College stories, American; Princeton (N.J.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Princeton University -- Fiction
And now he was in Virginia, surrounded by much dazzling full-pulsed
Southern loveliness. He was meeting people that had been brought up to
consider themselves the aristocracy of the American side of the world,
and they had been cherishing this idea for generations before New York
was more than a trading-post of miserly, Indian-cheating Dutchmen.
They had never heard of the Lawrences of New York and were rather
sorry for anyone that had to live there. And this was broadening. This
was not to be about the Glee Club trip, nor about what Lawrence would
have done if he had not gone, but what happened afterward, and if you
read this story you may skip to here: Lawrence lay on the divan.
He put his hands back of his head and tried to tell himself how sick
he was of teas and club receptions and convivial old grads. and
applause and dances and chicken-salad and girls. Cinders were in his
hair. What he wanted most in all the world was, first, someone to
carry him to a Turkish bath, second, someone to dress him in his
campus clothes, and third, Billy Nolan to put an arm around and call
names.
But this reactional feeling he knew was inevitable, and he took it, as
he did his sensation of dirtiness and indigestion, as part of the
game. There was something else to make him fidget and frown on the
divan.
Lawrence had come back to the slushy old sunshiny campus a very
different fellow from the one that used to climb the stone steps from
the station, but he had had a month in which to become accustomed to
it. Besides, that was nothing to be sour about. He was very well
pleased with being a different sort of a fellow, and had made up his
mind to remain so. In fact, all during the trip he had been thinking
that he could put in a peaceful, comfortable time now for the rest of
his life, if it were not for one thing.
And as he started across the campus with a roll of corduroys under his
arm, and the intention of taking a bath at the club, the very first
thing he saw was that One Thing.
There was a "Hunt's Discourse" under his arm, and he was running to
reach his seat before the bell stopped ringing, like any other
freshman. But he was different from every other freshman in the world,
to Lawrence.
This boy, like some of every freshman class that ever cheered itself
hoarse, was beginning to do things his father had not sent him to
college for. And the senior had an idea that his own example was what
had started the boy; and this, when you stop to think of it, was
extremely conceited in him. He thought he could make the freshman
stop, and this, when you stop to think of it, was a hasty conclusion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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