Illegitimate children -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Middle West -- Fiction
If one was only a freshman one might have to be contented with the
private room of the “Bucket of Blood”--in a small rear section of
which negroes were allowed to drink. Later on, you aimed for the
private room at Steve Ball’s. The Y.M.C.A. and the Cadet Corps, the
latter also a moral training camp under the guise of military orders,
throve, but only among the groundlings. Two obscure fraternities out
of twelve admitted members who would stoop to either, unless they
were recommended by extraordinary prowess in other and more popular
directions.
In those days the dirt-stained farmers in jack-boots came to town
Saturday morning with heavy carts of solid produce and departed at
nightfall with almost equally heavy burdens of liquid joy. Afternoon
strollers got their legs inextricably mixed with frantic, squealing
hogs, and the smell of fresh manure rose to the fifth story of the
Attic House, the tallest building on the local Broadway. Nowadays the
farmers come snorting in in Cadillacs as often as they please and
go home sober to tot up the double entry ledger with “mommer.” It
is a changed world and undoubtedly a more leisurely one for college
disciplinary committees.
Potter’s progress for a year had consisted in desperate efforts to
escape his classes toward the end of the week, and to regain some
hold on them at the beginning. As often happens, in spite of such
practices, or perhaps because of the extra spurts of effort which they
made necessary, he regularly stood well in his studies. His second
year, however, from the standpoint of conduct, was an improvement over
the first. Roget put in an appearance, and Osprey wearied somewhat of
smutty anecdotes, at the telling of which he was never skilful, and
found a genuine interest growing in him for his language classes, and
even for mathematics.
In the entire town, beside the poet, there had been two people in whom
he took an interest. One was a thin, rather angular but not uncomely
instructress in the art classes, who had come from New York and the Art
Students’ League. Potter never probed her jolly, untroubled character
very deeply, but she had a firm pencil stroke that he admired, and
after a few talks with her he discovered that she breathed a freer air
than the folk at Athens. To his fraternity brothers she was a frump,
socially impossible. The feminine ideal of the day was the type of Miss
Carroll of Carrollton, or Miss Brown from Brownhaven, rich father,
proud virtue, sentimental possibilities and skill in the small town
graces.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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