The Adventures of a Freshman Part 13

CHAPTER IX

A QUESTION OF MONEY

The great Yale-Princeton football game, which took place during the Thanksgiving holidays in New York, was now a matter of history--and of rejoicing, to one side. But as all those interested in football know which side won the championship that year, it is not necessary to recount the game and rub it into the losers.

Everyone, almost, had gone to see the great contest and to cheer for the team, and Princeton seemed as deserted as in mid-summer. The Invincibles secured a huge four-in-hand coach and were half frozen driving up Fifth Avenue to the game; but they had the privilege, granted to Freshmen on such occasions only, of wearing the sacred orange and black--yards of it, hung all over their hats, their clothes, the coach, the driver, and the horses. They cheered themselves voiceless, and had a time they were never to forget.

The Freshman team had played the Columbia University Freshmen in the morning, and had no difficulty in defeating them by a large score. Right Guard Young put up a very fair, steady game, the critics said, but had no chance to make any brilliant play, as he had hoped.

But the Deacon felt very big and important when his exultant cla.s.smates ran out at the close of the game and carried him and the rest of the eleven off the field on their shoulders, cheering for each player by name.

He felt less important in the afternoon, when the great contest, the event of the day, took place; he wondered if many of those flocking in realized that he was Right Guard Young of the Freshman team; again he feared that he looked like the big green farmer that he did not want people to think he was.

The enormous grand-stands and bleachers, and the coaches and carriages, and even the neighboring houses were jammed with thousands and thousands of eager human beings, wearing violets or chrysanthemums; and some of the old grads had come from as far as the Pacific coast to see this manly match, which was to decide the championship of the two best football teams in the western hemisphere. Young had never before seen so many people at once--"more than the population of the whole county you're in," he wrote to his brother Charlie--and never before had he been so thrilled as when long Jack Stehman made his famous tackle after that Yale half-back had dodged past all the rest of the Princeton team.... But the game and its noise and victory and defeat were all over now, and the two universities had returned to go on where each had left off before Thanksgiving.

Big Freshman Young had to go on along very pleasant lines, enviable lines they seemed to many a Freshman who longed in vain to be prominent and popular, and a member of the dashing Invincibles; but the Deacon had his worries. It had been very fine at first to be looked up to and admired, but the novelty had worn off by this time, and he had been hoping and hoping that his table-mates would soon begin to act toward him in the same easy, familiar, good-fellow way they acted toward each other. Why they had not, he failed to understand; he knew it wasn't because he was poor and ran the club; he wondered if it was because he had not prepared for college at a large school, and hence was green and ignorant of the ways of the world. That was one of the things that had off and on worried him, but that was not the worst; that was not what was making him stay awake at night thinking. It was that alarming question of money bobbing up again.

He had supposed that with the club to run, which wiped out the largest item of expense, he would have enough to worry along with until something else turned up. But his account in the Princeton bank was slowly but surely being drained, and thus far nothing had turned up.

He had intended to be more economical, but--well, for instance, the other Invincibles were always "blowing in" money for spreads in their rooms and all that; and Young did not like to accept favors without returning them. To be sure he might have declined their invitations occasionally, but he wanted to show them that the "dignified Deacon," as they called him, was not so terribly dignified and stiff, as they seemed to think. Then, too, when subscription lists were pa.s.sed around for various purposes, and they came to him among the first as "one of the influential men of Ninety-blank," he felt that he ought to do his share; "it's my duty to the good old cla.s.s," he said, "I hate stinginess, anyway."

As a matter of fact he had been doing more than his share, and it was the appearance of stinginess, possibly, that he hated even more than stinginess itself.

Now, he might easily have said: "Here, I can't afford this pace; you fellows get money from home--I have to earn mine, and so, much as I'd like to, I simply can't keep step with you--and that's all there is about it;" he would have been liked none the less and respected all the more. "Why, certainly; you are dead right," they would have said. But he did not want to; he preferred to keep step, and did not like them to know how little money he had. It was nothing to be ashamed of, surely.

It was not on account of money, as his own experience had shown him, that a man became popular or prominent.

More money had gone when he went to New York at Thanksgiving time. His expenses up and back were paid, of course, by the Freshman football fund, but Lucky Lee had invited him to stay over Sunday at his home there; and Young felt ashamed of his cut-away coat--though Lucky said, "Nonsense"--and so he bought something which he considered very magnificent at a large ready-made place on Broadway, together with some brilliant neckties, something like Billy Drew's, and a huge scarf-pin (but decided not to tell his mother how much they all cost, in the letter describing what a good time he had and how nice Mrs. Lee was).

So, altogether, with the new term staring him in the face, and room-rent to pay, and books--though that was a small item compared to what he had "blown in" foolishly--it was beginning to look as if Deacon Young would have to hustle if he meant to stay in college much longer. "We'll see how long you stay there," his father had said.

"All right," thought Will, "we'll see! More fellows earn their way through college than the people out home have any idea of, and I think I'm as good as the next man. I'll talk to Barrows and Wilson and some of those quiet fellows about it."

But it was all very well to say: "Why, there's Dougal Davis in the Junior cla.s.s who commands $2.50 an hour for tutoring, and there's Harris, the Senior, who sometimes makes as much as $20 in a week writing for the New York and Philadelphia papers;" it was easy enough to point out how many men made money in various other ways; no doubt many did; but that was just the trouble--so many did that all the opportunities seemed to be snapped up already.

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 cla.s.s 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 Soph.o.m.ore, 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 Na.s.sau 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 embarra.s.sed,' 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."

"What would you do, Lucky?"

"I'd let you lend me some dough--naturally."

Young hesitated. "Lucky," he said, "I am hard up--don't tell anybody, but I'm mighty hard up. I'd rather leave college, though, than borrow money to stay here with."

But Young spent Christmas holidays with Lucky Lee in New York, and it turned out to be a very good thing that he did--not only on account of the temporary rest from worry.

CHAPTER X

HOW HE STAYED IN COLLEGE

"Business is the systematic supplying of wants. When all visible wants are supplied, you must simply create new wants to satisfy. Patient willingness to do whatever turns up will only bring success when things turn up. Under the conditions of modern compet.i.tion things seldom turn up of themselves."

Mr. Lee, Lucky's father, had said this one evening after dinner during the happy holidays; and Will remembered every word of it, not only because he had great respect for successful Mr. Lee's opinions, but because what he said seemed to apply to his own quandary. Mr. Lee seemed to have taken a fancy to Young, and talked to him frequently. Mrs. Lee liked him, too. She seemed to consider his preferring to eat his peas with a spoon a very small matter (though Will himself blushed scarlet when he discovered his mistake). She said she was glad her son had chosen for one of his intimate friends a young man with so much maturity and character--this she said to Young himself--"And I know you will look after him," she said; "he's such an impressionable boy, but he admires you so much that you can influence him any way you desire."

The Deacon blushed and said he would try, but what Lucky's father said made more impression upon him at the time.

"When all the wants are satisfied you must simply create new wants." It seemed to Young that this ought to apply to the little world of college quite as well as to the big world of commerce of which Mr. Lee spoke.

Every day as he walked to and from recitations through the campus, now muddy and monotonous after a wet snow, Young tried and tried and tried to think of some new want to satisfy.

Lucky said he was trying, too; but generally he forgot as soon as anyone yelled, "Hold up, there, Lucky!" and joined him on the walk. It did not mean so much to him.

The Deacon was walking past Old Jimmy, the peanut-and fruit-vender, when the idea came to him. He suddenly stopped short, slapped his thigh, and said: "I've got it! I've got it!" That night he unfolded his scheme to Lucky, whose eyes grew big.

"Deacon, you're a dandy! But, say, are you sure it'll work?"

"Sure? No, I'm not sure it'll make much. But I'm sure I'll have to leave college, anyway, if I don't do something, and----"

"But why go to all the expense of the posters?"

"To advertise it, get 'em talking, create the want! That's the way to do business. And just now everything is dull in the college world--no athletics to distract attention."