Stover at Yale quotes

Then, settling, not flopping, down, he completed his preparations for the journey by raising the sharp crease of the trousers one inch over each knee—a legendary precaution which in youth is believed to prevent vulgar bagging.

Each movement was executed without haste or embarrassment, but leisurely, with the deliberate savoir faire of the complete man of the world he had become at the terrific age of eighteen.

In front of him spasmodic freshmen arrived, struggling from their overcoats in embarrassed plunges that threatened to leave them publicly in their shirt sleeves.

“Honor bright.” A flicker of reminiscent convictions passed over McNab’s frolicking face. “Yes, and I made a lot of resolutions, too—good resolutions.”

“Well, that was day before yesterday.”

The train started with a sudden crunching. A curious, excited thrill possessed Stover. He had embarked, and the quick plunge into the darkness of the long tunnel had, to his keenly sentimental imagination, something of the dark transition from one world into another.

“How?” For the first time the question impressed itself on him. He scratched his head and said simply, unconscious of the wide application of what he said:

“Gee! guess I didn’t stop to think how rotten I was.”

He went to bed, gorgeously happy with the first throbbing, satisfying intoxication of success. The whole world must be concerned with him now. He was no longer unknown; he had emerged, freed himself from the thralling oblivion of the mass.

He had won his spurs and the right to lounge, and he looked forward eagerly to the rest of the year as a time for reading and the opening up of the friendships of which he had dreamed.

Old age settled down rapidly upon him, and at eighteen that malady appears in its most virulent form.

Perhaps there was a little justification. The test he had gone through had educated him to self-control in its most difficult form.

“Gimbel’s all right; a good politician.”

“Everyone’s sincere.”

“You mean everyone’s convinced of his own sincerity.”

“You mean everyone’s convinced of his own sincerity.”

“Sure; easiest person in the world to convince.”

Stover laughed a little consciously, wondering for a brief moment if the remark could be directed at him. Curiously enough, the more the blunt antagonism of Regan impressed him, the more he was reassured that the man was too radical ever to challenge his leadership.

“Well, what then?” he said, wondering what other standard could be applied.

“I wonder how real you will be in your success,” she said, looking at him steadily.

“You think I am calculating and cold about it,” he said, insisting.

“I don’t believe you have begun to think yet.”

“Because⁠—well, because you are too popular, too successful. It’s all come too easily. You’ve had nothing to test you. There’s nothing so much alike as the successful men here.”

“You are very old for your years,” he said, plainly annoyed.

“Tough about Dudley, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps it’s Bones’s loss,” said Regan grimly. “Dudley’s all right. He’s lucky. He’s ten times the man he was this morning.”

Neither Hungerford nor Stover answered.

A new life—life itself—was suddenly revealing itself to him; not the guarded existences of his own kind, but the earnest romance of the submerged nine-tenths. As Swazey stopped, he said impulsively, directly:

“By George, Swazey, I envy you!”

“Well, it’s taught me to size men up pretty sharply,” said Swazey, continuing. “I’ve seen them in the raw, I’ve seen them in all sorts of tests. I’ve sort of got a pretty guess what they’ll do or not do.

“Say, Bob, I just wanted you to know one thing.”

“I’m just a plain damn fool; do you get that?”

“Just a plain damn fool—good night!”

Then he considered. Even their life and their point of view was something unknown. It was true he was only a part of the machine of college, one of the wheels that had to revolve in its appointed groove.

He had thought of himself always as one who led, and suddenly he perceived that it was he who followed.

A step sounded by him, and the winking eye of a pipe. Someone unaware of his tenancy approached the steps. Stover, in a flare-up of the tobacco, recognized him.

“That. A colossal mumbo-jumbo that has got every one of you in its grip.” He paused a moment and gave a short laugh.

“Did you ever stop to think, Stover, that this fetish of society secrecy that is spread all over this Christian, democratic nation is nothing but a return of idol-worship?”

This idea was beyond Stover, and so, not comprehending it, he resented it. He did not reply. Brockhurst, perceiving that he had spoken too frankly, rose.

“Three cards,” said Swazey’s voice. “Well, Brocky, what’s your remedy?”

“A smashing war every ten years,” said Brockhurst shortly.

“Why, you bloody butcher,” said Regan, who did not seize the idea, while from the card-table came the chorus:

“By Jingo,” said Stover, listening to this jumble of words, entranced, “I believe you’re right. And so you’ve reduced it to a science, eh—Foolology?”

Ricketts, half in earnest, never entirely in jest

, abetted by newly arriving tobies, was off again on his pet theories of business imagination, disdaining the occasional gibes that were flung at him from Gimbel’s table.

“The pink ones,” he said solemnly.

“Study’s better in pink,” said Stover wisely to McNab, who was trying to exceed him in dignity. “Most becomin’.”

“Make him study, Dopey,” continued Stover. “I make him study.”

“What right you got to say that?”

“Every right⁠—every,” said McNab, trying to remember what was the original destination of his argument.

“I’m bad example ’n you’re good infloonce, there’s diff, see?”

Never taken home—walk myself—self-control.” He began to laugh at the memory of Tom Kelly, who had insisted on going to bed with one boot under the pillow and his watch on the floor. The excruciating humor of it almost made him collapse.

He clung to the nearest tree and wept for joy.

“Never hear end of it—Tom Kelly—boots—wonderful—poor old Tom—’n I walkin’ home—alone.”

“Wiggin is the type of man,” said Brockhurst, meditatively puffing his pipe, “that is the glorification of the commonplace.

He is a sort of sublime earthworm, plodding along and claiming acquaintance with the rose because he travels around the roots.

He is really by instinct a bricklayer, and the danger is that he may continue either in literature or some profession where the cry is for imagination.”

“Still, you would have liked it.”

“Sure; I’m inconsistent,” said Brocky, with a laugh. “It’s only when I don’t get what I want that my beautiful reason shows me I shouldn’t have had it.”

“Well, there’s no danger of either of us disappearing under the halos,” said Stover shortly.

“If I were tapped—it would mean a good deal to her. I’ll be darned if I’ll let Brocky work me up. I’m not going up against anything more! I’ve done enough here.”

He said it defiantly, for the courage of a man has two factors, his courage and the courage of the woman he loves.

He was hurt at this, and his face showed it.

“It’s something to be able to refuse what others are grabbing for,” he said shortly.

“But all you seem to care for is the name.”