Part 11

“Most of the professors lived near the college. My friend was the owner of an attractive small house, with a bit of ground, opposite the campus, computing the entire carrying cost at less than three hundred dollars a year. Adequate food and service were equally available and cheap. ‘Indeed, I have,’ he said, very earnestly,--I take pains to quote him exactly,--‘I have the smallest quarrel that it is possible to have with the academic income. Ours is not the ill fortune of those professors who suffer privation because ambitious presidents and business-like trustees agree that advertising is better than instruction, and spend on unessential but showy buildings funds that would relieve the men on their staff from financial anxieties distracting in themselves and occasioning those efforts to earn from outside sources which so often seriously undermine a professor’s academic usefulness, if not his intellectual and physical health. We manage to live on the two thousand dollars which is the professorial stipend here, knowing that proportion of the income of the college to be a generous proof of its belief in the primary importance of instruction. We decrease the numerator to suit the denominator. We seek the simplest food, clothing, and furnishings; reduce service to a minimum; buy fewer books; take shorter vacations; give less to charity, and nothing to public causes. Not being able to have what we want, we succeed pretty well in enjoying what we have, sustained by the intellectual and moral satisfactions of our calling--except sometimes. We, of course, become accustomed to the humiliating knowledge that the public does not consider our labor and devotion worth paying highly for. But the realization that the meagreness of our incomes, by more and more separating our lives from those of other men, is steadily decreasing our usefulness and influence--that is at times hard to bear.

“‘So far as living in a small town is concerned, save for the spice of variety which one may store up in vacation, it furnishes ideal nourishment for the intellectual life. The time at one’s command seems almost inexhaustible, and there are practically no distractions. Our social circle is limited, but interesting. Lacking the opera, our ladies become fair pianists. In place of museums of art, they have a club that studies art appreciation and history. Instead of going to the theatre, we read and talk of books, of which we know a few well rather than many slightly. Being devoid of the opportunity and hence free from the obligation of winnowing the current ephemera of my specialty, I am constantly occupied, instead, with the monumental, permanent contributions to the subject. One cannot do both things, and I am content with my enforced choice.’

“The students were unquestionably gainers by their rural environment. They evidently studied a great deal, that being the most interesting occupation available. The cheapness of the place enabled many of them to obtain for a low tuition and a ridiculously low cost of living, a training they would elsewhere have been unable to pay for. For recreation they spent much time in the gymnasium, on the athletic field, and wandering far through the charming surrounding country. There was a not unhealthy amount of what is known as college and class spirit, with the numerous traditional customs thereto attendant.

“I could not see that the fraternities, which played a large part in the student life, did anything more than give to natural tastes and tendencies an organization that helped the student to see qualities, and the faculty to watch defects, in the mass. The religious life of the place impressed me as abundant and powerful, but in no way overstrained. When I saw some of the young ladies whose habit it was to be at home to students on Friday evenings, I wished myself a youth again. The boys repaid their kindness in many ways, not the least pleasing of which was the serenading which invariably followed the closing of the fraternity meetings, which were held from ten o’clock to midnight on the night preceding the weekly holiday--a custom that seemed to satisfy the youthful desire to act very much grown up, at the small price of consequent sleepiness. The healthy spirit of the place frowned on actual dissipation.

“Thinking over my visit, during the return journey, I realized that the whole question of the relative usefulness of the metropolitan university and the rural college reduces to an estimate of the comparative values of the large and the small, the near and the remote, of efficiency and culture. Our national environment and history have emphasized the importance of the large, the immediate, the efficient. But there is always much to be said on both sides of every question, and it is at least possible that enough importance has not been attributed to the small, the distinctive, the fine.

“On the whole,” concluded Professor Maturin, “I am inclined to disagree with my friends in the universities, and to believe that the future of the small college is bright rather than dark.”

XXI

_Old Town Revisited_

I found Professor Maturin, the other evening, recently returned from a visit to the home of his youth with a bundle of such pleasant memories that I set them down as nearly in his own words as possible, without any of the inquiries and the interruptions of appreciation that they inevitably drew from me.

“In the first part of the journey thither, repeated efforts failed to conjure up anything like a full and definite picture of the place. But, suddenly, as so often happens, the mists of memory cleared, and it seemed as though I had never been away. This almost theatrical change causing me to look about with surprise, I became quickly aware that the train had swung into the beginning of what we used to call ‘The Happy Valley.’ With a sigh of content, I sank back into the comfort of old adjustments, with a sense of their completeness that could come only from a knowledge of later maladjustments to compare them with.

“This valley, perhaps a hundred miles long and from a dozen to a score of miles wide, is walled in by blue mountain ridges of from twelve to two thousand feet in height, their bases sweeping nearer or farther and their sky-lines higher or lower in a series of almost symmetrical curves. The same restrained variety characterizes the surface of the valley, which billows and rolls throughout like a solidified section of mid-ocean. The mountains, foothills, and small patches of the valley are still covered with oak and chestnut, pine and cedar timber, which make springtime delightful and the autumn splendid. Elsewhere all is fertile farm land, squarely fenced or marked with low walls of ever available limestone, which also provides firm, smooth roads stretching in every direction over hill and meadow. Many farm-houses and barns are built of this stone, softened with the mellowness of years. Later structures of local brick with slate roofs seem scarcely less sturdy.

“This same pleasant variety of surface and solidity of building characterizes the town itself. Cheerful two-and-one-half story houses, of red brick, with green shutters still prevail, although about the central square and along the business blocks the height is usually greater. I well remember the builder of the first three-story house in town. The first four-story structure was reared in my boyhood. Its completion was celebrated with fire-works and the first electric lights seen in the town. Now there are even cut-stone bank fronts, and they are building an apartment house and a five-story department store. Near the edges of the town, where the dwellings stand back from the streets with lawns and flowers and trees, the march of improvement is particularly noticeable--as indeed it well might be, for the place has doubled in size since I left.

“These dwellings indicated to me that local prosperity had caused the tide of physical well-being to rise to the second or shelter stage. Formerly, ideas of luxury centred chiefly in food, which was consumed in a variety and abundance that would have made a dietitian shudder. The land is still one of plenty and good cheer, and a progress through the town would delight the monarch who said, ‘Let me have men about me that are fat,’ but other creature comforts have come to be considered also. The stage of personal adornment has yet to be reached: the men seldom have their hair trimmed or their trousers pressed, and the costume of the women is simple. The local attention to such matters seemed interestingly different from the metropolitan order of clothing, shelter, food.

“But as it was not progress that I had chiefly come to see, I found myself returning repeatedly to the old town hall, which once sheltered the oldest bank and is still surmounted by a tower of strange local architecture, bearing an equally erratic clock. All this, like everything else in the place, seemed by no means so large or so imposing as I had remembered it, and the bank’s disappearance prevented the repetition of our one local author’s jest concerning ‘the bank where the wild thyme grows.’ But when I once more climbed the tower and picked out, one by one, the old landmarks, I felt all of my early fondness for the place return. No one, I believe, can be without a certain proprietary affection for a place upon which he has often looked down from a tower.

“There, above the town, my memory of many of its personages became vivid. First, always, we admired the old Governor--we never called him ‘ex,’ although he had been that for many years. A fine, burly figure, even in old age, he was usually seen driving to or from his model farms in a vehicle which must have antedated the one-hoss shay. And he seldom passed without some one relating how, when a misguided ram, not being in position to be awed by his countenance, had made the conventional attack, he expanded to his fullest height and, with his favorite, historic, expletive, thundered: ‘Continental dam, sheep! What do you mean?’

“The Senator, who logically came next, was by no means so impressive; for, being regarded chiefly as a provider of political places, he was forced, when he walked abroad, to assume an abstraction profound enough to make him oblivious of the hungry eyes of his constituents. I fear that his was not a happy life, at least when he was at home, which grew to be more and more seldom.

“The General, however, loved to parade his tall, proud figure. It was currently reported that he wore stays; certainly he carried his shoulders always ready for epaulettes and his head poised for a chapeau. For years he longed to be elected a Congressman, but always in vain. A tradition that he had once compared a poor man to a wet dog embodied the popular distrust of his aristocratic nature; and his set speech of compliment to each village where he spoke--that the fairness of its daughters almost persuaded him to renounce his bachelorhood--usually waked sarcasm rather than applause.

“After the General came the Colonel, an attorney so genial that, it was said, he habitually bowed to trees and hitching-posts, from mere force of habit. Every one suspected him of storing up popularity against the day when he might run for office. Whether he ever compassed or even desired such an end, I do not know.

“The Town Beauty, I learned, had long since married an officer in the army. We had, I think, even more than our share of handsome girls, but to gaze upon her was such an unalloyed delight that she came to be prized as one of the chief attractions of the town. It used to be said, jocosely, that after visitors had seen the new court house, they were always made to wait until she passed, before any one would show them the way to the fair grounds. Certainly she never disappointed the fondest anticipations, except during one sad season when the whole town mourned. Most inexcusably she had attempted to improve the lily and the rose of her complexion by means of a cosmetic, which must have been devised solely to further the sale of the same manufacturer’s healing lotions. The damage wrought was most distressing, and recovery was slow and anxious, but happily complete. There was some desire to express the public anxiety that there should be no more such experiments; but the lesson had been learned, and thereafter her loveliness only bloomed the richer.

“The persons mentioned were all conspicuous members of the local aristocracy, to which the professions of law, and, to a lesser degree, of medicine, were the open sesame. The chief members of these professions, together with all such persons as were distinguished for family, and a selection from those who were distinguished for wealth, made up a somewhat exclusive social set, which gave an annual ball, invited friends to dinner, and went on vacations--sometimes even to Europe. As for the great majority, the men were devoted chiefly to business and sometimes to politics; the women to their homes and their churches, which last regulated all of their social as well as their religious activities.

“For the recreation of our elders there was always a great deal of driving. It was possible to keep a carriage on an income that would not suffice for that alone in the metropolis. The carriage roads were and still are excellent and the country charming, with here and there a stately old manor house for historic atmosphere. Even then the mountains were frequently resorted to. Now they are easily accessible, and boast not only numerous hotels, but many cottages to which the more fortunate go back and forth daily in summer. To my boyhood the mountains represented not only untamed nature, but their hotels were outposts of the great world beyond. The mountains represented history also, for on the side of one was a battlefield, marked with a huge cairn of stones; and they meant literature, as well, for in one of the gaps was the home of an author whose novels and poems were in the town library.

“With us young people bicycles were popular to a degree that once, in the days of the old, high wheels, drew even a national meet to the old town. But the simple attractions of the place palled on our travelled guests, and the occasion began to look like a failure until, in the evening, the entertainment committee got together and started a false alarm of fire, which allowed the visitors to pull the hand-apparatus of the local fire companies madly about the streets, until their superabundant energies were exhausted and they went to bed happy.

“These volunteer fire companies were centres of the most intense interest, making up in anticipation and preparation for the practical efficiency which, happily, they were seldom called upon to demonstrate. They held innumerable initiations, elections, anniversaries, and reorganizations; and they were always considering, with infinite attention to detail, the adoption of new uniforms and the purchase of new equipment. All of which we youngsters ardently emulated with an organization which, in a vocabulary more aspiring than accurate, we called ‘The Juneviles.’

“Even more, if possible, than by the fire companies, our interest was stirred by the annual county fair, which, for four days in the autumn, crowded the town with visitors and filled the central square, of evenings, with all sorts of travelling mountebanks. This was eagerly welcomed as practically our only opportunity for familiarity with the histrionic art, for the attractions of the town theatre were not of a sort to be generally approved. I remember, however, attending at least one performance there when young enough to be tremendously puzzled by the difficulties of a harlequin in attempting to get through a wall the door of which mysteriously changed from place to place, while from time to time the wall became all doors or showed no doors at all.

“Sometimes the few bookish people gathered into reading clubs or welcomed visiting lecturers, who also conducted discussions and criticised essays, when anybody wrote them. The only lecture that I recall dealt with Rugby, and impressed me partly for Tom Brown’s sake, but chiefly because on that occasion the most sensitive man in the town covered himself with confusion by absent-mindedly clapping his hands together in pursuit of a mosquito, with the effect of applauding loudly at a most inappropriate time. The after-lecture discussions struck me then as very learned, but I judge now that I must have been easily impressed, since the only specimen that I remember was the statement that ‘Carlyle was a bear, wallowing in a sea of words,’ made by the principal of the high school.

“Even now I should consider him as remarkable as his rhetoric. For he was not only the official head of the dozen schools in his building, but he also taught, alone and unaided, all of the classes in the high school, preparing us for college in every subject from algebra to zoölogy, and doing it well. His only limitation was that he chewed tobacco, secretly, or as secretly as he was able with the eyes of thirty boys constantly upon him.

“Not the least interesting feature of my visit was the opportunity it provided for noting the present status of old schoolmates. Most of them had developed in directions that might have been anticipated from their youthful traits. Even the fact that two of the most harum-scarum had become responsible bank directors was explained by the remembrance that youthful lawlessness may often represent merely a superabundance of excellent energy. The school dreamer had become the chief confectioner of the town, expending his imagination on a new-art shop and a summer garden lighted by the electric eyes of Cheshire cats and owls perched in the trees. The serious boy had acquired practice as a physician until his stout body and large head seemed bursting with incommunicable knowledge concerning the local human comedy. The clever boy had become a successful attorney, more than satisfied with his profession as an excellent working hypothesis in an unintelligible world. The boy who had become a musician pleased me, perhaps, most of all. With a talent that would win distinction anywhere, he rejected the distractions of cities for a simple environment, where he might discover and develop his spontaneous self.

“If those that I had known as boys were now men, those I had known as mature were now old. The fine old clergyman who for years had led in every movement for things of good report now saw much of his seed bring forth abundantly, and had, moreover, the personal satisfaction of knowing that his youngest son had won distinction as the first Rhodes scholar from his state. The one local artist, a landscape painter, still pursued with modest determination his honest, if undistinguished, toil. The old florist was still the finest of idealists in his devotion to nature, irrespective of worldly considerations. I was happy to note that he seemed to have prospered materially, in spite of his fondness for giving and his distaste for selling his plants.

“One or two old men that I had known were still able to regale me with memories of ‘the Rebellion,’ and of the installation of the town water-works. But most of my familiars of that generation had passed away. The two old admirals who had so strangely chosen such an inland berth for their final cruise, the old doctor who urged his horse by explosively uttering the words ‘effervescent’ and ‘fundamental,’ the little old librarian with his fondness for Josephus, and the sadly wheezy conductor of ‘the Madrigal Club’--even the decayed old gentlewoman who wore different colored wigs to suit her gowns--all had passed on.

“But, in spite of many such absences, and of some sadder memories, my visit was one of profound and lasting pleasure. I did not mind the omniscient small-town scrutiny, which somehow apprised my friends of all that I had been doing, even before I called. And I found the whole place full of the most delightful little interests, even for one who has so little of ‘the restless analyst’ about him. From the point of view of contrasting the residential values of capital and province, the advantages of the old town are, perhaps, largely of a negative character. But all the essentials of life are there, although in little, and success being so much less difficult, and failure so much less disastrous, the balance of vitality left over is satisfyingly large. It was not at all a bad place to spend one’s youth, and it would be by no means a bad setting for one’s old age.”

XXII

_The County Fair_

I found Professor Maturin deeply pondering, the other evening, the season when the county fair stirs semi-rural communities, all over the land, with anticipation, realization, and fresh reminiscence. “No one of our institutions for pleasure or profit,” said he, “is more firmly established; and yet students of local manners and customs and of social psychology appear to have given it small attention, and there is no notable record of it in literature, save that by Mr. Howells in the beginning of ‘The Coast of Bohemia.’ Its phenomena, however, are easily ascertainable by any one who has rural acquaintance or access to rural newspapers.”

I asked him to instruct me concerning the subject, and he continued substantially as follows:

“For weeks before the great occasion these newspapers record and reflect the steady growth of the greatest enthusiasm of the year. Meetings of the Fair Association begin, and become more and more frequent, until it is announced that the secretary will be at his office daily. Immediately thereafter rumors spread, or are spread, concerning larger exhibits than ever before, of live stock, of machinery, of household entries; in short, of everything.

“Extra offices are ostentatiously opened for every sort of entry, and are as ostentatiously filled with more and more assistants, who periodically and publicly exhaust their entire supply of exhibit tags. After a secretly anxious interval the officers of the association begin to smile over the conscious possession of actual cash paid for concessions, and lavishly hire a negro of aldermanic proportions, in a costume boasting three hundred and fourteen brilliant patches and two hundred and three assorted buttons, to parade the streets in the interests of advertising.

“At the last meeting but one before the fair, it is officially announced that the ‘outlook is for the greatest collection of exhibits ever entered,’ and the association decides, out of the fullness of its heart and pockets, to equip the new barn with electric lights, and to issue complimentary tickets to all clergymen who apply for them.

“At the same meeting it awards the ‘feed privilege,’ and appoints judges, ticket-takers, grandstand ushers, and many guards, under the command of a military train-announcer, together with various unnecessary marshals and sundry mysterious functionaries known as ‘hill-men’ and ‘hatchet-men.’ All of these, especially the night guards, speedily become heroes in the now almost painfully wide-open eyes of the town’s small boys.

“The Poultry Fanciers’ Association likewise begins to hold frequent meetings, planning its own exhibits and its entertainments for visiting exhibitors, and announcing that silver cups may be given as prizes, in which event the cups also will be exhibited. Finally, at least one cup makes its appearance, and is displayed in advance, surrounded by many ribbon rosettes and streamers destined for such happy birds as are only less than the best.