A Hoosier holiday

by Theodore Dreiser

During my stay here, what novel sensations did I not experience! It was all so different from the commercial life from which I had been extricated in Chicago. There I had been rising at five thirty, eating an almost impossible breakfast (often the condition of my stomach would not permit me to eat at all), taking a slow, long distance horse car to the business heart, working from seven to six with an hour for lunch, in a crowded, foreman bossed loft, and then taking the car home again to eat, and because I was always very tired, to go to bed almost at once. Only Saturday afternoons in summer (the Saturday half holiday idea was then becoming known in America) and Sunday in winter offered sufficient time for me to recuperate and see a little of the world to make life somewhat endurable for me,—a situation which I greatly resented. It was most exasperating.

In college all that was changed. From the smoky, noisy city, I was transported once more to the really peaceful country, where all was green and sweet, and where owing to the peculiarly equable climate of this region, flowers bloomed until late December. The college curriculum necessitated my presence in class only from nine until twelve thirty or so. After that I was free to study or do as I chose. Outside my window in this lovely old house where I had a room were flowers and vines and a grape arbor heavy with blue grapes, and a stretch of grass that was like balm to my soul. The college campus, while it contained but a few humble and unattractive buildings, was so strewn with great trees and threaded through one corner of it (where I entered by a stile) with a crystal clear brook, that I was entranced. Many a morning on my way to class or at noon on my way out, I have thrown myself down by the side of this stream, stretched out my arms and rested, thinking of the difference between my state here and in Chicago. There I was so unhappy in the thing that I was doing. The Irish superintendent who was over my floor despised me—very rightly so, perhaps,—and was at no pains to conceal it, threatening always to see that I was discharged at the end of the year. Our home life was now not so unpleasant, only I found no time to enjoy it; my work was too arduous.

Here were no pots and kettles to pile in bins, no endless loads of tinware and woodenware to unpack out of straw or crates and store away, only to get them out again on orders. There I felt myself a pointless, unimportant bondslave. Here I was a free, intellectual agent, to come or go as I chose. I could even attend classes or not as I chose. Study was something I must do for myself or not. There was no one present to urge me on. Various youths, as I have said, at once gathered about me. Prospective lawyers, doctors, politicians, preachers, educators in embryo, walked by my side or sat by me at the club boarding table, or dropped in between four and six of an afternoon, or walked with me in the country, or played cards on Saturday afternoon[afternoon] or Sunday, or proposed an evening at church or at a debating society to discuss philosophy or read, or even a call upon a girl. I was not very well equipped materially, but neither was I absolutely unpresentable, and aside from the various Greek letter and social fraternities, it did not make so much difference. I was never actually tapped for membership in one of these latter, and yet I was told afterwards that two different fraternities had been seriously divided over the question of my eligibility—another typical experience of mine. But I went out a great deal nevertheless, dreamed much, idled, rested; and if at the end of the year I was mentally disgruntled and unhappy, physically I was very much improved. There can be no question of that. And my outlook and ambitions were better.

It was during this winter that I experienced several of those early, and because I was young and very impressionable, somewhat memorable love affairs which, however sharp the impression they made at the time, came to nothing. Owing to a very retiring and nervous disposition I could never keep my countenance or find my tongue in the presence of the fair. If a girl was pretty and in the least coquettish or self conscious, I was at once stricken as if with the palsy, or left rigid and played over by chills and fever.

Adjoining this house, in the cottage previously mentioned, was a young, tow headed hoyden, who no sooner saw that I was in this house as a guest, than she plotted my discomfiture and unrest.

It was my custom, because there was a space between two windows outside of which were flowers, to study in the east side of my room, looking out on the lawn. In the cottage adjoining were several windows through which, on divers occasions during the first and second week, I saw a girl looking at me, at first closing the shutters when she saw me looking; but later, finding me bashful, no doubt, and inclined to keep my eyes on my books, leaving them open and even singing or laughing in a ringing, disturbing way. On several occasions when our eyes met, she half smiled, or seemed to, but I was too terrified by the thought of a possible encounter on the strength of this to be able to continue my gaze, or to do what would seem the logical thing to most, to speak, or nod, or smile. Nevertheless, in spite of my inability to meet her overtures in the spirit in which they were made, she was apparently not discouraged. She continued to half smile—to give me the shaking realization that some day soon I might have to talk to her whether I would or not—and then where would I find words?

One afternoon, as I was brooding over my Latin, attempting to unravel the mysteries of conjugations and modifications, I saw her come out of her back door and run across the lawn to the kitchen of the old widow lady who kept this house. I was not at all disturbed by this, only interested, and keenly so, even jealous of the pleasure the old lady was to have in the girl’s company. She was exceedingly pretty, and by now there were other male students in the house, though not on my floor. I thought of her graceful body and bright hair and pink cheeks, when suddenly there was a knock at my door, and opening it I encountered the feeble old lady who kept the place, very nervous and bashful herself, but smiling amusedly in a sly, senile way.

“The young lady next door wants to know if you won’t help her with her Latin. There’s something she can’t quite understand,” she said weakly.

Actually my blood ran cold. My hair writhed and rose, then wilted. I felt shooting pains in my arms and knees.

“Why certainly,” I managed to articulate, not knowing anything about Latin grammar, but being dizzard enough to imagine that any educational information was required on this occasion.