The Plastic Age Percy Marks (read full novel txt) 📖

were set in even rows. Nothing else was there, not even the gymnasium apparatus. A few years earlier a wily student had sneaked into the gymnasium the night before an examination and written his notes on a dumbbell hanging on the wall. The next day he calmly chose the seat in front of the dumbbell⁠—and proceeded to write a perfect examination. The annotated dumbbell was found later, and after that the walls were stripped clean of apparatus before the examinations began.

At a few minutes before nine the entire freshman class was grouped before the doors of the gymnasium, nervously talking, some of them glancing through their notes, others smoking⁠—some of them so rapidly that the cigarettes seemed to melt, others walking up and down, muttering and mumbling; all of them so excited, so tense that they hardly knew what they were doing. Hugh was trying to think of a dozen answers to questions that popped into his head, and he couldn’t think of anything.

Suddenly the doors were thrown open. Yelling, shoving each other about, fairly dancing in their eagerness and excitement, the freshmen rushed into the gymnasium. Hugh broke from the mob as quickly as possible, hurried to a chair, and snatched up a copy of the examination that was lying on its broad arm. At the first glance he thought that he could answer all the questions; a second glance revealed four that meant nothing to him. For a moment he was dizzy with hope and despair, and then, all at once, he felt quite calm. He pulled off his goloshes and prepared to go to work.

Within three minutes the noise had subsided. There was a rustling as the boys took off their baa-baa coats and goloshes, but after that there was no sound save the slow steps of the proctors pacing up and down the aisle. Once Hugh looked up, thinking desperately, almost seizing an idea that floated nebulous and necessary before him. A proctor that he knew caught his eye and smiled fatuously. Hugh did not smile back. He could have cried in his fury. The idea was gone forever.

Some of the students began to write immediately; some of them leaned back and stared at the ceiling; some of them chewed their pencils nervously; some of them leaned forward mercilessly pounding a knee; some of them kept running one or both hands through their hair; some of them wrote a little and then paused to gaze blankly before them or to tap their teeth with a pen or pencil: all of them were concentrating with an intensity that made the silence electric.

That proctor’s idiotic smile had thrown Hugh’s thoughts into what seemed hopeless confusion, but a small incident almost immediately brought order and relief. The gymnasium cat was wandering around the rear of the gymnasium. It attracted the attention of several of the students⁠—and of a proctor. Being very careful not to make any noise, he picked up the cat and started for the door. Almost instantly every student looked up; and then the stamping began. Four hundred freshmen stamped in rhythm to the proctor’s steps. He blushed violently, tried vainly to look unconcerned, and finally disappeared through the door with the cat. Hugh had stamped lustily and laughed in great glee at the proctor’s confusion; then he returned to his work, completely at ease, his nervousness gone.

One hour passed, two hours. Still the freshmen wrote; still the proctors paced up and down. Suddenly a proctor paused, stared intently at a youth who was leaning forward in his chair, walked quickly to him, and picked up one of his goloshes. The next instant he had a piece of paper in his hand and was, walking down the gymnasium after beckoning to the boy to follow him. The boy shoved his feet into his goloshes, pulled on his baa-baa coat, and, his face white and strained, marched down the aisle. The proctor spoke a few words to him at the door. He nodded, opened the door, left the gymnasium⁠—and five hours later the college.

Thus the college for ten days: the better students moderately calm, the others cramming information into aching heads, drinking unbelievable quantities of coffee, sitting up, many of them, all night, attending seminars or tutoring sessions, working for long hours in the library, finally taking the examination, only to start a new nerve-racking grind in preparation for the next one.

If a student failed in a course, he received a “flunk notice” from the registrar’s office within four days after the examination, so that four days after the last examination every student knew whether he had passed his courses or not. All those who failed to pass three courses were, as the students put it, “flunked out,” or as the registrar put it, “their connection with the college was severed.” Some of the flunkees took the news very casually, packed their trunks, sold their furniture, and departed; others frankly wept or hastened to their instructors to plead vainly that their grades be raised: all of them were required to leave Haydensville at once.

Hugh passed all of his courses but without distinction. His B in trigonometry did not give him great satisfaction inasmuch as he had received an A in exactly the same course in high school; nor was he particularly proud of his B in English, since he knew that with a little effort he could have “pulled” an A. The remainder of his grades were C’s and D’s, mostly D’s. He felt almost as much ashamed as Freddy Dickson, who somehow hadn’t “got going” and had been flunked out. Carl received nothing less than a C, and his record made Hugh more ashamed of his own. Carl never seemed to study, but he hadn’t disgraced himself.

Hugh spent many bitter hours thinking about his record. What would his folks think? Worse, what would they say? Finally he wrote to them:

Dear Mother and Dad:

I have just found out my grades. I think that they will