Tramping on Life Part 45

Professor Dunn made of Vergil a contemporary poet....

Lang was of the fair Norse type, so akin to the Greek in adventurous spirit. Dunn was of the dark, stocky, imperial Roman type. In a toga he would have resembled some Roman senator....

That summer there were long woodland walks for me, when I would take a volume of some great English poet from the library and roam far a-field.

After that first summer it was my father who kept me at school. He was too poor to pay in a lump sum for my tuition, so he sent four dollars every week from his meagre pay, to keep me going.

There was a wide, wind-swept oval for an athletic field. From it you gazed on a beautiful vista of valleys and enfolding hills. Here every afternoon I practiced running ... to the frequent derision of the other athletes, who made fun of my skinny legs, body, and arms....

But as I ran, and ran, every afternoon, my mile, the boys stopped laughing, and I heard them say among themselves, "Old Gregory, he'll get there!"

After the exercise there would be the rub-down with fragrant witch hazel ... then supper!

A dining-room, filled to the full, every table, with five hundred irrepressible boys ... it was a cheerful and good attendance at each of the three meals. We joined together in saying a blessing. We sang a l.u.s.ty hymn together, accompanied on the little, wheezy, dining-room organ. I liked the good, simple melodies sung, straight and hearty, without trills and twirls....

Every night, just before "lights out," at ten, fifteen minutes was set aside, called "silent time"--and likewise in the morning, just before breakfast-bell--for prayer and religious meditation.

Jimmy Anderson, my little blond roommate, fair-haired and delicate-faced as a girl (his sisters, on the contrary, not femininely pretty, as he, but masculine and handsome)--Jimmy Anderson read his Bible and knelt and prayed during both "silent times."

I read the Bible and prayed for the quiet, religious luxury of it. My prayer, when I prayed, was just to "G.o.d," not Jehovah ... not to G.o.d of any sect, religion, creed.

"Dear G.o.d," ran always my prayer, "Dear G.o.d, if you really exist, make me a great poet. I ask for nothing else. Only let me become famous."

I was so happy in my studies,--my work, even,--my wanderings in the woods and along the country roads, with the poets under my arms.... I read them all, from Layamon's _Brut_ on. For, for me, all that existed was poetry. At this stage of my life it was my be-all and end-all.

My father was a most impractical man. He would sit in his office as foreman, read the New York _Herald_, and suck at an unlit cigar, telling anyone who listened how he would be quite happy to retire and run a little chicken farm somewhere the rest of his life.

The men all liked him ... gave him a present every Christmas ... but they never jumped up and lit into their work, when they saw him coming, as they did for the other bosses. And the management, knowing his easiness, never paid him over twenty or twenty-five dollars a week. But whenever I could cozen an extra dollar out of him, alleging extra school expenses, I would do so. It meant that I could buy some more books of poetry.

I was sent from the stable out into the fields to work ... harder and more back-breaking than currying horses. But my labour was alleviated by the fact that a little renegade ex-priest from Italy worked by my side,--and while we weeded beets or onions, or hoed potatoes, he taught me how to make Latin a living language by conversing in it with me.

There were no women on the hill but the professors' wives, and they were an unattractive lot. We were as exempt from feminine influence as a gathering of monks--excepting when permission was given any of us to go over to Fairfield, where, besides the native New England population of women and girls, was situated the girls' branch of our educational establishment....

The fall term ... the opening of the regular school year. The regular students began to pour in, dumping off the frequent trains at the little school station ... absurd youths dressed in the exaggerated style of college and preparatory school ... peg-top trousers ...

jaunty, postage-stamp caps ... and there was cheering and hat-waving and singing in the parlours of the dormitories on each floor.

There were three dormitory groups on the "hill." The "villas" were the most aristocratic. There the "gentlemen" among the students, and the teachers' favourites, dwelt--with the teachers. Then there was Crosston Hall, and Oberly. Crosston was the least desirable of the halls. It was there that I lived.

We were hardly settled in our rooms when the usual fall revival began....

One of the founders of the school, a well-known New England manufacturer, came on his yearly pilgrimage ... a fanatic disciple of the great Moreton, he considered it his duty to see to the immediate conversion, by every form of persuasion and subtle compulsion, of every newly arrived student.

Rask was a tall, lean, ashen-faced man. He had yellow, prominent teeth and an irregular, ascetic face. In his eyes shone an undying lightning and fire of sincere fanaticism and spiritual ruthlessness that, in mediaeval times, would not have stopped short of the stake and f.a.got to convince sinners of the error of their ways.

The evangelist's two sons also hove on the scene from across the river ... both of them were men of pleasing appearance. There was the youthful, elegant, dark, intellectual-browed John Moreton, who had doctorates of divinity from half a dozen big theological seminaries at home and abroad; and there was the business man of the two--Stephen, middle-aged before his time, staid and formal ... to the latter, the twin schools: the seminary for girls and the preparatory school for boys--and the revivalistic religion that Went with them, meant a, sort of exalted business functioning ... this I say not at all invidiously ... the practical business ideal was to him the highest way of men's getting together ... the _quid pro quo_ basis that even G.o.d accepted.

The first night of the opening of the term, when the boys had scarcely been herded together in their respective dormitories, the beginning of the revival was announced from the little organ that stood in the middle of the dining-room ... a compulsory meeting, of course. In newly acquainted groups, singing, whistling, talking, and laughing, as schoolboys will, the students tramped along the winding path that led to the chapel on the crest of the hill.

On the platform sat the teachers. In the most prominent chair, with its plush seat and its old-fashioned peaked back, sat the evangelist-manufacturer, Rask,--the shine of hungry fanaticism in his face like a beacon, his legs crossed, a dazzling shine on his shoes, his hands clutching a hymn book like a warrior's weapon.

Little Princ.i.p.al Stanton stood nearby, his eyes gleaming spectrally through his gla.s.ses, his teeth shining like those of a miniature Roosevelt.

"We will begin," he snapped decisively, "with John Moreton's favourite hymn, when he was with us in this world."

We rose and sang, "There is a green hill far away--"

Then there were prayers and hymns and more prayers, and a lengthy exhortation from Rask, who avowed that if it wasn't for G.o.d in his heart he couldn't run his business the way he did; that G.o.d was with him every hour of his life,--and oh, wouldn't every boy there before him take the decisive step and come to Christ, and find the joy and peace that pa.s.seth understanding ... he would not stop exhorting, he a.s.serted, till every boy in the room had come to Jesus....

And row by row,--Rask still standing and exhorting,--each student was solicited by the seniors, who went about from bench to bench, kneeling by sinners who proved more refractory ... the professors joined in the task, led by the princ.i.p.al himself.

Finally they eliminated the sheep from the goats by asking all who accepted the salvation of Christ to rise. In one sweep, most of the boys rose to their feet ... some sheepishly, to run with the crowd ... but a few of us were more sincere, and did not rise ... it was at these that the true fire of the professors and seniors was levelled.

They knelt by us. They prayed. They agonised. They groaned. They adjured us, by our mothers, to come to Jesus ... all the while, over and over again, softly, was sung, "O Lamb of G.o.d, I come, I come!"

"Just as I am, without one plea, But that Thy blood was shed for me!"

Weakening under the pressure, and swung by the power of herd-instinct, most of us "came."

Then there was the hypnotism of the enthusiasm which laid hold of us.

It was indescribable in its power. It even made me want to rise and declare myself, to shout and sing, to join the religious and emotional debauch.

When chapel adjourned at ten o'clock many had been cajoled and bullied into the fold. Then, still insatiable for religion, at the villas and halls, the praying and hymn-singing was kept up.

In the big parlour of Crosston Hall the boys grouped in prayer and rejoicing. One after the other each one rose and told what G.o.d had done for him. One after the other, each offered up prayer.

Toward three o'clock the climax was reached, when the captain of the hall's football team jumped to a table in an extra burst of enthusiasm and shouted, "Boys, all together now,--three cheers for Jesus Christ!"

I was one of the three in our hall who resisted all efforts at conversion. The next morning a group of convertees knelt and prayed for me, in front of my door ... that G.o.d might soften the hardness of my heart and show me the Light.