The Seven-Branched Candlestick: The Schooldays of Young American JewGabriel, Gilbert W. (Gilbert Wolf)
General
The Seven-Branched Candlestick: The Schooldays of Young American Jew
Gabriel, Gilbert W. (Gilbert Wolf)
Jews -- United States
Otherwise, I was treated with a fair amount of kindness by almost all of
the college. The members of my own class, in which I was gradually
acquiring such positions as work and merit could win me, had begun to
show me a good, clean respect; and those in the class above soon
followed their lead. All that I asked was fair play, and the chance to
overcome that handicap which I knew existed. This was easier, now that I
lived at college, and I gave to the various activities in which I was
interested, all the spare time which I could afford from my studies. I
was beginning to realize what that preachment meant: "The college will
give you back all that you give to it in work."
Thus, at the end of my sophomore year, when I again went to the
settlement for the summer, I was planning big and enthusiastic things
for the autumn term.
Mr. Richards placed me in charge of one of the settlement's fresh-air
camps, up the state. I had two other boys to help me in my work, and one
of them was Frank Cohen. It had taken me a long time to overcome Frank's
sensitiveness, after his encounter with my aunt; but we were fast
friends again now, and it was good to have him with me where I could
help him with his daily noon-time studying for his "preliminaries." When
the fall came, he passed them easily--and it was now definitely decided
that he would enter my college when I was a senior.
My own return to the university, however, gave me an unpleasant shock. I
had arrived a few days late, because I had wanted to help Mr. Richards
with some of his coming year's programs. The campus was already alive
and crowded, therefore, and the dormitory windows were all thrown open
and overflowing with the rugs and chair cushions of autumn cleaning. The
campus teemed with a thousand youths who grasped each other cordially by
the wrist and went through all sorts of contortions to prove that they
"were glad to see you, old man!"
But there was a difference! The first glimpse I had of it, I called
myself a self-conscious fool. I tried to reassure myself, everybody's
greeting had been as cordial as I could expect. Everybody had said he
was glad to see me--and--yet!
Then, the second day that I was at college, I had my first proof of the
truth of my suspicions. I had it through eavesdropping--but I was
justified. For I heard little Waters, the genial popularist, talking of
it to another classmate in front of the laboratory steps.
"It's a rotten shame," he was declaiming. "Haven't you noticed? I don't
see how it could escape you! Jews and Jews! The freshman class is just
swarming with 'em!"
"What? Really?"
"Honestly. If there's one Jew in the freshman class, there are fifty.
And such Jewy-looking Jews!"
"Gee whizz, it's a disgrace. It was bad enough when they used to come in
four or five--or even ten--in a class. But fifty! Are there really
fifty?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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