A Master\'s Degree

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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 new town, at once real estate
dealers advertised the place as the literary center of Kansas;
while lots in straggling additions far away across the prairie
draws were boomed as "college flats within walking distance
of the university."

In this new setting Lloyd Fenneben started again to build up
what had been so recklessly torn down. But it was slow doing,
and in a downcast hour the head of the board of trustees took
council with the young dean.

"Funnybone, that's what the boys call you, ain't it?"
The name had come along over the prairie with the school.
"Funnybone, you are as likely a man as ever escaped
from Boston. But you're never going to build the East into the West,
no more'n you could ram the West into the Atlantic seaboard states.
My advice to you is to get yourself into the West for good
and drop your higher learnin' notions, and be one of us,
or beat it back to where you came from quick."

Dean Fenneben listened as a man who hears the reading of his own obituary.

"You've come out to Kansas with beautiful dreams," the bluff
trustee continued. "Drop 'em! You're too late for the New England
pioneers who come West. They've had their day and passed on.
The thing for you to do is to commercialize yourself right away.
Go to buyin' and sellin' dirt. It's all a man can do for Kansas now.
Just boom her real estate."

"All a man can do for Kansas!" Fenneben repeated slowly.

"Sure, and I'll tell you something more. This town
is busted, absolutely busted. I, and a few others,
brought this college here as an investment for ourselves.
It ain't paid us, and we've throwed the thing over.
I've just closed a deal with a New Jersey syndicate that gets me
rid of every foot of ground I own here. The county-seat's goin'
to be eighteen miles south, and it will be kingdom come,
a'most, before the railroad extension is any nearer 'n that.
Let your university go, and come with me. I can make you
rich in six months. In six weeks the coyotes will be howlin'
through your college halls, and the prairie dogs layin'
out a townsite on the campus, and the rattlesnakes coilin'
round the doorsteps. Will you come, Funnybone?"

The trustee waited for an answer. While he waited, the soul of the young
dean found itself.

"Funnybone!" Lloyd repeated. "I guess that's just what I need--
a funny bone in my anatomy to help me to see the humor of this thing.
Go with you and give up my college? Build up the prosperity of a commonwealth
by starving its mind! No, no; I'll go on with the thing I came here to do--
so help me God!"

"You'll soon go to the devil, you and your old school.
Good-by!" And the trustee left him.

A month later, Dean Fenneben sat alone in his university barracks
and saw the prairie dogs making the dust fly as they digged about
what had been intended for a flower bed on the campus. Then he packed
up his meager library and other college equipments and walked ten
miles across the plains to hire a man with a team to haul them away.
The teamster had much ado to drive his half-bridle-wise Indian
ponies near enough to the university doorway to load his wagon.
Before the threshold a huge rattlesnake lay coiled, already disputing
any human claim to this kingdom of the wild.

Discouraging as all this must have been to Fenneben, when he started
away from the deserted town he smiled joyously as a man who sees
his road fair before him.

"I might go back to Cambridge and poke about after the dead
languages until my brother passes on, and then drop into his chair
in the university," he said to himself, "but the trustee was right.
I can never build the East into the West. But I can learn from
the East how to bring the West into its own kingdom. I can make
the dead languages serve me the better to speak the living words here.
And if I can do that, I may earn a Master's Degree from my
Alma Mater without the writing of a learned thesis to clinch it.
But whether I win honor or I am forgotten, this shall be my life-work--
out on these Kansas prairies, to till a soil that shall grow
MEN AND WOMEN."

For the next three years Dean Fenneben and his college
flourished on the borders of a little frontier town,
if that can be called flourishing which uses up time, and money,
and energy, Christian patience, and dogged persistence.
Then an August prairie fire, sweeping up from the southwest,
leaped the narrow fire-guard about the one building and burned up
everything there, except Dean Fenneben. Six years, and nothing
to show for his work on the outside. Inside, the six years'
stay in Kansas had seen the making over of a scholarly dreamer
into a hard-headed, far-seeing, masterful man, who took
the West as he found it, but did not leave it so. Not he!
All the power of higher learning he still held supreme.
But by days of hard work in the college halls, and nights
of meditation out in the silent sanctuary spaces of the prairies
round about him, he had been learning how to compute the needs
of men as the angel with the golden reed computed the walls
and gates of the New Jerusalem--_*according to the measure
of a man_.

Such was Dean Fenneben who came after six years of service to
the little town of Lagonda Ledge to plant Sunrise on the crest above
the Walnut Valley beyond reach of prairie fire or bursting boom.
Firm set as the limestone of its foundations, he reared here
a college that should live, for that its builder himself with his
feet on the ground and his face toward the light had learned
the secret of living.

Miles away across the valley, the dome of Sunrise could be seen by day.
By night, the old college lantern at first, and later the studding
of electric lights, made a beacon for all the open countryside.
But if the wayfarer, by chance or choice, turned his footsteps to those
rocky bluffs and glens beyond the Walnut River, wherefrom the town
of Lagonda Ledge takes its name, he lost the guiding ray from the hilltop
and groped in black and dangerous ways where darkness rules.

Above the south turret hung the Sunrise bell, whose resonant voice
filled the whole valley, and what the sight of Sunrise failed
to do for Lagonda Ledge, the sound of the bell accomplished.
The first class to enter the school nicknamed its head
"Dean Funnybone," but this gave him no shock any more.
He had learned the humor of life now, the spirit of the open
land where the view is broad to broadening souls.

And it was to the hand of Dean Fenneben that
Professor Vincent Burgess, A.B., Greek instructor from Boston,
and Vic Burleigh, the big country boy from a claim beyond the Walnut,
came on a September day; albeit, the one had his head in the clouds,
while the other's feet were clogged with the grass roots.

CHAPTER II

POTTER'S CLAY

_This clay, well mixed with marl and sand,
Follows the motion of my hand,
For some must follow and some command,
Though all are made of clay_.
--LONGFELLOW
THE afternoon sunshine was flooding the September landscape
with molten gold, filling the valley with intense heat,
and rippling back in warm waves from the crest of the ridge.
Dean Fenneben's study in the south tower of Sunrise looked
out on the new heaven and the new earth, every day-dawn created
afresh for his eyes; for truly, the Walnut Valley in any
mood needs only eyes that see to be called a goodly land.
And it was because of the magnificent vista, unfolding in woodland,
and winding river, and fertile field, and far golden prairie--
it was because of the unconscious power of all this upon
the student mind, that Dr. Fenneben had set his college up here.

On this September afternoon, the Dean sat looking out on this
land of pure delight a-quiver in the late summer sunshine.
Nature had done well by Lloyd Fenneben. His height was commanding,
and he was slender, rather than heavy, with ease of movement
as if the play of every muscle was nerved to harmony.
His heavy black hair was worn a trifle long on the upper
part of his head and fell in masses above his forehead.
His eyes were black and keen under heavy black brows.
Every feature was strong and massive, but saved from
sternness by a genial kindliness and sense of humor.
Whoever came into his presence felt that magnetic power only
a king of his kind can possess.

Long the Dean sat gazing at the gleaming landscape and the sleepy town beyond
the campus and the pigeons circling gracefully above a little cottage,
hidden by trees, up the river.

"A wonderful region!" he murmured. "If that old white-haired brother of mine
digging about the roots of Greek and Sanscrit back in Harvard could only
see all this, maybe he might understand why I choose to stay here with my
college instead of tying up with a university back East. But, maybe not.
We are only step-brothers. He is old enough to be my father, and with
all his knowledge of books he could never read men. However, he sent
me West with a fat pocketbook in the interest of higher education.
I hope I've invested well. And our magnificent group of buildings up here
and our broad-acred campus, together with our splendid enrollment of students
justify my hope. Strange, I have never known whose money I was using.
Not Joshua Wream's, I know that. Money is nothing to the Wreams except
as it endows libraries, builds colleges, and extends universities.
Too scholarly for these prairies, all of them! Too scholarly!"

The Dean's eyes were fixed on a tiny shaft of blue smoke rising
steadily from the rough country in the valley beyond Lagonda Ledge,
but his mind was still on his brother.

"Dr. Joshua Wream, D.D., Litt.D., LL.D., etc.! He has taken all the
degrees conferable, except the degree of human insight." Something behind
the strong face sent a line of pathos into it with the thought.
"He has piled up enough for me to look after this fall, anyhow.
It was bad enough for that niece of ours to be left a penniless orphan
with only the two uncles to look after her and both of us bachelors.
And now, after he has been shaping Elinor Wream's life until she
is ready for college, he sends her out here to me, frankly declaring
that she is too much for him. She always was."

He turned to a letter lying on the table beside him, a smile
playing about the frown on his countenance.

"He hopes I can do better by Elinor than he has been able to do,
because he's never had a wife nor child to teach him," he continued,
giving word to his thought. "A fine time for me to begin!
No wife nor child has ever taught me anything. He says she is a
good girl, a beautiful girl with only two great faults. Only two!
She's lucky. `One' "--Fenneben glanced more closely at the letter--"
`is her self-will.' I never knew a Wream that didn't have that fault.
`And the other' "--the frown drove back the smile now--" `is her
notion of wealth. Nobody but a rich man could ever win her hand.'
She who has been simply reared, with all the Wream creed that higher
education is the final end of man, is set with a Wream-like firmness
in her hatred of poverty, her eagerness for riches and luxury.
And to add to all this responsibility he must send me his pet Greek scholar,
Vincent Burgess, to try out as a professor in Sunrise. A Burgess,
of all men in the world, to be sent to me! Of course this young
man knows nothing of my affairs but is my brother too old and too
scholarly to remember what I've tried a thousand times to forget?
I thought the old wound had healed by this time."

A wave of sadness swept the strong man's face. "I've asked Burgess to come
up at three. I must find out what material is sent here for my shaping.
It is a president's business to shape well, and I must do my best,
God help me!"

A shadow darkened Lloyd Fenneben's face, and his black eyes
held a strange light. He stared vacantly at the landscape
until he suddenly noted the slender wavering pillar of smoke
beyond the Walnut.

"There are no houses in those glens and hidden places," he thought.
"I wonder what fire is under that smoke on a day like this.
It is a far cry from the top of this ridge to the bottom of that
half-tamed region down there. One may see into three counties here,
but it is rough traveling across the river by day, and worse by night."

The bell above the south turret chimed the hour of three as Vincent Burgess
entered the study.

"Take this seat by the window," Dr. Fenneben said with a genial smile
and a handclasp worth remembering. "You can see an Empire from this point,
if you care to look out."

Vincent Burgess sat at ease in any presence. He had the face of a scholar,
and the manners of a gentleman. But he gave no sign that he cared to view
the empire that lay beyond the window.

"We are to be co-workers for some time, Burgess. May I ask you
why you chose to come to Kansas?"

Fenneben came straight to the purpose of the interview.
This keen-eyed, business-like man seemed to Burgess very unlike old
Dr. Wream, whom everybody at Harvard loved and anybody could deceive.
But to the direct question he answered directly and concisely.

"I came to study types, to acquire geographical breadth, to have seclusion,
that I may pursue more profound research."

There was a play of light in Dr. Fenneben's eyes.

"You must judge for yourself of the value of Sunrise and Lagonda Ledge
for seclusion. But we make a specialty of geographical breadth out here.
As to types, they assay fairly well to the ton, these Jayhawkers do."

"What are Jayhawkers, Doctor?" Burgess queried.

"Yonder is one specimen," Fenneben answered, pointing toward the window.

Vincent Burgess, looking out, saw Vic Burleigh leaping up the broad
steps from the level campus, a giant fellow, fully six feet tall.
The swing of strength, void of grace, was in his motion.
His face was gypsy-brown under a crop of sunburned auburn hair.
A stiff new derby hat was set bashfully on a head set unabashed
on broad shoulders. The store-mark of the ready-made
was on his clothing, and it was clear that he was less
accustomed to cut stone steps than to springing prairie sod.
Clearly he was a real product of the soil.

"Why, that is the young bumpkin I came in with this morning.
I thought I was striding alongside an elephant in bulk and wild
horse in speed," Burgess said with a smile.

"You will have a share in taming him, doubtless," Dr. Fenneben replied.
"He looks hardly bridle-wise yet. Enter him among your types.
I didn't get his name this morning, but he interested me at once,
as a fellow of good blood if not of good manners, and I have asked him
to come in here later. Some boys must be met on the very threshold
of a college if they are to run safely along the four years."

"His name is Burleigh, Victor Burleigh. I remember it because it is not
a new name to me. Picture him in a cap and gown at home in a library,
or standing up to receive a Master's Degree from a university!
His kind leave about the middle of the second semester and revert
to the soil, don't they?"

Burgess laughed pleasantly, and leaned forward to get one more look at
the country boy, disappearing behind a group of evergreens in the north
angle of the building.

"They do not always leave so soon as that. You can't tell
the grade of timber every time by the bark outside."
There was a deeper tone in Dr. Fenneben's voice now.
"But as to yourself, you had a motive in coming to Kansas, I judge.
You can study types anywhere."

Whether the young man liked this or not, he answered evenly:

"I am to give instruction in Greek here at Lagonda Ledge. Beastly name,
isn't it? Suggestive of rattlesnakes, somehow! I shall spend much
time in study, for I am preparing a comprehensive thesis for my
Master's Degree. The very barrenness of these dull prairies will keep
me close to my library for a couple of years."

"Oh, you will do your work well anywhere," Dr. Fenneben declared.
"You need not put walls of distances about you for that.
I thought you might have a more definite purpose in choosing
this state, of all places."

Fenneben's mind was running back to the days of his own
first struggle for existence in the West, and his heart went
out in sympathy to the undisciplined young professor.

"I have a reason, but it is entirely a personal matter."
Burgess was looking at the floor now. "Did you know I had
a sister once?"

"Yes, I know," Dr. Fenneben said.

"She was married and came to Kansas. That was after you
left Cambridge, I suppose. She and her husband are both dead,
leaving no children. My father was bitterly opposed
to her coming out here, and never forgave her for it.
He died recently, making me his heir. I've always thought I'd
like to see the state where my sister lived. She died young.
She could not have been as old as you are, and you are a young
man yet, Doctor. In addition, my father left in my care some trust
funds for a claimant who also lived in Kansas. He is dead now,
but I want to find out something more definite concerning him.
Outside of this, I hope to do well here and to succeed to
higher places elsewhere, soon. All this personal to myself,
and worthy, I hope."

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