Kitabı oku: «The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862», sayfa 4

The educational system pursued at Cambridge is open, I think, to one very grave objection. Unless the student is tolerably wealthy, he is deprived of the advantages which his richer companions enjoy. The brief lectures—of one hour's duration only—delivered daily by the college tutors to a crowd of undergraduates, are ill calculated to benefit the striving individual student. As far as the college is concerned, the youth is left to himself. If he cannot afford the expense of a private tutor, his attainments are due to solitary application, and he is self taught within the very walls of a college. The private tutors reap a rich harvest from this careless system. They are usually members of the university who have recently taken their first degree, and prefer the large recompense of tuition to the miserable stipend of a curacy. To each of their pupils—and a popular private tutor has usually eight or ten—they devote one hour daily, and their charge is $70 for the term. As a term sometimes expires at the end of seven weeks, they receive about $2 an hour. This sum is beyond the poor scholar's means, and he has to run an unequal race at the examinations with his more fortunate competitor.

If appearances are to be trusted, the Trinity undergraduates are not untiring students. They seem to pass their days and nights in the pursuit of pleasure. The great evil of the English universities is the credit system, and though Dr. Whewell endeavored to show me that it was thoroughly discountenanced by the college authorities, he did not succeed in convincing me that they were dealing properly with the difficulty. A student, in defiance of all the restrictions imposed upon his intercourse with the tradesmen of the town, may contract debts to almost any amount. It is notorious that parents are brought to the verge of ruin every year by their sons' misconduct at college, unless they choose to contest the demands of the tradesmen in a court of law, by pleading the infancy of the debtor when he has not attained his majority. The college regulations demand that every tradesman licensed by the university—and with none other is the student authorized to deal—shall send to the tutor, at the expiration of each term, the bills of the respective undergraduates who have been his customers. From the position occupied in society by the friends of the student, the tutor is enabled to judge whether he is exceeding his income. The expenditure which would be excessive for the son of a clergyman, with a small living, would be moderate for the heir to a peerage. It is further required that the expenses of each term shall be paid before the undergraduate recommences his studies, and any tradesman who is known to withhold from the tutor's knowledge any debt, or portion of a debt, owing him by any student, is immediately deprived of his license. Nevertheless, all but a few of the more wealthy tradesmen conduct their transactions with the students on the understanding that these regulations are to be violated at pleasure. Thus, from term to term, debt is added to debt, until the student is preparing to leave the university. Then the tradesman becomes eager for a settlement. The student endeavors to put him off with promises. The tradesman hurries to a lawyer. A writ is issued, judgment is delivered, and the student has to fly from the university without taking his degree, in order to escape a prison. Or, if he is in his minority, proceedings are commenced against his father, who, if he is a proud man, will rather pay the bill than contest it, though the entire amount will seriously impair the fortunes of his other children. Or he may deny his liability, plead that his son is a minor, and that the articles furnished were not necessaries. In this way, it has been argued by barristers on the plaintiff's side that wine, cigars, jewels, and hired horses were necessaries of life, and the presiding judge has sometimes ruled on one side that they were, and sometimes on the other, that they were not. Hundreds of young men have had their prospects in life blasted by this system, and yet, no cure has been found. I heard of one instance, and it was only one of many nearly similar, where an undergraduate had contracted debts amounting to upward of $10,000 beyond his ability to pay. Of this sum, I recollect some of the items: $1,000 was for cigars, $3,000 for wine, $2,500 for the hire of horses, $1,900 for rings, pins, and other trinkets, and only $200 for books. He had attained his majority, and was sent to prison, his father resolutely refusing to pay his debts. He languished in prison for two years, and died there.

Nor does it always follow that the undergraduate may be saved from this disgrace and ruin by firmness and honorable principles. He is, for the first time in his life, his own master. The superintendence of the college tutor amounts to just nothing at all. Immediately he arrives at the university, he is besieged by tradesmen. It is particularly impressed upon him, that money is not necessary to conclude a bargain. He can pay when he likes. Three years hence will do. The youth is sorely tempted. He finds his new college acquaintance sailing under press of canvas, over the sea of extravagance. They give splendid wine parties, and invite him to the jovial board. He is bound to return the hospitality of these prime fellows. One extravagance leads to another. The port and sherry, that he could afford, shine no more upon his table. He drinks hock now, and claret, and princely champagne, at two dollars and fifty cents a bottle. He smokes cigars at $10 a pound. He is living like a gentleman. Let the poor sizar toil over musty books; he will have a race horse. 'Tis a fine life. How much better than a schoolboy's. He speaks of his father as the governor, and talks in a flash manner of the girls he is acquainted with. He thinks he will marry one of them, but his choice is not determined. The college dons, professors, tutors, fellows, know the temptations, know the risk, know the ruinous goal, but no one arrests his career. Which is most to blame; the raw, undisciplined boy, or the evil university system?

I passed a rare time at Cambridge. What delight it was in those cold mornings to take a bracing walk into the country, and looking back over miles of level land, to behold the chapel of King's College, and the tower of St. Mary's church, which had been the land beacons of aspiring students for so many generations! I verily believe that the chapel of King's College is the finest piece of modern architecture in the world. It is a poem in stone! Teaching so much—not of this earth, only; least of this earth, perhaps. I never wearied of walking in it, and around it, repeating Wordsworth's sonnet, and feeling that 'for a few white-robed scholars only,' it was not built; but as an utterance of man's spirit, more fervent than he could express in the articulate speech of man. The soul of the individual, nurtured by any semblance of culture, who can stand unmoved beneath that fretted roof, must be cold as the frozen zone. It remains with me, like Niagara.

As a college, Trinity is the most interesting. The chapel is very inferior to that of King's, but it is hallowed by the memory of Newton. Roubiliac's statue of the philosopher is the chief object of interest, and the Trinity men do not envy the scholars of King's their chapel, when they behold that statue. The dean of Trinity, the Rev. W. Carns, author of the 'Life of Simeon,' is the present possessor of the rooms once occupied by Newton. The little watch tower where he pierced the heavens with his telescope is still standing. One ascends it, and surveys the firmament, not without a reverential feeling. Cambridge abounds with the associations of genius. Chaucer studied here, and at Oxford also, it is said; and in treading the great court of Trinity, one cannot help thinking of Bacon. Milton's mulberry tree is yet standing, and puts forth a few fresh leaves every spring in the garden of Christ's College. His manuscript of 'Comus,' partly in his own writing, partly in that of his amanuensis—of one of his daughters, it is probable—is in the library of Trinity College, and may be seen by the curious. The spirits of these venerable men still haunt the scenes of their studious youth, and with their mighty shadows brooding over us, what is the value of dollars and dimes?

A PHYSICIAN'S STORY

'Phil, keep the office door shut and the windows open. None of your sacrilegious games of marbles on the front steps. Behave yourself respectably, and wash bottles till I come back, or I'll turn you off to-morrow. Have an eye to Mrs. Thompson's gate, and if anybody should call for me, you know where I am to be found, I suppose?

Phil responded by a grinning nod, the question was superfluous. It is an attribute of boys of fourteen that they know everything they should not know, and if there be one of the class who excels his fellows in useless knowledge, my Phil is that lad. Apparently busied forever in those light but continuous labors which pertain to an office boy, he contrived to keep a far more watchful eye upon my movements than I was able to do upon his, and could tell (probably did) exactly in what direction I usually bent my steps after the above formula, whether I walked on the right or left hand side of the street, and how soon I reached my destination—the number of times my tender knuckles came in contact with a certain hard green door, and the reception that awaited me inside it, the length of my stay—the only thing he had a legitimate right to know—and the mien, cheerful or dejected, according to the fortunes of the day, with which I returned to the empty office and full bottles, over which he was supposed to mount guard during my absence.

Preferring not to notice the peculiarity of my assistant's manner, as it might involve awkward explanations, I closed the door of his prison with an authoritative bang, that shook the slate outside it, and strode with hasty steps down the village street. There was no occasion for hurry, the business I had on hand was not of a kind to demand it, and had been pending a reasonable time; nor would any more haste on my part be lively to advance it much, but would rather verify the old proverb, of 'less speed.' I therefore walked fast purely as a matter of principle, in the hope, that the village dames, who I knew were watching my progress from behind the green paper curtains of their 'sittin' room' windows, might possibly judge from my speed, that I had been called to a patient at last. Vain hope! idle precaution! every one of those astute matrons knew at least as well as myself the errand upon which I was bound, and far better than I, as I own in all humility, the state of health in the neighborhood, which precluded all possibility of any professional exertion on my part.

And here I may remark, literally en passant, that the town in which I had chosen to locate was salubrious to a painful and unnatural degree, the very last place in the world for a young physician in ordinary circumstances to seek his fortune, but my circumstances were peculiar—it was not so much fortune that I sought—in short, I had my reasons—and a large practice would have greatly interfered with my more serious occupation. Still, I do not deny that a slight modicum of professional business, just to fill up the intervening time and save appearances, would not have been amiss, and I had been in fact rather anxiously looking for some symptoms of the sort for a considerable time, without any result at all. The inhabitants all took Hall's 'Journal of Health;' they cherished Buchan's 'Domestic Medicine,' they studied the 'Handbook of Hygiene;' they were learned in the works of Fowler. Cold water was cheap and plentiful, they used it externally and internally—exercise was fashionable and inevitable, where every lady was her own help, and every gentleman his own woodsawyer; food was just dear enough to make surfeits undesirable, and medicine was so unpopular that nobody before me ever ventured to open a drug store; the old ladies dispensed a few herbs privately, and that was the end of it. People did not seem to die; if anything was the matter with them, they perseveringly 'kept on,' till it stopped, the disease retiring in despair from their determination to be well. Fat parties, who ought to have been dropsical, were not so at all—they grew fatter, and flourished like green bay trees; lean persons, threatening to go off in a decline, declining to do so, remained. Adventurous little boys, falling from the tops of high trees to the stony ground, sustained no injuries beyond the maternal chastisement and brandy-and-brown-paper of home; babies defied croup and colic with the slender aid of 'Bateman's Drops,' and 'Syrup of Squills,' dispensed by a wise grandma, and children of mature years went through the popular infant disorders as they went through their grammars, and with about as much result; mumps and measles, chills and chicken pox, prevailed and disappeared without medical assistance, and though all the children in the village whooped like wild Indians, no anxious parent ever thought it necessary to call in a physician. There was but one in the place before my advent, a comfortable, elderly man, who selected the profession, as practised in his native town, because it interfered less than any other with his punctual habits of sleeping and eating, and was a gentlemanly sinecure, possessing peculiar privileges. No patient of his ever dreamt of calling him out at night, or keeping him away from his meals; the person to be ill, chose a convenient hour between dinner and tea, and gave respectful notice at a reasonable time beforehand. No extraordinary accidents, requiring wonderful feats of surgery, were ever permitted in his practice; no stranger shocked his nerves by dying suddenly at the village hotel; no mysterious diseases, unknown of science, baffled his skill, or defied it; the locality was too far south for bronchitis and consumption, too far north for poisonous malaria fevers and coups de soleil; and being inland, just inside the line of the coast scourges of cholera and yellow Jack. In short, to quote the only epitaph in the village churchyard, 'Physicians was in vain.'

It was a beautiful morning on which I took my way through this healthful town—I mean, of course, professionally speaking, a very fine morning, indeed. The air was warm and damp, as if laden with pleurisy and ague; the ground soft and oozy, seemed a sure thing for rheumatism and influenza. The sun unseasonably hot; fever and rush of blood to the head. Old Captain Hopkins is constitutionally inclined to gout—he never had a twinge through the rainy season, but it is just possible that this may settle him. Mother Hawks is rheumatic, is she? if she is about, disseminating scandal to-day, I shall be avenged for her slandering me; and the Sessions girls come out to get the news in all weather. That vicious child of Mrs. Thompson, after keeping me in suspense four months, will probably 'croup up' to-night, and its grandmother Banks is off on a visit, and Dr. Coachey never goes out after dark, and I live right over the way! With these encouraging reflections, and a grateful glance upward, where a copper-colored sun blazed through a sea of purple mist, I pursued my way to the mansion of Colonel Marston, father to Miss Dora Marston, to whom I am honorary cousin.

Colonel Marston's house is situated on a fine grassy knoll, shaded by handsome trees, and inclosed with a well kept hedge; it is just out of reach of village eyes and ears, but not beyond the pale of village curiosity. Anybody there can tell you by what right I address good Mrs. Marston as my aunt, and pretty Dora as my cousin, while being not in the least related to either. My dear mother, now deceased, when a young widow, possessed of some property and a little boy, married Miss Dora's uncle, and became her aunt, thus making me, as I consider, virtually her cousin. At any rate, for twenty years I have been a frequent visitor at the dear old house, recognized in my cousinly capacity by the family, and treated accordingly, and for more than half that time like a wolf in sheep's clothing, have I sought the avuncular mansion with an eye to Miss Dora, a fact she seems surprisingly unconscious of, considering how many times, by hint and innuendo, by sigh and look, and tender courtesy, and honest speech, I have shown her the place she occupies in my mind, and given her, as it appears, the right to drive me out of it, if possible. Tom Hayes is her favorite instrument of torture. He is the young lawyer of the place, as I am the young doctor, and is advancing about as fast in his profession. He is considered a good-looking fellow, though I don't see it, and has undoubtedly a fine voice, upon which pretext he spends about half his time twanging away upon Dora's guitar, and waking Col. Marston from his afternoon nap. It would look better, I must say, for a young man in his position, to be at home, waiting for practice; but I have heard that he says the same of me, and perhaps with equal justice. At all events, it was hard to find his horse already tied to the gate post on that particular spring day, when warm and weary, I arrived on the battle ground, prepared to put my fate to the touch at once.

On one side of the house lay the broad white public road, from which one deviated to approach this earthly paradise; on the other, a narrower private one, a mere cart track, grass-grown, cool, and shady, leading down to the mill stream that ran behind the grounds, brawling and seething and swelled by the spring rains into quite a respectable torrent. Down this path Dora always took me to walk when she wanted me to say anything uncommonly foolish, which could serve her as food for laughter, and down this path again we must always go when that villain Hayes was of the party, and she wanted to play me off against him, or him against me, or both against her womanly vanities. Accordingly I found them equipped for a walk, loitering on the front piazza, not waiting for me, however, as Dora took pains to explain, and as I could readily believe, for they were flirting over a new song. Not in the best of humor, I took the offered seat near them, wiped my heated brows, and advised my fair cousin not to saunter through the damp woodland paths on this most unhealthy morning. 'I advise you as a physician, mind you,' said I, to give weight to the opinion which might be denied it in my cousinly capacity; but she received it with utter contempt and ridicule of my pretensions, gladly joined by Mr. Hayes, whose white teeth gleamed wolfishly behind a long black mustache, at my expense. We had shaken hands with great cordiality; I had inquired after his clients, he had professed interest in my patients; I had asked him how he had enjoyed the ride with Miss Julia Stevens last evening, and he had just remembered seeing me, as he drove past Mrs. Hedge's in the front garden with Anna Hedge; a reminiscence which went a thought too far, for I had been, at the time of which he spoke, seated on this very piazza beside the innocent young lady opposite, who now showed no tokens of the sweet confusion, with which she listened to my broken confidence last night, and only glanced from one to the other with guileless interest and wondering simplicity.

Now I had said enough to her on that occasion to make me feel some anxiety concerning her demeanor to-day, and some resolution concerning my own. I had a right to expect, after the way in which she then treated me, that if my cheeks burned and my ears tingled, and my heart beat faster, at the remembrance of that sweet meeting, hers would at least betray some consciousness of the fact. But not a fleeting tremor shook her little hand, not a shade of color deepened the rose of her round cheek, not a passing emotion of bashfulness weighed down her curly eyelashes. She was serenely self-possessed, superbly cool, and attentive to the obnoxious Hayes, in proportion as she was disregardful of me.

Burning with suppressed indignation, I accepted her careless invitation, and followed the precious pair into the shrubbery, there being no other way of obtaining the explanation I was determined to have this morning. I had often seen such demonstrations before, and borne them with comparative patience, knowing how well worth the trouble of winning, how true and tender after all, if only it could be reached under these disguising caprices, was the wayward little heart that had tested my love and tried my temper all these years. From her very cradle she provoked me, from the frills of her baby cap she mocked me; and, grown into the ranks of little girlhood, systematically aggravated me by artful preference of all the little boys I most hated, for whose infant attentions she unceremoniously deserted my elder claim and assured protection. And yet, in all her childish troubles, from torn frocks to Latin lexicons, she flew to me for aid, counsel, sympathy, and protection, repenting of all her sins against me, and walking in a straight path again, till between her sweet eyes, and her pretty confessions, her helpless reliance, and gentle ministering to my vanity, she had regained a larger place than before in my alienated heart, and could afford to play the very deuce with it again.

'Twenty years of this sort of thing must have settled the question one way or another,' I argued; 'there is no use in my putting up any longer with this bewitched town, and my empty slate, Phil's nonsense, and Tom Hayes's impudence, my aunt's sermons, and my uncle's lectures, and Miss Dora's caprices; she has either flirted with me, or she has loved me from her cradle.' I have sometimes thought the latter, but I greatly suspect it is the former. Grand query, which is it? and I resolved to know to-day.

It was in vain, however, that I tried during the shady walk to gain a moment's conversation with Dora, a whisper in her ear, a look of her eye, or a touch of her hand; such favors were reserved for the military cavalier who walked at her side, exultant and triumphantly good-natured, though I seemed to read sneering and defiance in the very cock of his hat. Sullen and morose, as I saw her lifted over muddy places in his proud arms, or climbing a stile by his gallant assistance, I followed more slowly, and completing this pleasant party behind me and before me, and about me, wherever he could get within stumbling reach, trotted my favorite aversion, Rover, an ugly, awkward, senseless, and ill-conditioned puppy, whom Dora had elected her prime pet and favorite, for no better reason apparently than that we all hated him. The colonel kicked him, Mrs. Marston chased him, the cook scalded him, the boys stoned him, and I could hardly refrain from giving public utterance to the anathemas that burned on my tongue, when the wretched animal, who seemed to have an insane attraction to me, floundered about my legs as I moved, or flapped his stump tail under my chair when I sat still. Dora alone, with strange perversity, persisted in ignoring his bad habits, his vulgar manners, his uselessness, his ugliness, and his impudence, and set me at defiance when I objected to him, by pressing him in her beautiful arms—happy cur that he was!—and laying her soft cheek against his villainous bristles, till in very disgust and jealousy I ceased to complain, and learned to submit quietly to his revolting familiarities.

On the present occasion the few private kicks and pinches which I ventured to bestow, availed nothing against his clinging affection, till we drew near the water, and the sight of a rabbit's white tail further up the bank effected my release from his attentions, for he immediately galloped in pursuit of it, and a similar happy accident left me for a moment free to approach Dora without the intervention of my friend, Mr. Hayes, who had gallantly volunteered to scramble up a steep bank for a cluster of pink flowers which Miss Dora persistently admired, as they waved in inaccessible beauty above her head, though sister blossoms bloomed all about her feet. Being thus freed from the attendance of both puppies, as I suitably classed them in my mind, I approached the little queen of my heart, who stood on the very verge of the wet sand, where she had planted herself in express defiance of my professional warning, with the water gently oozing up around her thin slippers.

'Don't come here, cousin! I'm afraid you'll wet your feet!' she called out impertinently as I drew near; but her eyes were not lifted, and such a rosy flush crept up her face as she said it, that I forgot my hot walk and hotter indignation, and glowed less with anger and more with love. I laid my hand lightly on her shoulder, looking down on her mocking lips, and stooping, whispered something in her ear—in spite of female coquetry (in her person), and her uneasy pretexts to escape, in spite of Tommy Hayes, in spite of Rover, that marplot puppy, I had a moment's hearing, and used it manfully, and as I whispered, my heart beat thick with triumph, for she could not raise her eyes to mine, they were pensively watching the source of the rippling flood, and bright tears seemed quivering on the silken lashes, her cheeks wore a warmer scarlet, her pretty lips trembled with the fateful answer, and I was sure it wasn't no, and saw them pout, gracious heavens! to suit one of those shrill female screams which more than trump of war or voice of cannon strike panic into the bold heart of man, and unnerve him to the finger ends. 'My dog, my puppy!' she sobbed, 'he'll be drowned, he can't swim! He's coming down stream, tail first, poor fellow! I knew it was Rover! Oh why don't you go and save him?'

This passionate appeal was addressed to the sympathizing Hayes, I being in disgrace on account of an unfortunate ejaculation, wrung from me in the first surprise, an impoliteness in strong contrast to the graceful gallantry of the hero of the cliff, who supported the weeping maiden in his arms, and tenderly soothed her excitement, as the unhappy Rover wheeled and eddied toward us.

'Why don't you go?' she reiterated impatiently, stamping her little foot, and as her eyes this time wandered toward me, I responded by throwing off my cap and coat, and preparing to obey; it was of no use to remonstrate or to explain to her that it was almost impossible to rescue the dog, and that the attempt would involve great risk of my own life—what did she care for that? The emotion I had so proudly misinterpreted on her lovely face, was for a blundering senseless puppy; the heart I had so faithfully served to win, was given to a miserable dandy: what remained to me, but to finish a life devoted to an unworthy object, by consistently sacrificing it in the same worthless cause; and with the bitter hope that my failures would end here, I prepared to plunge into the rushing water.

I could not help looking back at Dora, who, tightly clinging to her lover's arm, had been hidden from me during my rapid preparations by his tall figure and ample white linen robes. 'Don't you go,' she had said to him; 'let George go; if he can swear, he can swim—don't you try, Mr. Hayes!'

Mr. Hayes had no idea of trying; he risk his life, a life so precious to a world of spinsters, for a miserable fellow puppy! he wash the dye from those perfumed whiskers—dear to the hearts of so many maidens—he ruin those freshly laundered clothes, he abandon those new French boots! Ridiculous! He glanced down into his companion's pale face with a smile of exquisite amusement, as she said it, but Dora's eyes were tightly shut, and she did not see him; so the sneer travelled to me, who was about to drown in his stead for his lady's pleasure, and gave my heart its last dying pang as I quitted the shore.

A cry of terror and recall, from what had been a dear voice, followed my splashing descent into the deep water, and thrilled my nerves a moment; but I struck out bravely for the whirlpool, where, plunging, yelping, struggling, revolved the wretched beast, to whom my cousin had resolved to sacrifice my life, and for whose sake she was crying on the beach. Much time was lost in reaching, more in capturing the blundering fool, who, mad with fear and fright, dreaded me more than the water, and when I had him in my arms at last, we were rapidly shooting toward the cruel wheel that splashed and creaked a hundred rods below, ready to suck us in to certain death. Well, what would it matter? Dora would be sorry perhaps, at least for the dog, and so desperately bitter and vengeful was I that I was glad her clumsy pet, since she loved him so much, was to drown in my company, that she too might feel what it was to mourn the loss of something dearly loved, and that my death would be associated in her mind with a painful event—in short, I despised the weakness and felt my mad folly, but it would have its way. I closed my eyes upon the shifting scene, and tried to prepare for death, unconscious that the current was bearing me close to the shore, and that my only chance of escape was near. Something struck my face, a thrilling voice called my name, I raised my heavy gaze, and there, clinging to the farthest branches of an old tree that had fallen over into the water, and stretching out her arms to me, was Dora, her cheeks wet, her lips pale, her eyes imploringly fixed on me, or on the burden I carried, regardless of the rushing flood that saturated her floating dress and tiny feet, and threatened to bear her away from the frail support to which she clung. Feeble, exhausted, despairing, as I was, there was a magnetic power in that dear voice, in that beautiful pale face, that inspired me with hope, and drew me back to life.

A few strokes impelled me nearer, the stream drifted me among the sweeping branches, I was clasped in those beautiful arms, then seized and dragged along by a stronger gripe, and presently lay half senseless and wholly exhausted on the sandy beach.