Kansas University Weekly.
311
LITERARY.
Telegram 1013.
"Well, good night fellows," said Stuart Bronson, as he buttoned up his overcoat, lighted his cigar and opened the hall door to leave. "I'm not going to quit yet, by any means, though I am a good deal behind. My luck is bound to change and whenever you fellows have a night with nothing to do, you will find me ready." Then as his friends called after him, "good night," he closed the door, went down the steps of an old colonial mansion in New Haven and walked briskly up the street.
Stuart Bronson was a junior at Yale, the son of a wealthy New York stock broker. His father, who had made his money during the war and just after its close, had set his heart upon making a lawyer out of Stuart and had sent him to Yale with that end in view. Stuart's elder brother, Harry, was a steady business-like young man and their father, seeing that he could depend upon Harry in the management of his business, had determined that his younger son should turn his attention to the study of law.
Stuart, himself, was a brilliant but reckless fellow, handsome, fascinating, magnetic. His record at college had been a series of brilliant, scholastic achievements, interspersed with periods of careless attention to his work. It had been said of him that he could not fail in a study; that no professor had the heart to refuse to pass him; he was so fascinating in his manner, and always so clever in extricating himself from critical situations in the class room. He could do the work required with less effort than any other student at New Haven, and whenever he chose to take a little extra pains he become the idol of his instructors.
There were many predictions as to his future. His friends laughed at his carelessness and recklessness and at all his idiosyncracies, declaring them merely the eccentricities of a clever sociable fellow, and scoffed at the idea of Stuart's failing in anything in which he was in earnest. There were others, though, who shook their heads more seriously at each of this gay young student's escapades, and predicted that his very brilliancy and good nature would help to ruin him. Said Endicott, of Meriden: "Give him half his father's fortune now, and in a few years he will not have a cent left. He will spend it all on himself and friends, mostly the latter I'm bound to say.
Then the reaction will come. He will buckle down to work and startle everyone with a few brilliant strokes, get a little ahead in this world's goods, lose it all in some frolic, and begin over again. After a few repititions of this sort of thing he will grow despondent, and one more name will be added to the long list of complete failures who might have been successful." But then, everybody knew that Endicott was a regular Puritan, to whom anything more exciting than a game of authors was an abomination and a snare, and besides, what did he know about New York, or Bronson either for that matter. He didn't belong to Bronson's set and couldn't be expected to understand his way of life.
Stuart on the night when our story opens, had been having a "quiet little game" with two of his college friends at the home of one of them whose people were in Europe. As his words indicated, he had lost, and quite heavily too, but that didn't trouble him in the least. "Father can afford it," he mused as he opened the door of his landlady's house and went upstairs to his rooms. "He had such a hard time to get along when he was my age and brother has always been such a deacon that I've got to make up for the three of us. I wonder what father would say if he knew how I was wasting my time and substance, though, I suspect he wouldn't be in a hurry to give me that raise in allowance I asked for. Of course, I don't suppose I do pay enough attention to work, but bah—the benefit of a college education is largely general in its character anyway and a fellow who enjoys himself along with it, gets as much good out of it in the end as the dig, and is a lot more sociable. Well, whether he likes it or not, I guess he'll have to stand it."
As he opened the door and lit the gas, he noticed a yellow Western Union envelope lying on the table. "Well, what's this?" he muttered as he picked it up. "I told Braxton to telegraph for funds if he need any, but I didn't expect he'd have to do it." He tore off one end carelessly, pulled out the dispatch, unfolded it and read:
"Practically ruined. Father sick with worry. Stay but curtail. HARRY."
For a moment Stuart Bronson was stunned. He looked at the telegram and read its words without seeming to comprehend them. Soon their full import burst upon him and the care-