Wild asses

Front matter

Class_L .'L '5 _

Book .D 92>h

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Contents

CHAPTER PACK

I. Origins..

Table Manners. 3

CHAPTER I ORIGINS Table Manners Scene: A Table in a Freshman Dining Hall Time: Late September, 1919

Five young fellows, apparently known to one another, were seated at an end of the table; there were two vacant chairs at their end. A negro waiter served soup to the five; the soup was a dark brown concoction with lumps of yellow egg in it — it looked much as rusty-piped water would look, if it had chunks of yellow egg in it. The serving was accompanied by a chorus of timely com¬ ments apropos of the substance in the bowls. Many

of the comments beginning with, “ This reminds me-”

ended in much laughter.

Before the five had consumed their delectable rations of the dark brown mixture, a fair-haired youth entered the dining room and came to the unoccupied chairs near the five friends. He was particularly youthful and imma¬ ture, a very nice-looking boy, his fastidious manner and studiedly frowsy hair indicating that perhaps he was of a delicate, poetic nature — he looked the part of a wellcultivated aesthete.

Just as the Poetic Nature sat down, the young man beside whom he found himself looked him over from the corner of his eye, smiled to his friends across the table and said, “ Have you ever heard the story about the French lady who kept a gilded palace of sin and shame near one of the American camps in France?”

The speaker was a dark-haired, older-looking chap named Riley, and there was a devilish twinkle in his eye as he propounded his inquiry.

Across the table, a ruddy-cheeked fellow, with black hair and skin the color of an Indian’s, began to laugh and consume his soup with more rapidity, as if he were anxious to finish it before the story was told. Beside him, a fair-haired man of Riley’s age, with clean-cut features and eyes which seemed to say that their owner, at some time or other had been through hell, smiled and looked toward the young innocent, the Poetic Nature, to whom the dusky servitor was just then bringing soup.

“ Shoot, Riley,” said this man, whose name was Brocker, “ let’s hear it! Pickett and Bratten haven’t heard that one yet!” He referred to the other two mem¬ bers of their company of friends.

“ Oh, heck, you fellows, have a heart!” This from the young one called Pickett.

But Riley proceeded, with a solemnity bom of long practice, and a choice of words to fit the delicate situ¬ ations of the story that indicated his having been in the recent war. With descriptive flourishes and sinking emphasis upon the most unsavory bits of the story, he told it, leaving nothing to the imagination.

The others listened, all smiling and surreptitiously watching the Poetic Nature, who was endeavoring to consume his soup, that same dark brown mixture.

When the end of the story came — and it ended with an almost unstomachable piece of realism — the Poetic Nature pushed his plate of soup slowly from him, slid back his chair, made several grimaces away from his neighbors, and left the dining hall, amid a chorus of raucous laughter and jeering comments.

“ Oh, these tender natures!” cried Brocker, clicking his knife against his glass to attract the attention of a lazylooking negro standing near.

“ How about a little service here, Anthony?” barked Riley, as he-

(But first, let’s see more closely who were and whence came these' five friends, whose rude talk so upset the Poetic Nature.)

The House of Bratten

A hundred and thirty years or so ago, a few white men crossed the mountains from Pennsylvania, and set up a trading post on a little river in southern Ohio, which trading post became rather important in the life of that region, and was known to all the Indian tribes within a radius of a hundred miles. The Indians, for obvious reasons, called the place Whiskey Switch, and it was for a time true that the chief enterprise of the little community had to do with the switching off of liquor from white men’s caches to red-skinned stomachs. With¬ in a few years, however, Ohio was admitted to the Union, and the powers that were selected a site not far from Whiskey Switch on which to build the State capitol, the result of this selection being that the popu¬ lar Indian bartering-place began to change its character toward more conventional and respectable standards, whiskey becoming a side line rather than the main sup¬ port. Eventually even the name of the post became too unsavory in sound, and without much controversy the name was changed to Dartonville, in memory of one of the first citizens of Whiskey Switch in its palmy days, who had been dead long enough to be hated by no one, and was therefore memorialisable.

After a time Dartonville began to grow up, like so many towns along that line of the western expansion, and became the center of a population whose chief works were more or less agricultural and civilized. A stage¬ coach line connected the village with its neighbors, and the river was employed for a limited amount of trans¬ portation to points north and south of Dartonville. As the years rolled on, more New England pilgrims came and settled in or near the town, trade and life in general flourished, Dartonville thrived and grew.

The Bratten name stood high in Dartonville, its stand¬ ing being the result of the efforts of two generations of Brattens, who had succeeded in making a comfortable income and a good name for the family by dealing in “ Hay and Grain ” (as the sign over the livery stable suggested). About the time of the World’s Fair in Chicago, the family was one of the most prominent in the city, from a social as well as from a business standpoint. The Brattens were well established, in the manner so well known to every one who ever had the good fortune to live for any length of time in a not over-large city.

Mrs. Bratten, however, was of the kind never satis¬ fied with existing honors or with things as they are. She longed for greater and larger fields of honor, for more worlds to conquer, and she longed with such ener¬ getic longing that her unfortunate husband worked him¬ self to death in a vain attempt to give her the means of conquering all the worlds to which she aspired. His death left her with an income ample for all reasonable needs for herself and her two children, a daughter, who was about seven years of age at the time, and a son, aged five. The children were so small that Mrs. Bratten’s insatiable ambition is to be wondered at; it is in¬ credible that any woman with two young children could be so ambitious. But she was, and in spite of it found more than sufficient time for her children, as will shortly be seen.

Her attention, aside from that directed upon her two young hopefuls, was given entirely to the business of reforming, to which cause, or causes, she gave generously of her name, time and money. In her eyes the world was all wrong and, by concession of authority from some divinity, she felt it to be her duty to rectify all the stark, staring evils which confronted her. She was her brother’s keeper, often in spite of the brother. Needless to say, she belonged, in most cases in an official capacity, to every woman’s society and club within striking distance of Dartonville, and as head of the Woman’s Christian

Temperance Union in her locality she had not a friend among the bartenders of the city. One cafe owner, who was more or less of a student of society, contemptuously described her as “ an infernal pest, a confirmed med¬ dler, trying to become famous by minding other people’s business!” Which was, in truth, an adequate description of the lady in question.

At any rate, Mrs. Bratten became a leader among women, and was in a fair way of gaining that prominence to which she so ardently aspired. Yet she found time, as most such women do, to raise her children as according to her lights they should be raised. Lois Bratten, the daughter, required less of her attention than did the little brother Charles, for Lois at an early age showed marked tendencies toward doing things aesthetic and self-sufficient, and when she had come to high-school age had very artistic leanings — in fact, she tottered per¬ ceptibly more frequently than not, according to the neighbors and friends. Most people, in strict confidence among themselves, called her “ dizzy,” and even her mother was forced to admit that “ Lois is so unlike other girls! Really eccentric almost to the point of genius.” Lois was truly an unusual girl.

Little Brother Bratten was at once the object of ridicule, pity, kind advice, loving consideration, sisterly shame and maternal pride. He also was an unusual child — unusual in the sense that he was one of those awkward individuals who have suffered so beautifully as rare specimens for study and experimentation in both psy¬ chology and physiology, it being, it seemed, a cause of pride to his mother that he had thus served the cause of two sciences. But even the most modern methods of treatment for bodily awkwardness and mental backward¬ ness were of little avail in Brother’s case, for which the chief reason lay in the fact that if the treatment pre¬ scribed did not happen to meet the taste of the young hero, he was, with mild rebukes of course, relieved of the prescription. His fond parent’s adoring attention and considerateness functioned at all times — she catered to his every whim, with the result that all the learned doctors in the world could not have helped the child. It was after the discovery of some of these counteracting home remedies that one of the most eminent of American psychologists and mental hygienists was heard to exclaim, with much feeling, “0 Mother Love! What sins are committed in thy name!” thereupon giving up the job and the prospect of a large fee, for, in the estimation of the child’s mother, he was hopelessly damned for¬ evermore.

Bratten, however, grew up in spite of these ineffectual attempts at scientific treatment and of the spoiling attentions of his mother. He graduated, in over-due course of time, from the top stage of infancy, and began to develop, chronologically at least, albeit without many indications of improvement either in mind or body. He grew and grew, and then grew some more, regardless of the fact that none of the neighbors or family friends were ever able to explain how he managed to live so long under the smothering influence and care of his mother. Naturally, they all joined in judging him to be “ a hope¬ lessly spoiled kid;” but this opinion was not wholly just. Admittedly Brother Bratten was quite unlike his playmates in every way — almost, in that one outstand¬ ing characteristic was always obvious: however awkward and stupid he appeared, his desires were invariably those of the average normal boy of his age, and his troubles arose from the fact that unlike the other boys he could not seem to organize his faculties and powers to the end of satisfying his desires. And worst of all! he blundered by failing to act terribly heartbroken by his defeats and failures. This latter characteristic was prac¬ tically unpardonable in the eyes of all, in view of the common habit of boys to act rather badly when dis¬ appointed in something or deprived of some expected or anticipated pleasure. Nevertheless, Brother appeared not to trouble himself in the least with what he missed in life, and went serenely on his blundering way. Thus do we find at a very early age a redeeming feature in the makeup of this otherwise hope-depressing lad.

Still folks called him “spoiled,” and in course of time a choice variety of uncomplimentary nicknames were attached to him, each one descriptive of some phase of the general awkwardness which was peculiar to him. All of which he survived without visible ill-effects, until one day (he was old enough to roller skate) he came home from playing with the boys in a neighboring yard and abruptly asked his mother, “ What’s a brat?” where¬ upon Mrs. Bratten, unable to answer definitely, demanded to know where he had heard such a term, and learned that her dear offspring had been called “ brat ” by no less a person than Mrs. Carr, the lady who ran the select gentlemen’s boarding house on the next comer. The fond parent was distracted and enraged; she literally “ hit the roof,” and proceeded to make such an indiscreet fuss and furor about this incident that within a few hours the entire neighborhood was solidly agreed that “ Brat ” was the best name that could be found for poor little Brother. Thenceforth he was called Brat by every one who knew him, and gradually came to take the cognomen for granted.

So as Brat Bratten he continued to exist, much to the ingrown disgust of his mother and the shame of his sister, until he went away to an exclusive school to prepare for college. Then what the home folks had been unable to determine in his sixteen years, the over-wise and observant new schoolmates quickly decided. It was left for a dubiously clever novitiate in a German class to use, after surveying Brat’s discouragingly futile efforts in various directions, the one word in the English lan¬ guage most fitting and appropriate to the unfortunate Brat. “ Blundering ” was the word, and in short order “ Blunderbrat,” having the special virtue of a Germanic sound, became young Bratten’s name. The recipient of this honor, in his blundering wisdom, docilely took on the ready-made title, and proceeded to live up to its two literal meanings with remarkable success, this being the first real success of his young life.

Throughout the time spent at that school he was known by no other name than Blunderbrat, and so truly did he seem not to mind it that eventually it became a term of endearment and friendly greeting, which carried no odium at all. Brat blundered along on his uncaring way, played football a little because he was a husky boy, swam a little, tried to do something in track and baseball, became a not very good student but a moder¬ ately well-liked member of the. school community, did or tried to do everything that he was supposed to do (according to his earlier formed habits) and evaded or tried to evade doing anything that was counter to his inclinations. He learned but little, but seemed to get ahead just the same, and came down to Cambridge in the late summer after his graduation from the school, with a pretty fair notion of what he wanted and how to get it.

He wanted to get into Harvard (chiefly because his mother had talked Harvard to him since he was a mudpie baker) and his way into Harvard led through that famous tutoring school at Harvard Square, “ The Widow’s.” With a little extra treatment and attention, the tutors pulled him through his exams, and he found himself, the Blunderbrat, a member in good standing in the oldest and most revered of American colleges. Being himself, he was not in the least surprised or elated over his success, where so many others whom he knew had failed.

Nor was his mother surprised. She accepted his progress into that great institution where 44 the Crimson in triumph flashes,” as a matter of course — there had never been a doubt in her mind but that Brother would be admitted; she had always counted upon it as a fact. So the business of reforming went on without inter¬ ruption, except for the brief pauses in which Mrs. Bratten took occasion to pilot the course of their domestic affairs.

“ Brother boy,” said she, just before the young hero departed to take up residence in Cambridge, “ you are quite a man now, so act as a man should! I know you

will, but-” and she went on to recount all the

maternal worries which sometimes occupied her mind, including the dangers from lewd and lascivious women, liquor-drinking men, and bad companions in general. “ And don’t forget Ellen,” she added, as if the mere mention of Ellen’s name were enough to clinch her argument. “ If you just remember to play fair with Ellen, who will be waiting for you, you will never do wrong!” And her son quite agreed with her.

He quite agreed with her — the vision of Ellen would surely keep him straight, if anything would, for Ellen, whose full name was Ellen Louise Carver, was by all the standards of conduct and ancestry the first young lady of Dartonville, the daughter of wealthy old Colonel Carver, one of Ohio’s most prominent Republicans (in a county of Democrats) and descendant of a long, traceable line of aristocrats, born to the blood somewhere in Cromwell’s England. Ellen was as aristocratic as she could be and still live in Dartonville. Her friends were few and well chosen, and Brat’s mother had been more than pleased with the arrangement which Mrs. Carver and she had always more or less taken for granted — namely, that Brother and Ellen would some day join hands and hearts to carry on the traditions of the two old families. To Brat this arrangement had always seemed quite all right — he accepted his election to this office in the same spirit as he accepted everything else in life, and he did what he was supposed to do in cultivating Ellen’s friend¬ ship, and cementing their relationship in many little ways.

Brat liked Ellen, and Ellen liked Brat, but there had been few thoughts of love in the mind of either. To Brat, the whole business of being sentimental was absurd and foolish, and he never doubted but that Ellen’s little sentimental sallies were more affected than real, for he thought that she would naturally feel toward the matter as he did. Ellen, however, felt differently; she liked Brat very much, and she was aristocrat enough to appreciate the responsibilities of their position and the desirability of their marrying, but she was not so sweetly simple and altogether puppetish that she failed to have the normal girl’s little sentimentalities. She often wanted Brat to act more like a lover than a paid companion — she wanted some romance in the affair, realizing the while that Brat was utterly incapable of things romantic. Yet she continued in her efforts to make him so.

“Now, Brother,” she said, when Brat came to say good-by to her upon the occasion of his leaving for Cambridge, “ you’ll write to me? You’ll answer every letter? You’ll not forget and go out on parties with your friends? You’ll be absolutely true and faithful all the time until you come back to me?” Ellen twined her arms about her big man’s ‘ shoulders, and asked these questions with an affectation of deep feeling over his impending departure from Dartonville. She knew what his answer would be.

“ Of course, Ellen,” Brat replied, impatiently, after the manner of the brusque man that he was. “ Don’t be foolish — of course I’ll remember everything, and you know I never go to parties anyway! And I’ll answer every one of your letters — I’ll write just as often and as long as you do, so don’t worry!” Brat always felt uncomfortable whenever he found himself in a situation having in it elements of amative warmth. Much as he thought of Ellen, he was impatient to be gone.

But Ellen made him promise many things, very solemnly and very self-irritatingly, before she gave him the final farewell kiss and embrace which sent him off to the train.

Yes, Ellen would keep any man straight, thought Brat to himself, en route to the railroad station. But girls were such darned crazy things — always thinking of something unnecessary — still, he supposed, Ellen would be as fine a wife as any other girl, so why worry about it. And so, being himself, he didn’t worry or even think about it, until it came time to write to her from Cam¬ bridge.

Thomas Alfred Riley

“So you’re Bratten, eh?” demanded the tall, dark¬ eyed youth who welcomed Brat to the rooms which he was to occupy for the coming year. Brat had burst in, tired from his over-night journey from Ohio, scarcely wonder¬ ing at all as to whom he would have for roommates. He knew that the suite in Persis Smith Hall was a threeman suite, but in typical Brat fashion he had not stopped to consider the possibilities in this regard. Now, accosted by this chap, who looked several years his elder — looked more like a senior, thought Brat — he was only able to answer in a laconic affirmative, staring the while at this man who apparently was to be his roommate, judging from the air of possession with which he surveyed the study with its desks and chairs and bare walls.

“So you’re Bratten?” continued Riley. “Well, I’m Tom Riley, and you and I might as well get acquainted, because we’re going to have to put up with each other for about ten months, from this moment henceforth, as it were.” He walked over and extended his hand to the newcomer, exclaiming, “ I’m damned glad to meet you, and I hope we get along 0. K.”

“ Same here,” assented Brat, taking the outstretched hand and squeezing it more than was necessary, while he looked about the room, anxious to get settled.

“ I’m all set,” Riley went on, “ moved in yesterday. So maybe I can help you get straightened around.”

“ Yes,” agreed Brat again, throwing off his coat and hat. “ My trunk will be out sometime this afternoon, and these bags are all full of junk that must be put somewhere; have we any bureaus or dressers or cupboards or anything else to put things into?”

“ Sure,” laughed Riley, “ there’s a bureau in your bed¬ room — it’ll hold about three collars and a dozen hand¬ kerchiefs if you’re careful! They don’t seem to be overgenerous with the furnishings down here, do they?”

“I should say not — from the looks of it,” returned Brat, as he started into the adjoining bedroom.

Riley stood looking at the door through which he had vanished. “ Seems like a good kid,” he said to himself; “ has prep school written all over him from hat to toes, but may not be so bad after all.”

Riley’s first impression of his roommate was really satis¬ factory. He liked young Bratten’s looks— and Riley was one of the kind which judges much by appearances and by first impressions. “ First impressions,” his old father had said to him many times, “ are the thing! If you go on your first impression, or first impulse, you’ll do the best thing every time!” And his son had come to agree with this principle. So he thought to himself, after this first meeting with his new companion, wondering about many things but instinctively taking a friendly atti¬ tude toward Brat.

Riley wondered just how different this boy would really be from himself — apparently, Bratten was from an en¬ tirely different mould, a plutocrat probably, from one of the tony prep schools — well, if so, he woqM be entirely different from Tom Riley.

For Riley had none of the background which Bratten’s very appearance and manner indicated. Riley came from good old Irish stock, of the highest order — as he often said, “All the Irish were kings, so we’re all of royal blood!” His father, however, had not had the good fortune to be able to carry on in the kingly manner, and had brought up his family on a carpenter’s wages — and carpenters, during the time in which Old Man Riley was concerned with the business of raising a family, were not the commanding financiers that post-war conditions have set them up to be. Consequently young Tom had not had all the “advantages” of education, social position and allied affairs of youthful existence. He had attended the public schools, had gone to work as a telegraph messenger before he entered high school, and had bought his own clothes and helped a little at home during the high school period. The spring of his graduation had seen the United States throwing itself into the Great War, and it had re¬ quired the most extreme measures on Old Man Riley’s part to keep his son in school until graduation, after which there was absolutely no restraining him longer, so he en¬ listed in the Ambulance Service, and after a few months of preparatory training found himself in the north of France. In the course of his two years of service he did duty in many sectors and in many kinds of work; he had had his share of the so-called horrors and pleasures of the busi¬ ness of war, and had, by the time of his discharge at the age of twenty, been directed by the heavy hand of disci¬ pline into doing everything, from emptying rank G. I. cans and peeling potatoes by the bushel, to bearing bloody stretchers and rendering first aid to less fortunate crea¬ tures, even to bartering with Parisian “ petites,” who accepted pieces of soap and cigarettes as mediums of exchange. He had gone through the best and the worst of the war and had escaped unscathed, except for a few periods of sickness following some unavoidable rendez¬ vous with gas bomb and pieces of shrapnel; he came back to the States to all appearances hale and hearty, but for many months after leaving the service his move¬ ments and his peace of mind were handicapped by spells of physical torments, the cause of which lay in his experi¬ ences in France.

Then he came to Harvard. As he put it, “ Uncle Sam is the best damned uncle any man could have!” For Uncle Sam, mindful of the condition of ill-health and unrest prevailing among his erstwhile warriors, assumed the burden of repaying, in part at least, the debt which he owed to the many disabled veterans, by giving these men an opportunity to go to school and college, and so better equip themselves for the struggle of life. Much to Old Man Riley’s profane gratitude, his son was one of the first to benefit by Uncle Sam’s offer. So he came to Harvard; but for the life of him, he could not explain exactly what he expected to gain by this. For the time being, he was satisfied with his being there, exposed to the higher educative processes for which John Harvard’s gift to New England has become famous; in due time, he felt, he would begin to learn something of value and would become sufficiently interested in some profession to want to make it his life work. For the time being, he was content to live and engage in the usual trivialities of pursuing fleeting happiness.

So he stood in the study of their rooms in Smith Hall, and waited for his just-met roommate to reappear; but Brat did not return to satisfy his curiosity until he had satisfactorily disposed of his clothing, and arranged his bedroom to suit his tastes. Appearing finally in shirt¬ sleeves and with tousled hair, he smiled broadly at the Irishman, now sitting in a small-town sheriff pose with hat over eyes and feet on desk.

“Where do you hail from, Bratten?” asked Riley, casually.

“ Ohio,” answered Brat.

“No — I mean, what school?” pursued the other; to which query Brat finally replied by giving the name of the exclusive school for boys with much wealth and lots of family which has made its small-town locality renowned throughout the East. Riley acted not at all awed by the announcement, but when Brat asked, with¬ out intentional sarcasm, “ Do you know anyone up there?” the Irishman had to cough before he could answer in the negative by saying, “No — guess not — don’t know many fellows in school the last couple of years — been in the army and sort of lost track of all my friends.”

Brat said nothing to this, and Riley fished in his pockets for a cigarette, offered one to Brat, was surprised at his refusal, and lighted one for himself. Blowing a lungful of smoke from his nose and mouth, he pro¬ ceeded to ask many questions aimed towards learning more about his roommate, but Brat was non-committal, and Riley was forced to rely upon his surmises instead of information such as Brat should have offered. At last the question “Would you like a drink of rare old cognac?” brought such a prompt refusal from Brat that Riley, feeling that he had done more than his share toward breaking the ice, decided to keep still and go his own way. Which he did — although he and Brat talked over the problems of how and where to register, pay their college bills, open accounts, buy books and attend classes, and Brat seemed not distant or uppish at all during these discussions. However, Riley spent many moments in studying his roommate, for there was much that baffled him in this young fellow, who seemed to want to be friendly, but also appeared to want to stay his distance.

Jean Louis Beauvais

Their unknown roommate, the third occupant of the suite, did not put in an appearance until the following day, when Brat and Riley returned from the College Office to find a picture of dejection gracing the top of the small desk in the study. At first sight, Riley thought he must be a large man, his head and shoulders indicating that he was strong, muscular, and well set-up; but when he slid lightly from the desk and stood on the floor, he surprised the Irishman by being much too short to fit the previous impression.