So Big by Edna Ferber (read books for money .txt) 📕

In that case, they decided, Midwest University, in Chicago, on the south side near the lake, would do splendidly. For a general course, sort of. The world lay ahead of Dirk. It was like the childhood game of counting buttons.

Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief,
Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief.

Together they counted Dirk’s mental buttons but it never came out twice the same. It depended on the suit you happened to be wearing, of course. Eugene Arnold was going to take law at Yale. He said it would be necessary if he was going into the business. He didn’t put it just that way, when talking to Dirk. He said the damned old hog business. Pauline (she insisted that they call her Paula now) was at a girls’ school up the Hudson⁠—one of those schools that never advertise even in the front of the thirty-five-cent magazines.

So, at eighteen, it had been Midwest University for Dirk. It was a much more economical plan than would have resulted from the choice of an eastern college. High Prairie heard that Dirk DeJong was going away to college. A neighbour’s son said, “Going to Wisconsin? Agricultural course there?”

“My gosh, no!” Dirk had answered. He told this to Selina, laughing. But she had not laughed.

“I’d like to take that course myself, if you must know. They say it’s wonderful.” She looked at him, suddenly. “Dirk, you wouldn’t like to take it, would you? To go to Madison, I mean. Is that what you’d like?”

He stared. “Me! No!⁠ ⁠… Unless you want me to, Mother. Then I would, gladly. I hate your working like this, on the farm, while I go off to school. It makes me feel kind of rotten, having my mother working for me. The other fellows⁠—”

“I’m doing the work I’m interested in, for the person I love best in the world. I’d be lost⁠—unhappy⁠—without the farm. If the city creeps up on me here, as they predict it will, I don’t know what I shall do.”

But Dirk had a prediction of his own to make. “Chicago’ll never grow this way, with all those steel mills and hunkies to the south of us. The north side is going to be the place to live. It is already.”

“The place for whom?”

“For the people with money.”

She smiled then so that you saw the funny little wrinkle across her nose. “Well, then the south section of Chicago is going to be all right for us yet a while.”

“Just you wait till I’m successful. Then there’ll be no more working for you.”

“What do you mean by ‘successful,’ Sobig?” She had not called him that in years. But now the old nickname came to her tongue perhaps because they were speaking of his future, his success. “What do you mean by ‘successful,’ Sobig?”

“Rich. Lots of money.”

“Oh, no, Dirk! No! That’s not success. Roelf⁠—the thing Roelf does⁠—that’s success.”

“Oh, well, if you have money enough you can buy the things he makes, and have ’em. That’s almost as good, isn’t it?”

Midwest University had sprung up almost literally overnight on the property that had been the site of the Midway Plaisance during the World’s Fair in Chicago in ’93. One man’s millions had been the magic wand that, waved over a bare stretch of prairie land, had produced a seat of learning. The university guide book spoke of him reverently as the Founder, capitalizing the word as one does the Deity. The student body spoke of him with somewhat less veneration. They called him Coal-Oil Johnny. He had already given thirty millions to the university and still the insatiable maw of this institute of learning yawned for more. When oil went up a fraction of a cent they said, “Guess Coal-Oil Johnny’s fixing to feed us another million.”

Dirk commenced his studies at Midwest University in the autumn of 1909. His first year was none too agreeable, as is usually the case in first years. He got on well, though. A large proportion of the men students were taking law, which accounts for the great number of real-estate salesmen and insurance agents now doing business in and about Chicago. Before the end of the first semester he was popular. He was a natural-born floor committeeman and badges bloomed in his buttonhole. Merely by donning a ready-made dress suit he could give it a made-to-order air. He had great natural charm of manner. The men liked him, and the girls, too. He learned to say, “Got Pol Econ at ten,” which meant that he took Political Economy at that hour; and “I’d like to cut Psyk,” meant that he was not up on his approaching lesson in Applied Psychology. He rarely “cut” a class. He would have felt that this was unfair and disloyal to his mother. Some of his fellow students joked about this faithfulness to his classes. “Person would think you were an Unclassified,” they said.

The Unclassifieds were made up, for the most part, of earnest and rather middle-aged students whose education was a delayed blooming. They usually were not enrolled for a full course, or were taking double work feverishly. The Classifieds, on the other hand, were the regularly enrolled students, pretty well of an age (between seventeen and twenty-three) who took their education with a sprinkling of sugar. Of the Unclassified students the University catalogue said:

Persons at least twenty-one years of age, not seeking a degree, may be admitted through the office of the University Examiner to the courses of instruction offered in the University, as unclassified students. They shall present evidence of successful experience as a teacher or other valuable educative experience in practical life.⁠ ⁠… They are ineligible for public appearance.⁠ ⁠…

You saw them the Cinderellas and the Smikes of this temple of learning.

The Classifieds and the Unclassifieds rarely mixed. Not age alone, but purpose separated them. The Classifieds, boys and girls, were, for the most part, slim young lads with caps and pipes and sweaters, their talk of football, baseball, girls;