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

impersonal man restrained him. Kane had told him to take Math I; and Kane was law.

Unlike most of Hugh’s instructors, Kane kept the class the full hour the first day, seating them in alphabetical order⁠—he had to repeat the performance three times during the week as new men entered the class⁠—lecturing them on the need of doing their problems carefully and accurately, and discoursing on the value of mathematics, trigonometry in particular, in the study of science and engineering. Hugh was not interested in science, engineering, or mathematics, but he listened carefully, trying hard to follow Kane’s cold discourse. At the end of the hour he told his neighbor as they left the room that he guessed that Professor Kane knew an awful lot, and his neighbor agreed with him.

Hugh’s other instructors proved less impressive than Kane; in fact, Mr. Alling, the instructor in Latin, was altogether disconcerting.

“Plautus,” he told the class, “wrote comedies, farces⁠—not exercises in translation. He was also, my innocents, occasionally naughty⁠—oh, really naughty. What’s worse, he used slang, common everyday slang⁠—the kind of stuff that you and I talk. Now, I have an excellent vocabulary of slang, obscenity, and profanity; and you are going to hear most of it. Think of the opportunity. Don’t think that I mean just ‘damn’ and ‘hell.’ They are good for a laugh in a theater any day, but Plautus was not restrained by our modern conventions. You will confine yourselves, please, to English undefiled, but I shall speak the modern equivalent to a Roman gutter-pup’s language whenever necessary. You will find this course very illuminating⁠—in some ways. And, who knows? you may learn something not only about Latin but about Rome.”

Hugh thought Mr. Alling was rather flippant and lacking in dignity. Professor Kane was more like a college teacher. Before the term was out he hated Kane with an intensity that astonished him, and he looked forward to his Latin classes with an eagerness of which he was almost ashamed. Plautus in the Alling free and colloquial translations was enormously funny.

Professor Hartley, who gave the history lectures, talked in a bass monotone and never seemed to pause for breath. His words came in a slow steady stream that never rose nor fell nor paused⁠—until the bell rang. The men in the back of the room slept. Hugh was seated near the front; so he drew pictures in his notebook. The English instructor talked about punctuation as if it were very unpleasant but almost religiously important; and what the various lecturers in general science talked about⁠—ten men gave the course⁠—Hugh never knew. In after years all that he could remember about the course was that one man spoke broken English and that a professor of physics had made huge bulbs glow with marvelous colors.

Hugh had one terrifying experience before he finally got settled to his work. It occurred the second day of classes. He was comfortably seated in what he thought was his English class⁠—he had come in just as the bell rang⁠—when the instructor announced that it was a class in French. What was he to do? What would the instructor do if he got up and left the room? What would happen if he didn’t report at his English class? What would happen to him for coming into his English class late? These questions staggered his mind. He was afraid to stay in the French class. Cautiously he got up and began to tiptoe to the door.

“Wrong room?” the instructor asked pleasantly.

Hugh flushed. “Yes, sir.” He stopped dead still, not knowing what to do next.

He was a typical rattled freshman, and the class, which was composed of sophomores, laughed. Hugh, angry and humiliated, started for the door, but the instructor held up a hand that silenced the class; then he motioned for Hugh to come to his desk.

“What class are you looking for?”

“English One, sir, Section Seven.” He held out his schedule card, reassured by the instructor’s kindly manner.

The instructor looked at the card and then consulted a printed schedule.

“Oh,” he said, “your adviser made a mistake. He got you into the wrong group list. You belong in Sanders Six.”

“Thank you, sir.” Hugh spoke so softly that the waiting class did not hear him, but the instructor smiled at the intensity of his thanks. As he left the room, he knew that everyone was looking at him; his legs felt as if they were made of wood. It wasn’t until he had closed the door that his knee-joints worked naturally. But the worst was still ahead of him. He had to go to his English class in Sanders 6. He ran across the campus, his heart beating wildly, his hands desperately clenched. When he reached Sanders 6, he found three other freshmen grouped before the door.

“Is this English One, Section Seven?” one asked tremulously.

“I think so,” whispered the second. “Do you know?” he asked, turning to Hugh.

“Yes; I am almost sure.”

They stood there looking at each other, no one quite daring to enter Sanders 6, no one quite daring to leave. Suddenly the front door of the building slammed. A bareheaded youth rushed up the stairs. He was a repeater; that is, a man who had failed the course the preceding year and was taking it over again. He brushed by the scared freshmen, opened the door, and strode into Sanders 6, closing the door behind him.

The freshmen looked at each other, and then the one nearest the door opened it. The four of them filed in silently.

The class looked up. “Sit in the back of the room,” said the instructor.

And that was all there was to that. In his senior year Hugh remembered the incident and wondered at his terror. He tried to remember why he had been so badly frightened. He couldn’t; there didn’t seem to be any reason at all.

VI

About a week after the opening of college, Hugh returned to Surrey Hall one night feeling unusually virtuous and happy. He