"THERE was a time," I said to my friend Annabel Lee, "when I went to the Butte High School. I think of it now with mingled feelings."
"You were younger then," said my friend Annabel Lee.
"I was younger, and in those days I still looked upon life as something which would one day open wide and display wondrous and beautiful things for me. And meanwhile I went every day to the Butte High School. I found it a very interesting place—much more interesting than I have since found the broad world. I was sixteen and seventeen and eighteen, and things were not brilliantly colored, and so I made much with a vivid fancy of all that came in my path."
"And what do you, now that you are one-and-twenty?" said my friend Annabel Lee.
"I sit quietly," I replied, "and wish not, and wait not—and look back upon the days in the Butte High School with mingled feelings."
"Also unawares," said my friend Annabel Lee, "you still think things relating to that which is one day to open wondrously for you. But, never mind," she added hastily, as I was about to say something, "tell me about the Butte High School."
"'Twas a place," said I, "where were gathered together manifold interesting phenomena, and where I studied Vergil, and grew fond of it, and was good in it; and where I studied geometry, and was fond of it, and knew less about it each day that I studied it;—and always I studied closely the persons whom I met daily in the Butte High School. I recall very clearly each member of the class of ninety-nine. My memory conjures up for me some quaint and fantastic visions against picturesque backgrounds that appeal to my sense of delicate incongruity, especially so since viewed in this light and from this distance."
"What are some of them?" said my friend Annabel Lee.
"There is one," said I, "of a girl whom always in my mind I called The Shad, for that she was so bland, and so flat, and so silent,—and she had a bad habit of asking me to write her Latin exercises, which perhaps was not so much like a shad as like a person; and there is one of a girl who spent the long hours of the day in writing long, long letters to her love, but knew painfully little about the lessons in the class-rooms; and there is one of a girl who brought to school every day a small flask of whiskey to cheer her benighted hours,—she was daily called back and down by the French teacher on account of her excessively bad French, and life had looked dull for her were it not for the flask's pungent contents; there is one of a strange-looking, tawny-headed girl who sat across the narrow aisle from me in the assembly-room during my last year in school, who kept her desk neatly piled with the works (she called them works) of Albert Ross—and after she had read them, very kindly she would lean over and repeat the stories, with quotations verbatim, for my benefit;—her standing in her classes was not brilliant, but in Albert Ross she was thorough; there is one of a clever, pretty girl who was malicious—exquisitely malicious in all her ways and deeds, and seemingly no thought entered her head that was not fraught with it,—she was malicious in algebra, malicious in literature, malicious in ancient history, malicious in physical culture, malicious in the writing of short themes—and when it so chanced that I made a failure in a recitation, or was stupid, she would look up at me and smile very sweetly and maliciously; and there is one of a girl whose quaint and voluble profanity haunts me still. And especially there is in my memory a picture of all these on our graduating day, receiving each a fine white diploma rolled up and neatly tied with the class colors—a picture of these and the others,—we were fifty-nine in all. And the diplomas stated tacitly, in heavily engrossed letters, that we had all been good for four years and had fulfilled every requirement of the Butte High School. So we had, doubtless—but how much some of us had done for which in our diplomas we were not given credit! In truth, nothing was stated in them, in engrossed lettering, about courses in love-letters, or profanity, or malice, and Albert Ross was not in the curriculum.
"And the president of the school board doled out those diplomas, with a short, set speech for each, one wet June day—but he was not aware how insignificant they were.
"And my mind likewise conjures up a vision of two with whom I used to take what we called tramps, during our last year in the High School—far down and out of Butte, on Saturdays and other days when school was not. I remember those two and those tramps exceeding well—nor can I think with but four years gone that the two themselves have forgotten. One of these was an individual whose like I have not since known. She reminded me sometimes of Cleopatra and sometimes of Peg of Limmavaddy. She was of Irish ancestry and had a long black mane of hair braided down behind, and two conscious and lurid eyes of the kind that is known as Irish blue. She had brains enough within her head, but did not study overmuch. Her ways of going through life were often very dubious. She weighed a great many pounds. Her experience of the world was large, and to me she was fascinating. For herself, she was always rather afraid of me—so much afraid, in truth, that if I said a funny thing she must need laugh—with a forced and fictitious merriment; if I told her she had no soul, she must need agree with me abjectly, though she was a good Catholic; if I frowned upon her, she shivered and was silent. Fanciful names and frocks (though this lady's frocks were always fanciful in ways) were selected for these tramping expeditions. This one's fanciful name was called Muddled Maud. For no particular reason, I believe—but she wore it well. The other member of our trio was of a less extraordinary type. She was stout as to figure, and she knew a great deal about some things. She was very good in history, and at home she could make pie and cake and bread. It is true that her cake sometimes stuck, and sometimes sank in the middle, and when she carved a fowl she could not always hit the joints. And she was one of the kind that always pronounces picture, "pitcher." She was also known as a very sensible girl. I can see her now with a purple ribbon around her neck and a brown rain-coat on coming into the High School on a wet morning. When we went tramping she usually wore an immense gray-white, mother-hubbard gown, belted in at the waist, and a wide flat hat, which made her look rather like a toad-stool. Her fanciful name was Emancipated Eva. Emancipated, in truth, she was. In the High School she was dignified and sedate, but on our tramps she would frequently skip like a young lamb, and frisk and gambol down there in the country.
"She who was called Muddled Maud likewise frisked and gamboled—and always she personified my idea of the French noun abandon.
"Also I frisked and gamboled in those days far down in the country.
"The fanciful name selected for me was Refreshment Rosanna—and I can not tell why. But it was thought a good name for a lady tramp. We started on these tramps at six in the morning. We would rise from our beds at five, and at ten minutes before six I would meet Muddled Maud at the corner of Washington and Quartz streets, below her house. Together we would go down east Park street to the home of Emancipated Eva. Then we walked seven miles or eight away into the open and the wild.
"We took things along to eat—sometimes a great many things and sometimes a few. Times Muddled Maud would have but a curious-looking jelly-roll, and Emancipated Eva would come laden with hard bits of beef, and I could show but a plate of fudge. But other times there were tarts and meat-pies and turnovers, and deviled ham and deviled chicken and deviled veal and deviled tongue and deviled fish of divers kinds, and some bottles of nut-brown October ale, and sardines a l'huile, and green, green olives. Only the more there was, the harder to carry. But, times, Muddled Maud would carry much with little effort—she would adorn herself with the luncheon—a long bit of sausage-link about her neck like a chain, and upon her hat, held securely with bonnet-pins, fat yellow lemons, and two bananas crossed in front like the tiny guns on a soldier's hat, and bunches of Catawba grapes scattered here and there, and pears hanging by their little stems behind.
"The too early morning prevented all from being seen by the inhabitants of Butte, and we did not venture home again until came the friendly darkness.
"Those were fascinating expeditions—and whose was the glory? Mine was the glory. 'Twas I who invented them. 'Twas I who knew there was none so fitted for a so delicate absurdity as she we called Muddled Maud; and after her, none so fitted as the fair, the good-natured, the Emancipated; and together with them both, I. And I led them forth, and I led them back, and I said things should be thus and so, and straightway they were thus and so. And we enjoyed it, and clear air was in our lungs and life was in our veins, for we had each but eighteen years and were full of youth. But most of all 'twas fascinating because we were three of three widely differing manners of living and methods of reasoning. For I was not like Emancipated Eva, nor yet like Muddled Maud; and Emancipated Eva was not like me, nor yet like Muddled Maud; and Muddled Maud was not like Emancipated Eva, nor yet like me.
"To be sure, there were some things in my ordering which neither the one nor the other found enchanting. Why should the MacLane do all the ordering? they murmured between themselves, but they dared not openly revolt, so all went well.
"But now these are gone.
"The three of us were graduated from the Butte High School with the fifty-nine others of ninety-nine, and had each a fine white diploma, and went our ways.
"She who was like Cleopatra and Peg of Limmavaddy is teaching a school, according to the last that I heard, in the north of Montana; and she that was Emancipated Eva has long since gone to California, and is married, and keeps a house; and for me—I am here, far off from Butte, with you, Annabel Lee, some things having been done meanwhile.
"But though the two are gone, I warrant they have not forgotten. They have not forgotten the Butte High School, nor the class of ninety-nine, nor the tramps we went, nor their tyrant, me.
"And I daresay they all remember their Butte High School—she of the love-letters, she of the whiskey-flask, she the student of Albert Ross, she of the profanity, she of the malice, The Shad,—and all the nine-and-fifty, the young feminine persons and the young masculine persons. Some are married, and some are flown, and some of them are grown up and different, 'and some of them in the churchyard lie, and some are gone to sea.'
"But whenever I've a fancy to shut my eyes and look back, I can see them all, a quaint company.
"Also, whenever I've a fancy to shut my eyes and look back to life when it was unspeakably brilliant in possibilities to look forward to, and was marked in parti-colored checks and rings, it fetches me to the days when I went to the Butte High School and studied geometry and Vergil. Only I'm glad I'm not there now."
"What for?" said my friend Annabel Lee.
"It is rather pitiful and dreadful to think of having been seventeen, and to have gone every day to the Butte High School and imagined how wonderful-beautiful life would be some day," said I, and all at once felt very weary.