The Adventures of a Freshman

by Jesse Lynch Williams

Now, a year hence, if he won the Freshman First Honor prize, he would not only have the $200 but, in consequence of his high stand, he could get all the tutoring he would want; but this year he was still a Freshman and there was no class below him to tutor. Next year, also, he would have some of those newspaper correspondences of Harris's. Young had already arranged for that—but this year Harris was still in college. Young might also get the agency for shoes, or athletic goods, or photographic supplies next year, or possibly the contract for issuing the programmes of the baseball and football and track athletic games; or, he might, as a Sophomore, publish syllabuses of the lecture courses (and sell them for a dollar each). In fact, now that he was on the field, he saw more ways of earning money while getting a college education than he had dreamed of—hundreds of ways, very good ways, if only he had hustled and availed himself of them at the beginning of the term. Other Freshmen had secured the jobs of distributing the Daily Princetonian and The Nassau Literary Magazine and The Tiger, or had taken the agency for steam-laundries at Trenton, and so on, and so on, while he, who needed money more than most of them, had only spent it foolishly, had not earned a cent, had not done a thing for himself, but accept the club management which had, so to speak, been thrown into his lap—and this is what he kept telling himself as he walked to and from recitations, and repeated when he went to bed at night, and remembered when he awoke in the morning ... until—how time flies at college!—Christmas vacation was only a week off and still nothing had turned up. He couldn't go through another term this way.

Meanwhile what made it all the harder for Young was to watch the ease with which Lee and Powelton and the others with whom he sat down three times a day at the club, received their comfortable allowances from home.

"Ah!" they would say, cheerfully, when a check came fluttering out of a letter. All they had to do to get money was to open envelopes and then sign their names. "You fellows," Young used to think as he watched them—"You fellows don't know how lucky you are." But of course he said nothing to them of what worried him. He was not that kind. They had great respect for his abilities and thought he could do anything. They did not guess what was going on in his mind these days, while they talked of the fun they were going to have during the holidays. "I can't bear to think of your being away from us at Christmas," wrote the Deacon's mother. "Perhaps," said Young to himself, "I sha'n't be away, after all."

Then he wondered what the fellows would think and what the people "out home" would say.

He knew just how his father would laugh at him, remarking, "I told you so," and how his mother, who kept everyone informed of how Will was getting on at college, would cry; for it would be as great a disappointment to her as to him. It would surprise her, too, for he had not let her know how much he had spent, telling himself that it would only worry her unnecessarily, that when the time came he would pitch in and do something.

"Deacon," said Lucky Lee on the way to luncheon, "you're to come home with me for the holidays—at least mother says so in this letter. Course, I don't want you, but I'll obey my mother."

The sober Deacon laughed at the pleasantry, and thanked Lucky, but shook his head at the little fellow's repeated importunities. Young felt that he couldn't afford even to buy a ticket to New York and back.

His excuses were so lame, however, that the bright-eyed little Lucky suddenly got an inkling of what was the trouble. "Say, Deacon," he began when they were alone, "if you should ever get hard up, I hope you have decency enough to give your friends a chance to——"

Young blushed and shook his head.

"I don't mean particularly about this vacation," Lucky went on. "You're coming home with me all right, if I have to carry you on my back all the way. I mean in general. For instance, if you—er—that is, well, blame it, we're good enough friends. If you are 'temporarily embarrassed,' as they say, when you come back after Christmas, you'll do what I would do if I were hard up, won't you? If you wouldn't you're no friend of mine."