Part 3

'Four o'clock! Why, there was no train until seven! No train for three hours! The eggs would spoil! Then with a rush it came over me that this was Sunday morning, and there was no regular seven o'clock train,--none till after nine.

'I think I should have fainted had not the turtle just then begun crawling off. I was weak and dizzy; but there, there in the sand, were the eggs! and Agassiz! and the great book! And I cleared the fence, and the forty miles that lay between me and Cambridge, at a single jump. He should have them, trains or no. Those eggs should go to Agassiz by seven o'clock, if I had to gallop every mile of the way. Forty miles! Any horse could cover it in three hours, if he had to; and upsetting the astonished turtle, I scooped out her round, white eggs.

'On a bed of sand in the bottom of the pail I laid them, with what care my trembling fingers allowed; filled in between them with more sand; so with another layer to the rim; and covering all smoothly with more sand, I ran back for my horse.

'That horse knew, as well as I, that the turtles had laid, and that he was to get those eggs to Agassiz. He turned out of that field into the road on two wheels, a thing he had not done for twenty years, doubling me up before the dashboard, the pail of eggs miraculously lodged between my knees.

'I let him out. If only he could keep this pace all the way to Cambridge! or even half way there; and I would have time to finish the trip on foot. I shouted him on, holding to the dasher with one hand, the pail of eggs with the other, not daring to get off my knees, though the bang on them, as we pounded down the wood road, was terrific. But nothing must happen to the eggs; they must not be jarred, or even turned over in the sand before they came to Agassiz.

'In order to get out on the pike it was necessary to drive back away from Boston toward the town. We had nearly covered the distance, and were rounding a turn from the woods into the open fields, when, ahead of me, at the station it seemed, I heard the quick sharp whistle of a locomotive.

'What did it mean? Then followed the _puff_, _puff_, _puff_, of a starting train. But what train? Which way going? And jumping to my feet for a longer view, I pulled into a side road, that paralleled the track, and headed hard for the station.

'We reeled along. The station was still out of sight, but from behind the bushes that shut it from view, rose the smoke of a moving engine. It was perhaps a mile away, but we were approaching, head on, and topping a little hill I swept down upon a freight train, the black smoke pouring from the stack, as the mighty creature pulled itself together for its swift run down the rails.

'My horse was on the gallop, going with the track, and straight toward the coming train. The sight of it almost maddened me--the bare thought of it, on the road to Boston! On I went; on it came, a half--a quarter of a mile between us, when suddenly my road shot out along an unfenced field with only a level stretch of sod between me and the engine.

'With a pull that lifted the horse from his feet, I swung him into the field and sent him straight as an arrow for the track. That train should carry me and my eggs to Boston!

'The engineer pulled the rope. He saw me standing up in the rig, saw my hat blow off, saw me wave my arms, saw the tin pail swing in my teeth, and he jerked out a succession of sharp halts! But it was he who should halt, not I; and on we went, the horse with a flounder landing the carriage on top of the track.

'The train was already grinding to a stop; but before it was near a standstill, I had backed off the track, jumped out, and, running down the rails with the astonished engineers gaping at me, had swung aboard the cab.

'They offered no resistance; they hadn't had time. Nor did they have the disposition, for I looked strange, not to say dangerous. Hatless, dew-soaked, smeared with yellow mud, and holding, as if it were a baby or a bomb, a little tin pail of sand.

"'_Crazy_," the fireman muttered, looking to the engineer for his cue.

'I had been crazy, perhaps, but I was not crazy now.

'"Throw her wide open," I commanded. "Wide open! These are fresh turtle eggs for Professor Agassiz of Cambridge. He must have them before breakfast."

'Then they knew I was crazy, and evidently thinking it best to humor me, threw the throttle wide open, and away we went.

'I kissed my hand to the horse, grazing unconcernedly in the open field, and gave a smile to my crew. That was all I could give them, and hold myself and the eggs together. But the smile was enough. And they smiled through their smut at me, though one of them held fast to his shovel, while the other kept his hand upon a big, ugly wrench. Neither of them spoke to me, but above the roar of the swaying engine I caught enough of their broken talk to understand that they were driving under a full head of steam, with the intention of handing me over to the Boston police, as perhaps the easiest way of disposing of me.

'I was only afraid that they would try it at the next station. But that station whizzed past without a bit of slack, and the next, and the next; when it came over me that this was the through freight, which should have passed in the night, and was making up lost time.

'Only the fear of the shovel and the wrench kept me from shaking hands with both men at this discovery. But I beamed at them; and they at me. I was enjoying it. The unwonted jar beneath my feet was wrinkling my diaphragm with spasms of delight. And the fireman beamed at the engineer, with a look that said, "See the lunatic grin; he likes it!"

'He did like it. How the iron wheels sang to me as they took the rails! How the rushing wind in my ears sang to me! From my stand on the fireman's side of the cab I could catch a glimpse of the track just ahead of the engine, where the ties seemed to leap into the throat of the mile-devouring monster. The joy of it! of seeing space swallowed by the mile!

'I shifted the eggs from hand to hand and thought of my horse, of Agassiz, of the great book, of my great luck,--luck,--luck,--until the multitudinous tongues of the thundering train were all chiming "luck! luck! luck!" They knew! they understood! This beast of fire and tireless wheels was doing its very best to get the eggs to Agassiz!

'We swung out past the Blue Hills, and yonder flashed the morning sun from the towering dome of the State House. I might have leaped from the cab and run the rest of the way on foot, had I not caught the eye of the engineer watching me narrowly. I was not in Boston yet, nor in Cambridge either. I was an escaped lunatic, who had held up a train, and forced it to carry me to Boston.

'Perhaps I had overdone the lunacy business. Suppose these two men should take it into their heads to turn me over to the police, whether I would or no? I could never explain the case in time to get the eggs to Agassiz. I looked at my watch. There were still a few minutes left, in which I might explain to these men, who, all at once, had become my captors. But it was too late. Nothing could avail against my actions, my appearance, and my little pail of sand.

'I had not thought of my appearance before. Here I was, face and clothes caked with yellow mud, my hair wild and matted, my hat gone, and in my full-grown hands a tiny tin pail of sand, as if I had been digging all night with a tiny, tin shovel on the shore! And thus to appear in the decent streets of Boston of a Sunday morning!

'I began to feel like a hunted criminal. The situation was serious, or might be, and rather desperately funny at its best. I must in some way have shown my new fears, for both men watched me more sharply.

'Suddenly, as we were nearing the outer freightyard, the train slowed down and came to a stop. I was ready to jump, but I had no chance. They had nothing to do, apparently, but to guard me. I looked at my watch again. What time we had made! It was only six o'clock, with a whole hour to get to Cambridge.

'But I didn't like this delay. Five minutes--ten--went by.

"'Gentlemen," I began, but was cut short by an express train coming past. We were moving again, on--into a siding; on--on to the main track; and on with a bump and a crash and a succession of crashes, running the length of the train; on at a turtle's pace, but on,--when the fireman, quickly jumping for the bell-rope, left the way to the step free, and--the chance had come!

'I never touched the step, but landed in the soft sand at the side of the track, and made a line for the yard fence.

'There was no hue or cry. I glanced over my shoulder to see if they were after me. Evidently their hands were full, and they didn't know I had gone.

'But I had gone; and was ready to drop over the high board-fence, when it occurred to me that I might drop into a policeman's arms. Hanging my pail in a splint on top of a post, I peered cautiously over--a very wise thing to do before you jump a high board-fence. There, crossing the open square toward the station, was a big, burly fellow with a club--looking for me.

'I flattened for a moment, when some one in the yard yelled at me. I preferred the policeman, and grabbing my pail I slid over to the street. The policeman moved on past the corner of the station out of sight. The square was free, and yonder stood a cab!

'Time was flying now. Here was the last lap. The cabman saw me coming, and squared away. I waved a paper dollar at him, but he only stared the more. A dollar can cover a good deal, but I was too much for one dollar. I pulled out another, thrust them both at him, and dodged into the cab, calling, "Cambridge!"

'He would have taken me straight to the police station, had I not said, "Harvard College. Professor Agassiz's house! I've got eggs for Agassiz"; and pushed another dollar up at him through the hole.

'It was nearly half-past six.

'"Let him go!" I ordered. "Here's another dollar if you make Agassiz's house in twenty minutes. Let him out; never mind the police!"

'He evidently knew the police, or there were none around at that time on a Sunday morning. We went down the sleeping streets, as I had gone down the wood roads from the pond two hours before, but with the rattle and crash now of a fire brigade. Whirling a corner into Cambridge Street, we took the bridge at a gallop, the driver shouting out something in Hibernian to a pair of waving arms and a belt and brass buttons.

'Across the bridge with a rattle and jolt that put the eggs in jeopardy, and on over the cobble-stones, we went. Half standing, to lessen the jar, I held the pail in one hand and held myself in the other, not daring to let go even to look at my watch.

'But I was afraid to look at the watch. I was afraid to see how near to seven o'clock it might be. The sweat was dropping from my nose, so close was I running to the limit of my time.

'Suddenly there was a lurch, and I dove forward, ramming my head into the front of the cab, coming up with a rebound that landed me across the small of my back on the seat, and sent half of my pail of eggs helter-skelter over the floor.

'We had stopped. Here was Agassiz's house; and without taking time to pick up the scattered eggs, I tumbled out, and pounded at the door.

'No one was astir in the house. But I would stir them. And I did. Right in the midst of the racket the door opened. It was the maid.

'"Agassiz," I gasped, "I want Professor Agassiz, quick!" And I pushed by her into the hall.

'"Go 'way, sir. I'll call the police. Professor Agassiz is in bed. Go 'way, sir!"

'"Call him--Agassiz--instantly, or I'll call him myself."

'But I didn't; for just then a door overhead was flung open, a great, white-robed figure appeared on the dim landing above, and a quick, loud voice called excitedly,--

'"Let him in! Let him in. I know him. He has my turtle eggs!"

'And the apparition, slipperless, and clad in anything but an academic gown, came sailing down the stairs.

'The maid fled. The great man, his arms extended, laid hold of me with both hands, and dragging me and my precious pail into his study, with a swift, clean stroke laid open one of the eggs, as the watch in my trembling hands ticked its way to seven--as if nothing unusual were happening to the history of the world.'

* * * * *

'You were in time then?' I said.

'To the tick. There stands my copy of the great book. I am proud of the humble part I had in it.'

A Father to his Freshman Son

By Edward Sanford Martin

No doubt, my son, you have got out of me already what there was to help or mar you. You are eighteen years old and have been getting it, more or less and off and on, for at least seventeen of those years. I regret the imperfections of the source. No doubt you have recognized them. To have a father who is attentive to the world, indulgent to the flesh, and with a sort of kindness for the Devil--dear son, it is a good deal of a handicap! Be sure I make allowances for you because of it. _Ex eo fonte--fons_, masculine, as I remember; _fons_ and _mons_ and _pons_, and one other. Should the pronoun be _illo?_ As you know, I never was an accurate scholar, and I suppose you're not--_Ex eo fonte_ the stream is bound to run not quite clear.

My advice to you is quite likely to be bad, partly from the imperfection of its source, partly because I am not you, and partly because of my imperfect acquaintance with the conditions you are about to meet. When I came to college my father gave me no advice. He gave me his love and some necessary money, which did not come, I fear, as easy as the love. His venerable uncle who lived with us--my great uncle--gave me his blessing and told me, I remember, that so far as book-learning went, I could learn as much without going to college. Still he did not discourage my going. He was quite right. I could have got more book-learning out of college than I did get in college, and I suppose that you, too, might get, out, more than you will get, in. Of course, that's not the whole story; neither is it true of all people. For me, college abounded in distractions, and I suppose it will for you. And I was incorrigibly sociable and ready to spend time to get acquainted, and more, to stay acquainted, and if you have that propensity you needn't think it was left on the doorstep. You come by it lawfully. Getting acquainted is, for most of us, one of the important branches. But it's only one of them, and to devote one's whole time to it is a mistake, and one that the dean will help you avoid if necessary, which probably, if I know you at all, it won't be.

It is important to know people, but it is more important to be worth knowing. College offers you at least two valuable details of opportunity: a large variety of people to know, and a large variety of means to make yourself better worth knowing. I hope, my son, that you will avail yourself of both these details.

This is a mechanical age, and the most obtrusive of the current mechanisms is the automobile. It has valves and cylinders and those things that give it power and speed, and rubber tires that it runs on, and a wheel and steering-gear and handles and treadles by which it is directed. Your body, especially your stomach, is the rubber tires; your brains are the cylinders and valves; and your will and the spiritual part of you are the chauffeur and his wheel.

I beg you to be kind to your stomach, as heretofore. It needs no alcohol at your time of life--if ever--and the less you find occasion to feed into it, the more prosperous both your physical and mental conditions are likely to be. I am aware that life, and college life in particular, has its convivial intervals; but you might as well understand (and I have been remiss, or have wasted time, if you do not understand it already) that alcohol is one of the chief man-traps, abounding in mischiefs if you play with it too hard. Be wary, always wary, with it, my son, and especially with hard liquor.

Your mind, like your body, is a thing whereof the powers are developed by effort. That is a principal use, as I see it, of hard work in studies. Unless you train your body you can't be an athlete, and unless you train your mind you can't be much of a scholar. The four miles an oarsman covers at top speed is in itself nothing to the good, but the physical capacity to hold out over the course is thought to be of some worth. So a good part of what you learn by hard study may not be permanently retained, and may not seem to be of much final value, but your mind is a better and more powerful instrument because you have learned it. 'Knowledge is power,' but still more the faculty of acquiring and using knowledge is power. If you have a trained and powerful mind, you are bound to have stored it with something, but its value is more in what it can do, what it can grasp and use, than in what it contains; and if it were possible, as it is not, to come out of college with a trained and disciplined mind and nothing useful in it, you would still be ahead, and still, in a manner, educated. Think of your mind as a muscle to be developed; think of it as a searchlight that is to reveal the truth to you, and don't cheat it or neglect it.

As to competitive scholarship, to my mind it is like competitive athletics,--good for those who have the powers and like the game. Tests are useful; they stimulate one's ambition, and so do competitions. But a success in competitive scholarship, like a success in competitive athletics, may, of course, be too dearly bought. Not by you, though, I surmise, my son. If you were more urgent, either as a scholar or as an athlete, I might think it needful to warn you not to wear your tires out scorching too early in life. As things are, I say to you, as I often say to myself: Don't dawdle; don't scramble. When you work, work; when you play, play; when you rest, rest; and think all the time.

When you get hold of an instructor who is worth attention, give him attention. That is one way of getting the best that a college has to offer. A great deal you may get from books, but some of the most valuable things are passed from mind to mind, and can only be had from some one who has them, or else from the great Source of all truth. I suspect that the subtle development we call 'culture' is one of those things, and the great spiritual valuables are apt to come that way.

You know you are still growing, both in mind and body, and will continue so to be for years to come,--I hope, always. One of the valuable things about college is that it gives you time to grow. You won't have to earn any money and will have time to think and get acquainted with yourself and others, as well as with some of the wisdom that is spread upon the records. You would be so engaged, more or less, in these years, wherever you might be. But in college, where you are so much your own man, and are freed from the demands and solicitudes of your parents, the conditions for it are exceptionally favorable. I suppose that is one thing that continues the colleges in business, since I read so often that at present they are entirely misdirected and teach the wrong things in the wrong way.

But nobody denies that they give the young a breathing spell. Breathe, my son; breathe freely. Remember that the aim of all these prospective processes is to bring out the man there is in you, and arm him more or less for the jousts ahead. It is not to make you over into somebody else: that can't be done,--not in three or four years, anyhow; but only to bring out, and train as much as possible of you. There's plenty in most of us if we can only get it out; more, very much more, than we ever do get out. So will you please think of college as a nursery in which you are to grow a while,--and mind you do grow,--and then, presently, to be transplanted. It is not as if college was the chief arena of human effort. Nevertheless, for your effort, while you are there, it is the chief arena, and I am far from giving you the counsel to put off trying until you leave.

I hear a good deal about clubs and societies: how many there are, how important they are; how it is that, if a youth shall gain the whole of scholarship and all athletics and not 'make' a proper club, he shall still fall something short of success in college. Parents I meet who are more concerned about clubs than about either scholarship or deportment. They are concerned and at the same time bothered: so many strategies and chances the clubs involve; so bad it may be to be in this one; so bad to be out of that; so much choice there is between them, and so much choice exercised within them, by which any mother's hopeful may be excluded.

There is a democratic ideal of a great college without any clubs, where the lion and the lamb shall escort one another about with tails entwined, and every student shall be like every other student, and have similar habits and associates. This ideal is a good deal discussed and a good deal applauded in the public press. Whether it will ever come true I can't tell, but there has been some form or other of clubs in our older colleges, I suppose, for one or two centuries, and they are there now and will at least last out your time; so it may be you will have to take thought about them in due time.

Not much, however, until they take thought of you.

You see, clubs seem to be a sort of natural provision, just as tails were, maybe, before humanity outgrew them. I guess there is a propensity of nature toward groups, and the natural basis of grouping seems to be likeness in feathers and habits. The propensity works to include the like and, incidentally but necessarily, to exclude the unlike. Whether it is the Knights of the Round Table or the Knights of the Garter or the Phi Beta Kappa, you see these principles working. The measure of success in a club is its ability to make people want to join it, and that seems to be best demonstrated and preserved by keeping most of them out.

Now the advantages of the clubs are considerable. To have a place always open where you can hang up your hat, and where a hospitable welcome always awaits you, and where there is enough of a crowd and not too much, and where you can in your later years inspect at all times a family of selected undergraduates,--all that is valuable and good, and pleasant besides, and this continuity of interest that the clubs foster among their members helps to keep up in those members a lively and helpful interest in their college. The drawback to the clubs is their essential selfishness, and their disposition to take you out of a large family and limit you to a small one, and one that is not yours by birth, or entirely by choice, but is selected for you largely by other persons.

In any club you yield a certain amount of freedom and individuality, the amount being determined by the degree in which the club absorbs you. Don't yield too much! Don't take the mould of any club! A college is always bigger than its clubs, and the biggest thing in a college is always a man. The object of being in college is to develop as a man. If clubs help in that development,--and I think they do help some men,--they are a gain; but, of course, if they dwarf you down to the dimensions of a club-man, they are a loss. Some men take their club shape, such as it is, and find a sufficient satisfaction in it. Others react on their clubs, take what they have to give, add to it what is to be had elsewhere, and turn out rather more valuable people than if they had had no club experience.