Tales of Bowdoin; some gathered fragments and fancies of undergraduate life in the past and present told by Bowdoin men

Front matter

(lass '■^-^c S^aO Hook /// ^

PKESENTEn BY

Tales of B^wdoin

Contents

PAGE

Chums at Bowpoin i

Edward A. Rand, '57

Introduction

In later years, the improved laboratory facilities and increasing use of the library ; the introduction of the elective system, and the advent of athletics; have given the students a free life of their own. Hence the sphere of artificial freedom which they formerly carved out for themselves, and which all save the genial Woods so deeply deplored, is no longer an educational and spiritual necessity to them. The students to-day are as free as they ever were ; but it is a freedom in the life of the college, rather than against it. Resistance is as necessary to the development of character, as friction to the motion of a railway train;

but the student now finds his resistance in the generous rivalry of fraternities; in the difficulties of self-chosen and congenial studies ; and the prowess of athletic teams from other institutions.

Faculty and students now sing "Phi Chi" together, with a common reverence for the boyhood of the college, and a common consciousness that, for the most part, childish things are put away. To be sure, the faculty still occasionally is obliged to appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober ; from passing student caprice to the permanent student aims and ideals. Yet, even in the rare cases where serious discipline is necessary, the student's class-mates or fraternity friends are consulted ; and almost invariably their honest judgment either modifies the faculty action, or else acquiesces in the faculty decision. Students have become more mature and manly as a greater sphere of freedom has been placed within their reach; and the professors, instead of exercising lordship over their private affairs, are rather, as St. Paul says, '"helpers of their joy."

These stories happily bnid together the old Hfe and the new by the common bonds of youthful enthusiasm, hearty good fellowship, and true academic freedom, running through them all.

As the graduates of former years here refresh their memory of what the college did for them, I am sure they will offer anew the tribute of Henley's "Matri Dilectissimae :"

"The stars shine as of old. The unchanging Eiver, Bent on his errand of immortal law, Works his appointed "way To the immemorial sea.

And the brave truth comes overwhelmingly home :— That she in us yet works and shines, Lives and fulfils herself, Unending as the river and the stars.

"Dearest, live on * In such an immortality

As we, thy sons.

Born of thy body and nursed At those wild, faithfvil breasts.

Can give— of generous thoughts.

And honorable words, and deeds That make men half in love with fate ! Live on, O brave and true, In us, thy children."

TALES or BOWDOIN

Edward A. Rand, '57

Chapte;r I. — In Coi.i.ii;ge;

WHAT a marvel was that night! It was a February evening when Goodwin Smith, at the close of a winter's school, reached the college yard again. The snow was deep. One dead mass of white was before him. Down upon it, the moon that seemed to be more than at the full, poured a flood of silver. A "dead mass," did I say? Where the moonlight fell, it kindled death into life. Upon that silvery whiteness, all the trees had left the impress of their forms as if in a wonderful rivalry of effort to get the most distinct shadow possible. Not a twig but left its black print upon the snow. Not a breath of wind stirred the trees to confuse the fine tracery of these shadows. Overhead, the stars had swung out their torches for their custom.ary procession, though not so vivid as on moonless nights.

"There is Orion !" said Goodwin. Yes, the hunter was out with his dogs, while timid Lepus was trying to shrink away in the vivid moonlight. One almost expected to hear a blast from the hunter's horn, and would Sirius bark in faithful response, and Procyon bay in the distance? "There is Regulus !" said Goodwin. This brilliant gem that for centuries had been upon the handle of Leo's silver sickle, was still faithfully ornamenting it. Not far away, the white bees that Pliny watched, were clustered in Praesepe, refusing to let go their ancient hold upon the ancient hive.

A I

TAI,5;S OF BOWDOIN

Below this wonderful beauty, rose out of the snow in prosaic stififness the old college buildings, Massachusetts Hall, Winthrop Hall, Maine Hall, Appleton Hall, so many in their very name declaring that they were of a beloved Massachusetts origin and so closely akin to Harvard. In form, they were sugar-boxes, but whether their contents were saccharine, time alone could show.

}jox succeeded box, structures that were monotonous masses of length, breadth and height, but what a breaking of the stiff, prosy line there was in the upward climbing roof, the upspringing, soaring towers of the new King Chapel, that noble expression of Christian aspiration, that strong symbol of a faith that has foundations.

"I must go there and stand on the Chapel steos !" thought Goodwin.

The slender, beshawled figure tugged along a big, old-fashioned carpet bag that would bump against his slender legs. He puffed by the motionless black shadows on the white snow, each seeming to say, "Look this way !" No, he wanted to see something else. He stood on the Chapel steps and looked up.

Orion Avas still out in the silent, silver chase. Leo curved his gemmed sickle, and around the hive in Cancer clustered the white-winged bees. Between those starrv heights and the snow, was the flow of glorious moonlight. The soul of the student was thrilled. He shivered in the cold but he could not leave the spot. He did not forget that behind him was the Chapel of granite. He had never seen such a structure before his student life at Bowdoin. He had lately read Ruskin's ''Seven Lamps of Architecture," and was never tired of an attempt to interpret the symbolism of this Chapel of stone, whose towers pierced the infinite blue and whose foundations went down to the Immutable.

CHUMS AT BOWDOIlSr

Some of the windows were pieces of brilliant shading. He had been accustomed to the small squares of colorless glass m the old New England meeting houses, and their only duty was to stand as receivers and let the glare of the sunshine through. These panes of rich staining, to his sensitive imagination, not only received but flamed into scrolls of fiery prophecy, or poetry, and they always had a message. While not remarkable as pieces of art-work, they marked him. His friend Paiseley Gore, the Sophomore, found him one day in the college library facing a window of warm, rich color, and he was saying over a bit of Keats' "Eve of St. Agnes :''

"And diainonded with panes of quaint device,

Innumerable of staius and splendid dyes,

As on the tiger-motli's deep damasked wings."

"You little booby!" said Paiseley the practical. "They won't bring you bread."

Goodwin tried to say these lines that night out on the Chapel steps, his teeth chattering away, but the "t-t-tigermoths" tripped him up.

Some one passed him, and a second student came up to the first and called out, "vSay, Tom, have you seen Goodwin Smith? He expected to arrive about this time and I have been hunting him up, this hour."

The big carpet bag on the Chapel steps stirred quickly and the Freshman followed it. "Here I am, Paiseley !"

"There, there! So you be! Goody^ how are ye?"

The next moment, Goodwin felt gratefully the folds of an immense shawl going about him. In those days, shawls were included in men's furnishing goods. Every student wore a shawl, generally of a light blue or grav shade. The effect was peculiar when they flocked after prayers out of the Chapel, their shawls fluttering in the wind. Had the

TAI,15S 01? BOWDOIN

shawls been red, it would have seemed as if a lot of flamingoes with flapping wings had been let loose into the college yard. If Paiseley's shawl had been red that night, it could not have been warmer.

"Let me take that bag ! There ! Let me have it — mind ! I'm so glad to see you !" Big Paiseley gave him a bear hug. "I've been out twenty times looking for you."

"I — am ever so glad to see you. I — just wanted to get the eftect on those steps — effect of the moonlight — "

"Oh, fiddlesticks ! Sentiment ! You'll die of it. It will freeze you. Now you come to my room."

They 'sat awhile before the open fire in one of those hospitable Franklin stoves of a previous generation.

"I'll just thaw you out first, young man. I got your letters all right. You liked your school.''

"Oh, yes."

"And the place where you boarded?"

"The Fellows', Deacon John Fellows? Oh, yes. They were very kind to me, as to you when there last winter."

Paiseley wanted to ask about the deacon's daughter, Mattie. His heart — this was the heart of Paiseley, not the deacon — was a heart that was a locket carrying the image of the deacon's daughter, a beautiful girl. He never had confessed it to Goodwin. It was a locket that never had seen the daylight. He did want to say one word about the girl.

He hesitated. He began. He stammered as if in the cold he also stood on the Chapel steps. "Did M — M — Mattie — " He stopped.

He began again and as he began, a warm, guilty blush overspread his features.

"Did M — Mattie go to — to— school ?"

His ears were also burning. The locket was now open before the returned schoolmaster and Paiseley knew it.

"Oh, yes !" said Goodwin, and he too stammered. "And she was a g-g-good scholar. I — I had a kind of f-fancy she might like — ker — you !"

Goodwin was now blushing. The two guilty men lifted their eyes and for a moment faced one another.

"What a botch I've made of it!" thought Goodwin. "Paiseley loves that girl. How red he is!"

"He is dead in love with that girl," thought Paiseley, eying the Freshman's heat. "Well, I won't interfere."

Paiseley was glad to rise, glad to drop the whole tribe of "Fellerses," as people in that town called them, and he said to Goodwin, "Now we will have a change. First, I'll lock up."

He went to the door and carefully sprung the lock. Then he drew a big screen before the door. Thin indeed was the screen, but it looked thick as the Chinese wall sketched, upon it, and the world seemed far away as the twentieth century from Old Cathay. He went to the windows, and let the heavy folds of the red curtains cover the old-fashioned panes. He went to the wood-closet. Ah, what old time treasures were in it !

"Goodwin," called out Paiseley, "I have a splendid bed of red oak coals already there, and now will you have some rock maple — sound to the core and heavy — or birch covered with Californy gold?"

"It's a cold night. Bring out both kinds."

"There," said Paiseley, "I like to see it burn."

"Yes, the rock maple has white wings of flame and the yellow birch wings of old gold, say a little tawny.'"

"Sentiment!"

TAL^S OF BOWDOIN

"And it talks, an open wood fire does. The maple purrs softly like a cat, and the red oak sobs and weeps like Niobe."

"Sentiment agin! You mean 'tis wet and it sizzles. Now we'll have something practical. Have vou been to supper ?"

"N-no. I've got some c-c-crackers." Goodwin was one who sometimes for economy's sake "boarded himself." A cracker looked more cheerful than a landlady's bill, or a club demand.

"Young man, if you say crackers again, I'll crack you. See here ! A little legerdemain ! What will you have, chicken for two ? That means two chickens. Presto !"

He lifted a table cloth from a tin kitchen before the fire.

"There, I got my landlady, to fix these for me, tender and sweet, you know, and I've been trying to keep them warm — just roasted — and I thought you never would come — "

"Paiseley, the Magnificent, but — Paiseley, ! Did you abstract these from a Bunganock roost?"

"No, sir ! We call that stealing at home, and it ought to be called stealing in college. I believe in one code of obligations for home and college, one code for man and woman, one code for Sophomores and Freshmen, a.A so we will waive all class distinctions and eat together. And another thing, young man, I want you to stay in Gomorrah to-night and be my guest."

"Oh, I must go to my room. You know my fire is built, as you kindly said 3'-ou would build it."

"I — I — know I did, and I went round to Sodom and looked into your room and it did look so cold — " ■ He might have added "so poor and bare and homesick." Goodwin was poor, and he had not reached the level of Montaigne's philosophy so as to appreciate any advantage from indigence. Life with him was Huxley's "struggle for existence." It was evident in the scant furnishings of that room. Jn comparison, how full of luxurious comfort was Paiseley's room in the other end of the collep-e, Gomorrah. Paiseley was the son of a wealthy farmer and his furniture had cost enough to equip half a dozen rooms like Goodwin's. Besides this, P'reshman housekeeping is an experiment. It never can ecjual the ease and comfort of the Sophomore's furnishings that show a stage of completeness always accompanying prolonged good housekeeping.

But Paiseley was speaking again and in reply to Goodwin's plea that he had no Livy with him and must go to his room to study that classic and the time of recitation would be that barbarism, the hour before breakfast.

"See here, young man ! Thoughtful as ever, I brought your Livy over here. So you can get your lesson here. Then in the morning, an agreeable surprise will be furnished Uncle Tommy. '^•' There will be a recitation from his promising pupil, Goodwm Smith — "

"Nonsense!"

"No interrupting rem.aiks, young man ! All out of place here! Let me smother that tongue with more chicken. There ! Now you keep quiet and be comfortable. You will have a good night's rest and be up in time for prayers before recitation. Old Dif will wake us."

"You have him now?"

"Yes, or he has me. He came in, this morning. He built my fire and bowed his stovepipe hat to it as if worshiping some Persian divinity. I was awake and saw him. Thinking I was asleep, he came to wake me up, and tapped

*The beloved Prof. Thos. C. Upham.

t Diogenes, the nick-name of Curtis, the gray haired hermit who served the students.

on my bedpost with a bunch of keys and g^ot off a lot of doggerel about a command from Neptune and his mermaids to wake me up. I yawned and said I would throw my boots at his stovepipe if he did not leave, which he did. Now see how well everything will turn out if you stay here."

It was so good to be taken care of, to be warm, to have a hearty supper, to go to rest in so luxurious a bed as Paiseley's. Goodwin could see in the snug bedroom where the oak coals hung over the furniture the drapery of their warm, crimson glow. He heard the wind mildly purr and mew like a cat anxious to get in, and the noise drowsily diverte-d him and coaxed him down, down, down Slumber's stairs into the chambers of forgetfulness. After a while, the crimson drapery vanished from the furniture. The hot coals sobered to ashes and went out.

In the yard, though, the light went on. The white moon showered its sparkling pearls on the white snow. Orion kept up the chase after Lepus all the while, and Praesepe's bees hung poised and motionless on their white wings. The winter night was so glorious in the old college yard. It was such a silent glory unless interrupted bv the vigorous singing " 'Tis the way we have at Old Bowdoin" by a party of Sophomores from a secret society meeting, or the lackadaisical music of "Annie Laurie" from an old time Senior just going into society and at an early hour strolling home alone from a church sociable.

Chapter II. — Out ot College

The cloud burst at last. As a threat it had been lying upon the horizon of American life for long years. It might be only a threat but it was not a thin mist today, to be blown away tomorrow ; it lived on. It was not always of the same size. It might alarmingly tower one year and then would subside, but it disappeared never. "The irrepressible conflict" was coming nearer. In i860, the cloud mounted the sky again, black with threat. "War between the North and the South is coming," said the watcher of the heavens. The cloud darkened all the sky at last, and the red bolts of war tore down through its folds and struck in every direction. Few were the homes North and South that in some way did not feel the jar of the temnest. In many households it was more than a jar. It was a shattering of the family life. Bowdoin's sons with heroic manliness went to stand by the colors of Union and Freedom, imperiled in the fight. How little did some I used to see in the old happy college paths, imagine that there would ever be opened a path to a Memorial Hall and their consecration would be inscribed on any bronze tablets there!

Among my classmates, did Edward Thurston Chapman in the quiet of his honorable student-seclusion hear the thud of that distant gunboat explosion on the James River, fatal as if sullen Stromboli had suddenly lifted its ashy furnace-door? Could John Barrett Hubbard, so manly and undaunted, have possibly caught the flash of those roaring guns at Port Hudson before which his consecration and courage would be swept away like the harvest straw before the October gust? And there was "Bob" Spearing from New Orleans. Doubtless he followed his conscience and he stood in the strife on the side of the South. When he saw the sun of college winter days crimson the morning snow, did he once think that his young blood would redden the snov/s of Fredericksburg? I turn the page here and close the chapter of personal reminiscence.

It was the summer of 1863. Gettysburg was not far away, but nobody saw the tragedy. Least of all, did the

TAI^IvS OF BOWDOTN

anticipation of it come to the farmers who looked complacently at the corn fields of that town that would soon be torn by War's reckless plow driven in every direction. People only knew there were movements of armies but those that listened in Pennsylvania caught not as yet the sound of a hostile footfall.

It was that summer of 1863 that an officer in our army was going along a street of one of our large cities. It was a chilling morning and his rank was concealed by his army cape. He was not a person of graceful carriage, but he had a stout, sturdy build and a resolute air that commanded respect. This was apart from his uniform that always compels attention.

"What's the matter?" he said when he had passed a big brick building labeled "hospital." There was a group at a corner, looking down upon an object on the sidewalk.

"Oh, what's the matter with the man?" asked the officer.

"He's drunk," said a burly fellow whose red face suggested that he ought to know from experience.

The officer pushed aside the crowd, bowed and exclaimed, "Heavens, this is Goody ! why, you poor fellow !"

He lifted the head tenderly as if a mother had found a child, and then folding him close to his breast, stroked gently the white forehead and brushed aside the tresses of black hair from a face of classic beauty.

"He's diamk," said a shabby but wiry fellow. "Plim and me," and he nodded tov/ard the burly man, "him and me are going to take him to the station. It is the thing to do for him."

"No, you don't!" growled the officer. "Drunk! He abhorred liquor in college. He never touched it, and he hasn't touched it since. I know all about him. This is a fever-stroke, overwork or something-."

"What are you goin' to do 'bout it ?" said the burly man. "Leave him be!"

"You touch him, if you dare," said the officer.

He looked around.

"I wish I had a squad of soldiers here."

"You needn't think because you are an hosafer, you can boss us. Leave him be, I say."

The burly man held a dirty fist insultingly near the officer's face.

"Is there somebody here — " He looked around again.

"I'm not a soldier, only a woman, but I b'lieve in standin' by the flag. I'll help ye."

It was a woman. Her air was that of patriotism going to the battle-front, as if she would say, "Which one of these shall I take?"

"You just hold on to hiui," he replied, relinquishing his burden to the woman.

"Poor feller !" she murmured. "I know ye. Who'd-er thought it ? There, there, keep still !"

She tenderly hushed the sick man, who had begun to moan. "I'll be a mother to ye ! There, there ! Hush-sh-sh I Make b'lieve ye're down in dear old Maine among friends."

The two men had laid hands upon the officer. He was getting ready for a grapple that would tax his powers. The sight of Goodwin Smith had awakened out of sleep old college memories. He saw the ropes and the rings suspended in the primitive gymnasium amid the old murmuring pines where he could outswing and outjump every other student. He thought of the "hold ins" when in the Sophomore arch he had tossed back every heavy Freshman

II Tal^s Of Bowdoin

that had dared assault it. The thrill of the old muscular excitement swept through him. He laid aside his cape.

"You needn't think you can draft us for the war !" said one of the objectors.

"The war has no place for imps like you !" said the officer, and gripping each brute by the collar he led them both to the curbstone, and flung them as if carrion out into the street. They could only mutter and stare at him in astonishment. Then he went back, took up Goodwin Smith and beckoning to the woman, went toward the hospital steps.

"You belong in here?" he said to the woman, noticing sonie peculiarity of dress.

She nodded her head.

Together, they went up the steps.

"You don't know me," she said. "You came from Brunswick and taught school at Crawford Centre down in Maine, and Goodwin Smith taught after you, and you boarded at Deacon Fellerses'. You forgotten Mattie?"

Forgotten! Her face had been glowing like a sweet evening ?tar among his remembrances, but evening stars are not accessible. He had never married, but he had hoped that Goodwin and Aiattie would be sensible enough to take that step. Out of the seed of separation, marriages do not grow. The two had cherished an interest in each other at one time, but they had not met for years, and no one could say whether under memory's gray ashes there might be any spark of mutual interest alive.

Paiseley Gore did not tell the woman whether he remembered or had forgotten Mattie, but as they entered the superintendent's office, he said, "See here ! You are not 'Ann' ? Bless me !"

The calling of her name pleased her.

"I am Ann Stevens, the hired woman at the Fellerses' !"

But the superintendent was waitinp^ for a communication from Capt. Paiseley Gore, having- rung a bell for "'bearers" as soon as he had caught sight of the officer and the man in his arms.

Capt. Gore bowed. "This man, sir, I want you to look after. He's one of God's great princes, an old collcp-e chum. Take the best care of him and I'll foot the bill."

"Oh, that will be all right."

"But I want extra care of him. He has been using himself up, studying for the m.inistry, working in the slums, teaching to pay his way — an old trick of a college student — and he has broken down. I happened to be on a furlough and was g'oing through the city and found him. My furlough is up tomorrow and I must get back to my regiment. You see Lee's army has broken loose and I must get to our army, but I will write you. H anything should happen to me — I have remembered him in my will. Don't forget that he is one of God's great heroes though a little fellow. I knew him in college, and a fellow that knows another fellow in college, feels tender — "

"I won't forget," said the superintendent, smiling. "I've been there."

"You see, he wanted to be a soldier and he couldn't pass the examination, but really he is a great man. God, when He measures big souls, doesn't go by feet and inches."

"You're right," said the superintendent.

A few minutes later, Ann Stevens was alone in her room. She went to the looking glass, a way she had when she wanted to tell a secret and leave it in a safe place. "Now, Ann !" she gxclaimed, contemplating a rather homely but very sensible face, homeliness and good sense often being wedded in this life. She called again, "See here!" The Ann in the looking glass nodded to the Ann before it, as if

TAI^I^S OP BOWDOIN

to say, "Go ahead. You can trust me." "I want to tell you what is goin' on. The superintendent says I may git the nuss for the patient. Who's a better one than the gal in Maine I worked for and that I have followed to this place because she wanted to do some good for her country, hoping they would put soldiers here ? That's all ! Don't tell ! We'll see how it comes out."

In a little while there was a woman standing over a patient's bed in a quiet room, a woman in the garb of a nurse. She bent lov/ her sweet face, out of which shone the hope and courage of youth.

"Ann says I knoAv him," murmured Mattie, and then her eyes grew bigger and bigger, as if some fuller wave of light, of discovery, of resolution, were sweeping into her soul. She said nothing. She made no outcry, though here was one who as the teacher of the little village school, had made a change in her life. He had left an emptiness in her soul, a hunger that had never yet been satisfied. So hungry, and he was in this very room ! He was the patient that she, as the hospital nurse, m.ust tend ! Hark, he was saying something! "I hear the old pines talking." He opened wide his eyes. "They're talking. Once at Brunswick, when I went into the old cemetery back of the college, I thought I caught the sound, the roar of the sea. It was all around me. No, it was only the wind talking up in the tops of the pines. lyovely 1"

"Yes, yes, it's lovely," said the nurse. "Now I will try to make a noise like that and you go to sleep. I want you to be very quiet."

He smiled and closed his eyes. That wandering mind, though, was not at rest yet.

He spoke again: "Say, are you my sister?"

"I must humor him," she said, and repHed, "Yes, yes! Now I want you to go to sleep."

"Are you my wife?"

"He will forget this. He's out of his head," she thought, and replied, "Yes, I am your wife. Now go to sleep and I will make the wind in the pines."

That always hushed him, the thought of the sound that seemed to come up from the stretching shores of Harpswell Neck and old Bunganock, and breathing its music across miles of sandy plain and reaching" the big stretches of pinegrowth back of the colleges, started up all the harpers and players on organs in the treetops! What a soft, luxurious dream of melody in gentle June days, and in the winter storm what vigor, as if Neptune's band had just come to town and were playing back of the colleges !

One day, a convalescent was sitting on a balcony and the sweet-faced nurse v»?as beside him.

He asked, "Have you heard from Paiseley Gore yet?"

"He — I'll tell you the news some time. He went to his regiment, you know. It was Gettysburg."

"You need not tell me. He is very near me. He came to me in a dream and a beautiful smile was upon his face, and I said, 'Paiseley, what a look of life you have, so bright.' 'Yes,' he said, 'they could not hurt me.' It's a beautiful thought that death is not less but more life, and that this fuller life is about us, God caring for us in the old tender way, but caring for us too through those — you know what I mean — I was thinking of Paiseley."