The Courage of the Commonplace
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Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews >> The Courage of the Commonplace
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The Courage of the Commonplace
by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
The girl and her chaperon had been deposited early in the desirable
second-story window in Durfee, looking down on the tree. Brant was
a senior and a "Bones" man, and so had a leading part to play in
the afternoon's drama. He must get the girl and the chaperon
off his hands, and be at his business. This was "Tap Day." It is
perhaps well to explain what "Tap Day" means; there are people
who have not been at Yale or had sons or sweethearts there.
In New Haven, on the last Thursday of May, toward five in the
afternoon, one becomes aware that the sea of boys which ripples
always over the little city has condensed into a river flowing
into the campus. There the flood divides and re-divides; the
junior class is separating and gathering from all directions
into a solid mass about the nucleus of a large, low-hanging oak
tree inside the college fence in front of Durfee Hall. The three
senior societies of Yale, Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, and
Wolf's Head, choose to-day fifteen members each from the junior
class, the fifteen members of the outgoing senior class making
the choice. Each senior is allotted his man of the juniors, and
must find him in the crowd at the tree and tap him on the shoulder
and give him the order to go to his room. Followed by his sponsor
he obeys and what happens at the room no one but the men of the
society know. With shining face the lad comes back later and is
slapped on the shoulder and told, "good work, old man," cordially
and whole-heartedly by every friend and acquaintance--by lads who
have "made" every honor possible, by lads who have "made" nothing,
just as heartily. For that is the spirit of Yale.
Only juniors room in Durfee Hall. On Tap Day an outsider is lucky
who has a friend there, for a window is a proscenium box for
the play--the play which is a tragedy to all but forty-five of the
three hundred and odd juniors. The windows of every story of the
gray stone facade are crowded with a deeply interested audience;
grizzled heads of old graduates mix with flowery hats of women;
every one is watching every detail, every arrival. In front of
the Hall is a drive, and room for perhaps a dozen carriages next
the fence--the famous fence of Yale--which rails the campus round.
Just inside it, at the north-east corner, rises the tree. People
stand up in the carriages, women and men; the fence is loaded with
people, often standing, too, to see that tree.
All over the campus surges a crowd; students of the other classes,
seniors who last year stood in the compact gathering at the tree
and left it sore-hearted, not having been "taken"; sophomores
who will stand there next year, who already are hoping for and
dreading their Tap Day; little freshmen, each one sure that he,
at least, will be of the elect; and again the iron-gray heads,
the interested faces of old Yale men, and the gay spring hats
like bouquets of flowers.
It is, perhaps, the most critical single day of the four years'
course at the University. It shows to the world whether or no a boy,
after three years of college life, has in the eyes of the student
body "made good." It is a crucial test, a heart-rending test
for a boy of twenty years.
The girl sitting in the window of Durfee understood thoroughly
the character and the chances of the day. The seniors at the tree
wear derby hats; the juniors none at all; it is easier by this sign
to distinguish the classmen, and to keep track of the tapping.
The girl knew of what society was each black-hatted man who twisted
through the bareheaded throng; in that sea of tense faces she
recognized many; she could find a familiar head almost anywhere
in the mass and tell as much as an outsider might what hope was
hovering over it. She came of Yale people; Brant, her brother,
would graduate this year; she was staying at the house of a Yale
professor; she was in the atmosphere.
There, near the edge of the pack, was Bob Floyd, captain of
the crew, a fair, square face with quiet blue eyes, whose
tranquil gaze was characteristic. To-day it was not tranquil;
it flashed anxiously here and there, and the girl smiled. She knew
as certainly as if the fifteen seniors had told her that Floyd
would be "tapped for Bones." The crew captain and the foot-ball
captain are almost inevitably taken for Skull and Bones. Yet
five years before Jack Emmett, captain of the crew, had not
been taken; only two years back Bert Connolly, captain of the
foot-ball team, had not been taken. The girl, watching the big
chap's unconscious face, knew well what was in his mind. "What
chance have I against all these bully fellows," he was saying
to himself in his soul, "even if I do happen to be crew captain?
Connolly was a mutt--couldn't take him--but Jack Emmett--there
wasn't any reason to be seen for that. And it's just muscles
I've got--I'm not clever--I don't hit it off with the crowd--I've
done nothing for Yale, but just for the crew. Why the dickens
should they take me?" But the girl knew.
The great height and refined, supercilious face of another boy
towered near--Lionel Arnold, a born litterateur, and an artist--he
looked more confident than most. It seemed to the girl he felt
sure of being taken; sure that his name and position and, more
than all, his developed, finished personality must count as much
as that. And the girl knew that in the direct, unsophisticated
judgments of the judges these things did not count at all.
So she gunned over the swarm which gathered to the oak tree as
bees to a hive, able to tell often what was to happen. Even to
her young eyes all these anxious, upturned faces, watching
silently with throbbing pulses for this first vital decision
of their lives, was a stirring sight.
"I can't bear it for the ones who aren't taken," she cried out,
and the chaperon did not smile.
"I know," she said. "Each year I think I'll never come again--
it's too heart-rending. It means so much to them, and only
forty-five can go away happy. Numbers are just broken-hearted.
I don't like it--it's brutal."
"Yes, but it's an incentive to the under-classmen--it holds them
to the mark and gives them ambition, doesn't it?" the girl
argued doubtfully.
The older woman agreed. "I suppose on the whole it's a good
institution. And it's wonderful what wisdom the boys show.
Of course, they make mistakes, but on the whole they pick the
best men astonishingly. So many times they hit the ones who
come to be distinguished."
"But so many times they don't," the girl followed her words.
Her father and Brant were Bones men--why was the girl arguing
against senior societies? "So many, Mrs. Anderson. Uncle Ted's
friend, the President of Hardrington College, was in Yale in
the '80's and made no senior society; Judge Marston of the
Supreme Court dined with us the other night--he didn't make
anything; Dr. Hamlin, who is certainly one of the great physicians
of the country, wasn't taken. I know a lot more. And look at
some who've made things. Look at my cousin, Gus Vanderpool--he
made Keys twenty years ago and has never done a thing since.
And that fat Mr. Hough, who's so rich and dull--he's Bones."
"You've got statistics at your fingers' ends, haven't you?" said
Mrs. Anderson. "Anybody might think you had a brother among the
juniors who you weren't hopeful about." She looked at the girl
curiously. Then: "They must be about all there," she spoke,
leaning out. "A full fifty feet square of dear frightened laddies.
There's Brant, coming across the campus. He looks as if he was
going to make some one president. I suppose he feels so. There's
Johnny McLean. I hope he'll be taken--he's the nicest boy in the
whole junior class--but I'm afraid. He hasn't done anything
in particular."
With that, a thrill caught the most callous of the hundreds of
spectators; a stillness fixed the shifting crowd; from the tower
of Battell chapel, close by, the college bell clanged the stroke
of five; before it stopped striking the first two juniors
would be tapped.
The dominating, unhurried note rang, echoed, and began to
die away as they saw Brant's hand fall on Bob Floyd's shoulder.
The crew captain whirled and leaped, unseeing, through the crowd.
A great shout rose; all over the campus the people surged like
a wind-driven wave toward the two rushing figures, and everywhere
some one cried, "Floyd has gone Bones!" and the exciting business
had begun.
One looks at the smooth faces of boys of twenty and wonders what
the sculptor Life is going to make of them. Those who have known
his work know what sharp tools are in his kit; they know the tragic
possibilities as well as the happy ones of those inevitable strokes;
they shrink a bit as they look at the smooth faces of the boys
and realize how that clay must be moulded in the workshop--how
the strong lines which ought to be there some day must come from
the cutting of pain and the grinding of care and the push and
weight of responsibility. Yet there is service and love, too,
and happiness and the slippery bright blade of success in the
kit of Life the sculptor; so they stand and watch, a bit pitifully
but hopefully, as the work begins, and cannot guide the chisel
but a little way, yet would not, if they could, stop it, for the
finished job is going to be, they trust, a man, and only the
sculptor Life can make such.
The boy called Johnny McLean glanced up at the window in Durfee;
he met the girl's eyes, and the girl smiled back and made a gay
motion with her hand as if to say, "Keep up your pluck; you'll
be taken." And wished she felt sure of it. For, as Mrs. Anderson
had said, he had done nothing in particular. His marks were good,
he was a fair athlete; good at rowing, good at track work; he had
"heeled" the News for a year, but had not made the board. A gift of
music, which bubbled without effort, had put him on the Glee Club.
Yet that had come to him; it was not a thing he had done; boys
are critical of such distinctions. It is said that Skull and Bones
aims at setting its seal above all else on character. This boy had
sailed buoyantly from term to term delighted with the honors which
came to his friends, friends with the men who carried off honors,
with the best and strongest men in his class, yet never quite
arriving for himself. As the bright, anxious young face looked up
at the window where the women sat, the older one thought she could
read the future in it, and she sighed. It was a face which
attracted, broad-browed, clear-eyed, and honest, but not a strong
face--yet. John McLean had only made beginnings; he had accomplished
nothing. Mrs. Anderson, out of an older experience, sighed, because
she had seen just such winning, lovable boys before, and had seen
them grow into saddened, unsuccessful men. Yet he was full of
possibility; the girl was hoping against hope that Brant and the
fourteen other seniors of Skull and Bones would see it so and take
him on that promise. She was not pretending to herself that anything
but Johnny McLean's fate in it was the point of this Tap Day to her.
She was very young, only twenty also, but there was a maturity in
her to which the boy made an appeal. She felt a strength which
others missed; she wanted him to find it; she wanted passionately
to see him take his place where she felt he belonged, with the men
who counted.
The play was in full action. Grave and responsible seniors worked
swiftly here and there through the tight mass, searching each one
his man; every two or three minutes a man was found and felt that
thrilling touch and heard the order, "Go to your room." Each time
there was a shout of applause; each time the campus rushed in
a wave. And still the three hundred stood packed, waiting--
thinning a little, but so little. About thirty had been taken now,
and the black senior hats were visibly fewer, but the upturned boy
faces seemed exactly the same. Only they grew more anxious minute
by minute; minute by minute they turned more nervously this way
and that as the seniors worked through the mass. And as another
and another crashed from among them blind and solemn and happy
with his guardian senior close after, the ones who were left seemed
to drop into deeper quiet. And now there were only two black hats
in the throng; the girl looking down saw John McLean standing
stiffly, his gray eyes fixed, his face pale and set; at that
moment the two seniors found their men together. It was all over.
He had not been taken.
Slowly the two hundred and fifty odd men who had not been good
enough dispersed, pluckily laughing and talking together--
all of them, it is safe to say, with heavy hearts; for Tap Day
counts as much as that at Yale.
John McLean swung across the diagonal of the campus toward
Welch Hall where he lived. He saw the girl and her chaperon
come out of Durfee; and he lingered to meet them. Two days ago
he had met the girl here with Brant, and she had stopped and
shaken hands. It seemed to him it would help if that should
happen today. She might say a word; anything at all to show that
she was friends all the same with a fellow who wasn't good enough.
He longed for that. With a sick chaos of pain pounding at what
seemed to be his lungs he met her. Mrs. Anderson was between
them, putting out a quick hand; the boy hardly saw her as he
took it. He saw the girl, and the girl did not look at him.
With her head up and her brown eyes fixed on Phelps gate-way she
hurried along--and did not look at him. He could not believe it--
that girl--the girl. But she was gone; she had not looked at him.
Like a shot animal he suddenly began to run. He got to his rooms;
they were empty; Baby Thomas, his "wife," known as Archibald
Babington Thomas on the catalogue, but not elsewhere, had been
taken for Scroll and Key; he was off with the others who were
worth while. This boy went into his tiny bedroom and threw
himself down with his face in his pillow and lay still. Men
and women learn--sometimes--as they grow older, how to shut
the doors against disappointments so that only the vital ones
cut through, but at twenty all doors are open; the iron had come
into his soul, and the girl had given it a twist which had taken
his last ounce of courage. He lay still a long time, enduring--
all he could manage at first. It might have been an hour later
that he got up and went to his desk and sat down in the fading
light, his hands deep in his trousers pockets; his athletic young
figure dropped together listlessly; his eyes staring at the desk
where had worked away so many cheerful hours. Pictures hung
around it; there was a group taken last summer of girls and boys
at his home in the country, the girl was in it--he did not look
at her. His father's portrait stood on the desk, and a painting
of his long-dead mother. He thought to himself hotly that it was
good she was dead rather than see him shamed. For the wound was
throbbing with a fever, and the boy had not got to a sense of
proportion; his future seemed blackened. His father's picture
stabbed him; he was a "Bones" man--all of his family--his
grandfather, and the older brothers who had graduated four and
six years ago--all of them. Except himself. The girl had thought
it such a disgrace that she would not look at him! Then he grew
angry. It wasn't decent, to hit a man when he was down. A woman
ought to be gentle--if his mother had been alive--but then he
was glad she wasn't. With that a sob shook him--startled him.
Angrily he stood up and glared about the place. This wouldn't do;
he must pull himself together. He walked up and down the little
living room, bright with boys' belongings, with fraternity shields
and flags and fencing foils and paddles and pictures; he walked
up and down and he whistled "Dunderbeck," which somehow was in
his head. Then he was singing it:
"Oh Dunderbeck, Oh Dunderbeck, how could you be so mean
As even to have thought of such a terrible machine!
For bob-tailed rats and pussy-cats shall never more be seen;
They'll all be ground to sausage-meat in Dunderbeck's machine."
There are times when Camembert cheese is a steadying thing to
think of--or golf balls. "Dunderbeck" answered for John McLean.
It appeared difficult to sing, however--he harked back to
whistling. Then the clear piping broke suddenly. He bit his
lower lip and went and sat down before the desk again and turned
on the electric reading-lamp. Now he had given in long enough;
now he must face the situation; now was the time to find if
there was any backbone in him to "buck up." To fool those chaps
by amounting to something. There was good stuff in this boy that
he applied this caustic and not a salve. His buoyant
lightheartedness whispered that the fellows made mistakes;
that he was only one of many good chaps left; that Dick Harding
had a pull and Jim Stanton had an older brother--excuses came.
But the boy checked them.
"That's not the point; I didn't make it; I didn't deserve it;
I've been easy on myself; I've got to change; so some day my
people won't be ashamed of me--maybe." Slowly, painfully,
he fought his way to a tentative self-respect. He might not
ever be anything big, a power as his father was, but he could
be a hard worker, he could make a place. A few days before a
famous speaker had given an address on an ethical subject at
Yale. A sentence of it came to the boy's struggling mind.
"The courage of the commonplace is greater than the courage
of the crisis," the orator had said. That was his chance--
"the courage of the commonplace." No fireworks for him, perhaps,
ever, but, by Jove, work and will could do a lot, and he could
prove himself worthy.
"I'm not through yet, but ginger," he said out loud. "I can do
my best anyhow and I'll show if I'm not fit"--the energetic tone
trailed off--he was only a boy of twenty--"not fit to be looked
at," he finished brokenly.
It came to him in a vague, comforting way that probably the best
game a man could play with his life would be to use it as a tool
to do work with; to keep it at its brightest, cleanest, most
efficient for the sake of the work. This boy, of no phenomenal
sort, had one marked quality--when he had made a decision he
acted on it. Tonight through the soreness of a bitter
disappointment he put his finger on the highest note of his
character and resolved. All unknown to himself it was a crisis.
It was long past dinner-time, but he dashed out now and got food,
and when Baby Thomas came in he found his room-mate sleepy, but
quite himself; quite steady in his congratulations as well as
normal in his abuse for "keeping a decent white man awake to
this hour."
Three years later the boy graduated from the Boston "Tech."
As his class poured from Huntington Hall, he saw his father
waiting for him. He noted with pride, as he always did, the tall
figure, topped with a wonderful head--a mane of gray hair,
a face carved in iron, squared and cut down to the marrow of
brains and force--a man to be seen in any crowd. With that,
as his own met the keen eyes behind the spectacles, he was aware
of a look which startled him. The boy had graduated at the very
head of his class; that light in his father's eyes all at once
made two years of work a small thing.
"I didn't know you were coming, sir. That's mighty nice of you,"
he said, as they walked down Boylston Street together, and his
father waited a moment and then spoke in his usual incisive tone.
"I wouldn't have liked to miss it, Johnny," he said. "I don't
remember that anything in my life has ever made me as satisfied
as you have to-day."
With a gasp of astonishment the young man looked at him, looked
away, looked at the tops of the houses, and did not find a word
anywhere. His father had never spoken to him so; never before,
perhaps, had he said anything as intimate to any of his sons.
They knew that the cold manner of the great engineer covered
depths, but they never expected to see the depths uncovered.
But here he was, talking of what he felt, of character, and
honor and effort.
"I've appreciated what you've been doing," the even voice went on.
"I talk little about personal affairs. But I'm not uninterested;
I watch. I was anxious about you. You were a more uncertain
quantity than Ted and Harry. Your first three years at Yale
were not satisfactory. I was afraid you lacked manliness.
Then came--a disappointment. It was a blow to us--to family
pride. I watched you more closely, and I saw before that year
ended that you were taking your medicine rightly. I wanted to
tell you of my contentment, but being slow of speech I--couldn't.
So"--the iron face broke for a second into a whimsical grin--
"so I offered you a motor. And you wouldn't take it. I knew,
though you didn't explain, that you feared it would interfere
with your studies. I was right?" Johnny nodded. "Yes. And your
last year at college was--was all I could wish. I see now that
you needed a blow in the face to wake you up--and you got it.
And you waked." The great engineer smiled with clean pleasure.
"I have had"--he hesitated--"I have had always a feeling of
responsibility to your mother for you--more than for the others.
You were so young when she died that you seem more her child.
I was afraid I had not treated you well--that it was my fault
if you failed." The boy made a gesture--he could not very well
speak. His father went on: "So when you refused the motor, when
you went into engineer's camp that first summer instead of going
abroad, I was pleased. Your course here has been a satisfaction,
without a drawback--keener, certainly, because I am an engineer,
and could appreciate, step by step, how well you were doing, how
much you were giving up to do it, how much power you were gaining
by that long sacrifice. I've respected you through these years of
commonplace, and I've known how much more courage it meant in a
pleasure-loving lad such as you than it would have meant in a
serious person such as I am--such as Ted and Harry are, to an
extent, also." The older man, proud and strong and reserved,
turned on his son such a shining face as the boy had never seen.
"That boyish failure isn't wiped out, Johnny, for I shall remember
it as the corner-stone of your career, already built over with
an honorable record. You've made good. I congratulate you and
I honor you."
The boy never knew how he got home. He knocked his shins badly
on a quite visible railing and it was out of the question to
say a single word. But if he staggered it was with an overload
of happiness, and if he was speechless and blind the stricken
faculties were paralyzed with joy. His father walked beside
him and they understood each other. He reeled up the streets
contented.
That night there was a family dinner, and with the coffee his
father turned and ordered fresh champagne opened.
"We must have a new explosion to drink to the new superintendent
of the Oriel mine," he said. Johnny looked at him surprised,
and then at the others, and the faces were bright with the same
look of something which they knew and he did not.
"What's up?" asked Johnny. "Who's the superintendent of the
Oriel mine? Why do we drink to him? What are you all grinning
about, anyway?" The cork flew up to the ceiling, and the butler
poured gold bubbles into the glasses, all but his own.
"Can't I drink to the beggar, too, whoever he is?" asked Johnny,
and moved his glass and glanced up at Mullins. But his father was
beaming at Mullins in a most unusual way and Johnny got no wine.
With that Ted, the oldest brother, pushed back his chair and
stood and lifted his glass.
"We'll drink," he said, and bowed formally to Johnny, "to the
gentleman who is covering us all with glory, to the new
superintendent of the Oriel mine, Mr. John Archer McLean,"
and they stood and drank the toast. Johnny, more or less dizzy,
more or less scarlet, crammed his hands in his pockets and
started and turned redder, and brought out interrogations in
the nervous English which is acquired at our great institutions
of learning.
"Gosh! are you all gone dotty?" he asked. And "Is this a merry
jape?" And "Why, for cat's sake, can't you tell a fellow what's
up your sleeve?" While the family sipped champagne and regarded him.
"Now, if I've squirmed for you enough, I wish you'd explain--
father, tell me!" the boy begged.
And the tale was told by the family, in chorus, without politeness,
interrupting freely. It seemed that the president of the big mine
needed a superintendent, and wishing young blood and the latest
ideas had written to the head of the Mining Department in the
School of Technology to ask if he would give him the name of the
ablest man in the graduating class--a man to be relied on for
character as much as brains, he specified, for the rough army of
miners needed a general at their head almost more than a scientist.
Was there such a combination to be found, he asked, in a youngster
of twenty-three or twenty-four, such as would be graduating from
the "Tech"? If possible, he wanted a very young man--he wanted the
enthusiasm, he wanted the athletic tendency, he wanted the
plus-strength, he wanted the unmade reputation which would look
for its making to hard work in the mine. The letter was produced
and read to the shamefaced Johnny. "Gosh!" he remarked at intervals
and remarked practically nothing else. There was no need. They were
so proud and so glad that it was almost too much for the boy who
had been a failure three years ago.
