A
Master''s Degree
By
Margaret Hill McCarter
TO THE KANSAS BOYS AND GIRLS
WHO HAVE NOT YET EARNED THEIR DEGREES;
AND TO THOSE OLDER IN YEARS, EVERYWHERE,
"CAPTAINS OVER HUNDREDS,"
WHO WOULD WIN TO THE LARGER MASTERY.
In the old days there were angels who came and
took men by the hand and led them away from the
city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels
now. But yet men are led away from threatening
destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads
them gently forth toward a calm and bright land, so
that they look no more backward; and the hand may
be a little child''s.
GEORGE ELIOT
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
THE MEETING
I. "DEAN FUNNYBONE"
II. POTTER''S CLAY
III. PIGEON PLACE
IV. THE KICKAPOO CORRAL
V. THE STORM
VI. THE GAME
VII. THE DAY OF RECKONING
VIII. LOSS, OR GAIN?
IX. GAIN, OR LOSS?
X. THE THIEF IN THE MOUTH
XI. THE SINS OF THE FATHERS
XII. THE SILVER PITCHER
XIII. THE MAN BELOW THE SMOKE
XIV. THE DERELICTS
XV. THE MASTERY
THE PARTING
A MASTER''S DEGREE
THE MEETING
. . .There is neither East nor West, Border, nor
Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho'' they
come from the ends of the earth!
KIPLING
IT happened by mere chance that the September day on which
Professor Vincent Burgess, A.B., from Boston, first entered
Sunrise College as instructor in Greek, was the same day on
which Vic Burleigh, overgrown country boy from a Kansas claim
out beyond the Walnut River, signed up with the secretary of
the College Board and paid the entrance fee for his freshman year.
And further, by chance, it happened that the two young men
had first met at the gateway to the campus, one coming from
the East and the other from the West, and having exchanged
the courtesies of stranger greeting, they had walked,
side by side, up the long avenue to the foot of the slope.
Together, they had climbed the broad flight of steps leading
up to the imposing doorway of Sunrise, with the great letter S
carved in stone relief above it; and, after pausing a moment
to take in the matchless wonder of the landscape over which
old Sunrise keeps watch, the college portal had swung open,
and the two had entered at the same time.
Inside the doorway the Professor and the country boy were impressed,
though in differing degrees, with the massive beauty of the rotunda over
which the stained glass of the dome hangs a halo of mellow radiance.
Involuntarily they lifted their eyes toward this crown of light
and saw far above them, wrought in dainty coloring, the design
of the great State Seal of Kansas, with its inscription They saw
something more in that upward glance. On the stairway of the rotunda,
Elinor Wream, the niece of the president of Sunrise College,
was leaning over the balustrade, looking at them with curious eyes.
Her smile of recognition as she caught sight of Professor Burgess,
gave place to an expression of half-concealed ridicule, as she
glanced down at Vic Burleigh, the big, heavy-boned young fellow,
so grotesquely impossible to the harmony of the place.
As the two men dropped their eyes, they encountered the
upturned face of a plainly dressed girl coming up the stairs
from the basement, with a big feather duster in her hand.
It was old Bond Saxon''s daughter Dennie, who was earning
her tuition by keeping the library and offices in order.
As if to even matters, it was Vic Burleigh who caught a token
of recognition now, while the young Professor was surveyed
with fearless disapproval.
All this took only a moment of time. Long afterward these two
men knew that in that moment an antagonism was born between
them that must fight itself out through the length of days.
But now, Dr. Lloyd Fenneben, Dean of Sunrise, known to students
and alumni alike as "Dean Funnybone," was grasping each man''s
hand with a cordial grip and measuring each with a keen glance
from piercing black eyes, as he bade them equal welcome.
And here all likeness of conditions ends for these two. Days come
and go, moons wax and wane, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter glide fourfold through their appointed seasons,
before the two young men stand side by side on a common level again.
And the events of these changing seasons ring in so rapidly,
and in so inevitable a fashion, that the whole cycle runs like a real
story along the page.
STRIFE
_With the first faint note out of distance flung,
From the moment man hears the siren call
Of Victory''s bugle, which sounds for all,
To his inner self the promise is made
To weary not, rest not, but all unafraid
Press on--till for him the paean be sung.
The song for the victor is sweet, is sweet- Yet to the music a memory clings
Of trampled nestlings, of broken wings,
And of faces white with defeat! --ELIZABETH D. PRESTON
CHAPTER I
"DEAN FUNNYBONE"
_Nature they say, doth dote,
And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan,
Repeating us by rote:
For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,
...............................................
With stuff untainted, shaped a hero new_.--LOWELL
DR. LLOYD FENNEBEN, Dean of Sunrise College, had migrated
to the Walnut Valley with the founding of the school here.
In fact, he had brought the college with him when he came hither,
and had set it, as a light not to be hidden, on the crest of that high
ridge that runs east of the little town of Lagonda Ledge. And the town
eagerly took the new school to itself; at once its pride and profit.
Yea, the town rises and sets with Sunrise. When the first gleam
of morning, hidden by the east ridge from the Walnut Valley,
glints redly from the south windows of the college dome in
the winter time, and from the north windows in the summer time,
the town bestirs; itself, and the factory whistles blow.
And when the last crimson glory of evening puts a halo of flame
about the brow of Sunrise, the people know that out beyond
the Walnut River the day is passing, and the pearl-gray mantle
of twilight is deepening to velvety darkness on the wide,
quiet prairie lands.
Lagonda Ledge was a better place after the college settled permanently
above it. Some improvident citizens took a new hold on life,
while some undesirables who had lived in lawless infamy skulked across
the Walnut and disappeared in that rough picturesque region full
of uncertainties that lies behind the west bluffs of the stream.
All this, after the college had found an abiding place on the
limestone ridge. For Sunrise had been a migratory bird before reaching
the outskirts of Lagonda Ledge. As a fulfillment of prophecy,
it had arisen from the visions and pockets of some Boston scholars,
and it had come to the West and was made flesh--or stone--and dwelt
among men on the outskirts of a booming young Kansas town.
Lloyd Fenneben was just out of Harvard when Dr. Joshua Wream,
his step-brother, many years his senior, professor of all the dead
languages ever left unburied, had put a considerable fortune
into his hands, and into his brain the dream of a life-work-even the building of a great university in the West. For the Wreams
were a stubborn, self-willed, bookish breed, who held that salvation
of souls could come only through possession of a college diploma.
Young Fenneben had come to Kansas with all his youth and health
and money, with high ideals and culture and ambition for
success and dreams of honor--and, hidden deep down, the memory
of some sort of love affair, but that was his own business.
With this dream of a new Harvard on the western prairies,
he had burned his bridges behind him, and in an unbusiness-like way,
relying too much upon a board of trustees whom he had interested
in his plans he had eagerly begun his task, struggling to adapt
the West to his university model, measuring all men and means
by the scholarly rule of his Alma Mater. Being a young man,
he took himself full seriously, and it was a tremendous blow
to his sense of dignity when the youthful Jayhawkers at the outset
dubbed him "Dean Funnybone"--a name he was never to lose.
His college flourished so amazingly that another boom town,
farther inland, came across the prairie one day, and before
the eyes of the young dean bought it of the money-loving trustees-body and soul and dean--and packed it off as the Plains Indians
would carry off a white captive, miles away to the westward.
Plumped down in a big frame barracks in the public square of
twenty acres in the middle of this ...
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