Little by little the idea of college life became more
attractive to Vandover; at the worst, it was only
postponing the Paris trip, not abandoning it.
Besides this, two of his chums from the High School
were expecting to enter Harvard that fall, and he
could look forward to a very pleasant four years spent
in their company.
Out at Cambridge the term was just closing. The
Old Gentleman’s friends procured him tickets
to several of the more important functions. From
the gallery of Memorial Hall Vandover and his father
saw some of the great dinners; they went up to New
London for the boat-race; they gained admittance to
the historic Yard on Class-day, and saw the strange
football rush for flowers around the “Tree.”
They heard the seniors sing “Fair Harvard”
for the last time, and later saw them receive their
diplomas at Sander’s Theatre.
The great ceremonies of the place, the picturesqueness
of the elm-shaded Yard, the old red dormitories covered
with ivy, the associations and traditions of the buildings,
the venerable pump, Longfellow’s room, the lecture
hall where the minute-men had barracked, all of these
things, in the end, appealed strongly to Vandover’s
imagination. Instead of passing the summer months
in an ocean voyage and a continental journey, he at
last became content to settle down to work under a
tutor, “boning up” for the examinations.
His father returned to San Francisco in July.
Vandover matriculated the September of the same year;
on the first of October he signed the college rolls
and became a Harvard freshman. At that time he
was eighteen years old.
There was little of the stubborn or unyielding about
Vandover, his personality was not strong, his nature
pliable and he rearranged himself to suit his new
environment at Harvard very rapidly. Before the
end of the first semester he had become to all outward
appearances a typical Harvardian. He wore corduroy
vests and a gray felt hat, the brim turned down over
his eyes. He smoked a pipe and bought himself
a brindled bull-terrier. He cut his lectures
as often as he dared, “ragged” signs and
barber-poles, and was in continual evidence about Foster’s
and among Leavitt and Pierce’s billiard-tables.
When the great football games came off he worked himself
into a frenzy of excitement over them and even tried
to make several of his class teams, though without
success.
He chummed with Charlie Geary and with young Dolliver
Haight, the two San Francisco boys. The three
were continually together. They took the same
courses, dined at the same table in Memorial Hall and
would have shared the same room if it had been possible.
Vandover and Charlie Geary were fortunate enough to
get a room in Matthew’s on the lower floor looking
out upon the Yard; young Haight was obliged to put
up with an outside room in a boarding house.
Vandover had grown up with these fellows and during
all his life was thrown in their company. Haight
was a well-bred young boy of good family, very quiet;
almost every morning he went to Chapel. He was
always polite, even to his two friends. He invariably
tried to be pleasant and agreeable and had a way of
making people like him. Otherwise, his character
was not strongly marked.
