Gilbert W. Gabriel

“ It was the first exercise of any sort, outside of the required freshman gymnasium course, which he had had in college. At first he would not talk at all; would just walk beside me through the city's fringes into the half-suburban roads, his eyes drinking in the green vistas as if they were astounding novelties, his breath coming fast with exertion, his cheeks glowing with new color. Gradually I urged him into talking—and, like all beginners, he talked of himself entirely. It was good for him. The more he spoke of himself, the more highly he thought of himself. He needed pride. ”

“ The old farmer listened, with growing wonder. He could only shake his head and lick his toothless gums with his long tongue and say, “Tut, tut, what a queer affair! Tut, tut, tut!”
Then he scratched himself very long and hard, and broke into a red-faced chuckling. It was plain to see he had just had a new, sly thought!
“I’ve never seen a shell,” said he, “because I’ve never seen the sea. The sea is so far away from here ... it doesn’t touch our little valley at all. The thunder of its waves never comes to our ears, and the sting of its spray never flicks us. ”

“ Then I remembered that it was Friday night—and I knew that this was a synagogue—a temple of the Jewish Faith.
At first realization, I moved a little away from it, down the street. A synagogue—and all that it brought to my mind was the memory of my parents. In former years they had been wont to take me with them when they went on Friday nights. And those had been dull, wearisome nights for me—but I had spent them at my parent's side. So that now, in the shadow of God's house, my loneliness for them came back to me in wild deluge, breaking the dam of reserve and doubts and petty limitations. ”

“ The old villain had scarcely time to fall to his knees when the avenging blind men, groping in the dark, clutched him, plucked at his clothes, at his hair, at his eyes. Peterkin alone could save him from their vengeance. He screamed aloud, as he tore them from their prey.
“He has come to give you back your eyes! From now on you will see! Aye, see everything—the sunlight and the summer night sky, the fields, the smiles upon your little children’s faces. Oh, do not touch him lest he keep not to his promise!”
Therewith the blind folk fell back, waiting in a hushed and nervous circle. ”

“ She had declared I must either come along to the hotel or else I would not be allowed to enter college. In the face of such an alternative I had yielded quickly. But there had already begun between my aunt and me a chasm that grew daily wider, deeper, more hopelessly incapable of bridging. When one has been away for a year, one returns to find grim truths. I had met other people, seen other lives and other souls since I had been in boarding school: I was not clouded now by my blood relationship to Mrs. Haberman or by day after day of close but unintimate companionship. ”

“ The Pumperkin, the adventure with the whale, the meeting with the old villain, the flight from the dungeon, the rescue of each of the four joyless valleys, ... all were depicted there. Everyone wondered, to be sure, how such a handsome work of art could have been made so hastily—but ah, they did not know that, in her long hours of lonely waiting, the little Princess Clem had nearly ruined her dainty fingers with the needle and threads of the loom. For happiness is always born of toiling; and love grows greater for a little patient hardship. ”

“ And I was a regularly enrolled student at the university.
I told my aunt of it at lunch, as if it were a casual thing—and she treated it as such, too. If I had had any doubts of her lack of genuine interest in me, I knew it now for certain. It was just a matter of course to her—this entrance into college—and to me, in turn, it meant so much: a new work, a new land, a life entirely new and shot through with hopes. ”

“ I always leave him fast upon his vine. Whee, whiz!”
But then there came a night when myriad snowflakes were falling over the patch. It was more than the mischievous wind could stand. He must get in among those flakes! He must make them jig and dart and dive in crooked merriment!
He rushed down upon them, charging with a trumpet’s roar. And in his wild path he rolled the clumsy pumpkins to this side and that, until their rumble fairly shook the earth.
Poor Peterkin was dozing at his tiny stove, just then—for it was very chilly and shivery inside his Pumperkin house. Whee! whistled the wind. ”

“ Had I had the pride, the devotion to my religion which is a Jewish heritage, those days would have meant less. Less in sorrow and bewilderment, that is, and infinitely more in the building up of my character.
There are those who go stolidly, brusquely through life without ever needing the comfort of religion. And there are those, like me, who lack the self-reliance ... who cannot be content with a confessed agnosticism, but who must take faith and strength from those rites and codes which satisfy their sense of the mystically sublime. ”

“ He went on slowly, until he came to the fearful experience he had had, in his flying shell, with the toothless old farmer.
The King could stand it no longer. He banged his scepter down so hard as to crack every butter-plate on the table. Up to his feet he sprang, his eyes flashing lightning.
“Yes,” he rumbled, “yes, yes, yes! I might have guessed it! It was the arch enemy of our Four Kingdoms that you brought into our midst. Yes, yes, the Farmer Without Teeth! It is told in all our histories that he will work us harm. Every witch in the land has warned me to beware of him! ”

“ Another whale? Peterkin rushed up his ladder, and ... oh, it was land!
Yes, directly ahead of him, the waves were combing into a high, frothy surf thundering down upon a stretch of yellow sands. Behind that, he could see tall trees spreading their broad palm leaves in tufts of brightest green; and a low hill of glistening rock, where purple flowers clung and orange-leaved vines were twining.
“Land!” cried Peterkin in rapture. “Land at last!”
Sure enough, the pumpkin boat gave a last leap in the swirl of the surf and came down on something firm and grating. ”

“ In the quadrangle where we formed in line to march to the mess-hall, stood a huge oak tree, century-old, with twisted limbs and browning leaves. On one of those limbs, they told me, an American spy was hanged by the British in Revolutionary days—but it may have been only a fable. I have since learned that almost every military school along the Hudson has its Revolutionary oak—but, at the time, it made a deep impression on me, so that I could not bear to hear the creaking of the branches against my dormitory window. ”

“ Here was I, a Jew, raised above all the other Jews who had ever entered this college ... raised among the highest, to be a power in the land, to be the champion of all those who had suffered, the winner through hardship and handicap, a vindicated Dreyfus, an example to all the lower classes.... For, at twenty-one, alas, we are our own best heroes, and none can take our place!
College closed in a blaze of glory for me. There was even a note from Aunt Selina Haberman, wishing me well of this new honor and informing me that "Mrs. Fleming-Cohen, when she heard it, was green with envy!" ”

“ As he walked along the shabby road, he came to other houses, broken down and unpainted, all tangled in high weeds and matted vines. Each house was poorer than the last; each one more deserted than the other. And from each of them trooped little groups of blind folk, groping in darkness, to question him and to complain to him of their hard fate. All along his way he met the sight of their tears and 81heard the sound of their weeping. But wherever he went, Peterkin gave the same promise of happiness within four days and left a smile of hope behind him. ”

“ VII FRESHMAN YEAR
New adventures must be prefaced by new hopes. My entering college meant the starting of a thousand new dreams, ambitions—and seemed to me an opening gate to a land stronger than any I had yet heard of: a land of real men, virile, courteous and kind, whose thoughts were never petty, whose breadth of mind unfailing.
It was only a few weeks after Sydney's death that I took my college entrance examinations. ”

“ Why, for brave Peterkin’s old home, the Pumpkin Patch! That’s where the honeymoon would be—and then.... Then back to the Four Kingdoms, to reign for years in peace and power and glory.
And some day, when you, too, have grown up and have wed a Princess Clem, and have come into a kingdom of your own, you will live—as they lived—happily ever after. ”

“ Outside the door, in the gymnasium, we could hear the joyful shrieks of a crowd of young boys playing basketball. From the upper floors came a scraping of feet to tell that the clubs were beginning to meet for the evening. From across the hall came the sound of young girls singing the parts of a cantata—and this was all planned, all created by Lawrence Richards who sat there at his desk and had a smile for each and everyone who came before him.
"Don't think you're different from all the other fellows at the university," he said to me. "You're not. You're all as much alike as a row of pins. ”

“ Peterkin shuddered and turned his eyes away.
“Oh, oh, look again!” chattered the toothless old farmer. “We are past the mountains now. We are well above a brand-new valley, where a rushing river tumbles and froths, and oh, look ... over there are the spires and roofs of a city. Gray and silver they are, all gleaming and tall. And we are flying straight toward them. Hurrah, now I shall get me a new set of teeth!”
45But long ere they reached the city, the sea-shell began to crack and split, and to wabble from side to side. ”

“ I asked, searching my brain for some reason for his change of attitude.
"The servants? Oh, no, of course not!" He picked up his suitcase and started for the street. "Well, goodby," he said. He stopped as if he wanted to explain, then thought better—or worse—of it, and went on. I was a little nettled by this time, and let him go.
As I went up in the elevator, it seemed to me a mighty mystery. But no sooner had I let myself into the apartment than I was due for a bigger surprise.
For there, blocking the hallway, a figure of offended pride, stood Aunt Selina. ”

“ And with that it dived deep under the pumpkin boat and came up on the other side. “Haw, haw,” it chuckled—as only a whale can chuckle—“what bully good sport! Just to look at that little man who is peeking out over the side of this yellow ball! Just to see how surprised he looks to find me over here, where he didn’t expect me to be! Haw, haw!” And the whale gave another frolicsome wiggle to his tail—nearly upsetting the Pumperkin again.
As for Peterkin, he was chattering with fear. He did not know what was coming next! Perhaps the whale was about to swallow him for breakfast. ”

“ I knew that prejudice of race and religion was the strongest shield of the ignorant and mean, that neither he nor I could fight it fairly—and that, if he came into the fight by my side, he would ruin his own chances of being one of the biggest men in the college world when his senior year arrived.
"A lot I care for being a big man in a place of little thoughts," he snapped back at me. ”

“ And one by one, in the dark dungeon, they pulled out of my gums the joy of my life—my white, my sharp, my glistening teeth. Think of it! Think of the pain, of the deep shame!
“But I swore a deep revenge, and when I was banished, I went to live as a simple farmer in that neighboring valley where first you beheld me. I have spent all the rest of my toothless, joyless days in taking terrible revenge upon this cousin King—this royal wretch who stole my proud possessions. I have brought sorrow into each of his Four Kingdoms, and I shall kill him—him and his pretty daughter, Princess Clem! ”

“ You probably won all your college honors through standing aside. And now you have the audacity to ask me to do the same, lest you be made uncomfortable by the number of other Jewish boys at your college. You want me to stand aside, do you? Well, I wish I had a thousand Jewish boys to enter into your college's next year's class!"
He glared at me. "If you want to know the truth, I can't get a single boy in my school to go to your college, now. I wish I could. Because I'm training them to fight like men. They aren't the sort who win honors by allowing themselves to be classed as exceptions...." ”

“ Why in the name of everything foolish did I ever come to live in a pumpkin? Why didn’t I stay in a sensible house, and live like other folks live? Oh, ouch!” And then, as the wind gave one last roar and his jouncing little home gave one last, extra large somersault on its vine, Peterkin would usually find himself thwacked back into bed again, with his feet on the pillow and his head buried deep in the mattress. ”

“ Because, then, perhaps, you would have some knowledge and appreciation of what the last few months of my stay at the military school meant for me.
David Copperfield had his Steerforth. Every boy must have one. Certainly, I did. And I worshipped him with all the ardor and unquestioning devotion that could come fresh from a boy-heart which had never yet given itself to friendship. Steerforth was a villain; but in David's eye he was always, unalterably, a glorious hero. This is how it was, perhaps, with Sydney—though he was no villain, I am sure. ”

“ Away it sailed, over the waves, in the clutch of the lazy tide. Away, until the marshes and the golden strand were lost in a hazy mist. Up one wave and down the next, with the spray dashing in through the ceiling window. How like the first few days it all was—those first few days of the marvellous adventures. Peterkin smiled to think of them, 106and of how many wonderful things had happened to him since first his house was torn from his stem in the pumpkin patch. ”

“ Fire can fight fire, perhaps—in proverbs, anyhow—but discrimination is not to be overpowered by a like amount of secularity. If Jewish college men objected to that unwritten rule of fraternities; if they contended that fraternities should be democratic; if they wanted equal rights in those fraternities ... how, then, were they justified in standing apart and founding a fraternity of their own—a brotherhood which should be open only to Jews? ”

“ AND meanwhile Peterkin, in the dungeon deep, was lying face down upon the cold stone floor, trying his brave best to shut out from his head a thousand wild fears and torments which did not belong there. What if he should stay here in this dark cell for all his days? What if he should never again see the sunlight or hear the rustle of the trees? What should he do for food? ”

“ He had summed up Trevelyan marvelously well in those few words. He saw my wonderment and smiled.
"I've only met him once or twice," he said, "but I have the faculty of knowing men. It's a faculty I have to have in this sort of work. It depends so much on the human equation. I meet thousands of young men and women every year—meet them, talk with them a little while, give them the best I have to give in that short space—and like to think that, even if I never see them again, I've helped them along a bit. That's all that a settlement can do, after all." ”

“ The windows in the palace, across the narrow street, were gleaming with bright cheer and threw big yellow squares 109of light across the cobbled gutters. The old villain, when he stood a-tiptoe, could see the gilded walls and the jeweled ceilings. He caught just a glimpse of a corner of the throne itself, all in a glory of precious stones and carvings. And once he thought he could make out the shadow of a man all decked in royal robes—and a crown on his head. ”

“ I told him exactly how I felt: that I was growing impatient of all the tomfoolery of college; that I wanted work more sure of manly results, more broadening, more full of character. Then, too, I told him of what Trevelyan had said, and he laughed at it merrily.
"Trevelyan?" he said. "Oh, yes, I know him. He belongs to my fraternity, doesn't he? I've met him at one or another of our affairs. A good enough fellow—a little too much money, and a little too easy with himself in consequence. But he's a thorough gentleman at heart, isn't he?" ”

“ And soon enough his pumpkin house grew cold and cheerless and wet with the briny waves which came dashing in through the door-window-ceiling.
19It was a dreary party now. Peterkin felt his yellow ball of a boat leap and fall with every wave. Everything rattled and jingled to the see-saw motion. He grew dizzy. He could scarcely steady himself to climb up the ladder a second time. He could hardly see the white froth at the crests of the waves and the deep green of their troughs. He made out a ship passing by, miles and miles away. ”