The college man and the college woman

Front matter

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Preface

Now that we have about sixty thousand men and thirty thousand women in the colleges of the United States, the College Man and the College Woman deserve sympathetic interpretation and intelligent appreciation. To reveal to themselves and to the world these college men and women as they are, and as they are capable of becoming, is the purpose of this book. It deals with the personal, ethical, spiritual side of college life, and with organization and administration only incidentally. It presents as the best spiritual drink for college youth a blend of Greek sanity and Christian service.

Nearly everything in it has been presented to college audiences at Harvard, Yale, Pennsylvania, Syracuse, Chicago, Northwestern, Amherst, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Williams, Haverford, Colgate, Mount Holyoke, Eockford, Smith, Vassar, or Wellesley. Nearly all of it has been printed in "The Atlantic Monthly," "Scribner's Magazine," "The Educational Review," "The International Monthly," "The Outlook," CroweU's "What is Worth While " Series, or pamphlets published by colleges to which the addresses were delivered. Taken as a whole, they represent what twenty viii PREFACE

years of life in a college have taught me, and what I in turn have tried to teach others, about what college students mean to be, and what college graduates may be expected to become. I trust it may assure over-anxious parents that not every aberration of their sons and daughters while in college is either final or fatal ; persuade critics of college administration that our problem is not so simple as they seem to think ; and inspire the public with the conviction, cherished by every college officer, that college students, with all their faults and follies, are the best fellows in the world ; and that notwithstanding much crude speculation about things human, and some honest skepticism concerning things divine, the great social institutions of family and industry and church and state may be safely intrusted to their hearts and hands.

The literary form of the second chapter, though unusual, was unavoidable. The college undergraduate is a being of too complex and swiftly changing phases for external description to catch and reproduce. If he is to be truthfully depicted at all, the only way is to place him in intimate and confidential relations and let him "give himself away."

The one biographical chapter is introduced because the office of college president is preeminently a personal office, and is best described in terms of a life and work which express a personal character.

I have ventured to recognize the fact that man

PREFACE IX

and woman are not just alike, and to suggest that what God has put asunder man cannot satisfactorily join together.

While I have introduced two or three college sermons, it will be evident that the main reliance of a college for its moulding of men and women is not preaching or exhortation, still less rules and regulations, least of all threats and penalties ; but actual living, in an atmosphere of freedom, where each person has returned to him frankly, swiftly, mercilessly, the social judgment that his acts invite and his character deserves. The ethical and spiritual fruits of a college course, likewise, are not to be measured mainly by verbal professions of piety and virtue, but by those deep-grooved sub-conscious habits of good-fellowship and courtesy, kindliness and courage, thoroughness and patience, sincerity and sympathy, serviceableness and self-sacrii&ce, which, whether in the press of business and the clash of politics, or in the quiet of home and the joy of the social circle, are the marks of the true College Man and College Woman.

William DeWitt Hyde.

BowDOiN College,

Brunswick, Maine.

Contents

PAGE

I. The Offer of the College . . 3

II. The Transformation of the Undergraduate 4

II The Transformation of the Undergraduate

FRESHMAN SORROWS

Bradford College, October 24, 1901.

DEAE Father, — Your letter, with welcome check inclosed, is at hand. I note your advice to " wear the same-sized hat, and keep sawing wood ; " but really I did n't need it, for the Sophs attend to the former, and the Profs provide for the latter.

No, I am not suffering from '' swelled head " yet. You know you wished me to keep up my music. Last week a notice was put up on the bulletin-board, inviting all candidates for the College Glee Club to appear at a certain room, at nine o'clock Saturday evening. Among the candidates who came were two other Freshmen and myself. They told us that we must all put on dress suits, as personal appearance was a large element in fitness for the position. As I did not have any, they lent me one, or rather parts of two, — waistcoat and trousers that were far too small, and a coat that was miles too big. Then they had us come in and make bows, and show how we would lead in a prima donna. Then they had us stand on our heels and sing low notes ; stand on tiptoes and sing high notes ; sing everything we knew from comic songs to the doxology in long metre ; and finally, about half -past eleven, dismissed us with the statement that the other two were the better singers, but that my presence and personal appearance was greatly in my favor ; and that the decision would be announced on the bulletin-board the next morning. We had not been out of the room two minutes before we recognized that we had been awfully '' taken in.'' I did not sleep much that night ; and whenever, I fell into a doze, the vision of that bulletin-board would dance before my eyes and wake me up. If ever I wished I was dead and buried, I did that night. It seemed as if I could never get up and go to breakfast, where they would all be talking about it, and walk into chapel with everybody knowing what a fool I had made of myself the night before. It made me wish I either had taken my dose of this sort of thing three years ago at a fitting school, or else had gone to one of the great universities, where a fellow can be simply a unit in the vast whole, of whom nobody takes the slightest notice. But you always said that the small colleges have a great advantage over the large ones, in the fact that here the individual is made to be somebody, and take the consequences of his own action upon his own head. Well, I have made an ass of myseK to begin with ; and everybody knows it and is guying me about it. But I am getting used to it, and don't mind it as mucli as I did. I have had a good many calls by way of congratulation on my election to the Glee Club ; and as these were the first calls of persons I had not had the privilege of knowing before, it seemed appropriate (and I was informed that it was an established college custom) that I should treat. I think that by taking the thing good-naturedly, and entertaining my guests handsomely, I have made more friends than I have lost.

Your affectionate son,

Clarence Mansfield.

Bradfobd College, November 6, 1901.

My dear Mother, — You say you are " afraid I am homesick ; " for I write all " about things at home and nothing about things here." Well, I have been just a bit homesick, but I am getting bravely over it. This time I will try to tell you the things you want to know.

You need n't worry about my clothes ; they are all right. I tore a three-cornered hole in my trousers the other day ; but I fixed it up first-rate. I tried one of those fine needles to begin with ; but it was no use. So I fished out a darning-needle, got some black linen thread, and went at it. I took the thread double and twisted, left a long end at the beginning ; sewed it over and over, as you call it, taking stitches about a quarter of an inch apart, fetched back the end next to the needle to the long end I left at the beginning, and tied them together. Some Sophs made great fun of it ; wanted to know if I was trying to demonstrate the pons asinomm on my trousers leg. That night I ripped up the whole seam, or whatever you call it, I had made, turi;ied the trousers wrong side out ; proceeded as before except that I took stitches only half as big ; tied the ends on the inside where they don't show ; and the trousers look as good as ever.

You ask particularly about my religious life. I don't know what to say. The first morning I went to chapel, some one who seemed to be the usher asked me if I would like to rent a sitting. I was fool enough to give him a dollar for a seat ; and then he ushered me into a pew at one side near the front which is reserved for the Faculty. I tell you I didn't feel much like praying that morning.

The first really familiar and home-like thing I found when I came here was the Y. M. C. A. reception to the Freshmen. A large number of the students and several of the Faculty were present. There were a few addresses of an informal nature by the professors. Then we sang hymns, and refreshments were served. I got acquainted with three of the professors, to one of whom I recite ; and the whole affair went a long way toward making me feel at home here.

As for the meetings : well, I go to them regularly. I camiot say I altogether enjoy them. Some of the fellows have such wonderful experiences of grace, that I don't know what to make of it. I never had anything of the kind. If that is essential to a man's being a Christian — why, I simply am not in it. I can't conceive of myseK as feeling like that. I don't see the sense of it. It does n't seem natural. I want to do right. I know I do wrong, — I know I need to be turned right about face once in so often, or else I should go straight down hill. And I am glad to spend an hour each week with the f eUows who are trying to get a brace in the same direction.

To tell the truth I don't get much out of church here. The ministers are smart enough, and they roll out great glowing periods. But when they are through I cannot tell for the life of me what they have been driving at. You hear a lot about justification, sanctification, and atonement ; and then you hear a lot about Phrygia, Pamphylia, and Mesopotamia. Once in a while there comes along a man who seems to understand us. He will throw out some practical and moral problem that we are grappling with ; pile up the arguments in favor of the indulgence just as they pile up in our own minds ; and then turn around, knock them all to splinters, and show how much more noble and manly it is to overcome temptation ; and show us

Christ as the great champion in the moral and spiritual warfare of the world.

It is a good deal harder to be a Christian here in college than it was at home, and the things that ought to be a help seem to be a hindrance. I expect to have rather a sorry time of it here for a while; but by far the greatest of my sorrows is that I have not been more faithfully,

Your dutiful and grateful boy,

Claeence Mansfield.

Bradford College, May 30, 1902.

Dear Helen, — I wonder if time flies as swiftly with you Willoughby College girls as with us ? It seems but yesterday that we were gliding along together to the music of the merry sleighbells over the glistening snow. Of course you have your good times there. Your afternoon teas tendered by Sophomores to Freshmen ; your debates in the gymnasium on municipal suffrage for women ; your Halloween frolics ; your basket-ball contests ; your boat-races rowed for form only ; your midnight lunches interrupted by " the Pestilence that walketh in darkness " — that nickname of yours for a meddlesome Prof, beats the record — are all very delightful as portrayed in your charming letters ; but compared with foot-ball and base-ball, boxing and fencing, rushes and tugs-of-war, turkey suppers on the Faculty table with any one of three parties, the owner of the turkeys, the college authorities, or the upper-classmen, liable to swoop down on you at any moment and gobble up the feast, I must confess that your worst dissipations seem a little tame.

I have no doubt, however, that you make up in study what is lacking in sport. I have n't seen anybody here quite so completely carried away with Sophocles, or so in love with the Odes of Horace, or so fascinated with German syntax as you seem to be. Your lamentations over spherical trigonometry, however, would evoke many a responsive moan. That was really credible from a college man's point of view ; but if I were not so sure of your thorough genuineness and sincerity, I should set down those raptures about philologies and trilogies either to satire or to affectation. We men are not taken that way. I am glad you like them, though. To see a little gleam of sense, real or imaginary, through the interminable technical jargon a fellow has to grind out, must be a relief. I am heartily glad for you if the gods have granted you such a special dispensation.

I must confess, though, that I am beginning to get a real hold of Greek. Professor Bird has us read the whole of an author in translation , write essays on the times, characters, customs, and institutions ; and then read in the original such passages as are specially significant in throwing light on the main characters and events. We get the jf life first in this way ; and the letters afterward as the expression of that life. Then, too, he shows pictures of Greek architecture and art with the stereopticon in the evening ; tells us the story of the statues of which we have casts in the Aj^t Building, and of the coins and vases in the cases there. Life is interesting in all its forms ; and it is slowly dawning upon me that these old fellows lived about the gayest, freest, loveliest life men ever lived on earth. But from the way Greek was ground out in the high school one would never have dreamed the old dry roots once had such sweet juice in them. And some of the other languages here are taught by young fellows fresh from German, or German- American institutions, who regard the text, even of Horace or Goethe or Moliere, as just so much grammatical straw to thrash the syntax out of. When I see what Greek is, and what the other languages and literatures might be if only we had a man and not a thesis in cap and gown to teach them, it makes me mad. And yet you girls fall down and worship just that sort of a creature !

Boys and girls make very different kinds of students. I think we get along better apart than together. You are docile, conscientious, and at least outwardly courteous. You eat whatever is set before you, asking no questions for conscience's sake. You study just as hard whether you like a subject or not. You do your best every time.

Now that is very sweet and lovely. But I should think it would spoil your teachers to treat them that way. With us it is different. If we don't like a thing, we say so. As for these fellows that tryto cram their old philology down our throats, we make their existence pretty uncomfortable. The other day the Latin tutor asked a fellow the gender of ovum^ and he answered, " You can't tell until it 's hatched." They won't teach us anything we want to know, and so we won't learn anything they want to teach. "We keep asking the same old question over and over again ; and make him explain the simplest of all his favorite fine distinctions every time it occurs. Well, I must stop somewhere. I really did not know I was so interested in my studies, or had so many theories of education. You always understand me better than anybody else does. When I began this letter, I did n't think I cared much about these things anyway. But you are so in earnest about them, that I believe I have caught the inspiration. I am a many-sided being ; some sides are good and some are bad ; some are wise and some are very foolish. You always bring out the best side ; and for fear of deceiving you and making you think I am better than I really am, I have to let you inside, and show you just how foolish and light-minded I am. If I always had you to talk to, I think I should be a very much more diligent student than I am. Not that I crave coeducation. Oh, no ! What Emerson says of friendship is especially true of the friendship of college boys and girls : '' The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it. There must be very two, before there can be very one. Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long probation." I wish you would read the whole essay. I am immensely fond of it ; and I always think of you when I read it. The two writers I love best are Carlyle and Emerson; although I don't profess to understand much of either of them. Carlyle braces me up when I am tempted to loaf and shirk. Emerson tones me down when I am tempted to pretense and insincerity. Both tend to make me more simple and true and real — more like what you are and what I fondly fancy you would like to have me be.

Your faithful friend,

Clarence Mansfield.

sophomore conceits

Bradford College, October 25, 1902.

Dear Father, — Now that it is all over, I suppose I may as well tell you about it. Perhaps you saw in the " Herald" that we came near having a class rebellion here yesterday.

Two or three of us ventured to wear, into Professor Bird's recitation-room the other morning, some vestiges of the attire which had done duty in a parade the previous evening. Professor Bird said that if we wished to make fools of ourselves on the public streets he, as an individual, had nothing to say about it; but that when it came to bringing such nonsense into his recitation-room he would not stand it, and we might leave the room at once.

Immediately after recitation the class held a rousing indignation meeting in Old College Hall, and passed the following resolutions : " That we, the members of the Class of 1905, most emphatically and indignantly protest against this act of tyranny and usurpation ; and that we will attend no more college exercises until this wrong shall be redressed."

As I was one of the persons especially aggrieved I was made chairman of a committee of three, which was appointed to wait upon the president and present our resolutions.

He listened very respectfully to our representations. When we had finished he said that there seemed to be a hopeless division of opinion on the subject, — the faculty being firmly and finally committed to the position taken by Professor Bird, and the class being equally tenacious of the position taken in the resolutions. Accordingly, he proposed that we should refer the whole subject to a committee of three alumni, of whom the class should name one, the president should name one, and the two thus appointed should name the third.

The class, after some discussion, voted to accept the president's proposition ; and we appointed as our representative on this committee a young graduate of the previous year who had been a leader in all manner of deviltry while he was in college, and is hanging around the college this year as a selfappointed coach of the foot-ball team until he can find something to do. We went back and reported that we had accepted his proposition, and named our referee. The president then gravely announced that he had selected you as his representative on the committee to which the matter should be referred; that he would telegraph for you at once; and that he should expect me and the others interested to appear before the committee in the precise apparel which had been the occasion of the controversy.

You can imagine that I was a good deal taken back. I did not relish having you called down here from your business, two hundred miles, to sit in judgment on that question. I thought I could anticipate the decision and the manner in which it would be delivered. So I persuaded the class to drop the matter, and we have resumed attendance at recitations.

I give you the full account. This is all there is in it. The reporters got hold of it and have written it up with a great deal of exaggeration and embellishment. So if you read my name or see my photograph in connection with the instigation of a great rebellion, don't be disturbed, and tell mother not to worry. Your affectionate son,

Clakence.

Bradford College, November 30, 1902.

My dear Helen, — The foot-ball season is over, and I must tell you about it. As you know, we won the championship ; and I happened to play quite an important part in it. The opposing team was made up of great giants from the farms ; while our team, were mostly light city boys, quick as lightning, and up to all the tricks and fine points. Their game was to mass themselves on one weak point in the line, and pound away at that time after time. In spite of all that we could do they would gain a few feet each time ; and it looked as though they would win by steadily shoving us inch by inch down the field. When they had it almost over, we made a great brace and held them and got the baU.

Then we made a long gain, bringing the ball within forty yards of their goal. The time was nearly up ; and if we had lost it again, the game would have been either a tie or a defeat. As a last resort, the signal was given for a goal from the field. The ball was passed to me : I had just time for a drop kick in the general direction of the goal, without an instant for taking aim, when their biggest man came down on me; and that was the last I can remember. As all my force had gone into the kick, and I was standing still and had almost lost my balance in the act of kicking ; while he weighed seventy pounds more than I, and was coming at full speed, you can imagine that I went down with a good deal of force onto the frozen ground.

The next thing I knew I was in my room, and the doctor was working over me. To my first question, " Was it a goal ? " the Captain replied, " Yes, old man, you won the game for us." My injury proved to be nothing serious ; and a few stitches in a scalp wound was all the medical treatment necessary. By the way, don't mention this part of the affair around home, where the folks will be likely to hear of it. They would worry, and that would do no good. I was at some loss how to charge up the doctor's bill on my cash account; but in view of the stitches, I charged it to " sewing." I am just having a glorious time of it this year. There are lots of foolish girls here, as there are everywhere ; and I don't see why a fellow should not have some fun with them. My foot-ball prowess has opened the doors of all the best society to me ; and I am lionized wherever I go. I can take my pick of the girls; and I get along with them first-rate. They talk foot-ball as soon as they are introduced ; and that is a subject on which I feel perfectly at home. There are half a dozen on whom I have made a perfect mash ; and perhaps I ought to confess that there is one in particular toward whom I am inclined to reciprocate. She is a little older than I (some of the fellows who are jealous of me call her the college widow), but with shrugging of her shoulders and elevating her eyes when one makes a particularly piquant remark, she is young enough in her manner. We led the dance the other evening, and it was great fun to see the fellows green with envy, and the longing looks of more than one girl whose eyes as much as said, ^'Oh, if I were only where that girl is."

I was considerably amused at the account you gave of your harmless serenade under the windows of the obstreperous Miss K. ; but I was disgusted at the specimen of petticoat government that followed. How perfectly absurd to scold a set of such innocent and guileless creatures, who never entertained so much as a shadow of a naughty thought in all your lives !

Our dean would n't have made such a fuss over a little thing like that. Let me tell you what happened here the other night. We have an instructor whom we hate. I don't know just why. He is a wooden fellow. He tries to apply high-school methods of discipline and instruction to college men ! Just think of it ! We don't propose to stand it. So we "fixed" his recitation-room the other night, and among other things propped up the skeleton from the Medical School in his chair, and put between his teeth strips of paper on which the instructor's oft-recurring phrases were inscribed. I was in it. The dean got onto it, and I was summoned to his office. I expected I should catch it, and was making arrangements to leave town on an early train.

The dean, however, did not refer to the affair once. He said that he was afraid that I was not giving to my studies the undivided attention that they deserved, and asked what was the trouble. We talked over my plans and purposes in so far as I have any ; and then he tried to show me how these studies in general, and the one which is taught in that room in particular, have a vital relation to my whole intellectual future. I never realized before how hard the college is trying, with very scanty resources, to provide for us a satisfactory course, or how interested in our individual welfare the officers of it are. I came away with a very much better understanding of what I am here for. I had a very pleasant interview, and was almost glad to have had it ; though after the tacit understanding to which we came, it would be fearfully embarassing to have another based on a similar offense. I shall give the college no further trouble along that line, I assure you.

Now, was not this masculine mode of discipline better than yours ? Women seem to read their

Scriptures to the effect that without shedding of tears, there shall be no remission of mischief. We men don't take much stock in tears. And such tear-provoking talk as seems to be so efficacious with you girls would run off from our toughened consciences like water off a duck's back.

Now, my dear Helen, if I seem to hold women in general, and women's ways of doing things, in somewhat light esteem, you know I regard you as a shining exception ; and think whatever you do is perfect ; and know you must have looked perfectly lovely even in those absurd and wasted tears. Faithfully your friend,

Clakence Mansfield.

Bbadford College, April 8, 1903.

My dear Mother, — That is just like you, mother, " to look with more favor on my friendship for Helen than on my passion for Kate," or the " college widow," as you hatefully insist on calling her. You are a woman, and you can't see things as I do. Why, Kate just adores me ; idolizes me ; says that in all the history of the college there never was a fellow quite like me. Now, that is the sort of a girl for me. She makes me feel satisfied with myself. And she is pretty and fascinating.

As for Helen, what do you think she had the impertinence to write to me ? I had written her a nice letter, in which, to be sure, I made one or two slighting and patronizing references to women in general and petticoat government for colleges in particular, and this is what I got : —

"You HORRID, CONCEITED THING, No, thank