it up. It became a second nick-name.

The worst of it was—in fact the reason of it all was—that he took this as he did himself and everything else, with entirely too much self-importance. Instead of laughing or answering back he looked sullen and sedate when they said, "Thank you, marm," and naturally they said it then all the more.

It cut and hurt to have his own classmates—the men with whom he had stood shoulder to shoulder in the rush and at the class meeting—treat him thus. If they had known that he was taking it so seriously, they would have stopped. But they did not know it. How should they? Most people have to suffer before they learn to be sympathetic.

So, altogether, with the Sophomores who hazed and the classmates who guyed, Will Young decided that college life was not all it was cracked up to be. But you may be sure he did not let this opinion get into the letters he wrote home. Because he was discouraged was no reason for making his mother discouraged too. But, oh, it would have helped a lot, if he had only somebody to talk to about it all. He did not know how to make friends with the others, and the others did not seem to care to make friends, thank you, marm, with the sober-faced old Deacon.

It was all very well for a fellow like Linton to say that something of this sort was a good thing for a fellow like Young. But Linton was a Junior, with friends that loved him; and Juniors forget. Besides, sometimes we get too much of a good thing, and then it becomes a bad thing. If it had kept on this way Young might have become meek and backboneless, and such an extreme would be even worse than that of self-importance.