I Teach in a Hick College
I
THERE are plenty of hick colleges all over the country, but the one in which I teach is so perfect an example that it might be used as a yardstick by which to measure all the rest. Not a single quality is missing: we have a deep purpose in life; we are not only poor, but desperate; we supply a college education to rustic boys and girls for about the price of a secondhand Ford; we neither dance, drink, nor smoke, and pet as little as possible; in short, we are so different from the usual college of movie and popular novel that you really ought to know something about us.
So far as I can discover, old Brother Spence was the only Georgian who founded two colleges. As a young Methodist minister, he first went out West to do good to the Indians. Then he decided that the Georgia mountaineers needed him more, and came back home. Many people forget that Georgia has mountains. They think of us as a land of turpentine swamps. But in the northern part of our state the great Blue Ridge comes to its most delectable climax; farthest south of all the Appalachians, these mountains combine the freshness of a high country with the warmth of a Southern sun. In the hopeful nineties, when all things were possible, Brother Spence came back to this region, so beautiful before man haggled it up. He went into a dreamy little valley on the western side of the mountains and founded one college; then he drove his horse and buggy over to the eastern side and founded us. One of the miracles of the twentieth century is that we still persist.
There were few railroads in those days. Students came in from miles around, some of them walking barefoot, as Carlyle walked to Edinburgh University. They came from high ridges and hidden coves; they came from the little corn patches, the log cabins, and the moonshine stills. This was just what Brother Spence wanted. He listened to the boy whose only resource was a ‘yearlin’ steer,’ which he hoped to ‘larn up’ to work on the college farm. He told of the woman who had sold her cookstove ‘to put it into Davy’s head.’ Cooking over the fireplace was hard work, but she had a boy in school. Very few of the ones who came were ready to enter college; so Brother Spence had to found a high school, too. Even this would n’t take care of everybody. Finally he decided to do the business up right and include everything from the first grade to the bachelor’s degree.
II
Of course, many things have changed during the last forty years. The town developed its own grade school, so we dropped ours. Georgia’s high schools increased from eleven to over three hundred, so we did n’t need our ‘Academy,’ either. Our students now come from the small towns and farms fully as much as from the mountains, and none of them come barefoot. But our poverty, which has been so constant a companion for nearly forty years, remains. We should hardly feel normal in any other state.
Most colleges think they are poor; but have you ever heard of a college without a single college building? Our recitation hall is a converted livery stable; our library is a redeemed doctor’s office; our girls’ dormitory is a reclaimed summer hotel; our boys’ dormitory is a reformed dwelling house; and our chapel is a regenerated Chautauqua hall. Actual money is so scarce that we have resorted to a complicated system of barter, far more interesting than ordinary getting and spending. I buy milk from a neighboring farmer, but I would n’t think of paying him money for it. Each month I write him an order for thirty quarts’ worth of tuition, with which the farmer’s son pays his bills at the college treasury. And the treasurer charges the sum against my salary account. I receive a good part of my salary in the form of peaches, potatoes, hams, and firewood from the college farm. Even as it is, however, salaries are always in arrears, and are very small when they are paid. So we have to scheme, and patch our clothes, and, when tempted to have an appendicitis operation, simply subdue the impulse.
I don’t quite know why the millionaires have all overlooked us. Other schools whose mountaineers were not one bit more convincing than ours have got money. Other founders not half as charming as our Brother Spence, with his warm heart, his Southern eloquence, his shrewd humor, have moved the most stubborn of magnates. To be sure, Mr. Carnegie helped us toward a small endowment. But the kings of the twentieth century have not followed his example.
No, it is not the millionaires who have loved and cherished us — it is the New England old maids! Here it was that Brother Spence made his master stroke. He soon saw that he could not finance his college with funds from a South still impoverished, still unable to support decent public schools. Hence he bravely laid aside his denominationalism and called in help from a more powerful church in the North. We became a missionary college, and the sewing circles in Vermont and Massachusetts heard about us. Brother Spence grew old and died, but his system carries on. We owe our continued existence to five-dollar donations from those thousands of gnarled but generous hearts who people the New England hills.
But I am dwelling too long on the hick college as picturesque tradition. I am more interested in telling you how we stand the wear and tear of the present age. Well, frankly, it’s going pretty hard with us. Victorian ideals, when sincere, were capable of being beautiful. We inherited these while they still had life in them; but we make a rather sorry sight still clinging to the dead husks. The one thing that sometimes makes me want to leave this land forever is my despair at the restricted view of life which we seem bent on giving our students. It is n’t the fault of any one person. A thousand complicated things have helped to make us that way. But the upshot of it is that we pay far too much attention to what our students do, and far too little to what they are.
The ideal student in the eyes of the administration is the docile, conforming student who makes fairly good marks, but who has no original ideas, nor any questioning fire in him. Every trace of individuality is censored out of our poor little college paper by official supervision. The faculty will not allow dancing because ‘ the trustees would n’t hear to it.’ The trustees say it really does n’t matter to them, but ‘the parents would be outraged.’ Most Georgia parents seem quite willing that their sons and daughters should be thus carefully guarded at college, but they readily let them dance when they come home.
Perhaps it does n’t matter much that the wine of life should leak away into the sands. But it does matter, I think, that the student’s whole set of values should be so badly confused. A person becomes good or bad according to whether he does or does not do certain trivial things. Our handbook of rules is a wonderful document. It explains that young women are not allowed under any conditions to smoke tobacco; and that young men may not smoke in any college building, or on the street, or in any public place. As a concession to masculine waywardness, smoking is not utterly forbidden; but it must be indulged only in furtive secrecy. Several of our students were recently expelled for drinking a mouthful of brandy; another, convicted of flagrant and outrageous cheating, was allowed to remain. One of the seniors remarked to me that of course the authorities had to expel the brandy drinkers, because they had injured the reputation of the college, but that the faculty could go easy in the other case, as a little quiet cheating would hardly be noticed. I thought he was being ironical. To my dismay, however, I found that he was entirely serious.
Caught in this maze of rules (which even specify that one may not appear in class without a necktie), compelled to attend chapel, herded to church twice each Sunday, is it any wonder that our more intelligent students come dangerously near to having less respect for the college at the end of their course than at the beginning? They at least read books and magazines in the library, and find that many very estimable people have a view of life quite different from that laid down in the handbook of rules.
I wish we could get away from all this and give our students the notion that there is something more important than the mere a voidance of naughtiness; that cigarettes, like coffee, are a matter of taste and manners, but hardly to be dignified as a means of sin; that even the heinousness of brandy is largely dependent on how, when, and where it is drunk. I wish we could give them some notion of what high learning means, and the joyous toil that leads to it. I wish we could lead them to see those green pastures where human life is a beautiful thing, and instill in them a longing to find their way there.
III
But, even as I cast these reproaches, I am repentant. The last few paragraphs would be terribly false if allowed to stand alone. Our very failings are due to an exaggerated idealism which is loath to make any concessions to the wickedness of this world. If we are petty in small points of student conduct, we are not petty in larger concerns. I have taught in several Southern colleges, and observed a good many more; and I know of none where the spirit is more magnanimous in matters of race, religion, and a general feeling for human decency. The place has a sold — a unified and definite soul to which many brave lives have contributed. We do seek to find the green pastures, uncertain though our paths may sometimes be.
Our tiny mountain village has an almost cosmopolitan air. Out of our faculty of twenty-nine, fifteen are from the South, and fourteen are from the North. Even the large state universities do not offer so harmonious and balanced an atmosphere. It is no wonder that chance visitors often return to us again and again, and sometimes settle down in our midst. My own friends who live at a distance, not understanding all this, often sharply question me as to why I stay in this provincial place so long, sliding on past the peak of middle age, letting bigger and better jobs go by. The answer is simple. Like Falstaff, I have drunk medicines; the place has cast its spell over me. It is only fair that I should more fully expound the ingredients of this spell.
In the first place, it is inevitably a satisfaction to know that one’s work is greatly needed and greatly appreciated. Many of our students could not possibly go to college if they were unable to go here. And, no matter what doubts we may have as to the value of college training, we can see the transformation which brings students from the bleakness of mountain farm or cotton mill to happy and responsible work in the world. One of our graduates is a federal judge in Macon; another is a city official in New York; a third is an editor in Chicago. Others all over the South are successful as teachers, doctors, lawyers, and business men and women. This would be a commonplace for the usual American college; but here it seems to mean more because the distance traveled is so much greater.
My next reason, I’m afraid, is merely a matter of vanity. In most parts of America the teacher, like the preacher, no longer has much human dignity. Our rapacious society looks on him as a rather pitiful thing who has nothing to sell that the world is willing to pay for. But here all that is different. The college teacher is regarded with respect, as a leader in his community. Even our meagre salaries are not looked on with disdain. The Harvard student regards the twelve-thousand-dollar income of his professor as ridiculously less than what his father can earn; but the boy from a one-mule Georgia farm, whose family never see three hundred dollars cash in the course of a year, regards our two-thousand-dollar salaries as high affluence.
The strongest bond which holds me here, however, is found in the perennial freshness, the unspoiled and eager teachableness of our students. The teacher’s paradise is a class in which everybody wants to learn. We very nearly attain that here; and the fact that there are such depths of ignorance to fill makes the job all the more exciting. The usual Southern student unquestionably is much more innocent of knowledge than the Northern student of corresponding position. This is not wholly to his discredit; it is due to a fundamental difference of cultures. The culture of old New England was based on learning and piety; the culture of modern America is based on power and machines; the culture of the South was and is based on manners. It is quite possible to go into the houses of some of the ‘best families’ of Atlanta and find antique furniture, old silver, and exquisite courtesy — but never a book!
This lack of book culture does n’t apply to the Bible, in which the Southern student is better informed than his Northern contemporary. But even there his knowledge is barren and literal, and entirely lacking in historical perspective. This sometimes leads to astounding results. A year or two ago, some small matter of church history arose in my Sophomore English Literature class. The Baptists and the Methodists of the class were disputing as to which belonged to the older denomination. I told them that reference to any encyclopædia would soon settle the matter, but that if age were their mania they should remember that the Catholic Church was a considerably older body than either of the organizations to which they belonged. One of the boys, brought up on the account of the baptism in the Jordan, found this hard to accept. Finally, with admirable directness, he cut his way to the heart of the matter with the following question: ‘Well, Professor, there’s just one thing I want to know. Which was Jesus, anyway — a Baptist or a Catholic?’
IV
It is when we forget the classroom that we learn most. In those rare moments when we can do as we please, we really live. And what is there to do in a place so far removed from the great libraries and museums, from the music and art which make up so much of human culture? Well, I shall tell you what I do.
On holidays I take three college boys, pile with them into a rickety Ford, and set out for my log cabin thirty miles away in the big mountains. We feel a sense of joy, of release from prison. We drive too fast along the narrow winding roads, we sing and shout aloud, we become intoxicated without resort to alcohol. Suddenly we stop by an old-fashioned mill, where the swift little river turns a ponderous wheel. Farmers bring their corn from the mountain valleys to be ground. Like so many things done in simple ways, the meal is far better than that made by modern machinery. The great millstones, turning gently, do not rend the soul from the corn. All the life, the warm fragrance, like golden sunshine, is left unspoiled. For a quarter we buy a big bagful, and invest a dime in a gallon of buttermilk. We aim to have corn pone for supper, baked Georgia style before the fireplace.
The road up the mountain is so toilsome, it traverses so incredible a series of boulders and ledges, that no citybred car would even try to climb it. But we go up and up, and, although our flivver pants hotly, it never dreams of stopping. At last we come to that hidden glade, under the beeches, under the hemlocks, for which my soul had longed for many years before I was able to buy it. The cabin stands with its back to the ancient forest, as if emerging from mysterious shadows. But it faces the sheer drop of a granite cliff from which a small stream hurls itself, and is lost in a chatter of broken voices, hundreds of feet below. From the cabin porch one looks far down into the valley, with Yonah mountain majestically rising at the end. Beyond the dim horizon, forty miles away, lies the great world with all its futile vanity.
We are five miles from the nearest house, and the realm that lies around us is our own. Wood is to be cut — the stubborn oak, the sparkling hickory, the dry chestnut. Fat pine knots which sizzle with resin furnish the kindling. Supper is cooked and eaten and cleared away. Darkness settles down from the mountain top. But the fire flames up the rock chimney and flickers on the log rafters. We sprawl before the hearth and light our pipes. The boys see a few books on a shelf. They pull them down, and at first are disappointed to find that they are all ‘classics.’ But, since there are no poor books available, they might as well read good ones. One of the boys is our sharpest senior, but he still retains the quaintness of his original mountain speech. He opens Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Soon I hear him chuckling.
‘This Walt Whitman was a pretty vulgar old cuss, was n’t he?’
‘If you mean that he had no use for schoolmarmish prudery, he was, and proud of it. But you seriously misunderstand Walt if you think him essentially vulgar.’
‘Read some of it to us, Professor, and explain it.’
For two spellbound hours we read and talk. Whitman is one of my chief delights, and I have an audience both intelligent and appreciative. Here is the flesh and blood of a living man, and the immortal book which he has left behind him. As the boys ask questions, I warm up to my subject: —
‘If we could only understand what this man was, and what he did! He was free, in an age of peculiarly petty slavery. He rejoiced in the human body in an age which despised and ignored it. He understood the rhythm of human life in an age of confusion. He anticipated much of the best that is in Freud and Havelock Ellis before those men were born. And the thing for which I peculiarly love him is this: he is the only poet or prophet — the only one, I say — who has ever had a complete and beautiful vision of what this great American continent is and what it might become. The rest of us crawl like destructive insects over its surface. We have made this soil, which should be sacred, incredibly hideous. Whitman told us of a better way, but it is thus that we have fulfilled the promise of the pioneers.’
‘I believe you teach better up here in the cabin, Professor, than you do down yonder in the classroom.’
‘Teach? No — I am merely talking to my friends about another friend, who, though dead, still lives among us.’
V
Yes, these are the medicines I have drunk, and the spells which hold me to this preposterous but enchanting place. My old Harvard roommate who faithfully continues to write me letters even from the courts of the mighty once tried to wean me away from this land of the hicks. But he is now resigned. It is no use, he says, since I am only a sort of super-hick myself. Well, why not? Being a super-hick is something new in the way of a career, and it suits me exactly. Like Brer Rabbit, I am never able to feel at home when very far away from my native brier patch.