It is easy to say that I was making a mountain out of a mole hill, a catastrophe out of a mere breach of good manners. It is easy to say that. But I know that I suffered agonies of shame. After the exercises, when the crowd pressed in all directions in search of friends, I tried in vain to get out of the hall. I was mobbed, I was lionized. Everybody wanted to shake hands with the prodigy of the day, and they knew who it was. I had made sure of that; I had exhibited myself. The people smiled on me, flattered me, passed me on from one to another. I smirked back, but I did not know what I said. I was wild to be clear of the building. I thought everybody mocked me. All my roses had turned to ashes, and all through my own brazen conduct.
I would have given my diploma to have Miss Dillingham know how the thing had happened, but I could not bring myself to speak first. If she would ask me—But nobody asked. Nobody looked away from me. Everybody congratulated me, and my father and mother and my remotest relations. But the sting of shame smarted just the same; I could not be consoled. I had made a fool of myself: Mr. Swan had publicly put me down.
Ah, so that was it! Vanity was the vital spot again. It was wounded vanity that writhed and squirmed. It was not because I had been bold, but because I had been pronounced bold, that I suffered so monstrously. If Mr. Swan, with an eloquent gesture, had not silenced me, I might have made my little speech—good heavens! what did I mean to say?—and probably called it another feather in my bonnet. But he had stopped me promptly, disgusted with my forwardness, and he had shown before all those hundreds what he thought of me. Therein lay the sting.
With all my talent for self-analysis, it took me a long time to realize the essential pettiness of my trouble. For years—actually for years—after that eventful day of mingled triumph and disgrace, I could not think of the unhappy incident without inward squirming. I remember distinctly how the little scene would suddenly flash upon me at night, as I lay awake in bed, and I would turn over impatiently, as if to shake off a nightmare; and this so long after the occurrence that I was myself amazed at the persistence of the nightmare. I had never been reproached by any one for my conduct on Graduation Day. Why could I not forgive myself? I studied the matter deeply—it wearies me to remember how deeply—till at last I understood that it was wounded vanity that hurt so, and no nobler remorse. Then, and only then, was the ghost laid. If it ever tried to get up again, after that, I only had to call it names to see it scurry back to its grave and pull the sod down after it.
Before I had laid my ghost, a friend told me of a similar experience of his boyhood. He was present at a small private entertainment, and a violinist who should have played being absent, the host asked for a volunteer to take his place. My friend, then a boy in his teens, offered himself, and actually stood up with the violin in his hands, as if to play. But he could not even hold the instrument properly—he had never been taught the violin. He told me he never knew what possessed him to get up and make a fool of himself before a roomful of people; but he was certain that ten thousand imps possessed him and tormented him for years and years after if only he remembered the incident.
My friend's confession was such a consolation to me that I could not help thinking I might do some other poor wretch a world of good by offering him my company and that of my friend in his misery. For if it took me a long time to find out that I was a vain fool, the corollary did not escape me: there must be other vain fools.