How To Write Special Feature Articles Part 47

As it turned out we began our wedded life quite luxuriously. We had a whole house to ourselves--and sometimes even a maid! In those days there were no flats in our town and certain small but shrewd local capitalists had built rows of tiny frame dwellings which they leased to a.s.sistant professors, a.s.sistant plumbers, and other respectable people of the same financial status, at rates which enabled them--the owners, not the tenants--to support charity and religion.

They were all alike--I refer to the houses now, not to all landlords necessarily--with a steep stoop in front and a drying yard for Monday mornings in the rear, the kind you see on the factory edges of great cities--except that ours were cleaner and were occupied by nicer people.

One of our next-door neighbors was a rising young butcher with his bride and the house on the other side of us was occupied by a postman, his progeny, and the piercing notes of his whistle--presumably a cast-off one--on which all of his numerous children, irrespective of s.e.x or age, were ambitiously learning their father's calling, as was made clear through the thin dividing wall, which supplied visual privacy but did not prevent our knowing when they took their baths or in what terms they objected to doing so. It became a matter of interesting speculation to us what Willie would say the next Sat.u.r.day night; and if we had quarreled they, in turn, could have--and would have--told what it was all about.

"Not every economist," Carl remarked whimsically, "can learn at first hand how the proletariat lives."

I, too, was learning at first hand much about my own profession. My original research in domestic science was sound in theory, but I soon discovered that my dietetic program was too expensive in practice.

Instead of good cuts of beef I had to select second or third quality from the rising young butcher, who, by the way, has since risen to the dignity of a touring car. Instead of poultry we had pork, for this was before pork also rose.

My courses in bookkeeping, however, proved quite practical; and I may say that I was a good purchasing agent and general manager from the beginning of our partnership, instead of becoming one later through bitter experience, like so many young wives brought up to be ladies, not general houseworkers.

Frequently I had a maid, commonly called along our row the "gurrul"--and quite frequently I had none; for we could afford only young beginners, who, as soon as I had trained them well, left me for other mistresses who could afford to pay them well.

"Oh, we should not accuse the poor creatures of ingrat.i.tude," I told Carl one day. "Not every economist can learn at first hand the law of supply and demand."

If, however, as my fashionable aunt in town remarked, we were picturesquely impecunious--which, to that soft lady, probably meant that, we had to worry along without motor cars--we were just as desperately happy as we were poor; for we had each other at least. Every other deprivation seemed comparatively easy or amusing.

Nor were we the only ones who had each other--and therefore poverty.

Scholarship meant sacrifice, but all agreed that it was the ideal life.

To be sure, some members of the Faculty--or their wives--had independent means and could better afford the ideal life. They were considered n.o.ble for choosing it. Some of the alumni who attended the great games and the graduating exercises were enormously wealthy, and gave the interest of their incomes--sometimes a whole handful of bonds at a time--to the support of the ideal life.

Was there any law compelling them to give their money to their Alma Mater? No--just as there was none compelling men like Carl to give their lives and sacrifice their wives. These men of wealth made even greater sacrifices. They could have kept in comfort a dozen wives apiece--modest ones--on what they voluntarily preferred to turn over to the dear old college. Professors, being impractical and visionary, cannot always see these things in their true proportions.

We, moreover, in return for our interest in education, did we not shamelessly accept monthly checks from the university treasurer's office? It was quite materialistic in us. Whereas these disinterested donors, instead of receiving checks, gave them, which is more blessed.

And were they not checks of a denomination far larger than those we selfishly cashed for ourselves? Invariably. Therefore our princely benefactors were regarded not only as n.o.bler but as the n.o.bility.

Indeed, the social stratification of my new home, where the excellent principles of high thinking and plain living were highly recommended for all who could not reverse the precept, struck me, a neophyte, as for all the world like that of a cathedral town in England, except that these visiting patrons of religion and learning were treated with a reverence and respect found only in America. Surely it must have amused them, had they not been so used to it; for they were quite the simplest, kindest, sweetest overrich people I had ever met in my own country--and they often took pains to tell us broad-mindedly that there were better things than money. Their tactful attempts to hide their awful affluence were quite appealing--occasionally rather comic. Like similarly conscious efforts to cover evident indigence, it was so palpable and so unnecessary.

"There, there!" I always wanted to say--until I, too, became accustomed to it. "It's all right. You can't help it."

It was dear of them all the same, however, and I would not seem ungrateful for their kind consideration. After all, how different from the purse-proud arrogance of wealth seen in our best--selling--fiction, though seldom elsewhere.

For the most part they were true gentlefolk, with the low voices and simple manners of several generations of breeding; and I liked them, for the most part, very much--especially certain old friends of our parents, who, I learned later, were willing to show their true friendship in more ways than Carl and I could permit.

One is frequently informed that the great compensation for underpaying the college professor is in the leisure to live--_otium c.u.m dignitate_ as returning old grads call it when they can remember their Latin, though as most of them cannot they call it a snap.

Carl, by the way, happened to be the secretary of his cla.s.s, and his popularity with dear old cla.s.smates became a nuisance in our tiny home.

I remember one well-known bachelor of arts who answered to the name of Spud, a rather vulgar little man. Comfortably seated in Carl's study one morning, with a cigar in his mouth, Spud began:

"My, what a snap! A couple of hours' work a day and three solid months'

vacation! Why, just see, here you are loafing early in the morning! You ought to come up to the city! Humph! I'd show you what real work means."

Now my husband had been writing until two o'clock the night before, so that he had not yet made preparation for his next hour. It was so early indeed that I had not yet made the beds. Besides, I had heard all about our snap before and it was getting on my nerves.

"Carl would enjoy nothing better than seeing you work," I put in when the dear cla.s.smate finished; "but unfortunately he cannot spare the time."

Spud saw the point and left; but Carl, instead of giving me the thanks I deserved, gave me the first scolding of our married life! Now isn't that just like a husband?

Of course it can be proved by the annual catalogue that the average member of the Faculty has only about twelve or fourteen hours of cla.s.sroom work a week--the worst-paid instructor more; the highest-paid professor less. What a university teacher gives to his students in the cla.s.sroom, however, is or ought to be but a rendering of what he acquires outside, as when my distinguished father tried one of his well-prepared cases in court. Every new cla.s.s, moreover, is a different proposition, as I once heard my brother say of his customers.

That is where the art of teaching comes in and where Carl excelled. He could make even the "dismal science," as Carlyle called economics, interesting, as was proved by the large numbers of men who elected his courses, despite the fact that he made them work hard to pa.s.s. Nor does this take into account original research and the writing of books like Carl's scholarly work on The History of Property, on which he had been slaving for three solid summers and hundreds of nights during termtime; not to speak of attending committee meetings constantly, and the furnace even more constantly. The latter, like making beds, is not mentioned in the official catalogue. I suppose such details would not become one's dignity.

As in every other occupation, some members of the Faculty do as little work as the law requires; but most of them are an extremely busy lot, even though they may, when it suits their schedule better, take exercise in the morning instead of the afternoon--an astonishing state of affairs that always scandalizes the so-called tired business man.

As for Carl, I was seeing so little of him except at mealtimes that I became rather piqued at first, being a bride. I felt sure he did not love me any more!

"Do you really think you have a right to devote so much time to outside work?" I asked one evening when I was washing the dishes and he was starting off for the university library to write on his great book.--It was the indirect womanly method of saying: "Oh, please devote just a little more time to me!"--"You ought to rest and be fresh for your cla.s.sroom work," I added.

Being a man he did not see it.

"The way to advance in the teaching profession," he answered, with his veiled twinkle, "is to neglect it. It doesn't matter how poorly you teach, so long as you write dull books for other professors to read.

That's why it is called scholarship--because you slight your scholars."

"Oh, I'm sick of all this talk about scholarship!" I cried. "What does it mean anyway?"

"Scholarship, my dear," said Carl, "means finding out all there is to know about something n.o.body else cares about, and then telling it in such a way that n.o.body else can find out. If you are understood you are popular; if you are popular you are no scholar. And if you're no scholar, how can you become a full professor? Now, my child, it is all clear to you."

And, dismissing me and the subject with a good-night kiss, he brushed his last year's hat and hurried off, taking the latchkey.

So much for _otium_.

"But where does the dignity come in?" I asked Carl one day when he was sharpening his lawnmower and thus neglecting his lawn tennis; for, like a Freshman, I still had much to learn about quaint old college customs.

"Why, in being called p'fessor by the tradesmen," said Carl. "Also in renting a doctor's hood for academic pee-rades at three dollars a pee-rade, instead of buying a new hat for the rest of the year. Great thing--dignity!"

He chuckled and began to cut the gra.s.s furiously, reminding me of a thoroughbred hunter I once saw harnessed to a plow.

"P'fessors of pugilism and dancing," he went on gravely, "haven't a bit more dignity than we have. They merely have more money. Just think!

There isn't a butcher or grocer in this town who doesn't doff his hat to me when he whizzes by in his motor--even those whose bills I haven't paid. It's great to have dignity. I don't believe there's another place in the world where he who rides makes obeisance to him who walks. Much better than getting as high wages as a trustee's chauffeur! A salary is so much more dignified than wages."

He stopped to mop his brow, looking perfectly dignified.

"And yet," he added, egged on by my laughter, for I always loved his quiet irony--it was never directed at individuals, but at the ideas and traditions they blandly and blindly followed--

"And yet carping critics of the greatest nation on earth try to make out that art and intellectuality are not properly recognized in the States.

Pessimists! Look at our picture galleries, filled with old masters from abroad! Think how that helps American artists! Look at our colleges, crowded with buildings more costly than Oxford's! Think how that encourages American teachers! Simply because an occasional foreign professor gets higher pay--bah! There are better things than money. For example, this!"

And he bent to his mower again, with much the same derisively dignified strut as on that memorable day long ago when I came and saw and was conquered by it--only then he wore black silk sleeves and now white shirtsleeves.

And so much for dignity.

I soon saw that if I were to be a help and not a hindrance to the man I loved I should have to depart from what I had been carefully trained to regard as woman's only true sphere. Do not be alarmed! I had no thought of leaving home or husband. It is simply that the home, in the industrial sense, is leaving the house--seventy-five per cent of it social scientists say, has gone already--so that nowadays a wife must go out after it or else find some new-fashioned productive subst.i.tute if she really intends to be an old-fashioned helpmate to her husband.

It was not a feminist theory but a financial condition that confronted us. My done-over trousseau would not last forever, nor would Carl's present intellectual wardrobe, which was becoming threadbare. Travel abroad and foreign study are just as necessary for an American scholar as foreign buying is for an American dealer in trousseaus.

I thought of many plans; but in a college town a woman's opportunities are so limited. We are not paid enough to be ladies, though we are required to dress and act like them--do not forget that point. And yet, when willing to stop being a lady, what could one do?