Grave and Gay in the Days of Johnnie Maclean

In his recent volume, “Along the Friendly Way,” Dr. James M. Ludlow ’61 has a chapter on experiences of his college days which makes an interesting addition to our Princetoniana of the last century. He had unusual opportunities to form an estimate of President John Maclean’s character and services to the college, and the characteristic incident of “Johnnie’s” unexpected visit to an undergraduate’s room is worth recounting for its own sake.

           Dr. Ludlow tells of the passion for cards in a group of undergraduates of his time and how some of them mastered it, while in another’s case it ruined a possibly brilliant life. He then continues:     

           Another student has since told me a very different experience. I’ll call him Tom, lest some of his grandchildren resent my tale-bearing about their revered ancestor. One night a glimmer at his window caught the eye of our Prex, whose love for the boys made him very alert in watching for any signs of their illness or over-weariness in study; let us not say that such symptoms were the only ones he searched for, since occasional “rustication” made us suspicious that he had other interest in us. He knocked at Tom’s door. After a little delay the lazy string drew the latch. 

           “Come in!” sounded a sleepy voice. Tom was studying his big Greek lexicon. 

           “Too bad! Too bad!” said Prex. “I must really speak to Professor — about the long lessons he is giving. It is a shame.”

           Saving which he closed the lexicon, revealing the cards beneath. He then opened the closet door. 

           “Ah, you have a visitor!” gently pulling out a concealed comrade. “Well! Well! Please put each other to bed. Good-night, gentlemen! Good-night!”

           Tom expected discipline. Day after day it was delayed. It never came in any outward form; but Tom declared to me in after life that no “suspended sentence” ever cut the heart out of a criminal as that did. The shame of his deceit was like a rusty nail in his very soul. He couldn’t endure the exceeding affability of Prex as they met afterward. One day he entered the sanctum of the president, and threw himself on his mercy.

“It’s all right, Thomas,” was the response. “I knew your father, and was sure that a man of that stock had only to be made to think in order to straighten himself out. Follow the lesson you have taught yourself, my boy, and God bless you!”

           Years after, when Prex died, Tom — then a noted clergyman — went back to the college, sat in his old seat in the chapel during the funeral, and cried like a child.

An Old-time College President

I love to think of old Prex. I have occasion for thinking of him very gratefully which I will not put down here, for this is not a book of confessions. Many people thought of him as only an ordinary man, and wondered how he kept his position so long at the head of a distinguished faculty. He was not a man of genius, unless the ability to fathom the souls of young men and to love them sacrificially be genius. He left nothing in print that added to the lustre of the institution. He was called commonplace; but the commonplace in him ran in deep channels, and full-flooded a life of great usefulness.

           To this I can testify “by the book.” After his death, in order to prepare a memorial address, I was permitted to sift a few bushels of miscellaneous papers which he had been in the habit of throwing into bureau drawers. Many of these were yellowed with years and dust-covered, showing that the modest man had never even gratified his reminiscent old age by looking at them. Among these papers I found enough to make the reputation of a half dozen philanthropists and administrators of great affairs. 

           This was before the days of our great university endowments. It was not yet the fashion for rich men to memorialize themselves on the college campus with dormitories, chapels, and gymnasiums. Those were the “days of small things.” College funds were scraped from the bottom of the treasury, or picked off the salaries of the professors. But our commonplace Prex managed it in some way so that no deserving student ever left college for lack of tuition or board money. There was presumed to be an Association for the Aid of Indigent Students; but since Prex’s death it has been discovered that he himself was not only the president of the Association, but almost the only donor to its funds.

           The college buildings were out of repair; the library and laboratories antiquated; the professors threadbare. Prex took a vacation, roamed over the country and returned with nearly a half-million dollars; and that at a time when a dollar meant more to the donor than four times the amount today. The old buildings were straightened to the plumb; and the backs of the old professors also with the renewed spirit that came to them; while some of the foremost scientists and educators of the world were added to the faculty.

Princeton and the Civil War

As I was completing my academic career the Civil War crashed suddenly about us. One of our professors, who had been a most determined alarmist, prophesying the imminence of the coming catastrophe, brought the news to the campus — “Why, gentlemen, the impossible has happened. South Carolina has fired upon Fort Sumter!” The youthful enthusiasm of us undergraduates quickly outran the more cautionary counsel of our elders. In spite of the order of the faculty that lectures and recitations should not be interrupted, the whole body of students went on a strike. The bell-rope was detached, the belfry hatched down, and from the roof of our main building, together with several of our brazen-tongued embryo orators, I made my first appeal to the “listening world,” which world consisted of the students and the entire population of the town, who were gathered by the excitement. Our professor of physics brought out from the laboratory an immense bar of steel, upon which he beat with a hammer the call of class-room duty. But we refused to recognize this unhistoric substitute for that old bell of authority which had called our fathers a century ago. We lashed a stout flagpole to the finial of the cupola; and “Old Glory” was unfurled. There it remained during the entire war, until it flapped its last shreds in the gentle breeze of peace.

           The next night after my debut a public meeting was held in a large hall of the town, addressed by several statesmen of repute. The students became impatient of the deliberation and temporizing tone of these noted speakers. We took the platform, and harangued the crowd in terms which would have excited the envy of the ghost of Demosthenes, as he recalled his Phillipics against the Macedonian invaders.

           Associated with my recollections of these exciting days is one of peculiar sadness. Many of our students were from the South; and among them some of my closest companions. They were recalled to their homes. The railroads entering Dixie soon became blocked. Virginians and Georgians and men from the Carolinas were compelled to take long journeys around by the West. For this their purses were insufficient. The Northern boys shared their pockets with their unfortunate comrades. It was a bitter day when, at the railroad station, we took the hands of these fellows, with whom we had grown up from boyhood to manhood, and bade them Godspeed through the gathering uncertainties. I realized then for the first time something of the meaning of a disrupted country; but the full significance of it was not felt until, as the months went by, we heard of one and another of that band who had fallen upon the field; or as we got a glimpse of a familiar face among the huddled crowds in our prison camps, or as some captured Northern boy felt the coddling of a familiar hand on a Southern field. A few of our comrades survived the war. Some reached distinction in the military command of the Confederacy; but alas, how many were starred on our class roll as we called that roll at our reunions in after years!

This was originally published in the January 14, 1920 issue of PAW.