College stories, American; Princeton (N.J.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Princeton University -- Fiction
He considered himself somewhat of an artist. There were ever so many
bits that he was fond of showing you if he thought you could
appreciate them; like the bend in the canal up toward Baker's basin,
with peculiar water and willow-coloring in springtime. Linton said it
was like a French water-color. He used to carry a gun over his
shoulder, and say he was going snipe-shooting; really it was to look
for things like this, and get up a big appetite for dinner. He could
also point out a view of gentle hills and rolling green fields on the
way to Kingston that was a good imitation of English landscape, he
said, and he knew just where the tower of the School of Science ought
to make an effect through treetops, like the view of Magdalen tower
from a point in Addison's walk, if it were only beautiful Gothic
instead of ugly Renaissance. But perhaps all this was merely to show
that he had once canoed down the Thames from Oxford to London.
He was very well up in the ancient history of the town, also. He knew
all about most of the old houses, and he had sketches of the best of
the old brass-knockers and colonial doorways. It is said that he used
to prowl about on moonlight nights for this purpose. Small
window-panes were another thing he was insane over. He had substituted
for the ordinary panes of his windows, dingy little square ones with
thick frames painted black. Some of the fellows said the reason he did
this was to be odd. Linton blew smoke, and said yes, that was the
reason.
But it was the old campus that he loved the most. He knew just about
all there was to find out about it, and dreamed a great deal more.
He had ever so many favorite aspects, such as the one of the back of
the Dean's house--with small, square window-panes--from away over at a
point between Whig and Clio Halls, and the rear view of Prospect
across the stretch of sloping meadow toward the canal, and a number of
congenial little spots that meant something to him, like the stone
buttress at the bottom of the tower of Witherspoon, a great place to
warm your back against in spring sunshine, with the blue smoke
trickling lazily from your mouth and the fellows batting up flies on
the old diamond; and then for midnight chats there were the smooth
steps of chapel with the elms saying things in low tones overhead. But
those midnight chats were all over now. It was Commencement Day, and
it was the saddest thing that had ever happened to Linton.
He was not at all anxious to spring forth into the world and battle
with opportunity and all the other things that the class-day speakers
and the valedictorian said that he was going to do. He thought this
little world was good enough for him, and there wasn't much spring in
him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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