The why: I wanted a college education.
The how: By sticking type, kicking the 8 x 12 Gordon jobber, feeding the old Babcock drum cylinder, yanking the lever of the paper cutter (which usually had a dull knife), doctoring the ramshackle old engine in the print shop of The University Press at Chapel Hill, N. C., and working fourteen and sixteen hours a day,—and enjoying it, too—on rare occasions, especially when there was a ball game on the “the Hill.”
Later, when I came to be manager of the shop, the principal part of my work, at times, was finding new and novel excuses for not getting the work out on time. I am not sure, but I am inclined to think that I did my full share of creative work in that field, a field in which imagination has done and is doing wonders. I believe that I may safely refer to Acting-President E. K. Graham, Dr. Archibald Henderson, Dr. George Howe, Dr. L. R. Wilson, Professor N. W. Walker and other members of the University faculty for testimonials along this line. Certainly they will bear me out in the statement 50 that I always had an excuse ready; also that I usually needed one.
The smell of the print shop had been in my nostrils since I was a mere youngster. I “learned the case” on The Express, at Sanford, N. C.; graduated into the shop of Cole Printing Company, in the same town; worked for a short time in one or two other shops, and so when I started for Chapel Hill in the fall of 1904, fired with enthusiasm by glowing tales of life on “the Hill,” I felt that I was fairly well equipped to earn my living and get an education.
I might state, parenthetically, that the enthusiasm lasted almost to University Station. It came back later with compound interest; but when I first set foot on Chapel Hill soil I did not stand calmly and survey the world that I had come to conquer. In fact, the conquering instinct in my manly breast was distinctly dormant.
I was armed with fifty dollars, enough to pay the registration fees and to give me a feeble shove. The above soon lost its force, however, and it was up to me to dig, which I did. There may be poetry and there may be glory in working your way through college, but I found that it consisted mostly of digging.
I got along fairly well with my school work during my freshman year. I earned enough money, lacking just five dollars, besides my initial fifty, to pay my expenses, but I didn’t luxuriate noticeably. I did, however, learn to study. 51
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