The call, p.11
The Call, page 11
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IN MOST of the Protestant denominational colleges and universities of those days, the Young Men’s Christian Association had the prestige and assumed the functions much later taken over by student governments and student unions; it provided some services, in fact, that were later the responsibilities of university bureaus. Along with major team captains and the campus newspaper editor, the president of “the Association,” as the Y.M.C.A. was commonly called, was a prominent undergraduate leader, more or less equivalent to a student council president or student union chairman in an American university later in the century. David’s new form of ambition—to be useful in God’s eyes, “to burn brightly for him”—drew him to the Christian Association. He was soon active in its work.
Founded in London in 1844 and transplanted to Canada and the United States seven years later, the Y.M.C.A. was originally intended to improve the spiritual and physical lot of young urban workers, but there were soon thriving branches on college campuses. In 1877 a convention of the Y.M.C.A. in Louisville formalized a college department and named Luther D. Wishard, who had joined the Association at Hanover College in Indiana before transferring to Princeton, as its secretary. This energetic youth founded scores of college Associations in the East and Middle West, and with what the International Committee of the Y.M.C.A. took to task as excessive zeal he even admitted women to campus branches—thus paving the way for the eventual appearance at many colleges of the adjunct Y.W.C.A. The Syracuse male Association, established in 1880, was later indeed joined by a female Association—which was to prove fateful in Treadup’s life. In 1894 both had been given headquarters in the new gymnasium.
It was there, with the din of athletic games and physical education classes in his ears, and the odors of basketball dust and sweat and floor oil in his nostrils, that David Treadup sharpened his organizational skills through the rest of sophomore and all of junior year. Shortly before David joined up, Albert Hurte, ’01, an attractive former president of the Association and a prominent undergraduate athlete and journalist, had become Permanent Secretary; it is clear that he liked the big bear Treadup and spent much time training him.
Besides organizing weekday prayer and Bible meetings, and setting up lectures and discussion sessions on missions, the Association also provided essential college services. There being as yet no campus dormitories, students had to live on the town, and the Y served as a clearinghouse for approved boarding facilities. It acted as an employment agency for students earning their way. It provided academic and personal counseling for underclassmen. In the fall it put on orientation sessions for freshmen.
David worked hard. “In office at YM all day. I find heaps that need looking after.” “Found things in a mix-up at Assoc office.” By the spring of junior year he was having no trouble keeping up in his studies yet also spending much time in the gym office. “I am on the go these days and am out very little. My work keeps me busy more than usual. Feeling good.”
Yes, he radiated good feeling—what in the language of cant was called “a spirit of fellowship.” He was so cheerful, so giving, so bustling—and these qualities seemed so unforced, so generous—that he began to be first a trusted, then a popular figure on the campus. Yet it is clear that he did not realize how much he was liked. He could not be called self-righteous because he was so unaware of having a self at all. Now and then there would be egregious lapses from this self-denial, and he occasionally performed acts of excessive Christian zeal which, though of high intention, turned out to be mean-spirited. But these would all be part of the transition he was going through, and for the most part he did trim himself to the needs and desires of others. In his junior year (early 1904) we come on these diary entries:
FEB. 28 I went around to Frat houses to get fellows for fraternity meeting. Thirty representative men were present. All expressed desire to take up Bible study in houses. Called on Hurte in evening. He said he believed I was the man for president next year. This was a gt. surprise.
29 Leap year! I am anxious and determined to see this Bible study scheme go through. Talked Y.M.C.A. election over with Grow. I have had no other thot than to have him run for president.
MAR. 1 Hurte says they—the Y.M.C.A. people—are going to try to lift me before I graduate. I am thinking they will have a job.
11 The Y.M.C.A. nominating committee met this morning and made out slate. They have nominated me as the only candidate for the presidency. This is still a surprise to me. I am determined by God’s help to make the most possible out of this….
15 Annual election of officers in the Y.M.C.A. President D Treadup. Vice-Pres Bob Wood. Treas.—Wear. Secy.—Andrews. This election is gratifying, in that I was the only man mentioned for presidency. Lord help me to meet the need. Higher! HIGHER! HIGHER!
With these cries, David, without knowing it, had chosen his mountain once and for all. His new success had selected his career for him. His “call” was still a year away, but he was now set on a fixed path from this strength to a far more demanding one.
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NOT LONG after his conversion, at a joint Y.M.C.A.-Y.W.C.A. reception for a missionary from Africa named Dr. Hotchkiss, who had spoken at Park Church in the city, Treadup was introduced to a Mrs. Helen Kupfer, the wife of a professor of Roman history; she was an informal adviser to the young volunteers of the Y.W.C.A. “A captivating lady,” David wrote.
A few days later he received a written invitation to “drop by the house after services on Sunday. Very informal spread.” Professor Kupfer, a Methodist whose foot had slipped, as the saying went, attended neither church nor his wife’s very informal spreads. “Aloof and cold,” wrote David. But not Mrs. Kupfer, who very soon had become the older woman of David’s Syracuse years. He began to call on her every Sunday, and he saw her often at the gym offices.
Outwardly, though large and plump, Mrs. Kupfer was quite unlike Mrs. Farleigh of Turcott. Mrs. Kupfer wore woolens and was pale. She had eyes, one gathers, of the sort Yeats would have called dream-dimmed. Though sharp and keen in support of her young ladies, she was chary in gesture and deeply reserved. Something in David, however, opened her heart, and vice versa, and they took to confiding secrets to each other; hers apparently had to do with pain in her marriage. “Odd. I feel pity for her,” David wrote, “yet she has me wound around her little finger.” It went without saying that there was never to be, with Mrs. Kupfer, anything so intimate as the massaging of an aching shoulder. And in her case, the goals of the dream of “the other mother,” the generous round sources of sustenance, were encased in wool, linen, whalebone, and pallor. And yet: “I have never encountered such large-hearted Christian love as Mrs. K’s. It is as sunlight must be on the Caribbees, hot and direct.” And how strange this is: “When I pull my Navy oar I think, with each stroke, Kup, Kup, Kup, Kup, and with each stroke I gain strength.”
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COMPLAINTS about studies vanished. “Why, it is as if I had been playing blindman’s buff all these years, and now the blindfold has been taken off.” The irony was that with his new clarity of vision Treadup doubtless could have seen his way through the classical courses, but for better or worse he was committed to science. The cap of the irony was that in the grip of his new religiosity he was able to learn the “facts” of science by rote without quite being able to pin down (or wipe out) God’s role in them. We know he had taken the trouble to read The Origin of Species, but there was never any sign that he acknowledged Darwin’s assault on the Book of Genesis. Yet he was—or gradually became—aware of the conflict, which was to project itself far into his missionary career. In junior year he took two courses that were centered on it: a course in philosophy, in which the hardest nut to crack was Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and one entitled Theistic Science, an exercise in mental gymnastics, the thrust of which was that one could believe in both science and God. In the latter course, David encountered early inklings of the New Theology, on which the “social gospel” of the liberal wing of the missionary movement was to be based—another future source of conflict in Treadup’s life.
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NOW CAME one of Treadup’s dreadful lapses. It was not to be until “Search,” more than forty years later, that he would finally acknowledge his shame over it.
The spring term of sophomore year was the time of fraternity rushing. Before his conversion, David in his secular ambition had set his cap not only for membership in a Greek-letter fraternity, which would provide the humble farm boy with luxurious room and board in a collegial setting, and would lift him above the forlorn mass of the unchosen “neutrals”; but for membership, furthermore, in one of the more prestigious societies. The fraternities seethed with campus politics; they feuded openly for captaincies, for academic honors, for influence with the chancellor and faculty, for control of the college publications and of the boards of the Y.M.C.A. and other campus organizations. Exclusion from one of these major centers of power simply meant exclusion from power.
The conversion had changed only one element in this picture: Treadup’s concept of power. Now power would not be a means to personal aggrandizement but, rather, a means to help others: “power with man and God.” At deeper psychological levels, this distinction might be blurred, but it would take decades for David to realize it.
On March 4 a man named Kelly invited Treadup to dinner at the Phi Kappa Psi house. David was impressed. He was given to believe he would get a bid. “They have a good house of fellows.” But on the tenth he began to be courted by one Wright, from Chi Alpha Sigma, and on the morning of the twelfth Wright called on David at his lodging house and gave him a formal bid.
Treadup asked what about his close friend and housemate Cook?
Wright said there had been objections to Cook.
Then, said Treadup, he had objections to the bid. According to the diary: “Cook must go with me where I go.”
That evening Wright returned and offered a bid to Cook. Five days later, “Wright, McClellin, and McLachen came down after meeting and rushed us until late. I am sorry they have rushed me so hard.” The next day Kelly, of the other fraternity, talked to Treadup “for nearly an hour” and begged him to wait at least until March 25 before pledging any fraternity.
Treadup’s being able to carry Cook with him and the urgency of these rival rushes apparently gave him a sense of a new kind of power—bargaining power—and also got him thinking about something he called “higher necessity.” He had a duty to God to join the fraternity where he would have the greatest influence for good. Unfortunately neither of the fraternities that were rushing him were up there in the pecking order with the nationally prominent societies, such as Psi Upsilon, Delta Kappa Epsilon, and Beta Theta Pi.
Then suddenly on April 18 (for he had waited long past March 25) exclamation points reappeared. “Brown was in my room in evening talking Psi Upsilon. This is a new chapter in frat experience!” Three days later:
Took dinner at Psi U at 101 College Place—colonial mansion, stately pillars, broad roofs, symmetrical turrets! This is oldest frat at Syr. These are the type of men who get things done. After dinner went with the men to the Williams game! Brown is rushing me for all he is worth. He is one of the best fellows I ever knew.
The following day came two terrible sentences:
I do not fancy the idea of leaving Cook another year, but if Psi U opens to me I think I will go with Brown. I came to college to get and to give.
And on May 12:
Brown and Harry Barber called for me at suppertime and pledged me to Psi U. A higher necessity dictates my choice. May God add his blessing and make me strong.
Cook’s name disappeared from the diary, as if he were dead.
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INITIATION did not come until the next autumn:
OCT. 6 Last night I received a command from ΨY to appear at 1140 S. Salina. I am commanded not to speak to any member of the Chapter until I am released from command. A “mum” day. Prayer meeting in evening.
7 This initiation makes me laugh. Every member cuts me dead. If such a state of affairs were in earnest, it would be unendurable. As it is, it is amusing.
8 At two o’clock Fowler, Cornwall, Perus, and myself reported at the corner of Mad. and Crouse Strs. We were blindfold there until nearly night. We were then taken into the country and ‘put thro’ cave, hell, ect. The init. was elaborate and splendid. We then were brot to the house, where we singly took an oath of Fidelity, Secrecy, and Brotherly Love. This was extremely solemn. Took the binding oath at the ΨY altar at 8 o’c. The Chapter then went to the Yates where we had a 2 dollar dinner. The initiates were called upon for toasts. I am now a member of Pi of Psi Upsilon fraternity. This is a great privilege and chance. I hope I shall be able to give here as well as get.
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WHAT FORMS did his giving, in the name of the “higher necessity,” take? The answer, at first, was dreary: prudishness and censoriousness. These odious traits, common and persistent in many missionaries he would know in China, later disappeared entirely from Treadup’s repertory. It was as if the transition period required, among other shifts and changes, a purging of high-minded nastiness, once and for all.
“Three of the brothers did a very shameful act today in getting drunk and then riding up in a loaded car. I have spoken to some of the alumni and they are very much put out about this disgrace.” “I had a long talk today with L. Vought. He is drifting. I did not spare him but told him what I thot.” “There is trouble in the air about poker playing. This thing must be stopped.” “Had a talk with Bronson about his life. It is appalling how many of these young fellows lose their heads when they come to college.” “There has been more swearing in the house since we returned than ever before. Something must be done.” “Attempts at wit at the Pi Lit were near the limit and bordered on vulgarity.”
In several cases there is strangely—perhaps coincidentally—a O beside Treadup’s notations. “It seems that Charleau has been doing considerable harm by not leading a clean life. I was much surprised to learn of it. He has promised me to amend.”
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ON THE SECOND FLOOR of the Hall of Languages, the Y.W.C.A. had set up a lunch counter where, between ten in the morning and one, students could buy sandwiches, cookies, bread, and milk. There one noonday in the late spring of his sophomore year David Treadup was waited on by a young lady who, he knew, had just been elected president of the Y.W.C.A. for the following year. (David’s corresponding election was to be a year later; she was in ’04, he in ’05, though he was five years older than she.) Her name was Emily Kean, and she made a prompt misspelled debut in Treadup’s diary: “I like the appearance of Miss Keen very much.”
Later notes specified “dark brown eyes, dark brown hair,” “braids coiled in a crown,” and he even noticed “amber horn hairpins.” “Behind the counter Miss K calm, even at rush hour never gets flustered like some others.” Much later David would learn that she was the daughter of a handsome Scot who had immigrated to the United States at the age of nineteen and had eventually established himself as a dairy farmer and dealer in cheddar cheese, near Herkimer, New York. Miss Kean had attended Rome Free Academy, in the town of Rome, a school quite like Enderbury Institute; she was preparing to teach in just such another school—preparing to be a valuable person like Absolom Carter.
There is no sign that Treadup gave Miss Kean any thought over the summer—during which he served as boys’ secretary in a Y.M.C.A. in the slums of Little Falls, New York, catering to “genuine toughs,” the whole experience “a study in degraded classes.” But early in the fall he saw her again and invited “Miss Keen” to go with him to the first Y.M.C.A. reception on Saturday night, September 19. The occasion was “a great success!” The following Friday:
Played tennis in P.M. I happened to be on the winning side today. I am more and more convinced that I should make the acquaintance of Miss Kean.
This phrase, “make the acquaintance of,” quite often repeated in following weeks, evidently encoded more than its surface meaning. It hinted at a serious intention. A convert was bound to be thinking that a Christian man had a duty to become engaged to be married, for he would need a helpmeet in the service of God.
OCT. 3 Dissected a frog at lab. Went to a reception for Mr. Ilium at Mrs. Kupfer’s. Had pleasure of seeing Miss Kean home. Made date for later call.
15 [Just after the initiation into Psi U.] Took buggy drive in P.M. with Miss Kean. Drove down Indian Reservation way. Very pleasant afternoon. Talked to Grow about Miss K. Have decided to make her acquaintance.
NOV. 8 In evening to Park Presbyterian. Miss Kean was my company. Hope to become better acquainted with her.
