The Land of Joy

by Ralph Henry Barbour

“Bloody Monday Night” was a dire disappointment to Phillip. After marching about the yard arm in arm with Chester and Guy for the better part of half an hour, cheering defiantly for his class, the subsequent shoving and jostling, in which the most glorious thing that befell him was the loss of his cap, was distinctly unsatisfying. He went home feeling rather aggrieved, in the mood of one who has seen an ideal shattered.

There was another visit to the theatre about this time. He and Chester witnessed the performance of a sensational melodrama, which Chester subsequently re-enacted for his benefit on the platform of the Boylston Street Station of the subway, to the intense interest of several score of dignified citizens of Cambridge and the Back Bay. Phillip paid his half of the expenses without questioning, having discovered that Chester’s theatre parties were invariably Dutch treats. And about the same time Phillip awoke to the fact that there was a well-developed skeleton in his closet which, for want of a better name, might have been called Pecuniary Embarrassment. Expenses came thick and fast. He purchased a new suit of brown tweed cut in the prevailing mode, with a short jacket having a stunning plait and belt, and a pair of trousers surprisingly generous at the back. A dress suit followed this, and some shirts in blue and pink and green effects, a crimson cap and several pairs of wonderful socks. Then he made the startling discovery one morning that he was the only fellow at a recitation who wore high shoes. At noon he went to a shop on the avenue and purchased a pair of low ones with very extended soles. He caught a violent cold the first day he wore them—which happened to be wet and raw—but persisted and suffered in the cause of fashion for a week. When he had to stay in his room for the whole of one day and take medicine, he consoled himself with the knowledge that, even as an invalid, he was attired in the mode.

He joined the Union, bought an H. A. A. ticket and rented a locker at the Newell Boat Club. As he had nothing with which to grace the locker he purchased a pair of rowing-trunks and a shirt and promised himself a place in a freshman crew. Meanwhile he had joined a freshman club table at The Inn and was living very satisfactorily. But six dollars a week, payable monthly, caused the skeleton to rattle noisily. His connection with the table had come about as the result of an advertisement in the Crimson. He had interviewed the fellow who was getting it up and had learned the names of those who had already joined. He had conferred with John North, and the latter had advised him to cast in his lot with the freshmen rather than to go to the general table, where, as John delicately explained, freshmen weren’t popular. The Inn was not particularly handy to his rooms, but John insisted that the walk there and back several times daily would do him good.

There were nine other fellows at the table and, with the exceptions of Phillip and a man named Kingsford, all had prepared at the same school and were naturally somewhat clannish. But when a week had passed the two outsiders were accepted by the others, rather patronizingly, to be sure, but still unreservedly, and Phillip found himself amongst a congenial and thoroughly nice set. It did not occur to him to feel any surprise at his admission any more than when Chester Baker had so unconventionally scraped acquaintance in the Yard. But later on he discovered that he would never have been privileged to fill the vacancy had not his friendship with John North served as a guarantee. Kingsford had been admitted simply because he was one of the Marlborough Street Kingsfords and must of necessity be desirable, on the principle that the King can do no wrong.

During that first week of polite ostracism Phillip and Everett Kingsford got to know each other thoroughly. Phillip felt uncomfortable at times when the conversation at table veered to subjects outside his experience and emphasized his aloofness, but Kingsford found only amusement in the situation.

“It’s funny,” he confided one day, “how those chaps think that no one who hasn’t been to school at Milton can be quite correct. They put up with me because they have been brought up to consider a Boston Kingsford one of the elect, but it’s easy to be seen that, try as they may, they can’t help looking down on me a bit. And the most amusing thing about it is the really generous and charitable way in which they all strive to conceal it.”

Despite the fact that his waking hours were pretty well filled, Phillip pined for other fields in which to win distinction. At Chester’s advice he had become a subscriber to the Crimson, and every morning he read the calls for candidates for one thing and another and tried to find some line of action that appealed to him. For a week he was undecided whether to try for the Rifle and Pistol Club, the Lacrosse Team or the Pierian Sodality. Later he gave up thoughts of the latter because the only instrument he could play was a jewsharp, and he discovered that for some reason jewsharps were not included in the orchestra. Inquiries elicited the disappointing information that if he joined the Lacrosse Team he could not hope to take part in a game before midspring, and he relinquished the idea of gaining glory in that sport. That left only the Rifle and Pistol Club under consideration, and it is probable that he would have tried there had he not found a notice one day calling for candidates for the Shooting Club. Phillip rather prided himself on his ability with the shotgun, and so attended a meeting in Claverly one Wednesday night and was duly enrolled as a member.

He had not given up hope of gaining a place in one of the crews, but John had advised against it for the present and so he put off the attempt. He joined a class at the gymnasium and went there every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons and did strange things with chest weights, dumb-bells, Indian clubs, ladders and bars, and had aches in all sorts of out-of-the-way corners of his body. But he measured and remeasured his chest and biceps and found, to his delight, that he was rapidly increasing the girth of both.

Squad E had not yet been called to the field, and Phillip realized that his chance of playing on the Freshman Football Team that year was not worth considering. Guy Bassett had been taken onto the second squad and was distinguishing himself there. But Chester, like Phillip, was quite out of it and they bemoaned their fate together.