Ethics -- Fiction; Religion and sociology -- Fiction; Upper class families -- Fiction
Have I made us out a pair of deliberate, calculating snobs? Well,
after all it must be remembered that our bringing up had not been of
sufficient liberality to include the Krebses of this world. We did not,
indeed, spend much time in choosing and weighing those whom we should
know and those whom we should avoid; and before the first term of that
Freshman year was over Tom had become a favourite. He had the gift of
making men feel that he delighted in their society, that he wished for
nothing better than to sit for hours in their company, content to listen
to the arguments that raged about him. Once in a while he would make a
droll observation that was greeted with fits of laughter. He was always
referred to as “old Tom,” or “good old Tom”; presently, when he began to
pick out chords on the banjo, it was discovered that he had a good tenor
voice, though he could not always be induced to sing.... Somewhat to the
jeopardy of the academic standard that my father expected me to sustain,
our rooms became a rendezvous for many clubable souls whose maudlin,
midnight attempts at harmony often set the cocks crowing.
“Free from care and despair,
What care we?
'Tis wine, 'tis wine
That makes the jollity.”
As a matter of truth, on these occasions it was more often beer; beer
transported thither in Tom's new valise,--given him by his mother,--and
stuffed with snow to keep the bottles cold. Sometimes Granite Face,
adorned in a sky-blue wrapper, would suddenly appear in the doorway to
declare that we were a disgrace to her respectable house: the university
authorities should be informed, etc., etc. Poor woman, we were
outrageously inconsiderate of her.... One evening as we came through
the hall we caught a glimpse in the dimly lighted parlour of a young
man holding a shy and pale little girl on his lap, Annie, Mrs. Bolton's
daughter: on the face of our landlady was an expression I had never seen
there, like a light. I should scarcely have known her. Tom and I paused
at the foot of the stairs. He clutched my arm.
“Darned if it wasn't our friend Krebs!” he whispered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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