The Opelousas courier., 1901-07-27
The POOR COLLEGlANS,
YOUNG MEN WHO WORK THEIR WAY
THROUGH UNIVERSITIES

YOUNG MEN WHO WORK THEIR WAY
l. THROUGH UNIVERSITIES.
The Opportunities For SeIf.support Wary
IN the Different colIeges-some Strange
Occupations For PIuckY students-Cro-
GERS and Butchers at Harvard.
Working Ones Way Through Col
lege," by Alice K. Fallows, with draw
lngs by Clifford Carleton, is the leading
article in the Century, which is a college
number.
ANY one who visits a certain little
meat-shop in a side street of Boston on
Saturday night, when the rush of trade
is greatest, will find there an extra Clerk
distinguished from his fellow-clerks
only by an unusually intelligent face.
Like them, he wears no coat, and he
manages his long white apron as easily
as they. His smile and quick repartee
make him popular with the waiting
throng, and he sways through the bone
OF a porter-house steak, wraps up the
meat, and hands it to its owner as quick
ly and deity as a professional. If the
customer will go to a dingy grocery
store a little farther down the same
street, he will find another man backed
up against a kerosene-barrel, patiently
rehearSing the price of eggs, butter, and
soda to the bulky matrcn of the, middle
class, keeping his temper when she in
forms him that all these commodities
are two cents cheaper at a rival store,
and even smiling a cheerful goodbye
when the virago slips four cents worth
of Goldfish into her basket as the result
of twenty minutes haggling, and
squeezes through the door.
If the same customer happens to be
in Harvard Square the following Mon
day, at the end of a collegiate hour, he
will probably feel like the victim of a
modern fairytale, when he recognizes in
two students, swinging across the yard
with notebooks in their hands, the
butcher and the grocer of Saturday
night.
In the modern development of under
graduate s~elf-support, such metamor-
phoses from student to workman and
back again are so common that e stran-
ger within half a days distance of any
one of the we'll known colleges for men
is likely to meet with a similar expert
ence. The students themselves take.
these transformations as a matter of
course, but the conventional visitor in
a large college town may be permitted
to a start of surprise when he learns that
the tactful person at an evening party,
who looked after the comfort of the
guests effectively and u~nobtrusiyely, and
who set the social wheels in motion
skilfully when they threatened to run
down, was in reality a student, earning
a dollar or more al evening for his
services. 1t is rather disconcerting al
so, for one with carefully regulated So
cial ideas, to discover in the class orator
at the night clerk Of his
hotel. But a nation which allows one
of its sons to work his way from canal
boy to President could not, if it wished,
escape a reflection of democratic ideals
even in it's most ~aristocratic educational
institutions.
The opportunities for s%elf-support
vary in the different colleges, according
to their size and location. Occupations
practicable for students in a small town
are soon exhausted. For this reason
the self-supporting student in Prince
ton, Williams, Dartmouth, Amherst, Le-
land Stanford, Jr., and some other col
leges must make the best commercial use
possible of the college public, and not
rely 90 greatly on the limited supply
of outside work. But the man earning
his way at the Chicago University, Col
umbia, Yale or Harvard has a whole
city full of possibilities to choose from,
il the college body itself proves unre-
munerative. When the prospective stu
dent of. one of these universities consults
the list of undergraduate industries
from the safe vantage of his w home,
indeed, he feels as bewildered as a wo-
man before samples of all the dress
goods in a store. His choice at first
seems unlimited. But only a few en-
counters with the actual difficulties of
earning his living serve to reverse his
ideas of his own importance, and to
make him thankful to do the first profit
able thing his hands find to do.
The freshman, particularly, discovers
before him a very hard row to hoe.
Lack of capital, ignorance of the college
public, its supplies, and its needs, a
scarcity of friends and acquaintance
Ill these things he must contend against.
Upper-classmen may be choosers, but
freshmen, like beggars, must be content
with what they can get. They may be
among the fortunate ones whose high
grades are to be rewarded by scholar
ships later on. But this vague posi-
bility will not keep the wolf from the
freshman's door-mat in the meantime,
and he will have to bestir himself or go
hungry. Fear of hunger is a strong mo-
tive, and it drives hard bargains with
its victims; but an e%xpedient that would
be a tragedy in the life of an older in
tellectual man becomes a pastime to the
student who looks on it as a temporary
measure, and he shovels off sidewalks
hlithely. and cleans furnaces to a song.
Naming a Japanese Royal Baby.
To-day every house in Japan is dec
,rated with two Japanese flags crossed