Through college on nothing a year, literally recorded from a student's story

Preface

The reader of this volume is eavesdropping on what we hope will prove to be for him an interesting and profitable story of real life. And this brief preface is designed to apprise him more fully of his privileges and status.

The informality of the following narrative will in all probability be a sufficient indication that the experiences here so frankly revealed were not in the first instance intended for any larger public, or for a public at all. Such is indeed the case. Had I at that time intimated to the very busy and matter-of-fact young man here concerned that he was to become the "hero" of a printed book, I feel sure that in spite of old acquaintance he would have looked upon me askance and have avoided my questions with suspicion. Of any such fate he had, for these times, a somewhat unusually healthy horror. I feel it my duty, therefore, to remove this seeming curse

vii viii PREFACE

which, as a result of unforeseen circumstances I have in a sort brought upon him; for it should be understood at the outset that the story is now presented with the narrator's as well as the writer's sanction.

A whole school of philosophers holds that there can be no changes in our world which are not somehow known or experienced by the human mind and soul. Man, they tell us, is the measure of all things. This problem, in deference, we must leave with them. It will be plain even to the lay mind, however, that conditions in colleges cannot change, or even exist, without affecting the lives of individual students, and as a result of this embarrassing fact, which a philosopher might have foreseen but which we did not, what began as an impersonal investigation of conditions has become this frankly personal narrative and confession.

A university publication had planned a series of articles on the opportunities offered to and the methods employed by that increasing number of students who are earning their way through college. In gathering the facts for such an investi-

PREFACE ix

gation I naturally turned to students so situated, and in particular to the young man of our story, for he was well known to me personally and had at this time nearly finished his college course with no assistance from outside. With him I had a number of most informal conferences on nearly all the phases of this problem, and he very willingly told me of his own ventures and experiences, believing that he could thus be of assistance to others who were or would later be in a position like his own; for many of his difficulties were due, as his story will show, to ignorance of conditions which he was called upon to face, and which he indicated and explained. Unknown and with no prospect of financial assistance, he had, as the result of a boyish determination, suddenly found himself upon a college campus, where, in an utterly strange world, like the man from Mars, he for some time had the sense of being an interloper in a stranger's house. He labored under yet other handicaps particularly severe, which even an American lad of foreign parentage, born in the slums, would not be called upon to face. These he never discussed but acx PREFACE

cepted so much as a matter of course that no hint of them is conveyed in his cheerful narrative. Suffice it to say that his case was extreme; it presented every possible difficulty and the odds could not have been heavier against him. Evidently, if he could succeed, the way was open to any young man of equal determination, though it should be added that his was a determination and fixity of purpose by no means common. I soon realized that in his own experience he had confronted and solved practically every problem which we were investigating, and which might confront the poor boy looking forward to a university education.

As truth is stranger than fiction and more interesting than statistics, I was convinced that his own story would be far more significant and of greater value than any articles of mine might ever hope to be, and I repeatedly urged him to write it. This his modesty refused to allow him to do. He offered no objection, however, to my making use of the material he had placed in my hands, in case it was felt that it would be of value and interest to others.

PREFACE xi

As a result of our series of friendly and informal conferences and a goodly amount of questioning, he had now given me, at one time and another, a fairly complete account of his life in college, with sudden and illuminating glimpses of the world from which he had come. Before proceeding with the original plans I prepared for my own guidance a connected account, in his own words, of his story as he had given it to me. I was more than ever convinced that this story would be a greater help and a safer guide to young men than any mere record of the difficulties to be met and the possible methods of meeting them. At my very earnest request he therefore gave his consent to allow it to be placed before the graduates of his university and it was published in instalments in the Princeton Alumni Weekly,

Its appearance there has aroused much favorable comment and discussion. Apart from the information conveyed to the young man struggling against difficulties for admission to the university world, and apart from its value as a human document, it gave so new and significant an answer to the question so frequently put: "What xii PREFACE

is a college education worth?" and "What does it cost?" that numerous requests have been received for its publication in permanent form. To these requests from many unknown friends the original narrator has now generously acceded, and the story in its present form is printed with his permission and sanction. For the informal manner of presentation, the frequent use of slang, and the generally familiar style no further explanation or excuse is therefore offered, and it is, of course, understood that the expressions employed and the opinions offered are his and not mine.

Although it may convey to the reader the impression that he is overhearing a private conversation, I did not feel free to depart from the familiar colloquial tone employed by the original narrator. As eavesdroppers are the best listeners and as stories, especially true stories of real life thus overheard, have the added savor of stolen sweets, this will, we believe, work no hardship to the public. Sensitive readers are, however, reassured that they are now invited and accredited eavesdroppers, and the present writer hopes that the story here

PREFACE

Xlll frankly and faithfully recounted will afford them the same pleasure and satisfaction which he himself experienced when in the same words and style it was first told him by his younger friend.

Christian Gauss.

Princeton, N. J., June, 1915.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. From Street Gamin to Freshman ... i

II. Learning How to be a Freshman . . 21

CHAPTER I FROM STREET GAMIN TO FRESHMAN The Finest Four Years of His Life

You'd like to know what it feels like to go through college on nothing a year from home? It will be pretty hard to make any one understand who hasn't done it, and I'll have to tell you a good many things that I don't care to make public. But if you mean, "is it a hard thing to do?" or, "Am I sorry that I did it?" I can say right off the bat: "A thousand times no." So I want to tell you at the start, and I want to make it emphatic, that if at any time you get the idea that I have had a poor time in college, you get a false impression. In this little town and on this campus I have had the finest four years of my life, and I would not trade it for anything that ever came before, or, so far as I can see, for any four years that will ever come after.

How did I ever get the notion of coming to college ? Well, that's pretty hard to say. There was a time in my life when I didn't know that such a thing as a college existed. I first learned that there were colleges from the sporting pages of the newspapers, and there were three of them that I heard about particularly, Yale and Harvard and Princeton, not because they were the best universities, necessarily, but because their athletic teams received most space in the sporting columns that came under my eye. You must remember that for the most part we selfhelpers are not the sons of alumni, and very often, in the world that we come from, there is no college man. That was my case. I was born and raised (if you can say that I was raised) in a somewhat disreputable Jersey suburb of New York, famous for its goats and slums. I came from the slums. I have just now come back from a slumming trip of the social-economics class. That trip didn't teach me anything. It was a dead loss.

A New Heaven and a New Earth

The East Side slums that we visited are not one, two, three with the slums in which I was brought up. I'd like to tell you a little about this, because one of the difficulties you men have in understanding us lies in the fact that you can't even imagine what the world looks like to us before we get here, and how different it looks to us when we leave. Four years here literally give us a new heaven and a new earth. That one change is worth all my college career cost me. And, as a matter of fact, it didn't cost me anything, because I should have had to earn my own way even if I had never come to Princeton. My education has been handed me on a gold platter.

Yes, I was arrested twice. Each "prison term" was a one-night stand. It was during a very bad winter, and for three weeks we lived literally on bread and water, and occasionally that diet had to be simplified for a day or two. The combination of freezing and starving, and general low spirits while the father is going around looking for a job, tends to make you forget the somewhat artificial distinction between meum and tuum. Why should we not be warm when others were and when down in the yards firemen, out of overflowing fire-boxes, were raking the redhot coals, and when trains went through carrying cars so full that they overflowed with what would never be used? As children we used to pick up the loose bits or follow at a discreet distance when they raked out the fires, put out the glow with snow or water, wait for it to cool, and bring home the half-burnt lumps of coke.

My older brother and I were down along the tracks, and I was trudging along with what for me was a pretty heavy bag of half-burnt coal. The railroad detective came up from behind. We were afraid of him because he had killed his man. My brother noticed him and called to me to run; and we both dropped our bags and made off. I was a little fellow and it may be that I wouldn't have beaten him. But that race was not to be to the swift. He pulled his gun on us and yelled: "Stop, or I'll shoot." I stopped. My brother ran. The second shot hit his shoe and carried off his heel. He looked back, and, seeing that I was arrested, came back to keep me company. We were marched off. There was a queer mixture of brutality and solemnity about that trip to the office of the justice of the peace. Now and then the detective helped me to make haste with his foot. He was trying to impress and frighten me, and all that I remember about that trip is kicks and "petty larceny" — words which my captor uttered very frequently and with an air of great importance. I took it that petty larceny must be some particularly expensive kind of coal.

Now, to me this arrest wasn't complete. I wasn't handcuffed. I had previously believed that this was a regular part of the ceremony, and thought I was being discriminated against because I was a little fellow. Instead, the detective made us walk ahead and he came along behind, gun in hand. The justice of the peace, who I believe gets a certain amount for each case, had us locked up for the night in an old wooden station, where we took turns in trying to sleep on a splintered wooden bench.

Oh, the other arrest wasn't much. It was merely for playing hookey. But it will help to make my point and give you my standpoint at that time if I tell you that my all-too-brief prison experiences were to me a kind of holiday and pleasant surprise. I had always been told that in prison men were fed on mouldy bread-crusts and water. You can imagine my pleasure when,, after having spent the night in a relatively warm room, they brought me in the morning a very huge-looking piece of bread and a cup of sweet coffee. Yes, "sweet coffee" was what we called coffee with sugar in it, for ours usually had none. In the afternoon after my nearly regular arrest I was out along the tracks again. These things, therefore, are a part of my background if you wish to see it as I saw it.

Furthermore, it wasn't a hardship to work; I was used to that because I have done it since I was a child. At nine I drove a butcher's cart on a route with thirty-five customers. That was hard work because I wanted to be in the back lot playing baseball, and occasionally I handed some good woman some other good woman's sausage, which didn't bring me many kind words from the boss. When I was ten I worked in a cemetery all my spare time during the spring and summer and fall. I planted flowers on the graves, two plants for five cents; and watered the little garden plots around the monuments, twelve quarts for a nickel; and cut the grass around and upon the graves, fifteen cents a grave. Why do I remember those prices? Because they were the most important thing in my world.

Now, of course this wasn't exciting for a boy and the environment wasn't cheerful. I tell it to you only that you will understand what the economists would call the state of the money market in my town when I was a boy. Cash wasn't easy.

A little later I worked on a huckster's wagon at twenty-five cents a day, and I tell you they were long days. Nothing makes a day seem so long as work that you don't like. One day the boss, a big, burly chap who was angry because business had been poor, struck me a terrific blow in the kidney and I dropped into the wagon. As we were passing a farmhouse I evidently came to and groaned in the cart, for an old farmer came out and remonstrated. The boss excused himself, laid it to my misdeeds, and drove on out of sight. Then he accused me of having played the baby act, swore some, knocked me insensible again, and left me in the road. He still owes me two days' pay. Now, you must remember that we make our money a good deal easier than that when we get to college, but we need more money than I did then. But I merely want to let you know why a dollar looks as big as your head to us before we get here.

But how did I get the notion of coming to college? Well, I'm coming to that. You must let me tell my story in my own way. I suppose as a little chap I went to school because it was pleasanter at school than it was to stay around in my neighborhood, and my mother was off working most of the time. I liked it at school; it was a kind of holiday and I hated the idea of leaving it.

So I went on into the high school after a stormy family council in which I agreed to pay my expenses and my board at home. Incidentally, I couldn't quite swing that proposition, and there were arrearages before I got through. That's why I came down to college with so little ready cash. In the high school I began to hear and think more about colleges, though without any intention of ever going there. I imagined that every man in college was a big athlete. I had a notion they were all great, strong fellows, all over six feet tall, because the only pictures of college men I had seen were pictures of athletes. Then as I went along in the school I found that one or two of the teachers there were college men; one of them was a Princeton man. I happened to be making a good record and he began to talk college to me. That was the beginning. The idea grew on me, and it had the fascination of something far off. About the same time somebody told me about an Indian who had gone through Princeton on seventy-five dollars a year and a blanket given him by the government. That didn't sound so bad. By the way, did you ever hear about that redskin? He sure was a good Indian. I looked him up after I got here, for I had come to look upon him as a kindred io COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR

spirit, but discovered that, like other good Indians, he was a myth. The good as well as the evil that men do seems to live after them, even if they never did it at all, and he was partly responsible for my coming here just the same. I finally got the "hot dope" as to what I would really be up against from a young Princeton graduate, a very fine fellow. I made up my mind I was going to do what the Indian had done. So much for that for the present.

I spoke of how large the dollar looks to us when we first come to college. The university doesn't understand that and it can't be expected that it should. No university does. You question that? Well, let me try to make my point. And at the same time I shall be getting into my story.

When I came to Princeton in the fall I came with three dollars in my pocket. To me that was a lot of money, because it was all I had. That is, three dollars over my railroad fare here and back; and let me call to your attention also that this ride to Princeton, even if it was only fifty miles, was to me what a trip to California would be to some of the other fellows. It was

FROM GAMIN TO FRESHMAN n

the longest ride I had ever taken, because I had only been in a train twice before, both times for very short rides, I mean five or ten miles; and a ride on the New York elevated was to me an excursion. That trip to Princeton was an experience. I had heard about the beautiful scenery that you see from the trains. I thought this must be some of it and enjoyed it immensely. I thought the strip of woods that we came through as we drew near Princeton on that September day was the most beautiful scenery I had ever seen, and Princeton itself and the buildings were like a city in a dream. I came down with another chap who was taking his preliminary examinations, and was told that we could get a " cheap' ' room on Chambers Street with a Mrs. X. We made for Chambers Street. I was business manager of our partnership and I asked about the rooms. She showed us a very small room with one bed for both of us, and she wanted three dollars for the two nights. You think that's cheap? It wasn't cheap for me. When I was on the huckster's wagon room-rent didn't cost me anything, because I didn't have any room.

I slept in a hay-loft. They used to allow me fifteen cents for supper and breakfast. So I shook the dust of Chambers Street from my feet. I honestly thought the woman was trying to "do" me.

A Lodging for the Night

The first night after our examinations the other fellow and myself bought a couple of newspapers and walked, or rather stumbled, along the railroad tracks to that little six-by-eight waitingroom where the railroad crosses the turnpike at Penn's Neck. It was pitch-dark and was raining hard. Of course I had my best clothes on and so took of! my coat because I didn't want to get it wrinkled, spread out the papers, and lay down on the bench in the Penn's Neck station and tried to sleep. But one of the window-panes was broken and the rain came driving in. I took a newspaper and tried to shut out the storm, but it was dark, and we had no matches, and couldn't make it stay. We stuffed loose paper into the broken pane, but it got soft and melted and the rain came splashing in on us all night long. Still it would have been all right, but every train that came in from the junction stopped in front of the station because they saw us lying on the benches and thought we were prospective passengers. So if my rest was broken it wasn't only because the bench was hard. I was used to that.

Now, the next day I was busy morning and afternoon, and the other fellow had some hours off, so I sent him out scouting, and the second night (it was still raining) we walked down what I have since learned to be Alexander Street, and down there in the Basin somewhere we found a ramshackle deserted house, spread our papers on the floor, and tried to sleep. A man with a lantern approached, and we thought we would either be arrested or have to fight for it. But the danger passed and "Moscow's walls were safe again."

We finished our exams the next morning and I decided to celebrate. We bought two loaves of bread and a pound of bologna sausage, went over behind the cemetery on Witherspoon Street, and had a grand feast.

i 4 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR

Apparent Failure

Things were going fine, but when the results of the examinations came out my name, unlike Abou Ben Adhem's, didn't head the list of the admitted candidates posted in the west end of McCosh. It was not on the list at all, and I thought it was all up. But I saw some notice about an entrance committee and asked what it meant. I realized that I had some chance to make a bicker and I'll tell you I was dead in earnest about getting into Princeton. So I decided I'd go up and talk to the profs. I went over to where the committee on examinations was sitting. There was a big crowd of disappointed candidates like myself waiting, and I noticed that they were calling them up one by one. You can't imagine what "a professor" meant to me. In those days to me he was not only a rare bird, he was a kind of demigod. In all my life I had only seen one college professor on the hoof. That one came to our high school to give an elocution recital when I was a junior.

The Council of the Gods

Well, here I was in a room full of Princeton professors! They were sitting around a table and it looked to me like the council of the gods on Mount Olympus.

Now, the man who knows the life of the streets can tell more about human psychology than the other fellows. Any newsboy in New York can size up a man far better than the average senior in college. He knows what the chances are of getting a nickel from this fellow or that fellow before he asks, and if he is thrown down it isn't because he doesn't often expect to be thrown down, but because he is willing to take the long chance.

Now, the students who had flunked their examinations were going up in order, the "A's " first. I scanned the faces as each one came out, and I could tell whether he had been turned down cold or whether he had been given some hope, and it was plain to me that only a few of those fellows then coming out were being admitted on trial. So I thought I had a poor chance. But things were moving very slowly. After a couple of hours they were only up to the "E's," and I saw that at that rate my turn at the end of the alphabet wouldn't come up till the next day.

I began to be afraid I'd have to buy another bologna and stay another night. It seems funny to you? That's my point exactly; the university can't understand that it is a pretty serious business to the fellow who comes with a couple of dollars. I was desperate, and decided that I had to put my case very soon. They were calling for E's. I went up and said my name didn't begin with "E," but I told them I didn't have money enough to stay over in Princeton another night and asked them if they wouldn't consider my case then. They were very nice about that and said they would. So I began to give them the straight dope. I couldn't understand why I had failed because I had been valedictorian of my class. How should I know that the school was not up to the standard? In competing with fellows from other high schools, I subsequently learned that it was not, but, even so, I won't blame it all on the school.

Now, I have tried to let you know that my coming to Princeton to pass the examinations was to me no small matter. I had worked hard to get down here, had been soaking wet for two days, hadn't had much sleep, and I was a nervous wreck, but didn't know it, because I didn't know what that was. Where I came from nobody knew that he was a nervous wreck. If that's what he was, he thought he had something else.

The committee explained to me that I hadn't passed a sufficient number of examinations to be admitted, even on probation. They were sorry. Now, can you imagine what it would have been like for me to have to go back to my home and say that I couldn't get in? So I put my case before them just as plainly as I could. I put it this way: Gentlemen, why don't you give me a chance? If I don't make good by Thanksgiving, it won't hurt the university; if I do make good, it will help me.

One of the professors spoke up. I don't know who he was, but he was a fine chap. " I am very sorry, Mr. X, that we can't make any excepig COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR

tions. We ourselves are governed by certain definite rules from which we cannot deviate. However, we shall take up your case at a special meeting of the committee and let you know by telegraph." To me it was a very nice way of saying "So long." But I took the train and went home, and, thinking it was all up, I answered thirty "ads" in the New York Herald that night and the next morning, "ads" for jobs of all kinds.

The Telegram "Collect"

A couple of days later I got a telegram collect. It ran: "Entrance committee have decided to admit you on trial. Report Monday." I still have that telegram, and know it came collect, because I had to borrow forty-five cents to pay for it.

Well, say ! You don't know what that meant to me. You could have knocked me down with a feather ! So I was in ! I packed my hand-bag. It was a black cardboard hand-bag, three years old, originally costing ninety-eight cents. At that time it was split at the edges and was held together by a ten-cent book-strap. I threw into it a shirt, a suit of underwear, a comb, a pair of socks, a looking-glass, and shaving apparatus. I had only the one suit, which I was then wearing. My new two-dollar-and-fif ty-cent trunk was to follow me down with the rest of my effects, and fittings for my room as soon as I had established an address.

I thought a great university, like any other institution, opened for business at eight o'clock, so I took the six-o'clock train from the Penn Station, and arrived in Princeton at seven forty-five. I waited till eight o'clock and walked over to the university offices and tried the door. It was locked. I sat down on a bench under the trees at the west end of Nassau Hall. I must have been a queer sight on the front campus with my strapped cardboard grip, my curled trousers and colored cap. College had opened on the previous Thursday and all freshmen were now in regular freshman garb. Any one else would have known that it was anathema for a freshman to wear cuffed trousers and a colored cap, but about such college taboos I, of course, knew nothing.