University of Virginia Library

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE ROSICRUCIANS.

While affairs, in the busy circle of the boys of St.
Bart's, and in the wise counsels of its Trustees, were in
this condition, there happened something to give a
little new interest to the every-day life of the School,
and concerning Brade and some of his friends.

Secret societies, which have come to the playing of
so important a part in many of our colleges, and which
have found their way into some schools, were forbidden
here, as not being open and manly. Perhaps the
Rector's eye and the practised intelligence of tutors
may have been now and then eluded for a while, and
some transient and timid organizations may have had
two or three stealthy meetings, at long intervals, undiscovered;
yet every thing of the kind was pretty thoroughly
put out, and it might be said that no lasting
combination of that sort existed here.

Of this halcyon state of things an invasion seemed
now to be threatened.

A certain mysterious handbill, over copies of which
small groups of boys had talked and wondered, was read
by several tutors, and was made the subject of a little
comment, even among them. It was a printed bit of
paper, on which the first thing to draw the eye was a
red cross. Above this were the letters “B. R. C.,” and

underneath it, “Rosicrucians. — This Brotherhood defends
the widows and fatherless, provides for the poor
and needy, and encourages each other. — No initiationfee
required. One black ball excludes from admission.
— Per order G. M.”

These — though not arranged as on that paper nor
printed in the same type — were the contents of the
handbill. The younger boys discussed it, when first
found, as it was, in several of their rooms, remarking
upon the cheapness of it, and “where they got money
from, to do all their works, if their members didn't pay
any thing;” and so dismissed it. It appeared again;
and then the boys, having ascertained that the wording
was just the same, and the printing just the same,
began to wonder “what fellow was sticking these
things about?” Towne applied to it a witticism of
his own, which made no one laugh but himself, although
it was about as good as the average of boys' jokes.
“The Rosy-crutchers!” he said: “who'll be a rosy
crutch?” Wilkins uttered another, about as good as
this: he called the name “Rosy Christians.” Sam
Blake, coming along while several boys were making
their comments upon it, said it was just the thing that
he wanted; for he “had been obliged to leave a disconsolate
widow and several fatherless children behind
him, when he came to get an education, and he wanted
them provided for.” Peters, though he read the paper,
with the others, made no comment; perhaps because of
his general sympathy with chivalry. Brade had as
many of these thrust into his alcove as any one.

Night after night these things found their way into
the dormitories, and always into the same rooms, one
of which was Brade's, another Remsen's, and another

Towne's. Where they were made, or how they were
distributed, no boy could tell. Several printing-presses
were owned in the School, and, except the red cross,
more than one of them was competent to do the printing
of this strange bill; but then none of these presses
had done the work. Of course, if the printers had put
their name at the bottom of the paper, it would have
been a simple matter to read it; but no such help to
discovery was there. There was the name “Rosicrucians,”
and there were the letters “B. R. C.” and “G. M;”
but these gave no information, and were, in themselves,
mysterious.

If the scattering of these handbills had happened
only once, all interest in them and curiosity about
them would have died out with the first reading, and
with the application to them of the usual amount of
comment and discussion and witticism; but, coming
again and again, as they did, they kept discussion
astir; and, of course, the Tutors very early, and in
time the Rector, became aware of the strange fact.
Meanwhile, as much in fun as in earnest, one of the
base-ball nines called itself `Rosicrucian,' by anticipation
of the next season; beginning so early in order to
secure the name. This, as may be supposed, was not
of the older boys, for they had attained to too much
gravity and dignity to apply to any organization of
theirs a name from a mere transient occasion; but
the “Rosicrucian” Nine was not the youngest, nor the
worst in the School; for it took in Brade and Remsen
and Hirsett, and Albert Wadham and Towne, and
others of less note. Tarleton had been in it; but had
withdrawn, on finding the general feeling to be strong
against him, and Peters half-filled his place.

In adopting the name, the Nine adopted the device
of the red cross, to be worked upon a blue lozenge, or,
as they called it, “a diamond,” on the shirt-front.

This adoption into the life of the School ought, perhaps,
to have satisfied the unwearied originators of this
handbill; and it showed that, whatever unexplained
mystery there might be about it, there was, at least, no
apprehension of it, or scruple about meddling with it.
Still, at short intervals, the production of the papers
went on, and there was added, at the foot of them, in
print, “Seek the Association.”

“Who can be doing it?” everybody in that dormitory
asked, and “What's it for?”

When the new words appeared, a gathering of boys
discussed the subject in Brade's alcove, three of his
visitors occupying places on his bed, and the rest sitting
and standing as they might.

“It's the way fellows get people to attend to 'em,”
said Tom Hutchins, — “by keeping on. It's the way
with advertisements. Why, look at Parmenter! Do
you suppose anybody'd ever hear of Melitrech and that
other stuff if he didn't advertise 'em? He sends thousands
of advertisements away out West (he don't care
who sees 'em out there), and puts rhymes to 'em.
Blanchard told me so. `A man out West Thought he
would test A better thing than honey: He drew a check
For Melitrech, And found 'twas worth the money!'
That's the way he does it.”

“You made that up, Tom Hutchins,” said Towne,
who was within hearing.

“No, I didn't, fact. Blanchard out here told me.
You ask him, sometime. He's got some prettier than
that, — real poetry. I shouldn't wonder if he kept

poets. They're poor, and don't have any thing to eat.
Look here!” and then he began to repeat, “`The
south-west wind'” —

“You've got it wrong!” said Blake, as Hutchins
stopped. “Let a fellow try it, that's got a little poetry
in him;” and, having sniffed, as if he were drawing in
some fragrance, he repeated, in a dainty voice: —

Blake left off, with his face and eyes lifted up, and
his right hand spread aloft, heedless of the “Encores”
which greeted this recitation.

“Well, but what's this fellow going to sell?” asked
Leavitt. “He hasn't got any thing to sell, unless it's
red crosses.”

“Well,” said Hutchins, who, as we know, is something
of a reasoner, “I tell you this chap's got deep
thoughts. He wants to make out of it.”

“I don't believe it's any thing but trying to fool us,”
said Remsen. “What do you say, Brade? Don't you
believe it's just trying to fool us?”

Brade laughed: “We haven't got any widows and
orphans,” he said.

“Yes, we have, too,” said Alonzo Peters, in an awkward
sort of way. “My mother's a widow, and there
are ever so many widows and orphans in the world.”

“Oh, well!” said Remsen, “the orphans are to take
care of their own widows. Everybody hasn't got to
take care of all the widows and orphans.”

“But who's going to look after the orphans, your

way, Remsen?” asked Tom Hutchins, who has encountered
Remsen before.

“I tell you,” said Peters, fortified by this unlooked-for
support, “people have got to join together, to look
after 'em, and the poor: the Church is for that.”

“Gentlemen,” said Towne, taking from his mouth,
and holding like a cigar, a bat, which he was pretending
to smoke, “you're wandering from the subject.
What's this fellow printing these things and putting
'em in here for?”

“Oh! it's some fellow that's doing it, of course,” said
Remsen, giving, as the Chinese do, by his emphasis, an
entirely different meaning to the word emphasized.

“If we don't take any notice of it, he won't do it, —
you see if he does,” said Hutchins. “'Tain't worth
making a fuss over, any how.”

To this they generally agreed, and dropped the subject.
In the School at large, it was not talked of,
now.

A night or two passed by, and then the printed things
appeared in a new guise, in the same rooms as before.
This time, there was a triplet printed below, in which
“land,” “holy band,” and “heroes stand” rhymed
together, as well as they rhyme in high verse like
“Hail Columbia;” perhaps caught from that fountain,
perhaps original with the author, or some one else.

As this came soon after the talk of the different
visitors in Brade's room, and Tom Hutchins's rhyme,
quoted from Mr. Parmenter, had not yet been forgotten,
and as this doggerel appeared so soon after, the boys
began to say that it was a joke of Hutchins's, and not a
very bright one. Hutchins denied it, entirely, and said
“they must not put such stupid stuff on him: if he was

going to make any thing, he'd make something better
than that.”

The mystery, therefore, such as it was, had kept itself
mysterious, up to this point. Here a sort of jog was
given to it, which changed the condition of things.

There had been a foot-ball match between the Great
Middle Class, as the Third proudly and facetiously
called themselves, with the Fifth, on one side, and the
rest of the School on the other. Towne had kicked
hard enough for any three: every one had done his
best. Once Brade had run the ball up among everybody,
till Russell got a chance at it, and followed it
nearly out, when Lamson had gone at it and kept it, in
such a way that he ran it all the way down again.
Gaston had done wonders; Wadham, the elder, had
distinguished himself; Burgess had done as well as
ever; Peters had run the risk of personal harm, in an
astonishing way. Hutchins, Remsen, — who had not
done honor to themselves, and worked hard for the
victory?

In short, the field was manfully contested; and all
who were engaged got hot, and pretty tired, when at
last the challengers (the Third) with their allies, the
Fifth, came out the conquerors by two out of three.
Gaston and Hutchins happened to leave the ground
together, and happened to be followed by Brade, whom
Peters joined himself to. It was not yet late, and the
greater part of the boys stayed where they were, for
more play.

Gaston and Hutchins had taken a short run, to try
their speed, and so had got a good way ahead. They
reached the house, while still the other two were so far
off that Peters's voice could not be perfectly heard, as

he discussed the varied fortunes of the afternoon.
Already, though it was not dark out doors, some lamps
were burning in the house, and as they stopped not far
from the back-kitchen door, which stood ajar, and indulged
their curiosity by looking in, as they passed,
they saw the cook, to be sure, in the inner room, and
other women, too; but they saw something nearer,
which drew all their eyes.

“Ain't he too handsome to be lying there?” asked
Gaston.

Now, though the reader may be too old and wise to
care, or may be impatient to see the connection of all
this with the Rosicrucians, we must linger a moment
here. This beauty, which delighted the clever Gaston, lay
not in wholeness, nor in symmetry; for that which had
been a full-fleshed, evenly browned bird of the mid-day
board had been impaired a good deal in his integrity.
Much of his mighty breast had been cut off, and one of
his stalwart thighs. A broad, steep-sloping smooth of
white stretched down from his breast-bone — which Gaston,
learned fellow, while he stood there, with grinning
face and watering mouth, twice told Hutchins was his
“sternum” — under his strong pinion. About a fourth
part as much of a gray, mottled substance stretched
out, in like unbroken smoothness, beyond this white,
to where the neck, cut off, bounded the view. Under
the pinion, squeezed against his breast, — “the way a
fellow carries a book,” as the bookish Gaston reminded
Hutchins, who, all this short while, was talking only
with his eager eyes, — was a stout gizzard. Such was
this sight; and in such a state of incompleteness was
this once-splendid roasted bird, when seen by these
two hot and hungry boys.

“There!” said Gaston, who could not keep his learning
down, and who, perhaps, having nothing better to
do, thought he could wear away a little time, while
still enjoying, with the sight, a feast on which his more
substantial senses were forbidden to make inroad,
“there! that stuffing — just that sort of mixture of
colors — is what the Greeks called ` ποιχίλος ' (poikil'os).
It's a sort of” —

“I should like to try whether it would `kill us,' I
know,” said Hutchins, for the first time breaking silence,
and not only taking patiently his companion's learning,
but taking the trouble to make a play of words on what
he said. “Well, it's no good standing here: it only
makes a fellow hungrier and hungrier.”

Gaston, however, was not so minded.

“Hold on a minute!” he said. “Let's show it to
these other fellows.”

Upon the word, the other boys drew near, of whom
the fantastic Peters was the most heard, discoursing of
the doughty deeds that had been done that day.

“Somehow,” he was then just saying, “you don't care
when you get into it, do you?”

Gaston nudged his companion, and repeated aside his
request: “Hold on, now, Hutchins!”

“We're waiting for you fellows,” he said to Brade
and Peters, as soon as they were near enough to hear
him in his common voice. “Now's your chance! You
haven't been in, yet. That's for the conquerors,”
(Peters and Brade, as the reader knows, were both
Third-formers, while Gaston and Hutchins were of the
Fourth), and, drawing back, he left room for them to
come between him and the coveted sight.

“What do you mean?” asked Peters, looking

through the chink of the partly open door, and seeing,
of course, that dainty dish which stood upon the table.
“That ain't for us?”

“We didn't open the door, really: did we, Hutchins?”
said Gaston. “They opened it. Now, you've just got
to go right in, and ask for your share. There's Mrs.
Porter; and there's Christina: they're all there, ready
to wait on you.”

Brade, whether through wisdom and wariness, or
whether because he happened, at the moment, not to
have what healthy boys are hardly ever without, an
appetite at any time, for any good thing, and for almost
any amount of it, said that “he was not hungry, and
did not want any thing.”

This statement Gaston treated with contempt.

“You don't know what you're talking about, man!”
he said. “Look there!” and then poured forth a
polyglot profusion of exclamations, as “En tibi! ἰδού !
Voilà! There you have it!” and he pointed to the
turkey.

Brade still declined; but Peters said “he guessed
that he'd go in: he felt pretty hungry, for they'd
worked hard.”

“That's sensible!” said Gaston. “I wish I had your
chance. Only be quick! There isn't much gone yet;
but there'll be plenty of fellows here, before long;” and
he looked up the road that led by the gymnasium to
the play-ground.

“Come, Brade!” said Peters, not stirring yet: “you
come with me, won't you?”

For some reason or other, this seemed not to be
according to Gaston's plan.

Before Brade could answer, Gaston “took the word,”
as Frenchmen say.

“He'll come right in: she likes one at a time best. I
want to ask Brade a question.”

So, pushing Hutchins to one side, and drawing Brade
by the button to the other, while the often-abstracted
Peters seemed about lifting his foot to enter, Gaston
addressed his captive thus: —

“Look here! What do you suppose `turkey' is in
Latin?” (Peters still lingered, but with his queer
eyes fixed hard at the temptation: “Go on, Peters!
don't be too long!” said Gaston, by way of parenthesis.)
“Don't you suppose” (to Brade, again) “they
had a” —

“But they didn't know about turkey,” said Brade.
“It's a new thing, isn't it?”

“The Romans must have known!” said Hutchins.
“The Turks are a big people.”

“Don't you suppose,” Gaston continued, without
changing the character of his sentence, “they had a
word `dindo'? You know the French — (Rush in,
Peters!)” Gaston's voice trembled with the excitement
of the occasion. Then to Brade, again: “It
sounds like Greek Διν ” (din—). Peters was slowly,
and with a very uncertain hand, opening the door a
little, when the cook, whose ears were good, looked
toward them, and Peters started; the other boys keeping
themselves out of sight, at each side.

Peters went, with his usual wavering and unsteady
step, across the floor of the back kitchen, and presented
himself, awkward and hesitating, to the authorities of
the inner room.

Peters began to speak, and immediately there was a
laugh of scorn from within.

“I won't leave him,” said Brade.

“No,” said Gaston, whose plan now seemed to admit
of a change. “Go in and bring old Peters off!” and
he made way, and Brade went in. “Now, Hutchins!”
said the chief speaker: “there's a towel!”

Brade went in to the relief of the undaunted
Peters, and found, when he got to his side, that that
boy had not succeeded. The cook was just saying, with
the utmost downrightness, to the applicant, “that it
would be a pretty thing for her to be giving a bit of
turkey to every boy that played foot-ball;” and one
of those attendant women, who were to have been so
ready to help in the distribution of the reward to the
conquerors, craftily advised that “the turkey should be
looked after, where it was.” Things therefore gave
little hope of rewards to the strenuous victors from the
play-ground.

The cook sent an assistant to bring the great fowl
in, and to begin cutting slices for the table; and Brade
and Peters turned to go from the fruitless errand,
when suddenly there rose a cry from the assistant that
“the turkey was gone! there wasn't sight nor sign of
it!”

Then was there running and crying out, among the
maid-servants of St. Bartholomew's School; and, as
may be supposed, the two members of the victorious
Third were given to understand, in very plain English,
that their room was better than their company; that
“the Rector would find it out, and then they'd have to
take their deserts; that if boys went on in this way,
there would be no living at St. Bart's;” and as much

more of wise thought and earnest exhortation, as half
a dozen excited and indignant women could put into
words in the space of a minute.

It was to no purpose, of course, that Peters rather
indignantly denied any business but just the honest one
of asking for a bit of turkey; and said that he had not
got even that. All eyes, his own included, although
they were different from other people's, could see that
where a turkey had been was nothing now but a large
empty dish, on which were a very few and slight, however
savory-looking, traces of the great roasted bird
which a boy could not look at without wanting.

Brade assured the cook that “Peters was perfectly
innocent, and that he himself had only come in to keep
Peters company, for he did not want any turkey.”

The cook's answer to all this was, “Of course not;
what would he want turkey for? Boys didn't eat turkey,
— oh, no!” and another less angry, but not less
indignant female explained that “these two were only
blinds; and, while they were talking, others were carrying
off the fowl. That was the way of it.”

Brade's face, as we know, was a very sympathetic
and communicative one; and at this explanation it
went through sudden conscious changes. He had too
much presence of mind to call out to their late comrades
at the door; and, after insisting upon giving his
word that they knew nothing about it, he hurried away
the unpractical Peters, who wished to stay and clear
himself, and got him out of the door.

Strangely enough, their troubles seemed only to have
begun within the house; they went on worse, as soon
as the boys set their disappointed and indignant feet
upon the great earth that holds up every thing.

Just by the door, apparently attracted by the turmoil,
were Tutors Bruce and Hammersley, who had been
down at the play-ground when the match was played.
Gaston and Hutchins were no longer to be seen.

The women, who had been so hard when talking to
the boys about the punishment that they deserved, now,
when they saw the Tutors, drew in, or threw away, a
good share of their hardness. “The turkey was gone,”
they said; “and it had been stolen. Orders had come,
express from the Rector, to have some for the boys'
supper, and it had been standing right there, upon that
dish, in open sight. The cook had seen it, and Christina
had seen it; anybody might see it, up to the time
these boys came in, five minutes ago, or less than that.
Then these came in, asking for a bit, because they'd
beat the foot-ball, and while they were standing there
the bird was gone, — just the way it was then;” and
here two of the speakers pointed to the sad emptiness
of the dish; and one, to make the expression stronger,
took the goodly-sized and shapely piece of stone-china
between her two hands, and showed how light and how
utterly empty it then was. It was the opinion of the
cook and her chief associates that “the Rector ought
to know how high-handed the boys were getting.”

The Tutors, without expressing any opinion, set up a
preliminary court of inquiry on the spot; and the two
boys told their story, leaving out, of course, all other
names than those of one another. Peters came nearest
to mentioning a third party, when he said that “they
told him that any of the Third and Fifth could have
some turkey, by only going in and asking for it. That
was all he did: he just asked civilly, and they told him
he could not have any.” The reader knows the story.

“If boys tell you, up and down, a thing, you must
believe 'em,” said Peters.

“It ought to be so,” said the Tutors. “Did you believe
them, too, Brade?”

“I didn't ask for any, sir,” said Brade. “I didn't
want any. The girls were all laughing at Peters, and
so I went in, to stand by him and bring him out.”

This story furnished a very imperfect explanation of
the turkey's disappearance, for it left that point untouched:
it accounted for the doing of these two boys,
supposing it to be true; and a boy's word, at St. Bart's
School, was always taken to be true, unless overwhelmingly
contradicted, which seldom happened.

So Brade and Peters, coming home as victors from
the well-fought field, are caught suddenly in unsuspected
toils. They had nothing to do with the carrying off
of the turkey: they can fancy how it went, but cannot
open their mouths, except to assert their own innocence.

The Tutors go in before them, and Mr. Bruce turns
off (as the boys can easily understand), to report to the
Caput.

“Well, don't let's tell Gaston and Hutchins about
the Tutors,” said Peters. “It'll serve 'em right, for
playing us such a trick.”

To this Brade readily agreed, laughing at the prospect;
but soothing his aggrieved companion with the
assurance that “those boys did not mean to get them
into trouble”