 | Dream life |  |
I.
Cloister Life.
IT has very likely occurred to you, my reader, that I
am playing the wanton in these sketches;—and
am breaking through all the canons of the writers, in
making You my hero.
It is even so; for my work is a story of those vague
feelings, doubts, passions, which belong more or less to
every man of us all; and therefore it is, that I lay upon
your shoulders the burden of these dreams. If this or
that one, never belonged to your experience,—have
patience for a while. I feel sure that others are
coming, which will lie like a truth upon your heart;
and draw you unwittingly—perhaps tearfully even—
into the belief that You are indeed my hero.
The scene now changes to the cloister of a college;—
of the Cam or the Isis—huge, battered hulks, on whose
weather-stained decks, great captains of learning have
fought away their lives; nor yet the cavernous,
quadrangular courts, that sleep under the dingy walls
of the Sorbonne.
The youth-dreams of Clarence, begin under the roof
of one of those long, ungainly piles of brick and
mortar, which make the colleges of New England.
The floor of the room is rough, and divided by wide
seams. The study table does not stand firmly, without
a few spare pennies to prop it into solid footing. The
book-case of stained fir-wood, suspended against the
wall by cords, is meagrely stocked, with a couple of
Lexicons, a pair of grammars, a Euclid, a Xenophon,
a Homer, and a Livy. Beside these, are scattered
about here and there,—a thumb-worn copy of British
ballads, an odd volume of the Sketch Book, a clumsy
Shakspeare, and a pocket edition of the Bible.
With such appliances, added to the half score of
Professors and Tutors who preside over the awful
precincts, you are to work your way up to that proud
entry upon our American life, which begins with the
Baccalaureate degree. There is a tingling sensation
in walking first under the shadow of those walls,
uncouth as they are, and in feeling that you belong to
them;—that you are a member, as it were, of the body
to actual moneyed fines—varying from a shilling, to fifty
cents!
There is something exhilarating in the very consciousness
of your subject state; and in the necessity of
measuring your hours by the habit of such a learned
community. You think back upon your respect for the
lank figure of some old teacher of boy days, as a
childish weakness: even the little coteries of the home
fire-side, lose their importance, when compared with the
extraordinary sweep, and dignity of your present
position.
It is pleasant to measure yourself with men; and
there are those about you, who seem to your untaught
eye, to be men already. Your chum, a hard-faced
fellow of ten more years than you,—digging sturdily at
his tasks, seems by that very community of work, to
dignify your labor. You watch his cold, gray eye
bending down over some theorem of Euclid, with a
kind of proud companionship, in what so tasks his
manliness.
It is nothing for him to quit sleep at the first
tinkling of the alarm clock that hangs in your
chamber; or to brave the weather, in that cheerless run
to the morning prayers of winter. Yet, with what a
dreamy horror, you wake on mornings of snow, to that
tinkling alarum!—and glide in the cold and darkness,
under the sharp gusts that come sweeping between the
buildings;—and afterward, gathering yourself up in
your cloak, to watch in a sleepy, listless maze, the
flickering lamps that hang around the dreary chapel!
You follow half unconsciously some tutor's rhetorical
reading of a chapter of Isaiah; and then, as he closes
the Bible with a flourish, your eye, half-open, catches
the feeble figure of the old Domine, as he steps to the
desk, and with his frail hands stretched out upon the
cover of the big book, and his head leaning slightly to
one side, runs through in gentle and tremulous tones,
his wonted form of Invocation.
Your Division room is steaming with foul heat, and
there is a strong smell of burnt feathers, and oil. A
jaunty tutor with pug nose, and consequential air, steps
into the room — while you all rise to show him
deference,—and takes his place at the pulpit-like desk.
Then come the formal loosing of his camlet cloak clasp,—
the opening of his sweaty Xenophon to where the day's
parasangs begin,—the unsliding of his silver pencil
case,—the keen, sour look around the benches, and the
cool pinch of his thumb and forefinger, into the fearful
box of names!
How you listen for each as it is uttered,—running
down the page in advance,—rejoicing when some hard
passage comes to a stout man in the corner; and what
late at night,—when the last paragraph is reached,—
the ballot drawn, and—you, safe!
You speculate dreamily upon the faces around you.
You wonder what sort of schooling they may have had,
and what sort of homes. You think one man has got
an extraordinary name; and another, a still more
extraordinary nose. The glib, easy way of one student,
and his perfect sang-froid, completely charm you: you
set him down in your own mind as a kind of Crichton.
Another weazen-faced, pinched-up fellow in a scant
cloak, you think must have been sometime a school-master:
he is so very precise, and wears such an
indescribable look of the ferule. There is one big
student, with a huge beard, and a rollicking good-natured
eye, who you would quite like to see measure
strength with your old usher; and on careful comparison,
rather think the usher would get the worst of
it. Another appears as venerable as some fathers you
have seen; and it seems wonderfully odd, that a man
old enough to have children, should recite Xenophon by
morning candle-light!
The class in advance, you study curiously; and are
quite amazed at the precocity of certain youths
belonging to it, who are apparently about your own
age. The Juniors you look upon, with a quiet reverence
for their aplomb, and dignity of character; and
you too, shall be admitted freely to the precincts of the
Philosophical chamber, and to the very steep benches
of the Laboratory. This last, seems, from occasional
peeps through the blinds, a most mysterious building.
The chimneys, recesses, vats, and cisterns—to say
nothing of certain galvanic communications, which you
are told, traverse the whole building—in a way capable
of killing a rat, at an incredible remove from the bland
professor,—utterly fatigue your wonder! You humbly
trust—though you have doubts upon the point—that
you will have the capacity to grasp it all, when once
you shall have arrived at the dignity of a Junior.
As for the Seniors, your admiration for them is
entirely boundless. In one or two individual instances,
it is true, it has been broken down, by an unfortunate
squabble, with thick set fellows in the Chapel aisle.
A person who sits not far before you at prayers,
and whose name you seek out very early, bears a
strong resemblance to some portrait of Dr. Johnson;
you have very much the same kind of respect for him,
that you feel for the great lexicographer; and do not
for a moment doubt his capacity to compile a
Dictionary equal if not superior to Johnson's.
Another man with very bushy, black hair, and an
easy look of importance, carries a large cane; and is
represented to you, as an astonishing scholar, and
it. You think of him, as, presently—(say four or five
years hence)—astounding the United States Senate
with his eloquence. And when once you have heard
him in debate, with that ineffable gesture of his, you
absolutely languish in your admiration for him; and
you describe his speaking to your country friends, as
very little inferior, if any, to Mr. Burke's. Beside
this one, are some half dozen others, among whom the
question of superiority is, you understand, strongly
mooted. It puzzles you to think, what an avalanche
of talent will fall upon the country, at the graduation
of those Seniors!
You will find, however, that the country bears
such inundations of college talent, with a remarkable
degree of equanimity. It is quite wonderful how all
the Burkes, and Scotts, and Peels, among college
Seniors, do quietly disappear, as a man gets on in life.
As for any degree of fellowship with such giants,
it is an honor hardly to be thought of. But you have
a classmate—I will call him Dalton,—who is very
intimate with a dashing Senior; they room near each
other outside the college. You quite envy Dalton,
and you come to know him well. He says that you
are not a `green-one,'—that you have `cut your eye
teeth'; in return for which complimentary opinions, you
entertain a strong friendship for Dalton.
He is a `fast,' fellow, as the Senior calls him; and it
is a proud thing to happen at their rooms occasionally,
and to match yourself for an hour or two (with the
windows darkened) against a Senior at `old sledge.'
It is quite `the thing' as Dalton says, to meet a Senior
familiarly in the street. Sometimes you go, after
Dalton has taught you `the ropes,' to have a cosy sit-down
over oysters and champagne;—to which the
Senior lends himself, with the pleasantest condescension
in the world. You are not altogether used to hard
drinking; but this, you conceal,—as most spirited young
fellows do,—by drinking a great deal. You have a
dim recollection of certain circumstances—very unimportant,
yet very vividly impressed on your mind,—
which occurred on one of these occasions.
The oysters were exceedingly fine, and the champagne—exquisite.
You have a recollection of something
being said, toward the end of the first bottle, of
Xenophon, and of the Senior's saying in his playful
way,—`Oh, d—n Xenophon!'
You remember Dalton laughed at this; and you
laughed—for company. You remember that you
thought, and Dalton thought, and the Senior thought—
by a singular coincidence, that the second bottle of
champagne was better even than the first. You
have a dim remembrance of the Senior's saying very
loudly, “Clarence—(calling you by your family name)
confirmation of the remark.
You remember that Dalton broke out into a song,
and that for a time you joined in the chorus; you
think the Senior called you to order for repeating
the chorus, in the wrong place. You think the lights
burned with remarkable brilliancy; and you remember
that a remark of yours to that effect, met with very
much such a response from the Senior, as he had
before employed with reference to Xenophon.
You have a confused idea of calling Dalton—
Xenophon. You think the meeting broke up with
a chorus; and that somebody—you cannot tell who—
broke two or three glasses. You remember questioning
yourself very seriously, as to whether you were,
or were not, tipsy. You think you decided that you
were not, but—might be.
You have a confused recollection of leaning upon
some one, or something, going to your room; this
sense of a desire to lean, you think was very strong.
You remember being horribly afflicted with the idea
of having tried your night key at the tutor's door,
instead of your own; you remember further a hot
stove,—made certain indeed, by a large blister which
appeared on your hand, next day. You think of
throwing off your clothes, by one or two spasmodic
efforts,—leaning, in the intervals, against the bed-post.
There is a recollection of an uncommon dizziness
afterward—as if your body was very quiet, and your
head gyrating with strange velocity, and a kind of
centrifugal action, all about the room, and the college,
and indeed the whole town. You think that you felt
uncontrollable nausea after this, followed by positive
sickness;—which waked your chum, who thought you
very incoherent, and feared derangement.
A dismal state of lassitude follows, broken by the
college clock striking three, and by very rambling
reflections upon champagne, Xenophon, `Captain
Dick,' Madge, and the old deacon who clinched his
wig in the church.
The next morning—(ah, how vexatious that all our
follies are followed by a—`next morning!') you
wake with a parched mouth, and a torturing thirst;
the sun is shining broadly into your reeking chamber.
Prayers and recitations are long ago over; and you
see through the door, in the outer room, that hard
faced chum, with his Lexicon, and Livy, open before
him, working out with all the earnestness of his iron
purpose, the steady steps toward preferment, and
success.
You go with some story of sudden sickness to the
Tutor;—half fearful that the bloodshot, swollen eyes
will betray you. It is very mortifying too, to meet
Dalton appearing so gay, and lively after it all, while
him thoroughly the extraordinary capacity that he has.
Here and there creeps in, amid all the pride and
shame of the new life, a tender thought of the old
home; but its joys are joys no longer: its highest
aspirations even, have resolved themselves into fine
mist,—like rainbows, that the sun drinks with his
beams.
The affection for a mother, whose kindness you recal
with a suffused eye, is not gone, or blighted; but it is
woven up, as only a single adorning tissue, into the
growing pride of youth: it is cherished in the proud
soul, rather as a redeeming weakness, than as a vital
energy.
And the love for Nelly, though it bates no jot of
fervor, is woven into the scale of growing purposes,
rather as a color to adorn, than as a strand to
strengthen.
As for your other loves, those romantic ones, which
were kindled by bright eyes, and the stolen reading of
Miss Porter's novels, they linger on your mind like
perfumes; and they float down your memory, with the
figure, the step, the last words of those young girls, who
raised them,—like the types of some dimly-shadowed,
but deeper passion, which is some time to spur your
maturer purposes, and to quicken your manly resolves.
It would be hard to tell, for you do not as yet know,
to be the very one who will gain such hold upon your
riper affections, as she has held already over your
boyish caprice. It is a part of the pride,—I may say
rather an evidence of the pride, which youth feels in
leaving boyhood behind him, to talk laughingly, and
carelessly, of those attachments which made his young
years so balmy with dreams.
| Dream life | |