Through the school: The experiences of a mill boy in securing an education
John Stuart Mill · en
“Don’t scold, please,” replied Sanderson. “He gets through his work
all right. He’d starve if he couldn’t be a benefactor to somebody. He
will come in tonight. We’ll have a few minutes’ chat. Then he’ll ask me
about the quiz and he’ll let go at me for an hour or so. Then we’ll
have another chat and it will be my bedtime, for I never plan to be out
of bed after half-past ten except on exceptional occasions. I’ll leave
my bedroom door open while I get ready. Jimmy’ll talk to me until I
let out a snore,--I’ll tell him to be sure and snap the lock after he
leaves. Perhaps an hour later he’ll creep out, and go to his own room.
Oh, I swear by Jimmy!”
“And get your marks by him, too, eh?”
“What’s a fellow to do?” asked Sanderson.
As I turned to go, Sanderson yawned,
“Say, Priddy, could you run in with that print on Holbein’s ‘Saint
Barbara?’ I failed to get it, and we have to recite on it, in the
morning. You might bring me the dope on it, too!”
I entered at last upon the final stretch towards my degree. In the
stress of work and the excitement of writing a philosophical and a
literary essay, in competition for two senior prizes, the days of
winter changed into the brighter aspects of spring almost before I was
aware of it. Once more we assembled on the campus for the class “sing,”
and this time my wife could enjoy the music with me, as we stood on the
corner and let our year-old boy ask, “What?” when the cheers began.
The class elections were held, the photograph of the class was taken,
backgrounded against a most rustic wall of stone and arrangement of
wild shrubbery. Our caps and gowns soon followed the class pictures,
and then we wore them to chapel, in which we marched so slowly
and solemnly under the guide of our marshal, that more than one
irrepressible spirit in the ranks would burst out with laughter at so
much dignity in so youthful a crowd. Through these days I often grew
impatient. I was eager, now, with restored health, and with a richer
mine of truth, to be in a parish again, doing my chosen work.
But when commencement week arrived with its sentimental spirit,--then I
felt the full significance of this last educational experience.
A band, brought from the city, gave concerts on the college club porch,
amid a forest of plants and shrubs, and under fairylike illuminations.
Class reunions brought crowds of graduates, who donned yellow hats,
wore clownish clothes, and paraded up and down seeing how much
burlesque they could express. One class engaged an Italian hand-organ
artist who had also, perched on his music-box, an intelligent parrot
which would pick out fortune slips from a box--for five cents. In some
way the class lost the parrot, and I came across the Italian boy,
crying bitterly, as he searched a wild gully for the bird, saying, when
I asked him what the trouble could be,
“Ah, my parrote, he los’, my God, what I do for live now!”