Classmate

“ In college mind meets mind in the severe competition of recitation and annual examination. The bright boy—one of a small class at home, who had it all his own way there—now finds a score or more of leaders whose unvoiced challenge he is compelled to accept, and how he does knit his brow, close his eyes, summon his strength, school his will, force his flagging energies, and grapple problems that he may hold his own, outstrip his rivals, and win prize and place for the sake of his family’s fame and for his personal satisfaction! ”

“ I have heard of a man who had one foot in the grave, but here was a man who had one foot in heaven. Dear friend, and my father's friend, friend of my youth, and all my later years, teacher, counselor, encourager, model of my student life, to whom my heart was knit in all the ardor of the first enthusiasm over the idea of going to college, to whom my obligations are beyond computation, Thou hast thyself gone to sit at the feet of the Great Teacher. ”

“ That will depend on yourself. When you have finished the fourth grade, you will go to the High School, and they will become workingmen; but you will remain in the same city for many years, perhaps. Why, then, will you never meet again? When you are in the University of the Lyceum, you will seek them out in their shops or their workrooms, and it will be a great pleasure for you to meet the companions of your youth once more, as men at work. ”

“ Every person whom you know may be in some way pleased and benefited by your experience. There are little girls who are examining you as only a little girl can, and are making up their minds whether they, too, will go to college some day. When you see this bright child peering at you,—there 72 is your chance to be something adorable!
No one follows you with more sympathy than the teachers who have fitted you for college. They have a share in you, remember; for teachers have a reward beyond money in the futures of their pupils. ”

“ But ‘the fellows’ did me much good in the way of my education. I had a most excellent and worthy set of friends, especially in the last year of my college life. My associations with them drew me out of myself, and gave me, in the best meaning of the term, the sense and the impulse of good-fellowship. As bearing upon my preparation for my life’s work, this association did much to give me that common sense, and sympathy, and warm-heartedness, and love of{583} young men, and comprehension of their nature and their feelings, the value of which is so great to a college teacher. ”

“ The freshman girl is happy who, in her preparation for college, has included some knowledge of the art of living with others. Miss Ellen Emerson once read aloud to our Sunday-School class an essay by Sir Arthur Helps on this very subject. One sentence I remember: “A thorough conviction of the difference of men is the great thing to be assured of in social knowledge: it is to life what Newton’s law is to astronomy.” Miss Ellen paused, and bade us not forget that saying. The girl who goes to 66 college prepared to find people “different” has a mastery of the situation. ”

“ Aside from the curriculum, what is the atmosphere that a boy breathes as soon as he sets foot on a college campus? Is he trained in honesty, in politeness, in high ideals of speech, in lofty conceptions of character? Does he have to obey orders? Is he taught to be neat, prompt, and industrious? Such questions are of things too often taken for granted, and too often lacking. ”

“ But after the pupil has entered and become regularly enrolled it is the teacher who is the stimulating, guiding and holding power. To analyze the charm of personality which attracts and holds the girl in her teens is impossible, but there are certain things which the teacher must do that we may discuss.
She must remember that the girl in her teens has “grown up,” and that she is very conscious of it. One must be more her friend than teacher. In the earlier years every Sunday-school teacher really interested in her pupils calls freely in the home. ”

“ There are some things in this school that aren't always quite what they ought to be, and it's rather hard for juniors to fight their own battles. Sometimes you squabble among yourselves—oh, I know!—and sometimes you get it hot from the seniors or the Transition. Well, we're going to help you. Each of us means to take on one or more of you and be a sort of fairy godmother to you, and responsible for seeing you're decently treated. I understand there's been a little trouble about your lunch biscuits? ”

“ A [Pg 63] new class is always somewhat hysterical. Some of those in the front rows turned and stared at him in their laughter.
It was a natural mistake. This freshman had prepared for college at a high school, and most of the High School teachers were women. Young should have joined in the laughter, but he only stood there, scarlet and serious-looking and wishing he could disappear forever. ”

“ Interest in school life is perpetual. The young student, facing new surroundings, finds an element of romance and strong appeal; and to the older graduate college days recall some of the most pleasant memories of the past. ”

“ When the teacher has resolved to make the effort to reach out for the girl who is leaving the Sunday-school in large numbers, the clear and challenging question, “What makes a class attractive to the girl in her teens?” ”

“ She is the giddiest of the giddy in talking about her beaux, and wonders why the school girls are so rude as to speak about their “fellows.”
The pupils of another room—and often the same pupils under another teacher—are quiet, orderly, obedient, respectful and studious. She does not gush. She is not petty and has no pets. She is quiet, bright, cheerful, cheery, orderly, serious, natural, and has confidence in her pupils. She speaks kindly and affectionately of her boys and girls, neither thinking them faultless nor lauding them to the skies. Her every act is an inspiration to her pupils. ”

“ The indescribable exhilaration, which must be familiar to many of you, of leaving school and entering college, is in great part the exhilaration of making acquaintance with teachers who care much about their subject and little or nothing about their pupils. To escape from the eternal personal judgements which make a school a place of torment is to walk upon air. ”

“ I said I didn't believe there was such a thing as a fellow being glad to go to school. You're not a fellow, are you? (Both boys laugh and cross over.)
Thomas: If I was a girl I dare say I'd like to go to school. Of course, that's better than rocking the baby and washing the dishes—but fellows! I tell you they have better ways to pass their time, eh! ”

“ You've never been a teacher in a large fashionable college, my boy. When most of your so-called students are taking your course because it is reported to be a snap, so they can spend their evenings at billiards, musical comedies, or the like, any young devil with a ray of intellectual interest becomes the teacher's golden-haired boy. ”

“ You took me in the same as you took in Redtop and Sis Jones; and there’s more class to any of the fellows in your set than to me. Don’t I know that?”
“That’s where you’re off the boulevard, old chap. You’re in the class that has pluck and honesty and the capacity for friendship. That’s a class by itself. ”

“ A hint of friendly patronage crept into the manner of the junior. “My dear chap, college isn't worth doing at all unless you do it right. You're here to get in with the best fellows and to make connections that will help you later. ”

“ They recognize their teacher by his step and his odor; they perceive whether he is in a good or bad humor, whether he is well or ill, simply by the sound of a single word of his. They want the teacher to touch them when he encourages and praises them, and they feel of his hand and his arms in order to express their gratitude. They love each other, and are good comrades to each other. In play time they are always together, according to their habit. ”

“ Partly through my friend, but in part also from the circumstance that I retained a measure of intimacy with such of my schoolfellows as had subsequently prosecuted their education at college, I was acquainted, during the later years in which I wrought as a mason, with a good many university-taught lads; and I sometimes could not avoid comparing them in my mind with working men of, as nearly as I could guess, the same original calibre. I did not always find that general superiority on the side of the scholar which the scholar himself usually took for granted. ”

“ I'm only telling you kid stories, for you are still a good deal of a kid, though a pseudo-college man. You can draw morals from them or not as best meets your requirements. You know your requirements better than I do. You aren't so bad—in fact, you have behaved yourself pretty well—for a Freshman—better than I anticipated in some respects. But you still have a lot to learn about being a college man. So I am just telling you about college men and college kids I have known. ”

“ In my imaginary College, the various teachers are in the habit of attending each other's classes whenever they wish to do so; a practice which actually does prevail to a certain extent in some schools, and with the happiest results; for the teacher who takes his place among the pupils of a colleague, can, if he will, set the class an excellent example of courteous and intelligent questioning. ”

“ Many little boys and girls, when their teacher is talking to them, are in the habit of staring about the school-room, or looking at their fellow-pupils, or, perhaps, slyly talking to them or laughing with them, when they ought to be listening to what their teacher is saying. ”

“ Indeed, the mark of the undergraduate almost covers them, especially of the undergraduate as he fondly imagines himself in his callow days and as he is foolishly instructed to regard himself by the more vinous and more hilarious of the old graduates who annually come back to a college to offer themselves—though this is not their conscious purpose—as an object lesson in the loud triviality peculiar and traditional to such hours of reunion. ”

“ I have been a schoolmaster myself, and I enjoyed the life very much, and made among my boys some of the best of the friends of my life. I have also been a school-boy,--and I roughed through my school life with comparative comfort and ease. As master and as boy I learned some things which I think can be explained to boys and girls now, so as to make life at school easier and really more agreeable. ”

“ In order to remedy these defects, and to ease the teacher, I would advise, that several young gentlemen read in a class, each a sentence in this book, (it being divided into small portions for that purpose,) as often as convenient: and let him who reads best, be advanced to the head, or have some pecuniary reward; and every inferior one according to his merit; this will create emulation among them, and facilitate their improvement much more than threats or corrections, which stupifies and intimidates them, and often ends in contempt of their teachers, and learning in general. ”

“ From the teacher in the primary school to the heads of the universities no effort is made to influence character: "As soon as the student leaves the lecture hall he is free to return to the niche he has constituted for himself, to its probable triviality and its [Pg 76] possible grossness, or to the vulgar pleasures of the town.... We lose the advantage of that peculiar monastic, thoughtful life which is offered to the young Englishman." ”

“ I never shall forget the restful pleasure of hearing a teacher call the roll in a large schoolroom as quietly as she would speak to a child in a closet, and every girl answering in the same soft and pleasant way. ”

“ But I can tell from the tenor of your letters, enthusiastic though they be, that you think it rather hard luck, now that you are free from the irksome restraint of school-days, that a big boy like you, in college at last and called a man by courtesy, cannot do exactly as he pleases and stick out his chest like the college men he used to see at football games. ”

“ It was the custom when a new girl entered school to hand her over to a boarding scholar in her last year, who was expected to introduce the novice into the ways of the establishment and befriend her in every possible way. ”

“ I who stand in the guardianship of youth have frequent occasion to miss a favorite pupil, boy or girl, who throws up a college training and goes home—often, in my judgment, mistakenly—to support, or merely to cheer, the family there. ”

“ Having made up his mind to this, she gave him a tutor, provided him with books, and every thing that would make him comfortable, and sent him away with a tender mother’s blessing. There, for several years, she maintained him with every comfort he could wish. The youth, having every advantage, improved greatly, and became an excellent scholar, and by his gentleman-like manners, correct conduct, and great talents, had gained the affection of all his fellow collegians. ”

“ Men stopped to look and ask questions, and on hearing the story, laughed, as memory, perhaps, carried them back to some similar college prank; for the boys of to-day are built on the same model of those who went to school many years ago. ”

“ We ought to try to make a new scholar feel at home,—help him to become acquainted with the others, tell him the rules and customs of the school, and assist him at first in his lessons if he needs it. We ought not to stare at him when he enters or rises to recite, or smile if he makes a mistake. It is kind to draw him into games at recess until he forgets he is a stranger. ”

“ It came my turn. I stepped to the front and raised my hand for the first word when suddenly the class next above mine yelled, poked up slang signs, and then from the square ventilator hole high above my head darted a sparrow with a trailing streamer of our class ribbon fluttering from its tail. At every sentence, nearly every word, I had to pause on account of the yellings, the banter, and the interruptions caused by flying hats and scudding pieces of pasteboard. After about a half hour of disciplined posing, I finally concluded the “oration” amid the admiring plaudits of my class. ”