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BOARD
OF
EDITORS
Vol. XXXVII OCTOBER, 1928 No. 1
EDITORIAL BOARD
Editor-in-chief, Anne Lloyd Basinger, 1929
Managing Editor, Ernestine Gilbreth, 1929
Book Review Editor, Elizabeth Botsford, 1929
Katherine S. BolmaNj 1929 Rachel Grant, 1929
Elizabeth Wheeler, 1929 Elizabeth Sha^v, 1930
Sallie S. Simons, 1930
Art — Nancy Wynne Parker, 1930
BUSINESS STAFF
Business Manager, Sylvia Alberts, 1929
Lilian Supove, 1929 Anna Dabney, 1930 Mary Folsom, 1931
Mary Sayre, 1930 Esther Tow, 1931 Sarah Pearson, 1931
Agnes Lyall, 1930
Advertising Manager, Betsy Tilden, 1930
Gertrude Cohen, 1929
Circulation Manager, Ruth Rose, 1929
The Smith College Monthly is published at Northampton, Mass., each month from
October to June, inclusive. Terms $2.00 a year. Single copies 25c.
Subscriptions may be sent to Sylvia Alberts, 12 Fruit Street, Northampton.
Advertising Manager, B. A. Tilden, Oillett House.
Contributions may be left in the Monthly box in the Note Room.
Entered at the Post Office at Northampton, Mass., as second class matter.
Metcalf Printing § Publishing Company, Northampton, Mass.
"Accepted for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1203,
Act of October 3, 1917. Authorized October 31, 1913."*
/til manuscript should be typewritten and in the Monthly Box by the fifteenth
of the month to be considered for the issue of the following month.
All manuscript should be signed with the full name of the writer.
I
For Taxi Service - - Phone 55
i
LOWEST RATES IN THE CITY
"Around the Corner from Treblas"
Cadillac and LaSalle
DRIVE YOURSELF CARS
CHRYSLERS AND CHANDLERS
SEDANS AND ROADSTERS
Oldest Drive Yourself in the City
Phone 55 - No"haZon Taxi
i !> Masonic Street,
X
orthampton, Mass.
CONTENTS
1
The Sour Grape
Two Portraits
Leaf in the Autumn Gale
Entrance
Visas
In the Modern Manner
Jaffa Gate
"For King and Country"
To a Fencer
Return-
Editorial
Book Reviews
Bambi
The Magnificent Idler
Marie Grubbf
Cowboy
Elizabeth Share, 1930
Barbara Damon Simi.son, 1929 S
Anne Lloyd Basinger, 1929 9
Katherine S. Bolman, 1929 14
Anne Andrew, 1930 15
Patty Wood, 1930 18
Rachel Grant, 1929 V?
Elizabeth Wheeler. 1929 20
Nancy Wynne Parker, li)3<> 25
26
30
33
•\ M. G.
33
R.G.
35
s. s. s.
11
E. B.
15
The oldest and most dependable
taxi firm in the city.
OPERATING
Buick "Master-Six" Cars
u<rDrivurse/f Department
and
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Phone 96
Gitv Taxi Service
J
NEAR THE DRAPER HOTEL
Smith College
Monthly
THE SOUR GRAPE
Elizabeth Shaw
fi
ECENTLY the fermented grape has been the topic of
interest for many of our dinner table and club meeting
HH discussions. It has furnished conversation in many an
arid desert of silence, when the weather has, by common con-
sent been buried in a long merited grave; it has lent the spice
of battle to otherwise peacefully dull dances; it has weathered
the sternest gales of disapproval, to emerge smiling optimisti-
cally at the end with a "y°u see this is the way I feel about
Prohibition." Many a struggling author has clothed and fed
his children on the femented grape, while the magazines thai
published his enthusiastic originalities have developed thriv-
ing circulations. The fermented grape has been boomed. Is
it not time that we should pay some attention to its less start-
ling, but equally galling companion, the sour grape? Is it
necessarily more shocking that a man should spend his wages
on bad liquor, and come home to chase his wife over the apart-
ment with the coal skuttle bought on the installment plan,
than it is that a tender and affectionate maiden aunt should
perjure her immortal soul, in which she devoutly believes,
by teaching a credulous audience of youthful nieces and ne-
phews that those grapes which hang most succulently out of
reach are of necessity sour enough to pucker the mouths of
those who may be so foolish as to attempt to reach them \
There is a certain class of persons, largely composed of
those who indulge in such professions as medicine, pedagogy
and the ministry, who place their whole faith in the somewhat
doubious doctrine of the sour grape. I have my doubts as to
6 The Smith College Monthly
\\ hether the fox who first pronounced his unattainable grapes
sour, knew what he was doing in making his opinions public.
He did not realize perhaps that in a short while husbands
would be telling their wives that big ears were too much
trouble to keep in order, that mothers would he telling then-
children that the theater had so degenerated that it was a
great mistake to go often and that children would he telling
each other that the possessors of curly hair wore entirely to he
pitied since it had to he put into cork-screw curls each morn-
ing, while theirs needed only to he braided and tied.
Those who have uncles scattered over the country in
thriving parishes, and whose aunts organize sales that the
deserving heathen may he clothed and converted: those whose
relatives teach: and those who have been taught to believe
that of all professions that of the general practioner is the
noblest, will, I think, understand far better the misuse of the
sour grape than those fathers in business who have either
attained or are frankly striving for a good share of this
world's goods, and who do not say in a cheerful tout1 of voice.
'Its nice to be comfortably off', but I should hate the respon-
sibilities entailed by being rich", as they look up from last
year's novel, in its lending library covers. This responsibility
seems to be the chief objection against most otherwise desir-
able grapes. How well we know the disparaging tone of an
aunt, as we gaze covetously at the jeweler's window, quoting
with hungry lips our Revelation verses, "The first foundation
was jasper; the second sapphire; the third a chalcedony1; the
fourth, an emerald - -" Before we had reached the chrysolytc
we would be recalled to earth. "Imagine the responsibility
of owning valuable jewels, Tin sure I would hate it!*1 Or
later, as we pass the importer's window with its smart and
lovely clothes. "Expensive clothes must be such a burden to
take care of!"
Soon we shall have our populace trained so that the
hungry woman outside the restaurant will heave a sigh of
relief al not having anything to eat. "Think of having to
digest lobster Newburg whal a responsibility!" Or. at her
home, as she pins a burlap bag over the broken window.
"Well. Till glad that last pane is gone, now I won't have to
worry any longer about breaking il !" Indeed how much we
can find to be thankful for. There is the perennial minister's
remark to his familv, "Mv dears, we should all be thankful
The Smith College Monthly 7
for the temptations we cannot afford", and once 1 found an
old couple who live near us rejoicing over the fact that they
could no longer afford to take the local paper, for they told
me, "Now we can't spoil our eyes reading it at night."
It is a fact that has often been observed, that self-per-
suasion soon leads to sincere belief. Five minutes after the
fox had decided that the grapes were sour, he would not have
touched them, had they been handed to him on a silver salver.
"Those grapes," he would have said in a condescending tone.
"are sour, I don't care for them, but help yourself if you like
them that way." And so it is. When the long expected legacy
comes to the doctor, he remembers that when we have fewer
things, Ave love and appreciate them more, that a big car is too
much trouble and that a Ford is far more convenient for
traffic, that his wife positively enjoys planning her two hun-
dred dollars a year for clothes, and that it wouldn't be any
fun if she could just go in and buy whatever struck her eye.
that the public school is good for the children because they
make a wide range of friends, that there are so few good
books now-a-days that it doesn't pay to buy them, and the
old Dickens and Scott will be perfectly all right if they are
rebound, as he likes the dear old set. And so it continues
until the doctor decides that the family does not need a thing,
and large parts of the legacy go to Cousin Ben for his mission
(he doesn't realize what a responsibilty clothes and a religion
will be to the heathen) and the rest is a nest egg for travelling
(perhaps he forgets how often he has remarked that he could
see all the life and beauty he wanted in Brunswick, Maine;
and that the City had grown so he didn't like to go there any
more) .
But according to the Scriptures, "Take the foxes, the
little foxes that spoil the vineyards— " So perhaps they didn't
believe what Father Fox told them about the grapes!
8 The Smith College Monthly
TWO PORTRAITS
Barbara Damon Si mi son
She shut her life up in a narrow box.
Too narrow for the breadth of other men.
But plenty large for such a one as she.
Who put the cardboard cover down to stay,
And even under pressure will not lift
It up to set its contents out on view.
Rut. some day. she will die, and then the box
May still remain closed up — just as before.
Though with a change — her life will all be gone,
Despite her carefulness to keep it there.
II
She packed up beauty deep within her soul
As if it were a trunk in which to pile
The loveliness she saw around herself.
That others did not see. or saw, and did
\ot care about- the ripple of a pool in spring
Beside the new-found wonder of a phrase or two:
The wist fulness of pines that filled the night
Beneath Madonna blue in rows of squills.
When she unpacked her trunk she used all care.
\ot spilling out its contents on the floor
As I have seen some other travellers do.
The Smith College Monthly
LEAF IN THE AUTUMN GALE
Anne Lloyd Basingek
|>^r|S the car drew up before his house he looked at his
1*H| watch. He had been out just an hour. Bending his
Elfl head against the wind and rain he hurried across the
pavement to the door; and in that moment of exposure felt
the change of the season. Following three days of intense
Indian summer humidity, this storm that closed in steely
gloom about lamps and head-lights had chilled autumn to
death. Tomorrow would be winter.
He felt glad that he had gone over to his daughter's
apartment, even though she had seemed fretful at his visit.
It was not far; the car protected him from the storm. As
twilight had fallen, two hours ahead of time, under the op-
pressive clouds, he had decided suddenly to go and make sure
that she felt well; for in her state she was subject to depres-
sion. He had never learned to forget the premonitions of his
wife before this daughter's birth, when in spite of all assur-
ances from her doctors she had sensed her approaching death.
Women live close to the nerve of nature ; they need a man's
companionship in storm, he thought. So he had gone; had
found her surprisingly exultant over this gloomy day; had
fussed over her until she became irritable, and now returned,
reassured. You cannot count on women; but so long as she
was cheerful — well. He himself felt only dark restlessness.
A card had been left on the plate. The business name
he recognized; on the back, a scribbled note: "Missed again.
Why? Conklin."
He had been out just an hour. In that hour, Conklin
had come, and gone again. Thus for the fourth time in
thirty years they missed eachother.
He carried the card into the study, and sat beside his
fire. The rain beat at his windows incessantly. He rubbed
his eyes with both hands, for his shaded lamp made the room
oppressively dark; the clouds outside had shrouded the whole
day; and as if through a film he strained to see a clear image
10 The Smith College Monthly
of things. Perhaps his eyes were tired: at least, the brighter
edges of shiny objects tables, chairs, the andirons and his
ink-well on the desk made for him only a devil-pattern
tonight, lying llat and meaningless before his tare-.
He rang for his little Japanese servant, and questioned
him. Conklin, it seemed, had missed him by only fifteen
minutes. He had left word that he had only a few minutes
between trains, and could not wait.
When they had missed eaehother the first time, it had
seemer no more than a mischance. They were young and
busy then, he himself just beginning to build a reputation of
brilliant amateurism in literature, and Conklin entering the
rail-road world in the- west, where he was to gain importance.
They never thought of separation as more than temporary;
and they had traveled enough to think of the world as a small
plaee. lint the mischance repeated itself queerly. Twice in
the west and now four times in New York they had tried, ami
failed, to set eaehother. The margin of time grew narrower.
Once Conklin had visited his home when he was in Europe;
once, when he had gone to fish for two weeks up-state: once
when he was spending a week-end in the country. Hut never
before had he missed so narrowly as by fifteen minutes. A
rail-road man is always in a hurry; it so happened that Conk-
lin could never wait. lie left his card each time: all very
alike. The first had read something like: ".Missed you. Better
luck next time. Conklin." The two middle cards wore al-
most identical. "Missed again. Only in town for the day.
Sorry. Conklin." This last card in his hand gave a new note.
"Missed again. Why? Conklin." And one could visualize
Conklin. writing, "M issed you," in that scribble of haste: then
pausing with a shadow of perplexity; writing "Why?" with
an expression almost of astonishment : and signing, and plow-
ing away doggedly into the howling twilighl street. The new
word indicated a confirmation of a secret feeling that he had
hated to waste time upon before: the feeling that something
more than chance played their lives; that an external power
persisted in separating them and bewildering them; and that
they were prey to an unseen meddler. A literary man will
siihmit to this sort of sen sat ion : he investigates out of curios-
ity tli< reasons for things. Hut if casual, unimaginative
Conklin. perhaps under the influence of this howling wind.
delaved a minute to wrinkle his forehead and to write
The Smith College Monthly 1 1
"Why?" on his card, before turning up his collar and going
away — there must after all be something wrong. Just so a
dog or a horse gives sign of (list rust before a man, reinforc-
ing by instinct an impression which his master has reasoned
out of mind.
And on this wild afternoon, under the oppression of
spirits felt by so many people when the sky is darkly oxer-
cast, such a slight sign as his daughter's restlessness during
his visit seemed also to confirm the sense of fatality, hinting
that she felt something going wrong, during his visit to her.
She had begged him repeatedly to go home, with a nervous
energy which, by exhausting her, had seemed to feed itself
by her added persistence to overcome weariness, until he had
wondered whether after all storm did not cause a disturbance
far deeper than consciousness within her. At the time he
had considered her to be arguing against her wishes, out of
consideration for him; and so he had answered her fretfulness
with stubborn calm, until at the end of half an hour she had
suddenly fallen silent, drooping as if doped with a sleeping-
powder; and had murmured that if he would only run away
and stop disturbing her she could rest before dinner; and he
had been satisfied, and had returned. These events he played
over again now, very slowly, and told himself that more than
her condition caused her irritability; that swinging as she was
in the turn of the tide of life, giving more of herself away
than her strength afforded, half-dead, perhaps, because
drained of energy, but half-immortal, since creating like a
goddess in herself, she had sensed the alien force in his life
which separated him from Conklin, and had tried, not under-
standing her own motives, to help him trick it.
Under the intensity of his study, her nervousness that
had seemed a coincidence at first became in turn the proof of
that unnatural inter ferance, and convinced him that more
than chance separated him from Conklin. But he could not
guess any reason for that separation. Why. after all, should
fate choose Conklin for subject? They had never been inti-
mate friends; and inevitably they must have drifted apart as
they pursued their different lives, lie could scarcely under-
stand his own interest in the rail-road man. Met by chance
when he himself had just graduated from college, and Conk-
lin, five years younger, had run away from school, they had
chosen to make their way around the world together, for
1 2 The Smith College Monthly
adventure. A queer wanderer named Capshaw, who must
have been a little older than cither of them, made the third
of the party. None of them defined the reason for such
choice of company: they had nothing in common but the
escapade: hut they had enjoyed eachother. Obviously they
would have to part in the end. since one was a horn tramp,
one a dabbler with hooks .and one a self-making novice in
business. They had known it when they came hack to New
York. Conklin was a less interesting boy than undisciplined
Capshaw; if they had met again once or twice it would have
satisfied them both. But — to lose eachother! In so small a
world, in one continent, for two men used to travel and wide
friendship to he separated forever, stung one to a defiance of
hick, till from chafing their interest in eachother was in-
flamed; and the memory of old friendship perpetuated itself
in a disproportionate bond. Thus, though he told himself thai
rough Conklin had virtually become a memory more than
thirty years ago, he could not forget the ominous manage-
ment which set fifteen minutes' time between them. And
little Conklin's rugged face hailed itself before his eyes as he
had last seen it on a morning in New York following their
trip, to haunt him forever.
They had parted so unexpectedly then. Standing in
the lobby of their hotel, they had laid their plans, to do
errands, see people, buy a hat. 'I will see yon here in an
hour, then," Conklin had said. The words kept ringing
louder in his ears nowadays: 'I will see yon here in an hour.
then." Matter-of-fact, precise. Conklin walked one way, he
and Capshaw another. lie never saw Conklin again. When
they returned, they found a note explaining that Conklin's
mother was ill; his father had telegraphed; he had gone at
once. They had heen disappointed; hut they would meet
later. And Capshaw did meet Conklin later many times:
he, the casual vagabond, could drop in at Conklin's head-
quarters and nearly always find him. even in an hour between
trips, or could meet him unexpectedly out on the far ranges,
Or could find him in the cities of the eastern or western sea-
board, where he went only once a year. Capshaw met every-
body; he carried messages between them. This malign luck
never touched the adventurer.
The plain square lace of Conklin! Mouse-brown hair,
brown skin, tumpv features already wrinkled and homely
The Smith College Monthly 18
from squinting in the sun. It was no weird mask to haunt
one for thirty years or so. If it had been Capshaw, instead,
he would have gained in losing him. For Capshaw as he had
found him first had been a man to stare at and remember:
tall, spare, darkly savage; his teeth and eyes shone; he had no
regard for appearanees. He was one of those men who,
while so passionate as to be made ill from anger or the con-
templation of suffering, yet practise rigid asceticism, betray-
ing by their severity the nature of their dreams. If he had
lost Capshaw, he would always have remembered the tiger-
like man with whom he had adventured onee, and who had
vanished to prepetuate himself in romantic memory. Vet
Capshaw came back to him yearly, sometimes oftener; while
it was ugly little Conklin whom some storm of destiny, like
the rain and wind without, tore away out of reach. The face
of Capshaw was not to become an ideal; it was to be exposed
to view in every stage of its decay: through the brief prosper-
ity of his life when he tried to settle down, through the pinch-
ing times of destitution when he could find no work; when it
received a scar during the world war; when the hair and the
thin moustache grizzled and lost their startling blackness;
when the brows came to beetle over eyes with drooping lids :
when lines of relaxation fell from the inner corners of those
eyes downward to the cheek; when vertical creases etched
themselves on either side of the thin mouth, and the smooth
throat which had been pale and straight as a column was dug-
out into cords. Such decay appeared naked when Capshaw
came every year ; but the immature features of an undistingu-
ished boy remained with photographical clearness to be re-
membered always.
And again this night a fear came in around his curtains
from the night that some day luck would desert him in his
relationship with Capshaw- too; that this unbound wanderer
would also drift away from his circle, and leave him alone.
Possibly more might disappear; as the enchantment widened,
every friend one by one would fall beneath a spell, till he
could never again find those worth calling companions, with
whom he had hunted, or studied, or enjoyed his life. And he
would search the city, but see only strange faces; for fate
would have cleared the others from his path, till not even a
heel of them would be visible, as in a fraction of a second they
moved beyond sight, hunting him, hunted by him, separated
14 The Smith College Monthly
forever in the puzzle of circumstance. Such imaginative stuff
hazed his judgment tonight as never before; and it intensified
the bafflement of every recent parting from Capshaw; catch-
ing again the reverberations of his mood when, months ago,
in the hustle of a sub-way platform, he had called alter him,
feeling infinitely wistful; hut saying, with a shame-faced
O JO
gruffness, 'Come hark do you hear? Don't lose yourself!"
The tall grey fellow had nodded; his Tare had glimmered
weirdly in the electric glare, as faces ought to look when you
see them for the very last time; and then he had gone; the
crowds had received him into their heart: and silence had
fallen.
Thus on a streaming night, alone with a card which
marked one more mischance, the man brooded his loneliness.
And his thoughts were deadly-serious to him then. But when,
next day. in the clean bravery of 'winter sunshine, he met
Capshaw- in his worn familial' tweeds at a block from his door.
he forgot such nonsense in the commonplaces of greeting;
and only the fact of Conklin's advent remained as a queer
mischance.
ENTRANCE
KATHERINE S. Hoi man
I have wept and bruised my hands,
'Till I could weep no more,
I found it was ;i useless thing
To beat upon your door.
1 thought the way was barred,
Beyond your high stone wall.
I nt il I found the garden gate
Was never closed at all !
The Smith College Monthly 15
VISAS
Anne Andrew
El COLD wind blew twilight downstream towards us as
I we left Budapest for Vienna and Linz. As to my fate
TMtJ during the next twenty-four hours we were not quite
sure, Paulette and I. Hers was to be simple enough, for she
was on the boat bound for Vienna and, after a few hours of
sighting, thence to Linz and Paris, but I was not as lucky.
Through misunderstandings I had no transit visa for Hung-
ary which I was hoping to leave. Lenient officials by per-
suasions had let me on the boat, but they had ordered me to
leave at Szob, the frontier, buy my Hungarian visa,, take the
six o'clock morning train on which I would buy my Czechosla-
vokian visa, later, my Austrian visa, and arrive in Vienna at
five that night ready to resume my boat trip up the Danube
to Linz. I was to be traveling in German speaking lands
where neither my English nor my extremely bad French
would be of great assistance, nor would Paillette's able
tongue help me, for she had to remain on board to take care
of our luggage. We talked long and it was advice in general
and advice in particular which she gave me. For the advice
in general, she taught me to count up to ten in German and
she wrote down some useful expressions. I felt quite capable
and poised, much more so than when I knew I was landing
in a France, the rudiments of whose language I had been
learning for four years. It was, however, time to leave and
say au revoir.
The boat moved slowly away from the pier. It took all
the light with it and in the midst of the light was Paulette
waving goodbye. Slowly upstream it went and was suddenly
hidden by a mass of blackness. Only the rush of the waters
down to Budapest could be heard.
We left the landing and Avalked along the muddy paved
streets of midnight Szob. Two arms supported me. One
belonged to the short, dark Hungarian douane who spoke
occasionally in scratchy German gutterals. His remarks
J 6 The Smith College Monthly
evidently verged on coarseness, for the "police" (not gen-
darme but "police" as he insisted) stopped now and then
to laugh. 1 1 is was the Other arm. He, too, was a short man
but light in complexion and flabbier in body. His hand rest-
ing on my arm was covered by a white cotton glove. He had
told me that during the war he had been in a Russian prison
camp where his hand had been cut off. It had been replaced
bv a waxen one of hard colors. Now I shivered as I felt its
nothingness rest on my arm.
We walked endlessly past black houses and blacker t rees.
We passed the village cafe. We walked on and on to the
station where soldiers paced up and down or lounged in small
sleepy groups. In the hare military office an official in shirt-
sleeves stamped my passport, while another pulled the bed-
clothes of his cot over his head. Still a third said he hoped I
could get my Czech visa on the (> o'clock train. Alter a mom-
ent of handshakings we were again outside. Then,
acting on the decision of the "police" we returned to the cafe,
and entered a large common room, oblong and wooden with
a sordidness the uniforms of the soldiers intensified. \Vc went
to sit at the- further end near the gypsy musicians who were
dirty and inharmonious. For a time 1 talked of America
and fiance Hungarians have such respect for that sort of
tiling though he was. sad to say. only mythical. As I
talked I was watching the soldiers gathered in one group
and then four huge loud men amusing themselves with two
gingham-dressed sisters, quite homely and rather doubtful.
Shortly a Czechoslovakian soldier proud of his style asked
me to waltz. (Would I be able to get my Czech visa?) Then
the Hungarian national dance, the Tsardas.. We danced to
the straining zither and violins. During long intervals I
talked to the "police" refusing food and drink, for I could
not bear the thought of being under any obligation to them.
At three the cafe closed. I had intended to say good-
night to the gentlemen and go to the station hut they would
nothaveit. Verboten. They would look out for me and, too.
I must rest. 'The "police" seemed suddenly unable to ex-
press himself in French concerning his reiterating the word
Verboten. Realizing the futility of a struggle I went with
them to the douane's room in a nondescript cottage near the
cafe. We entered the door, passed through a sort of kitchen
lo a small hedrooin where the police lit a candle. In the
The Smith College Monthly 17
unsteady light 1 saw two single beds, a table, chairs and
vague overhanging shadows. 1 sat down and opened up my
map and books, all I had taken from the boat. I glanced up
and to my amazement the douane was divesting himself of
eoat, collar, tie, shoes, socks, and garters. Then lie lay down
on the bed, pulled up the comforter, sighed, and snored. I
wanted to laugh, I wanted to cry but I lit a cigarette and
wrote down expenses.
In a short while the police interrupted me and said 1
should rest; besides, the candle had only a half an inch of
wax left and pft — it would be out. Please to lie down and
rest. His insistance was command; I obeyed. The light was
blown out. Between the snores of the douane I heard a
clock strike one, two, three, four. Silence seemed to shriek
at me. The police creaked over and sat creak, creak on the
edge of the bed. I could see nothing but I sensed everything.
I waited. The whole of life, all emotions and thoughts,
roared through my brain, and in the following silence so
dead, I knew. My surroundings came into my field of con-
sciousness and I realised that the police had left — that he had
gone in that moment of silence. It was no dream, but reality
no longer fearful. I lit the candle and by its light wrote on
a scrap of paper, "Merci mille fois messieurs." The candle
sputtered and went out. Somehow I left the man, somehow
I left the room, the house, the street. Good God! would I
get my visa and the train ? Again I heard a clock striking.
It was a fresh sweet morning of late summer. The mud-
dy road to the station felt soft underfoot; overhead the sky
was growing a soft blue, leaves were a shiny gray green. The
breeze came fresh and gentle as I strolled along in mood with
the day. Yet the visa —
Arriving at the station and using my German expres-
sions, I bought my ticket. Time and to spare was mine so
I looked over my map which interested a bored Czech soldier.
In the course of our pantomimic conversation I learned I
would have to return to Budapest for my Czech visa. I
knew I could not do that; I had to get my visa and go on to
Vienna.* While I waited, he went to search for a French-
speaking ofriicial.
I saw the six o'clock train leave. The next one would
leave at ten o'clock. If I were unable to take it — but there
was no use thinking of that nor of the hunger I felt after
18 The Smith College Monthly
twenty-four empty hours. Up and down 1 paced. Seven
o'clock. The soldier cattle back with the official. We talked
uselessly. 1 said why 1 had to take the train, why I must get
my visa. He replied that 1 might possibly get it thereat the
station, at any rate not e>n the train. Still he- thought it
advisable to return to Budapest. 1 talked and talked. Eight
< t'clock. He w cut away and came back. 1 1 is idea had not been
successful. We talked and talked. 1 began to feel rather
sorry for myself. Xine o'clock. He went away again and
came hack with the same sad Look. Nine-thirty. 1 felt ex-
tremely sorry tor myself. Tears came' to my eyes. Xine
forty-five the train came in. Again the official left.. Xine
fifty. IK' returned again, smiling. At last he had managed
se> 1 was to have my visa. He shoved me into a small room
where two officiers were busy writing. One arose, pulled
on his white gloves, felt his sword, adjusted his cape, put on
his cap, glanced at me and marched out. The other after a
few moments ol* frantic writing handed me my passport. I
grabbed it. rushed out to the' train and jumped on. It was
ten o'clock.
As I rode up to Vienna through the- wooded lands and
marshes I wondered if they ever knew what I meant when
1 wrote "Merci mille fois messieurs."
IX THE MODERN MANNER
Patty Wood
Hend low. goldenrod,
in the' flying wind,
in the brown grass
hend low
Dust will swirl
leaf on dry leaf,
scraping
lardy warmth of sun
sickening to die
Bend low, goldenrod,
above a summer
laid awav in I ime.
The Smith College Monthly 10
JAFFA GATE
Rachel Grant
The air is ashen
With the passing of flocks,
Grey sheep, their shoulders
Rising unequally, press at the foot
Of the tall arch-
ils sudden emptiness of heat
Pours like a fall of water
Over them.
Inside the seller of licorice water
Clinks his chill cymbals
And the herders pause;
In the far corner a story teller
Leans forward from his heels.
Chanting legends of glory.
His voice taut with their splendor—
And there, the sand-prophet.
His fingers flickering
Between the cold threads of falling sand
Stares at the magic forming
On his silver tray.
A shout — a quick shudder — and the flock
Moves out. under a furious, blue sky—
20 The Smith College Monthly
yo\{ KING AM) COUNTRY
Elizabeth Wheeleb
IT the heart of Edinburgh, within the battlements of
her Castle, stands the Scottish National War Memori-
flj al. The doorway is superscribed with the words 'Lest
we forget." Beyond, the walls of the dim-lit hall Dear
panels "To the glory of God" and to the memory of all those
who laid down their lives in the Great War. Here are re-
presented all the Scottish regiments, the Air Force, the
Navy, chaplains, surgeons and nurses; all other men and
women who died; and even the canaries and rats who by
their own deaths warned soldiers of the approach of gas.
The names, written in gold, of battlefields — Verdun, Ypres,
.Jutland, Gallipoli, Palestine — shine from the walls; and
also blazoned there, are the sublimest expressions uttered
by man through the ages concerning heroism and death and
resurrection. The light through mullioned windows falls
softly on burnished coats-ofarms and tattered regimental
Hags. The only sound to he heard is the ceaseless muffled
fall of slow footsteps passing through the hall- the host of
the living come to pay homage to the dead. Some bore
arms on the battlefields named above them in the company
of the fallen here commemorated. Some approach as pil-
grims to the shrine of loved ones who died for King and
Country. And others who never knew the horror of a
battlefield or the grief of an irreparable loss, go out from
this hallowed place initiate into the proud sorrow of a mi
I ion.
These last will doubtless walk in silence down the stone
causeway, thinking not at all. feeling poignantly as they have
never fell before. They pass under the arched outer gate
with its defianl motto— "Nemo me impune lacessit", and
cioss the open square before the Castle, walking more brisk-
ly ,'is who would banish from their hearts a new. unwel-
come emotion. Bui al the head of High Street, a man with
horribly disfigured face calls. "Postcards and guide to the
Castle" in b half-strangled voice. lp the middle of the
The Smith College Monthly 21
street wanders a shabby, bareheaded man singing "The
Long, Long Trail," his hands groping, his eyes unseeing.
No, we cannot escape however much we would. Be-
cause the war scarcely touched us, and so has receded into
history with the passing of ten years, the recurrent sight
of the suffering it has wrought must stab us the more keenly.
And more heartrending than the countless memorials to
the dead are the innumerable wrecks of the living.
Some few Americans to whom the name of Robert
Bruce is hallowed will visit the battlefield of Bannockburn.
It is, however, a little frequented spot, but there is a guide
who will reconstruct the battle for visitors. He is shabbily
dressed, gray and haggard of face, and carries a cane which
he uses to point out the positions of the opposing armies —
but he drags one leg when he walks. He talks well in a
broad Highland accent, and with his words the rolling fields
echo again to the war cry of the clans. One peaceful sum-
mer afternoon standing on the rock where the Bruce plant-
ed his standard, we lived again that clay in 1314.
"You know," said our guide, "the famous British
square was first employed here by the Bruce. Front rank
kneeling, second rank standing, to form a Avail of steel.
Officially, it was last used in the Sudan. Personally. I can
say we used it at Mons in 1914. We had to . . . I was the
only man in my company who got out of there uninjured."
Thus in one swift sentence he bridged the gap of six
centuries from Bannockburn to Mons. Inevitably, we
asked his regiment. He answered with a pride that is his
heritage by the record of that regiment for two hundred
years :
"The Black Watch."
Then, with a jerk, "Well, to return to this battle, and
he continued his story. But the sense of reality was gone.
Robert Bruce yielded to the soldier of the Black Watch.
Later he said,
"I was at Gallipoli too. That was the worst place I
ever was in. Not a wash or a shave for seven weeks. I
only saw bread twice from April to December. Men died
of illness by the hundreds. . . I've often been tired in my
life, but — Yes, I was glad to get wounded and get out of
it."
Once more with an effort he remembered Robert Bruce.
22 The Smith College Monthly
He had himself in action helped to make history: yet the
hare need of food and shelter have forced him to bring to
life in words the phantoms of history. His wages can Be
only the- smallest pittance, and his tips, even it generous,
must he few. Once he lived free in his native Highlands;
then he gave his youth, his strength, his happiness, all hut
his life, for his country; and now he exists from day to day,
recalling with bitter pride that lie was a soldier of the Black
Watch.
But he is more fortunate than hundreds of his com-
rades who number among Britain's million unemployed.
They are everywhere present — destitute, unkempt, maimed,
halt and blind. They wander aimlessly on every populous
street in London. Barred by their disability from obtain-
ing work, they must resort even to begging in order to live.
Some manage to sell an occasional hunch of violets to a
passing tourist. Some, ashamed openly to beg, hold out
pencils or shoe laces, knowing that no one will buy, hut
hoping that someone will give them a few coppers. In the
more crowded thoroughfares, some of them pick at banjos
or scrape away at violins. We saw three together one day
on Bond Street — a man with one arm grinding a hand
organ, a blind man with a fine tenor voice singing "Sole
Mio", and a man with one leg passing the hat. At the cor-
ner of Pall Mall and Regent Street sits a shell shocked vet-
eran who paints, garish landscapes on the pavement. He
had to obtain permission for this from the government from
whom also he receives a pension that barely pays his rent —
and he has a wife and four children. Sometimes, among
his pictures appears a crude black cat for luck, or an appeal
scrawled in chalk— "You will never lose bv showing a kind
heart."
One morning we were watching the change of guard
at St. James' Palace. As the troops lined up in the court-
yard, a voice addressed us.
"You see the color-hearer walking up and down, and
the captain with him? Well, that's a tradition of the
guards. At the siege of when all the men were killed or
wounded, except a few officers and (he color-hearer, they
walked up and down on the rampart to make the enemy
think the fort was si ill garrisoned/
\\Y turned from the spectacle before US to look at the
The Smith College Monthly 23
speaker. He was dressed in a suit of which the coat and
trousers did not match. In his left hand he held a cigar-
ette; his right was thrust in his pocket, and the arm, held
close against his side, appeared strangely shrunken. There
were deep lines about his mouth, and now and then he
closed his eyes as he talked. He spoke with an easy grace
of expression that bore witness of unusual culture.
He had won our attention at once by his explanation
of a ceremony that to us had hitherto been meaningless.
Now he continued, "Whenever you see a wreath on the
colors, it means the anniversary of a victory for the regi-
ment."
The strains of a Sousa's march blared loudly in the
sudden hush of motionless traffic. "Ah! Here they come,"
he said, turning with a light in his eyes as the Scots Guard
band swung into view. In their scarlet coats and fur bus-
bies, every man over five feet ten, these Guards regiments
are the most magnificent troops in the world. But some-
how, beside this shabbily dressed man with his crumpled
arm, they seemed unreal, mere wooden soldiers in a toy
parade.
When it was all over, he asked: "Would you like to
see where the Prince of Wales lives?" So it happened that
in the next hour we went with him from the Palace down
the Mall to Whitehall. Along the way he pointed out monu-
ments and buildings, coloring his information with glamor-
ous details of tradition and anecdote, till we stood in the
shadow of the massive piles that represent the nerve center
of the Empire, built to stand and fall with the Empire. At
length, emerging from the unpretentious dinginess of Down-
ing Street, we left him on the busy corner in front of the
Abbey. He moved slowly away into the crowd as one who
has no incentive for haste, no destination for his aimless
footsteps, more tragic than all his fellow-sufferers; for by
birth and culture he was prepared to walk with his feet
upon the hills; but circumstance has compelled him to share
the lot of beggars who must live by charity.
In Westminster Abbey, the Unknown Warrior sleeps
among the illustrious of the nation. Nearby in Whitehall,
men bare their heads before the wreath-banked Cenotaph to
"The Glorious Dead." In one brief moment life was de-
manded of them. They scarce had time to question or to
2 I The Smith College Monthly
mourn the end of dreams they had cherished in days remote
and tranquil. All thought was refined, all desire purified
in the Same of sacrifice. They died swiftly, unfalteringly,
with steadfast courage, passed byond all doubt and pain, and
arc at peace again.
Hut these others, their living comrades, what lias been
their sacrifice? They too offered life, hut it was spared to
them only that they might he seared by years of agony.
They were to know no longer what had once been part and
parcel of their daily lives: — the light of friendly faces; the
joy of striding free over the hills of home ; the clasp of greet-
ing or farewell; the harmony of relaxed body and un-
troubled mind. Rather, they yielded up all that was theirs
save life. Their strength, their happiness, their youth.
Ten years after peaee has come to their war-torn coun-
try, it has not come to them. Poverty lias quenched their
youth in middle age; has clothed their bodies in tattered
garments; has stifled their pride and self-respect; and has
made them the objects of pity of a nation itself too poor to
help them. Their life is sunk to a sordid struggle for an
existence which they cannot value; and the future is lit by
no flickering torch of hope. but. rather, deeper shrouded in
despair. For as the years pass, even pity, so poignant to-
ward a man wrecked in the prime of life, grows sluggish
towards that same man when his long life is nearly spent.
So. while their comrades sleep in glory, they must five
hour by hour with a resignation that has ceased to be depair.
till at last Death conies to claim the shattered life that he
refused when it was offered in the fulness of youth.
The Smith College Monthly 25
TO A FENCER
Nancy Wynne Parkeb
This is lean grace.
Your uncoiling lunge
Is a greyhound that passes.
A swirl of wind outlined by quirks of silver.
But you are suddenly stopped, caught, angled.
You are a thing of daylight.
Daylight mounds on your bare arms and chest.
Waits fierce on your cheek's flattened curve.
Smites from the lid-gripped cold of your eyes.
In the grass
Clear grapes hung cool from the temples of slim dancers
Before you came.
Swords weave, curve — echo —
It is a bird your fingers hold against your steadied hand—
A bird with a cry in its throat.
I know a meadow lark along whose song
Daylight slithers as cruelly.
I have been stabbed by things hunched spiderlike.
Half-choked by tremendous bulging knuckles of the brutes.
Known the shattering darkness after bullets.
But only song can pass slim torture through my soul
This is grace flayed of slow curves
Death laughing.
26
The Smith College Monthly
RETURN
Ernestine Gilbreth
0TVENING came gently, The pine trees rustled and
I trembled in the breeze. Far off in the distance sounded
I the muffled cries of frogs. Tiny ripples fluttered hack
and forth over the lake.
On shore the bonfire crackled and burst into flame. Now
the- first chords of the organ sounded; the voices rose in
chorus, swelling out over the water, ringing hack from the
cove. The sunset had faded until only a blur of pink stained
the sky. The world was hushed, hilled in beauty.
The hymns followed one upon another, mingling with
the ripple of the water, the rustle of the trees. Long Haines
darting from the bonfire, illuminated the rows of faces.
Silence came completely, wiping away the distinctness of
reality. Then sighing like a distant wind, louder, gaining
strength and volume, sounded the first spiritual. kk\Vc arc
climbing Jacob's ladder we are climbing The notes
soared higher and higher, tense and shrill with emotion.
"'Soldiers of the Cross". They faded, ending in a whisper.
The negro singers stumbled away, their hacks hunched and
transparent in the firelight. The sky was darker now. Deep
clouds rolled over it. blotting out the crystal of the sky. The
moon appeared, yellow and waning, smiling down from a
wealth of effulgent wrinkles.
They were drifting, breathing in the cool night air. Dan
turned the canoe and started toward the cove. The service
had begun to break up. People were rising from the benches;
they scattered, melting into the darkness. Their voices echoed
hack from the road and were lost in the pines.
1 list inctively she had dipped her hand into the water and
fell the cool drops trickle away. 'The contact sent exquisite
shivers up her arm. The I ,akc it had been SO for years, cool
summer nights and moonlight, drifting silently until a yoo-
hoo in the distance, meant t ime to conic home. Hut this year
there had heen no need for Calling; she was older now. able
to judge for herself.
The Smith College Monthly 27
The past summers returned in swift, impressionistic
Hashes. There were the old friends, strangely real, haunting
now because of their vitality. Fred had been tall and blonde-
headed with glowing blue eyes. September had come quickly,
leaving him miserable and pathetically lonely. He had sworn
never to return. Why then, did his hearty laugh continue to
resound through her memory? Others had come and gone
too. Now they filled every turn of the road, lingered under
each pine, smiled from the club-porch. The lake was alive
with their voices. The springboard reverberating "from a
dive, recalled Woody, graceful as a girl, in spite of his mas-
sive build. Raising fieree black eyebrows, he had boasted of
his wives, loudly perferring them "young and silent". Win-
ning him from a determined blonde had been a matter of ease.
But again Septemher had come, deseending swiftly, leaving
no hope for resumption the following year. For summer
affairs were momentary, pleasant while they lasted, leaving
an after-taste not to he quickly forgotten. So Woody con-
tinued to dominate the spring-board, to fill the swimming
dock with his shoulders, his quick, graceful motions.
People rarely returned to the lake ; the crowd underwent
a ceaseless change. Each summer left holes never quite filled,
brought new faces smiling with an air of progressive posses-
sion from the club-porch, faces which sang new songs, whis-
pered new jokes — faces to which one became reconciled in
time. The former spontaneity and enthusiasm had disap-
peared; in their place were careful calculation and charter-
ing, the application of technique. It mattered little that the
lake remained as serenely beautiful, that the pine trees kept
their stiff, relentless watch, that Sunday nights Avere illumi-
nated with Song Service. These, the treasures of the past.
had become mysteriously, imperceptibly transformed.
The drops trickled away from her fingers and were lost
in the lake. So it was with memories. One raised them
gently, only to watch them recede once more into their source.
They were created from the past through the medium of
one's mind. Inevitably they returned whence they had come.
Why then should she remember, why should she unconscious-
ly project past events into the present, weaving bright
threads through a dull and colorless web?' Life continued
swiftly, surely. Foolish to mark time, to crane one's neck
28 The Smith College Monthly
backward like a reluctant puppy. Foolish hut when one
did it Instinctively.
A bal skimming past, brushed her cheek. Involuntarily
she shivered with disgust. Reality, it was interrupting,
like a bat. No, reality was about her, the moonlight, the
lake, paddling toward the cove; material for dreams, yet
actuality itself. And Dan! She glanced up at him, paddling
with long silent strokes, at his shirt open at the neck, at the
lean rugged features. lie was whistling, half-smiling to
himself. ''Drifting and Dreaming!" How completely it fitted
into her feelings! The lake yes. Dan loved it too. its chill
beauty, its jagged curves. The realization swept over her
chokingly. Dan and she were alive, .mutually appreciating,
living in an exotie harmony of understanding.
Now they had reached the cove overhung with tangled
branches, damp and sweet smelling. The canoe humped
against a dead root and lay drifting. Dan had put down his
paddle. Still whistling, he lit a cigarette. She glanced up
at him swiftly — at the hair blowing hack from his temples,
that half-quizzical smile.
Was she unconsciously making notes, hoarding the very
essence of future memories!'
*- -:- * * #
A year had passed. Strange that it should he Sunday
night again. The intervening winter and spring were com-
pletely obilterated; summer had become everlasting.
Again they were drifting silently, listening to the hymns
following one upon another, the spirituals rising and fading
into nothingness. She was a year older now. a year older
and Dan had come back. Dan had come back! For the firsl
time fate had sanctioned a continuance from summer to sum-
i. er. The thread had been permitted to remain unbroken;
memories and actualities existed on the same plane, could no
longer he separated.
lie had appeared one morning, smiling eagerly from
his broad height, shaking hands with the old vigor, II is pre-
sence surprised, hurt her beyond endurance. "Tonight.
There'll he a song-sen ice tonight ! Til get a canoe if it means
stealing It was impossible to repel his pleading. "Last
year do you remember last year?" Certainly she remem-
bered, hut now his proximity rang 8 sudden hideous discord.
vibrated I hroucrh her mercilesslv.
The Smith College Monthly 29
Sunday night! There had been no chance to refuse-, no
time to think, to adjust oneself to the facts. Reality and
phantasy. Where and how to differentiate! Dan had re-
turned to life, to the lake, miraculously, disappointingly.
Now glancing at him, her memories conflicted, struck on all
sides, always to his disadvantage.
How perfectly she had recalled him during those inter-
vening winter days, his hair blowing in the wind, whistling
to himself. But now he was paddling. She could hear the
water gurgling under the canoe. And suddenly she was
frightened, by his nearness, by the healthy ring of his voice,
by her utter inability to escape.
"Drifting and Dreaming". It was fate which made him
whistle that tune recalling sensations and impressions that
could only hurt. No, this was not Dan. this masquerader
sporting his air of proprietorship, trying to rekindle the old
memories, to relive them once more . By his very presence he
was sweeping away a world dim and beautiful with idealism.
he was —
Something was breathless, caught and choked within
her. Dissappointment, crumpling illusions, these were there.
But her whole philosophy, the unconscious appreciation of
life itself, faded and died before her eyes. So she had been
merely amusing herself, dressing and painting life into some-
thing dead and embalmed? How naive to try to breathe life
into what was already gone! Unsuspectingly Dan had re-
fused her ornaments, calmly brushed them aside. Should
she not appreciate — but a larger emotion swept over her.
hatred for his clumsiness, his thoughtlessness, hatred for life
itself.
The illusions had been brushed down in a single stroke.
The gaudy coverings of imagination once stripped off, left
the past revealed for what it was. a mummy a hideous dust.
It was of no significance that a bat flew by, skimming
flatly over the water, that Dan was whistling and raising the
paddle up and down, up and down. She had dipped her hand
into the water, delighting to wince at the painful sensation
it produced, at the drops falling silently, completely, back
into the lake.
•M)
The Smith College Monthly
EDITORIAL
ST happens not infrequently to ladies of the arts. Take
almost any popular actress. She had all the hard work
of establishing herself, once; or even farther back, of
picking up stage tricks while earning a living. Later she
Hushed to the applause of her first triumph; and still later.
having become fashionable, she played to houses of people
who would not dare to admit they had not seen her. Those
are the prosperous times; then the actress becomes aristocra-
tic and even haughty; she spends money freely; her position
seems enviable. Hut before she knows it her public come
only out of habit; then, there is a newer star; then all at once
her engagements thin out. and in a lew years more- she has to
beg for a place. She is likely to wonder, then, how anybody
can do without her; surely there must he a mistake? Hut the
rejections hammer at her self-respect until it is mashed out
thin and brittle; and she begins to think it would be queer
lor anybody to want her. (Though there are always the old
friends sentimentalists, probably; they still remember her,
years ago. ) So she might go on indefinitely, and even starve
somewhere in a garret, it the old friends did not come to her
rescue; start a new fashion for her; pull wires and take season
seats for her, and presently bring her forth, renovated, into
a more dependable spotlight.
It wasn't much use for her to act well, in that slump,
when people were out for style. One needs a public.
So Tm not any exception, thought Monthly, facing her
thirty-seventh season; hut poverty, even common-place.
feels night-marish. And she began to plan to economize; she
would sell her house, and much of her furniture, keeping only
the finest pieces, though they seemed less showy than her old
crowded rooms. No exception. . .And I must cut down on
The Smith College Monthly 31
dress, too, just this year; I may have been extravagant. And
there are so many things one wears that never show. . .(She
blushed; all her friends wore laee from the skin out; she had
believed sueh thorough finery was the mark of a lady.) Hut
something must be given up. Plain underthings. Nobody
ever saw her Editorial, for instanee; they expected one- some-
where underneath; but they would be embarrassed to have to
look at it. Well, she would leave off the Editorial, and the
laee; and her elothes should be severe now. ( But if I had
some good friends, they might revive me. and then, grad-
ually, I would reinstate myself. )
All of this, she thought, was natural. Shabby-gentility.
But when she found that her influential friends were working
for her after all — making public opinion swing back her way,
she tossed her head in relief, feeling awakened from an ex-
hausting night of dreams; she splashed eold water on her
face; sniffed salts, and then dashed eau de cologne under her
nose; built her hair high: put on her Editorial for the last
time that season, and walked out respectably at last, thanking
her stars for the kind public. The first appearance of the
season! Her mood was genial. Tomorrow, she promised
herself, nonsense should cease; she would catch up for lost
time, she Avould exercise her art; she would captivate them.
Today in full regalia, ( including Editorial) she Mould pay
calls, and thank these patrons.
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The Smith College Monthly M
BOOK REVIEWS
BAMBI ( A Life in the Woods) Felix Sal-ten
Translated from the German by Whittaker Chambers-
Simon and Schuster 1928
"Bambi came into the world in the middle of the thicket,
in one of those little hidden forest glades which seem to be
entirely open, but are really screened in on all sides." "He
stood there swaying unsteadily on his thin legs and staring
vaguely in front of him with clouded eyes that saw nothing."
In this fashion Felix Salten begins the story of Bambi's
"life in the woods."
The writer is interested in Bambi as a personality, and
takes keen pleasure in describing his first vibating sensations,
his fears and joys, the childish naivete so soon to be replaced
by stern calmness. With treatment as poetic and sensitive as
it is exact and simple, he describes Bambi's experiences in the
forest, his rapid accumulation of knowledge. The relation-
ship of the fawn to his mother and to Faline is carefully in-
dicated. But more delicate is the bond existing between
Bambi and "the old Prince." Salten has managed it. by the
use of restraint and of consistently skillful suggestion. The
aged deer who knows the secrets of the forest and teaches
"the vital need of being alone", remains indeed the per-
sonification of nobility, wisdom and courage.
Nature pervades the book. Poetic descriptions of the forest
reverberating with life, produce a striking combination of
beauty and reality. One lives keenly, while the days pass
and the seasons merge silently into one another. There is
summer with the forest sweltering under a scorching sun.
"Over the meadows and treetops the air quivered in glassy
transparent ripples as it does over a flame." Similes and
metaphors quiver from every line. "The forest lay as though
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The Smith College Monthly 35
hurt by the blinding sun." But winter wipes away all memory
of warmth. The trees stand "as though violated, their bodies
naked for all to see. And they lifted their bare brown limbs
to the sky for pity."
Bambi, Friend Hare, and the other unforgettable char-
acters, speak easily in human dialogue. They are always
charmingly consistent. Even the tiny midge-buzzings are
peculiarly midge-like. Or as winter approaches one may
over hear two leaves speaking for the last time.
"Have I changed much?" asked the second leaf shyly
but determinedly.
"Not in the least," the first leaf assured her. "You only
think so because I've got to be so yellow and ugly. But its
different in your case." And then a little later. "You're as
lovely as the day you were born. Here and there may be a
little yellow spot but it's hardly noticeable and only makes
you handsomer, believe me."
Equally skillful is the relationship of the people of the
forest to their most deadly enemy "Him". "The old Prince"
is able to draw a lesson from a dead hunter. "He's just the
same as we are. He has the same fears, the same needs, and
suffers in the same way." Bambi listening, was inspired and
said trembling. "There is Another who is over all, over us and
over Him". But to most of the animals "Him" remains "A
wave of scent blowing past, filling their nostrils, numbing
their senses, making their hearts stop beating." A creature
standing remarkably erect:" It was extremely thin and had
a pale face entirely bare around the nose and eyes. A kind
of dread emanated from that face, a cold terror."
The reader loses himself, forgets his own world. Utterly
free, he roams the forest, smelling the fragrant glasses, de-
lighting in the touch of cool moist winds. With a new under-
standing, a more sensitive appreciation, he listens to the
midge-buzzings, senses the trembling of a hare. Heart
pounding, he dares the sunlit meadows--with Bambi.
E. M. G.
"THE MAGXIFICEXT IDLER" Cameron Rogers
Doubleday Page and Co. 1926.
To those who find their own setting unexhilarating or
negligible, there is a vicarious excitement to be derived from
exploring the eccentricities, particularly the moral deviations,
The Smith College Monthly 37
of others. This impoverished curiosity frequently involves
an irresistible desire to draw to itself, by its loud remark, the
attention and interest of an unheeding world. Needless to
say, for these people, the distinction between the actually im-
moral and the merely complex or rare personality is too del-
icate. A biography of Walt Whitman would seem to offer
the most remarkable oportunity to that type of critic who is
preoccupied with eroticism, with high-colored sensuality, and
it is, therefore, the more unexpected and exhilarating to find
temperate criticism, intelligent and palatable, unlike so much
contemporary writing engaged in exhuming the decently
buried. Cameron Rogers has written fearlessly, maturely,
and with great humor, on the life of one of the notorious and
little known men of recent literature. The biography tries
to explain the emergence of so striking and profound a poet
from an inarticulate background. Walt Whitman's poetry
was, in a peculiar sense, borne of his life, shaped in his suffer-
ing. Without literary guidance, hampered by an initial lack
of taste and a damaging facility, he was faced with the neces-
sity of creating an entirely new medium which could give to
his great unwieldy thought, sufficient clarity, sufficient beau-
ty ; the very nature of his thought made it impossible to util-
ize created forms.
As a child he loved trees and the sea, passionately. Later
when the Whitmans moved to the city he transferred his ab-
sorbing interest to people, watching them, considering their
multiple relations, liking them. He read widely, thought
through long hours of idleness, and turned to people again.
There is an unusual emphasis on his childhood and Cameron
Rogers makes him a very engaging child, lonely and abstract-
ed, but vitally concerned with everything surrounding him.
As he grew older he turned journalist, finding to his immense
satisfaction that wrords came easily to him. During this he
wrote morose little tragedies, weighted with morals, which
he admired and respected to a large extent. His mother,
Louisa, met his literary productions with some reserve. She
wras a "skilled and experienced cook and her bread and her
biscuits were perfectly leavened masterpieces. She sensed a
certain sogginess in Walt's performance in his different field
and in a homely flash of imagination, she visualized his little
writings as muffins. . . .whose unwholesome heaviness became
neither their size nor their significance as nourishment." Walt
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The Smith College Monthly 39
lacked the yeoman qualities of his ancestors; he bewildered
his family and harassed his employers who could not appre-
ciate his substitution of long- periods of meditation for the
consistent and productive effort they demanded. He was
hugely mercurial, driven here and there by an overwhelming
energy of the imagination. His idleness possessed an elem-
ental quality which impressed even his associates who did
his work.
As the life goes on Cameron Rogers writes with in-
creasing insight. The account is one that would have pleased
Walt Whitman. It is quite without sentimentality, orginal
and comprehending. The unsophisticated conceit of the man,
his pleasure in his published work, that writing which had cost
him such agony, his simple amazement at the violent criti-
cism which thundered over and around him, are written down
in perfect understanding. After months of severe work, all
his nonchalance and easiness gone, he had finished the man-
uscript of "Leaves Of Grass". He had given up his various
interests in journalism, in printing, in publishing, to devote
himself to writing a book which should express his own es-
sence and the truth he knew. On its completion he went to
the "northeastern shore of Long Island to read it in its en-
tirety. He was so excited that he kept his hand upon it in
his pocket lest by some malison of chance it disappear, lost,
dropped as he walk, to disintegrate again into the soil from
which, assuredly it had come." He read and in agony saw his
failure. What he had striven to express was still locked in
him and his poems said nothing. "Leave of Grass" left his
hand in fluttering, slanting flight and met the sea." Then the
long struggle began again, against the formalism that bound
him, until he could be fully and artistically articulate. The
sixth manuscript reached the publishers. The story of its
appearance and the instant clamor that assailed it, is too well
known to need repetition.
Cameron Rogers, with extraordinary subtlety, with-
draws the figure of Whitman further and further from actu-
ality as the book reaches its last chapters. The legend that
shadows the decline of a great man. gathers closely about
him, his enormous vitality lessens and the entire tonal quality
of the writing follows its decrease. As he was less the poet
and more an unseparated part of humanity towards his death,
the impression of a great human being grows increasingly ;?s
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The Smith College Monthly 41
his presence, his power declines in weakness. There is a sense
of intimacy, a friendless and a kind of gratitude, as the book
ends.
R. G.
MARIE GRUBBE Jens Peter Jacobsen
Alfred A Knopf 1925
The increasing interest in Scandinavian literature in the
past fifteen years has been both the cause and the result of
the translation into English of several valuable works by
comparatively recent authors. Alfred A. Knopf has pub-
lished a series of which perhaps the most widely known are
Hamsun and Undset. The latter, in the trilogy "Kristin
Lavransdatter" , has accomplished the difficult fusion of a
manner of life which is past with the motion of life which is
present. Kristin and Erlend are dominant, absorbing per-
sonalities, not bound by years or periods in spite of their
entire and intimate participation in the customs of fourteenth
century Norway. In "Marie Grnbbe" , lately produced by
Knopf, history has not been joined to the present so defini-
tively. Were it not for "Kristin Lavrandsdatter" one might
say that the realistic effect of a story necessarily is damaged
by translation, adequate though the translator may be; but
I Tndset's work precludes this explanation.
It is curious that "Marie Grubbe" , a book potentially so
powerful, should give the impression of being twice removed
from actuality. It seems to be the story of a story rather than
the story of a life, its historical basis to the contrary. Seven-
teenth century life is more convincing as it is presented in the
old Danish histories. Jacobsen consumed volumes of them in
the Royal Library in preparation for his writing. He says
in a letter in 1873, " . . .1 read old documents and letters and
lies and descriptions of murder, adultery, corn rates, whore
mongery, market prices, gardening, the siege of Copenhagen,
divorce proceedings, christenings, estate registers, geneal-
ogies, and funeral sermons. All this is to become a wonderful
novel to be called "Mistress Marie Grubbe. Interiors of the
Seventeenth Centura." Most of these pastimes do discover
a speaking acquaintance in the book. Mistress Marie, social-
ly insignificant but aspiring and romantic, marries into im-
portance through Ulrik Frederick, the King's natural son.
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The Smith College Monthly 43
He is the first if three men to whom she is successively bound.
Each has a simple one-sided nature which is compelling to
Marie until she discovers its weakness empirically with much
tribulation. Sti Hogh, who for variety is paramour instead
of husband, fascinates her by a melancholy voluptuousness,
and Soren, the peasant serving in her father's house to which
she returns after breaking with Sti, has the brutal stength to
override her. Together they are driven out, and and she ends
her life in plain garments and a tawdry brocaded cap as
Soren the Ferryman's Marie. This emphasis on her dress is
an instance of the frequent use which the author makes of the
indirect method of approach to his characters, — a device
which he managed with considerable subtlety. Jacobsen says
that with Soren she was happy, but her contentment is not
persuasive. It is true that when she is alone throughout the
book she flashes into tangibility. When incidents crowd
closely her personality fades until they seem only dissolving
visions of her own imagination.
Though it is plausible to venture a criticism of the char-
acters in a foreign book, it is nearly impossible to judge the
style, the excellency of which is a matter of convention.
Jacobsen was a stylistic innovator in Danish. He admired
"the luxuriant glowing picture." Reading "Marie Grubbe"
in English is like trying to determine the whole signifance of
of a quotation out of its proper context. The scholarly care
the author exercised in supplying details peculiar to the
century, the people, or their surroudings sometimes contri-
butes to realistic effect, sometimes stultifies it. Overrichness
in style corresponds to the lack of balance in handling which
makes him introduce chapters about the besieged Copenhagen
populace which behaves quite like any other mob and adds
nothing to the progress of the novel. He has an extraordin-
ary feeling for flowers and flower settins. There is ease in
his descriptions and a facility which brings the prose near
poetry. This is most evident in the long fire passage ; "Warm
and pleasant and luminous the breath of the fire streamed
through the little room. Like a fluttering fan of light it
played over the parquet floor and chased the peaceful dusk
which hid in tremulous shadows to right and left behind
twisted chair-legs, or shrank into corners, lay thin and long
in the shelter of mouldings. . ." If Jacobsen had been as in-
terested in construction and characterization throughout the
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The Smith College Monthly 45
book as he was in aesthetic writing in which he was strongest,
over-emphasis would not have struggled with mere outline.
S. S. S.
COWBOY RossSantee
Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1928
I realize that in undertaking this review, I am opening
myself to criticism on the grounds that I am neglecting for it
other more outstanding pieces of literature, books which will
receive more praise and more discussion. I doubt wether this
book will go beyound two or possibly three editions because
it will appeal to the minority of the reading public. But I
am ready to make a firm stand in its defense.
From its title the general nature of the book is obvious,
and might well prejudice a perspective reader who has long
since been thoroughly disillusioned in the literature of the
west. The west has been capitalized for a good many years
by writers of little merit and less knowledge. We have had
"The Virginian" which has become an American classic, a
few obscure stories by Bret Harte and Hamlin Garland, and,
more recently, by Will James — "Cowboys North and South"
and two companion volumes of authentic stories and sketches.
But the rest of the western novels have been, on the whole,
justly named "trash". Their aim is sensational action, with
the result that they only occasionally achieve truth of detail
and actual characterization or atmosphere. There are excep-
tions that I might make, but I am speaking generally.
We have seen recently that excellent novels can be writ-
ten on the Middle West and its pioneers. We have yet to see
a novelist do full justice to the ranch country and to the men
who spend so much of their lives alone with cattle and horses.
These men have been misrepresented. They have been typi-
fied in a romantic diffuse glow, and have lost their sturdy
flame of reality. They deserve as much attention as the
middle western farmer has received for they too have suffered
hardships and have struggled against the forces of an implac-
able nature . The two-gun cowboy and bandit of cheap novels
has crowed out the hard working cow-hand, the camp cook,
the flunky. The wrangler who rises in the black hours before
dawn to run the horses in, the peeler who faces death every
time he mounts an unbroken horse. The vigorous drama of
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The Smith College Monthly 47
the lives of these men has been sacrificed for exaggerated
flashy tales manufactured to thrill jaded readers.
But Ross Santee in "Cowboy" has aehieved a veracity
and simplicity which are highly commendable in themselves.
The people, the horses and the maimer of life have been
learned through his own experienee as a cowboy, and he does
not make any attempt to romanticize them. The unity of
the book is maintained by the determination of a small boy
from an east Texas farm, to become a cowboy. Button is
not remarkable in any way, except for his stubborn courage.
His rise from fifteen dollars a month, milking cows and feed-
ing the chickens, to the glorious position of "bronc-peeler"
is told humourously and with keen sympathy. Button is boy
enough to have his day of conceit over his riding ability,
(quickly taken out of him by one small black horse) ; and boy
enough to worship Mack, the silent but friendly com puncher
at McDougal's ranch. His joy when he is set to work break-
ing colts, his pride over a new saddle, his intense excitement
when he rode into town for Christmas for the first time, on a
"big roan bronc," — these touches open up the wistful heart
of a boy trying to realize his ideal.
The humour is the keen spontaneous humour of a west-
erner who jests over the greatest difficulties of his life and
grumbles over the trifling discomforts. It is a rough humour,
always ready in any emergency, and expressed in a quick
figurative language. Comedy is balanced with tragedy, al-
though the latter is treated with the philosophical impassivity
which a cowboy learns. For them it is all in the run of things
that the day should come when "old man Grimes" would be
to old to lead his roundup, and that Mack should find a swift
death beneath a falling horse, alone in a horse camp. The
whole book is very real and very moving in its absolute sin-
cerity. It is written in the concise and vivid vernacular of a
cowpuncher, from Button's naive viewpoint. The descrip-
tions are done with brief suggestion — -
"We'd crawl out with the morning star. Our boot heels
poppin' on the kitchen floor before it started breakin' light.
You could tell who each puncher was by the jingle of his
spurs." or —
"At MeDongal's we always kept a bronc to wrangle on:
an' that always meant a show, for the pony had been standing
out all night, an' them nights got pretty cold. He'd always
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The Smith College Monthly 19
have a hump in his hack when you laced the saddle on, an'
most of them had to be thrown and tied down before I could
get on. That hour before daylight was always the lowest
time for me, when I did'nt have no coffee in my paunch be-
fore I started out. After the sun gets up awhile, a horse
don't look so mean, but to hear one snort when you walk up
to him while its still dark, especially if he's got rollers in his
nose, always sent a chill through me. But no matter how
cold the mornin' was, by the time I'd saddled an' crawled a
bronc I'd be circulatin' good."
Button should he allowed to make his own stand and to
tell his own story. I only hope that I have in some way indi-
cated the excellences of a book, little heralded in its arrival
upon the market. It is high time the west be given it .due
praise, and Ross Santee, although he has not written a best
seller or a prize winning novel, has told the truth about the
ranching country. He has written with a passionate honesty
as though he felt that the friends of his cowboy life had too
long been falsely painted. I recommend "Cowboy" both to
those who know the west and to those who do not. If given
a fair chance, it will enlighten many and do a great deal to
remove the heavy prejudice against western novels.
E.B.
Smith College
November
1928
"I agree with D' Alvarez*
Luckies give subtle satisfaction"
Evelyn Herbert, Star
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BOARD
OF
EDITORS
Vol. XXXVII NOVEMBER, 1928 No. 2
EDITORIAL BOARD
Editor-in-chief, Anne Lloyd Basinger, 1929
Managing Editor, Ernestine Gilbreth, 1929
Book Review Editor, Elizabeth Botsford, 1929
Katherine S. Bolman, 1929 Rachel Grant, 1929
Elizabeth Wheeler, 1929 Elizabeth Sha^ 1930
Sallie S. Simons, 1930
Art — Nancy Wynne Parker, 1930
Business Staff
Business Manager, Sylvia Alberts, 1929
Assistant Business Manager, Betsey Tilden, 1930
Lilian Supove, 1929 Anna Dabney, 1930 Mary Folsom, 1931
Mary Sayre, 1930 Esther Tow, 1931 Sarah Pearson, 1931
Agnes Lyall, 1930
Advertising Manager, Betsy Tilden, 1930
Gertrude Cohen, 1929
Circulation Manager, Ruth Rose, 1929
The Smith College Monthly is published at Northampton, Mass., each month from
October to June, inclusive. Terms $2.00 a year. Single copies 25c.
Subscriptions may be sent to Sylvia Alberts, 12 Fruit Street, Northampton.
Advertising Manager, B. A. Tilden, Oillett House.
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CONTENTS
Caroline and Diana
Education X
The Duel
Jealousy
Shrine to Aesculapius
Poem
The Personal Touch
Book Reviews
Orlando
Reginald and Reginald in Russia
Pennagan Place
The Island Within
Elizabeth Perkins, 1931 5
Barbara Damon Simison, 1929 15
Elizabeth Wheeler, 1929 20
Helen Fishe, 1930 25
Sallie S. Simons, 1930 26
Rachel Grant, 1929 28
Virginia Farrington, 1930 29
35
43
47
49
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Smith College
Monthly
CAROLINE AND DIANA
Elizabeth Perkins
aN 1830 there appeared in London soeiety an unusually
gifted and beautiful lady. Her husband, the witty,
gifted, and particularly efficient Tom Sheridan, having
died while in the service of the Crown, the Crown had pre-
sented her with a modest dwelling-place whither Polite
Society soon learned to turn when in need of social inter-
course at once intelligent and amusing. For the lady, in
addition to her other admirable attributes, was possessed of
three daughters whom, Polite Society insisted, one could not
have believed to belong to one who appeared so young, had
not her beauty and brilliance appeared to an unmistakable
degree in them also. "Georgy" was perhaps the most strik-
ingly handsome of the three, and "Cary" was considered the
wit; but each of the sisters was an addition to the society
which was quick to realize the fact. Wherever they went they
were expected to be an ornament to the assembly, the life of
the partv; and thev generallv were. Polite Societv called
them "The Three Graces."
It was hardly to be expected that any one of the Three
Graces would remain long unsought or unwed. "Georgy"
and Helen became respectively the Duchess of Somerset and
Lady Duff'erin; the ladies were handsome, witty, and withal
womanly; the marriages were quite suitable; Polite Society
saw nothing of which to disapprove. But when Caroline,
alike the most gifted and the most impulsive, married the
Hon. George Chappie Norton, in whose character and social
attributes the casual observer at least could discern nothing
6 The Smith College Monthly
worthy of note- except the possibility of his succeeding to a
title-, murmurs were- heard. Who was this Norton? Caroline
Sheridan, only nineteen, whose- brilliance was already prover-
bial, whose promising literary career had already begun —
what hidden merits had she* seen in this apparently uncoiii-
mendable man' Society soon had an opportunity of judg-
ing for itself: and its decision was not in favor of the object
of investigation. He was pronounced a bore of "a coarse
nature and violent temper;" one- writer states that he spent
his time- in "taking pills and spinning conversation out of his
own how els;" Maurois succinctly characterizes his as "son
odie-nx mari." lie- was unpopular from the- start : without the
most rudimentary social gifts, he was equally lacking in the
means of supporting his wife or himself. It is probable that
he- exerted as little- effort to acquire the- one- as the1 other. Cer-
tainly, amidst the pecuniary difficulties which soon beset
them, he seemed to se-nse- nothing unworthy in the i'aet thai
his wife's writings earned the- money which maintained their
household. She* was. at this time, as she- continued to be
throughout her life, a popular editor of and contributor to
the literary journals of the daw which throve by a type of
writing to which her talenl was exactly suited. Her first hook
of poetry appeared only a short while- after her marriage-.
Meanwhile- she- kept up as best she could the' social life, the
constant entertaining which seemed almost essential to her
nature-. It is significant that the diarists of the- time- seldom
if ever mention Mr. Norton in this connection. They had
gone- to a recepl ion at .Mrs. Norton's, or .Mrs. Norton had
hern among those- present; or they had just heard of Mrs.
Norton's latest witticism. Probably Mr. Norton remained
in the- home' his wife- provided for him. and partook of pills.
Society was at a loss to account for the marriage-. Three
children were- horn to the- couple; still their relations were'
uncordial and yet without an open break. The puzzle be-
came more and more inexplicable.
But the difficulties seemed to be lessened in one- way at
least. Lord Melbourne, a devoted friend of "poor dear Tom
Sheridan," found a government position for Norton, which
rendered the struggle of Debit and Credil not ejuite' so one-
sided. Unfortunately, Lord Melbourne at the same- time
discovered in the lovely Mrs. Norton a woman who was both
intelligent and charming; their tastes were in many ways
The Smith College Monthly 7
congenial; he met interesting and useful people at her seleet
gatherings. He began to make his appearance quite regu-
larly at Mrs. Norton's assemblies; he developed a custom of
dropping in late at Mrs. Norton's after long sessions of Par-
liament. This is all that was definitely known; out the low
and disinterested murmur which had persisted since the mar-
riage grew to a more menacing roar punctuated by sharp
yelpings; stories flew, and in their flight became huge and
distorted. The apparently phlegmatic Mr. Norton suddenly
brought suit for divorce, naming Lord Melbourne as co-
respondent.
Polite Society and Politics were electrified. Greville
writes (May 11, 1830) : "Great talk about Lord Melbourne's
affair with Mrs. Norton, which if it is not quashed will be
inconvenient. John Bull fancies himself vastly moral and
the court is mighty prudish, and between them our off-hand
Premier will find himself in a ticklish position. . .People rather
doubt the action coming on. . .the Tories will fall on the in-
dividual from party violence, the Radicals on his class from
hatred to the aristocracy,"
This last sentence suggests the thought which was up-
permost in the saner and less malevolent minds; that some
urging of the Opposition was behind Mr. Norton's action.
Certainly when the trial came on, the greatest wonder was
how anyone whose case was so absolutely unsupported could
have considered bringing suit. The trial was a farce; the
jury found in favor of the defendant.
The trials of Mrs. Norton, however, were by no means
over. Attempting reconciliation, she was repulsed; and her
husband, according to the incredible laws of the time, could —
and did — refuse her money and the custody, even the sight, of
her children. In one connection or another her name was
forever being bandied about ; she was finally even accused of
having sold to the Times a political secret confided to her by
one of her admirers — a charge Avhich was investigated and re-
futed only some years after her death. Throughout the bit-
ter years of her notoriety as a woman, she was building up
her fame as a writer and a wit. She seemed to inspire in her
true friends a degree of devotion which now appears almost
ridiculous. Janet Ross writes: "My mother had taken up
(Mrs. Norton's) cause against her husband so warmly that
she refused every invitation to great London houses to which
8 The Smith College Monthly
her friend was not asked." Wherever she went she was the
center of attention. Her cleverness was possibly a trifle
cheapened by the strain now put upon it: for "her position
in society was to a great degree imperilled" and must be pre-
served at all eosts. Even Mrs. Koss. one of her fondest ad-
mirers, says: "I always thought she was more agreeable and
brilliant when we were alone or 'en petit eoniite' than when
there were many people: then she sometime posed and seemed
to try and startle her hearers". She wrote continually: many
poems which despite their uniformity of subject-matter, their
sentimentality, and the faithful rhyming of "love" with
"above," "water" with "daughter," "tear" with "bier," seem
to have a basic sincerity; longer and more purposeful poems
which brought out the weak points of her talent: novels: and
a long stream of personal letters and formal articles setting
forth the injustice of the existing laws for women and plead-
ing for changes in them.
Critics differ as to which was her most important type of
writing. Home says simply, "the writing of Mrs. Norton
breathes melodious plaints over the desecrations of her sex's
loveliness," and the shepherd of "Noctes Ambrosianae" is of
much the same opinion. "Chastity knows her ain sacred char-
acter, and when inspired by genius, isna' she a touchin'
Muse!" Arthur Arnold, on the other hand, declares: "The
most distinguished literary woman of her time. . .her style
was not employed in its perfection to protest against any
other wrongs than those which had pierced her own heart."
She made no claim to equality before the law, saying:" the
wild and stupid theories advanced by a few women of equal
rights and equal intelligence are not the opinions of their sex.
I for one believe in the superiority of man as I do in the
existence of a God." What she wanted was "protection,"
and she strugled valiantly for it. If she indeed fell that her
main purpose was to secure changes in existing laws, it
must be confessed thai she used her personal charm and power
of gaining sympathy to obtain her ends. Her letters are all
couched in the most personal terms: "There is a bill now be-
fore the House in which circumstances have taught mc to
take a deep and painful interest". "What I suffered respect-
ing those children. God knows, and lie only." "I bless God
thai at leasl mine was one of the cases which called attention
lo the law as it then existed."
The Smith College Monthly 9
Occupied with her work, eagerly soughl after by her
friends, harassed by troubles with her husband, for over
forty years she lived a busy and worried life. At length her
husband died and most of her notoriety perished with him;
before her own death she had a few months of tranquil
happiness, married to Sir William Stirling Maxwell, a lov-
ing friend of many years' standing.
Such was the life of the woman whose death occurred
only a few years before the writing of "Diana of I he Cross-
ways" In treating of one whose life had in it so much that
was intrinsically dramatic, and whose name and history a
few years before had been on everyone's lips, Meredith chose
a subject sure to be of interest to his contemporaries; but to
make the novel interesting without regard to its basis in fact,
he had in the main a fourfold task: to explain the marriage,
to explain the initial scandal, to explain the betrayal of the
political secret, and to provide a more satisfactory finale.
Each of these questions involves of course numerous minor
explanations and changes, but these on the whole constituted
Meredith's problem.
The incredible marriage is his first concern. He begins
by making his Diana a singularly unattached figure: poss-
essed of a few close friends but apparently with no past as a
background except for a few shadowy experiences with these
same friends, and of no parents, guardians, or beautiful sis-
ters. Then he makes her devastatingly beautiful and clever,
painfully clever; (although one can never be sure how much
of her discourse is Diana; all Meredith's characters speak and
think in Meredithian, and it is difficult to strain out their
own ideas.) The natural result of so much unprotected love-
liness is a series of unfortunate attentions from amorous gent-
lemen. She feels a sense of inferiority to men, a need of
support strongly reminiscent of her prototype. Accordingly.
upset by one final experience with the husband of her dearest
friend, she accepts, as a refuge, marriage with "one" Mr.
Warwick. Unprotected feminine charm to disturbed feminine
equanimity to headlong feminine rush for shelter.
The husband thus logically acquired, Meredith depicts
not "of coarse nature and violent temper," but cold,
humorless, polite, with "opinions in packets," totally lacking
the spark essential to Diana. Diana's friends fear that some
dav she will "lose her relish for ridicule and see him at a (lis-
10 The Smith College Monthly
tance." This is exactly what occurs; and, finding her hus-
band incapable or undesirous of responding to her wit, she
turns it against him. She feels stifled by the combination of
his physical ascendancy and intellectual apathy; she gives
vent to her feelings by ridiculing him not only when they are
alone, hut, sometimes only too openly, in public. On the
other hand, in her friendship with the prominent politician
Lord Dannisburgh — in which she later insists there was noth-
ing more shameful than an occasional handclasp a shade too
long, a glance a shade too sympathetic, — she finds the stimu-
lus of intellectual compatibility and the pleasure derived from
the admiration of an almost-disinterested friend. It is
scarcely to he wondered at that Warwick, stung despite his
apparent apathy by his wife's taunts, should he driven to a
frenzy by the stage- whispering of society, and should take
such drastic — although senseless — measures as he did.
The trial over, Diana's history for a time closely parallels
that of Mrs. Norton, with one most important exception
which, obscurely at first, paves the way for the "Happy End-
ing." One sees Diana going brazenly (her term) into society,
exercising her arts and graces in behalf of her own good
name — for, "when a woman's charm has won half the battle
her character is an advancing standard ;" one sees her keeping
the wolf from the door with no weapon save her pen; "being
clever," censuring herself Tor the occasional cheapness of her
cleverness as a "drawing-room exotic." But her relations to
her husband are totally changed from the original. There
are no children of this marriage; and Diana, although con-
sidering herself "the first martyr of the modern woman's
cause," is campaigning only for a vaguely defined "freedom
and protection," which one suspects do not present them-
selves in any very clear form even to Diana herself. And in
this instance it is the husband who sends repeated petitions
for a reconciliation, the wife who with expressive gestures
and overly-dramatic speeches publishes her refusal to con-
sider any such project. And Mr. Warwick, instead of living
on for forty-odd years, a constant source of anxiety and no-
toriety to his wife, dies after a conveniently brief passage of
time, thus further clearing the way for the "happy ending."
Diana sets out, as has been said, to earn her living by
her writing. Hersuccessal first is enormous, but differing
again from Mrs. Norton her powers of being as brainy and
The Smith College Monthly 11
as popular on paper as she is in conversation quickly deeline,
the sales on her books grow smaller. The wranglings of
Debit and Credit which continually disturb the peace of her
small but expensive household grow ever more bitter and
more one-sided, with compromises less easily effected. Diana
is without resources; Mr. Tonans, a newspaper editor to
whom she has frequently given choice t id-bits of news, ral-
lies her on the score of being "out of it;" she is forced to sell
her beloved country home, The Crossways; to temporize; to
seek cringingly from her publishers advance payment on a
book which she feels sure she can never complete with any
success. It is at this critical moment that Dacier, the rising
young politician with whom only a coincidence a short time
before has restrained her from eloping, confides in her a
secret of state. Her vanity has been wounded by the accus-
ation of her being "out of it" ; her nerves are on edge from
the now continuous howling of the wolf on the doorstep;
and she is evidently quite unaware of the value of political
secrets. Scarcely has her admirer left the house when she
hails a late-prowling cab, drives to the office of Tonans and
tells him what has just been confided to her. There is a
vague mention of payment — nothing definite spoken, but
large sums hinted at. She is quite unaware of the import of
what she has done until Dacier himself informs her. Thus
Meredith seeks to exculpate an action which in itself seems
inexcusable.
Now for the "happy ending". Meredith's task here
seems at first sight somewhat hopeless. Dacier utters in a few
brief and pithy sentences his opinion of Diana, and almost im-
mediately takes unto himself a fair, cold, very English, en-
tirely suitable wife. Diana plays the broken reed very mo-
vingly for several chapters, and resigns herself to an unsat-
isfactory and loveless existence. Then appears once more as
saviour of the situation the noble Redworth. who throughout
Diana's career has played the part of faithful hound, loving-
more or less dumbly, rendering every service in his power, and
several times unknowingly rescuing Diana, as she herself ad-
mits, when she was at the crossroads. This noble Redworth,
the perfect type of "a good husband," seeks to make Diana
his wife and to bring her the good solid comforts of home and
family life which she has always lacked. Diana, experiencing
again that feeling of friendlessness which wTas partly respon-
12 The Smith College Monthly
sible for her firsi matrimonial adventure, still shrinks from the
worldly sacrament of marriage yet she feels herself op-
pressed, driven, by custom, her helplessness and her apparent
inability to manage her own life. To this arc added the im-
portunings of her dearest friend, who argues in the hast com-
mendable of ways by pointing out the long and faithful ser-
\ ice of the suitor, his manly bearing in the lace of disappoint-
ment and the dog-like expression of his eyes The weary
Diana's last defense- is worn down; she sees "a regiment of
proverbs bearing placards instead of guns, and each one a
taunt at women, especially at widows", . . ."Banality, thy
name is marriage!" she cries with a last attempt at a gesture,
and goes "forth to her commonplace fate". Here she is, all
nicely married to the noble man whom Nature SO evidently in-
tended for her protection. Still the tone of the finale seems
not quite satisfactory. Accordingly, in the last chapter, Diana
is rather unaccountable "led to bloom with the nuptial sent-
iment," returns from her honeymoon in the mental state con-
sidered appropriate for a recent bride, and is speakingly
silent, with an "involuntary little twitch of the fingers", in re-
sponse to her dearest friend's sweet discourse of godchildren.
This is what Meredith has made of Mrs. Norton. One
cannot help wondering whether he was as fond of his Diana
at the completion of the work as he was at the beginning.
While still engrossed in the novel, he wrote to Robert Louis
Stevenson: kkl am finishing at a great rate a two-volume novel
partly modeled upon Mrs. Norton. I have had to endow her
with brains and make them evidence to the descerning. 1
think she lives." This is all very well. Certainly her almost
masculine brain was the basis alike of her finest wit. of her
great popularity with certain people and corresponding dis-
like of her by others, and of the disastrous end of her first
marriage. Hut Meredith as he advanced further into the
story found much about his heroine which demanded expla-
nation on other grounds than that of her brains. Surely the
almost constant necessity for throwing an explanatory and
flattering light on so many dubious actions must have become
a soure< of vexation even to the tolerant and loving tran-
scriber of these actions. Diana is a brilliant fascinating char-
acter, and a living being despite the extravagances of her
story: but she is none the less remarkably exasperating. Al-
most everything she does shows her to be incurably romantic
The Smith College Monthly 13
and idealistic in attitude — or rather in that one of her atti-
tudes which appears most often and most consistently. She is
sentimental and given to dramatic attitudes, and like Mrs.
Norton, she seems to inspire similar tendencies in her admir-
ers. Thus we find Mr. Sullivan Smith, that ardent Hibern-
ian, seeking duels on the slightest of pretexts, and several
other gentlemen, ordinarily of perfectly sound mind, grand-
iloquently leaving their cards on journalists with intimations
as to how much shall be published concerning M rs. Warwick,
or hunting down with grim zeal the perpetrators of each new
story that crops up.
Meredith makes quite plausible Diana's precipitate rush
into the impossible marriage; but still finds it difficult to ap-
prove of her subsequent treatment of her husband. Certain-
ly she had genuine grievances against this parasitic creature
who lived on her earnings; but her method of retaliation al-
though it is made to account for a number af things, was mean
and unworthy. And despite all Meredith's vivid description
of Diana's later pecuniary difficulties, of her mental struggle
and bewilderment, her betrayal of the political secret seems
far from blameless. The plea made by the author through
Diana's own words and thoughts — that of her ignorance of
the secret's importance — quite loses its validity both through
his own statement that he has endowed her with brains, and
through her evident interest in and knowlege of politics.
The intricate arguments contrived by Meredith to reply
to such objections must have cost him no little pains and an-
noyance; but these, after all, are personal objections raised by
the reader. More important is the impossibility of making
this one of Meredith's heroines correspond to his ideal of
womanhood. Richard LeGallienne states that one of
Meredith's main tenets was that of the union of body and
spirit. ''Woman's conventional" purity.' and sentimental
daintiness, are to him a dangerous superstition. . .'love, what
is that but a finer shoot of the tree stautly planted in good
gross earth'. .To love the flower and be ashamed of the root is
a pitiable silliness in Mr. Meredith's eyes." Even in the novel
"Diana of the Crosswaifs" itself, he says "True poets and true
women have the native sense of the divineness of what the
world deems gross material substance." In this case, Diana
can on the whole be considered no true woman. She is ap-
palled at the thought of anything material being connected in
14 The Smith College Monthly
any way with what seems basically emotional or spiritual.
"What if her poetic frenzy had not been of origin divine?
had sprung from other than spiritual fonts? had sprung from
the reddened sources she was compelled to conceal?" The
"physiological basis of passion" is to her a thing unthinkable.
This conception of Diana's attitude grows on one from the
beginning of the hook, as though without the will or even the
knowledge of the author. As the story draws to its close he
seems suddenly to realize that his heroine docs not come up
to his standards, and makes a spasmodic effort to recover her
position. lie declares her reactions, both present and past.
to be due to "chastity of spirit, not coldness of blood," and in
the last few pages depicts her in possession of the quickly ac-
quired traits of his womanly ideal. Hut this complete and
almost instantaneous change fails to counteract the impres-
sion made by the rest of the tale of Diana ; it seems to lack the
ring of the genuine, and gives the effect of having been tacked
on hastily — and too late.
One wonders if Meredith was. not only slightly dis-
pleased, hut quite strongly surprised at the way his Diana
turned out. The story of Mrs. Norton seemed to many, and
probably to him. a dramatic one which without a great deal of
tampering or exposition could he interpreted, made plausible,
orderly, and heroic, lie must have found that the amount of
apology and argument necessary was far greater than had ap-
peared. I f he had omitted the last pages of the last chapter — a
last vain attempt to capture the heroine he thought he had
seen in .Mrs. Norton — his story would have had the pattern lie
sought. By dint of much contortion and struggling he made
his Diana's fictions and reactions seem plausible a wonderful
feat : hut in the process the woman herself was clearly shown
to he far from heroic, far from ideal, and not at all the ration-
alized hut idealized Mi's. Norton Meredith probably expected
to create.
The Smith College Monthly 15
EDUCATION X
Barbara Damon Si mi son
OME day, perhaps — waiting in my attic room for fame
to come to me, I shall he hungry. Unlike Elijah, the
raven will avoid me, and even my sonnets to the spar-
rows will bring me no crumbs. Thus prematurely forced to
burn the rejected manuscripts which are to do me no service,
I shall finally sally forth in search of a job. I might become
a parlour maid, and take up the art of dusting which I had
abandoned so long ago. My delight in good food might
make me invaluable as chief taster to a millionaire. But, be-
fore I think of any such occupation I shall be reminded of
the college diploma in the bottom of my trunk. The allure
of making myself mistress of a schoolroom will inveigle me
into the teaching profession. Soon, however, I am to learn
that my preparation has been at fault. I only have one year
of education to my credit instead of two! Therefore, the re-
volt which caused me to spurn Education in my senior year
will lead me to some country, or at least village, school — far
removed from bookshops and lecture tickets, but a salvation
place to such a one as I.
Once there, moreover, I shall determine to make my one
year of Education do the work of two. From the first, I shall
put into practice the theories which had lain idle in black note-
books for so long, and make them bear everlasting fruit.
With such a resolution as this I shall step into my school-
room on the day after Labor Day, when well-regulated
schools begin. There, I shall find a heterogeneous group of
pupils hitching in their seats, craning their necks to see what
I look like.
"That's the new teacher! That's the new teach-ir!" their
stentorian young voices will assure me — knowing only too
Avell how new I feel.
"Good morning, children. I am your new teacher," I
shall, in turn, reassure them, "Now let me see, you are of
Junior High School age, I believe?"
"No, no! Seventh grade, teacher!" one voice will deny,
and, "Eighth grade!" "Ninth grade!" two more.
J 6 The Smith College Monthly
"Ninth grade? Do you have that? Well, never mind.
1 will call you Junior High School, because that is what you
really should be, you know!" The .Junior High School idea.
1 shall recall, will help me to retain pupils; recognize individ-
ual differences; secure better scholarship, and six other things
1 had long since forgotten. It might be, 1 shall decide-, wise
to relearn them to quote, in case of need.
".Junior High School sounds more grown-up, teacher,"
one little hoy will pipe up with pride and new-found
wonder in his tone.
In the meanwhile, one small hoy will begin to choke.
"Take him to the fountain, John!" 1 shall command another.
"Fountain?" he will question, "You mean the one out
on the green?"
"No, the drinking fountain," I shall correct him. "You
have one?"
"Oh, you mean the cold water- faucet, teacher!" John will
tell me scornfully. Or, perhaps, he will cry. "You mean the
pail?"
With such lacks as these ringing in my ears I shall
trudge to and fro each day to my so-called "Junior High
School". 1 may find my pupils sleepy, and decide to rectify
their stupidity; wake them up with exercise. "At the end of
every hour, children, you may have ten minutes for anything
you like," I plan to inform them— not expecting the wrath
which is to descend upon me from the teacher of the next
room.
"What on earth are you doing? You interrupted my
biology lesson with your racket. Let me warn you — our
principal will not stand for things like this. Your being
new, 1 thought I had better tell you. lie demands absolute
quiel at all times."
klYcs, hut exercise!" I am to stammer.
"They have plenty of time to play as it is." she will snap
at me with years of experience to hack her up. so to speak.
For this reason I shall allow my children to stumble stupidly
on. although I will manage to let them sit idle for a little;
let them relax while I tell them of Kohin Hood or King-
Arthur.
Other problems 1 shall manage less well. Little Jimmy
Jones, freckle-faced and red-haired, may come to tell mc that
he must leave school to go to work. Willi horror in my eyes.
The Smith College Monthly 17
I shall find myself urging him to stay a year or two longer. I
may almost succeed in winning him over, when the principal,
his head fringed with hair, will rebuke me for what he will
term "interferenee:" "I eannot have my teaehers interfering
with what I eall home matters. The parent is the sole judge
as to whether his boy should or should not remain in school."
"Very well — but— " I may begin; then eheck myself as L
remember the slim roll of bills in my pocket-book.
Another pupil, ready to enter high sehool, may tell me
that he wants to go to college, but, sinee his I. Q. is low, I
shall advise him that he had better try something else. I
dimly remember that Vocational Guidanee should be a part
of the work of every good teacher, and so, now, to the best of
my ability, I shall inform Frederick that he is too mechani-
cally inclined to waste his talents upon a liberal arts college.
Just at the moment, however, when I have him almost con-
vinced, I shall see my friend, the good principal, beaming
benevolently upon us.
"Ah, Frederick, my boy!" and his beam will become ex-
pansive, "I hear you plan to go to college! That is fine, my
dear boy. You will do us proud!"
"But," I may argue, after Frederick has retreated," that
boy will never be able to go to college. Besides, he is not in
high school yet, and his I. Q. is low."
"Yes, Miss S — , but I always try to instil the highest
ideals in the young minds of my boys. He may pass yet. I
cannot run the risk of letting my rating go down. There
have always been six taking the college preparatory course
from my school. This year, I cannot let it go down to five.
Don't you see?"
I shall nod when I feel like shaking my fist.
"Another matter, Miss S — , I find that your boys do
better in history and mathematics than the girls. Now those
girls are not stupid."
"No, that is not it. The girls do better in language
study. It has been proven, psychologically, that this should
be the case. Therefore I do not see that there is anything to
do. It is a matter of interests." I may reason thus as though
I believed it. The good principal will look bewildered and de-
part— his arguments, mayhap, run out for the moment. I
know, however, that he will soon be back — peering over the
glass in the door when my back may be turned; standing,
18 The Smith College Monthly
perhaps, at the rear of the room when I am drawing a dinos-
aur on the blackboard for the edification of the young savages
under my control. I shall even see him usher in the county
superintendent, who will puff across the room with his Order
of Elks badge shining from his vest, and interrupt the Col-
lectors1 Club which 1 shall hold in school hours.
"Now, don't you think, Miss S ," the county superin-
tendent may begin, "that this is a waste of school time?"
"Ye — s," 1 shall respond meekly, even reluctantly with
a better answer on the tip of my tongue: "Repressed energy.
Collectors' instinct. See Briggs, page 99, paragraph 2."
"It puts extravagant ideas into their young brains.
Economy is the program of this school," the principal may
admonish me with a broad sweep of his plump hand.
On another day. perhaps, 1 may have a more serious
problem with which to cope. Cordelia will decide that she
does not want to study; she may shriek, even, when 1 tell her
to read. My educational psychology notes will then slide un-
announced into my memory: "Watson's researches upon the
new-born infants have revealed three generic types of innate
response, each of which combines the impulsive and implicit
mode with an explicit adjustment to objective conditions.
These three types are fear, rage and love. . .An instinct per-
sists with varied effort until the disturbed equilibrium of the
organism has been restored. . .The innate patterns which
form the background of all behavior are commonly called in-
stincts." 1 do not now recollect whether our class was taugfll
lo accept Watson's theory, or that of Ogden or Koffka. Wat-
son's will do in this case, I shall reason, since this child is
evidently in a rage. She will certainly be older than Wat-
son's new-born infant, but. since rage is an early instinct she
must still have it. Therefore, I will allow her to cry and
Stamp, and bite, and tear, lor the benefit. 1 shall discover, of
the selectmen who comprise the School Committee.
"Nice little performance," I can hear them say as they
shake their heads. I shall feel the slim roll of bills in my
pocket with fresh qualms. Their watch-chains, brassily
noisy, will clank their answer to me across the room. Their
penned notice I shall find on my green blotter at H.'M) the
next morning; "Miss S may find it best to resign at the end
of the official school term." I can hear them making their
decision now. iklt is a pity, ureal pity my good principal
The Smith College Monthly 19
will say with magnanimity in his beam. The county super-
intendent will hem and haw. "Great pity! For one so young!
To be so serious about it!"
"Yes," the School Board will answer, "She aets as if she
means what she says. Very sorry ease very. Must do it.
Have a new candidate for the job who has twel-ve hours of
Education behind her. Evidently si-ix is not enough. Yet,
she seems to believe what she says! Queer! She appears to be
so serious. Can't afford to let such a person stay."
So, I shall resign — not as they suggest with such polite-
ness— "at the end of the official school term", but in Novem-
ber. The teacher next door will give me a frigid good-bye.
The I-told-you-so in her smile will seem to tell me that she
has heard me teaching Robert Frost instead of the geography
of New England (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont), or
Amy Lowell when I was supposed to be reading Washing-
ton's Inaugural Address. She will look askance when I
smile back at her. "And she got fired!" I may hear her mutter
as I wave my hand.
It will be, then, with a sense of freedom and a great shak-
ing of school-room chalk from my feet that I shall return to
my garret. My memoirs as a school mistress shall never be
written as I had dared to hope. Instead, my black notebooks
shall go the way of my manuscripts — to keep me warm ! In
the meanwhile, before I care to join the force of parlour
maids, or the chief tasters' guild, I shall be hungry, and I shall
write more sonnets to the sparrows, who will not bring me
"bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the
evening." But, at least, I can sit by my attic window and
watch the children playing in the street — after their school
is over !
20 The Smith College Monthly
THE DUEL
Elizabeth Wheeler
.©
HE "Lion d'Or" was crowded. Men gathered about
every tabic, sonic playing cards, all drinking, all talk-
| ing rapidly, gesticulating with half- emptied glasses.
Their voices rose higher as the general din grew louder. Corks
popped, glasses clinked, money /jingled. The air was heavy
with smoke and the odor of wine. Dripping candles and oil
lamps threw a wan glow on the objects nearest them; the
light from snapping birch logs reeled among the moving
shadows on the opposite wall.
Four men lounged about the center table, animatedly
discussing the other occupants of the room.
"Bourbons, Bonapartists, bourgeois and aristocracy/'
said the nervous little man with his back to the tire, and added
with a dramatic gesture. "But all are children of la belle
France."
"No, my deal- Gaston," corrected the fat man next to
him. "Not all. Look behind you."
Gaston pivoted swiftly on one leg of his chair. On the set-
1 le before the fire reclined an individual who was long and lean
and built in folding sections, unlike the children of la belle
France. His face was cold and still with an imperturbable
calm. A pipe hung relaxed from his thin lips. 1 1 is eyes
travelled leisurely down the page of a magazine propped
against his knees; il was the "Quarterly Review." His expres-
sion never changed as he read. lie was utterly oblivions to
I be noise of song and argument that raged around him, and
unconscious of the stares directed at him ; wrapped in his own
thoughts and sufficient unto himself.
Gaston swung around with a grimace of disgust.
"Mon Dieu, these English! Wherever yon go, always
the same, sour and stern, no joie de vivre."
(Vision spoke loudly, but the Englishman did not hear.
lie reached down bis band to pick up from the floor a glass
of Burgundy. With his other hand, he removed the pipe
The Smith College Monthly 21
from his mouth, and drank slowly, his eyes still on the "Quar-
terly Review."
"Pah!" spat the fat man. "They think they own the
earth. Look at him, appropriating the best seat in the room,
just as if he belonged there instead of me who come here
every night of my life."
"The fool! You'd think he'd hear us talking about him."
"Not he! He's far too superior to listen to anyone 'be-
sides himself except possibly another Englishman.
Gaston hitehed his chair nearer to the table and leaned
forward.
"Pardieu," he said in a lowered tone. "Mon ami, you
shall have your seat by the fire. I'll make him move. If I
know these English, their love of themselves is only matched
by their love of gambling. Just wait and see!"
Gaston hopped up briskly and approached the settle.
"Pardon, Monsieur, but — would you care to play cards?
One finds it so dull travelling, n'est-ce pas?"
The Englishman looked up, and coolly considered
Gaston's smiling face for a moment.
"Thank you very much, I should like to," he replied
gravely. Putting aside his magazine, he unfolded himself
and stood up. They joined the others at the table, where
Gaston urbanely effected the introductions. The English-
man bowed stiffly, and took the seat vacated by the fat man
who was even then ensconced in the settle before the fire.
One of the Frenchmen counted out the chips. Gaston
dealt, smiling pleasantly.
"A sou a point, Monsieur: would that be satisfactory?"
"Oh, quite."
Before picking up his cards, the Englishman drew from
his pocket a large gold watch which he laid before him on the
table.
"I have to catch the Paris stage at three," he explained.
It was then eleven.
They began to play. Gaston chatted volubly, laughing
and gesticulating. The Englishman, intent on his game,
replied in monosyllables; if he was annoyed at the garrulous-
ness of his* opponent, his face did not betray him. As the
game progressed, his pile of chips mounted higher, while
those of the three Frenchmen shrank steadily. Gaston grew
22 The Smith College Monthly
silent, hut still smiled. The other two looked at him with
open accusation in their eyes.
Unfalteringly the Englishman continued to gain.
Gaston ceased to smile. His eyes darted angrily from the
sullen faces of his two compatriots to the face of the English-
man, still masked in imperturable calm. Gaston slapped
down his last card. The Englishman tossed his on top of it.
He" had won again, and the hank was broken. Gaston swore.
The Englishman said nothing, hut leaned back in his chair
and lit his pipe, lie glanced tor the first time at the corner
of the table where his elbow had rested, then folded himself
and looked under the table. Straightening, he asked casual-
ly of no one in particular,
"1 say. has anybody seen my watch?"
Gaston sprang to his feet, upsetting his chair with a.
crash.
"Monsieur, do you mean to insinuate?" he began pomp-
ously. Then all control snapped, and he waved his arms
wildly, exclaiming,
"Mon Dieu, you have insulted me! This is too much!
You come here and take the only comfortable chair in the
room. You oiler to play cards with us. You rob us of our
money. You are not content with a little, hut you must have
it all. And then you say I steal your watch! ()-o-oh! 1 can-
not hear it ! You have insulted me. We will fight a duel. 1 — a
thief! Oh. 1 am insulted!"
He was at last interrupted by-repeated cries of "What
is it. Gaston? What is it?" All the occupants of the room
were crowding round the table, shouting and pushing, thirst-
ing for excitement. Only the Englishman remained calm.
I Ie had risen from his seat, and had removed his pipe from his
mouth. He waited until there was comparative silence as
all eyes, following Gas ton's accusing linger, wore fixed on
him.
"Pardon me. Monsieur, 1 merely asked if you had seen
my watch. 1 am sorry you misunderstood me."
"Do you think I believe that? It makes no difference;
you have insulted me. We will light. Pierre and .Michel, be
my seconds. .Make I he a rra ngeinen t s with this English-
man."
The Englishman shrugged his shoulders. His eye fell
on something that lay under the chair where he had been sit-
The Smith College Monthly 23
ting. He stooped and picked up his watch, looked at it and
put it in his pocket. No one appeared to notice; all were
thronging round Gaston and his seconds. The Englishman
sauntered to the fire, and sat down on the settle, opening the
"Quarterly Review" at the page where he had left oft*.
Deuced awkward situation, this, he reflected. It was now one
o'clock. He was due to leave for Paris at three, and in the
interim he had got to fight a duel, thanks to that ass of a
Frenchman. He'd be damned if he would hit him, and mess
things up any further. Maybe he would be hurt himself-
devilish nuisance in a place like this; but if that Frenchman
was no cleverer with weapons than he was with cards, he
wouldn't be likely to do much damage except by luck.
At this point Gaston's seconds approached, with obvious
contempt for their friend's adversary, and equally obvious
enjoyment in the importance of their own position.
"Is Monsieur prepared to discuss the matter of the duel \
Good. What weapons is Monsieur pleased to choose?"
"Pistols. At twenty paces. In the dark."
Under the cool gaze of the Englishman the seconds
looked at each other apprehensively.
"Monsieur would not prefer swords? A victory with
swords is more glorious. . ."
"And death in either case is quite as final."
"Pistols it is, then. And when and where would Mon-
sieur prefer to fight?"
The Englishman pulled out his watch and made a lei-
surely calculation.
"At two o'clock, in any empty room that is available,"
he said with a finality that precluded any protest on the part
of the obviously dissatisfied Frenchmen. They withdrew,
muttering with their heads together, and the Englishman re-
turned to his magazine. Presently he became aware that the
foregoing arrangements did not please his adversary.
"Pistols, in the dark," shrieked Gaston from the other
side of the room. "Mon Dieu, these English cannot even fight
like gentlemen in the open with gentlemen's weapons, but
must fire away in the dark like highwaymen. Not even a
lantern? Insult upon insult! To kill or be killed like a rat
in a hole! Oh. I will have his blood for this!"
During the ensuing hour, the "Lion d'Or" settled down
to something like its normal composure. The tables were
2 1 The Smith College Monthly
once more crowded with gamblers and drinkers, singing and
arguing as before, but suspense, heavier than the* smoke, hung
over the room. Even those most intent on their cards cast
frequenl fiances now toward the fire, now toward the dark-
est cornel- of the room. The Englishman read on. pulling
away at his pipe, his lace inscrutable. Gaston leaned on a
table, tattooing with his fingers, drinking Burgundy, sput-
tering dis jointedly to his seconds. Occasionally his voice
rose and a few words became audible to those at the tables
nearby.
"What an insult! Pistols in the dark!"
A clever swordsman, Gaston," someone remarked. "Hut
he is gun-shy."
At five minutes of two, when suspense had cooled the
fever of the most ardent gambler, the landlord entered the
room, bawling loudly.
"This way, please, Messieurs."
Gaston swallowed a glass of wine at one gulp, and al-
most ran after the landlord, shouting.
"Allons, nics amis!"
The Englishman knocked the ashes from his pipe, and
placed it with his magazine on the mantelpiece: then he
strode alter his adversary. Behind him pushed all the other
occupants of the "I aon d'Or." At the end of a long passage,
he found himself together with the landlord, Gaston and his
seconds, in a large rectangular room, unfurnished except for
a huge fireplace opposite the door.
The landlord held out several pistols. The Englishman
selected one-, examined it casually, and took his place at one
end of the- room, with the fireplace on his right. On his left,
two deep along the- full length of the' wall stooel all his
fellow-travellers, eyes Hashed with anticipation. Opposite
him. at a < I isl .i i u-t of twenty paces which had just hern meas-
ured by the seconds, Gaston shifted from one' foot to the-
other, fingering his pistol, apparently almost unable to wail
for the signal.
The Englishman's eyes without moving, took in every
detail.
"By Jove," he thought, "What a perfectly rotten way to
manage a duel! With all these chaps standing about, some-
one's sure to be hurt. Damnme, 1 don't want to hit anybody,
not even thai ass Gaston. What a ballv nuisance to be mixed
The Smith College Monthly 25
up in such an affair! Wait a minute, though! Of course —
the fireplace. That'll do."
With imperturable calm, he listened to the landlord's in-
structions.
"The lights will he extinguished. Then 1 will count
three. At three you will fire. Are you ready, M essieurs ?"
The lights were blown out.
"One! Two! Three!"
One shot rang out, and, strangely, it seemed to come
from the fireplace.
■'MonDieu, I am killed!"
Lanterns were lighted hastily. The Englishman was
standing in his place at the end of the room, a smoking pistol
in his hand. In the fireplace, moaning and cursing, with both
hands clasped around one knee, lay Gaston.
An exclamation of surprise burst from the crowd as they
surged forward around the unfortunate man. But in a second,
as comprehension dawned, there was a shout of derision.
The Englishman's face remained inscrutable. "By Jove,
serves him jolly well right," he said to himself as he strode
over to the fireplace. He reached up to lay the pistol on
the mantelpiece. Then, looking down at Gaston over the
heads of twenty babbling Frenchmen, he said coolly,
"I say, I hope you're not much hurt."
Gaston glanced hastily at him with hatred in his eye.
then turned away, spluttering feebly.
"You have insulted me."
The Englishman swung around and strode out of the
room. Presently he was reclining on the settle before the
fire, his pipe hanging from his mouth, and against his knees
was propped the "Quarterly Review."
JEALOUSY
Helen Fiske
But when
I loved the moon,
The sun unsheathed his light
From the scabbard of the hills and struck
Me blind.
26 The Smith College Monthly
SHRINE TO AESCULAPIUS
S.m.i IE S. Simons
\KK as it is. there may be that peculiar harmony be-
tween man and the things about him which induces a
creative repose. It is not the- harmony which dulls the
instant response- of sense to outward impression, the' sort of
peace due' rather to lethargy in man than serenity in nature.
An equality that produces a repose which still is active must
be formed of motion and of quietness, a synthesis of change
and continuity. This feeling, intangible and elusive, is ex-
perienced, I think, only in the country. 1 cannot imagine a
sense of rising power, coupled with the- most complete relax-
ation, in surroundings pitched to a tautness of activity. No,
the movement that 1 sense even late at night in the- city is
harsh and restive, in no way comparable to the stirring in the
country air. And it is at Pelham that 1 find its perfect expres-
sion, [am most e-onscions of it in the spring, though I have
felt it when color burned over the hills and when blue shadows
drew across the snow.
Pelham is only a generic name'. It seems to e-xte-nd in-
clusively over the Berkshires east of Amherst. 1 believe there
is a Central Pelham and a West Pelham through which the
street ear sways with alarming purposefulness, bu1 both are
slight, hampered. Xorth-of- Boston gestures, frugal, with
narrow white- houses and a general store. To me, Pelham
is ;i brown shingled house with a re-d roof, and woods that
slope away from it down the long hill. As 1 open the gate
I may be barked at, bu1 I am reassured to sev a poodle with
,-, coal permanently and badly waved. I closed it behind me
so n,,.,! the more regal Pekinese will not trot through majesti-
cally, drawing the delicate buff plumes on his feet and tail
into a less appropriate milieu. He would like very much to
Stretch his svcll brevity on the single pile of stones which
markes the one-time aspiration towards a gate post. Because
it is still early spring, the rose hushes are only guileless
sprouts, and six feel of hist summer's sunflower grins dryly
€.,l |1,(. house. 1 leave my bag indoors and go into the fields.
The Smith College Monthly 27
which arc not cultivated, being maintained as hunting ground
for the gentleman cat named "Winnie".
The north edge of the pasture is lost in a growth of
white pine. As the sun strikes obliquely on the highest
branches, they lose color, the needles glinting like sparkling
facets of spun glass. The houghs press down and in upon
the path, and the ground is resilient under foot. I walk with-
out noise, slipping a little on the needles, and leaving no im-
print. There are late red checker berries and bluets no taller
than the moss. The quiet odor of pine lies on the ground,
but above the stillness I hear the wind moving evenly through
the trees. The influence is irresistible, exciting, and those
who love Pelham recognize beneath the movement a reserve
which is a startling source of power the greater for its un-
foreseen tranquility.
As I come from green shadow into the open maple woods
on the far side of the pines, I am increasingly aware of an-
other sound, very like the wind but deeper toned and unvary-
ing. It is the brook. Xot very wide, never more than ten or
twelve feet, its course is rough with rocks, just inaccessible
each from the other. A large one in midstream is within
wading distance, and I often lie there to watch the water,
tumbling up to it, part and slide in a long undulation around
the sides, smoothing them gently. I try to catch a little as
it slips resolutely and graciously under my hand. So I have
wished on summer evenings to fasten in the air the fragrances
of lavendar stock before it was swept away on the first night
breeze like water running through the fingers. The sun
glistens in a bubble and then plunges deeper reflecting reds
and yellows on the stones. Where in the fall I saw a crystal
emptiness flowing over pebbles, in the spring I found the
warm amber brown of earth and old leaves held melted in
the water. Brown is a still color, without motion, but merged
with a quick red it turns to bronze, a color not impassive, not
coldlv rigid, and vet not wholly changing.
Not all people go to Pelham. One must bring an aware-
ness of what is lovely and an eagerness for what may be
beautiful. The little things become the great things, — the
pine needles and the odor of the woods, the sound and color
of the brook. I do not think that I should find the same
completeness elsewhere. The harmonious perfection de-
mands an increase of sensitivity, a fullness of appreciation.
28 The Smith College Monthly
Whether from the brook itself or from the wind flowing
through the branches of the pines, there is everywhere the
sound of running water, tranquil and yet strengthening. 1
should be content to stay at Pelham. It draws from me a
"quickened multiplied consciousness", a sense of repose most
splendidly creative.
POEM
Rachel Grant
These trees have drunk the sun.
Fire-filled, their strength
Breaks into clarion color on the hills.
Maples, with a strange new energy,
Burn in the wind
And sumac kindles to a darker flame
I n all the toreh-lit wood
Only the blanched ferns are dim.
Crushed beneath air, they break
With a slight sound of foam.
The Smith College Monthly 29
THE PERSONAL TOUCH
V 1 rginia Fa k EINGTO X
ill
ISS Baxter prided herself on the interest she took in her
students. The Seventh Grade was her family, she was
wont to say, and the proprietary air with which she
addressed each eleven-to-thirteen year old unit of it hore out
her assertion. It is doubtful however, if the Seventh Grade
accepted Miss Baxter's interest in quite the spirt in which it
was meant. In fact, there was a rumor that outside the
white-washed fence which inclosed the grammar school play-
ground, she was known to the ribald tongues of the pupils as
"The Snoop."
There was a neat card file on the oak desk which faced
the roomful of thirty-three scrub-mopped or sleek pigtailed
heads. "Taking 'Tendence" was the first process of the day.
On this particular Monday morning the October sunlight
sifting in broad beams through the yellow shades found only
one member of the Seventh Grade absent from school. Thirty-
two pairs of already grimy hands were folded on straight
desks, thirty-two mouths were pursed in adolescent self-
righteousness, thirty-two pairs of eyes — assorted brown, blue,
tan, and green — were fixed on Teacher's face as she looked
up from the pile of neatly lettered white cards.
"Can anyone tell me where James Bendetti is today?"
asked Miss Baxter. Her pale eyes fairly oozed sympathetic
interest behind the hard glint of her rimless spectacles.
Jimmy was not usually absent from class although there were
those who thought it might be better for the Seventh Grade
if he were. Perhaps he was ill today. That would give Miss
Baxter an opportunity to see what his home conditions were
like — she could take him a little note of condolence from the
class. She loved seeing what home conditions were like al-
most as much as she loved having her "little family" write
notes of condolence of those stricken in health. Besides be-
ing good practice in English composition it developed their
sense of civic responsibility.
80 The Smith College Monthly
A dozen hands had sprung up in answer to her query
as to Jimmy's whereabouts. There was always a delightful
alacrity about the way the Seventh Grade offered inform-
ation, and on this occasion it was more marked than usual.
"Yes, Sophie. Do you know what is the matter with
James this beautiful autumn morning?", Miss Baxter ad-
dressed her favorite pupil, the daughter of the local hanker.
"Yes'm. He's in jail." Sophie was an artist she did
not spoil the effect of her announcement by attempting to
add details. Her round eyes gazed with great enjoyment at
her teacher's evident distress. It wasn't every day that she
had a chance to throw a bombshell like this— Bud Fitch had
just been aching to be the one to tell about it. Sophie twisted
in her seat and struck the curly end of a malicious pink tongue
in Bud's general direction.
"\\ ny. now, how very terrible. And what was the cause
of this catastrophe?" Miss Baxter was beginning to recover
from the shock and to realize the possibilities of the situation.
She could see herself in her best black coat holding the hand
of an unjustly incarcerated .James, and reading the prisoners
the Christian Science .Monitor.
"Aw. he tried to knife a guy what he found kissing his
sister. " Henry Graham volunteered this information with a
scornful twist of his thin month. Nobody'd ever so makin'
love to his sister, that was sure. She was the homelist girl in
Delaware county, said the town.
Miss Baxter felt the vvd Hood which had surged up into
her virginal grey face subside. "That will do, Henry. \Yc
will begin on page forty-three of the arithmetic book, if yon
case.
School didn't go very well that day. There was too much
whispering behind the the large drab covers of Dickinson's
Geography of the World; too many triangular notes tossed
quickly from row to row; too restless an atmosphere through-
out the bare walled room. The case of James Bcndetti was
having a bad effect on the Seventh Grade.
After dismissal thai afternoon. Principal Arthur called
.Miss Baxter into his office. He was a pompous man with
grey hair and an astoundingly small nose which was likely to
wiggle a bit at the end in limes of menial stress. It was
wiggling now.
".Miss Baxter. I daresay von have heard that VOUnc
The Smith College Monthly 31
James Bendetti has been put in prison. A very sad affair
indeed. It seems that he was protecting his sister's honor
against the advances of a ruffian cousin who was boarding
with them. The boy seized upon a kitchen knife which hap-
pened to be at hand, and, it is believed, wounded this Paulo
quite badly. No one censures James very severely — in fact
I gather that he is something of a hero in the town. At any
rate, Miss Baxter, I felt sure that you would want to go and
see him, in accordance with the interest which you take in
your pupils."
"Thank you, Professor Arthur, of course I was plan-
ning to do that. I shall try to make James feel that, while
we deplore his action, we do not feel that he was greatly to
blame."
"Exactly, Miss Baxter. You have a wonderful way
with children."
"Well, as I always say, Professor Arthur, they are just
like a little family to me." Miss Baxter's uplifted eyes and
coy smile puffed out the principal's chest. He had long been
convinced that were he an unmarried man, he would have but
to say the word and Susan Baxter would be his. Even with
his dear wife and four daughters in existence, this thought
gave him a certain satisfaction.
At precisely five o'clock of that same Monday, Miss
Baxter in her best black coat was ushered by a red faced and
obsequious jailer into the small cell of James Bendetti.. The
criminal looked absurdly small, sitting hunched up on the
narrow bed with his skinny knees drawn up to meet his chin.
In the black eyes which greeted his visitor there gleamed a
sullen fear that somehow was not quite in keeping with the
righteously mournful expression on the thin dark young face.
"Ah, James, I am very sorry, very sorry indeed, to find
you here. We missed you in school today." She had decided
not to take too serious a tone with him at first. — She wras sure
that James was a nervous, high-strung lad. She spoke of
affairs of the Seventh Grade for some time to put him at his
ease, then abruptly she asked the question she had been pon-
dering.
"James, won't you tell me just exactly how this hap-
pened? You know I am very anxious to help you in any way
I can, and I want you to know that I think it was very fine
of you to go to your sister's rescue, although of course what
32 The Smith College Monthly
you should have done would have been to call the police."
Miss Baxter was vaguely annoyed to feel that she was blush-
ing again. The boy's stare was curiously malicious, it seemed
to her. as though he found in her perfectly natural interest in
a pupil, some evidence of a morbid curiosity.
But .Jimmy's eyes filled suddenly with tears. He felt
sweep over him the necessity of telling some one the truth,
and his teacher was being as kind as she could. He would
tell her, let them punish him.
"It was this way. Miss Baxter. OF Paulo, this here
cousin of ours, he was a mean one. He'd been boardin' with
us for pret' near a month, and never would give none of us
kids a penny or nothin', and was always kickin' us out of the
way. Well, last night, my dad he was over on Guinea Hill
buying some whiskey. My dad he sells more whiskey than
anyone else in Walltown."
Miss Baxter drew a sharp breath. The awful pride with
which the boy made this horrible assertion! His home con-
ditions were impossible, evidently. It was really wonderful
that such an impulse of chivalry as must have actuated him
last night had not been entirely stamped out in these sordid
surroundings.
"Where was your mother, James?" she inquired, to
change the subject from an undesirable discussion of the
merits of Mr. Bendetti as a vendor of whiskey.
"Ma? Aw, she ran off' with a Greek that sold popcorn
when we lived in Newark." James' tone was casual; he didn't
remember his mother much. He continued in a tone which
grew more dramatic, as he approached the climax of his story.
"Well, I was comin' back from the poolroom 'bout ten
o'clock. There wasn't any light in the house, I noticed,
Ycpt in the kitchen, so when I come in, I went out there.
Guess what I seen."
"Saw, not seen, James." Miss Baxter sought refuge
in grammatical correction. Her maidenly mind forbade it-
self to indulge in any such wild conjectures as her pupil ap-
parent ly expected. I Ie waited a moment, then went on, since
no guesses were forthcoming.
"Well, I'll tell you. Right there in front of me on the
table was Paulo's wallet. And it was all stuffed full of bills,
'cause he gets paid twenty dollars every Saturday night for
workin' on the road. Jeeze, Miss Baxter. I couldn't do nothin'
The Smith College Monthly 33
but gawp around and wonder what had made ol' Paulo leave
it there where us kids might find it. It was pret' dark in the
kitchen with the lamp turned down real low. 'Nen all of a
sudden I noticed Paulo and my sister Roise standin' in the
pantry kissin' each other. They didn't see me at all."
Jimmie's eyes were opaque and glowing ellipses in his
olive face. He was talking faster now, and seemed to have
forgotten his startled listener.
"I never thought he'd turn around. I grabbed that
wallet faster'n anything, and jus' as I did it, he did turn
aroun' an' saw me. I was too scared to run — Jeeze, I was
scared. OF Paulo, he grabs me by the throat. 'You dirty
little thief!' he says, ' I will kill you quick.' So I grabbed a
knife that was on the table and I dug it into Paulo ver' hard.
It went squish! and he fell on the floor. So Rosie and me we
made up a story to tell to the p'lice /cause Rosie don't really
like Paulo, just the money he gives her," Jimmie ended with
a grunt of approval.
Miss Baxter was sitting bolt upright in her chair. Her
horrified brain was not functioning properly — it refused to
take in the meaning of sentences she felt related somehow to
another world. Jimmy, who had been carried away by the
relief of relating events as they had actually happened, came
down to earth with a bump as he saw the expression on his
teacher's face. He felt suddenly haunted. Had he been
crazy? They might hang him for knifing Paulo, if they did
not think he'd done it to help Rosie. Jeeze, he never should
have told the old snoop all that !
"Miss Baxter, you know I'm a 'nawful story teller," he
said wheedlingly. "I jus' get started on a story and I cant
stop. That was all a big lie what I just told you, Teacher.
I jus' made it up while I was sittin' here with nothing to do.
'Course why I really knifed Paulo was to perfect Rosie's
honor." He had heard Professor Arthur use this phase that
morning, and he seized upon it in desperation .
Miss Baxter's brain cleared itself slowly of the thick
mist that had seemed for a few moments to penetrate it. No
wonder the poor boy had gone almost insane — a terrible
strain just to sit there feeling the disgrace of being in jail.
And of course he had always been an incorrigible story teller.
She remembered the tale he had told one noon to scare little
34 The Smith College Monthly
Sophie a lurid horrible account of the murder of an old
darkey in a graveyard.
"I understand. James. Professor Arthur and I will do
all we can. Meanwhile if 1 were you. 1 should forget the
whole affair as much as 1 could. You'd better cat your din-
ner now, and get a good night's sleep." and Miss Baxter rose
to leave as the /jailer brought in Jimmy's supper.
As she walked briskly hack to her boarding place, she
iclt a glow of acknowledged virtue. It wasn't every teacher
who would have sat in that damp cell an hour, letting an
imaginative pupil tell lengthy and morbid tales of unreal
happenings. Well, she considered it part of her work — this
personal interest in her pupils.
The Smith College Monthly 35
BOOK REVIEWS
ORLANDO
Virginia Woolf Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1928
Looking at Michelangelo's Last Judgment one need
not be very clever to realize that he did not use models for
these struggling and heavily falling bodies. They are
not posed; nobody ever took their orginals and pulled
them into a posture which could be held by living flesh for a
half hour, or even ten minutes, while the master sketched.
They portray movement — the wincing, the reluctance and the
leaden plunge of despair. How could they be posed? Pretend
for a moment that Michelangelo equipped himself with a
models' gymnasium, hung with safety nets for acrobatics ; he
sent men and women up rope ladders to fling themselves out
into the air, and plunge, and be caught ; he sat watching fall-
ing bodies all day; and when his retina seemed etched with
naked acrobats he painted the sight out again for the Last
Judgment, Would that explain it? Look then at the Day
on the tomb of Giuliano de' Medici; a figure in brief pause,
but swelling to twist into action; could this be posed? And
could his sister Night be found among the models of Renais-
sance Florence? Those faddists who measure everything,
put tape-measures on Day, and then went looking for his
equal among prize-fighters; but having searched very thor-
oughly they reported: no human being's muscles swell as
large as these bands; no wrestler can reproduce his pose. And
that is just the answer which even casual and inartistic sight-
seers make before any of Michelangelo's frescoes and statues.
From the same kind of tape-measure accuracy coupled
with respect for authority the middling-intelligent man has
come to accept the fact that great art refuses to be true to
life. (Grand Opera isn't a bit like us, he says; a symphony
sounds like nothing else you ever heard; and I suppose — since
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The Smith College Monthly 37
you insist — that a book is just the same. We can't expect it
to imitate life.) Of course these persons prefer imitation,
since they can understand it better; or a greater art, like
Shakespeare's, in which they mistake their recognition of
vague old feelings transfigured for mere accurate imitation.
Other critics see the truth; that art should create; and that
a character in a book, like a painting or a piece of music, has
more to do than shadow an original. For truth is more than
actuality; as a portrait is more than a photograph, and a
lover's aria more than the phonographic eaves-dropping from
the same type in a Bronx apartment house or a road just
back of Main Street. Reproduction has held writers earth-
bound, except as they could forget individual cases, let ex-
periences enter into the fluid of their own personality to be
dissolved; and finally produce a new creature, who has no
nearer relative than the writer himself; a creation unbound
by memory, who will live completely in a pattern formed
from his own necessities and those of his environment. This
process Mrs. Woolf knows well ; she has repeatedly given us
men and women of intense individuality, whose days are
flavored freshly, being neither stale nor warmed over ; whose
life burns brightly within the' consciousness, not like our in-
complete life, but like the life we might lead if we were not
dull-sleepy most of our days. Shakespeare's lines have this
quality of realizing the potentialities of our own smaller life.
And as his situations brought from the players on his scene,
Romeo, Othello or Hamlet, words not as we would say them
but as we might hope to have them said, so Mrs. Woolf sur-
prizes the knowledge lying behind our consciousness, com-
pounding a language different from many we use, being a
medium apart. This rare talent for new-born forms has
set all her work apart, before Orlando.
In writing Orlando she traveled dangerous ground. The
subject would have been easier, and less complex, to a young
writer who had not yet ventured to treat life itself, stripped
of concrete example. Her two pieces of impudence were, first,
to pick up a contemporary and drop her into Sham history-
biography; and second, to write his biography as a joke. At
once she flouted holy literary aloofness, (call it propriety,
though it might better be described as artistic creation;)
and her own sincerity. You may laugh sincerely, but all the
parts of your joke will be grotesques. With some shrewdness
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The Smith College Monthly 39
she next broadened her field of targets; and reversed all laws
at once, biological and temporal as well as literary; then she
picked out critics, biographers, all writers; and mortal man.
and herself, to tar with the same stick. Especially she
amused herself with the sexes. Thus, while she was making
enemies, she included most of mankind, and having equalized
the mixture, hurt nobody; jealousies were impossible; her
book retained a singular pureness from spite. W. S. Gilbert
worked with the same impartiality, in the Savoy Operas. Sueh
a joke, aimed at everybody, ceases almost to be a joke, and
becomes an attitude of mind; so, paradoxically, Mrs. Woolf
seems to have been sincere. Then, the central theme treated
here would not have been invented at all, but through a kind
of sincerity of interpretation. After all, there must be some
reason for every act or thought ; in a simple case, we put an
egg on to boil because we feel hungry ; more complexely, we
give a friend a nick-name because something about her sug-
gests the figure. So Mrs. Woolf describes a boy born under
Elizabeth over three centuries ago; he does not grow old or
die ; after a century or more he turns into a woman ; and we
follow her vivid career till the twelfth stroke of midnight
sounds: "The twelfth stroke of midnight, Thursday, the
eleventh of October, Nineteen Hundred and Twenty-eight. "
The account closes here; yet Orlando lives on. . . .Not even
Mrs. Woolf" s imagination would build this story if it had
not been given an initial push by truth. It is thus that she
again evades censure for her joke; she must have meant a
great deal of it. And, actually, what started this train in her?
With characteristic complexity she saw in the original woman
more than a solitary individual ; the rich old blood colored her
life with reminiscent moods and acts; growing up from the
home of her ancestors, she was compact of their lordliness
and their gypsy adventuring; their imaginative restlessness
and their changeable life. She was a woman who could never
stand like a naked Eve, clipped of tradition, looking only for-
ward. Again, her masculine mind, and perhaps an artifici-
ality about her physical identity worked upon Mrs. Woolf for
expression. Finally all these observations amalgamated into
one form; the woman became her house; she came fluently
down the centuries, undying. Such liberties as Mrs. Woolf
took with time and with sexual identity gained value because
Mrs. Woolf is incapable of leaving her subject alone; she
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The Smith College Monthly 41
must pour herself into everything; she sees with whomever she
treats. The aesthetic experince of living with Orlando
through five ordinary life-times has brough her beyond the
bounds of joking; with conviction she flouts death; she allows
humanity to slide from manhood to womanhood, changing
manners as clothes change with time, and proprieties with
climate; quite constant underneath all. The question of un-
iversality is not forced; we should not believe Orlando to be
like everybody else. The laughing mood covers all these
slurred edges; time is not serious; sex is not serious; literary
interests are more important, but literary people, how despic-
able ! Orlando is not serious ; that is why he never kills him-
self; he has only a bright interest, pliancy and activity. The
change from manhood to womanhood is drawn broader, much
broader, than Mrs. Woolf has drawn before ; the ceremony of
the Three Sisters, Purity, Chastity and Modesty, moves with
a ludicrous, thumping dance to its climax. Suddenly we see
the authoress turning Elizabethan herself, to jerk her original
somewhat coarsely in the ribs. She does not work so grotes-
quely again, until, perhaps, the theme of sexual change re-
turns, and the Archduchess Harriet becomes a man; while
still later Orlando's lover Shelmerdine plays back and forth
across the dividing line with her as if they were dancing to-
gether to a tune something like this: " 'Are you sure you're
not a woman?' 'Are 37ou really not a man?' ' Truly here the
story avoids the bounds of biography, or novel, or even farce ;
and it becomes a written dance, like a violent puppet-dance
at first; then more human; and then increasingly graceful,
less jerky, until we are caught in its rhythm and follow per-
force to Mrs. Woolf's premise, which in the immediate case
turns Orlando into a genuine woman for us ; Avhile secondarily
it wipes out the dividing line between the characters of the
sexes. If that broad comedy stings us unpleasantly in the
scene of climax, it may be remembered finally as an appro-
priate device to the form of the book.
If, then, Mrs. Woolf trifled with truth and drew out a
greater truth, what happened to her character, which alone
in her book is drawn deliberately from actuality? Has
Orlando been posed? Supposedly, if he came forth from his
making new-created, he would have been divorced from his
original, and the purpose of the book would have lost. Or
if he was indeed the ape made to caper after his mistress, ever
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The Smith College Monthly 43
so gracefully, he would not, by the standards of so many
critics, remain a fine creation. I believe that the answer must
be sought in the quality of Mrs. Woolf's art, in which the
world is dipped to change its very substance. Orlando en-
tered it blocked out as a caricature, and left it carrying Mrs.
Woolf's identity, for the time; walked through the centuries
with eyes through which she watched mankind, amused; acted
physically as she acts intellectually; broke through limiting
actuality as she chips away the crust from a flowing imagina-
tive life; and generally dismaved his neighbors by refusing
to be a convent ion-poldder. I do not mean that he was the
less like his original for being the person we read. I mean
that Mrs. Woolf seems incapable of sustained insincerity or
sustained imitation ; she cannot shut herself out of her people ;
and when she has flowed in, she becomes like those indepen-
dent people, only intensifid, heated, and individual in the tight
packing of the character. Orlando will be considered no less
than the greatest of her creations.
A. L. B.
REGINALD AND REGINALD IX RUSSIA
Saki (H. H. Munro) Xew York: The Viking Press, 1928
If it were possible for a butterfly — a little butterfly, but
beautiful — to be entombed in a bit of ice, through which
its delicate lines would seem more distinct, more perma-
nent, and somehow unapproachable, it might recall Saki.
The figure may be fantastic, but even that belongs to him. He
is at the same time so inexplicably impalpable and yet so inex-
plicably hard. Flight arrested; and the arrest miraculously
translated in to cold tangibility.
The work of man who was killed in the war has an advan-
tage all its own: it makes an appeal, irrelevant to the content,
because of a universal pity or sympathy or admiration for the
author, even after some lapse of time. Sometimes the appeal
blinds, appreciation becomes an expression of charity. Saki
himself, with his characteristic irreverence of death, might
have laughed at all this, and spoken epigrammatically on the
literary and commercial advantages subsequent to "Pro
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The Smith College Monthly 45
patria mori". But those authors who appeal only to charitable
natures do not live long, — in the literary sense; post-war
memory is too short. Post-war appreciation, however, may
be permanent and, in the case of Saki, accumulative, since he
is known more and more widely.
His strong point is his humor, to which his premature
death adds a note of irony, which, again, he himself would
have appreciated. Humor is here too general a term, but the
cataloging of the various species of humor is so eternally de-
batable! The frequent comparison of Saki to Wilde seems
the best, though in many senses the two are very different;
Saki, for instance, is certainly less artificial, more spontan-
eous. He sees everything, even the tragic, with a little hum-
orous twist, but he succeeds especially in his character obser-
vation :
"Before we had time to recover our spirits, we were in-
dulged with some thought-reading by a young man, whom
one knew instinctively had a good mother and an indifferent
tailor the sort of young man who talks unflaggingly through
the thickest soup, and smooths his hair dubiously as though
he thought it might hit back."
— "the girl, for instance, (at houseparties) who reads
Meredith, and appears at meals with unnatural punctuality
in a frock that's made at home and repented at leisure."
But sometimes he descends to a sort of stained littleness:
"The cook was a good cook as cooks go; and as cooks go
she went."
Perhaps he redeems himself, however, in the keenness of
his general observations:
"Every reformation must have its victims. You can't ex-
pect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over
the prodigal's return."
And he may be forgiven much for his ingenuity and the
achievement of a masterful incongruity in such breath-taking
jumps toward the romantic as:
"So I got up the next morning at early dawn — I know it
was dawn, because there were lark-noises, and the grass
looked as if it had been left out all night."
He tickles, perhaps he goads a little, he tantalizes just
out of reach ; he is a literary Puck.
In the matter of style he is unique in his method of con-
fusing the simple and the sophisticated — the mixture sym-
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The Smith College Monthly 47
bolized in his medium, Reginald, a very young man, who
believes that "To have reached thirty is to have failed in
life", but a very worldly person who kmnges about summing
up people and things with a disrespectful but delightful acid-
ity. The short stories in Reginald in Russia best illustrate
Saki's simplicity; Gabriel-Ernest is unforgetable for that
very reason. The first collection, Reginald, more sketches than
real stories, brings out a complicated cleverness and, like all
humorous writing, loses in volume form the force of the
earlier intermittent magazine appearances. But whether
his mood is simplicity or sophistication (and he jumps from
one to the other so quickly!) , Saki's manner is different — not
different in a glaring, tabloid sense, but different in a youth-
ful, reckless, impertinent sense.
Saki himself pricks so many balloons that it would be
unfitting to give a well-blown generalization as to his degree
of literary excellence, even that which he might have achieved
had he lived; His work has an incidental element that may
mean an incidental fame, though the present popularity
would argue otherwise.
Ellen Robinson '29
PENNAGAN PLACE
Eleanor Chase J. H. Sears and Co. 1928
Pennagan Place is a 'first novel'. Reading it is like open-
ing a window in a stale room. Unconsciously it throws a re-
vealing light on the sentimentalism, the silly self-conscious
cynicism, the pseudo-cleverness that has invaded present day
literature. The clear wind of it blows their insipid flatness
into the daylight. We cannot but be pleased to find a book
whose natural charm and dignity is not marred by that lab-
ored artificiality that is so much a part of the modern novel.
The Pennagans live in the Middle West, three genera-
tions of them, over by the ruthless old patriarch Giles. One
cannot described them, the Pennagans, living proudly and
contemptuously in the isolation of their home, because the
author herself has not described them — she has created them.
They are living people, everyone of them — Christopher,
Nickodemus, Benjamin and Curtis and Donna and little
Webby; most of all Giles — 'magnificent, terrible old man.'
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As characters they are entirely consistent throughout the
book. And Miss Chase lets them live their lives in their own
wilful way. She lets them wander in and out of the story as
they please, drinking and laughing, quarreling and calling
for more whiskey. This book is vital, amazingly vital and
amazingly real — Lisa's port, Webby's bread flower, Gile's
remarks, so wonderfully obscene and cruel and amusing. All
of them become living realities.
It is impossible to understand just how Miss Chase has
achieved this result. But it seems to me that it is partly due
to a quality of effortlessness. There is nothing forced, noth-
ing labored throughout the whole. Almost unconsciously she
has put her vitality and her own humor into the book. Because
she knew the Pennagans intimately, we also can know them.
Because she loved them and laughed at them, we love them
and laugh at them with her. And it seems to me, also,that
there is a certain basic conception in the book which gives it
much of its power. This is the concept that sincerity and
loyalty are the fundamental issues of life, before which all
conventional moral codes are subordinated. Curtis and
Donna stand at the opposite poles in this. Giles himself is
an appaling old sinner, an amazing liar, yet he is loyal and
wholly sincere. You will find almost all the sins in the
Pennagan family, but only Donna is disloyal. This subtle
recognition of sincerity, even though it is never mentioned,
gives to the book the possession of truth, a direct, creative
force, vitalzing the whole.
And so we will always carry our memories of it — the
autumn wind, Lisa, in a blown frock, greeting Giles and Min
and the stage coach, Curtis in her yellow dress, Giles calling
for champagne to celebrate Min's return, Nick whooping
back to his family and tearing off again — and through it all a
freedom of thought and a freedom of creation that has at-
tained much. Anne Homer '29
THE ISLAND WITHIN
Ludwig Lewisohn Harpers 1928
Can our individualistic and introspective age produce an
epic? Can a modern author transcend himself and his little
materialistic world to the epic scope with its time feeling and
heroic breadth?
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The Smith College Monthly 51
That Ludwig Lewisohn's The Island Within is intended
as an epic is evident, both from the author's preface, and from
its subject matter. Here is presented the story of a Jewish
family in its wandering from Russia where its prestige had
been established, to Germany where much of its individuality
is swamped, and finally to New York City where the vestige
of its racial consciousness balks at assimilation.
But Lewisohn's conception of generation succeeding
generation is dramatic rather than epic or panoramic. Tie
portrays only the crises in the lives of his successive characters,
not the even tenor of their living or their more universal
emotions which bind one age to another. To him, the in-
dividual is too murningly important to be subordinated to the
time chain, to the struggle of heridity and environment. On
the contrary, the epic writer must survey the whole sea of
time, not the crest or valley of a single wave.
The epic, furthermore, cannot regard all individuals as
important in themselves, as does Lewisohn. For it works
with the dream-stuff, the ideals of a people, and with char-
acters superlative in greatness, goodness, or even in wicked-
ness. The Island Within lacks, consequently, the epic unity,
usually obtained through one grandly dominating figure.
Only the epic unity of strong racial feeling is here present.
Although Mr. Lewisohn has not succeeded in his de-
clared intention, nevertheless he has created a novel of in-
dubitable merit. His thorough comprehension of the psycho-
logy of the Jew. particularly of the Jew in American, enables
him to create characters of a fiery intensity and to present
problems whose depth and insolubility yawn like dark abysses
before the cold light of reason which the author attempts to
focus upon them. Anthropology and sociology may deny
the existence of a Jewish racial type, but Mr. Lewisohn re-
cognizes and poignantly portrays the seemingly inherent race
feeling, and its fight against assimilation. His eye. keen for
the dramatic, selects situations like the parental reception of
the two exogamic marriages and the position of the Jewish
doctor in the state asylum, and makes of them unforgetable
pictures, through his concrete realism and his minute char-
acterization.
Without a doubt this book is more carefully written,
more reflectively conceived, than Lewisohn's other novels.
Lewisohn, the propagandist, is calmed by the age and
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The Smith College Monthly 53
breadth of the grievance to which he is giving utterance. He
is writing the modern "epic" of his own people, and his man-
ner derives loftiness from his intent. Unlike his earlier and
more subjective novels, this book has a plan, and a big plan,
and its parts are introduced by philosophic generalizations,
certainly not unsuccessful. The Island Within deserves more
consideration than we should, at first, think warranted to the
author of the somewhat sensational Upstream and the slip-
shod Don Juan.
Ethel Polacheck '29
BOARD
OF
EDITORS
Vol. XXXVII DECEMBER, 1928 No. 3
EDITORIAL BOARD
Editor-in-chief, Anne Lloyd Basinger, 1929
Managing Editor, Ernestine Gilbreth, 1929
Book Review Editor, Elizabeth Botsford, 1929
Katherine S. Bolman, 1929 Priscilla S. Fairchild, 1930
Elizabeth Wheeler, 1929 Elizabeth Sha^v, 1930
Rachel Grant, 1929 Martha H. Wood, 1930
Sallie S. Simons, 1930
Art — Nancy Wynne Parker, 1930
BUSINESS STAFF
Business Manager, Sylvia Alberts, 1929
Mary Sayre, 1930 Anna Dabney, 1930 Mary Folsom, 1931
Agnes Lyall, 1930 Esther Tow, 1931 Sarah Pearson, 1931
Advertising Manager, Gertrude Cohen, 1929
Assistant Advertising Manager, Lilian Supove, 1929
Circulation Manager, Ruth Rose, 1929
The Smith College Monthly is published at Northampton, Mass., each month from
October to June, inclusive. Terms $2.00 a year. Single copies 25c.
Subscriptions may be sent to Sylvia Alberts, 12 Fruit Street, Northampton.
Advertising Manager, Gertrude Cohen, Capen House
Contributions may be left in the Monthly box in the Note Room.
Entered at the Post Office at Northampton, Mass., as second class matter.
Metcalf Printing $ Publishing Company, Northampton, Mass.
"Accepted for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1203,
Act of October S, 1917. Authorized October 81, 191S.'"
All manuscript should be typewritten and in the Monthly Box by the fifteenth
of the month to be considered for the issue of the following month.
All manuscript should be signed with the full name of the writer.
DON'T BE THROWN ABOUT!
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OF YOUR SERVICE
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AM) NOTE TIIK DIFFERENCE"
CONTENTS
Cover Design
"How Many Mn.es to Babylon?"
The Fatal Journey
Inheritance
Thirteen
One Afternoon
Chopping Wood
Book Reviews:
The Hamlet of A. MacLeish
Lily Christine
The Father
"A Rover I Would Be"
Nancy Wynne Parker, 1930
Pris cilia Fair child, 1930 5
Elizabeth Botsford, 1929 S
Sallie S. Simons, 1930 20
Ernestine Gilbreth, 1929 21
Emilie Heilpin, 1931 25
Elizabeth Shaw, 1930 29
35
45
47
51
The Monthly
takes pleasure in annoucing
that Mrs. Curtiss
has been made advisor lo the board.
^AT THE MASQUERADE
LADY CYNTHIA Milord, you're a perfect Chesterfield...
LORD CHESTERFIELD Milady, every Chesterfield is perfect!
Chesterfield cigarettes are mild . . . not
strong or harsh. Chesterfield cigarettes have
character . . . they are not insipid or tasteless.
The tobaccos in Chesterfield cigarettes are
blended and cross-blended in a different way
from other cigarettes and the blend can 'tin copied.
They are MILD . . . yes, mild enough for
anybody . . . and yet . . . they SATISFY.
Lfccrrr & Myeju To»acco Ca
Smith College
Monthly
"HOW MANY MILES TO BABYLON?"
Priscilla S. Fairchild
Ij^lHE train was clicking along the track to a rhythm syn-
|vl/| copated by grunts and squeaks and groans. Back
g§§a over mv head my lifted hand touching the fuzzy sticky
plush, and higher still the slick metal stippled to imitate
wood. I realized suddenly where I was. We stopped, and
pushing up the shade I saw a man's face and hand caught,
transfixed in the light of an oil lantern that modeled the con-
tours, and etched in sharp relief the edges of his features
against the blackness. Hoarse cries of men's voices, the hiss-
ing of steam, and ponderous thumps echoed in darkness that
was like the concave, hollowed back-drop of a theatre, the
setting for a symbolical mystery play, in which the effects
though important are muted, subordinate to the drama of
the central spectacular figure, in this case the man whose
lifted lantern had sharpened and defined himself. Chief,
then, among the confused impressions I bore as the train
lurched forwrard again, was this sight of an unknown man,
who by some trick of circumstance had become the central
figure in a play whose significance I could never understand,
whose lines I should never know, however passionate the
drama, whose end, like its beginning, would be no less a
secret to me, because I had glimpsed a single illuminated
moment.
The train was rushing on again with a rhythmic clack-
clack against the rails, swinging on their hooks my flopping
clothes, those extra-ordinary ghosts whose life and colour
6 The Smith College Monthly
and motion is only borrowed from the flesh which they rover.
Yet now in their loose slackness I saw a certain dangling
reminiscence of myself, as a sick man in his fever detaches
himself from his body and looking at it from a height sees it
thin and empty as an old sack and yet undeniably his.
Into my mind made vacant by the speed, the noise urged
an old jingle.
"I low many miles to Babylon?
Three-score miles and ten.
Can 1 get there by candle-light?
Yes. and hack again."
Drugged, numb, body lulled to a trance by the swift on-
rush through the night, my mind became as fleet, and spun
off through incredible distances.
1 saw all the intense thin youth of a nation riding swift
as .March wind, bright and boisterous as March sunlight,
towards an unknown city, whose brilliance and glamour had
spread as far as coloured autumn leaves blown down the
dusty highways. Eager boys with hair blown back like a
saint's in a stained-glass window, reined in their horses at
the cross-roads with nervous fingers, and leaned out of the
saddles to ask breathlessly, "How many miles to Babylon?"
The answer, dry. laconic, bored, of a man who had seen
so many rushing headlong for the city of high places, had
stormed there himself, dry-lipped and wide-eyed. once. was.
"Three-score miles and ten."
"Can I get there by candle-lighl ?"
Oh. hurry, hurry, old fool! There is no time to waste!
We must he in Hahylon by candle-light, when the music be-
gins, and rustlingly, languorously, the thin blue haze of even-
ing thickens in pools down curving streets. To Babylon—
to Babylon !
Slow, ironically mocking, there is an answer, "Yes, and
hack again."
lie came back, they all come hack from Babylon, and
life goes on as it was before, Leaving a dry ashy taste now
and then, and there is the desert to cross before you gel home.
the sandy, metallic desert between Babylon, hoi and wild
as a flame, and the cool streams and green fields of home.
I had dozed the thick unnatural sleep engendered by an
unaccustomed hed and strange surroundings, and with all
The Smith College Monthly 7
the queer sensations accompanying such an awakening, I
stirred again and pushed up the shade. We were crossing
the desert; and between the sand-hills and dunes of distorted
shapes, pushed around by a careless wind, peered curious
mesas, sand-eroded to figures easily interpreted into animal
and human likenesses. A red and flattened moon was set-
ting. The effect was as artificial and theatrical as a fiat seen
in naked electricity, waiting behind the scenes for the next
shift. In its very overwhelming impressiveness, the appear-
ance of the land was stupid, too crude, too obvious. Tired
and disgusted, I tried to imagine the ranch to which Ave were
going.
Would the mountains be bronze-tipped at sunset, like
flaming lance-heads, purple-shadowed at dawn in their secret
hollows, when the white mist curled up and was licked away
from the river, as the sun in its rising drew up to us the smell
of sage-brush and hot dust? Would the tremendous high-
piled clouds, so different from those in the east, hang mo-
tionless overhead until, borne lower and lower by their
weight, they struck the flank of a hill, and were changed mi-
raculously to an army of gray spearmen, bearing each a tilt-
ed gray spear, and sweeping slowly from our sight each series
of rises until they overwhelmed us in turn, bounding the vis-
ible world to a narrow radius, moved forward with us?
Would I know the insane love of terrific heights and depths,
thin cold air, through whose transparency hot sunlight
poured? Would there be new sensations, the prelude to
which I had already faintly experienced this night? Drawn
taut with a string of expectancy, woven of the promise of
three months' .intimacy with strange people in an unknown
place, I fell asleep, later, as the thumping wheels pounded
out,.
"How7 many miles to Babylon?
Three-score miles and ten.
Can I get there by candle-light?
Yes, and back again."
The Smith College Monthly
THE FATAL JOURNEY
Elizabeth Botsford
IV^lHERE had been a time when the world went only as
|V^| far as the end of the street where the heavy trees moved
rv£Sl together, and a horse and wagon disappeared strangely
as though they had fallen into emptiness. It had been a
small and comfortable world. The sun rose at one end and
set at the other, apparently with no other purpose than to
wake her in the morning and to send her to bed at night. No
one else lived in the world but her mother and father and
sister, the neighbors and half a dozen straying inquisitive
dogs. Other people passed as shadows along the street, did
not trouble her and left no trace upon her eonsciousness when
they had gone. She had been completely satisfied with her
world, with its soft lawns, dusty baek fences and strawberry
patches, with its empty lot, its trees and the row of eool
dark houses whose doors stood always open to her. Hut even
before she began, daringly, to add block after city block to
her private world by timorous exploration and thrilling dis-
covery; even before she recognized the blurred memories of
woods steeped in shadows and of a yellow road over a hill,
not as dreams but as realities, — the western end of the street
had held her with a peculiar fascination. She had stood on
the horse-block many times wondering what happened to the
crippled postman when he limped past the last house that
she could see. over the world's cd^v. There was nothing
beyond. She could not conceive of things unseen existing.
Yet the next morning he came baek. Casually, too, as
though to step over the end of things and return were noth-
ing more unusual than to deliver mail at her front door. And
the sun. every night, settled down softly into the trees and
into that mysterious distance, drawing after it its slanting
amber. The sun. too. came back in the morning unchanged.
There was an inconsistency in her world which puzzled her
vaguely. She had thought, holding her breath, of what would
become of her if she walked westward until the street
The Smith College Monthly 9
dropped away beneath her feet, and then stepped beyond.
Before she had quite collected the courage to march
away from her familiar yard on this perilous adventure, she
was told that the world was round, twenty four thousand
five hundred miles in circumference, and swarming with
people. From then on it grew daily about her, it never
ceased. It stretched out of her grasp proportionately as she
learned more and more about it. It reached terrible dimen-
sions. She was never just as happy as she had been when the
world was only ten or twelve blocks long, with so few in-
habitants that she knew them all.
There was always, however, the road west. It had now,
with her vast knowledge of the city blocks, the miles, even
the states that lay far along it, the most exciting possibilities.
She imagined it running out over the bluffs past the farms and
the towns that she knew now, across Minnesota which was
tan on the school map, across yellow South Dakota into
Montana. A long road curving around the elbow of a hill,
dumping into an empty ravine and stretching out thin and
breathless over wind-scraped prairies. Always following the
sun. Xight after night she watched the sun go down over
this first mile or so of that infinite road, and it seemed to
draw her westward as it gathered in its slow oblique light.
She began to learn about that far country, that it was
open and full of sunlight, that beyond long prairies were
mountains called the Rockies and they were many times
larger than her Minnesota hills. She had stared at the bluffs
across the river and had tried to imagine them reared up to
immense heights. It was impossible. One day she had found
a picture of a tall sharp crag with a patch of snow in the
hollow of its shoulder and a lake at its feet that echoed its
jagged height in a windless surface. And the sudden beauty
had made her cold. She had hung it over her bed where she
could see the moon upon it as she went to sleep, and where the
sun lingered over it in the morning. It found a deep and
secret place in her heart.
With an insatiable desire she began to amass her know-
ledge of this western land. She sat for hours over boldly
covered novels, thick histories and biographies; and when
she was interrupted she came back hundreds of miles and
through many years to do as she was bid. She picked up
the fragments of stories that men let fall from their lips
10 The Smith College Monthly
with careless tobacco smoke, hoarding them with the same
indefatigable eagerness with which she hoarded pictures of
cattle, cowboys, horses and wild game. The names of
pioneers sang in her cars, and their gallant figures rode her
imagination, hooted and spurred. Dan'l Boone, Lewis and
Clarke, Kit Carson and Fremont, Davy Crockett and Buffalo
Bill strange wayward figures whose Homeric deeds left
her stirred and restless. Perhaps they wakened in her the
blood tradition of her family which, on one hand, had brought
her fathers people from the comfortable eastern eoast to
the middle west early in the- nineteenth century; and. on the
other, had sent her mother's brother to the fickle climate of
.Montana where crops, eat tie and sheep failed one after an-
other hut the ranchers stayed, half enchanted by the lonely
inclement country. She did not know why she must go west.
She only recognized that there was something within her
clamouring to he satisfied, and that she would never he happy
until she had followed the beckoning road that led past her
own door.
It was more than romance that had obsessed her. When-
ever she had looked at the picture over her bed, silence had
fallen around her. The same perfect silence that she knew
too well from the river, the soundless harmony of nature
undisturbed and at peace, of all life in such exquisite and
faultless vibration that the result was not sound hut silence,
deep, mellow and precious. She had been too much alone as
a child, perhaps ever to he happy with many people. She
half resented them because they brought noise and confusion,
shattering the spell which had fitted her into the pattern of
nature so that she was conscious of herself only as part of a
summer day. made of its heat and its slow sifting motion,
falling through sunlight as a particle of dust, with that de-
finiteness and completeness of existence. She had been torn
from that charm to he brought up as a normal child, hut the
tal I (is of her other self were there reaching out to he welded
again with nature. The silence of those remote mountains
whispered promises of this fulfillment. (She had no thought
of this at the lime. |
Then, suddenly, she was fourteen. And at fourteen she
wcnl west, even beyond Dakota to the Rockies. It was the
culmination of years of an insistent desire, hut she realized
later that it was much more than that. It was the most
The Smith College Monthly 11
momentous thing in her life. All the night before they left,
she could not sleep but lay awake in the dark trembling
strangely, with some dim sense that an emptiness within her
would soon be filled. She did not know why she should be
so affected. There were still uppermost in her mind, the
cherished romantic conceptions of the west. She did not
analyze why she should feel physically weak with impatience,
and sick with the intensity of her anticipation. She did not
guess what the journey would mean, how much she would
lose of contentment, and how much more she would gain.
She finally slept, and dreamed of riding alone in a high still
place.
Afe jfe <fc >fc ik,
Remembering her first journey west, the realization of
its significance had followed slowly the sense impressions
which remained in her mind too clear for peace, even years
after. The full value and fatality grew upon her as time
passed, gathering power as she gathered age, and heightening
her memories until they filled her with an unbearable ache.
She found that she was bound unalterably with that distant
country by some tie that she could never fully comprehend.
Each time she went back it tightened about her. She knew
now that she would never be free from it. And although it
seemed only yesterday that for the first time she had watched
from a train window the dusty Dakota towns shrivel out of
sight, this unvoiced tenuous sorrow of separation from the
west had lain for an incalculable length of time in her heart.
She had been fourteen, that first unforgettable time.
For her in that unwise carefree period of her life, there was
glamour in the rhythmic whirr of train wheels, in dining cars
and long green folds of a railroad ticket. And she was in a
country twice enriched for her because of the years she had
dreamed of it. Montana — lingering Spanish syllables, deep
and poignant in their domination over her. She sat on the
rear platform and tried to look both ways at once. They had
left the willow green banks of the Milk River, the cattle
grazing on low swells, the horses knee deep in water holes,
crowded together to keep off flies with their restless tails. A
rider along a sun-dried road waved his hat to her, and they
left him behind quickly, riding at a jog trot to the small
metal chatter of his spurs. The country rose with the climac-
tic grace of a slowly rising wind. The green hills rolled up
1 2 The Smith College Monthly
to wooded foot-hills which, in turn, swept upward to the sky-
line- abuptly. Behind the sharp fir heights was a pause of
misl The train climbed, puffing.
She remembered, even, thai they had eaten an early sup-
per that day. From he' dining car windows, she' had
watched the- sun prostrate itself reverently in a dark-laven-
der hank of clouds. Then some' one' said with a strange note*
of joy in his voice "Look, the' mountains." And the- clouds
were- not clouds at all. They began to take- a definite' and
massive shape-, moving forward out of a remote mist. Snow-
caps appeared with relucani majesty, but their soft brilli-
ance shifted like- a chamelon. They had. with all their hulk.
a fragility. She- half expected them to fade' away again like
a mirage. "The' mountains" another person repeated with a
fading inflection of awe. So the weary out-rider of a wagon
train must have' murmured to himself when he first saw them
shaping before him out of the' haze', quietly opening up their
deep beauty to recompense and comfort his fatigue. So he
must have whispered, only more- gratefully, she thought, be-
fore he' Sung back his triumphant shout to those- who fol-
lowed, blind with travel. "The mountains". . . .She stared
and could not comprehend. No one talked now. no one- read
or played his tired game of cards. All sat close to the win-
dows, eagerly. The mountains had east a religious spell
over them all. The sun paused to lay its shining sac-rific-c on
the- high spotless alters and then, suddenly, was gone. The
shadows crowded together like' tall solemn monks.
The train crept slowly, abjectly, over forested plateaus
to the foot of the- mountains. She could feel the night air
reaching timidly into (he stuffy cars. The darkness came
down with a Sigh, and when they stopped at the' station the
moon was up. higher and clearer than she had ever known it
before. (The memory of this was disturbingly sharp to her,
bringing hack the same physical exultation.) From the1 mom-
ent thai she had stood on the' wooden platform at Glacier
thai night years ago, she was never again the' same' person.
She had stepped into some ouc\ great cool arms. The dark-
ness was Hung about her like- a crystalline cloak, and the
fragrancy of virgin pines freshened by snow was a scarf for
her throat. In the immense stillness the panting engijie and
the voices «>f men were lost, they were as pine' needles falling
through deep shadows. Before her the' mountains reared
The Smith College Monthly 13
up broad shoulders and great bare heads. Without a word
they greeted her generously. Without motion they took her
into themselves.
She was fourteen And there were the looming
figures of Indians with beaded shirts and tall nodding
feathers. She could hear the soft booming toms-toms stac-
catoing the wailing minor of Indian voices, and spurs trail
ing over the wooden steps. She could see a tall hat in the
starlight or the metal ornament on a pair of chaps. Beyond
the station a white pony glimmered in the dark, and the
splotch of color on another's rump. There was the continu-
ous melody of horses' hoofs on the hard road, the waver of
fires in between the shadowy tepees of the Indian encamp-
ment. Always the swift clarity of the air filling her entire
body. Impressions descended upon her keenly, etching
themselves forever on her memory. (Even now, recalling
that night, they returned to her, bodily, filling her with an
ache of loneliness.) This one brief draught of mountain
night alone had repaid her for the years of waiting.
There was a mountain outside her window. She could
not sleep for watching how the trees grew blackly up its
steep sides, and how it seemed to have long arms reaching
down to draw her into their embrace. The dark wind laid
its fingers on her heart and quickened a fever there. She did
not guess, at the time, that she would never again be free of
it. But outside was the promise of all she wished for in
adventure and beauty. She slept finally to the rough mur-
muring of a stream. And while she slept, the moonlight
sliding down from soundless heights to her bed, bound her
to the mountains.
So she entered the dominion of silence.
Against the harmonious succession of days that had
followed there were two personalities that she remembered
with unusual clearness. One was Jimmie, a cowboy and
their guide. You would not have noticed him without the
ten gallon hat he wore, or his weather-scarred chaps. He
was small, brown and quiet, and his voice had a soft slowness
as though he talked much to himself. Astride a horse he
gained the dignity of height, and his motion in the saddle
understood the rhythm in the action of the quick gray horse
he rode. He was a man of strange accomplishments. He
14 The Smith College Monthly
knew swift whirling tricks with the rope that hung at his
saddle horn, he could toss horse shoes left-handed and heat
her. ruder his hand and spurs the most "ornery" horse
forgot to buck, and yet his own pony came like a dog at his
whistle. She had seen him roll a cigarette and light it with
one match on a mountain pass where a horse staggered
against the wind, lie knew weird Hlackl'eet legends and
old trail songs that had no beginning nor end. She could
almost hear his sturdy nondescript voice and see him riding
before her through the pungent brush that stood as high as
his head.
"Oh. I am a Texas cow hoy,
Far away from home,
I f ever I get hack to Texas
I never more will roam.
Montana is too cold for me
And the winters are too long;
Before the round-ups do hegin
Our money is all gone."
And bending over his pony's neck at a steep scramble over
rock ledges —
"Work in Montana
Is six months in the year;
When all your hills are settled
There is nothing left for beer."
High in the windy sunshine above the timber line—
''Come all you Texas cowboys
And warning take from me,
And do not go to .Montana
To spend your money free.
Hut stay at home in Texas
Where work lasts the year around.
And you will never catch consumption
By sleeping on the ground. "
There were innumerable verses, and many other songs of
equal length. 1 1 is memory was remarkable. One track in
the mud was a story to him, and he could spot a mountain
goal high on the rocks miles away. If he cursed fluently
when the horses strayed into the jack pines and tangled
The Smith College Monthly 15
them selves in their reins, he remembered to say "ma'am"
before a lady. He had herded eattle for the biggest ranch
in Texas, and had broken three ribs at the Pendleton Round-
up. If she had seen him in a crowd, she would not have
looked at him twice. But she still saw him flapping his hat
at her as he dead-headed some loose horses down an empty
road, swinging to the light trot of his gray pony and grin-
ning goodby. She would probably never meet him again,
but she could not lose him.
With Jimmie she associated the strawberry roan, be-
cause Jimmie had led him up one morning for her to ride.
"I've named him the 'Gentleman' " he said, and she knew
from the tone of his voice that he liked he roan,
"because he's the politest horse I've handled for a long time.''
It was the roan's first year on the mountain trails, (the brand
was fresh and deep on his flank) and he remembered still
the prairies and the freedom of his youth. A flat stretch
lured him to a gallop, and there wras a cock-sure swagger to
his gait that steep switch-backs had not worn away. He had
no claim to beauty. He was lean and raw-boned, scrawny
at the neck and shaggy fetlocked; but he was lithe like a
cougar, and as precise with his feet as a pianist is with his
fingers. His coat was the color of dusty strawberries. He
loved the long upward pull of the trail, the jagged corners
over emptiness, the valley floors deep in grass where he could
roll and run, and the buffeting mountain streams where a
horse had to fight to keep his footing. He had a pleasant
way of flicking back an ear attentively if you spoke to him.
And no matter how long the day's travel, he was always
ready to race for the home corral. She had ridden many
horses since, but she did not forget the strawberry roan.
Strange — how vividly the sense impressions came back
to her, more clearly than the memory of people that she had
met. The waking up the first morning to the rattle of hoofs
under her window, the impatient gallop of a horse straining
on tight reins ; the blanket of pine-cool air that lay over her
bed; the sure thrilling knoAvledge of the day that was be-
fore her. She lived through that day again. Xow it was
symbolic for her.
The morning had been hard to bear, it was so beautiful.
They found the dew thick upon the grass, the clear chill of
night hanging reluctantly in the shadows and the mountains
J 6 The Smith College Monthly
sheering up from their feel breathlessly. Jimmie waited for
them patiently, cocked on the hitching rail with dangling
hooted feet. Half a dozen ponies waited too. each tied by
the reins to the other's saddle horn. The packs were fastened
behind the cantles, the stirrups adjusted. Then the horses
fell quietly into line behind Jimmie's small quick-moving
gray, and they jogged out past the corrals, past the Indian
encampment, past the ranger's shack to a slow swell of the
mountain.
They climbed gradually through blossoming thickets
and meadows of daisies and lupine, with a quiet squeak of
saddle leather and the light thudding of hoofs on the springy
trail. The wind from remote ice fields cleared the last wisps
of sleep from their eyes. Outlines were clean and hold in
the morning,— the abrupt ridge of the mountain, the jagged
profile of a pine against the sky. the smooth gray curve of a
boulder and the petals of a wild rose beside the trail. It was
all real and tangible, all comprehensible to her in those early
brilliant hours.
But soon conversation trailed away like a morning mist.
They lost sight of the hotel roofs, pushing through the in-
terlacing darkness of underbush and trees. The sunlight
reached them in oblique smoky shafts, its warmth was remote
and wavering. They were immersed in delicate forest night.
She felt a change creeping over her as though the shadows
were transforming her. She could not remember how she
had rationalized that first bewildering sensation of re-encoun-
tering silence. Perhaps she was a ghost wandering dimly in
a world of tapering heights. Perhaps she was real and this
was only the passionate imagery of desires still unrealized.
perhaps she was only dreaming that she was here. Or else
she was a misfit, too concrete, too prosaic for this place where
a pine needle falling was a single note in some immense
melody of years. And it was only this that within her
something long dormant was struggling again for life, thrust-
ing aside the neat barriers which society had set up against it
and pouring forth into the slow light of the forest.
They rode on boldly.
She could not think any longer. A hundred sensuous
impressions drowned thought and SO permeated her body
that always she could recall them as sharply, as physically
.•is she had first experienced them. The sweet rankness of
The Smith College Monthly 17
dead pine needles, of ferns and mosses in blind hollows, of a
redolent vine crushed under a horse's hoof. The cool wet
smell of a stream reaching her even before the sound of its
water, a eold splatter on her face as the horses wallowed
through the deep of the ford. She felt again the strong
movement of the roan between her knees, the quick sturdy
action of head and haunches as he elambered up a steep
turn. The sensation of being earried steadily higher and
higher into sunlight and increasing heat.
Past the timber line the loose shale glared in the morn-
ing, over-grown in dark ragged patches with jack pines
flattened down by endless winds. Far behind them the hotel
roofs appeared again, and the thin shining line of the rail-
road. Eastward, Montana spead out like a relief map, the
Bear Paws lost in a pallid blue haze, The trail led along the
crest of the mountain. Here the hot sunlight was brilliant
and hostile, the peaks closed in menacingly. For a terrible
moment she felt absolutely alone, penetrating with colossal
nerve an Olympian height. There had been nothing in her
life to prepare her for this sudden revelation of distance, of
tremendous beauty. She had been taught other dimensions,
other values. For a brief space of time she wras afraid. The
little lessons she had learned could not explain this tall wind-
burned peak, or the blue ranges that stood before her, hold-
ing tight to their hearts their deep emerald valleys and snow-
rimmed lakes. And the nameless portion of her which under-
stood, could not speak. She was only something alien in a
sacred land, violating world-old laws of beauty and silence.
But cheerfully Jimmie led the way down the other side,
along a narrow trail where the shale that a horse kicked over
the edge fell a thousand feet down, where a lake at the
bottom looked like a silver puddle. He even sang an old
cowboy song, and the impudent smoke from his cigarette
veered out over space. Valleys slid away beneath them.
They edged upland meadows partially covered with ancient
snow. One low cloud scuttled before them.
Xoon was a reality, with the coffee boiling over a small
fire, and the earth's strong inn under oip' head. A stunted
pine with sagging branches made a tent of shade and fra-
grance from the pressing warmth of the sun. She slept, and
when she awoke the mountains had made peace with her and
had taken her into their confidence. Thev offered them-
18 The Smith College Monthly
selves to her as a girl offers herself to her lover, showing her
their most secret beauties. She had no fear now. Some-
how while she had slept, that imprisoned part of her had
escaped completely and had been made whole again. She
was no longer herself. She was a pull' of shadow on a bald
crag, a finger of sunlight in dense pine branches, the froth
of melted snow spilling down through steep grasses. She
was one with the shale dust in high places that knew only
sunlight. She was one with the shining headed loam that
an old tree uprooted when it fell. She had been born when
these- were born. She eould not die while they remained. . . .
While she had slept she had regained her heritage.
The afternoon passed dimly, in a golden haze. She re-
membered long trails twisting downward, the soft chill that
stretched a hand up to her compassionately as they neared
the tree line again, and the plunge from sunlight into shadow.
There were vague impressions of the dappled rump of a
fawn disappearing into a thicket, a bear's awkwardness as it
lumbered across the trail, the chatter of a red squirrel on a
log. magnified in the silence. The constant rush of a water-
fall, muffled by trees. She had so expanded and merged
into her surroundings that she filled this world, knowing it
all. part of its perfection. . .She existed only in her realization
of her own existence The sunlight shrank until it
touched only the tree tops, the scarred crags and paused
tremulously.
The horses were tired. They moved slowly and patient-
ly, but once on the thick green floor of the valley they broke
into a shuffling trot. A deep sapphire lake appeared mir-
aculously with the mountains rearing up to enormous peaks
around it like tall guards standing over a priceless treasure4.
A lew shacks huddled in their heavy shadows. Coolness
bathed her face and throat. Her horse' nickered and shook
into a canter.
The night came down with an infinite' gracious silence;
fitting into every crevice and hollow. There was a hush as if
the lake- and mountains were' waiting. The1 stars were' bright
points of expectancy. Then slowly the' moon rose', flushed
and full, and e-ame- to the darkness. 'The' water washed softly
alone the rocky beach, a fish broke* the' surface and the' nifihl
flatly. Prom a moon-lit meadow fell a slow t*l ink-clink as
the bell man- moved in her grazing.
The Smith College Monthly 19
She went to sleep with a new knowledge of peace.
All night the moon wheeled over her, holding her in his
magnetic silver gaze. And though her body slept, she
watched the moon lay his pale hand benificently on one peak
after another, and withdrawing it tenderly, leave them to the
still blue dawn that followed, lifting up his dark train. She
saw the dew pour upward into the grass and hang quivering
to the imperceptible rhythm of the earth. She knew how
the mountains drew the night about them, loving it, and then
tossed back the black robes splendidly to meet the day that
sidled over the plains to fawn upon their somber majesty.
And how the sun rushed upon them with long golden strides.
The days passed, and the weeks. She had found again
the happiness of a child, the wise joy that is one's birth right.
It did not seem that this could end, any more than it was
possible that season should not follow season, merging and
changing but continuing endlessly, faultlessly. She lived,
breathing deeply. All that bound her in the fetters that
men inflicted upon themselves, she recognized dimly and ac-
cepted as inevitable; but for herself, she was free. She had
lost all conception of time and circumstance. She was com-
pletely in harmony with nature, keen to its beauty and to its
sanctity, unconsciously filled with its eternity.
V >
But the end came, like a blow in the face. And when
she climbed into the hot train again, she felt that she was
dying. She took one long look at the mountains. They
stood as she had seen them that first night, with their arms
open wide. The cool wind was seaching for her throat, the
moonlight was waiting for her shadow, and the trails resting
for the slow hoofs of her horse. And she would not be with
them to know their great enchantment. She looked deeply
that she might keep the memory forever.
The train swayed downward to the plains and the night
hid the mountains from her straining eyes. She was gone
before she knew her sorrow for a reality. She has left the
silent altars where she had worshipped in tranquillity. They
were for other eyes now, and other hearts. They were for
the day and night to know and love. She would be forgotten
as a passing wind is forgotten when it has ceased to stir the
sharp points of the pines. She was gone, body and mind,
20 The Smith College Monthly
all of her thai had a name, back to the intricacies of a man-
made world. Hut something remained, something that had
hern set free into the golden depths of a mountain noon. This
strange, inexplicable part of her clung to the heavy grass of
valleys, to the spray from an impetuous stream, and was still
alive in the dripping sunlight of the day and in the- pause, the
kneeling pause of the night. It left a nameless pain where
it had been, close to her heart. She guessed, prophetically,
that the pain would always he there, that she had reached a
perfect happiness which she would not find elsewhere. That
wherever she went, whatever she did. these memories would
follow her to torment her with their (lawlessness. She would
go hack to the river, to the quiet Minnesota hills and they
would not satisfy her. She would ride empty country roads
and I'eel only the contrast. She had paid an enormous price
for her joy and her religion. It had been a fatal journey
from which she returnd forever changed. Hut she had been
elose to the fundaments and the truth of life. She had
achieved a complete harmony of existence. The experience
and the memories were worth the sacrifice.
She knew' all this. And it was so.
[NHERITANCE
Sam, ik S. Simons
I have a chain from you.
Of red-gold, four times linked
II lies in long lluenl eoils in my hand.
Light, almost withoul substance;
Hut when its meshes. Palling, interwine,
I start at the muted sound within them,
A sound as of Hat brasses struck in a Burmese temple
Years ago w hen il was found.
I have a chain from you whom I can never see.
Hut whom I know.
The Smith College Monthly 21
THIRTEEN
Ernestine Gilbreth
F^ANE slipped on her pajamas and yawned loudly. She
l^^l was half-aware of Josephine already in bed and look-
feff&q ing expectantly toward the light. Josephine evidently
would be in no mood for conversation.
The house was entirely silent. Margaret the younger
sister, had gone to her room and was doubtless undressed.
Her light no longer sent a long yellow stream down the hall
rug. There was no sound, not even the faint snoring that
usually followed one of her "staying-up-nights".
"Margaret must be asleep." Josephine spoke gently.
"Perhaps, but I doubt it. Anyhow she looked very
well tonight, didn't she! That blue dress is quite good; it
hides most of the scrawniness. Thirteen' s such a grotesque
age!" Jane hunched her knees up to her chin and stared
thoughtfully at her mules. "Give her a couple of years, and
a lot of those embryonic hang-overs should disappear com-
pletely."
"Awfully strange kid," Josephine's voice betrayed a
certain pride. "She acts years older than we do and seems
to have such a good time doing it."
"She thinks she's wiser, at any rate. It's going to drive
me crazy one of these days. One teaspoon of contempt added
to a cup of severity and you produce the adolescent atrocity,
vour gro wing-girl-sage. Some day I'm just going to kill
her!"
Josephine was trying unsuccessfully to keep her eyes
open. "Listen, I'm awfully tired tonight. But I tell you
this, she's much more interesting than we ever were; she has
a much better time too. There's something rather magnificent
about her intensity, if you don't mind."
They were silent for a minute, both aware of an un-
pleasant discordance, of the barrier that a discussion of
Margaret was sure to produce. If only Josephine
wouldn't always take her side, defend her. Well, one
of these days perhaps she would understand, perhaps
•>•>
The Smith College Monthly
tonight, any time now Jane began to look mysterious, im-
mensely pleased with herself.
From downstairs a clock sounded eleven dull heats. The
vibrations echoed up and down the hall. Silence followed.
.Jane had stiffened and was holding one long finger to her
lips, (flaring with pleasure, she waited expectantly.
Someone had begun to speak, complaining bitterly in
a gruff and unpleasantly nasal voice. The sound came dir-
ectly from Margaret's room, from the vicinity of her bed.
Josephine jumped to attention and began a frantic
search for her negligee. But Margaret's voice followed re-
assuringly. "But my dear, you must realize that I'm doing
the very best I can. Just you go to sleep now George, and
I'll tend to it in the morning."
George seemed to refuse to be silent. In spite of
Margaret's tearful pleadings, her poor "Hushes", he con-
tinned to scold and criticize. Josephine listened, her eyebrows
contracting with horror. Margaret and a man — that child —
Jane had ducked into her pillow and was laughing in
great gulps of joy. "George! Isn't that the sweetest name?
Vou know, really, it's just my favorite. He's Margaret's
brain-child, no less, and exactly three nights old. She gave
birth to him on Saturday, and I've been chaperoning them
ever since."
Josephine was beginning to understand. "The little
devil. My God, how does she ever manage that perfectly
fearful voice? It sounds like a radiator dragged around the
room, clankety, clank clank. Of course I'll try to be hospit-
able to him, but whv couldn't the kid have. thought of some-
one more attractive?"
"A brother-in-law and a half, if yon ask me. I always
did hate the name "George". Say, he certainly personifies
the overworked bureau of complaints. 1 haven't heard him
approve of one single thing in this house. Vou should have
heard him crabbing aboul the dessert for yesterday's lunch,
and even that new blue evening dress of mine. As for his
remarks on Mother and Dad I was positively shocked.
really I was. Ifs not Margaret's fault, you understand; she
wears herself out defending everything and everybody. I
think she's a bit ashamed of him already. The man's simply
outspoken and decidedly bad-tempered. As for his voice—
They listened a minute, grinning with amusement.
The Smith College Monthly 23
"Catch that one, Jane/' Josephine was softly clapping her
hands. "He believes that Margaret should pack up and leave
home this very night. Nobody around here appreciates
her—"
"He does, does he?" But Margaret's whimpering, her
desperate pleading seemed to submerge everything else.
"But my dear, you don't seem to understand. They don't
mean a bit of it, really they don't. If you knew them as I — "
"The poor boob. I'll bet he wears checked suits and a
derby." Josephine jerked her head with satisfaction.
"It doesn't matter what he wears, "Jane's temper flared
through her cheeks. "The point is, I'm damn sick of this sort
of thing. It's not the first time, you know. I'm just ready
to wring George's neck, and Margaret's too, for that matter!
Lord, what we've been through lately! You remember the
religious craze certainly, and the cross she used to hoist up
on a pole every single morning. It was funny for a while."
"But the best was Abbie. Don't you remember — our
little colored sister? Margaret was perfectly right too. She
couldn't have her in the house, with Mother and Dad feeling
as strongly as they did —
Of course not. Margaret explained that very carefully.
But she did collect all the old dresses and make picnic lunches.
Why, she just wore herself out. It was a "very-real-de-
votion," shall we say?"
"You got rid of Abbie somehow, didn't you, Jane? I've
forgotten, but it was very clever. I've never heard her men-
tioned since."
"No, she died, I believe, after one of the picnic lunches.
But the lonely place has now been filled to overflowing — "
"By one royal gripe named — George."
"Named George!" Jane made a violent face. "And I'm
tired of him too, dead tired. You haven't been kept awake
for three nights running; this is no time for being humane.
Come on, action is what I crave. I won't have that man
around here. I tell you, he simply infuriates me."
Josephine was calm. "But certainly your sense of
humor — No? Well then, I think you're acting like a fool.
After all, you know, we're at a disadvantage, overhearing—
'loves sweet complaints' and ail-that rot."
"Overhearing, nothing!" Jane was almost writhing.
"You know verv well the kid's trying to be subtle. Whv, she
24 ... The Smith College Monthly
wanted us to listen. Wasn't that cute? No it was not! Too
darned obvious. 1 won't stand it either."
Josephine had become bored. "Well, just remember
she's only thirteen and probably having a hell of a good time.
She'll get tired of the whole thing pretty soon and chuck
George out. Turn off that light now and stop being tem-
peramental." She squinted her eyes shut with an air of fin-
ality.
Jane stared at her a minute with blazing eyes. "All
right." She began to mimic furiously. "Just you go to sleep
now, George, and I'll tend to it in the morning. You bet
I'll tend to it—"
She sat upright for a minute, smiling with satisfaction.
But Margaret's voice sounded sweetly from the direc-
tion of the hall. "Yes, I always believe in talking things
over.. Now my dear, don't you worry a minute more —
tomorrow's always a new day."
The Smith College Monthly 25
ONE AFTERNOON
Emieie Heilprin
IICKETT and Pock and Bramble were having a holi-
day, so they planned a picnic.
^M^ As they walked along through the city, on the way
to a certain meadow outside the town, they saw a large croud
in the street. They went up to see what it was.
It was a most unusual and unheard of thing for a mod-
ern day and age. A wandering harpist stood in the center
of a gaping group. He was an aged, small man, like an elf
two or three sizes too large. And because his eyes were black
and mocking, all the young folks liked him. Because his
smile was slow and crinkly, all the children liked him. The
older people liked him also, because he knew the by-gone
songs of their youth, such as "Kelly's Blue Necktie," "Pretty
Little Thing", and so on.
Bramble liked the Harpist for the way his hands
twinkled in and out among the harp strings. But she would
have preferred him to play something other than the favorite
songs of past youth. She said as much.
"Oh", said the Harpist, "So you don't like these songs?"
"No sir," answered Bramble.
The old player began to strum out some very modern
jazz, to the delight of the young people. Bramble, however,
looked annoyed, and Pickett and Pock looked cross.
"How did you like that?" the Harpist asked them when
he had finished.
"Not at all." they answered.
"Ah," remarked the Harpist, and his eyes sparkled
blacker than ever, "You are difficult to suit, But is there
no quiet spot where I can play for you?"
"Yes," spoke Pock quickly, "Bramble is taking us now."
"Then let's be off." said the Harpist. But first he
bowed solemnly to the crowd, pocketed the nickels they had
collected and strapped his harp over his back. After this,
the four of them inarched away.
26 The Smith College Monthly
"Pock and I didn't mean to be rude." apologized Bram-
ble as they walked along." It was just that — "
"No offense," broke in the Harpist gaily. "In fact, quite
the opposite."
"Why then, do you mean you don't like those songs
yourself?" queried Bramble.
"My business" replied the Harpist," is to give pleasure.
Haveing pleased every one else today, I shall now try to
please you."
"What you play for us must be awfully different." said
Pickett, not meaning to be conceited.
The Harpist smiled. "This must be the quiet spot," he
said. "It looks just right."
They were in a wheat field which resembled a golden,
tossing ocean. It was the sun and the wind which had worked
the magic of this; the sun burnishing the grain brilliantly,
and the wind billowing through it, till it had turned to gleam-
ing waves. Farther back, out of this riotous sea, rose a hill,
like a gaunt, black ship. The sky hung very close above, so
that you could have poked a hole through it with your fist.
To do this, you would have had to stand on the tip of the hill.
The three children curled up in the most golden part.
The Harpist sat bolt upright beside his instrument. He be-
gan to play, making slight motion with his arms, and only
his fingers twinkling among the harp strings, as sunlight
twinkles through the bars of a gate.
-'i'- ^ic 2l'. ik. ^k.
I low long he played, Bramble could never tell. If it
seemed a hundred years, that is not to be wondered at, for
a summer's afternoon can be filled with a century of mellow-
ncss. And the solemn minutes flow by too burdened with
joy to count for less than hours. So the Harpist played for
years, if you please, or for one afternoon. Pickett and Pock
mikI Bramble lay motionless, listening thirstily. And as they
listened, they watched the grace of wind-blown grasses, and
the faint, taut veil of the sky and the constant, weaving fin-
gers of the old man. And they forgot many things they had
once known, but they also remembered others.
Bramble fell into a soft, deep peace.
Pock murmured, "Bramble has gone to sleep." And
Picket I answered, "She might be the Sleeping Princess. Do
you think shell lie here till a hedge grows around her?"
The Smith College Monthly 27
"Hush," whispered the Harpist as he went on playing.
But Bramble did not hear them.
vJC $L £|& ili ^L
For she was lying on her back, torpid with lovely sensa-
tion, as cats grow torpid with sunlight. She was trapped in
a hopeless, mad tangle of thought, sound, sight and scent;
the tangle that has baffled men since the beginning of con-
sciousness. It is in striving to untangle this snarled network,
that all the poetry of the world has been achieved. A poem
is only one deftly-found loose end. Bramble, lying still, had
not the strength nor skill to untangle, but only to wrap her-
self thickly in the fine meshes of its splendour.
It seemed to her that the sky and the grass and the trees
and the rocks were made up of music; that each could be
dissolved into a special song which was the fabric of its being ;
that the universe was expainable at last, as a total symphony
in which all things played their individual parts, solid bodies
like rocks, with the condensed weight of ponderous themes,
and intangible bodies like air, with the heavenly lightness of
ethereal themes. It needed but a note, the right note, to
melt the world into symphony and rhythm.
Rythm was the motive power of all things. It was the
reason people continued to progress and struggle, when all
odds were against them. It was the reason men kept march-
ing when their tired feet became gashed with blood. It was
reason enough for life.
Bramble became lapped in serenity, like a soft, warm
blanket. The wind, with long, gentle fingers, ruffled her
hair. The sun beat through her body as though she were
made of cloud.
All the afternoon the Harpist played, his melodies
changing and blending as exquisitely as colors are blended
in the plumage of birds. At one time, Pickett got up and
began to dance, imitating the swaying of the wheat, for the
Harpist had matched his playing exactly to the wind's tune.
And Pock, at one time, began to shout, for the Harpist had
imitated the quick tatoo of drums. And Bramble, once, be-
gan to sing, for she couldn't keep her joy to herself, there
was such an excess of it. The Harpist smiled a crinkly, slow
smile when he saw them.
Then suddenly he stopped and said, "Are you pleased?"
The children blinked at him, but had no words to tell of their
28 The Smith College Monthly
pleasure', lie understood and said.
"I'll race you to the top of that hill. One — two —
three -"
Off they went. There was never in a hundred years such
a fast, light race. The four seemed to bound with swift leaps
all the way up the gaunt black hill. When they reached the
top. they found a sunset.
The Harpist said,
Now I'll play you one more song:" and he played
them the theme of Running, which is one of the greatest
themes known to man. On the last note lie smiled another
slow smile and said,
"It is getting late."
So the three children started down one side of the hill,
for town, turning back often to wave to the Harpist. He
too. when they had disappeared into the distance, started
down the hill. Hut his path lay in the opposite direction.
The Smith College Monthly 29
CHOPPING WOOD
Elizabeth Shaw
IwlHE leaden sky pressed heavily down, seeming to rest on
V-/ the tops of the dun coloured hills. The air .was raw
£§£§| and moist, cold, but oppressive to breathe, and abso-
lutely still. In the yard the old man was chopping wood
Under his axe the block was scarred and cracked by the blows
of three generations, but it still stood steady, resisting his
powerful attacks. Confused by the echoes that came back
from the hills, the sounds of his chopping were continuous,
repeating themselves indistinctly over and over. Grasping
the heavy axe handle his hands were red, ridged with veins,
and distorted with lumpy muscles and joints. As Rosie
watched him from the window she fluted the edge of the torn
curtain between her fingers, wondering at the still powerful
shoulders that pulled the old drab sweater at every blow. His
cheeks were red with a network of tiny veins and from under
the boy's cap he wore pulled down over his ears hung a thick
fringe of yellowish white hair. He had a heavy white curly
beard. Rosie pulled at the edge of the curtain. Gramp had
certainly chopped a lot of wood that afternoon. He liked to
work, of course, but it hardly seemed right that he, an old
man who should be sitting in front of the fire, should do as
much as all that.
From the kitchen came the sound of someone walking
gently around. That was Gammy. Rosie had hoped that
she would sleep until supper time but Gammy always slept
lightly, and Rosie didn't wonder at all that chopping wak-
ing her up. 'T would wake the dead, the noise it made. Pre-
sently the kitchen door opened and Gammy poked her head
out.
"Rosie" she piped, "be you there?"
"Yes, Gammy, I'm here."
"Where's Gramp?" Gammy came farther into the room
as she spoke. She was very short and almost bald, her brown
head showing through the carefully combed strands of gray
hair. Her face was like an old nut, wizened and covered with
30 The Smith College Monthly
a myriad of wrinkles, and her head nodded a little as she
talked.
"Can't you hear him, Gammy?" Hose answered rather
impatiently. "You ain't deef. He's out ehoppin' again.
He'll kill himself with all them logs." (Tammy stepped to
the window and rapped on it with her knuckles. Gramp
drove his axe through the pieee he was splitting and looked
up. lie grinned at her, displaying discoloured toothless
gums and waved his hand still bent to the shape of the axe
handle, and then turned to pick up another log.
"Time to come in, Gramp," Gammy called shrilly.
"He can't hear you way out there. Do you want me to
go out an' fetch him in? He probly won't come for me but
I'll try. He'll be all wore out if he keeps on ehoppin' like
that.""
"So do," Gammy agreed, her head bobbing more vigor-
ously, " So do." Rosie went into the kitchen, pushed the
kettle forward on the stove, and went out the back door. In
the dull air she paused shivering, folding her arms tightly be-
fore her and huddling into herself. She was a tall bony
woman of about fifty, her iron gray hair pulled back into a
tight knob at the back of her head. In the yard were two
piles of wood, one split and one unsplit; there was a saw
horse, and under it a pile of raw yellow sawdust. Beside it
stood the chopping block and the old man wedging his axe
into a half-split log.
"Gramp" called Rosie," It's gettin' too dark to see.
you'd better come in."
"Pretty soon, Rosie," he answered, "Ain't I done a lot
of work?"
"You done enough now, you'd better come in."
"Pretty soon, Rosie, pretty soon." Then suddenly quer-
ulous, "1 ain't hurtin' any one out here. Why don't you leave
me be? I'll be in pretty soon, pretty soon."
"Oh, all right, Gramp. Don't get mad at me. Gammy
scut me out to tell you." Hut Gramp was not listening any
more and her voice was drowned in the thud of wood and its
sharp splitting sounds. She was really cold now and walked
quickly back over the frozen ground to the kitchen door. In-
side Gammy had scaled herself in an old rocking chair, her
eyes had closed and she had fallen again into one of her light
dozes. Hut at Rosie's step she opened her eyes.
The Smith College Monthly 31
"Ain't he comin' in?" she demanded. "They ain't no
need for him to ehop that a way."
"He knows it, Gammy, but he's just got his mind set
on it and they ain't nothin' you can do. He's terrible set on
things it seems now-a-days." But this critiscm was too much
for Gammy.
"Ain't you shamed to talk of your Pa that way, Rosie?
He ain't neither too set on things. He'll be ninety this year
and they ain't any one round as old as thet who kin chop
wood like him. He's as spry as the day you wras born." But
Rosie was not listening. Imperceptibly the darkness had
been increasing until now the corners were blocked with
black shadows. Rosie was taking the smoke chimney off the
lamp on the table, she shook it to see if there was any oil
in it, turned up the charred wick and lit it. With a yellow
gleam it flared up, making long points of shadow on the
floor. Outside the chopping had ceased and dull sounds of
wood against wood told the two women that Gramp was
stacking the wood. Rosie opened the stove and put in two
sticks from the wood box beside it. They crackled softly as
Gammy creaked back and forth in the old rocker. Slamming
down the stove cover with the falsely efficient air she ahvays
assumed when taking care of the slatternly kitchen, Rosie
remarked to Gammy:
"Guess I'll go out and see if they's any eggs for supper."
Gammy did not answer and Rosie left the room, going out
through damp, cold, back passages to the shed where in the
dry darkness the drowsy roosting fowls emitted sleepy clucks
and gurgling noises. Reaching her hand skillfully under
the feathers of the setting hens she felt the warm ovals of
the eggs and pulled them out in spite of the sleepy remon-
strances. Four eggs — that wasn't a great many, but you
couldn't expect the fowls to lay much this time of year. Hold-
ing them carefully she went back to the kitchen, wondering
if Gramp had given up his foolishness and come in.
As soon as Rosie had left the kitchen Gammy had slid
out of her chair and walked stiffly across to the door. She
opened it and looked out into the darkness, but her eyes
blinded by the lamp-ligiit, could see nothing, "Pa", she called
in a wavering voice, abandoning the "Gramp" that with the
advent of the first grandchildren had become his name, "Pa,
where be you? Come in, its gettin' dark." From beside the
32 The Smith College Monthly
wood-piles came the cheerful answer. "Don' you worrit, Ma,
I'll be righi in. I .just aim to lay these last logs. I've split
nigh a cord of wood altogether. You go in, you'll ketch cold/
Gammy went slowly hack and shut the door just as Kosic
came hack into the kitchen.
"You ben callin' him agin, Gammy? Wun't he come in
yit? What ails him any how? lie never used ter act like
this: old men don't chop wood an' work all day long. They
should set by the lire and pest, they never can tell when they'll
need their strength." Rosie spoke mournfully, "lie may drop
dead any day." Gammy began to whimper. "I don't know
what ails him. lie's that set! Oh. Lordy!" Just then Gramp
came in. lie set his axe in the corner of the room and going
to the sink pumped some cold water on his hands, rubbing
them with yellow soap, saying nothing to the two women.
Rosie had been setting three plates and some bread and but-
ter on the table, now she took the eggs off the stove where
they had been boiling and broke them into three white cups
which she put on the table. In silence the three sat down to
eat. Gramp cut off great wedges of bread which he piled
with hut ter and gummed efficiently, while Gammy's c<x<j; ran
in little- yellow streaks over her chin. Presently the old man
looked up. "Ain't they no baked beans in the house. Rosie?"
he demanded "Seems to me that this is pretty slim pickings
for a man who's been choppin' all day."
"No, they ain't, an' it' they were you shouldn't have any.
You oughtn't to eat baked beans. They ain't good for a man
of your age. An' I shouldn't he proud of that choppin'
neither. It ain't right for you to work like that. What would
anybody think if they saw you?" The old man said nothing.
Kosic got up and carried the dishes over to the sink, coining
hack lor the lamp, which she placed on a shelf over her head
l<a\ing the two old people in comparative darkness. She
began to wash the dishes in the cold water, then she took a
cup and made a lit tie tea in it which she gave to Gammy, who
drank it noisily. Presently Gramp rose and tramped up
stairs. They heard him take oil' his hoots and put them
heavily on the floor, and then the springs of his bed groaned
and squeaked under his weight.
As soon ;is he had gone up. Gammy turned to Rosie.
"Why don't you hide his axe. Rosie, then he can't chop
tomorrer?"
The Smith College Monthly 33
"He'll be awful mad", but Rosie had crossed over and
held the heavy axe meditatively in her hand.
"Oh, Lordy, Lordy, I know it," the old woman moaned
to herself, "but Rosie, he'll kill himself choppin'; old men
can't chop like that. Hide it down cellar, praps if he don't
see it in the mornin' he'll forget about it." Rosie picked it
up and went down cellar. When she came up again Gammy
was asleep. She woke her and they both went up to bed.
The next morning Rosie was waked early, Gramp was
calling her.
"Rosie! Rosie! Where's my axe? What you done with
my axe? Rosie, wake up an' come down here, someone's
stole my axe! Where is it. Rosie?"
"Lordy, Gramp, I dunno. What do you want to chop
for this early in the morning anyhow? Don't yell so, you'll
wake Gammy." But Rosie rolled out of bed and putting on
an old coat, went down stairs. The old man's face was suf-
fused with blood and he was breathing hard.
"You done something with my axe, Rosie. Tell me
where it is, I gotter have my axe. Where is it?"
"I tol' you I dunno. You don't want to chop now any-
how. Sit down an' I'll make you some coffee".
"I want my axe, I want my axe. What you done with
it Rosie? You think I'm too old to chop, you hide my axe,
you lie to me. Where is it? I'm a-going to chop wood till I
die, I ain't old, I'm strong enough to chop. What you done
with my axe? Give it to me, gimme my axe." He staggered
forwards towards Rosie, his face purple and his blue eyes
popping and blood-shot. "Gimme my axe, gimme my axe,
gimme — " He lurched forward grasping at Rosie, and fell
face downward on the floor, where he lay breathing stertor-
ously. Rosie looked at him dully, then opened the door and
ran out through the yard onto the road, muttering to himself.
"I must get doc quick. I alius knew he'd kill hisself, doing so
much chopin'. He should have sat by the fire and saved his
strength. I said to Gammy last night, he should, I said he
might fall dead, and now he has. I told him he didn't ought
to chop so much." Her bedroom slippers flopped as she ran
along the frozen road, breathing fast. Upstairs Gammy
woke, listened for the chopping, and hearing none, sighed
with relief and fell asleep again.
34 The Smith College Monthly
r
BOOK REVIEWS
THE HAMLET OF A. MacLEISII
Houghton Mifflin Co. 1928
We were informed a few weeks ago in one of those com-
petitive literary conversations in which each individual tries
to outdo the other in announcements and criticisms, that
Archibald MacLeish had written a II (unlet. We were some-
what horrified by this apparent sacrilege at the altar of the
great literary deity, and since the conversation swept on
relentlessly and would not permit our frantic questions, we
ran down to the Bookshop, at the earliest opportunity, to see
for ourselves if Mr. MacLeish were actually guilty of such a
presumption. The title of his new hook quieted our per-
turbed spirits. It was not Hamlet by Archibald MacLeish.
It was The Hamlet of A. MaeLeish. We realized a distinc-
tion, and with relief carried the hook home to read at leisure.
Mr. MacLeish's daring is only to he gussed at from the
title of liis hook. For centuries critics have puzzled over the
mystery of Hamlet, have sensed his dark and troubled heart,
and have written down their faltering interpretations. For
centuries those who read Hamlet or saw it enacted before
them, have felt the timelessness of the Shakespearean pro-
tagonist, and, projecting themselves into his being, have
found their sense of the incomprehensibility of life voiced
through his eloquent lips. Many felt a kinship with the
ghost-ridden Hamlet of the sixteenth century, hut no other
has dared to name his hitter experience his own Hamlet.
Archibald MacLeish recognized in himself, as in the
Danish prince, the consciousness of the sinister and the in-
tangible evil in the world, of the "dreams" that haunt the
sensitive soul of a man who, hy reflection, seeks an adequate
answer to his insistent questions. He parallels his own exis-
The Smith College Monthly 35
tence with the tragedy of a man of an older time, knowing
that his fears and misgivings, his attempts to rationalize and
understand have lain a long time in the hearts of men. The
outward manifestations of these intimations of evil that man
is heir to may ehange, but fundamentally they are the same.
"No man living but has seen the king his father's ghost,
None alive that have had words with it. Nevertheless the
knowledge of ill is among us and the obligation to revenge,
and the natural world is eonvieted of that enormity
In the old time men spoke and were answered and the
thing was done clean in the daylight. Now it is not so."
The ghost comes directly to the Shakespearean Hamlet
and lays before him in plain words the crime that has been
done. The evil is translated into concrete terms. But for
the Hamlet of A. MacLeish the revelation comes haltingly —
"There have been men a long, long time that knew this.
The words come to us
Far, faint in our ears, confused. They have told us of
Signs seen by night and the vanishing signals. They
have told of the ominous
Stir over the leaves and the showing among them of
Mysteries hiding a dark thing. . . ."
And for him there is no answer.
By this parallel Mr. MacLeish has made a striking con-
trast of the eternal problem of a thoughtful man in two
widely separated ages; one embodied in actuality, the other
forever evasive, and complicated by the over-rationalization
of the minds in which it is conceived. That is, the Hamlet of
this day may no longer believe in ghosts. He can explain
them away just as he can explain the immediate causes of evil,
of passion, and of dreams, with his vast scientific knowledge.
But he is still haunted by ghosts. There is still for him the
blind struggle of the Shakespearean hero translated into the
abstract, the conflicts of emotion, the sense of the bleak over-
whelming secret of the universe.
We may detect in Archibald MacLeish's presentation
of his conception certain familiar modernistic tendencies.
These we would criticize mainly on the ground that they are
too conventional of this" period for a piece of work which,
although itself characteristic of this century, has also an
element of timelessness, The greatest art is that which es-
capes from the pattern of its age toward universality. But
36 The Smith College Monthly
over and above these occasional influenced passages stands
the impassioned sincerity of the whole poem, which is enough
in itself. There is no pose or affectation of feeling, bui rather
a terrible frankness which scorns half measures and implica-
tions, coupled with penetrating thought which is half divina-
tion. We find, as in Street* of the Moon, great beauty of
description and a delicate detail of phrasing, here electrified
by the tremendous force of the emotion behind it. Mr.
MaeLeislfs imaginative conceptions are expressed with re-
markable eonereteness and symbolism —
"Ha, hut the sun among us. . . .wearers of
Black cloths, hearers of secrets!
The jay jeer of the sun in the ear of our
Pain. . . .and the nudge of the blunt pink
Thumb troubling the pride of despair in us. . .
Ha, but the sun in our air."
It is this ability of his to put the nameless suggestions of his
own mind into forms in which we may recognize their dim
significance, which has made possible the success of his
attempt of his Hamlet. This is his ghost —
"Much of the time I do not think anything:
Much of the time 1 do not even notice
And then, speaking, closing a door, I see
Strangely as though I almost saw now. some
Shape- of thing 1 have always seen, the sun
White on a house and the windows open and swallows
In and out of the wallpaper, the noon's face
Fainl by day in a mirror; I see some
Changed thing that is telling, something that almost
'Fells and Ibis pain then, then this pain. And no
Words, only these shapes of things that seem
Ways of knowing what it is I am knowing."
His diction is curiously compact without giving any sense
of being over-crowded. The history of man. "the Cloth-Clad
Race, the People of Horses." lies in a few brief lines
"Westward they move with the sun. Their smoke hangs
Under the unknown skies at evening. The stars
(io down before them into the new lands.
Behind them the dust falls, the streams Mow clear again.
Vultures rise from the stripped bones in the sand.
They dwell at the last shores. Years pass. They vanish.
The Smith College Monthly 37
They disappear from the light leaving behind them
Names in the earth, names of trees and of boulders,
Words for the planting of eorn, leaving their tombs to
Fall in the thickets of alders, leaving their fear
Of the howling of dogs and the new moon at the shoulder,
Leaving the shape of the bird god who delivered
Men from the ancient ill, and under the loam their
Bronze blades, the broken shafts of their javelins.
They vanish. They disappear from the earth.
And the sea falls
Loud on the empty beaches
and above
The king rises. Lights, lights, lights!"
It is difficult to put one's finger on that actual quality
of Mr. MacLeish's poetry which embodies so completely his
ideas. It is not merely the careful facility of his lines. It
is a quality to be felt rather than to be put into words, lying
in the force of the generative emotion and its lasting intensity.
We feel this best when Mr. MacLeish keeps closely to his
original theme. The violence of the scene in the Queen's
Closet, which we understand ( Ave would not have realized it.
had we not been told) is directed against the "swell guy" of
the literary world, is discordant because it is too reminiscent
of the kind of violence one finds in Webster or Tourneur in
the sixteenth century. While opposed to it, the scene at
Ophelia's burial is done with a great sincerity which is in-
finitely more moving than the excessive brutality of the
former passage. We feel that when Archibald MacLeish is
least influenced and most himself, he writes poetry of extra-
ordinary beauty of conception and expression.
An analysis of the tragic effect of Mr. MacLeish's
Hamlet and of Shakespeare's Hamlet is justifiable since they
are dominated by a common theme, and illuminating since it
reveals that the former cannot truly be called tragic. Shakes-
peare ends his play on a note of serenity, of a sudden calm.
Hamlet, at last, achieves his revenge and, though he dies in
so doing, he is triumphant in his conquest of evil. Peace,
justice and human equanimity are restored. True to the
Aristotelian demand, pity and fear resolve into a peace of
mind which recognizes in the magnificence of his own soul the
ultimate answer to man's questionings. The Hamlet of A.
MacLeish, on the other hand, ends little farther than where
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The Smith College Monthly 39
it began, with an acceptance of life that is a confession of
man's impotence. And with the reiteration of his presenti-
ment—
"Thou wouldst not think
How ill all's here about my heart."
We close the book with that same illness in our hearts, and
realize that we have been convinced by Mr. MacLeish's pas-
sionate words. The impression remains. Our consciousness
of the guilt of the world has been aroused, but there is no res-
toration of peace and order to complete the katharsis of our
emotions.
Mr. Krutch in his essay The Tragic Fallacy in the
November Atlantic Monthly informs us that tragedy is no
longer possible for us of the twentieth century, that we can
no longer conceive it and will soon lose even our ability to
appreciate it. He says that, in comparing a modern so-
called tragedy such as Ghosts and a play of Sophocles or
Shakespeare, the question "is not primarily one of art, but
of the worlds which two minds inhabited. No increased pow-
ers of expression, no greater gift for words, could have trans-
formed Isben into Shakespeare. The materials out of which
the latter created his work — his conception of human dignity,
his sense of the importance of human passions, his vision of
the amplitude of human life — simple did not and could not
exist for Ibsen, as they did not and could not exist for his
contemporaries. God and Man and Nature had all some-
how dwindled in the course of the intervening centuries, not
because the realistic creed of modern art led us to seek out
mean people, but because this meannesss of human life was
somehow thrust upon us by the operation of that same pro-
cess which led to the development of realistic theories of art
by which our vision could be justified."
Our world, having no faith in man, rationalizing him
out of his once magnificent possibilities, can no longer con-
ceive a true tragedy which is "essentially an expression, not
of despair, but of the triumph over despair and of confidence
in the value of human life." Our too sophisticated society
"has outgrown not merely the simple optimism of the child,
but also that vigorous, one might almost say adolescent, faith
in the nobility of man which marks a Sophocles or a Shakes-
peare,— has neither fairy tales to assure it that all is always
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The Smith College Monthly 41
right in the end nor tragedies to make it believe that it rises
superior in soul to the outward calamities which befall it.
"Distrusting its thought, despising its passions, realiz-
ing its impotent unimportance in the universe, it can tell it-
self no stories except those which make it still more acutely
aware of its trivial miseries."
Mr. Krutch's essay seems particularly a propos of
Archibald MacLeish's new book. The title, The Hamlet of
A. Macleish, lead us to infer that it is tragedy and to be con-
sidered as such. Therefore, while the parallel of thought
throughout is of great significance, the change in the end of
Mr. MacLeish's poem, the failure to fulfill the requirements
of true tragedy by some katharsis of emotions, — may have
even greater significance. It may be, as Mr. Krutch says,
that "the tragic solution of the problem of existence, the
reconciliation to life by means of the tragic spirit, is now
only a fiction surviving the art." Or it may be as Hamlet, the
Hamlet of Shakespeare says, that "nothing is either good or
bad, but thinking makes it so." And that Archibald
MacLeish thinks too much.
E. B.
LILY CHRISTINE
Michael Arlen Doubleday Doran 1928
"From out of a deepened experience of grave illness and
line recovery Michael Arlen has created this new vision of a
woman — a brilliant, loyal, passionate creation — the modern
ideal mate for a man."
So runs the perhaps embarrassingly confidential blurb
on the paper cover of "Lily Christine". We are sorry if
Michael Arlen has been ill, and we congratulate him on his
recovery; and perhaps, during this deepening of his exper-
ience a new vision of a woman did come to him. We are
obliged to the publishers for supplying this rather personal
information, for certainly it is wholly personal. If Mr. Arlen
was the recipient of such an amazing gift from those notor-
iously miserly donors, the Muses, as actually a new vision,
(and of a woman, at that!) he has kept it discreetly to him-
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The Smith College Monthly 43
self, except for his confidences to his publishers, quite rightly
judging such a gift too precious for the eye of the public.
At all events, to our, perhaps undiscerning eye, "Lily Chris-
tine" contains no visions, not even a distant whiff (if one can
whiff a vision!) .
Lily Christine is the saccharine, Arlenesque centre of a
group of astonishingly stupid, Arlenesque friends. And the
point of the whole business revolves about Summerest, Lily
Christine's husband, whose joints fairly creak as he lumbers
on and off the stage. Lily Christine makes the mistake of
loving him too much for the sole reason that he appears
"somehow helpless" to her. Xow that may be a good reason
for loving a man to the point of tumbling under automobile
wheels when he decides to divorce one — we scarcely feel in a
position to judge. We do, of course, feel sorry for Lily
Christine, however insipid she may be, for having such hard
luck in a husband, although she does seem to really love him,
calling him tenderly "her old cart horse"; and for having
such a circle of utterly unintelligent well-meaning friends.
We are told that she has children, yes, we remember that they
were mentioned several times, two of them in fact, but their
existence seems to impress her as little as it does us — perhaps
that's because she is so near-sighted.
Oh, yes, its amusing if you don't mind a rather unin-
teresting style with plenty of clinches thrown in for good
measure. It's really rather interesting in spots for those who
like Michael Arlen trying to be high-minded and serious.
And we are glad that he is better and that he created his
vision. But why, oh why, did he write "Lily Christine"?
E. S.
THE FATHER
Katherine Holland Brown John Day 1928
The people who awarded the Woman's Home Compan-
ion— John Day Prize of twenty-five thousand dollars to
Katherine Holland Brown for her novel, "The Father," say
that it is a book "notable not only as a good novel, but as an
authentic piece of Americana." And so it is, within limita-
tions. Distinctly "The Father" is neither clever nor pro-
found, nor yet epoch-making, but read it when you are
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The Smith College Monthly 45
fagged, and it does you good. You feel that it was written
with a great deal of love, and for that reason it has warmth,
and a kind of romantic glamour not usual in modern books.
For it is not a stylish sort of book. The heroine — there
is no other label for her — Mercy Rose, is beautiful, sweet
and wise; the hero, a young gallant of great strength and
honour. They are all perfect, even to the utterly depraved
villain. Their saving grace is a rather choice sense of hu-
mour, which surely Mercy Rose needs to get her through the
uncommonly stupendous amount of housework she must
have had with a family of seven besides herself after they
moved out West, to say nothing of knitting stockings for
them all — and she only sixteen at the time. Miss Brown has
somehow accounted to herself for the way in which this labor
got itself done. A detail like that does not really bother the
true romantic.
But "The Father" is also an historical novel, and as
such succeeds as well as most. The time is during that
troubled agitation and uncertainty before the Civil War, and
before the Abolitionist cause had any following to speak of.
The Father, John Stafford, editing a struggling but ardent
anti-slavery paper, first in Massachusetts and afterwards in
Illinois, finds no support and little sympathy for his views,
even in his friendship with Lincoln, who, I think, has suf-
fered as usual from a somewhat sentimental feminine inter-
pretation. Emerson, and Horace Mann and "Nat" Haw-
thorne, come into the story, and naturally, without that effect
of being lugged in on pedestals, which has ruined so many
historical novels. Of course in the novel which has a defi-
nitely historical setting, the author comes up against the
problem of appeasing a public become all at once pedantic,
who complain that this or the other never happened, and is
therefore a sacreligious invention concerning people who
have actual dates ; or that some pet and cherished opinion of
theirs has been rudely assailed. Miss Brown has used a
great deal of ingenuity in avoiding these snags, partly, per-
haps, because she takes her material chiefly from the anec-
dotes of her father, who knew the men and the times.
One is able to put together a vivid if not very coherent
account of the Middle West in those days, although some-
what limited bv the fact that John Stafford seems never to
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The Smith College Monthly 47
have talked to anyone but his family and Mr. Lincoln — his
subscribers communicating their disapproval merely by hold-
ing- out on another bushel of mildewed grain. Except, of
course, when they ruined his press and tried to shoot him.
Miss Brown has undertaken to portray the struggle of
a devoted father between the relative claims of four mother-
less children, and of his belief in himself as an apostle of
truth, against a background of history. At the end she loses
sight somewhat of her problem and becomes increasingly
interested in Mercy Rose, the eldest child and only daughter.
Even the Father himself comes second. The book is to be
read for its sensitive historical feeling, for the humorous
quality which lasts throughout, and for the color infused into
a period which ordinarily does not attract the imagination.
Especially there are Aunty and the parrot Zenobia, little
Thomas, Jacob's coat, "not only a family relic, but a family
tree" — and Mercy Rose's diary, a better one than we ever
hope to keep.
E. R. Haw
"A ROVER I WOULD BE"
E. V. Lucas E. P. Dutton & Co. 1928
The cover is rather entrancing, and so is the frontispiece
of the little "Sleeping Sentinel" from the Xational Museum
in Rome. Besides, who would not be a rover if nothing
pressed him into service in the everyday routine of life? Mr.
Lucas, too, has already written several works of that order
which is known paradoxically as "a guidebook that isn't a
guidebook." So, although I had read none of these former
books, I was nevertheless prepared by his reputation to find
in him a delightful essayist.
Perhaps my hopes were raised too high by the sound of
its name, or it may be that to an ardent traveller the reac-
tions of another to parrots in English inns and waiting in
French post-offices never seem quite adequate. Surely there
are many of us who would disagree with the author's assur-
ance of the soothing effect of being "rocked in the cradle of
the deep" and I doubt if we should like to see giant search-
lights (donated, as the author suggests, by "Some rich
Oil Permanent Wave
Leaves the hair soft and fluffv
and does not make it brittle.
| Do you want a permanent wave that
looks like a marcel?
Or a soft round curl?
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i
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Dry Goods
Rugs
and
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Christmas Gifts i
A good book. A box of Stationery. 1
A Fountain Pen Christmas Cards, j
i
BRIDGMAN & LYMAN j
108 MAIN ST.
j LaMontagne Boot Shop
SHOES
! 21 Pleasant St. Tel. 1723-M
Northampton
Hc4alhmt'ii |
Department
State '
The Smith College Monthly 49
American eager to do something fine and memorable for
Paris") playing at night upon the facade of Sacre Coeur.
However this may be. we cannot make adverse criticism of
a book simply because we disagree with the ideas it happens
to represent; we must first consider how these ideas are ex-
pressed.
Mr. Lucas is evidently a collector of information, odd
bits of intelligence and experiences of travelling, for this is
the material he has most readily at his fingers' tips. His
chapters on the homes of Shelley and Cowper, on the Ched-
dar Gorges, on Sir Walter Raleigh who "enjoyed a pipe
while* the executioner was sharpening his axe" are best be-
cause they are based on fact, which the author can best deal
with. The attempts at humor are usually forced and unsuc-
cessful and one notices often an aptitude for misplaced flip-
pancy. For such essays as the brief one on the passing of
Mali Jongg and the one on Swans and Geese, Mr. Lucas has
chosen subjects that Lamb might have treated with grace
and delicacy, but which he cannot handle brilliantly because
he has not the lightness of touch and the facility of transition
from one subject to another that contribute to the essential
charm of he informal essay.
Besides this general lack, there are two serious defects
in the style of the book. One of these is an unfortunate
choice of words. We object to such combinations as "a tinkle
of bells married to the beating of hoofs," and various inap-
propriate epithets that make their appearance. The faculty
of choosing the vividly accurate word to suit a description is
not a part of Mr. Lucas's talent, and his phrases sound
strained when he tries to attain it. Nor has he perfected the
art of concluding an essay, of which Stevenson has given us
so many happy examples. The Horsensian after-dinner
speakers, he tells us, made their talks extraordinarily brief.
"Directly they came to a real point and had shot their bolt,
they sat down. Some, I will admit sat down with an abrupt-
ness which rather surprised me, and even seemed now and
then to surprise them." This is exactly what the author him-
self does. He no sooner gives us an introduction to a situa-
tion and launches our interest in the direction of the ideas
that we expect to find behind it, than he "sits down" upon
it, and that is the end of the matter. We should like to hear
more about Turner's water-colors and "the game of the
'.• <^_ ^» __ «_• ^_ .^—^ _ «^ o^ .^_ ^_ .•_ ^— «-
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"AT THE GATES OF
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The Dorothy Brooks Shop
18 GREEN ST.
Formerly Fireside Gift Shop i
The Plymouth Inn Beauty
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Pain8taking, Courteous Service
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The Smith College Monthly 51
sparrow," not to mention our desire for a deeper insight into
the psychology of a perambulator and an answer to the ques-
tion "Do the fish that look like men in clubs converse and
behave like men in clubs?" Mr. Lucas evidently prefers to
leave these things to our imagination.
What I did find in the book was a large amount of ma-
terial which, although it might have been better presented
and more gracefully developed, showed enthusiasm and in-
terest, as a traveller, a ready power of observation and a style
which when it allows itself to be natural has a very pleasant
conversational tone. We are introduced to such odd char-
acters as Thomas Tomkins who said in 1777 that "Poetry
was originally intended to express our gratitude to the deity
and teach mankind the most important precepts of religion
and virtue" and we find sentiments that are common to us
all in such passages as the description of the "Compleat
Chauffeur," who "always asketh the way of the wrong peo-
ple first." And for us who are not English there is great
delight in finding the manifestation or rather the humorous
criticism of the typically British attitude, summed up in the
paragraph where Lucas tells of the two great Claudes and
the two great Turners hung side by side in the National
Gallery, put there, he says, "so that the world may have the
opportunity of comparing the masters, French and English,
and deciding that the English is the better!" We wonder
whether it is with conscious or unconscious irony that he says
"If we (the English) were to adopt a flower and endow it
with fortunate characteristics, we could not do better than
choose the violet." In token, I suppose, of English modesty.
The book is chiefly interesting, then, to one who can over-
look its faults of style in order to enjoy the subject matter,
and who can be sufficiently drawn into its atmosphere of
leisurely observation to forget that its language is not that
of Lamb or Stevenson whom it seems to imitate. And for
those of us who confess our inability to pass over these de-
tails, there is still a pleasure in recognizing familiar names
and places, in learning new facts about them, that makes the
book worthwhile and enhances for us the out-of-the-way
corners of England and France.
K. S. B.
Smith College
January
1929
BOARD
OF
EDITORS
Vol. XXXVII JANUARY, 1929 No. 4
EDITORIAL BOARD
Editor-in-chief, Anne Lloyd Basinger, 1929
Managing Editor, Ernestine Gilbreth, 1929
Book Review Editor, Elizabeth Botsford, 1929
Katherine S. Bolivian, 1929 Priscilla S. Fairchild, 1930
Elizabeth Wheeler, 1929 Elizabeth Sha^v, 1930
Rachel Grant, 1929 Martha H. Wood, 1930
Sallie S. Simons, 1930
Art — Nancy Wynne Parker, 1930
BUSINESS STAFF
Business Manager, Sylvia Alberts, 1929
Mary Sayre, 1930 Anna Dabney, 1930 Mary Folsom, 1931
Agnes Lyall, 1930 Esther Tow, 1931 Sarah Pearson, 1931
Advertising Manager, Gertrude Cohen, 1929
Assistant Advertising Manager, Lilian Supove, 1929
Circulation Manager, Ruth Rose, 1929
The Smith College Monthly is published at Northampton, Mass., each month from
October to June, inclusive. Terms $2.00 a year. Single copies 25c.
Subscriptions may be sent to Sylvia Alberts, 12 Fruit Street, Northampton.
Advertising Manager, Gertrude Cohen, Capen House
Contributions may be left in the Monthly box in the Note Room.
Entered at the Post Office at Northampton, Mass., as second class matter.
Metcalf Printing <§• Publishing Company, Northampton, Mass.
"Accepted for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1203,
Act .of October S, 1917. Authorized October 31, 1913.'"
Mil manuscript should be typewritten and in the Monthly Box by the fifteenth
of the month to be considered for the issue of the following month.
All manuscript should be signed tenth the full name of the writer.
EIGHT-O
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the means of your pocketbook. Giving
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CONTENTS
Domestic Relations
Nancy Hamilton, 1930 5
DlAN
Patty Wood, 1930 11
'Tell Me Where All Past Years Are" Priscilla Fairchild, 1930 12
Just Speak Easy
Ruth Rodney King, 1929 17
Shelley at Field Place — 1804
Sallie S. Simons, 1930 21
Tour
Ellen Robinson, 1929 22
Hair Pin Evening
Patty Wood, 1930 27
Five O'Clock
Ernestine Gilbreth, 1929 30
Book Reviews:
"That poster reminds me ... a horseback scene like this would make
a good cigarette advertisement ..."
"Sure, call it 'Thoroughbreds' and it would be perfect for Chesterfield!'*
THEY'RE MILD
and yet THEY SATISFY
#»>2«, LIGGETT & MYERS TOBACCO CO.
Smith College
Monthly
DOMESTIC RELATIONS
Nancy Hamilton
aT is true, books and the play work strong, sub-cons-
cious unrest in the minds of the innocent. Take my
mother, for example. When she was younger, she
admits she read innumerable books of the "Elsie Dinsmore"
variety, and her father took her regularly to the theatre.
This has had its calculated effect.. Mother has grown up
with a multitude of literary and dramatic superstitions, chief
among which is the servant superstition. From all her
abandoned reading and play-going, this has insinuated itself,
like a worm, into her consciousness, and that worm has lived
and flourished. Servants are, for mother, something feudal
and fundamental. If she could have had her way, our serv-
ants would have been born and bred in the ancestral home
and lived and died, dusting down stairs in the service of their
lady bountiful. I am sure mother has always felt secretly
thwarted that when she was married there was no old nurse
in the bridal household to rush to her side, crying, "I will
not leave darling little Miss Margaret! From babyhood
have I cared for her. Her husband cannot part us ! Where
she goes I go!" As I say, mother never had this comfort,
and the lack only served to redouble her ardor. Her one
matrimonial ambition was to have an "old family servant",
and in fulfilling this ambition, she has gathered about her a
collection of Lithuanians, Czechoslovakians, Welsh, En-
glish, Irish and Africans, that would stagger a character
less determined than she. But let me not be misleading.
6 The Smith College Monthly
The flags of all these nations do not wave simultaneously
from the kitchen rafters. They represent a scries of serv-
ants, throughout the years, who, long since gone, still re-
turn with five children and an offering of Saner Kraut to do
homage to their benefactress. With unfailing regularity,
on the day that we arc- having company for dinner, one of
the "old family servants" comes back to spend the after-
noon and ask tor a twenty dollar loan: and mother, still
cherishing fondly the idyllic picture of a funeral procession
in which the beloved lady of the house was followed on foot
by all her faithful and adoring retainers, listens to their
family troubles and gives them the- twenty dollars.
As I look hack over the passing of the years, it seems
to me that there was a decided favoritism shown to all for-
eigners, and preferably those who had been so newly im-
ported that "Hello" and "Noo York" were their onlyEng-
lish terms of approach. Mother's interviews with the na-
tion's most recent immigrants are memorable in the1 annals
of the family. She is at her best at such times. Then is
something soothing about the way in which she1 slowly and
gently forms the simple and more elemental words of the
English language, her flexible lips patiently mouthing the
syllables. Never does her voice1 become loud and harsh. If
she cannot make herself understood by careful articulation,
she resorts to a series of guttural sounds, which, she claims.
is German for "Mow much does it cost ?" and the Immigrant
always stays.
The first of these was Pauline. She came into the
family before it could properly he called a family at all. —
that is she served as cook to the bridal couple and ushered
ifi the advent of my older brother. In fact, she hid fair to
he an "old family servant", and had not matrimony claimed
her. some two years after mother had taught her to speak
English, she mighl well have been. As it was. she1 met a
Hungarian on one of her "Thursdays out" and nothing
would do hut that she should marry. So. after tears and
well-wishes and the gifl of some table linen and sheets.
mother went one day, and saw Pauline marry her Toni in
a Hungarian Catholic Church. The first "retainer" had
departed, hut she was not lost to us forever, for she is the
ring-leader in that great gathering of continental peasants
who call on us annually with the children and Saner Kraut.
The Smith College Monthly 7
The last time she came she brought Stephaine, Louie and two
chickens with her, and stayed five hours. She was full of
little family incidents. "Mrs. Mami'ton", she said, "I used
to tink you vass so mean to Mr. Marshall, ven he vass a
paby. You speak so crool to him. Now I haf my Louie, I
shmack him tree times in de face, he iss so cracy," and a
vicious, foreign light gleamed in her eyes, as she looked
over at Louie, idly throwing rocks at the flower pots on the
front lawn. She was very troubled, too, over George, her
eldest. "He iss in hospital, Mrs. Mami'ton. His apprendix
iss bat and he haf opera. Oh, I don't mean to say any ting
wrong, but if any my childern iss to die vy couldn't it be
Louie, instead of George? He iss so cracy!" and just then
there came the noise of crashing pottery on the flagstones
in front of the house. So mother listened to Pauline's naive
brutality, and even subjected us, the children of her heart,
to the influence of such barbarism, and all for the sake of
the servant superstition strong within her. She likewise
contributed somewhat to George's "apprendix opera", and
last Christmas we were graced with a picture of the family,
all recovered and standing in filial devotion around Toni,
who looked belligerently into the camera, from an upright
position in a stiff-back chair, a fat cigar in his right hand,
which was resting delicately on his knee, his left hand plant-
ed firmly on Pauline's shoulder, which rose above him.
Pauline had written on the back of the picture, "Der Mrs.
Hamiton, I trid to get Toni to cut his mustashs for the
photograph, but he voodent do it. Merry Christmas, Paul-
ine." Mother looked upon Pauline's attempt to cut Toni's
moustaches, as a personal tribute, and speaks of her with
tears in her eyes.
When Pauline succumbed to the charms of her Toni,
and forsook the Hamilton hearth to enter into the state of
matrimony, mother was forced to cast about for a new
family servant, and finally Lucy Muse was hopefully
brought home. Lucy was a well-proportioned African of
comfortable ways, and I have no doubt but that the idea of
a negro mammy teaching the children to say "caint" for
"can't" was an unquestionable lure. Father's camera was
urged into action, and many little family groups were
"snapped", with the children playing tag around Lucy's
voluminous person, or hanging playfully from her apron
8 The Smith College Monthly
strings. When Marshall once told her she was so nice that
she was getting whiter every day. mother at last put her
down as the- family servant, and rejoiced. Quite suddenly.
however, Lucy joined the Holy Roller Church. Mother
tried not to let this make any difference, hut when Lucy
insisted upon making a joyful noise unto the Lord even in
the home-, and when all of us children, who loved her so
devotedly, followed her example with frying pans and egg
beaters, the time had come to discard Lucy and she left.
"Nursie" was the next venture. "Nursie" was an ancient
Welch woman — too ancient, 1 am afraid, ever to have grown
old in the service, .Mother realized this when first she saw
her in the employment agency, hut Nursie developed an
immediate aft'action for mother, and such affection could
not he rejected, so Nursie was ultimately brought home, in
the hope that she might, just possibly, live longer than at
the time it appeared probable, and in the end, die an "old
family servant". Nursie was a delightful woman, who
swathed herself in a yellow woolen shawl and regaled us
with tales of her "separated" husband. "lie used to cum
in drunk 0 'nights and wish ta hang heself, till finally when
Ld see him cumin' reelin' down the street I'd say 'Hurry up,
chuldern. Git the trap. Ycr father wants ta hang heself
again!' " Such comfortable anecdotes only served to streng-
then the bond between Nursie and the family until suddenly,
one winter's evening, Nursie's husband appeared, an aged
but spirited old toper, and bore her off, in what seemed to
ns a whirlwind of romance. .Another hope frustrated!
So the long list grew — Beatrice, the Bohemian, Lydia,
the Czechoslovakia!). Pearl, the New Yorker and Delia who
ran off with a married man. The search still continued for
thai one who was to be the family servitor. Then Bridget
came into our lives. It was generally agreed when Bridget
came thai she would only stay until we could get some one
else, lor she brought with her no less than three hundred
pounds net weight, and a set of whiskers lhal would scare
,-i large-sized policeman into a trance. Bridget it was agreed.
was too unsightly, ever to be allowed to stay. Hut soon it
was discovered lhal farm horses could not drag Bridgel from
the comfortable house she had found for her declining years.
\\Y were an endowed institution, maintained for her sole
benefit, and from which she drew her weekly allowance to
The Smith College Monthly 9
be handed over to the church. Thirteen years ago Bridgel
came and she is still with ns. We can not shake her.
Every morning at half past six sharp, her ponderous bulk
thunders down the back stairs, and light sleepers are awak-
ened by ominous crashings and rumblings from the nether
regions of the house. Every morning at ten she raises her
piercing, tuneless voice in ecstatic song to the canary-bird,
as she scours the dining room, her heavy step rattling the
silver on the sideboard, and every afternoon without fail,
just at five, she pokes her head into the living-room and
shouts, "Tell yer mother she forgot the potatoes," and then
retires, wildly pleased with herself, for having reported the
lack just after the stores have closed. She is the demon in
our home. Everything must be run according to Bridget.
If one wants guests for dinner, one consults Bridget.
"Bridget, my own, would it be too much to suggest that
we have Mr. and Mrs. So and So for the evening meal?"
If it is agreeable, she snorts briefly and goes on about her
work, but if on the other hand, it is the least bit inconvenient
she calls "God" loudly several times, and lightly lays her
hand on the carving knife. Her methods are crude, but
effective. Under such circumstances we generally do not
have guests for dinner. It is often wondered why we keep
Bridget, but we can do nothing but keep her. She refuses
to leave, unless by force, and she is a large woman.
Two summers ago we decided to take Bridget to Cana-
da with us. It was a bold step, but she would not be left
at home, so at last we risked the consequences and said she
might come. When the day appointed for the journey was
at hand, Bridget put on a large, well-modelled corset, a blue
serge suit of unknown vintage, with a sailor collar attached,
and a cartwheel hat of black straw, with a white lily on one
side. It was evident that this was a great occasion for her.
A razor had essayed the arduous task of removing some of
the whiskers, but it had failed, and left behind a patchwork
effect, startling, and unique. Her suitcase — a large wicker
box — was Bulging with some mysterious and speculative
contents and one stocking, just above her high black ground
grippers, was swelled out like an apple, where her money-
roll stretched it. As we waited at the station for the train
Bridget began to show signs of weakness. She panted up
to mother, drew her aside and said in a gruff, terrified voice.
10 The Smith College Monthly
"They tell me there's aothin1 but tissue paper between the
berths!" Mother tried to explain the technique of sleeping-
cars, ending with a comforting word about the colored porter
who would fix her berth for her. As the engine steamed in-
to the- station. Bridget shouted. "The further that nigger
stays irom me the better fer himself!" with which hostile
threat she was pushed and shoved into the train. We scarce-
ly dared leave her to work out her destiny with the porter,
hut having seen her into her berth we could do little more
than pay the unfortunate' darky to keep his distance. It was
a long, hot journey. When, in the morning, we came hack
for her, she was sitting just as we had left her, with her coal
still tightly fastened over her ample bosom, and her hat a
trifle askew. "Give me air!" she shouted so that all the car
might hear and he- frightened, and plunging blindly, like
stampeding cattle, she flew for the platform.
This was. needless te> state, a performance which none
of the family, much less Bridget, cared to repeat, hut toward
the- end of the summer the inevitable question arose, how to
<4et the- coe>k home? There was some' talk of shipping her.
and not a little of drowning her. hut Bridget finally solved
the problem herself, by declaring that she' would go he)ine'
in the- day coach, where a body could breath if it wanted to.
This seemed the' besi solution possible, so having drilled her
for weeks on what to say to the customs men at the border,
and how to acquire a respectful, submissive attitude toward
them, when they wanted to inspect her luggage, we put her
oil the- day coach, with an unspoken farewell and tremulous
prayers. The next morning, with bate'el breath, we weni
through the' coaches, and there' sitting triumphant and men-
acing, her feet firmly planted on her wicker box. was
Bridget. "Did you sleep we'll. Bridget?" we' asked in a
chorus. "T did not!" she' cried, "it was air T Mas after and
I gol that!" "And did you open up your bag for the cus-
toms?" "Sartinly not! The man came around and says
'What did ye gel up in Canada?1 and T says 'nothin' but a
lot of hard work.' and he' says 'you're exempt.' Bui there
was one pool- uirl caught fer smugglin' in eighteen dollars
worth of diamonds! \iver again to Canada fe>r me'! There's
nothin1 to do unless you sink a boat, and nothin' to see unless
von climb a tree!" And the' thought of the tree- with Bridget
in it. has so unnerved us. that we have never re'turned!
The Smith College Monthly 11
So Bridget rules the home. She is as much a part of us as
Peggy, my }roung sister, with whom she arrived simultan-
eously, and she rules with a rod of iron. Guests at our
table are often startled into fasting by a shrill cry from the
kitchen, "God! why don't they hurry up in there! Ye'd
think I had all night to wash the dishes!" and leaning across
the beautiful damask, we children explain gently "Oh, yes,
that's our faithful old family retainer. She's been with us
thirteen years, and wouldn't leave if you bribed her! Isn't
she a dear!"
DIAN
Patty Wood
The memory of brightnesses extinguished;
Exultings frozen perfect at their height,
And cooled to marble warmth as sculptured things;
The captured whisperings of evening, strung
Upon a thousand strings ; and corners of
The sun remembered; laughter undefined;
The depths of emerald waters ; tragedy
Reborn from burial in fragrant years.
Incarnate of such things, your beauty, and
It speaks to me of them, thru them ; it binds
A cord of swiftly-twisted strength from them,
That reaches out, and winds, and coils, and ties
Me, with its deep and perilous power, to you.
»
12 The Smith College MonVhly
"TELL ME WHERE ALL PAST YKAKS ARE"
Prisciu a S. Fairchiid
E
ER hand shivered upon a tabic, palm pressed againsl
the grain, fingers wavering delicately, fantastically,
^Tiffd like- fronds of sea-plants o\ crw he line (1 in the current.
A ray of sunlight plunged ninety million miles to strike her
between the breasts and impak her on a background of long-
legged, pink-billed birds. She sat relaxed, her pupils ex-
panded to a fantastic size, hollow and dark as the entrano
to a cave. A chain out of the past had wrapped its dragging
links about her and swept her away.
She became suddenly an abandoned city, the rubble of
an autumn field, a house deserted. The indrawn sag of her
nostrils emphasized a garden faintly crumpled by neglect,
where weeds blurred the edges of the flower beds. Win-
dows, black empty horrors, looked out on a walled garden,
where the sun flung itself on geranium-colored bricks. Fruit
had ripened and rotted here, leaving a sweet smell of decay,
and the buzzing of wasps. No longer trained in pyramid
shapes the trees sprawled, heat-soaked and indolent, and the
fountain, drugged wit li neglect, slithered over its pedestal in
a slimy track.
An accumulation of years tilled the house with sod-
den relies. Silver, worn paper-thin by many hands, tarn-
ished in the warped side-boards, while long ago the crystal
drops of the lamps had dashed themselves to a leap of bril-
liant splinters on the floor.
On the broad shallow steps ghosts passed each other in
a curious intermingling. The hands of one melted without
definition into the body of another. and from their union
appeared the head of a third. Their feel left no track on
the dust of floor bu1 their shoulders whispered againsl the
wall-paper, whose languid population mocked their trans-
parency. Blue and while plates on the dresser reflected a
paleness as they passed. Dulled pewter glowered at them
over the hearth. Brass leered ironically under a pfreen pa-
The Smith College Monthly 13
tina of age. Their coming troubled not at all the trembling
gilt Hakes on a Venetian Mirror, in the deep-sea surface of
which appeared only their eyes, cold and desireless. Hands
wavered over the maple chairs in white streaks of under-
water light. Old books exhaled a mustiness for their breath-
ing. White ashes nourished them and dust comforted their
senses.
She was the house, and the objects in the house, and
those who inhabited it. She was the crumpled skin of the
outside wall, and the broken brick in the fire-place. Each
ghost contained some part of her, and all of them were con-
tained in her. As house she watched the ghosts moving
within her. As ghost she saw the house, the shell of her
being, and the other ghosts, sharers in her existence.
The picture that blackened on the wall, the lawn glitter-
ing with mist, the slow crumpling to shreds of leather and
silk and wrool, were the tearing to pieces of her present life.
Changes occurred, new pictures came, after a little they
rotted with mildew on the walls, but no old figure ever dis-
appeared, nothing disintegrated so completely that its dust
was not to be discerned overlying new additions and sifting
through the house. New shadows wandered dowrn the halls,
ceaselessly, silently, pausing to look at a table, a chair, a ban-
jo clock, fingering imperceptibly the leaves of a book. Never
speaking, nor yet quite soundless, their whispering silence
shivered through the cob-webbed rooms, echoed the tap-
tap of branches stumbling over the window-panes, the stut-
tering of rain in the leaky gutters, the rasp of leaves shuf-
fling over the floor.
She relived herself by living in turn the life of each
ghost in the house. That one in which she existed took on
for the time a reflected light, an imitation, a mockery of the
past, which however cast a pale gleam over the house. She
was possessed by the creature in which she lived, and which
lived in her. Haunted, rapt, she moved like a sleep-walker
through the rooms and about the country-side.
Sometimes she walked on a road by the edge of the sea.
Tall rank grass grew up on each side, and about its roots
she could see crabs and snails scuttling in the shallow roots.
A white fog blurred the limits of the farther islands magni-
fying the rim of the trees. The world closed down to the
circle in which she moved; existence narrowed to the print
14 The Smith College Monthly
of her heels in the sand, filling with water after she passed.
Her feet rasped on the pebbles, carving a hollow out of the
booming silence. A row of deserted bathing-shacks, dirty-
gray and white, in creaking proof of desolation Happed their
doors emptily. Completely alone, in a naked blind world,
the physical desolation emphasized her feeling of the spirit-
ual loneliness of men. The log about her grew alive with
men and women, eyeless and dumb, who groped for each
other and found a hollow sea-shell, who grasped at perfec-
tion and threw it away for a handful of sand. Across the
incredible distances of their isolation they reached out their
arms, but not even the tips of their fingers met. She saw
lovers lying body to body and mouth to mouth who knew not
that they stood isolated on pinnacles a million miles apart, so
that even the gnat-like wailing of their calls disappeared in
the void between them.
She flung out her arms with a violent resolution to be
completely at one with some one, so as to confound and
refute this hell of loneliness and isolation. Fire would
mingle with fire, eating away the log out of the plains. The
mountains would bow their heads and the pinnacles come
together. Union complete and absolute would be achieved.
For a long time that day she ran down the beach, with
the salt wind dragging at her hair, the coldness struggling
lor her body. She exulted proudly in the flame that kept
her joined with the lonely air, that would ultimately give
her complete unification.
As other ghosts she slipped from place to place through-
out the house, peered through the tattered curtains, until
each room she visited sprang into vivid relief, renewing its
life with the glowing intensity of freshly-fanned coals. In
one small room the air smelled lavishly of ilowers. and be-
yond the windows a noisy summer rain splattered the lawn.
Across from her sitting in a low chair, a man plaited a piece
of grass through his fingers, under and over, over and under.
1 1 was green, she noticed, and his hand shook a little. "That's
all," he was saying, "that's all that happened." He laughed
abruptly, and rose, leaving the room quite still, for the rain
thumping on the panes mattered not at all. The spear of
grass lay on the floor, claiming her minutest and most pro-
found attention. "Two inches from the third brick on the
left," she thought, knowing that he had gone, but refusing
The Smith College Monthly 15
to consider that his departure affected anything but the posi-
tion of the grass blade. Footsteps clashed across the gravel.
Her eyes left the floor although a cold ring of steel clamped
its way inevitably around her heart. The silence, thick and
heavy, clung like fog to the furniture.
The shower stopped soon, and rays refracted from rain-
drops struck their way into the room. Dully she leaned
over and placed one hand on the floor. "And four inches
on the right," she said aloud, and the sound of her voice
boomed hoarsely, with the unnatural croaking of words
spoken alone. Her nails screamed over the boards as she
dragged her hand back, quick as a snake. The muscles of
her body contracted and she cried out on a cracking note.
After the echoes fell flatly away, waves of silence beat back
into the room,lapping over the chair in which she sat, look-
ing stupidly at her fingers, which were bleeding a little on
the tips.
That person slid imperceptibly back to nothingness,
the outlines blurring and wavering, the fire dying, until she
resumed the appearance of a pane of grey glass, bearing a
faint reflection.
From ghost to ghost she passed in a succession not
logical but irrelevant, governed by no desire but erratic and
involuntary, as they sifted by each other throughout the
house with a vague unregretful murmur.
Once she lay in a room whose corners a light from out-
side, filtering through the trees, partly suggested. The in-
definiteness of its size impressed her with a slight and very
tired dismay, for the walls floated away as she raised her
eyes, and the ceiling, now concave, now convex, soared
cloud-like over her head. Half- waking from a restless sleep
she felt extraordinarily light, and yet as heavy as iron in
the bed. Time lost all significance. A minute awake be-
came that long period of eternity when the world swings
in its orbit with the heavy roll of a log in the trough of the
waves, an hour disappeared in the brief clutch of an indrawn
breath.
As a magician possesses a seed capable of springing in
an instant to a stalk, a flower, a fruit, only to rot and dis-
appear, so a moment of that night carried embodied in it-
self the essence of the time-span, the terrible antiquity of
the dark itself.
J 6 The Smith College Monthly
She lay trance-like, unable to move or even to recog-
nize the presence of her body, while past her hurried the
hours, their black wings beating the air with the noise of
roaring torrents, with the stillness of furred night-moths.
In their swiftness, in their insatiable rapidity, she drew but
one breath, experienced hut one passing flicker of an emo-
tion, lived one impossibly brief second, tor the space be-
tween midnight and dawn passed as swiftly as the wrinkling
<»i a smile in the outer corners of the eyes.
She heard the cock crow two distinct and chuckling
notes at dawn. Between each note she lived again and
again. Not dying she passed from existence to existence
and the years flowed by like water, swift and silent, al-
though they were- held inescapably in the acorn-cup of an
instant between two crowings of the cock. Her thoughts
spun round like a wheel, now one, now another coming to
the surface, tangling themselves with her emotions into an
intricate pattern.
For a long time she lived in the memory of that night.
Its ghost pursued her down the corridors, to lay a remind-
ing hand like a feather of mist on her arm. to wind shadow-
tentacles about her heart. Hut the dust continued to gather
on the house, shutters clattered in the wind, the paint peeled
and l'otted. Stones crumhled off the terrace onto the lawn.
and under them the grass grew yellowed, flattened, and wet.
The Smith College Monthly 17
JUST SPEAK EASY
Ruth R. King
m
E walked down East Fifty-Sixth street, trying not to
look as though we didn't know which brown-stone
front was the one we wanted.
"Twenty is the number, isn't it?"
"Yes, I'm positive about that."
As we passed each house we looked furtively at the
numbers on the vestibule.
Sixteen, eighteen —
"It's the next one," I whispered.
We looked up and saw "Restaurant" written in gold
letters on the door. I gave him a dig, and walked up the
steps firmly. He opened the door for me, and we were in.
From the door it was rather hard to see the restaurant be-
cause of the profusion of potted ferns and palms wThich
made a wall of green, so that to enter the room one had to
walk past these and around in again.
The room was typical of the rooms in all residential
brown-stone fronts. It had two long windows on the street,
and a very high ceiling with an elaborate chandelier grow-
ing like an inverted mushroom from it. But the room was
so large that I came to the conclusion that a wall had been
knocked out, throwing two rooms into one. It was very
quiet. The small tables against the walls held two or three
diners, or were empty. A maitre d'hotel came up.
"Two? Right here, Madame." He pulled out my
chair. John relinquished his coat, and sat down facing me,
a self-conscious smile on his face. "Would you care for a
cigarette?" proffering me his silver case. He was so cour-
teous and deliberate that I knew he was nervous. I laughed
and he kicked me, under the table. A waiter came up, pad
in hand. John blew out a match and looked up carelessly.
"Could we have — " the sentence faded out and John
raised one eyebrow significantly. The waiter became all
apologies.
18 The Smith College Monthly
"Menus! Certainly, sir. One moment, sir. I fought
1 seen you had menus." He hurried oil'.
1 laughed aloud and .John looked darkly at me.
"All right," he said. "I'll show you."
The waiter came hark with the menus.
"What's good today" I asked, casually familiar.
"Try the znocchi, miss. \cr" good. Artichoke all-so,
vcrr' nize."
"Znocchi are those awful pasty little ' I began, but
John trod heavily on my foot, and taking the conversation
to himself as a man picks up a. distasteful burden, leaned
hack in his chair and said firmly. "We will have znocchi,
some salad, plain, and Tor dessert — well, we'll order that
later."
The waiter, writing briskly on his pad. turned away,
hut John stopped him. and i>ivm.U' nie a long look, drew the
waiter near him. and breathed huskily in his car. "Could
we have some, uh — some, uh — \\ rine?"
It was out. In a sudden heat of self-consciousness I
started to look on the floor for something I might have
dropped. John ashed his cigarette on the white tablecloth.
The waiter vanished, but reappeared almost instantly
with the maitre d'hotel, who bent discreetly over my bro-
ther and murmured. "What is your name, monsieur?"
John had been preparing for this test but I saw the lie
freeze on his lips.
"Gordoir", he said miserably. "G-o-r-d-o-n."
Knowing that this would be completely inadequate he
hesitated a moment, then blurted. "Tve been here quite
often with M\\ Hoss. I thought — perhaps you'd remem-
ber me." The name Hoss seemed to be all that was neces-
sary. The maitre d'hotel smiled and bowed.
"Oh yes, of course, of couse. You would like wine.
Monsieur? l\ed wine or white?"
"Red", said John happily, and kissed his hand at the
hacks of the depart ing waiters.
"Whal did I tell you" he began. "It's easy. Absolute-
ly nothing to it. All I had to do was to tell him my name
'J hope this red wine of yours will be Chianti," I in-
terrupted. "And I do wish We didn't have to eat those hor-
rible lit t le znocchi !"
"Oh. it doesn't make any difference what we cat — "
The Smith College Monthly 19
"Oh doesn't it? Well, why don't you get cocktails and
highballs and things." I have always loathed znocchi.
"Oh Lord, we should have had cocktails, do you know
it? Well, we'll get some Martinis with absinthe for des-
sert." The order of things never has bothered John.
The lunch, despite everything, was delicious. John
and I grew happier under the influence of the red Chianti
which the waiter poured from a straw covered bottle. We
noticed that the handful of other diners was composed most-
ly of elderly gentlemen, and on only one table did we see
anything but water. The quiet calm of the room, the wait-
ers, the diners, and the complete gentility of the atmosphere
struck us as curiously incongruous, and at the same time
delightfully consistent, with that form of law-breaking which
had made this restaurant known to us. "Of course," said
John grandly, "I should like a highball, but as long as we
are going to have those Martinis, you'd better not have any-
thing more. You can't hold a thing, you know."
I laughed at him as though he had said something amus-
ing. But after John had said to the wraiter:
"We'll dispense with dessert, please. And bring us
two Martinis with absinthe" I found everything amusing.
The Martinis tasted rather badly and John assured me,
with delighted wickedness, that they had "a kick like a
mule." When my glass was half empty I felt deliciously
airy and vague, and John's forehead became quite rosy. We
grew extremely silly and laughed inordinately at everything.
The waiter looked like a beagle; the room was like a plant
house: we were fried; the znocchi had tasted like fish-bait;
the room was hot as hell; we were fried. "Xo, we aren't
really fried. As soon as we get out doors this'll all go."
John solemnly lit a cigarette and solemnly blew out the
match. Everything was funny.
I took another swallow of the Martini. It was coldly
sweet in my mouth, with an under-taste so bitter that I gave
an involuntary shudder as it burned down my throat and
flamed inside me. My head grew suddenly so heavy that
I had to support it on my hand, and my body ceased to be-
long to me. John, with a naughty chuckle, emptied his
glass, giving his head a little shake after the last swallow.
"Got a kick like a mule,". he grinned.
20 The Smith College Monthly
"Isn't it too awful? I'm fried!" I laughed at him, my
eyes half-closed in delicious languor.
"Conic on, old bean. A little fresh air. you know,
and all that."
'All right. I'll sit lure while you gel your coat."
Feeling very uncertain of myself. 1 was afraid to stand
up. hut 1 found I could walk perfectly on feet that had no
sensation whatsoever. John took my arm as we walked
down the steps, and strolled up the street.
"This is the most divine feeling," 1 said.
"You look happy," said the sobered John. He steered
me around the corner, into the bright sunlight that Hooded
Fifth Ave. I still found it hard to keep my eyes open, and
I smiled happily into the haze of people, shop windows, and
sunlight. I felt a sudden pull on my arm from John.
"Hey, snap to," he said. "There's Pete."
He propelled me toward Pete. We gathered on the
corner of Fifty-fifth Street. Pete seemed to have friends
with him. We were introduced.
"You remember my sister. Pete?"
"Absolutely. How are you ? Do you know Miss Gor-
don, Mr. — ; Mr. — ." I didn't get their names hut I didn't
care. "This is Gordon, Joe, Bill, you remember John."
There was a splendid confusion of cheery young men, incon-
sequential chatter, laughter, and dazzling sunlight. I heard
someone say to John:
"No kidding? Listen Pve heard of it. Around here.
isn't it? What's the number?" "Twenty Fast Fifty-sixth"
said John. "It's a cinch. Just go in and say you know me
or Ross. Easy, you know. Never saw anything so easy."
I was dropped from the conversation, which centered
earnestly ahout John. Soon with much handshaking and
hand heads they left us, and we continued down Fifth Ave.
which had grown more distinct and normal to mv eves.
"What did I tell you!"' said John. "Wasn't it easy"
If you know how, I mean."
The Smith College Monthly 21
SHELLEY AT FIELD PLACE— 1804
Sallie S. Simons
Look!
Do you see the rain- driven wind
Riding the trees down?
It has unloosed the horned moon
And blown it free of the sky.
That's why it is dark in here,--
The candle gives no light,--
It is dark, dark, I say!
And listen !
Do you hear the gray step on the ceiling?
H's an arch-fiend the alchemist,
Who lives on shreds of brocade in the attic.
His name is Cornelius Agrippa,
And he covets the silver shining raindrops.
There! He has shattered his lantern
Against the rafters,
And moans in the dust and dark.
K The Smith College Monthly
TOUB
Ellen Robinson
f^TjlIK sun pushes up over the horizon like the suns on
|vl/| picture post-cards. It is the proper time- lor all correct
| small birds to twitter in their soft nests high in the
swaying trees, hut if there is any such romantic expression
on their part, it is lost in the early morning preparations of
the Hoggs family. Mr. Hoggs lias brought the car around
to the side entrance and Mrs. Hoggs and the three children
are Sling out to it at intervals, depositing great armfuls of
bundles and a number of suit-cases. The ability to pile these
in and about the car so that the Boggses themselves may
eventually find room, if not comfort, LS a true science, but
one which they have studied for many years. .Mr. Hoggs is
Strapping three suit-cases and a golf-bag on the running-
board : Ik stops grunting for a moment and stands upright.
"HOW many times must I tell you children not to get the
car all scratched up!"
.Mrs. Hoggs appears at the side door with a box of as-
pirin and a bottle of aromatic ammonia. "Sam, will you put
these in the right front pocket. Yes. I know you think it's
silly, but I won't 'feel safe. And tell the children to come in
to breakfast."
Breakfasl is a gloomy meal; everyone feels a little ill.
Julia the cook kicks the swinging-door as she goes out for the
coffee. Mrs. Hoggs whispers to her husband: "She goes
around looking like a thunder-cloud. Til be glad to get
away from her for a little while. And I am going to put
my fool down on a few things when we get back in Septem-
ber.
Mr. BoggS nods patiently; he is studying a road-map.
making long computations in a little note-book. He breaks
forth suddenly. "Yes, ['think we'll make it about twenty
a fter three."
Molly, the youngesl . reaches for the bul ter and somehow
pushes a grape-skin on to the sleeve of .Jo's coat ; he is sixteen.
The Smith College Monthly 23
He jumps up as though she had stabbed him and begins to
brush the spot carefully, glaring at her silently. Dot, the
oldest, speaks suddenly, "Oh! what did we do with the bath-
ing suits?"
The other two join in. "We've got to have a swim to-
night. Can't we, Mother?"
Mr. Boggs snorts. "I'm not going to have all that stuff
left in that ear all night. Every one of you has to turn in and
help un-paek. As soon as we get to the lake."
"But after that. Please, Mother!"
"Ask your father."
"Dad!"
"Oh. . .just as your mother says!"
"All right. Here, take my keys and go up and get them
out of the big trunk in my room." The three race up-stairs,
Jo keeping a little behind. Mrs. Boggs calls after them, "Be
sure you all drink another glass of milk before wre leave. I
don't want to leave a thing in the refrigerator." Julia stamps
in and slams down a plate of toast.
Dot calls from the stairs, "Where's Percy?"
"Yes, where is he? Where is he? He hasn't been any-
where around all this time."
Jo goes to the door and calls, "Here, Percy. Here,
Percy, Percy." His voice breaks in the middle of each word.
Molly squirms into the door- way beside him.
"There he is, Jo. Jumped into the car all by himself."
"He's so afraid of being left. Isn't that cute!" Dot taps
on the window with her finger-nail. An enormous airedale
sitting in the car turns and looks at her appealingly, brushing
his club-like tail along the seat.
At five-thirty they begin to get into the car, Mr. and
Mrs. Boggs in front, and Molly and Jo in back with Percy —
and a small space left for Dot.
"Where's Dot?"
Jo sniffs and crosses his legs. "We always have to wait
for her. Was she ever ready? That's just the way they are!
These women!"
Mr. Boggs folds up the road map. "It really seems to
me, Margaret, that you could have had the children ready. I
simply can't do everything, with all this driving before me."
Mrs. Boggs attempts to shrivel him with a look, but he is again
busy with the little note-book, occasionally blowing the horn
24 ... The Smith College Monthly
for Dot. She at last appears, carrying a large leather-cov-
ered ledger, a messy sheaf of papers, and five or six hooks.
"You don't want all those. Dot?"
"Yes, 1 do. Mother. How ran 1 write my novel un-
less... "
"Then why didn't you put them in the trunk?"
"Hut I have to have them to-morrow. I feel that I'm
going to start writing again right away. You can't suppress
Art in trunks and things. Art is forever. . ."
"Blah," exploded Jo."
"Hut, Dot, there isn't any room!"
"Oh. don't worry about that. 1 don't mind sitting on
them;'
They hack slowly out of the yard. Julia waves a gloomy
farewell from the dining-room window. The sun has risen
with a great, impersonal beauty; no one notices it. The car
turns the corner and is gone.
But in ten minutes it stops in front of the house. Julia
stalks out to it with a thermos bottle and a box of dog-bis-
cuits. Mr. Hoggs is impersonating any number of early Chris-
tian martyrs as they start oil' again. Julia stands at the
curb, her arms folded in front of her. No one waves.
II
The Boggs have lost the road, though Mr. Hoggs prefers
that it he stated in other terms. "Why. 1 know this road
from Spadeton to Harby Mills like a hook! Used to survey
all around here the summer of my Junior year. Know every
little hill. 11' you will just he quid and leave it all to me."
In silence they mount higher and higher; a little hoy in
overalls Stares at them as though he had never seen a ear he-
fore; the road begins to grow a little green heard between its
two wrinkles, as Dot puts it softly. Percy is restless and
walks hack and forth over the children. Molly stands up sud-
denly and thrust her dirty little pug-nosed face between her
parents. ".Mother, I want another cookie. Tel] Dot to gel
me oik
"No, you've had six since breakfast."
"Can I have an orange then?"
"No."
"Aw. .Mother "
"Well, ask Dot to peel it for you."
"Want to suck it."
The Smith College Monthly 25
"No, not while we're riding."
"Aw."
"All right, but sit down. This road gets worse and
worse."
Another ten minutes during which no one speaks. Jo has
been compressing himself against the side of the car. "Mother
I just wish you'd look at Molly. Just look at her. Why,
she squirts way over here. Mother, just listen to her. Honest-
ly!"
Dot hears nothing; she stares dreamily down into the
valley. "Somebody tell me what rhymes with leafy."
"Beefy."
"Mother, make Jo stop. How can I create?"
"I want a hot-dog."
"Not till lunch time, Molly."
"I tell you I know this short-cut like a book. Known it
for years."
"But just for fun, Sam, let's ask this man. It's the only
farm we've seen for the last half-hour."
A tall man in hip-boots leans reflectively over the car
door. "Got quite a load there, ain't ye? Why 'n't ye bring the
cat and the chickens?" He laughs and spits.
"Say, captain, this is right for Harby Mills, isn't it?
Just want to make sure, you know."
"Harby Mills! Well, I'll be! Ye'll be in Spadeton in ten
minutes."
"Oh, yes! Thank you. . .Good-bye."
Silence. Molly throws the orange-skin away and it rest
jauntily on the running-board. She leans out recklessly.
"Mother, why did Dad call him 'captain', especially when he
was a farmer?"
"Sh! It's just a little habit of your father's. He proba-
bly learned how when he was surveying all around here. Like
a book."
Mr. Boggs opens his mouth, considers a moment, and
shuts it with a repressed snort.
Eventually they re-enter Spadeton and find the state
highway. Mr. Boggs settles himself. "Well, let me see: I
think we'll make it about ten after four ; of course I can't tell
for sure. But ten after—about. Not bad, though last year it
was exactly five of."
"When can I have a hot-dog?"
26 The Smith College Monthly
"Mother, make Molly sit up; she leans all over Dot and
then Dot has to Kan on me. Motherl"
Sam, 1 think the left front tire- is down."'
"Nonsense. It's your imagination. Do you think I'd
r\ er start out with bum tires?"
"Oh!"
The car pitches unhealthily. At last Mr. BoggS stops
it. "Jo, step out there and look at that front tire."
Jo climbs gingerly over the bathing-suits, knocking over
a hot tic of sun-burn lotion.
"Flat as a pancake, Dad."
"Tough. 1 > i j t we'll have to fix it."
"Aw Dad! It makes yon get so dirty! Drive on a while;
there must he a gas station."
"Can I buy a hot-dog then ?"
".Joseph, this is an emergency. Let US meet it here."
"Aw, just wait till somebody comes along. I'll go find a
man at some garage."
"Joseph! Take off your coat."
Mrs. BoggS waits on a dampish hit of grass in front of a
sign-board. Dot has found a dilapidated wooden gate and
leans one elbow on it. Mr. Boggs takes oil' his vest. "Mar-
garet, w ill you please call Molly out from under the car?"
"Molly!"
"Aw, Mother, can't we eat lunch now!' Everything else
is gone. Can't we Mother?"
"Oh, bring me the basket." She begins to takeout soggy
stacks of sandwiches and deviled eggs to which the paper has
stuck. Percy sits close to her. almost pushing her over.
"This OUghl to make US gel there ahont twenty-five
after, I think. Margaret."
"Oh. no. Sam. Don"! you think ahont twenty- seven and
a half?"
Soon the five of them gather around the basket. Jo sits
oil' to one side on a little rock. A car passes them and
another and another. Mr. Boggs speaks nervously from
behind the cap of the thermos-bottle. "Better hurry up.
\V< \ e go1 to gel going."
"We can't Sam. Molly going to be sick."
lie Cflares, and lakes mil the little note-hook.
The Smith College Monthly 27
HAIRPIN EVENING
Patty Wood
a NEED another hairpin most awfully— another hair-
pin right there." She stuck a long finger low into the
krinkling gold mass. "And I can't take one from any
other place, because I need every one just where it is. O I do
need another hairpin!"
He loved her like this, when she was mock- serious and
her voice was whimsical and her topaz eyes krinkled at the
edges. Then all her golden beauty seemed to warm toward
him, and glow for him alone, as if she were saying, "You and
I, my dear— isn't it delightful?" These moments were price-
less, but O so perishable.. He had learned the secret of them,
tho. To prolong them, he must take up the gentle banter.
Then she would become even more melting, more liquid
golden; then she would laugh that half-silent, krinkling
laugh which was so peculiarly her own, clasping her hands
around one knee and rocking gently backward and forward,
or turning her head slightly to one side, deep in the pillows
of her high-backed chair. "O how delightful! My dear, we
do so enjoy each other — understand each other. Isn't it
glorious?" Of course, she never said such things, but it was
just as if she had, because she looked them, she acted them.
Once, it was before he had learned what his reaction should
be, he had made a fatal blunder. She was talking about
green cats, was saying that life would be fearfully dreary
until she possessed "a lovely jade-green kitten;" she had seen
one once, and would never be quite happy till she had one and
could "roll it into a soft, furry, green ball, right here in my
neck." He had said, "But Laurel, there never was such a
thing as a green cat." O it was a terrible mistake! Her golden
beauty had suddenly grown metallic, and she had said. "O
don't be so hopelessly literal!"
But he had learned his cue, so he now said, "When my
ship comes in, it will be laden with a cargo of hairpins — all
for you — long thin golden hairpins that zig-zag in the middle.
J* The Smith College Monthly
Ai.d you need never use the .same one twice -for there will
be an endless number, you know." She was laughing now,
nodding her head among her pillows, as if she were- saying,
"Yes, yes O do go on." He wanned to his subject. "You can
throw them aw ay as soon as you pull them Out, while you take
down your hair." Here his voice trembled a bit, Tor his own
words startled him he had always wanted to see her take
down that lovely glittering mass. Once he had asked her to.
hut had been painfull)' reprimanded by her swift "Of course
not how absurd!" She was waiting now. so he continued.
"And there w ill he a gold wastehasket for you to toss them in-
to, and on your dressing table a golden box always with a
fresh supply."
"Just like the Hihle miracle." she suggested, smiling and
golden and radiating.
lie- nodded, hut inwardly felt a hit shaky, for
he did not know which miracle. lie was afraid
of this uncertain feeling it had so often been the means of
destroying these precious moments of cameraderie. That
always happened when she slipped away from him. sat slim
and cold, all wrapped up in herself, her eyes far and like
transparent amber glass, her voice Far and not for him. When
she said, right in the middle of perfectly sensible conversa-
tions, things like "And rosemary for remembrance" or "For
God's sake let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of
the death of kings.'" I hen he was terribly confused. I Ie simply
couldn't follow her; he couldn't understand her meaning, or
if she had one. At such times he could only look at her in
pained silence, at thai Lovely golden beauty, krinkling less
and less, getting farther and farther away, aloof and self-
sufficient, like one cold hand of sunlight. Two agonizing
memories Hashed suddenly hack to him. The day they sat on
the sugar-loaf rock at the beach, thrilling after a long swim.
indolently splashing the water with their feet. She had
slipped away then, purring to herself "Five miles meander-
ing with mazy motion Thru wood and dale the sacred river
ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man. And sank
in tumult to a lifeless ocean." 'There had hcen much more'.
something aboul a waning moon and a woman wailing for her
demon lover. She had stayed away long that time, hut sud-
denly coining hack, had said that they must go home immedi-
ately, and she was silent all the wax into the city. Then that
The Smith College Monthly 29
other time — he had mentioned someone with a "strange" face.
She seemed to have heard only the one word — "It hath the
strangeness of the luring west And of sad sea-horizons," she
said dreamily. "O that lovely, lovely thing," and she had
quoted a long passage, saying upon finishing, "The most
idyllic blank verse I know. Once — once — " O she was so far
away! "Once I knew someone — for whom that was written.
It couldn't have been written to anyone else. O she was
lovely!" And he had sat there all evening, seeing that other
person in her eyes. That, in turn, reminded him of the time
she had said love was like a pancake, "so delightfully temp-
ting when fresh (It makes you say M-m-m, and you feel
M-m-m all over) , but so dreary and unappetizing when cold."
He had protested vehemently. "Love," he said, his voice
quivering with intensity, "Love— ' But he had got no far-
ther— he did not know what he was going to say. — "is the
greatest thing in the world," she had supplied, mockingly,
" 'Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things,
endureth all things.' " O sacrilege! He had been deeply hurt
by those cutting words, and by her eyes, narrowed and glin-
ting like a cat's.
So now he steered clear of the Bible miracle — that was
thin ice, and he an inexperienced skater. "Of course, all the
hairpins won't be the same," the words fairly tumbled from
his lips, bumping against one another in their haste, "there
will be many, many different kinds." Her smile was glowing
her hair and eyes krinkled. They said, "Of course — differ-
ent— these thrilling hairpins. But what will they be like?"
He hurried on. "Some polished and glittering, some softly
dull like clouded crystal." Xow he was sure of himself, now he
was happy, with a little rush of excitement. The evening
stretshed before him, golden with hairpins — hairpins.
30 The Smith College Monthly
FIVE O'CLOCK
Ernestine Gilbreth
j^iIIK sun reached down from the hills, making tiny pat-
vl/ terns on the sidelawn. The smell of warm leaves and
ggggj crisp fern drifted in from the gardens. A sudden
ireeze caught and ruffled the syringa bushes and Japanses
maples. It pushed them swaying against the porch, caught
in a rapid rhythm.
Five o'clock. This was Sarah Gibb's hour; it belonged
completely to her. Always as the front hall clock struck the
five dull heats, she had that sense of relief. Now she could
leave the baskets stacked with mending, the endless sorting
and straightening. Away from the hum of preparation in the
kitchen, from the children dressing for dinner, she sought the
sunporch. I lair askew, she ran lightly, thrusting open the
door and closing i( firmly behind her. For twenty years it
had been so a swift plunge into the cretonned hammock,
the unconscious ducking of her head, so that it could not be
seen through the windows. No one would disturb her. She
could lie in complete peace — for an hour.
The creaking of the springs as she settled herself on the
cushions, brought memories Hocking hack. Strange that her
mind centered upon the past, refusing to look ahead. De-
tails she lived in them. The present and the future be-
longed to Will. He handled the big things, delighting to plan,
lo decide with a brisk jerk of his chin. 'Tin very selfish about
decisions, Sarah." Will had confessed il immediately after
their marriage. "Besi to leave them lo me!" She had left
them for twenty years, stifled by his ability, rejoicing with
him as the plans crystallized. There was no doubt about
Will's success in everything he touched. II is business she
understood it vaguely, the change in partnership, some new
method of financing. He was proud of il. but prouder of his
home, of the four children, especially of .Jane now she had
finished her third year at college.
Will! She tingled, remembering how handsome he had
The Smith College Monthly 31
been at breakfast that morning. The coffee had been cold; he
was tired, distressed by the finical junior-partner, by Jane's
late hours. Gruff, difficult at times, but so fine, so ambitious,
— his white hair, the high glistening forehead and firm lips!
Her love for him suffused her, still made her feel choked and
breathless.
She knew that she was tired. Passing the hall mirror just
now, she had seen deep circles under her eyes, the lines that
had become tighter across her forehead. But there were so
many things to be attended to — Junior's new coat at the
tailor's ; it should have come back this morning — Jane's green
silk needed lengthening, half an inch at least — fresh flowers
on the table — all the innumerable tasks that were hers. No
ending; no beginning. From day to day she continued, re-
peating endlessly.
The children needed her less these days. Young people
wanted to shift for themselves, to think independently. No
longer must she lie awake at night listening for the twins, or
for Junior's cough. But she liked to stay up for Jane — one or
two o'clock — and last night — .She remembered now. Jane
had been drinking. "Don't kiss me good-night, Mother," — an
embarrassed little smile — "just you run on to bed — "
But she had persisted in following her into the room,
tucking her into bed. Jane — her little girl — if Will —
Perhaps Junior was right. She worried too much. "You
don't get out enough, Mother," he had tickled her under the
chin, "There's no need hanging around home all your life — "
There were her girl-scout activities, and the Ladies
Guild. Junior had smiled at that. What a big boy he was
getting to be, almost as tall as his Father.
Even the twins objected to her "fluttering around".
That had hurt. It Avas a part of Sarah's code to feel that she
was needed.
Yes she had forgotten. The children were growing up
now — the twins would ^o to high school next year. She must
remember not to kiss them before people; she should know
better. Bob had spilled some grape juice on his new gray
sweater — she must remind him — Then Jim mustn't Avear his,
the blue ones "would do until — Of course they should dress
alike — only a few years more — -
Then that chair in the dining-room. She must remem-
ber to have it fixed. Will had remarked on it again this
82 The Smith College Monthly
morning. But there were so many things — she never fin-
ished—
The hammock was swaying hark and forth gently.
Sarah's head ached. The throbbing had been much worse
these last few days. If she could only stop worrying. The
perfume from the syringa was suddenly comforting. That
sweet, sweei smell. A few blossoms in a hlue bowl would
look well in the library. Think of those hushes flowering still,
new Bowers on the same bushes. Will liked syringa too — next
to lilies-of-the-\ alley, wasn't it ] Yes, next to lilies — she
would pick some tomorrow.
The hush creeping in from the lawn, soothed her. She
found herself less tense. Beautiful world. How lucky she
was Will — the children! "Such a nice family — you should
be proud. .Mrs. Gibbs". Someone had said that just the other
day.
Yes, she was lucky. But sometimes she wondered if Will
realized how she was trying to help, to keep his home for him.
There were times — but he never meant a word of it. He was
worried lately — there was always the business, that trying
partner. Oh yes, she must ask him about the twins tonight.
Shouldn't they be outside more — playing tennis perhaps? At
their age. staying in the house, reading —
A draught whipped suddenly across her hack. Mercy!
Someone must have opened the door. Her eyes snapped
open. "I'm out here. Who wants me?"-— the exhilaration of
being needed. "Yes, Junior — "
He was apologetic, a little confused. He had disturbed
her. So handsome, wasn't he -Will all over again —
Raising her head on her hand, she surveyed him. Those
.jagged lights again. She must take it easier next time. "Sit
down, son" hut she had sensed the sudden blaze of pain in
his eyes. Had news — something had happened.
Courage! Vision! She strove for them blindly. The
world, twisted, wasn't it? He was gripping her hand until
it prickled with pain. Then at last his voice, flat, calm.
"Steady, .Mother you see Dad —
A sudden sharp pain dug through her heart. "Lord,
dear Lord " was she praying? Hut in the hack of her mind
was the dining-room chair. She must remember —
The Smith College Monthly 33
BOOK REVIEWS
THE BRIDAL WREATH
Sigrid Unset New York: Alfred Knopf, 1928
Alfred Xobel (accent on the last syllable) was a Swedish
inventor-manufacturer who left his fortune to advance the
world's literature, science, and the cause of peace. His speci-
fication for literature was that it should be the "most ex-
cellent work of an idealistic character," and this year the
Academy in Stockholm awarded the prize to Sigrid Unset.
Of her trilogy of the early 14th century Norway,
"Kristin Lavransdattef\ the first book is "The Bridal
Wreath' '. The story tells Kristin's life from early childhood,
through her romance to her marriage.
She grew from the young animal that sniffs the air,
learning its scents, to the young girl who feels vague stirrings
of responses. That everyday people live on co-existent planes
which never touch, she first sensed out on the open with her
father. But her longing for that contact so rarely effected —
that "warm and live love" — did not come until her betrothed
kissed her. Suddenly she thought back to her childhood
friend Arne, but recently dead, and knew that between her
and Simon there would always be the "uncertain shadow that
dulls life." Thus she willing went to the Sisters in Oslo at
the suggestion of Simon. "I know a little of some of the
maidens who are there," he said laughing. "They would not
throw themselves down and die of grief if two mad younkers
tore each other to pieces for their sakes. Not that I would
have such an one for my wife — but, methinks Kristin will be
none the worse for meeting new folk."
The second part, "The Garland", is her passionate, wil-
ful romance with Erland. It is not strange to us that Kristin
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The Smith College Monthly 35
saw her own and recognized him. Life behind convent walls
could not keep her and she managed meetings again and
again. "Once, while she was looking at the dark head that lay
in her lap, between her hands, something bygone Hashed on
her mind. It stood out clear,yet distant, as a homestead far
away on a mountain slope may start to sight of a sudden
from out dark clouds, when a sunbeam strikes it on a stormy
day. And it was as though there welled up in her heart all
the tenderness Arne Gyrdson had once begged for while she
did not as yet understand his words." The tenderness was
part of that "living love" which eventually drove Kristin to
having her engagement broken, and to returning home to the
silent reproach of her family.
The third part is the culmination in marriage of her
romance after long days of weary thoughts when "Kristin
thought each morning that she could bear no more, that she
could never hold out to the day's end. — But still, when the
evening came, she had held out one day more." During the
wedding preparations, she discovered that she had not been
punished with sterility by a just God, but that she was to
bear Erland a child. She alone knew it, but what her father
suspected when he saw her unmaidenly glances from the
bridal bed towards Erland was not far from the truth.
The story seemed all Kristin to me. Perhaps it was be-
cause I was Kristin during the 377 pages. All my friends
and relatives were those people, mentioned above, those
people on co-existent planes. Only Erland's plane seemed
occasionally to touch mine. Lavrans, my father, and Ragn-
frid, my mother, were in my life. But, as Kristin, I knew
them only as mother and father. As the reader I saw them
and heard their own stories from their own lips as they set-
tled down for the night after Kristin's wedding. I heard
Lavran's sigh as he said of Kristin, "She has come to the
bride-bed with the man she loves. And it was not so with
either you or me, my poor Ragnfrid."
As I said above, this is an historical novel of medieval
Norway, but far removed from the novels written by roman-
cers like Scott. Clothes are not costumes, scenery is not
the painted background of the historical cinema ; nor, on the
other hand, do the two together overwhelm the reader by
the detail of knowledge. It is a beautiful Gobelin of mellow,
rich color. Technically it shows the great skill of the weaver
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The Smith College Monthly 37
in the composition and the decoration borders, but artistically
it is even greater in the figures which seem not woven but
standing and moving against the hanging tapestry.
The story of Kristin might well be written with the
color of any age or country for its setting, it is so universal
a tale. Pick up the book to read, and, before long, time will
pass unnoticed, the shorthand of the clock will move from
figure to figure until you shut the covers of this book and
reach to pick up the next of the trilogy "The Mistress of
Husaby."
Anne Andrew 1929
THE HAPPY MOUXTIAX
Maristan Chapman The Viking Press 1928
Out of that new South which gave to contemporary
American letters Du Bose Heyward, Julian Green, Ellen
Glasgow, James Boyd, Julia Peterkin, Paul Green, Burton
Rascoe, Frances Newman, T. S. Stribling, Elizabeth Madox
Robert and Conrad Aiken, comes Maristan Chapman as the
latest to retain what is characterized in the November Har-
per's as a "poetic quality of style in dealing with the pedest-
rian prose of experience. If Ross Santee and Will James
have helped the West to escape from Zane Grey and his
confreres, so has Mrs. Chapman in The Happy Mountain
rescued the Cumberland from the clutches of John Fox, Jr.
Taking the dangerously simple triangle as her plot,
(but not as her motif) , Mrs. Chapman developes the story of
Wait- S till-on- the-Lord-Lowe's fight with Burl Bracy for
the love of Allardene Howard. The tale is written with a
keen eye for detail and an awareness of the beautiful. It is
written in an idiom new to us, the real speech of the Cum-
berland's, which is different not because the hill-billies say
"hyar" or "gwine", but because spring nights are "lown"
(gentle) , and the fields are "fere" or "fellowly," and the hills
are lost in "smirr" (mist). These coined words of intrinsic
loveliness are woven by the author into lyric passages which
are the more surprising and delightful because of their com-
plete unselfconsciousness.
uThe way the moon shrinks the hills is a sight to see!
One hour they'll be standing dark, and reaching up to
heaven, proud as they needed no salvation. Then up comes
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The Smith College Monthly 39
curling the bare, white moon and they flatten out and spread
and run down the valley, creeping and ashamed.
"The night thickened in the hollows, while the high
places were smeared with fresh moonlight. The drifting sha-
dows made the forest a living, moving thing, that at one
time both threatened and sheltered his homeplace."
Or:—
* 'Going on is like dreaming,' Waits told himself, 'and
living is just like going on. Then living and dreaming must
be the same thing, and we all of us live in a dream.' He
stopped to look at what he had said, and being unable to
make it out, went on again more quickly to get out of its
wray."
These are words that sing, and if the song is occasionally
interrupted while the words go on in a talking voice, even
that is of a pleasing quality. Mrs. Chapman's music is fine
enough to hold our interest through a fewr intermissions.
While we are still considering the mechanics of the
book, two things must be noted : that the characters stand out
as individuals instead of as types; and that the relations be-
tween them are indicated with a quick subtlety not often
found. As illustration of the first point Ave might use never-
to-be-forgotten Uncle Buddy Shannon, who "looked the
picture of a down-gone Santa Claus that had'nt been washed
since Christmas," and who made up for an irateness ex-
pressed by "scattering swear words that flew around like
spent bullets", in his eagerness to share the last crumb of
leftments in his hovel with his guest. For the second — listen
to Waits and Barsha, his mother:
" 'I'm going far 'n' beyond,' Waits went on, 'far 'n' be-
yond, and even farther than that, maybe so far as down to
Fentress and Cumberland.'
"Barsha crossed the kitchen and took the water-pail off
its shelf. 'Here! Take this to the spring for fresh water,' she
said, 'Least-ways lessen you're gone right XOW!'
"Waits grabbed the pail from her and, unmindful of
his steps, ran into the doorside and spilled the water dregs
on the clean floor.
" 'Heard the news?' Barsha asked.
"'What?'
" 'Fayre Jones fell off en a foot-log watching a fence-
rail float clown the creek yar morning. He's another that
never could do two things at one time neither/
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The Smith College Monthly 41
' 'Heard you tell that before,' Waits gave baek; and
turning at the foot of the steps he called to her: 'What's the
best way to keep May frost often the crops?'
" 'Plant 'em in June,' Barsha said. 'And if our old man
should to find us acting simple this way, the house wouldn't
be worth living in for a perfect hour." "
But to me, it is not in her natural felicity of phase, or in
her delineation of character, or in her nice indications of the
relationships between people that Marisyan Chapman is
greatest. For in Waits Lowe, torn between love and the
wanderlust, going forth from his homeland to satisfy his
"nedd to wonder", to resolve a little the Chaos left over in
him by the Lord, faring forth to find words and booklearn-
ing, coming back with Vegger his fiddle in place of these,
contented, yet still yearning, — in this Wait- S till-on- the-
Lord-Lowe, she has given us a universal creation. There is
a happiness in Mrs. Chapman's philosophy, but it is quietly
aware of pain. Most of all there's truth, for Waits, if he
finds peace in his love, is nevertheless "not one mite nearer
being easy in mind;" and at the end of a search that has
brought him back to his starting point, we find him owning:
" 'I'll have yearnings all my days 'n' years, and desires
not to be quenched, but I've come full circle, and hereafter
my shoes are no more swift for roaming; my head, maybe —
but there's Venger."
Here is the eternal seekingness of man understood,
without bitterness at the knowledge that all we ever find is
another question or another want. In this understanding,
in her insight, in her joy, however poignant, and in her loyal-
ty to what is true lies Mrs. Chapman's worth. For if her
mountains are filled with the sounds of gladness, she leaves
her forest brooding.
K. Lawrence Stapleton 1932
THE CASE OF SERGEANT GRISCHA
By Arnold Zweig.
Translated from the German by Eric Sutton.
New York: The Viking Press, 1928. $2.50.
Arnold Zweig is a new name to American readers, and
he comes to us credited with having written the best novel
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The Smith College Monthly 43
that has been written about the World War. He is not to
be confused with Stefan Zweig, familiar to many of us as
the adaptor of Ben Jonson's Volpone, reeently played in
Xew York by the Theater Guild. Arnold Zweig is a young
man, who conceived the plot of The Case of Sergeant
Grischa during the war, wrote it as a play in 11)21. and final-
ly produced it as a novel in 1927. This book is the second
of three volumes whose collective title will be A Trilogy of
the Transition. Both the first, Education before Verdun,
and the third. The Crowning of a King, have yet to be pub-
lished.
The story is concerned with the Russian peasant,
Grischa, a prisoner in a German prison camp on the eastern
front. He carefully plans and executes a dramatic escape,
spending the winter wandering through the forests towards
his Russian home, in which are his wife and the baby he has
never seen. Before long he comes upon Babka and Kolja,
two Russian refugees. Babka and Grischa live together, and
she tries to make him forget that he is an escaped prisoner
longing for his home. Finally she realizes his unhappiness
and urges him to go, even getting him another identification
tag to make things easier in case of capture. He is arrested.
The identification disc proves to be that of a Russian spy.
which means the death sentence.
He is imprisoned again, this time at Mervinsk, under
the supervision of General von Lychow. There he succeeds
in establishing his innocence, and by his good humor, his
services, and appealing peasant innocence, he ingratiates
himself with his immediate superiors, eventually coming to
the notice of the General, himself. Maj or- General S chief -
fenzahn is commander-in-chief of the German army in the
eastern sector. Yon Lychow appeals the case to him, almost
sure of its being dropped, but to his amazement Schieffen-
zahn orders the sentence carried through for the sake of
discipline. Von Lychow delays; he makes a trip to head
quarters to see the Major-General. Then there follows the
duel between old Germany's justice and new Germany's dis-
cipline which carries you through a desperate struggle to
the end of the book. It is a battle between von Lychow of
the old nobility and Schieffenzahn risen from the merchant
class; it is a battle of doffed resistance on the right side and
shrewdness on the wrong.
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Transient rooms at $2.10 ami S2.7<»
per night
Dormitorj cubicles $1.80
(209? less tor club members)
The latchstring is out for all Smith
women and their guests
W. O. KIRTLAND
Good Shoes
165 Main St., Northampton, Mast
SMART FOOTWEAR
for
SPORT AND DRESS
THE
NEW HOTEL GARAGE
Storage, Washing, Supplies
Stephen S. Sullivan Phone 8050
OPP. HOTEL NORTHAMPTON
THOMAS F. FLEMING
THE SHOE SHOP
Exceedingly Smart Models
— and moderate prices —
Painstaking, Courteous Service
12 CRAFTS AVENUE
The Smith College Monthly 45
The people in Anold Zweig's book are so convincing, so
real, that it is nearly impossible to select one characterization
more perfect than the rest. There is Grischa, whom you
pity as an unfortunate pawn in a game between greater pow-
ers. There is von Lychow, whom you admire intensely for
his sympathy and old-world courtesy, whom you love for his
kindness and gentleness to everyone with whom he comes in
contact. There is Schieffenzahn, supposed to be a study of
Ludendorff, who conforms perfectly to your conception of
the typical German officer — relentless, brilliant, hard, auto-
cratic. There is Babka — " the rough peasant woman who
had fought two fights and killed three men with her own
hand", and holding for Grischa "that entire affection in
which mistress and mother are united". She followed Grischa
to the end, bearing his child, comforting him, fighting for
him.
It is only after finishing the book that you can fully
comprehend its power, its intensity, its greatness. During the
reading you are far too conscious of the rapid motion of the
book, of Grischa's struggle for existence, of a new and un-
known aspect of the war. Arnold Zweig did not attempt to
soften the world's opinion of war time Germany. But we
can definitely admire the people who fought for Grischa.
Perhaps with the completion of Zweig's trilogy we may
grant humanity and justice to this side of Germany we are
just beginning to know.
M. M. S. Johnson 1930
College Lamps a Specialty
Repairs while you wait
A very attractive Line of Gifts
CATY'S
Electric & Gift Shop
NEXT TO BOYDEN'S
THE TARDIFF SHOP
Antiques and
Reproductions
40 CENTER ST.
Careful attention given to packing and
shipping Students' Furniture.
Tel. 2867-M
The Frank E. Davis Store
Watches, diamonds, high class gold
jewelry, silverware, clocks, fountain
pens, novelties, leather goods and an
especially good variety of costume
jewelry. Some of the mosi attractive
being very moderately priced. Watch
and jewelry repairing solicited.
FRANK E. DAVIS
164 Main St.
ARTHUR P. WOOD
THE JEWEL STORE
197 MAIN TEL. 2898
THE MANSE
Julia B. Cahill
1 Green St. Northampton
The College Girl's Favorite Store for
Immediate Wants
Girdles, Corselettes, Beaudeaux, Gloves
Silk Underwear, Crepe de Chine
Underwear, Sanitary Goods, Hosiery
I [andkerchiefs
FOR COLLEGE
NOTE BOOKS
FOUNTAIN PENS
AND STATIONERY
go to
J. W. HEFFERNAN'S
153 Main St.
SUNSHINE LUNCH
PLEASANT ST.
Opp. Post Oil ice Northampton
Popular American
Actress
and Star of the Stage
retaining a trim figure
"To slay slender reach for a Lucky Strike
instead of a tweet when your succt-iooth
tempts you. I hux e practised ihisfoi year*
and find it a most effective «av of wflll
ing a trim figure. There is somethins t<>
the toasting process which develops ■
flavor in Luckics that completely satisfies
the desire for stveels. Af the same time,
toasting lakes out the irritants and Lucku-\
never affect the voice."
BlLLlt BURK1
A reasonable proportion of fUtfU in the
diet is recommended, hut t he authorities
are overw helminu tint too many fatten-
ing sw eets are h.irmful and that too main
such are eaten hv the American pcoph .
So, lor moderation's sake we say: —
♦•REACH FOR A LUCKY
INSTEAD OF A SWEET."
It's toasted
No Throat Irritation -No Cough.
:) 19/9. Tli'- Anu-ricnn Tobacco Co, Mnnuf.-ut urt rs
BOARD
OF
EDITORS
Vol. XXXVII FEBRUARY, 1929 No. 5
EDITORIAL BOARD
Editor-in-chief, Anne Lloyd Basinger, 1929
Managing Editor, Ernestine Gilbreth, 1929
Book Review Editor, Elizabeth Botsford, 1929
Katherine S. Bolman, 1929 Priscilla S. Fairchild, 1930
Elizabeth Wheeler, 1929 Elizabeth Sha^v, 1930
Rachel Grant, 1929 Martha H. Wood, 1930
Sallie S. Simons, 1930
Art — Nancy Wynne Parker, 1930
BUSINESS STAFF
Business Manager, Sylvia Alberts, 1929
Mary Sayre, 1930 Anna Dabney, 1930 Mary Folsom, 1931
Agnes Lyall, 1930 Esther Tow, 1931 Sarah Pearson, 1931
Advertising Manager, Gertrude Cohen, 1929
Assistant Advertising Manager, Lilian Supove, 1929
Circulation Manager, Ruth Rose, 1929
The Smith College Monthly is published at Northampton, Mass., each month from
October to June, inclusive. Terms $2.00 a year. Single copies 25c.
Subscriptions may be sent to Sylvia Alberts, 12 Fruit Street, Northampton.
Advertising Manager, Gertrude Cohen, Capen House
Contributions may be left in the Monthly box in the Note Room.
Entered at the Post Office at Northampton, Mass., as second class matter.
Metcalf Printing <§• Publishing Company, Northampton, Mass.
"Accepted for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1203,
Act of October 3, 1917. Authorized October 31, 1913.'"
sill manuscript should be typewritten and in the Monthly Box by the fifteenth
of the month to be considered for the issue of the following month.
All manuscript should be signed with the full name of the writer.
EIGHT-O
TAXI SERVICE
LOW RATES
You will always find our rates within
the means of your pocketbook. Giving
the same service to everyone, charging
everyone the same rate.
TAXI SERVICE
25c per passenger when more than one ride.
PHONE 80
COLLEGE TAXI CO.
CONTENTS
1
The Land of Opportunity
Archeologist
The Day
Sappho
London Streets
Iseult
At the Sight of Blood
Manana
The Lekythos
Gardenias
Book Reviews
Scarlet Sister Mary
Joseph and His Brethren
The Lost Lyrist
Mary Chase, 1931 5
Patty Wood, 1930 10
Priscilla S. Fairchild, 1930 11
Marion Bus sang, 1932 14
Ernestine Gilbreth, 1929 15
Marion Bussang, 1932 22
Dorothy M. Kelley, 1931 23
Sallie S. Simons, 1930 25
Frances Ranney, 1929 26
Edith Starks, 1929 27
28
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College
Monthly
THE LAND OF OPPORTUNITY
Mary Chase 1931
5«jARY first met Joseph Sabin just after he graduated
>M from college, where he had been revently regarded by
T(fM the undergraduates as a literary genius. He was at-
tracted by her strange, Slavic beauty, and she, for her part,
was much impressed by his interesting if somewhat ape-like
appearance, and by the tradition of intelligence that had
grown up about him. She knew also that he cherished great
hopes of being a newspaper man, and writing for the Atlan-
tic in his spare moments.
By the time she married him, he had made a few steps
toward fulfilling his ambitions — he was a reporter on the
Chicago Daily News and had had an article on the evils of
city life accepted by the Atlantic. Alary had little sympathy
with his views on city life, or on life in general, but she re-
spected his ambitions and his rather meager achievements.
So she married him, hoping vaguely that she could handle
him and make him a credit to her.
For seven or eight years he worked steadily and was pro-
gressing, although too slowly to suit him. He complained
that he could never write, cramped in a city as he was — that
he had genius, as he could show if he were free, and living
the sort of life he fondly supposed an educated farmer could
live. Alary was contented in the city, in spite of the fact that
they \\ere uncomfortably poor, and always had difficulty in
taking care of the six children who appeared in quick succes-
sion. They, however, furnished Joseph with an excellent
argument — country life is good for children — but still Mary
refused to leave the city. However, the next April, when
6 The Smith College Monthly
Joseph was sent down to Florida to cover a murder trial in
Tampa, he bought an orange grove, disregarding Mary's
wishes and came back to fetch her and the children. He was
full of glowing but rather apologetic descriptions of the
platt "There S a house of course it isn't very nice yet.
but I'll fix it up for you. A creek that only needs cleaning
out runs right by the house. The schools are good they're
rather Car away, hut the school bus goes right by our gate.
The roads aren't very good yet, hut they're putting in new
ones next year. Anyway it's primitive and healthy and that's
what I want. It's warm the children can run about hare-
foot all day. I'll have a man to manage the grove; and
you know how much oranges cost -we'll make money and
1 'II he free and can write."
Tlu- train stopped beside a small sign which said
"Sutherland Station", and with the help of two porters.
Joseph got the- bags and the children out. Near the sign a
very old Chevrolet was waiting, with a thin, drooping old
man standing beside it. lie took the hags and some of the
children and packed them in the hack seat, while the rest of
them sat in front. The sun had made the car almost un-
bearably hot. The metal door burned Mary's arm when she
leaned against it: and the younger children, crowded to-
gether in the hack, began to cry. The old man started the
car. and. following two ruts in an otherwise blank, Hat and
uninteresting field, they rode for an hour or two through a
series of fields, each a repetition of the first, with almost the
same arrangement of scrubby palmettos and tall, naked pine
trees. After a long time the ruts turned and began to run
along beside a narrow creek, choked up with weeds and poi-
sonous-looking loots. Mary decided that that must he the
creek that "only needed cleaning out", and looking ahead
saw a house, distorted to her sight hy the oily waves of heat
rising from the ground. "That's ours," said Joseph, and af-
ter jolting over an insecure bridge they Stopped at the gate.
It was a blind-looking house, dirty-white, with torn screens
in the windows and a poreh shuttered with tarred paper. The
grass had obviously been left to itself for a long time, and
had grown Coarse and stalklike, tangled in a thick mat over
Mm ground. There was oik big tree shading the west side
of the house, two smaller ones with big white flowers on
ih« in. and a few bushes. Behind the prove, Marv could sec
The Smith College Monthly 7
the beginnings of the grove, and on each side, the waste land,
like the fields through which they had come. "See that land?"
said Joseph, "Nobody's ever put a plow in it before. I'm
going to set out a new grove there." While he was talking he
kept brushing his hand across his face, and soon Mary
noticed little, darting black specks before her eyes. She dis-
covered that they were gnats who seemed to be attracted by
her eyes and who danced back and forth in front of them,
occasionally darting in at her eyeballs. To escape them she
went into the house while Joseph took the children off to see
the grove.
For several months she could think of nothing but the
heat and the gnats. Whenever she went out, the hot light
rested like a weight on the top of her head, so that she felt
crushed under it. And indoors or out, the gnats spun like
black specks before her eyes and stuck to her skin. She was
afraid of this tropical country where everything happened
so quickly — it seemed to her as if she could see the grass
grow, die, and decay. The color of the leaves was also
strange to her. At first she often tried to find a word to
describe it, but since she always failed, she soon stopped try-
ing. It was a dark, dull green, almost black, and the surface
of the leaves was rough and dusty, although there was no
dust anywhere — only the sand in which nothing good would
grow. Joseph and the children seemed to have no such feel-
ings of insecurity and distrust. The children played hide-
and-seek in the thick palmetto clumps. Joseph was happy,
walking through the tall weeds, directing the negroes in the
clearing. Mary was afraid. At night when the tall pines
stood stark and black against the sky, and the land looked
flat and lifeless, it seemed like a setting for a great funeral ;
but in the daytime the land was agressively alive and grow-
ing, always fighting her and her family. So she stayed in the
house, while Joseph and the children lived outdoors.
When winter came she felt less unhappy. The country
no longer seemed so oppressively tropical, and the grass and
weeds stopped growing at the fearful rate that had weighed
on her mind so, at first. Joseph had started a book, and, with
the cold weather, he and the younger children were in the
house most of the day, while the older ones were away at
school. But in the spring, Joseph found from the sale of his
fruit crop that orange groves were not as profitable' as he had
8 The Smith College Monthly
dreamed. He dismissed the negroes, and with the help of
an old cracker, did the work himself. Then Mary noticed
that the oldest boy was thin, and looked pale and unhealthy.
So she and the hoy made the long day's journey to Tampa,
crawling through the miles of deep, sandy ruts. The boy
had hookworm, and they stayed for a week in Tampa, while
he was being cured. After that, the children never went
barefoot, and when, a month or two later, one of them met
a rattlesnake in the grove, Mary could see that they wore
beginning to share her terror.
Joseph felt no fear, hut he was beginning to he driven
by the land. By the time they had been in Florida two years,
he had stopped writing entirely and spent all hs time work-
ing in the grove, coming home at night too tired to keep
awake. The work hent his back and made his shoulders and
arms heavy and strong. He would come shambling home at
night, hent over with his long arms hanging in front of him.
his hands almost touching his knees. Mary sometimes won-
dered if he swung; from tree to tree in the grove, like the apes
he resembled more and more.
She feared these thoughts and buried herself in her
work, to keep from thinking. She felt safe in the feeling
of detachmenl her work gave her, and gradually became in-
different to the life around her, and even to the circumstances
of her own life. On the rare occasions when she caught Sight
of herself in a mirror, she could see that the fire and color
which had made her beautiful, had gone out of her face. With
her hail", faded to a drab brownish grey, and her shrunken
face, she was becoming like the old cracker women who sat
in the hot sun outside their ramshackle cabins and dipped
snuff. Hut she was past caring even for that. A hurricane
came and lore up half of their trees. .Joseph worked steadily
for a year, and had just repaired the damage when there
was a freeze and the fruit crop was lost. Then, slowly, their
fortunes improved. Land became more valuable, the fruit
crop was good for three years in succession; Joseph boughl
.1 Ik \\ car. It was all the same to Mary, In summer it was
a tilth hotter, and in winter a little colder; she baked and
scrubbed, and the time passed, as it always had.
Oik morning in the fall, while she was working in the
kitchen, she heard a shout from the yard. She went to the
door and s;iw Joseph leaning against the gate. "Snakebite,"
The Smith College Monthly 9
he said. She ran out to him, and, ripping oft' his stocking and
rolling up his trouser-leg. she saw the two red marks in his
swollen leg. "I'm done for," he said, "Get me a piece of
paper, for a will. I want you to stay here — the grove and the
land — ■" She didn't wait to hear any more, but ran into the
house to get the medicine and the paper. While she was
fixing the potash, she looked out of the window and saw
Joseph, squatting on the ground with his leg doubled under
him and his heavy hands exploring the bite, She could think
of nothing but the thought that had obsessed her for so long—
how like an ape he looked. Why should she be ruled by an
ape? She ran back with the solution and the bandage, and
saying, "There's no time to make a will," she put the tourni-
quet on his leg, not twisting it very tightly. While she
rubbed the potash into the bite, he told her about the snake.
"I was pruning a tree and stepped backwards. Something
hit me in the leg, very lightly, and I thought I'd stepped on
a stick. When I got around to the other side of the tree and
saw the snake, I knew what had happened, but then it was
too late, so I ran." Then he closed his eyes and slumped for-
ward. By the time Mary had the car ready, she had to shake
him to arouse him, and then, finally, almost to drag him to
the car. When the long ride to the nearest town was over,
he was dead asleep, and the doctor could not wake him. He
died, in the doctor's office, that afternoon.
When the doctor came out, Mary was looking steadily
at the Avail opposite. After he told her, she said nothing. She
was thinking that, with. luck, she and the children could leave
for the north within two weeks.
10 The Smith College Monthly
ARCHEOLOGIST
Patty Wood 1930
Remember, remember —
Why must you always he *~
Remembering?
I think, for you. today
Is hut a time for seeing yesterdays.
And there is nothing in tomorrow.
Remember, remember —
You dig, and hurrow. ferret out.
And when, from some ohseure and rotting tomb,
You have unearthed a moment of the past.
"Treasure!" you cry and. gloating,
Dangle it before my eyes.
Remember, remember —
I hate it. hate
I ts brokenness, its failure;
What of loveliness there w as
Is tarnish,
All of magic has been lost.
And there are tatters
Remember, remember
Why must you always he
Remembering?
The Smith College Monthly 11
THE DAY
Priscilla Fairchijd 1930
@ ELL this has been a day," she sighed, sinking suddenly
down to the purple flowers and green leaves of the
sofa. "This has been quite a day," she repeated, and
felt experimentally around her head for the wandering
prongs of hair-pins poised like dragon flies for flight.
Even getting up at seven to drive Fred to the train
didn't make the morning long enough. Mrs. Doyle had
come to clean the pantry after breakfast. All the china
taken down, washed, dried, put back again, clean bubbles
of glass glowing on the lace-petticoated shelves, hot smell of
ammonia and soapy water, garrulous Irish voices resound-
ing through the house all day.
About ten she got the lists and gave the orders to
Norah. A long process this, in which she stood tranced,
ecstatic, tapping the oil-cloth of the table with a pencil,
thinking of nothing, of everything, the fly buzzing in the
window, summer and bathing and wet hair, the garden to
be weeded, strawberries, hungry children. "Oatmeal," she
said trumphantly, "oatmeal, I knew it all the time." Norah,
faithful acolyte, murmured "Oatmeal, of course." So they
went through all the list, searched the ice-box, peered into
the closet for red and yellow packages. "Cinnamon," she
hummed, "clove, allspice and mustard, red pepper, white
pepper, salt, sugar and tea. Now for dinner shall we have
. . . ." Her mind spun off again. Stop at the bank, write
to Talbot ; Anne needs a new evening dress. Would she look
well in black? A miniature Anne in a black dress pirouetted
through her brain, fascinating, adored by everyone, the most
attractive girl at the party. . . .
"I shall get the material tomorrow, and make it next
week when I have more time. Such a lovely idea in my
mind."
" And caramel custard for dessert, then, that's
always nice."
Caramel custard and string beans are favorites of
1 J The Smith College Monthly
>li< was going upstairs whistling an assortment of
tunes curiously jumbled together, and as she moved
through the rooms, the crystal <In>|>s on the old-fashioned
lamps tinkled an obligate to her firm tread and the click of
her In < Is.
Then the laundryman made his weekly dramatic rush
up the dm
"Yes, the wife was better, thank you. It was a rotten
job driving a truck around, waiting at hack doors in the rain
and mud. Fine open winter it had been though.'1
Soapy must be tied out. lie watched her from the
window scat where he lay in a pool of sunlight, his tail
thumping joy and expectation. "You worm," she said
through her closed teeth, and swooping suddenly over him.
crumpled his ear in her fingers, "you little brown worm."
Tied to the tree, he saw her walk away over the sodden
lawn. She picked tip a handful of dried sticks from under
the hedge, to scatter them forgetfully in a minute as she
pulled three weeds out of the flowerbed. The earth had a
rotten feel, a rotten smell, the musk decaying before the
kernel sprouts. "So many leaves to he burned, and borders
eded, and the garden must he ploughed soon. Perhaps
ii< \t summer we can have a man ... I must pop down
and give the furnace a little shake/'
Hut ^1k still stood, her grey-green eyes decked with
d staring aimlessly across the road at a telegraph pole,
i hi' hand clutching a headless weed, the other holding a cook-
hook, till finally the Vague current of her thoughts allowed
her to move again, and whistling loudly, tunelessly, she
entered the house.
Immediately lit' fell upon her with the soft clatter of
a dropped pack of cards. Norah and .Mrs. Doyle wrangled
m the Kitchen. A man came to solicit money for the Salva-
t ion A rmj .
"After lunch. " she thought, and walking through the
dining room, 8he stopped to rub a spot off the sideboard,
immediately and utterly forgetting her motive Tor coming
into the room al all. "After lunch. I shall just lie down and
take a lit 1 1 < nap, I don't believe Pve sat down once all day."
The Smith College Monthly 13
But after lunch, (on a tray in front of the window, the
leaves of the morning paper strewn generously around on
the floor), the telephone whirred with the rasp of an insect
on an August night, and Soapy harked out of devastating
boredom. Xorah cleaning brass downstairs, ("I'm sure
she's spilling polish on the hard wood floor, and it does eat
into the wax so.") Xorah dropped the andirons with the
gesture of a man beating cymbals in an orchestra, determined
to make the most of his moment, that has finally arrived.
The two worst possible bores came to call. Under the
rumble of platitudes her mind leaped and darted like a
speckled trout. How long will they stay, oh God, how long!
Why do fat women with yellow faces wear light green?
Her eyes wandered to the book-cases. Those glass
doors must be washed, you can hardly see the names. Does
any one nowadays read Rutlcdge and Misunderstood? ....
How I loved them. Little wrinkles ran up the sides of her
nose as she smiled.
Always the outer flow of conversation rambled on. Xow
and then, vaguely, she fell a little behind, repeated herself,
asked meaningless questions. ''How the children laugh at
me when I do that ... I must write Talbot after dinner."
It was when they had gone that she murmured to her-
self. "This has been a day." The room closed in about her
with that intimacy of a late winter afternoon when it is
nearly time to go upstairs and dress. Little rumbling noises
crept out of the fire. Soapy snored heavily. At last, at
last, she could sink into herself, think of nothing at all, have
no demands made on her, just the luxury of sitting and
staring.
The door clicked and swung. "Fred, is *hat you? Are
you very cold? Just a minute, and I'll ring for more hot
water. Did you have a hard day?"
"Well, we sold five hundred bales today. The market
was good, silver has gone np. Skinner came into the office
and I told him . . . ."
His eyes were still very blue, sailor's eyes, puckered in
the corners from squinting, a little faded now. almost the
color of that china cow she had had as a little girl. It was
really a jug, you lifted it up by the tail, and poured the milk
1 4 The Smith College Monthly
out of its mouth, always a distinct shock to see. The jug
and the green hook with the gold title "Little George's
Journey to the Land of Happiness," were always associated
somehow
"And what have you been doing today?" he was saying.
" B< en \ ery busj .'"
"Oh no. just the same old round. I don't really think
I've done a single thing all day."
SAPHO
Marion Bussang 1932
When did they last
Plait your hair,
By a (hep sea?
Your purple hair?
Did you tip hark your head
Exquisitely \
And slip a soft smile
From your perfect lips?
I )id you touch your dim hair
With your fingertips?
By a deep, cool sea.
( )ne afternoon
Near M vtilene, . .
The Smith College Monthly 15
LONDON STREETS
Ernestine Gilbreth 1929
THE INTRODUCTION
For the pleasure of my readers as well as for my own, I must piek
and choose those who have an itching inclination to be conducted through
the London Streets. For their satisfaction and my own diversion we
must be a company stouthearted and sturdy-legged. I shall not expose
the vanities and vices of the town to those who smart easily, whose eyes,
ears and noses are forever a matter of care and preservation. But if
there be amongst you, a suitable temper to walk about and take a com-
pleat view, I bid you welcome to our company. We'll take a turn quite
round and then we shall escape nothing worth observing.
leec
f** E have left a world of peace, law and traffic regulations,
vl/ and come by foot to eighteenth century London. Here
is the very metropolis of England, a city which is in-
the heart of the commercial and financial systems, the
warehouse and clearing-house of business life. Stealthily it
has crept along the lines of existing roads or old country
lines, frequently submerging the cow-pastures themselves.
Ever widening, it extends through new and further roads.
Here is a growing residential district, alive with unceasing
progress and more definitely, congested masses of people.
Here are streets straggling in every direction, topsy-turvy
with life and action.
There remain many dark alleys, foul, dismal and devoid
of light or fresh air. Narrow streets retain their ancient pav-
ing of hard stone hammered into the ground, their filthy
gutters sometimes a succession of stagnant puddles, some-
times almost a rapid stream. Broader streets are beginning
to be provided with flat paving of freestone; the more im-
portant ones have posts. The dangerous kennel in the mid-
dle of the streets tends to be replaced by gutters on either
side. One looks in vain for curbs. Obstacles to ventilation,
light and walking, project from the houses. But there are
I () The Smith College Monthly
suggestions of improvement. The old personal obligation of
each householder to pave and keep in repair the street in
Front of his own door, has been replaced by a commission
appointed for this very purpose.
Before these changes due to the new Paving Avts, of
streets had suggested a colony of Hottentots. It was diffi-
cult to rest lain the nighl men and scavengers from emptying
their carts in the streets. The accumulated filth thrown out
from the doors and windows of neighboring houses meant "a
menace to health and safety." Householders invariably failed
to sweep the- road in front of their houses. The passerby
was constantly in fear of stumbling into a projecting bal-
cony, unfenced open cellar, or unprotected coal-shoot.
Should he- escape being struck by a falling flower-pot, there
was still danger of being drenched by spouts projecting
from the- house-tops.
Hut many inconveniences still characterize the streets.
In spite- of continued effort to bring the houses into line,
there are shops, especially on the smaller streets, which throw
out bay windows, or doorsteps advancing into the narrow
pathway. The pavement remains in a ruinous condition even
where it consists of nothing hut round stones; there is con-
stant danger of bullocks driven through the' streets. One is
ii< \ er safe from the packs of dogs taught to defend the* house,
lo fly at strangers and to fight in the* ring. Crowds of
pars swarm back and forth. A merciless procession of
street-cries jibes with the bawling from the shops.
In the early pari of the- century, the' lighting as we'll as
the paving was considered the personal responsibility of the
householders. Lights were supposed to be hung out during
the- six winter months from six to e'le've'n P. M. on dark
nights by the calendar. (On eighteen nights in each noon.;
The shops which were usually kept open until eight or nine-
o'clock in the evening, made the streets (phte- agreeable with
their half-hearted Lights. Hut il was nevertheless necessary
for those who sallied forth in the evening, to he* accompanied
to and from their card parties, by 'prentices carrying clubs.
The Paving Ads however, brought both the- lighting power
and ih< new paving projects under a body of trustees. Also,
.is in the case of paving, to no purpose. The- lamps which
were lit at sunset, were mostly out by eleven o'clock, because
t h< light ers si< >l< most of the oil.
The Smith College Monthly 17
The streets have their distinct atmosphere. Loeal odors
of all varieties and degrees of intensity, keep the pedestrian
ever-conscious of his sense of smell. Thames Street is the re-
gion of fish and meat markets and oil merchants. Past Fleet
Street one becomes aware only of the noxious open stream
at the foot of Ludgate Hill. It is a relief to reach "the per-
fumed paths of fair Pall Mall." Indeed as Gay points out
in Trivia
"Experienced men innr'd to city ways
Xeed not the Calendar to count their days."
Addison expands the subject in the Spectator, and
emphasizes the prevalence of street-cries. " There is nothing
Avhich more astonishes a foreigner and frights a country
squire." He divides them neatly into the vocal and instru-
mental. "As for the latter they are at present under great
disorder. A freeman of London has the privilege of dis-
trubing a whole street for an hour altogether with the twankle
of a brass kettle or frying pan." There are also the watch-
riian's thump at midnight, the sowgelder's horn. But "Vocal
cries are of much larger extent and indeed so full of incon-
gruities and barbarisms that we appear a distracted city to
foreigners." There are "the excessive alarms in turnip sea-
son", the call of the pickle hawkers "which like the song of
the nightingale is not heard above two months". "And one
cannot be deaf to the shrill note of the milkman, the hollow
voice of the copper, and the sad and solemn air with which
the public are often asked if they have any chairs to mend."
Attention is also attracted by the signboards hung out
before almost every house. Monstrous, heavy with ironwork,
they can be heard swinging ponderously in the wind, adding
to the uproar of the streets. The sign painters enjoy a fine
business and keep large stacks of them "both carved and
painted, spit grapes and sugar-loaves, lasts and teapots in
the round, as well as the still familiar lions and white
harts." Every shop has its sign of copper, pewter or wood,
painted and gilt, some very magnificent.
The finest shops are scattered down the courts and pas-
sages. Those on Strand, Fleet Street and Cheapside are
very elegant, enclosed with great glass doors and adorned on
the outside with pieces of ancient architecture. The shops
of the drapers are particularly beautiful, inspired by the
is The Smith College Monthly
noble fronts of banking houses with emblematic statins over
the doors. The windows of the jewelers and pawnbrokers
concentrate upon respendeni window-displays to the public.
Many of the shops hav< sonn outward mark signifying
th< occupation of their tenants. The baker lias a latice; the
al( -hous< . checkers; the barber his pole; the clothier, a golden
sh( ( p. Bui walking along the street one is aware of many
less obvious objects the milk-score chalked on every door-
post : the "flying-barber" on a Sunday morning; white glo^ e
mm a knocker to show the arrival of a child ; pickpockets held
under the pump, or the butcher's orchestral hand of morrcn -
bones and cleavers congratulating a wedding party.
Bui the London Spy in describing London, is more im-
pressed by the number of advertisements "hung thick round
the Pillars of each Walk. The Wainscote was adorn'd with
Quacks Hills instead of Pictures. Never an Emperick in the
town hut had his name in a lacquer'd Frame containing ;<
a t'aii- Invitation for a Fool and his Money soon to he parted."
The streets seem alive with amateur roysterers and pro-
fessional pickpockets and footpads. The criminals comprise
the Bold-bucks and Hellfires. (We find no evidence pointing
to the existence of .Mohocks.) Less harmless arc those whose
favorite pastime is the breaking of windows or storming of
hearses. The Apprentice hoys evidently find in these harm-
less pursuits, their only outlet for amusement and exercise.
Gambling, the ciub, tavern and alehouse were doubtless res-
ponsible for had masters and consequently lor troublesome
apprentices. So we find these hoys, any hour in the evening,
shouting and clearing the pavement of all persons, boxing
w it 1 1 those wIki dare to offer resistance, or in times of scarcity.
fighting among themselves with sticks.
More serious are the rogue's den. the smashing mint, the
abodes of villains, thieftakers and informers, found in every
eet. Even in the busiesl thoroughfares such as Ludgate
Hill, the pedestrian must be prepared to fighl with club or
tists. The rogues themselves are limitless. The very women.
'i the common prostitutes, know how to use their fists as
well .-is bo rob.
Stealing of luggage occurs all day long. Without so
much aa a l»\ your leave," the vistor to London may see
his trunk disappear. Hackney coachmen stand in villi the
thieves and take their 'regulars". Rvervone is a "smasher"
The Smith College Monthly 19
and a successful one. Caddees profess to be fellows hanging
around for six penny jobs, but devote their energy to pass-
ing off bad money for good, and selling it to everyone for
handsome profits. Picking pockets has also been reduced to
a science. Thieves mix in every crowd, wherever there is
any show or exhibiton of goods. "If a horse tumbles or a
woman faints away, they run to increase the crowd and con-
fusion; they create a bustle and try over the pockets of un-
suspecting persons." Or they get up sham fights and calm-
ly rob the bystanders.
All day long the streets resound with fighting. "The
journeyman of every trade, the fellowship porter, the steve-
dor, the carter, the waggoner, driver, sailor, watchman,"
are prepared to defend the rights of the lower classes, should
the occasion happily present itself. But gentlemen also
carry into the streets a stout walking stick far more useful
than a sword. They too are very anxious to use their fists
and are eager for a bully shoving into the crowd, or a per-
son taking the wall of everyone. It is considered a right
and a pleasure to treat footpads and pickpockets to a cudg-
elling or the pump. In every crowd the hasty quarrel, the
oaths and the blasphemies of disputants, the fight in the ring
sure to be promptly formed either with fists or cudgels,
mean the blocking of the streets by radiant onlookers who
remain to see the ordeal by battle decided. At the mere
suggestion of a disagreement, the porters and dogs run bark-
ing from all corners, and the handicrafts leave their garrets,
making a circle about the boxers. The standers-by are care-
ful to see the laws of combat strictly observed; they block
and crowd the streets until the battle is decided.
We find aside from the vehement action in the streets,
a motley group of people who make their living here. Lon-
don is a favorite place for beggars and vagrants of all de-
crees and kinds. Any persons born with a defect or deform-
ity, or maimed in such a way as to be rendered miserable,
have free liberty of showing their nauseous sights to terrify
people and force them to get rid of them. It is frequently
the custom for those less hideously deformed to stir up busi-
ness and competition by borrowing babies at 4d. a day from
the parish nurses.
If the streets seem noisy and alive during the daytime,
they are equally so at night. The city seems fairly to swarm
20 The Smith College Monthly
with waifs marching about in the dark, playing before the
houses. The London Spy niel such a "Gang of Tatterde-
malions" "A very young Crew of diminutive Vagabonds
who marched along in rank and file like a little Army of
Prestor John's Countrymen, as if in order to attack a bird's
nest." "When questioned one of the Peri Frontiers an-
swered We Master, are the City Black Guards marching
to our Winter quarters. Lord bless you Master, give us a
Penny or a half-penny amongsi us, and you shall hear us
(if you please) say the Lord's Prayer backwards, swear the
Compass round, give a new Curse to every step in the .Monu-
ment, call a Whore as many propel' names as a Peer has
titles. We gave the poor Wretches a penny and away they
trouped with a thousand God bless ye's, as Ragged as old
Stockin' .Mops, and I'll warrant you as Hungry as so many
Cat-ta-Mountains. Vet seem'd as Merry as they were Poor.
and as Contented as they were Miserable."
The London Spy is also a pretty judge of women and
has much to say of the mistresses and whores found in
abundance on every street. "They were to he had of all
Ranks, Qualities, Colours, Prices and Sizes from the Whet
Scarf to the Scotch-plaid petticoat. Commodities of all sorts
\\(iit off, for there wanted not a suitable Jack to every
Jill."
Quacks also conduct flourishing businesses, addressing
the rabble and recommending vehemently, "A sound mind
in .'i sound body as the Learned Doctor I Ionorficieahilit ud-
initatibusque" has it. and selling "Pacquets of Universal
Hoflg-podg." One also finds innumerable Puppet shows
where monkeys in balconies imitate men. and men. monkeys,
to engage "some of the weaker pari of the Multitude, as
women and Children." The London Spy also engagingly
describes the storekeepers "a parcel of Nimble Tungu'd
Sinners" who leap out and swarm aboul the pedestrian like
"so many Bees aboul a Honeysuckle, shrieking "Buy any
Clothes?" Chimney-sweeps, the chandler with his basket, and
the butcher with hjs greasy tray, likewise assail the unsus-
p< cting.
Even on ;i respectable Sunday morning the streets are
not bare of affronts. People going to church must fairly
jump over rows of drunken men laid out on the pavement
I" Fore the public houses, Even in the most respectable (lis-
The Smith College Monthly 21
tricts the ears of ladies are offended by the bawling of coarse
songs in the taverns, and by the balladmongers turning every
event from a victory to the hanging of a highwayman into
a ribald song.
Indeed the streets seem teeming with disorder. There
is obviously no street patrol by day, no means of regulating
the slow, congested traffic, of capturing thieves, of dispers-
ing curious crowds. It is optimistically expected that the
people themselves will preserve order. The Government
does offer large rewards for the apprehension of street rob-
bers, but to little effect. The city although spasmodically
admonished to clean itself, to light itself, to rid itself of
rogues, and to keep a guard at night, remains in an almost
primitive state of unconsciousness. The watch is not set
until nine o'clock in the winter, ten in the summer and
spring, leaving therefore, four or five hours in complete
darkness. But at night as well as day, it is true that the
'prentices are able and anxious to fight. They make an at-
tempt to preserve order, in their own Avay.
The daily patrol or watch is inefficient and ineffective,
subject always to uncomplimentary opinion and expression.
The watchmen themselves are stout and sturdy fellows.
Their fault is obviously not one of age, but of eagerness to
take bribes. So the poor streetwalker, for example, in
order to exist, has always to bribe the watch first, the con-
stable next, and the magistrate (if she ever appears before
him) last. These fellows:
"Do most thro' Interest, and but few thro' Zeal
Betwixt the Laws, and the Offender deal."
(Ward, The London Spy.)
The great good that they seem to do in the streets is "to Dis-
turb People every Hour with their Bawling, under pretence
of taking care that they may sleep quietly in their Beds;
and call every old Fool by name seven times a Night, for
fear he should rise and forget it next Morning; and instead
of preventing Mischief, make it, by carrying Honest per-
sons to the Counter, who would fain walk peaceably home
to their own Habitation; and provoke Gentlemen by their
sauciness to Commit these Follies 'tis their business properly
to prevent. In short, it is reasonable to believe they play
M The Smith College Monthly
more Rogue's tricks than ever they Detect and occasion more
Disturbances in the Streets than ever thev Hinder."
Behind ns the London Streets stretch into the distance.
The pavement is more even now, and glides smoothly under
one's fret. The crowds are less: the bellowing of SOngS and
street-cries has become suddenly faint, a mere jangle of
notes flung upon the memory. 'There are only the ache of our
legs, the ierk of our eyes, an imperceptible tingle of the ears,
to recall the reality of this world so vital, so blundering with
action. But these one treasures as something apart, yet
personal, ever-resounding with life and vigor.
[SEULT
Marion Bussang 1932
Powerless, oh white beauty, to have gone
Bruising your marvellous feel over the stone.
Down into caverns under the sea alone;
Creeping into the dark, with the fetid chill
Of the deep and the cold and the silence trying to till
Your wonderful hair and your eyes and your throat, until
i
Only a shadow stretched in the gloom is all
I -<l't of the body of [seult; never a tall
Candle lighting the rare head, dark in its fall.
The Smith College Monthly 23
AT THE SIGHT OF BLOOD
Dorothy M. Kelley 1931
>— rlLWAYS afterward, at the sight of blood Lucha re-
jL| member with sickening intensity the afternoon of
5HI93 the revolution. She felt an echo of the fear that had
stretched tightly, like sharp, glittering wires, across the
muffled sounds that came to them through the mattresses,
which buttressed them under the table. Shots suddenly
whirred, and hummed metallically, followed by the crashing
of heavy wooden doors, and screams of pain, clashing of
steel, and trickle of crumbling plaster walls. Horses' hoofs
clattered and rang on the cobblestones. Soft Spanish voices
had turned hard and hateful, were cursing each other. The
constant echoing of the bullets in the narrow street turned
the air itself into a shrill roar which penetrated through the
dull grey mattresses as if sight had been taken and only
sound remained.
The reverberations of the shots, the thud of falling walls,
the pulsations of the house, shook them like noiseless organ-
pipes. The big door of the patio rattled. To the children
it was like the shaking of the universe, to have that immense
door waver. Suddenly, the cathedral bell pealed out, as if
its fear had overcome its silence. The sustained ringing
throbbed fainter and fainter and died into the air. At such
such a moment the well-loved, mellow striking could por-
tend only evil. The glass of a window-pane crackled and
tinkled to the floor. Bobbie began to pray rapidly and in-
congruously, "Now I lay me down to sleep," just as fast as
his stiffened lips could chant. Lucha realized that Inez had
been sobbing mechanically, but was evidently now wearied
into silence.
The stuffiness between the mattresses was unbearable,
they could breathe only hot, musty air through the padded
greyness. Lucha tried frantically to awake from this noisy,
trembling, hot nightmare. One must always awake before
anything too awful happened. She pulled at the corner of
the mattress and crept out.
2 I The Smith College Monthly
Through the balcony-window by the table, she could s< i
caverns of twisting smoke- and dust, glimpses of vague dark
figures grappling with each other, the black Sash of guns,
sweaty, distorted faces, the downward gleam of steel knives.
Right outside the window, clear of the smoke, a palm tree
waved its long fringed arms languidly, just as if men were
not fighting and dying before it. The haze dissipated a little.
A black snorting horse reared as his rider fell. He was a
young man shot in the forehead so that blood seemed stream-
ing from his sightless eyes. Lucha shivered with horror and
shrank back against the mattress. She raised her head again
at the sound of staggering foot-steps. A man came reeling
into the room, holding his arm. Blood spurted between his
fincrers. The whole room turned bloody red to Lucha. gleam-
infif, wet red. then dark vcd. then black, and she could not
remember after that.
The Smith College Monthly 25
MAN ANA
Salue S. Simons 1080
(Fishermen on Monhegcm say that Captain
John Smith landed there about 1612)
The summer people have drilled four holes in a broad-stand-
ing rock and nailed up a tablet to his name.
They feel proud as they hurry by to post their manuscripts
and their thickly wrapped canvasses,
And they think, "He sought and found. Grateful, we cut the
letters of his name in bronze. My work is praised, ful-
fils its purpose. I wish someone would lay my ghost
like that when I am gone."
But the men who walk with their arms full of fish nets and
amber glass floats, never see the tablet.
They are looking with the eyes of John Smith across the
channel to Man ana,
Across the sucking tides that curl back from its cliffs to bare
revolving milk-green cones,
Across the gathering tides that plunge against reefs where
spray falls with a hissing sigh.
Only five hundred yards of water, yet these men know,
though they are simple, that their dories will not reach
the island.
Their quittance comes in listening for the foam at night as it
edges around the sharp shore, in watching colors shift-
ing on the grass at the cliff top, where no trees grow.
When they go past the tablet every morning they are looking
toward the channel;
They are thinking that John Smith never reached Manana.
The Smith College Monthly
THE LEKYTHOS
Fran< is Kannkv \l.)'2\)
B SMALL, round man bounded down the steps of the
Field Museum, his fat checks quivering with the mo-
-T(?°d tion. As lie reached the street, he pulled down the
frayed and tightly-buttoned coat that had wrinkled toward
his collarless neck in the precipitous descent. Blood-shot eyes
glancing furtively aboul him, lie patted a bulging pocket.
After assuring himself of the innocent and unsuspecting na-
ture oi the bypassers, lie leaned against a tree so that he
might survey the building from which he had just departed.
The smooth, white pillars of the Museum rested on the
horizon with the harmonious calm and simplicity of an
Athenian temple. The azure tints of the sky and the spark-
line sfreen-blue hues of Lake Michigan served to accentuate
its whiteness.
The small round nan did not recognize this classical
mblance. In fact, he had not the faintest notion of the
implications of the word "classical." He did know, however,
I hat nothing marred the peace of the building. No brass-
buttoned official appeared on the steps, shrieking whistle to
his lips.
A sigh of relief (scaped his puffy month. 'There was
no evidence of any chase. Luck was with him, for once.
Drawing a greasy cap and a do/en new pencils from a baggy
pocket, he shuffled on down the street, a grinning, sheepish
ex pression on his bloated face.
"Nice new pencils. Nice yellow pencils. Five cents
apiece. Silly .John wants a cup of coffee. Help poor Silly
.1 1 dm. he whined.
li was a chilly day. hut the sunlghl bathed the side-
walks with ;i yellow warmth. He would have liked, no
doubt, to squat down in it. doubling his legs under him in a
pitiful, crippled position, hut Silly .John was in a hurry to-
day. Ai short intervals his grimy fingers caressed the cool,
miimmI |i < i!> |(cl iii his pocket .
II< turned up Michigan Boulevard on the easl side. He
The Smith College Monthly 27
usually crossed over to where streams of people passed be-
fore the shop windows, but today he chose the opposite side.
where the sidewalks was empty hut for the lingering hoboes
and tramps that watched the endless iron and smoke of the
Illinois Central Railway. Here no one would notice him.
He felt safe.
An old friend sidled up to him, his shifty, heavy-lidded
eyes shadowed by smoked speetaeles. It was Frank, the
"blind" fiddler, whom John had met at various Salvation
Army lodging houses and with whom he had often shared
a newspaper blanket when the weather permitted sleeping
on the ground in Grant Park. Silly John did not like the
smoked speetaeles — they made him uncomfortable.
"Got the price of a drink on yer?" Frank whimpered,
his voice as high and thin and timeless as that of his cheap
violin.
"Nope Business rotten," answered John, staring direct-
ly at the smoked glasses with exaggerated unconcern.
"Aw, y'er no kind of a sport," the beggar whined, tap-
ping his cane impatiently. "Wot's the idea? Wot y'er over
here for if y'aint a'ready made yer pile this mornin'? On yer
vacation, maybe, huh!"
"Shut up! I haven't made a cent yet this mornin'. S'
help me, 's the truth." A sly, cautious expression came into
Silly John's narrowing eyes.
"Why don't ya get over where people is 'n make some
then, ya idiot," the blind man snarled, tap-tapping on down
the sidewalk.
As Silly John went on, avoiding the eyes of any ac-
quaintance he could chance to pass, a sharp gnawing doubt
crept into his consciousness. Luck had heen with him too
long — it could not last. Bv this time the Museum officials
must have discovered that a certain pale, smooth object v as
missing from its glass ease. Soon they would track him
down. It was always that way whenever he stole anything,
for he was a fool. He could not think straight like other
people. He could not even remember, now. why he had
stolen what he had. He did not even know what it was
called, or for what it was used. He was a fool. Jail in-
evitably followed his luck — jail, with a bed and good food.
but no whiskey!
Beads of perspiration broke out on his dirt-creased neck.
28 The Smith College Monthly
Prank! Had "Blind Frank" suspected anything? lie- had
been suspicious of his presence on the east side of the- street,
to be sure. Could he have sensed anything else? What an
idiot he had been to say thai aboul no! having any money so
far this morning, Hut he always made mistakes he could
no! think straight.
Soon he reached the Art Institute with its dingy pillars
and smoke-lined friezes. Around to the side Silly .John
shuffled, the cap with the yellow pencils in his hands. He
reached the "Five Sisters" and stood watching the jets of
sparkling water till the air with crystal heads. He liked this
fountain; the water was as cold and silvery as the side of a
fish.
He leaned over the rail and looked into the sliding,
shining bottom of the fountain. There, beneath the bent
knee of one of the "sisters" was a hollow just large enough
for an object the exact size of the one he had. hidden in his
pocket. No one was in sight. Swiftly sliding his hands into
the eold. clear water, he concealed his treasure.
I Ie hurried away.
At noon time he bought a can of baked beans and got
sonic coffee at a lunch wagon down on Canal Street. lie was
satisfied with himself. lie. Silly John, who could not think
as other people did. had accomplished something, lie had
stolen a beautiful "thing"; it was smooth and had pale colors
nn it. \n one had seen him. Moreover, he had concealed it
in ;i spot where not even the cleverest or most brass- buttoned
person in the world could find it. It was his. his very own.
to keep and look at occasionally, there beneath the sliding
w ater.
As soon as the sun went down and mists began to gather
over the lake, Silly .John, with his waddling shuffling walk,
made straighl for the "Five Sisters" fountain. He would
look once more al the pale, beautiful object he had stolen.
I [e splashed his hands into the cool water and fell along
tin hot loin. It was not there! Frantically, he slid his fingers
over Hi* smooth surfaces of the statues. It was not there!
I Ie splashed the water about, and tears ran down his fat, vc(\
cheeks. Someone had taken his beautiful "thing". Frank!
It niiist have been "Blind Frank" with his staring, smoked
trlasses. Ami \< I. how could he have known?
The Smith College Monthly 29
Silly John stopped splashing the water and sat down by
the side of the fountain. Luck was always the same.
In the Tribune the following day, this article appeared:
Valuable Lekythos Stolen
A priceless Greek funeral urn of the eighth century
B. C. was stolen from its glass case in the Field Museum
yesterday morning. The glass was broken, and the beautiful
polychrome lekythos forcibly removed. As there were
many visitors to the Museum during the morning, there are,
as vet, no clues as to its whereabouts. The Director places
the loss at $20,000."
Under the cool, wet knee of one of the "Five Sisters",
the palely-colored lekythos lies forgotten. Silly John does
not remember, for he can not think like other people.
GARDENIAS
Edith Starrs 1929
There are no words in my heart
As delicately penetrative
As the breath of one of these.
I would tell you that I love you ;
That as I lay these flowers
Fragile, white, and rare
For the last time, here before you
On the cool marble altar of your passing-
It is consecration.
They are beautiful ! and wounding . . .
They have eased my pain.
30
The Smith College Monthly
r
BOOK REVIEWS
1
SCARLET SISTEB MARY
.J II i.\ Peterkin
Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis. L928
The work of such writers as Julia Peterkin is of two-fold
interest : and a critic should remember its double value. I ni-
versality mixes with purely local elements, based on back-
ground, on the little social group discussed, and on dialect, in
every novel or play. Hut sometimes one element overbalances
the other: sometimes their separation comes to us sharply.
where background has been made so picturesque or so re-
mote as to stand alone. Sahatini. Stevenson. Conrad, Knnl
Ilamson. I>ret Ilarte and Hardy can he judged as writers
simply by their success at the weaving of the two themes:
and how many stand the test!* Add indefinitely to this list
of men who choose their peculiar background; and still we
return to Thomas I lardy, who in the end is the strongest,
the wisest: the man who has strength to lace the universal
and the particular both at once, and remain clear-sighted.
And Raphael Sahatini exemplifies the man who rides his
horse backwards into thickets of sentimentalized history. The
two extremes, one so easy to drift towards, the other so far
above common power, may easily be round in the literature
of the American negro, who is sometimes sentimentalized,
sometimes ridiculed, hut almost never understood. To all the
other forces of the particular dialect stronger than any
other in America; setting, whether in the crowded negro
s< cl i"i is of cities, or on the southern plantation; and private
customs, is added the subject of racial difference: color, his-
tory, social prejudice, and the strangeness of savagery mixed
with Ami ricanism. More closely than ever the reader watches
the author's point of view here. For no American author,
The Smith College Monthly 31
we believe, can write a book on the negro unprejudiced. How
far, in faet, ean he or she indulge in the universal ]
Mrs. Peterkin is a southern woman who lias observed
this people from the vantage-point, by inheritance, of the
mistress; but by taste and by inheritance also, it appears, as
a friend. It is difficult to define such a relationship. Certain-
ly it does not grow out of a breaking-down of barriers: more,
it derives from the special love of the good master or mistress
for the good plantation darky. Children nursed by their
mammies, and allowed to play with the servants' children.
often grew old before they dropped their negro accent: they
turned to the mammy or the old cook often er than they would
to any French or English governess; they did not doubt their
own position, nor did they express it. The intimacy of a long
life together and of plantation solitude bound southerners,
very often, to their negroes. Of such experience. Julia Peter-
kin continues to interest herself in the darkies, neither con-
descending nor theorizing, but watching sympathetically.
We know that she must always be conscious that these are
a special people whom she describes: but we must also re-
member that she chose them, and has so far kept to them,
for her subject. Hers are not the leaders of the negroes in
America, traveled and sophisticated; nor are they the town
negroes treated by Du Bose Heyward; they are people clos-
est to Africa, who made one move when they came to Amer-
ica; and have remained since the Civil War in the same state
that preceded it.
What are the special limiting characteristics of that
subject? I need not mention the language which has been
compounded of African dialect and the provincial English
of the south. There are three chief facts which set the negroes
apart: simplicity; the part that nature plays for them: and
superstition. Simplicity describes the back ground: a nar-
row street of huts; broad eotten-fields ; woods: a single little
shop, Grab- All, that gets their money; and a boat that con-
nects them with town. It describes their elementary and
elemental life; they raise vegetables and cotton; keep pigs
and chickens; supply each other with everything they need
in the village, save clothes; and it suggests their pleasures
from the nature of their work. This simplification extends
to Julia Peterkin's books, which show not that false simpli-
fication which becomes mere mechamical book-writing, but
32 The Smith College Monthly
.•in easy routine which emphasizes the passions and events of
life, making pleasure and catastrophe both easy; making the
characters pattern their lives without blurrings by the ncc< s-
sities of food and livelihood, and by love and hate. Religion
also is emotional: love and hate; but it concerns itself strong-
ly w ith superstition.
Nature, says Mrs. Peterkin, is kind to darkies: and in
life, as in her book, it neither dominates them utterly, nor re-
tires into a landscape background. The seasons and mens
occupations and also their emotions change all together, a
part of a whole. Plants, crops, animals and men all undergo
the same general processes of life. That is why negroes talk
so intimately to animals. Hut negroes can sow crops, and
pluck cotton, and sell it for clothing. If nature roots up the
garden and damages the house, it pays back later by draw-
ing up the seed into plants.
Superstition proceeds naturally from the combination
of nature's tremendous intimacy with the negroes, and from
the simplicity of their natures. They arc a new people in
America, but old in Africa, and uncivilized; and many of the
old beliefs have been transplanted with the first men and
women to new soil. Somebody taught them about Jesus:
and they believe in him too. And in hell. And they fear (iod
the Father. Hut underlying this religion lives their own.
which grew from nature, and which puts spirit into inani-
mate things. For emotion and pleasure, they put on shoes
mm Sundays and go to meeting; they bring up their children
to have a vision, and repent of their sins: to be baptized, and
become members of the church. Then they can join the
shouting. This is a pari of religion, and seeking grace, and
avoiding the Everlasting Bonfire. Hut outside, they can
!m> to old Daddy ( udjoe. and gel the right kind of charm to
put magic over a man. or send the devil out of the soup, or
save a life. Daddy Cudjoe governs the force which can
help people, having gol it from his ancestor who came from
ili< older country as a conjurer. Even an old woman like
M.mjim Hannah, in whose house all Christian meetings are
held when tin church is closed, recognizes that nothing else
can help. "In the old days, all the people trusted to magic
to rule and river and clouds and seasons as well as their tools
and each other, but t imes have changed. ( )nly Daddy Cudjoe,
of all the old people left, knew any of the old secret ways.
The Smith College Monthly 33
When Maum Hannah's adopted child Mary lost her hus-
band's love, the old woman told her that "If she had stayed
a good Christian girl, as she started out to be, then God
might have listened to her prayers. But she sinned. She was
a fallen member. She would have to depend on magic now,
the only power that will work as well for a sinner as it does
for a Christian." And everything needs to be charmed soon-
er or later; "Everything gets out of order and gives trouble
sometimes. Men and women and pots and pans and axes;
everything needs to be ruled." Evidently all the things in
the world fall under spells; and only magic can really help.
At least it is more generous and tolerant than Christian re-
ligion for helping people. Jesus is a kind gentleman, very
mild; but hell too must be included in a church-goer's belief.
Magic does not threaten with hell.
This, then, is the darky's world: land; his house and
tools; his neighbors whom he knows from birth to death,
since he does not travel; the rules and privileges of church-
going; and the mysterious service of magic. Everything is
partly magical to him.
Since Black April, Mrs. Peterkin has lightened her em-
phasis upon superstition. Conjure and charms play a part;
but they do not rule the destiny of the characters. The earlier
book was gigantic and terrifying; April himself walked in
it like a hero, full of a hero's strength and fatal self-confi-
dence. He was conjured, and he died miserably. The book
itself was complicated and powerful; while nature in its
jungle supremacy seemed to press in upon the village of
black people, defying them, defied by them. We remember
April catching a rattle-snake behind the head, holding it at
arm's length while he squeezed his hand close about its throat,
and spitting into its hissing mouth. Meanwhile the little boy,
his illegitimate son, waited beside him with a knife to cut out
the sting, if April should miss and be btten. We remember
too the heavy theme of charms and African rites that filled
the jungle to our imagination with shadows of horror. Scarlet
Sister Mar//, on the contrary, has been simplified to a single
story of few characters. Being a woman's story, it leaves the
jungle for the narrow street, and the men and women who
live there; while the pots and pans of Si' Mary's hearth are
as important. The storms that disturb her crops, and the
weather that is answered by the growing things in her yard
84 The Smith College Monthly
and by tlu animals tethered there alone reach her; she re-
sponds like all living things to the spirit of the seasons; hut
she does not know their horror. Ihr tragedy is told in human
terms, when the husband that she loves deserts her. Her
physical recovery is effected by physical excitement: her
spirit never heals entirely, for when that first man returns at
last, she cannot lace him with a whole mind. She learns
tolerance and wisdom with experience; and she knows that
she has seen more of pleasure and sorrow than stuffy good
women do. When she goes to Daddy Cudjoe for a charm
to use on her husband, she cannot hear after all to try it at
once; and he gets away before she acts. So she uses it on
other men. Hut if the- sophisticated reader wishes, he can
disregard the charm; the story is a universal, almost a hack-
neyed theme, which would have grown from her nature alone.
Yet the hook remains faithful; less congested than Black
April: less legendary. The portrayal of negro temperament
and negro belief is as true; the theme is less specialized. Tlu
two hooks supplement each other. From the heroic to the
common-place, from the ornate to the simple, from grand
racial legend to more obscure individual life, Mrs. Peterkin
has carred her interest in tin's people. It is significant that
Scarlet Sister Mary has on the \ hole less dialogue, and there-
fore less dialect, than its fore-runner. Singly, it will not be
as impressive as Black April; hut together with it, the new
hook will define more clearly than before the point of view
which readers must have been hunting. Mrs. Peterkin has
never made the mistake of pointing a moral. It is our snob-
bery as readers which will over-emphasize the racial clement.
We must remember that there is scarcely a white person in
either book; they might have been written of a world of
ii' -nns. lint the race in its own characteristics is perfectly
defined; and human nature, which we call psychology today.
is Faithfully treated. The first novel paid that race the com-
pliiiH nt of telling a deeply stirring heroic story for the race
itself; the second shows one of its members in her full re-
semblance to our own people. The special and the general
have both been shown, then. Thirdly, Julia Paterkin has in
Scarlet Sister Mary added to literature one more analysis
of a character often damned by moralists, and sometimes
over-dramatized; a character whom Mrs. Peterkin has
The Smith College Monthly 35
treated not as a thing apart, leperized; but as a sensitive in-
dividual, close to our own experience.
A. L. H.
JOSEPH AM) HIS BRETHREN
H. W. Freeman Henry Holt and Co. 1929
With the eastern part of Suffolk, England as his back;
ground, H. W. Freeman tells the story of Crakenhill Farm
and the Geaiter family. For Joseph and his Brethren is
most concerned with the farm itself, which dominates the
lives of Old Benjamin and his sons.
It is evident that Benjamin Geiter was nobody's fool
and that he bought the old place with his eyes open. Contrary
to all previous experience in spite of unfavorable predictions.
Crakenhill flourished and improved from year to year. "Ben-
jamin had always had to struggle against a world that he was
used to regard as his natural enemy. But for all that, he did
not spare his enemies, even his own sons." He put them to
work immediately, with his "old dogged and systematic en-
ergy." Like Crakenhill, they flourished, each year becoming
sturdier, more firmly rooted to the soil. And it was not until
middleage that any of the "boys" realized how unstintingly
they had given, how faithfully they had toiled, how tightly
bound they had become to every inch of their precious two
hundred acres.
Throughout the novel runs a twofold domination.
Stronger is the land which demands unsparingly, receiving
alike the strength and the devotion of its men. All except
Ben the oldest son, grow impatient, balance it against an out-
side attraction. Bob and Hiram start their runaway trip to
Canada, "the new country." But it is "the summerland of
ourn, so neat and reg'lar all over" and the "rare fine horses
they are, to plow" that send them sheepishr? back. Ern, on
the point of volunteering, forgets the glamour of an Army
uniform, for his sows farrowing without him, and plunges
desperately across the fields to Crakenhill. Again pride and
love of the farm, more definitely the chance bleating of a
restless ewe, force Harry to cast aside Jessie and dreams of
marriage. So Benjamin's five sons remain uncomplaining,
stolid, silent slaves from morning until night. Over them the
B6 The Smith College Monthly
father holds his rod of iron, insists on showing himself the
master of the house. He proves if by seducing Nancy. When
her condition is evident : 'You thought you w ere going to get
Nance and you didn't." lit- had seen them gathering cow-
slips and following her about the kitchen. Benjamin wasn't
blind yet.
This is not indeed the subjection to the soil, described
by Tolstoi or Turgeney the cruel exaction of unmitigated
toil. There is none of the lack of balance between the rich
and the poor, no hopless, thankless servitude, snuffing man's
energy until he is left only feebly glimmering like a burned
ash. Freeman is concerned with an absolute devotion to the
soil, which keeps the Geaiters fighting against nature certain-
ly, but which includes the joy of possession, of struggling,
.mi Immense satisfaction that the land is being brought "into
good heart." Is it not enough to know that Crakenhill has
become the best farm in the whole county?
One is struck by the similarity between the life of the
Greaiters and that of Isak and Lnger in the Growth of the
Soil. Hoth Hamsun and Freeman deal with the direct re-
lationship of man to the earth. There is no trace of artifice,
of complexity, of subjectivity. The development of Isak is
i pieal timeless; man. evolving, building. It is told objective-
ly, with an absolute impersonality, a magnificently elemental
strength. 'The progress of the Greaiters is similar. They are
unlimited by time; they might exist in any farming district.
P>ul they are more definitely a unit, a family revolving about
Crakenhill. restricted in orbit. lake Hamsun, Freeman is
objective, tells his story directly, and permits his characters
in Ii\< their vigorous silent lives unhampered by analysis iw
i xplanation. Bui the writer cannot resist stopping to breath-
the delicate sweetness of the cowslips, to count the five speck-
led sky-blue eggs reposing in the bottom of a little round
nest, or io see the earth and sky. after the faint October sky
has vanished, meeting in a dark embrace.
Both the CJeaiter family and Crakenhill remain singu-
larly untouched by time. They live in the seasons coming
and going swiftlv, necessitating the cutting of beans or the
ploughing and seeding of a Held. But the years themselves
pass silently, imperceptibly. It is only Benjamin's dramatic
death in the fields, or Nancy's remarriage, or Joeys love
affair, thai marks off a broader spacing, jerking one to the
The Smith College Monthly 37
reality of events. Yet with no .surprise, the reader watches
the brothers drawing more closely together, pathetically
overtaken by middle-age and no longer sure of their strength.
Young Joey shoots up and becomes taller and stronger than
any of them. But it is perfectly plausible for his five hall-
brothers to be "as proud as if he had been their own son/1
The whole development has been managed with perfect con-
sistence. The reader, like the characters, has so lost himself
in the prevalence and importance of everyday necessities, of
minor incidents, that the general trend of events remains
woven distantly into the background. The interest centers
increasingly upon "Xance's boy," although the emphasis re-
mains to the last, on Crakenhill. The title vigorously asserts
itself, "Joseph and his Brethren." Freeman's concern is how
Joey's learning to plow and mow, wrhile the others wTatch
over him with fatherly care, correcting him and guiding his
hands, "each telling him all that he knew". With character-
istric restraint, he indicates the unspoken affection between
these silent men, their mutual love of Crakenhill, and even
stronger, their devotion to Joey. But Joey has his own pro-
blems to solve, the weighing of outside excitment against the
earthy beauty of the farm, Daisy's happiness balanced
against that of his brothers. Penetrating every decision, is the
hold of the soil, the quick joy of working in the clover with a
scythe, with one's shoulders bowed "like a sapling in the
wind."
Every page of the book smacks of the earth. Uncon-
sciously it portrays the beauties of nature. There is always
the contact of man, elemental, direct, free from artifice. But
it is not in this alone that Freeman is successful. He has
created from Suffolk background, a group of characters
typical and definitely of a group, yet so individualized that
they remain sharply differentiated in the memory. Without
comment or analysis, he has presented men and women who
live. E. M. G.
THE LOST LYRIST
Elizabeth Hollister Frost Harper & Brothers 1928
"Be sure yourself and your own reach to know,
How far your genius, taste and learning go ;
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet ,
And mark that point where sense and dullness meet."
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The Smith College Monthly 39
Before Pope's admonishing words one quails at attemp-
ting just criticism, particularly \\hcn the work in question is
lyric poetry. With narrative poetry one can side-track skil-
fully on dramatic effect and characterization. But lyrics
are more intangible, concerned immediately with the emo-
tonal reaction; they are more various in form and more de-
pendant upon it. They must be handled like butterflies,
carefully, lest one brush the shining dust from their wings.
And one must always realize that no tAvo people will feel a
poem in exactly the same way. The quality and extent of
the appreciation is an individual matter.
I may point out to those for whom the quotation from
the Essay on Criticism has recalled the whole trend of eigh-
teenth century critical thought that poetry has, on the whole,
divorced itself from an emulation of the classics. It is a far
cry from Pope to Sandburg. Poetry today is in a period
which some future commentator will be sure to brand "transi-
tional". We are not yet convinced beyond all doubt of the
success of free verse. We have not yet reached a satisfactory
definition of poetry which reveals its undeniable and eternal
essence. With Humbert Wolfe we still debate form and con-
tent, rythmn and thought, in spite of a general agreement
that they are both important ; and we are piqued because we
cannot reduce the art to a scientific formula and the exact
knowledge of the proportionate ingredients. In the face of
an argument which has been going on for centuries, and the
wise couplets of Pope, criticism of poetry becomes perilous.
One may well throw up his hands and say in dismay, "Que
sais-je?" However, with necessity at the heel, one is still
justified to ask in poetry significance and originality of ex-
pression, sincerity, and successful use of verse form or of the
lack of it. The whole, resulting from a proper but mysterious
balance of these qualities is an aesthetic experience of some
value.
The Lost Lyrist would probably never have been writ-
ten if Mrs. Frost had not encountered profound sorrow at
the death of her husband. Her poetry is clearly the neces-
sary expression of a sensitive personality saturated with a
terrible and steadily growing sense of loss. It grows out of,
is dedicated to and embodies an extra-ordinarily beautiful
love and the grief which forced it into words.
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The Smith College Monthly 41
"Joy flickers out in grief articulate
And my first song strikes, startled, on the air."
It is the revelation of an experience of unbearable poig-
nancy because it is an experience inevitably universal.
One reads almost shyly, with the same embarrassment which
makes one avoid looking at the distorted face of a woman
crying. The implication is not that Mrs. Frost's poems are
cut out of the first uncontrolled burst of emotion, but that
their intimacy and their exposure of the clarity and depth of
the lost relationship lay open the innermost chamber of sor-
row. One looks within with a sense of trespassing. Yet it is
an unrealized privilege, for if we see and understand the
complete emotion which gave birth to these lyrics, we have
looked into a crucible of experience and have seen the molten
material of poetry. In The Lost Lyrist that material has
been poured out and cooled into tangible forms. Whether or
not the poems are great art. they bear the marks of the
creative pain of great art.
We cannot doubt, then, the significance of Mrs. Frost's
book in poetry's inescapable reference to life, or the sincerity.
I, personally, cannot give sincerity too high a place in any
literature. Nothing is more disgusting than the travesty of
any emotion for the sole sake of a rhyme, or a name in print,
or a fad. Poetry must satisfy an inner need (if I may use
a highly romantic phrase), and it has no value of its funda-
mental structure is not truth. Knowing how simply Mrs.
Frost turned to it for relief and for no other reason, we can-
not question her sincerity. It is, therefore, a difficult problem
to deal with certain of her poems which may be called "sen-
timental", although it is a treacherous term. She does not
indulge her motions to the point of being mawkish or maud-
lin. The failure lies less in the content than in the embodi-
ment of it. The minor tone and fragile style of Edna St.
Vincent Millay turn up proverbially. (One feels that Miss
Millay is losing ground rapidly because of her prolific fol-
lowers, and pays a severe price for being so imitable. )
Occasionally the ghost of A. E. Housman stirs and casts a
weak shadow of his lyric melancholy. These reflections, like
the reflections on ruffled water, are not perfect, and without
their original poise and finish have a second-hand quality
which we term "sentimentality." Or Mrs. Frost has allowed
in her poetry endearments and extravagances which in speech
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The Smith College Monthly 43
might be accompanied by a whimsicality and lightness which
they lose, impressed into written form. Again, she has allowed
herself to take a worn figure or a thread-hare word to con-
vey her meaning. In all cases the failure seems to he a mat-
ter of carelessness, as though she permitted her emotion to
take the most familiar and the easiest course of expression.
This observation throws a new light on "sentimentality"
showing it up as often purely a poor adaptation of form. One
realizes the importance of that intermediary stage of a poem,
between the stimulus and the finished product, in which
the artist dissects, rearranges and proportions his generative
idea. Neglect in this stage is dangerous.
Mrs. Frost's work is fortunately, however, uneven.
Many of her lyrics do not merit such adverse criticism. The
best are those which less obviously echo her predecessors,
and they attain a fine simplicity. Their brevity is effective.
It startles one and, being soon over, allows the slower re-
flections to flow around it. From Respiration —
"Stretched on the horizon
Eternity, asleep,
Drew in with his breathing
One of us to keep."
Suddenly quiet, the very smallness of her words betrays their
overwhelming importance. She may say—
''Agony is something-
It takes a while to make"
and the tense restraint is eloquent. One reads with a grow-
ing realization of the unusually beautiful relationship which
has been lost. From The Shattered Urn—
"Marriage is an urn
Chiseled out of love
Fashioned by four hands
And the skill thereof:
Point and drill and file,
Turn it to the light,
Keep the tools from rust,
Never finish quite."
In her best moments her images are distinctive, again char-
acterized bv swiftness. In the line —
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The Smith College Monthly 45
"My thoughts fly backward from me like blown hair"
is the essence of her verse, the aspiration and a suggestion
of its spiritual quality. Besides this dedicated portion of her
work, there is a close relation with actuality, a vivid descrip-
tive sense. A house "wears a pale and narrow face", "a white
wind pries the doors apart", there is a "poised breathless
moment on the ledge of day." I succumb to the temptation
to quote one of the most successful poems in the book because
it is illustrative of all that is excellent in Mrs. Frost, par-
ticularly of her delicate imagination. She often expresses
the feeling that a house retains a memory of its inhabitants
and the stilled echoes of their footsteps, and is somehow wise
to the life within it. One may guess that Prescience em-
bodies for her a poignant experience.
"We kissed and laughed,
The lattice winked,
The chimney snorted,
The fire blinked ;
The moonlight stepped
On the old stone floor,
The dark from the hall
Looked in through the door ;
We did not remark
The cynical eyes
Of the candles,
Or hear the spark's surprise —
We thought we were safe
With our youth and You —
But I wonder now
If the house knew?"
If I have been prejudiced for Mrs. Frost in my critic-
ism, it is because I believe in her poetry as the sincere ex-
pression of her life, and that at its best it has the significance
and originality which I have stipulated as the requirements
of the art. Knowing little of versification, I do not dare
launch beyond my depths. I can only judge it negatively
and says that it is conspicuous neither by its absence nor its
presence. The form is (again, at its best) a smoothly run-
ning and pleasing vehicle for the burden of the thought.
It is highly doubtful that Mrs. Frost will ever become
an outstanding figure in poetry. Her work is deficient in
vigour to stand the buffeting of many years of criticism, it
is not creative enough to be of eternal value. It lacks the
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The Smith College Monthly 47
authority which Humbert Wolfe demands in poetry. "Au-
thority"" says Wolfe "means that the magic poet of all times
recreates his material, and in the moment of recreation as-
tonishingly assimilates his expression to that of his predeces-
sors and of those who follow him." And authoritative verse
of any age, language or form has fundamentally "the same
calm accent of finality." Which makes poetry a case of per-
spective and evolution, and the poet a magician. We may
safely say, however, that The Lost Lyrist lacks authority
inasmuch as we understand by authority that "finality" and
powerful beauty of expression which is timeless. It is too
frail to live long. But it will find a small circle of readers
kindly because they understand this well-spring of poetry,
and a word or so of praise is owed to this quiet and delicate
monument to sorrow.
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WiaaUfr-SalaB.lf.G
Smith College
March
1929
BOARD
OF
EDITORS
Vol. XXXVII. MARCH, 1929 No. 6
EDITORIAL BOARD
Editor-in-chief, Anne Lloyd Basinger, 1929
Managing Editor, Ernestine Gilbreth, 1929
Book Review Editor, Elizabeth Botsford, 1929
Katherine S. Bolman, 1929 Rachel Grant, 1929
Elizabeth Wheeler, 1929 Priscilla S. Fairchild, 1930
Elizabeth Shaw, 1930 Martha H. Wood, 1930
Sallie S. Simons, 1930 Mary F. Chase, 1931
Elizabeth Perkins, 1931
Art, Nancy Wynne Parker, 1930
BUSINESS STAFF
Business Manager, Sylvia Alberts, 1929
Advertising Manager, Gertrude Cohen, 1929
Assistant Advertising Manager, Lilian Supove, 1929
Circulation Manager, Ruth Rose, 1929
Mary Folsom, 1931 Mary Sayre, 1930 Anna Dabney, 1930
Sarah Pearson, 1931 Agnes Lyall, 1930 Esther Tow, 1931
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CONTENTS
Wrangling at Night
Lake Rhazamene
Speak-Easy Nights
One Mo' Rock
Museum Portrait
Dancing School
Temperature Almost Normal
Winter Moon
Ten Dollars
Elizabeth Botsford,
Patty Wood,
Priscilla S. Fairchild,
Mary Chase,
Barbara D. Simison,
Georgia Stamm,
Rachel Grant,
Marion Bussang,
Elizabeth Wheeler,
Concerning Means of Locomotion
Elizabeth Perkins,
A Legend of Old Russia Pauline Slom,
Book Reviews:
Keats's Shakespeare
The Desert Road to Turkestan
Boston
The Well of Loneliness
1929
5
1930
11
1930
12
1931
17
1929
18
1932
19
1929
25
1932
27
1929
28
1931
33
1932
36
40
40
43
45
46
That delicious interval
When the curtain goes down,
and the lights come up. and
the landaulet is waiting . . .
in that interval, so to speak,
between supper and Sardou
. . . a good cigarette seem- to
acquire a New Significance.
. . . And perhaps you have
noticed that Camels always
play the leading role in these
gay little comedies of pleasure.
I 1929 R.J. Reynold* Tobacco <:<>., Winston-Salem, N.
Smith College
Monthly
WRANGLING AT NIGHT
Elizabeth Botsford
H~|ATE in thf afternoon it began to rain, an infinitesimal
rain descending in thin gray clouds which lay around
ggjgg the mountain peaks like chiffon scarfs. When we left
the camp about seven o'clock, an opaque dusk had already be-
gun to fill the high valley where our tepees were pitched,
rising up from remote bottomlands and the lower slopes of
the mountains like a strange vapour that darkened the sight.
We abandoned the bright crackle of the cook fire, the clatter
of voices and the sizzling bacon smell for the hostile embrace
of a slow wet wind. There was no sound as we crossed the
opening to the timber but the squelching of our boots in the
boggy ground and the rattle of the stiff bridles hung over
our arms. In a few moments pine and balsam boughs thrust
themselves darkly between us and the camp. The trees were
not thickly set, but the forest floor was littered with enormous
fallen trunks that reared grotesque roots over our heads.
They left rank caverns where they had once stood, filled
with hummocks of crumbling loam and colossal fragments of
bark. If we separated we were immediately lost from one
another in the brush and the debris of hundreds of years. It
was bad going and we clambered without words, pushing
slowly up towards the pass. A chill silence made our foot-
steps sound doubly laborious, and a rotted log giving way
beneath one's heel echoed and re-echoed. Before we realized
it we were in the depths of the forest, surrounded by tall
spruce darkness. I held tightly to the memory of the tepees
as I had seen them last, illumined from within bv small fires
The Smith College Monthly
\\ hich metamorphosed them into dully glowing cones haunted
l»\ impossible shadows. 1 remembered the angles of the poles
.•iikI i1k lacework the smoke had made among them.
A half hour of stead} walking and still no break, no in-
creased light to reveal the end of the timber. A fawn soared
<»ul of the brush above us ,-it our left, paused a moment to
Stare al us with brilliant eyes and wide-spread delicate ears.
We stopped and stared back. It seemed almost as though
he understood a kinship among us. We moved toward him
slightly. 1 Ic Sung up his head as the alien scent disturbed his
nostrils, turned in mid air and went up the mountain in long
rubber-legged hounds. Ili^ white tail Hashed into a thicket. . .
. . .There was no trail to follow. We were the iirst people in
years to penetrate this high and silent luart of the Rockies.
We could not find the faint tracks we had made riding in, or
the scattering trail of the horses when they had wandered
hack to graze. The motionless and soundless hostility of the
forest confused us. An endless wilderness of rain-soaked tree s
folded us into its cold breast.
The- sensation was that of a shade- rising slowly and
without warning, allowing greater light. We saw a clear
ridge above us, dully covered with the' faded lupin of August.
From the- top of it we could look hack down the' valley where-
a wavering feather of smoke distinguished itself only by
motion from the steel dusk. In front of us the- pass spread
out widely, a long ilal-hol tonied valley lae'ed with streams
which descended abruptly from precipitous summits. The
peaks on either side- formed harriers of incredible height to
tin world beyond them. At their feel lay a jumbled mass of
iron gray lock, armor that they had cast aside during the'
long restless years, I drew a deep breath. The air seemed
fr< sher here, quickened by a sharp wind that had a flavour
of snow . At th< foot of the shoulder on which we were- stand-
ing, t wo of the pack horses nuzzled the- bare ground, the- aged
bonj Xilchie and while- l)iiiir;iii with the- sore back. They
snorted w hen they saw us and moved away warily. We- passed
ih< m. descending to the floor of the- pass. A quarter of a mile-
away, nine or ten more horses hung together in a draw, and
beyond them, across the valley, was a larger group. We could
pick on I outstanding ones as we approached, Patches, White1.
Blue Robin, H< <lw ing, Flossie and her coll. Snake-, the- never
trusting, grazed apart, nervous and forlorn.
The Smith College Monthly 7
A long stretch of glacial mud lay between us and the
horses. The main westward running stream was fed by
thousands of rivulets and seepings which had so undermined
the grassy stretches that one had to climb for firm ground.
Ted plowed ahead determinedly, jumping over the soft spots
like a boy playing hop-scotch. Hegie was behind me, whist-
ling his foreign tunes. Occasionally he would stop long e-
nough to mutter about the wet. The bridles clinked and crack-
led, the water under our feet gurgled as it oozed in and out
of our boots. The wind grew colder and darkness was at
its heels. We hurried.
Close upon the first group we put the bridles behind our
backs and assumed the appearance of an innocent visit. Ted
stepped tactfully up to Tex, holding out the salt. The wise
old buckskin sniffed, pricked up his ears and stretched out
his lean neck. Ted began to croon to him —
"Come Tex. Steady, boy. Steady, old fellow."
But Tex was wise in the ways of wrangling. He reached
out a long pale tongue, then ducked from under Ted's rapid
hand and whirled away. Out of reach he plunged and bucked
viciously to display his temper. (He was the mildest horse in
the outfit.)
"Damn," Ted murmured. "We'll never catch him now,
the old fox." Yet with his peculiar patience with horses he
again offered the salt, making low musical noises in his throat.
Tex shook his head with an air of finality, kicked up his heels
and clattered away. From a safe distance he watched us, his
head set defiantly in the wind. Here on this lonely pass he
had taken on a wildness and spirit which were hard to re-
concile with his familiar docility. Ted lifted his shoulders
resignedly and caught Big Jack, an enormous lanky bay.
Hegie now ceased to be a respectful spectator. He
turned to me with a wride grin. His even white teeth gleamed
in the brown of his face. "I catch for you Prince. You ride
him. He ban for bareback one good horse." He began an
absurdly dignified approach upon that dozing animal, then
pounced upon him suddenly. The bridle was over Prince's
head before he woke up. Hegie was triumphant. "See," he
nodded "Not hard."
Prince's body was wet and slippery with the rain, but
it was warm between my knees. I settled myself on his fat
back and let him toss himself resentfully. His muscles moved
8 The Smith College Monthly
smoothly under my legs. We left Hegie doggedly pursuing
Baby Face, his ow n saddle horse, up the draw, and rode over
to tin larger bunch. Ted looked like a small boy on top of his
(all horse. He rode with a marvelous loose certainty, falling
into the rhythm ^\' Big Jack's jarring trot. He was rapidly
counting the group in front of him.
"Forty-five," he decided. "And all the colts. There are
m \( n missing." We reined in a moment to stare up at the
bleak ridges for the vagrants, and hack over the pass. "Guess
they're way hack there on the other side of the divide," said
Ted. "Somet hin's grazin' there. " lie crossed the soft valley
at a blundering canter, making for a clump of black specks
hall' a mile or so away. Before he had gone two hundred yards
he became a toy figure on a toy horse. The mountains on
either side of him were twice their size. Ted and Big Jack
disappeared.
Hegie and I rounded the horses into one hunch, and
tried to hold them waiting for Ted. They had been running
free for three days, and they were restless. 'They swayed hack
and forth across the valley as though they were moving to keep
warm, they split at the stream and a dozen or so strayed up
lo higher ground. Wayward old Kate and her colt again ex-
hibited the basis for suspecting their derivation from a moun-
tain goal and headed straight up the steepest slope. Hegie
yelled, waved his arms and made splattering reckless dashes
after the wanderers. Forty-five uneasy horses, crowding,
snapping and kicking. A bright sorrel gelding trotted about
the edges of the hunch with springing steps. His eyes flared
with excitement. Boob, lost from his beloved Kate, whick-
ered pitiably as he nudged about searching for her, I found
myself surrounded by their flying heads; their rumps pushed
at my knee, and their breaths warmed my bridle hand. I
was glad to have them near me. In this high rain-filled pass I
had lost some of my self-confidence, and there was a reassur-
ance in their vigour and in the heat of their steaming bodies.
They Ailed the chill wet silence with the rattle of hoofs on the
stony creek bed, with the thud of flank against flank and with
chit tered snorts.
A shrill whoop announced Ted's return, lie came alone.
The Smith College Monthly 9
shaping suddenly out of the mist. He was laughing, bending
down over his horse's long ears. "Caribou," he called from
a distance. "Thought they were horses. Seven of them too."
He rode up to me and swung his leg over the bay's neck so
that he sat sidewise, scanning the mountains inch by inch.
The clouds were sliding lower and lower over the mountains.
A long yodel from Hegie quivered down to us. He was across
the valley scrambling up an almost perpendicular ridge on
foot, dragging Baby Face at his heels. Above him were seven
black specks against the remote bare wall. Hegie looked like
a monkey. His elbows and knees shot out at rapid angles.
Baby Face climbed with strong rabbit-like action of the hind
quarters. The specks were not caribou this time. Hegie waved
reassuringly at us.
We sent our bunch across some good firm ground at a
full gallop. The horses ran eagerly. Redwing took the lead
with beautiful ease, his small fine head thrust forward into
the mist. Ted was sitting up on Big Jack's neck like a jockey.
"Hey — aa. Hey — aa," he yelled. I could feel Prince gallop-
ing smoothly between my knees and the thin rain brushing
by my ears. The grey dusk blew about us. The leaders
plunged suddenly into the muskeg, and slowed to a walk in
two steps. They piled into a jumble, and then of their own
accord fell into single file, following the trail over the pass
that we had made three days earlier. The trail made a wide
IT, doubling back across the valley. There they were strung
out like a parade — the black horses, the bays, the pintos and
the roans. In the dull light the sorrel gelding stood out like a
flame, and Patches' white face gleamed as he tossed his neck.
Their heads bobbed in unison. Their manes flagged in the
wind. A strange pilgrimage in a cold gray waste, winding,
serpentine, to a forgotten destiny.
Ted and I sat our horses on a small knoll, waiting for
Hegie. Ted's warm round voice ceased in the middle of a
line.
"Look," he pointed to the sky.
The night was descending visibly. It came down like a
dark curtain falling from the roof of the sky, furling over the
ragged peaks. I held my breath, watching the fringe come
nearer and nearer my face. Rapidly it fell, without a sound.
The soft luminous quality of the dusk snapped out like a
dim electric light. The night was upon us Now the pass
10 The Smith College Monthly
me a mysterious void of blackness in which horses wen
only moving sounds. The mountains around us were over-
hanging shadow s. { lie valley below, where the camp had been,
was lost. 1 sat still, glad to feel Prince's heaving sides: and
remembering, for the sake of campanionship, Ted's face as I
had seen it last his wide blue eves. Now it was only a pale
blur, illumined for one Raring moment when he lit a match
e the time.
Above us, hoofs roared, and the stones trickled down
from the ledges. Hegie's voice whooping at his horses.
"Hey aa. Hey aa. Hey aa." Seven swift holts came
down recklessly out of the dark heights. The shod hoofs
struck sparks on the rocks. Hegie was on top of them, exult-
ing in his daring We began the long drive home.
There was nothing to do now hut to let old Blue Robin
take the lead and follow the trail hack to camp, plowing
through the night with lowered head. Nothing to do hut
watch for dodgers in the brush, wait for a wet branch in the
face, and brace oneself against the sag of one's horse's knees
when he fell into a hole. Nothing to do hut crack lagging
rumps with the ends of the reins, whoop at the lazy ones.
chase the sly ones out of the brush onto the trail.
We were in the timber again. Ears were better guides
than eyes to know the ground underfoot, the noises off the
trail. We passed almost silently with our long procession.
save for the chanting of the hell on Old Fox's neck. The
horses' hoofs were muted in the moss. 1 could see only one
horse ahead, hut 'Ted's voice came hack with startling clarity
when he yelled at Maggie or Greenwood. Behind me Hegie
was whistling his foreign tunc, snapping his reins cheerfully.
I was w< i and cold and still', hut I remembered the gallop
back on the pass, the way the night had come upon us. the
(ju< i r shapes the horses made scrambling up a ridge. 1 was
Content w ilh these things alone.
The tawny Same of the cook lire picked Ted's face out
of the darkness. We let the horses go, knowing they would
not wander far before morning. Prince shook himself and
dr< w iii ,-i long snuffling breath. The camp was asleep. We
stood ,-i moment watching the horses fall to grazing in the
little opening. The bell on old Fox jangled more and more
slowly. II' eeth glistened. There was a warm blue smile
in T< d "s < \ < s. 1 put my hands into the firelight. The rain
had stopped.
The Smith College Monthly 11
LAKE RHAZAMENE
Patty Wood
Here have your eyes held tears,
Fl owe r- cupped —
Blue myrtles opening to rain.
Here have you forgotten years,
Lying limp with Beauty —
Passion fire-and-ice.
Here has your long pilgrimage,
Earthy trek over earth —
Come to sweet end.
Here came 1, with heritage
Of earth — brought back the years
In heavy flood — dried your tears
Of ecstasy — forever took away
Your bright-happy day.
11'
The Smith College Monthly
SPEAK-EASY NIGHTS
PkisiM 1 .\ Fairch 1 1 D
HE scrubbed the red and white cotton table cover idly
with her knuckles. The smoke in the little room sank
heavily in her lungs until drawing a breath was so
i«.|( nt and inadequate a physical effort as to leave her
unsatisfied, [ce settled noisily in the drinks, audible even
over the roar of the room and the clatter of broken .uiass
from the bar,
Allan leaned across the table, his eyes very large in the
smoky light, strangely luminous, the color of a silver spoon
in a cup of strong tea.
"You're wry beautiful," he said, "and that is the most
important thing. I don't care what you're like inside. 1
mean. Because you have an unusual line from the corner
of your eye to the tip of your chin. I am content. Your
possession or lack of other qualities matters not at all."
She shrugged her shoulders in a sudden violent gesture,
an involuntary movement that crept out of some recess of
her body and spread through her in a quickening momen-
tum. "What about courage and integrity? What about
f< < ling and 'keeping face' and one's own standards of per-
fect ion ?"
"Oh," he said, with disgust, "You're drunk. Things
like that are worn out. and you know it, certainly."
"You make me sick." she said dully, and stared at her
Iiiilv r naiK in abstraction, while neither spoke for the time
it took a chorus-girl with a banjo to wail for her mammy.
Two soft shoe dancers emphasized their next words with a
rhythmic patter that obsessed her mind.
I think III go home," she murmured, hut her brain
throbbed to the rap-rap patter of the dancing feet.
'You can'l go home, it's still very early, and I won't
lak< \<ui."
I in going home," she said obstinately, hut syncopa-
tion stumbled drunkenly throughout the room. Hvpno-
The Smith College Monthly .13
tized she stared at his black tie and then down to his two
pearl studs.
"I'm so very diga-diga-doo-by nature," screamed a
negro girl, exemplifying her statement to the utmost.
Excitement, that steel spring, wound up taut inside of
her. The muscles of her legs felt strong and supple as rub-
ber. Her back flattened as her shoulders straightened and
drew back. The feeling crept up to her mind, that swayed
with the control of a snake's head raised to strike, glancing
and lightning-quick. Alternately she was a concentric coil
bound in upon herself, or a flash of invisible motion, sneer-
ing and contemptuous in rapidity.
She rose and gestured to Allan to dance. To her im-
agination the other dancers turned to the skeletons they
would eventually become. Through the flesh of the negro
girl she saw dry bones rubbing together. Eye-sockets peered
at her from the corners of the room. A hand resting on
the frame-work of a shoulder rattled a tattoo as she passed.
Under the slamming music she heard the faint tap of flesh-
less feet beating the floor.
I am alive, she thought, and they are dead; but
through the excitement a stiffness crept over her. She looked
at her arms, expecting to see the flesh curl off the gleaming
bones, and the lightness of her feet no longer surprised her,
who knew to what brittle cages they were reduced. The flame
of her body burned out, leaving that fever of the bones, that
icy brilliance, which cold tons of deep sea water cannot
quench, or damp mould riddled with earth-worms utterly
smother.
This is no death, then, she thought, as the drum punc-
tuated each word, this flame in the marrow, this trans-
parency of the flesh. They are dead, long ago, who have
forgotten the bone for the body, the hard for the soft.
And she moved closer to Allan in the pattern of the danc-
ing, and as his arm closed more tightly around her she
laughed aloud to think of their two skeletons stepping so
daintily, fastidiously.
As the music stopped the spring of her tension ran
down. She moved heavily to the table, placing each foot
with elaborate care. Her wrists ached, her body weighed
her down, the line of her chin sagged under the pressure of
her head. Marking out a diagram with a fore-finger on the
1 4 The Smith College Monthly
cloth, sIk stared sullenly at the table. Her lungs could
scara ly lift the lead that oppressed them, and her shoulders
sank forward as if under a burden.
"For God's sake say something," Allan said. "You
l<»ok as if you'd seen a ghost."
"Not -hosts, hut skeletons." she answered. "And
there's nothing to say. or else I don'i know how to say it."
She noticed his amazed look as vaguely as if curtains
'< \ fog hung between them. Ghosts and skeletons, and
she was both. The fact of her reality grew to he impossible.
If she could not speak to Allan, convince him of the im-
portance of these things, so vital to her. did she exist at all?
Had she become as nebulous as an unexpressed thought?
She neatly placed a cross in each square of the diagram
with the (iid of a burned match.
"Bui Allan, you see — ." she began, and stopped. What
did he see? [f she could not speak, did she, then, exists If
she did not exist, how could she possibly speak? Could
he perceive her meaning if she failed to exist, through this
agonizing incapacity for speech?
She saw herself a phantom, lacking in life, because the
words beating in her brain disappeared before they reached
I" r mouth. No agony or intensity on her part could force
h< r f< < ling into expression, her thoughts into sentences.
II« r head fell filled with empty papers idly rattling about.
She grasped a! them hut they fell to pieces, or proved blank,
or were covered with a language whose secret she did not
know. Sometimes in her ears she heard the beating of
wings, whose significance travelled to her tongue, only to
dissolve there, vaguely and incoherently.
"Nothing at all. it doesn't matter. " she continued, as
Allan put down his glass and stared at her, in a rather
strange way, she thought. Perhaps she had been making
>"h\ fact s, as people do when they hold council with them-
selves. Perhaps Allan thought she was mad, to gibber as
she undoubtedly had been doing. Certainly she must be
mad and this then was a dance in a mad-house!
Th< six' I' Ions turned to maniacs forthwith, and she,
in fancy, pulled ahoul and modeled each face as if the feat-
ures w < i< made of putty, until it resembled a Daumier draw-
ing. Sli- s< I them swirling wildly as she completed in turn
each pan- thai passed by the table. Their frenzy increased
The Smith College Monthly 15
with the violence of the music, and the revolving colored
lights here touched up a nose to a livid blue, there ehanged
a laugh to a toothy glare. She put her hand to her faee, to
feel if she herself had altered, and the lack of difference in
the state of her features surprised her into an unconscious
smile.
In astonishment she watched Allan's face contort itself,
amazedly she noticed how the planes broke up and re-
formed into strange patterns, how odd lines appeared, and
wrinkles. She realized with a little shock that he was smil-
ing a response to her, and she became aware again of his
presence, but with such a detachment that she placed him
as far away as one of the outermost stars.
She made another try, "But Allan, there must be some-
thing more than just futility." As she said the wTords they
bounced, hollow, in her head. Another voice, not hers,
had surely uttered those incredibly unnatural syllables. They
boomed endlessly along the ceiling, the orchestra could never
drown them, not the concatenous collision of all the stars
could erase them from her eardrums. She hurried on des-
perately, knowing that nothing but her own voice could
give her even a pretense of help.
"I mean there's really something else." Why didn't
someone stop her from letting these words slide limply out
of her mouth? They kept on in an avalanche, meaningless,
trite, overwhelming her. She saw his mouth twist at the
corners, the sentences stringing helplessly along. Finally
in an agony of foolishness, she arrived at a lame finish and
sat in silence, one part of her brain scourging her, the other
encouraging, until the conflict so tore at her nerves that
with an exclamation she dragged on her coat and stumbled
for the door. She looked around quickly, saw Allan
slouched in the same position, his very shoulders curved
mockingly, his hand tapping a cigarette on the ash-tray,
then the coloured light slid off him, on to the dancers. With
a deep breath she pushed at the handle and moved out into
the street.
Over the powdery snow the lamps threw a net- work
of patterns. Cool air slid down into her lungs, poured over
her hot eye-lids and throat. She walked, her head a little
bent, forgetting to think or worry, content in this imper-
I 0 The Smith College Monthly
sonal world of softly settling Bakes. For blocks this daze
held her, then finally she stopped and lifted up her chin.
"It's this, all this." she murmured half out loud, look-
ing around. "Perhaps now that [*ve seen it again, some-
thing that goes on. and on. and doesn't change,— something
that has an ( ssence, an integral part that is always the same,
and always renewed -I could explain it better."
A little latei- she sat opposite .Allan across the red
and white table-cloth. Though he scowled, his nostrils
crinkled a little with amusement. Saying nothing he tapped
the end of his cigarette, then looked at it for a while.
Silence suddenly made an opening into which she
plunged. "Allan, you must see. Can't you see? It's so
terribly important, not to lose that burning inside hardness,
not to let it get soft."
She felt herself floundering helplessly. The words.
the words evaded her. The snow outside — no. he would
snort again, and again obstinately refuse to understand.
The words choked and died in her throat, leaving her burn-
ing with anxiety and an inner passion of shame.
lie rose as the orchestra brayed out its first note. To-
gether they slid out on the oily rhythm of the music, whose
heat forced their bodies to sway in unity, and their feet to
move together.
"Happy ?" he asked.
A es", she said, hut avoided looking at his eyes and
through the sockets into his skull, "very happy."
The Smith College Monthly 17
ONE MO' ROCK
Mary Chase
l^ylEPHAS walked down the beach toward home, alone.
|vJJ Usually he made the trip with three or four of his
(K* r:| friends, all in that pleasantly boisterous state which
followed their Saturday evenings of craps and bad shine.
Tonight, however, he had come from a changed town. A
revival was in full swing and he and his friends had indulged
in an orgy of repentance. Cephas remembered vaguely go-
ing up to the mourners' bench to sit there groaning, at in-
tervals throwing his head back to howl, "Jesus, sa-ave a
sinner."
Now that had all passed, and, except for a somewhat
exalted feeling, he was the same as ever. He walked along
slowly, playing his game with the waves — when they came
in, he skirted them; when they went out, he followed them
down the beach.
Then he noticed the moon. It was a thin one, leaning
over on its back, just above the water. It made a pale, white
path straight to him. 'T wonder if that light is cool or hot,
like the sun," he thought, and undressing hastily, he went
splashing through the waves, toward the end of the light.
It always kept just out of reach, however, so he swam until
he was tired and then went back near the shore, to rest. He
looked down — his body had disappeared entirely in the
water. "When I move," he thought, "the blue light says
I'm still there, but when I'm still, shark-sucker couldn't find
me, no matter how hard he tried. Good thing to be a
nigger, sharks don't like black meat."
He swam again, lazily. When he put his hands out
in front of him the lights in the water made white cotton
mittens for his hands. There was a blue path behind him,
and all the fish left blue darting trails as they swam. It was
all beautiful and cool. He began to sing a rough chant of
the water and the blue trails, but the idea soon failed him
and he fell back on "One mo' ro-ock, two mo' ro-ock," the
18 The Smith College Monthly
song he and his friends sang to the concrete-mixer when
they \\ orked on the roads.
"Time to go-oM ai las! wove itself into his song. II«
left the water slowly and unwillingly, and after he had
dressed, played his game with the waves down the beach
toward home, singing as he went, "One mo* ro-ock — "
MUSEUM PORTRAIT
Barbara 1). Simison
Above, they hung her portrait, newly oiled.
And done with [ngres minuteness; every hair
In place, with that sleek look for which she toilee
Because it was the fashion then to wear
It parted so; perhaps, it was because
Her husband told her to. and she felt she
Must purse her lips to wait lor his applause,
On having her accord with his decree.
Below, they placed the things that she liked best-
A comb just worn at night when she sat all
Alone a hit of laee upon her hreasl ;
The jewelled fan beside her Spanish shawl.
So here, she was as she would like to seem
And there, as lime and he would rather dream!
The Smith College Monthly 19
DANCING SCHOOL
Georgia Stam m
a)
AYBELLE, walking to dancing school with her older
sister, felt excited and frightened both at once. Her
heart was thumping violently, uncomfortably. She car-
ried a brown velvet bag, holding her dancing slippers, by its
drawstring, and it banged against her legs with each step
she took. Thump ! Thump! went her heart. Bang! Bang! went
the bag against her legs. She was thinking feverishly, "Sup-
pose no one should dance with me! Suppose I should be the
only one left out, and have to sit through a dance all alone!
Or have to dance with Miss Evans! What on earth shall I
say to a boy if one does dance with me? O heaven help me!"
Turning to her sister, she said in a desperate, breathless tone,
"What on earth do you say to a boy?" "Oh goodness, I don't
know," said her sister impatiently, for she was annoyed at
having to take Maybelle to dancing school, "Just anything
that comes into your head." "But just what do you say?"
persisted Maybelle, frantically pressing. Her sister was
spared an answer by their arrival at the dancing school. May-
belle was now struck dumb with terror.
They climbed the steps to the doorway. A boy was
climbing the steps too. He held the door open for them. May-
belle looked at him. Why, she knew him! He was in her class
at school, and his name was Charlie Wilson. Not that she
had ever spoken to him or he to her. The boys never paid
any attention to the girls and the girls ignored the boys. Still
it was cheering to see a familiar face and he looked half smil-
ing as he held the door open, as if he recognized her. She went
in feeling more excited than ever. An awkward arrangement
of the rooms made it necessary for her to pass through the
boys' waiting room to get to the girls'. The room was lined with
boys putting on white gloves and black patent leather shoes.
She passed through the black and white ranks with eyes cast
down, and thought in agony that she heard a titter go round
the room. In the girls' dressing room, sashes and hair ribbons
were being tied, button-hooks wielded, hair brushed by mat-
•JO
The Smith College Monthly
ter of fat-! governesses and fluttering mothers. The girls
were dressed like Maybeile, in white muslin and lace over
pink or blue silk slips, with pink or blue sashes and hair-rib-
bons.
Maybeile ohanged hurriedly into her black pumps, gave
her hat, coat, and brown-velvet bag to the cynical, bored-
looking hat-check girl, and began pulling on her long, white,
silk gloves. She saw a girl that she knew, whose mother was
helping her get ready. Maybeile never liked Lucretia hut
today she went over and spoke to her. I just love dancing-
school, don't you?" said Lucretia in her silly voice while her
anxious, attendant mother was brushing her long, brown
curls. "Oh, yes," replied Maybeile, trying to make her voice
sound natural, unscared. She turned to the mirror, and pulled
up her blue hair-ribbon, perched on the side of her head, and
w ished that her hair was not short and straight.
Maybeile and Lucretia together went up the red-car-
peted stairs to the ballroom to make their curtsey to Miss
Evans. Miss Evans was very tall with black hair. She was
wearing a beautiful sparkly green dress, and she was saying
"Take hold of your skirts! Take one step to the right! Left
leg behind! Bend and straighten!" Maybeile coming up from
hi v rather wabbly curtsey, noted the great length of the big
room. At the left was the piano. At the right, lining the wall
were chairs; a long uninterrupted black line that was the
hoys, abruptly changing into a longer pink and blue line that
was the girls. Maybeile and Lucretia /joined the pinks and
blues.
.Miss Evans now stepped to the center of the ballroom,
clicked her castanets, and said. "Take partners for the
march!" The black line stood up. advanced waveringly, then
broke up as each boy bowed before a *_». i i • 1 with right hand on
hip. lefi hand on stomach. A very small hoy bowed in front
of Maybeile. She noted with distaste that he was half a head
shorter than she, and looked somewhat like a rabbit. The
couples marched round the room, then formed in rows for
the Delsarte exercises. "Point the righl foot! Point to the
side! Extend the arms sideways! Right foot hack! The right
fool. William! Hands above the head! Feet together! Arms
down slowly, slowly!" said .Miss Kvans.
Maybeile hied io imitate .Miss Kvans' graceful fingers
ih.it rained down from her wrists when shr held them above
The Smith College Monthly 21
her head. Miss Evans' fingers seemed to float through the
air as her arms came slowly down to her sides. How silly and
awkward the hoys looked when they did these exercises. They
didn't point their feet, they stuck them forward as if they
were about to kick a soccer-hall. They held their hands in
fists above their heads, and the bad ones refused to do the
exercises at all. "What stupid things boys are," thought May-
belle, "They don't even know their right from their left."
"Click-click" went Miss Evans' castanets. "Take part-
ners for the one-step !" Here was the little boy bowing to
Maybelle again, hand on hip. other hand on stomach. Oh, how
awfully he danced. He never looked where he was going, and
bumped her into people. He made his left hand, holding her
right, go up and down, up and down. When the music stop-
ped, Maybelle was glad to sit down. Miss Evans was talking.
"Gentlemen, sit to the left of your partners. Click-click!
Don't leave your partners, boys. Go back there, Thomas and
William. Xo. you don't need any water so soon! Sit to the
left, remember! Young ladies and gentlemen, please do not
cross your legs! Xothing looks worse! However, you may
cross your feet at the ankles." With a subdued tittering, the
pupils uncrossed their legs, and sat uncomfortably erect.
Xext came a lesson in the waltz. Maybelle caught it very
quickly. After each slide, you began with a different foot,
and made a sort of square. The boys, Maybelle noticed with
scorn, had great difficulty learning it. They would start all
right, fumble with their feet and go all wrong. Miss Evans
(who could not say her th's) counted, "One! Two! Shree!
One! Two! Shree!
"Click-click!" "Take partners for the waltz." Boys were
bowing left and right. Maybelle, trying to seem unconscious
and uncaring, talked to Lueretia whose eye was wandering.
A boy bowed to Lueretia. Maybelle and two other girls were
left out. "You two," said Miss Evans, "dance together. May-
belle will dance with me." Maybelle, blushing hotly, tried
furiously to follow Miss Evans who counted, "One! Two!
Shree! One! Two! Shree! all through the dance without
ceasing.
Gladly Maybelle sat down after it was over next to a
group of girls whose partners had deserted them, escaping
Miss Evans' watchful eye. Lueretia, also deserted, came over
and sat in the chair next to Maybelle. As she sat down, "Rip"
22 The Smith College Monthly
went her dress. The bad boys had stuck a pin on her chair and
n<>\\ the) were sniggering at her plight. "How nasty boys
are!" said Maybelle, "That's their idea of something funny!"
"Click-click!" "Take partners for the polka!" Maybelle
fell a dreadful, sinking feeling. Oh, if only one of those
horrid, horrid boys would ask her to dance. A hoy stepped
in front of her. Ill bowed. She saw the top of his blonde
head, and then as he straightened she recognized the pink
face of Charlie Wilson. She go! up and made her curtsey.
Away they wen! to the polka step: slide slide, hop, hop.
hop! ( )ne! Two! ( )ne. t wo. shree!"
"I like the polka, don't you?" said Maybelle. "Yep, it's
go! so much go to it !" agreed Charlie. "Say," he said. "Don't
you think .Miss Groui is a funny old <^i rl ^" Miss Grout was
their school teacher. "She's a nut!" said Maybelle, delighted
that they should agree again. "Say," he went on "D'j'ever
hear the joke: why is a Ford car like a schoolroom?" "No,"
said Maybelle, "Why?" "Cause there's an old crank in front
and a lot hi little nuts behind!" Maybelle giggled furiously.
She though! it the funniest joke she had ever heard. "How
old are you?" she asked, thinking how- easy it was to talk to
this boy. "Twelve. How old are you?" "Eleven," she said
and thoughl how nice it was that he was a year older. "Let's
gel some water." he said, after the strenuous polka was over.
"Whew, it's Hot!" Gallantly he pushed the other boys right
and left from tin ice-water pitcher, gol her water for her. in
a paper cup. and presented it to her with a flourish.
Take partners for the Paul Jones! Charlie gulped down
his water, put a masterful arm round Maybelle and danced
off with her. Maybelle giggled admiringly as she pointed out
t<> him that he had omitted his how. "What would you've
done if M iss K\ ans had caught you ?" she asked. lie shrugged
his shoulders and said, "Well, she didn't catch inc. did she?"
'Click-click!" The music stopped. "Face vonr partner!
Girl's righl hand in hoy's left! Start forward!''' "Goodbye!"
said Charlie, and did he? Yes, he did squeeze her hand before
he hi it L!'» and passed on! Left hand, righl hand, tall hoy.
short boy, boy with glasses, ugly how left hand, right hand.
"Click-click!" The music stopped. Oh heavens! Maybelle had
to dance with the oldest, tallest, handsomest hoy in the room.
I l'iw he scar< d her, h< was so old and contemptuous looking!
They began to dance and she stumbled a little. kkOh. excuse
The Smith College Monthly 23
me!" she cried. "My fault," said he politely. "Oh, it isn't
your fault and you know it!" thought Maybelle ungratefully.
She was uncomfortable, nervous; she could think of nothing
to say to him. They danced past Maybelle's sister who was
sitting on the sidelines among the governesses and mothers.
Her sister was trying to say something to her; her lips were
forming the word, "Talk!" Talk! — Maybelle could not say
a word. She felt as if she would never speak again. In silence
they danced. In profound silence they sat down together, he
on her left.
With what enormous thankfulness did she see Charlie
Wilson's pink face bob up and down in front of her in a bow
as he asked her for the next dance. He did not chatter as
gayly during this dance as in the one before, but the silence
that fell between them was not in the least strained or
agonized. Yet Charlie was not altogether his former cheerful,
easy self, he seemed preoccupied, a little absent. Suddenly
he said in a hurried, embarrassed tone, "May I take you home
from dancing-school?" Maybelle's heart leaped at this thrill-
ing, this glorious offer. A boy asking to take her home ! But her
high heart sank as she dismally realized that she must refuse,
that her sister was sitting there, waiting to take her home. She
would have to confess to this boy that she was a child that
had to be called for. She would have to tell, disclose to him
what an infant she was, and he would no longer think of her.
or want td take home a girl so babyish. Humiliated, an-
guished, she made her reply, more abrupt than she realized.
"No you can't! My sister's here for me." "Oh, I see," he said
in what seemed to her a curt tone. She said to herself in des-
pair, "I suppose he thinks I'm just a little kid."
"Maybelle!" It was Miss Evans' sharp voice. "Maybelle,
please turn your toes out!" What an awful thing! How cruel
of her to say that just then! How humiliating! Oh, I've lost
him forever ! thought Maybelle, acutely unhappy.
"Young ladies and gentlemen," said Miss Evans when
they Avere all seated. "I want you to change partners after
every dance. I don't want you to go on dancing with the same
partner all the time. Now then, take partners, please!" Char-
lie left Maybelle. "Forever!" she thought drearily and the
small rabbity-looking boy whom she first danced with bowed
before her.
How miserable she was ! Whv did she have to lose Char-
2 I The Smith College Monthly
Ik '. Perhaps li< might dance with her again! No, he never
would! And here she was dancing with this nasty little fellow
who kepi bumping her into people. What was he saying to
her? That he had gotten A. A. A. on his report card that
month. Charlie had told her with great glee that he had got-
ten B, C, 1) for attendance, work and conduct in order. It
was sissy for a hoy to be good at his lessons. All the real hoys
w ere terrible in them.
The little boy was saying to her now. "Don't let's pa\
any attention to Miss Evans but let's dance the next together
too." "Oh horrors!" she thought, "1 don't want to dance with
him!" Hut fear that she would again be left out caused her to
accept. .Inst as she stood up to make her curtsey she noticed
Charlie's blonde hair and pink lace coming in her direction.
In despair she saw him suddenly turn and how to Lucretia.
Miserable, with a big unswallowable lump in her throat.
she went through the last dance with the brilliant student.
She was to glad to hear the music of the Polonaise which
apparently meant the (.rand March and the end. Hound the
room marched the couples, hand in hand, girl's left hand hold-
ing skirts, hoy's right hand on hip. "Take shree steps, then
sweep the foot along the Moor and up! One! Two! Shree!
Brush! One! Two! Shree! Brush!" Curtsey to -Miss Evans!
Curtsey to your partner! Dismissed!
Sick at heart, Maybelle stumbled down the red-carpeted
stairs, bumped by the hurrying hordes of the released boys
who hounded down three steps at a time. In the dressing-
room, dejectedly, she changed her shoes, put on her hat and
coat. "Are you all ready? Let's go!" said her sister. They
passed through the hoys' now noisy room, dodging a flying
patent leather shoe. To her sister's question, "Did you have
a good time?" she could make no answer.
A hoy was standing by the street door as if waiting for
some one, with his hands in his poekets. It was Charlie Wil-
son! Maybelle's heart stood still, then went on beating very
Cast. As she passed him, he closed one merry blue eye in
a broad wink. He'd winked at her! Then he wasn't mad! He
still liked her! How happy she was! I low thrilling! That
wink! She would never forgel it ! She was tired but she didn't
care. She had 1>< en scared, unhappy, w retched, hut now every-
thing was joyous. Joyfully her brown velvet bag banged
against her legs to the tune of her happy thoughts, "'He
winki (1 at me! 1 J< winh d at me!"
The Smith College Monthly
TEMPERATURE ALMOST NORMAL
Rachel Grant
aT was tedious to be lying in bed now that the fever no
longer burned heavily through her body, gnawing at
the edges of her eyes. It made one feel stupidly small
and childish. The distance to where her feet sloped up in
little pyramids was too short, unprepossessing, the shape
of her body thickened and blurred by the bedclothes. Pet-
tishly she pulled them taut to her chin and stretched full
length; that was worse, she looked like a long block of
stone. Tired, she let them go, and a magazine beside her,
slipping like a lizard between the bed and the wall, dropped
on the floor. It annoyed her to feel young, not in control.
Even her hands betrayed her, lying there on the coverlid, a
little on one side, curled, fingertips under. They looked
young and uncertain. She lifted them and examined them
carefully. She was proud of her hands, the long, chiselled
fingers were beautiful and she had taught them to interpret
her silences. They moved restlessly as she talked, touching
her face, resting against her hair and always stretched a little
separate, as if to emphasize her pleasure in them. But now
the nails were lustreless and too long; she turned on one side
and put both hands under the pillow.
The room was so still, inert. The furniture was pas-
sive as though no one had ever walked by it or moved it.
When she was up and using things they never seemed so
unalive. She thought the writing desk stood heavy against
the wall, and yet she knew how it lightly shifted position
when she pulled at the drawer. The portfolio on top lay
close, close, as though no fingers could pry it loose. The
perfume bottles were onyx and jade, and riveted as orna-
ments to the top of her dressing-table; the rug was a sheet
of dull red metal on the floor. Everything was unmoving
and immovable. The spring flowers were rigid in their
vase. She saw the thick, translucent stems of tulips, swol-
len in the green water, and shuddered; she hated thick
things. Sudenly she wondered if she. too. had lost all power
to move. She sat up sharply, her heart shivering. Then
26 The Smith College Monthly
with an uneasy laugh, she slid back again, turned the pillow
over and lay .still.
She shul her eyes, tired as they were of moving up and
down the edges of the furniture, through the small brass
drawer handles, and along the sun lines on the floor. She
tried to visualize herself serving tea in the library down-
stairs, as she so liked to do. hands outstretched above the
silver things on the tray, people coming up to her. talking,
listening, liking her. Hut it was too difficult, she was in-
< scapably here, in bed, and quite alone. She could not
accustom herself to being ill. and she had no patience.
Solitude was something one chose, not something to be
forced upon one like this, and silence had more dignity than
this soundless vacuum in which they had left her. People
m ( med SO remote. They had sent Mowers, but it was such
a usual gesture to send flowers, so mechanical. Perhaps
this pot of fuchsia which had pleased her so had been ordered
by his secretary, over the telephone, without any conscious
thought of her. It seemed to her terribly sad that she should
have been tricked into gratitude. Tears stood in her eyes,
she opened them hurriedly, aghast at this childishness.
She must stop thinking about herself. Without interest,
she began to hunt words, describing things, her curtains, Mut-
ed like bronze columns; the group of perfume boxes, uneven,
cubistic, a diminutive New York sky-line. Words were too
heavy, her mind sagged under them.
All at once she became aware of the bed. It pressed
into her back and the sheets strained across her chest. She
broke free of them, and on one elbow, struggled to pull
the bedclothes straight and to smooth the under sheet. She
suffered as it knotted in folds that seemed to urge themselves
into hei- back, and the sheets strained across her chest. She
suffered as it knotted in folds that seemed to urge themselves
into her body, granite, terribly hard. Exhausted and damp
with sweat, she lay down and felt the cover bend like steel
around her ankles. She writhed, the mattress was wooden,
corrugated. She drew herself convulsively into a crouching
position near the head of the bed. watching the blankets slid-
ing iii a malignant slant towards the Moor, —
"Two degrees more," said the nurse," that seems strange,
after you have been lying here placidly all afternoon."
The Smith College Monthly 27
WINTER MOON
Marion Bussang
Oh cold young moon,
The brittle lover
Of sloped slate roofs,
Of chiselled towers:
We who have worshipped
Summer and flowers
Penitent kneel
Under your scorn;
Steel and silver
Welded by heat,
Hardened by fire,
We, born
Out of the warm
Sweet womb of June
Ask that no more
May we know of desire;
Only the clear
Swift pain of the sword
That is all beauty,
Swift in its passing*.
28 The Smith College Monthly
TEN DOLLARS
Elizabeth Wheeleb
GTLINK! Nine dollars! The figures leapt at Peter, start-
lingly black and large. He picked up the hank and
I shook it; the coins shifted as if they had not much room
to move. Only a dollar more. Then the hank would open,
and then he could by all the soldiers he wanted. Germans,
French, British and Americans; infantry, cavalry, artillery;
machine-guns, tanks and airplanes. In another week perhaps,
if he worked very hard.
lh set the bank on the bookcase, and picked up the over-
sowing wastebasket. His mother's was only half full, so into
that he dumped the contents of his sisters and the one in the
guestroom, and then went to the cellar to empty them. His
father's wastebasket in the study had to be taken by itself,
it was so big and so full, though less full now than in school
time. However, it served the purpose of carrying up the
fire-wood. Peter threw the logs into the woodbox, rattled
the kindling on top, and swept the hearth in three quick
strokes. Six more days and he would have another twenty-
five cents. I If swept the front porch, already so hot that he
could feel the warmth through his rubber soles. The trees
along the drive scarcely stirred, and there was a haze over
tli< sea, blotting out the horizon line.
Willi this heat, the beans would be ready in his garden,
and his mother had said she would buy them from him.
Basket in hand, he walked quickly through the rose garden
where a hummingbird was Hying, across the road, and into the
field beyond. Two years ago it had been a hay-field; now it
was planted to crops to i\rd the school in the coming winter.
Across the upper part, near the road, marched rows of young
(•(•in like soldiers in platoons. Below, among the white-dotted
green ranks of flowering potatoes, khaki-clad figures with
hoes moved up and down. Since they could not go to war. the
school boys had come back in squads to work in the fields.
Willi bis basket fixed mi his head like a helmet. Peter
a< l\ anced up< >n them.
The Smith College Monthly 29
"Hello, Peter. Going to help us hoe potatoes?"
"No. My beans ought be ripe by now. I'm gointa sell
'em. Guess how much money I got?"
"How much?"
"Aw c'm on and guess."
"Oh, 1 don't know. Two dollars and a quarter?"
"Nope. Much more 'n that."
"You tell us. We can't guess."
Peter kicked at a dead weed with scornful impatience.
Then he condescended. "Nine dollars. When I get ten, I
can spend it, and I'm going to get lots of soldiers and have
a battle."
"That'll be fun, won't it?"
Peter looked at the bent back of the speaker, and sighed,
then moved on down the field to his own garden. The boys
did not seem much interested in his soldiers. He thought of
Mac, who had hoed potatoes last summer while he was pick-
ing beans, and had talked to him across the field as they
worked. In the fall, instead of coming back to school, Mac
had joined the Marines and gone to France. School had not
been the same without him. He had been football captain,
and could pass a ball further than anyone else in school,
and had taught Peter how to drop-kick, also how to tackle,
and a great many more things too numerous to be recalled.
Peter missed Mac. He wished that Mac were there to hear
about his soldiers.
But thinking of his soldiers made picking beans easy,
even in this heat. Quickly he hitched along on his knees,
feeling under the dusty leaves. The basket filled rapidly.
Some of them were long and curved, like nothing else but
beans; some were short and stumpy, like zeppelins, only
thinner. Peter dug his hands into the basket and wiggled his
fingers about. Nearly two quarts. He stood up and, thrust-
ing his hands in his pockets, surveyed his garden. Two rows
of beans, then a row of carrots, one of beets, two of lettuce,
and the last row of radishes because Mummy liked them. The
lettuce looked wilted ; he would have to water them when the
sun went down. Otherwise, the garden looked fine. Sud-
denly his eye caught sight of a bright orange something with
black dots on one of the beet plants. He leapt over the car-
rots in time to see a huge potato bug parade across a leaf and
disappear underneath. Peter grabbed him and put him down
30 The Smith College Monthly
in tlu- path. Then he selected a blunt .stone and standing a lit-
tle way off, dispatched the potato bug with the sure aim of a
grenadier. In satisfaction, he began to whistle "Over
There," and picking up his basket of beans, he strode up the
Held to deliver them and claim his wages.
The next day he sold some carrots, and the day after thai
some beets. The bank now registered nine dollars and sev-
enty-five cents. Saturday, when his father paid him, he
would have ten. On Friday, however, a sudden fear assailed
him that someone else might have bought his soldiers, so he
begged permission to go to town and see if they were still
there. I Le walked up to the window with his eyes averted, and
he closed them before he dared to look. Yes. there they were.
the whole window filled with them. On one side a whole army
of Germans in steel-pointed helmets marched forward with
bayonets set. led by a man that must be the Kaiser on a black
war-horse. On the other side, rank upon rank, stood poilus,
Tommies and doughboys; and in between were tanks and
guns and a few dead soldiers. For one short hour. Peter ex-
amined them separately and all together, and then, with a
sigh that clouded the window, he tore himself away, his eyes
blinking and the end of his nose white and Hat. To-morrow
they would all be his.
When lie go! home, as always he looked hopefully on the
front hall table for mail, and could hardly believe his eyes
when he saw a postcard addressed to him. It was from .Mac.
The picture was a colored one of a French soldier and an
American shaking hands. The American was labelled "Mac"
but he did not look much like him. Peter turned the card
over, and sat down on the stairs to read it. It took quite a
while. "Deai- Peter: Wait till you sec the German helmet
1 found for you yesterday. In a month now. you will be put-
ting them over from the thirty-yard-line. Wish I could see you.
Mac." Peter sat still for several minutes, looking first at the
picture .-Hid then at the writing. Abruptly he jumped up. slip-
ping the card into the pocket of his shirt. After fumbling
about in the darkness of the hall closet, he emerged with a
Foot ball. The screen door banged behind him as he landed with
H flying leap on the lawn. Hack and forth, from the lilac
hedge i<> the horsechestnui tree, he drop-kicked the football,
running tirelessly after it. The shadows of the spruce trees
Crept toward the house, and the sun slipped behind the hill;
The Smith College Monthly 31
but still Peter kicked, straining- to make each go further than
the last. Once he put one from the hedge over the tree into the
drive. Mac would have said, "Atta Boy! Come on now. Do it
again." So Peter tried, until it was dusk and the robins
chirped good-night through the gathering fog.
That evening after supper as his father unfolded the
Times, Peter said triumphantly, "Daddy, yon owe me a
quarter to-morrow. Then I can open my bank!" He turned
a somersault that knocked over the fire tongs. Peter hastened
to pick them up, but the expected reprimand did not come.
Instead, his father fished in his pocket.
"If you'll keep quiet, I'll give it to you now," and he
tossed the quarter to Peter. In half a minute, Peter was up-
stairs and down again with his bank. He jammed the quarter
in the slot, and as the nine-seventy-five changed to ten-aught-
aught, there was a strange click. Peter pressed the spring in
the bottom. It opened, and out poured nickles, dimes and
quarters in a jingling heap. He shook the bank until there
was nothing left in it, and then picked up the coins in both
hands, letting them slip through his fingers like sand. Then he
separated them into piles — nickles, dimes and quarters —
stacked them neatly, and counted them, then multiplied and
added to see if they made ten dollars. They did, so he set them
out in platoons with the nickels and dimes for privates, be-
cause there were more of them, and the quarters for officers.
The platoons moved about and formed in diminutive com-
panies. The nickles were the Allies and their officers were
heads up; the dimes were the Germans, their officers tails up.
The battle was so exciting that Peter hardly heard the
telephone ring except to know that his father had gone to
answer it. He did not hear what was being said, nor notice that
his mother and his sister had put down their books. But when
his father came back and stood still in the door, Peter looked
up.
"Mae's been killed." He spoke so quietly that Peter
could not believe what he had said until he heard his mother
say "Oh, John!" in the voice that always meant something
terrible had happened. Peter looked down at the coins and
stared hard at one of the quarters.
The Morris chair creaked as his father sank heavily into
it. "Poor old Mac. I've been waiting every day to hear this."
The eagle on the quarter disappeared and the quarter
32 The Smith College Monthly
became a white blur on the rug, Peter got up, and dragged
his feel slowly after him up the stairs. 1 1 is door closed softly.
The next morning he came downstairs before anyone
(1st. His money was in an old candy box on the table. He
picked up some of the coins and lei them drop hack into tin
box one by one, holding the last quarter, looking at tin- eagle,
and finally letting it too fall. As he heard his mother's step
on the stairs, he carefully put the cover on the box and turn-
ing his hack upon it. walked into the dining-room with his
eyes on the pattern in the ru<^'. 1 1 is mother had gone into the
kitchen. I Ic looked out of the window at a robin strutting on
the lawn, nor did he turn when the door swung behind him.
"Mummy, the Rid Cross still wants money doesn't it?"
"Yes, deal", they can always use it."
"Well, then. I guess 1 want to give them my ten
dollars."
Although he could not die like .Mac. perhaps he could
help the Allies too. Hut now he could not have his soldiers.
And Mac was dead. Suddenly Peter dropped his head on his
arm auainst the window-sash, and sobbed.
The Smith College Monthly 33
CONCERNING MEANS OF LOCOMOTION
Elizabeth Perkins
a COMMON generalization maintains that every novice
who gains admission to the sacred precincts of Higher
%r,8q Education believes that her purpose embodies the ac-
quisition of one of three assets: Learning, friends, amuse-
ment. The novice almost immediately discovers that while
her purpose may remain fixed, she is being forced to direct
her energies not immediately towards its attainment, but to-
wards getting from one to another of the places where learn-
ing, companionship or amusement is to be found. This fact is
less commonly recognized than the first, but is no less widely
applicable; and while the mind of Napoleon may have plan-
ned his most successful strategies in total repudiation of
whatever agonies the stomach of Xapoleon was suffering,
smaller brains are easily distracted from important considera-
tions by even so slight a matter as a pair of weary supports.
Consequently an appreciable amount of concentrated
thought is spent each year upon means of locomotion.
The automobile, worthy vehicle never before fully ap-
preciated, being forbidden to all save a select few, the field
is narrowed to an examination of three contrivances: the foot,
the roller-skate, and the bicycle. These are similar in that
all three use overmuch foot- and leg-muscle and thereby
revive the old grievance against parents who, fearing lest the
purity and Scriptural accuracy of their pedigree be ques-
tioned, refuse to instruct offspring in the impartial use of
hands and feet. Aside from this feature, they differ widely
and are deserving of separate consideration.
The foot as a rule comes as part of one's standard equip-
ment ; it is therefore convenient, its use is naturally and easily
acquired, and it is always within call. Practically no know-
ledge of its mechanism is necessary for the amateur, and there
is no danger of forgetting the key. In a state of nature its
upkeep also is negligible ; unfortunately the deteriorating in-
fluence of civilization has been such that shoes are now con-
3i The Smith College Monthly
sidered advisable and even necessary by the decadent daugh-
ters of Pithecanthropus Erectus. Quite aside from the ex-
pense of constantly replacing a succession of broken-down
shoes, this slate of affairs lias brought it about thai any un-
usual exertion produces great wear and tear on the foot it-
self. Blisters on one's feel are no less unattractive than worn
leather or tire-punctures; and they are distinctly more pain-
ful. It is this personal element in the relation between fool
and o\\ ik t \\ liieh lias made walking less popular than its man-
ifold advantages mighl lead one to expect.
Upon the roller-skate I gaze with a frankly /jaundiced
eye. There is to me an underlying faithlessness, a treachery,
in roller-skates to which I shall never become reconciled. Per-
haps oui- many unfortunate experiences have been due wholly
to my own lack of understanding; hut 1 can swear to having
S< ( n what on the lips of a person would be a malicious sneer
gleam about the clamps of a rollerskate as it relinquished its
grasp at the crucial moment and deposited me. at grazing in-
cidence, Upon the pavement. On the few occasions when I
have been allowed to retain the upright posture, 1 have found
the quality of self-control to he quite lacking in the skate:
however slight the incline on which I embark, an appeal to a
courteous tree has always been necessary in order to prevent
a continuance of the mad course and an inglorious end in the
shrubbery at the bottom. Moreover, the roller-skate is con-
st rid ing to the ankle: it produces a most harsh and uncsthetic
effect upon any but the smoothest cement: and it transmits
up the spine a series of uneven vibrations which cannot but
he injurious to the delicate nerve-centers of the brain.
The bicycle, on the other hand, is a thoroughbred. Offer-
ing a striking contrast to the blunted perceptions and pur-
blind cruelty of the roller-skate, it is affectionate, sensitive and
high-strung. Quick-tempered it may he, as is shown by its
behavior when forced to move at a pace at variance with its
own inclinations; and he who would master it must possess
in addition to ,-i certain technical skill, hands of tempered
steel, prehensile toes, and an intuitive quickness of discern-
ment. Like ;ill line creations, it requires of its owner intellig-
ence and constant care; hut these it repays a thousandfold.
Mastership, one* attained, has no equal among all the sensa-
tions to which man is susceptible. Hut all approaches to
perfection are, by their very conspicuousness, doomed to
The Smith College Monthly 35
frustration. Something in nature is aroused to antagonism a-
gainst this challenger of its powers; for at the approach of the
humblest pedestrian, hills are at worst quiescent; before au-
tomobiles they are seen to abase themselves ; while in the pres-
ence of a bicycle they rise indignantly on end. Unless a sys-
tem of elevators be installed in the country roads of the land.
I seriously consider growing a good set of callouses and re-
verting to feet.
36 The Smith College Monthly
A LEGEND OF OLD RUSSIA
Pauline Si.o.m
SI I E "Malach Ha Moveth" the Angel of Death was
somewhat tired of his abode in heaven. For eons he had
inhabited the same dwelling and had carried on the
same work which made him so feared on earth. \ot withstand-
ing the respectful awe his fellow-angels accorded him, his
present life was somber and monotonous. Now the Malach
had an idea that a wife might break this monotony. Where-
fore he petitioned the Most High Tor a vacation and his
pel it ion was granted.
Thus it happened that the Angel of Death descended to
the earth and assumed the guise of a mortal and the humble
name of Yankel. Hut within a fortnight came YankePs down-
fall, lie met a younff iadv in the village. As she stood there
in her high laced pointed shoes, gathered skirt, tight-bodiced
waist and multi-colored head shawl of the middle class girl
of thai period, she seemed a vision of loveliness to the dazzled
Yankel. It was not so much beauty of feature as an unusual
flashing air of independence that captivated him. lie made
inquiries and learned that she was by name Alte. daughter of
one Ben-Yomin, a shoemaker.
Time and courtship sped by quickly. Within four
months there was a great commotion in the home of Hen-
Ybmen. In one room a white-gowned .Alte sat on an inverted
wash tul). All the married women in the village were combing
and braiding her hair. Then Other people entered and each
one undid a little of the "tzop" or braid. Alia! At last the
secrel was out! This could mean nothing other than a wed-
ding.
And true enough, for there in the next room rose the
"chupeh" or wedding canopy. At the other side of the room
stood ;i dazed, beatific Yankel. In his blissful ecstacy, his one
wonder was thai souk "bocher" had not snatched his treasure
up long ago. Then, amid a maze of happiness, he was wed.
Before many months had passed poor Yankel under-
stood why this wife of his had not heen beSOUghl by the vil-
The Smith College Monthly 37
lage benedicts. For she was known as "Alte de Mook"-
"Alte the Vixen." She was a shrew of first water. All day
long she nagged and nagged. It was "Yankel, be careful,
don't soil my clean sanded floor," "Yankel, go to the porotz
for this," "Yankel, von made a mess of that last business
deal," "Yankel" this/and "Yankel" that.
Poor Yankel awoke from his rosy dream. Then he de-
termined to declare himself master. After all, was he not
the Angel of Death? Surely he could control a mere mortal
shrew. At first her husband's unexpected stand silenced Alte,
but not for long. It was impossible to quell her and she soon
wore down his resistance. And so. year after year, her inces-
sant nagging continued until he could endure no more. He
decided to return to heaven.
Now the reason he had not returned long before was his
love — not for his wife, but for his son Mosche. He had hated
to leave the youngster to fight his way in the world unaided.
But now the boy was nineteen and, with his father's help, old
enough to make his way in the world. Therefore the angel
summoned his son to him, revealed his true self, and added,
"I am not leaving you without the means of livelihood, so
listen carefully to me. You must become a doctor. Yes, yes,
I know you have never studied medicine", — as the astounded
boy tried to interrupt — "but that will not matter. If, when
you enter a sick room, you see me standing at the foot of the
patient's bed, you will know that the patient will live. You
may reassure his family and prescribe anything you wish—
the patient will recover. But should I be standing at the
patient's head, then it will be useless to try remedies. Say at
once nothing can be done and predict death. And now, my
son, one last farewell."— and with the joyful thought of his
renewed bachelordom the Angel of Death soared to the king-
ly realms above.
The years passed, as years do pass. To the Angel of
Death, his experience on the earth had become a vague, un-
pleasant dream; the only reminder of it was his frequent
meetings with his son. Alte in the meantime had become a
scolding, chattering, sharp-faced old woman cared for by
her son.
As for Mosche — ah, his was now a name renowned
throughout the Russian kingdom. His fame had grown from
a mere whisper of a man who never failed in his diagnoses, to
M The Smith College Monthly
a thundering acclaim as one of the greatest doctors in Eu-
rope. 1 f he said. "Madam, your son \\ ill recover," the mother
would cease worrying, no matter what others might say. Hut
if he said the patient was doomed .
However, his profession did not occupy all his thoughts.
Hopeless love also possessed him. For at a brilliant court
function he had met and lost his heart to the youngest daugh-
ter of the Czar! Moreover, he had reason to believe that he.
too. had found favor in her eyes. Hut realizing the emptiness
of his aspirations, he had never breathed a word of his affec-
tions.
One night as he was attending a medical case in Riga,
he received an urgent summons to the imperial palace in
.Moscow. The czar's youngest daughter was dying, all other
physicians had given up hope, and the czar was frantic in his
grief. With the utmost haste Mosche set forth. 1 1 is mind was
consumed with terrible anxiety. Where would his father he
Standing? I f at the foot, then all would he well and good. Hut
what if he should he standing at the head! He turned cold
with the horror of the thought. No! It could not be that she
would die! Why, ten days ago she had been so blooming, so
full of life. If at the foot, then all well and good. Hut what
if he should he standing at the head. Again and again the hor-
rible thought throbbed through his brain suppose his father
were standing at her head, suppose his father were standing
it her head, suppose his father thus passed the journey.
In the lower hall of the palace he came face to face with
(he czar himself, who with tears streaming down his usually
dignified face. said. "My boy. if you will only save her I will
grant vou anything you ask even my daughter herself!"
With this astounding promise he rushed him to the princess1
room. As .Mosche crossed the threshold he closed his eyes.
How could he look? Hut he must face the situation. With
a start h< opened his eyes. 1 1 is worst fears were confirmed!
There at the head of the richly canopied bed stood the Angel
of Death, grim and Foreboding!
For one endless moment Mosche remained motionless;
then he shook oil' the paralysis which had seized him. There
must still be a way to save her! Agitatedly he cleared the
room of bystanders. He must work quickly it was evident
she w.ms sinking fast. At last he turned and faced his father.
"Father, won't you go away? For my sake, father. 1 beg of
The Smith College Monthly 39
you." For many precious minutes he pleaded in an agony of
anxiety, but the angel only shook his head inexorably. "I'm
sorry, but I must do my duty."
Mosche fell back, hopelessly despondent. Then — no, he
wouldn't let her die; he wouldn't. He rushed forward shout-
ing, "Father, you must go away. I'll make you— " and then
the inspiration came to him.
"For the last time, will you leave?" he asked excitedly.
The princess was almost dead. "You won't, eh? Well then,
I'll bring my mother! Do you remember?" The Angel of
Death seemed to shrivel — gone were his majesty, his proud
and kingly bearing. He was about to collapse; he thought he
heard a shrill voice cry, "Yankel!"
Then he gathered his waning strength and with one
mighty bound was gone, just before the last breath of life was
about to leave the princess.
As you may know, the princess recovered and married
Mosche, who at once gave up the medical profession. As the
princess was in no way like her mother-in-law, their wedded
life was long and happy.
As for Alte, it is known that she lived to an astounding
old age — just as if, her neighbors used to say, even the Angel
of Death didn't want her and deferred her coming as long as
he possibly could.
40
The Smith College Monthly
r
BOOK REVIEWS
1
KEATS'S SHAKESPEARE
Caroline F. K. Spurgeon Oxford University Press 1928
Week-end visits in the country are in general somewhat
similar. We ask of them entertainment merely. In the dis-
cos ery of a startling, fine-cut lace, or an unexpected attitude
of mind we are fortunate beyond calculation. Probably .Miss
Spurgeon's hopes were not more extravagant on the day she
lef1 New York City last ( October; certainly she had no presen-
timent of that conversation with another guest which led to
one of the most important discoveries in the literary field for
many years. As .Miss Spurgeon describes it. this guest,
"hearing thai I was interested in such things, asked me rather
tentatively whether I would care to look at a copy of Shake-
speare which had some marks in it by Keats, and which be-
longed lo a friend of hers who lived at Princeton." And so it
was by chance thai Miss Spurgeon heard of the existence in
M r. ( Seorge Armour's library of those hooks of Keat s's which
had urown into the fibre of his life, which in a sense were his
.is were no others that he owned. Keats's own Shakespeare.
s< \< ii rather shabby . . . stocky . . . and attractive little vol-
umes," stood quietly on these shelves lor nearly fifty years,
unknown even to so expert a critic as Buxton Forman, unex-
.imii i' d i \ ( ii by Amy I *owell. The pen markings make lumin-
ous th< mind of Keats, approaching, pondering, sometimes
closing with that greater mind: they show his eyes turned
"upon iin< phrases like a lover." It is the revelation of an
intimate Keats, living in and by Shakespeare. Miss Spur-
geon found him in these hooks, and through her essay makes
it possible lor lis to find him.
Irrespective "l the quantity of Keat's remarks on his
reading which are printed and discussed in his biographies,
something of ih< movement of his thought is lost among the
The Smith College Monthly 41
conventional letters of type. Caroline Spurgeon avoids this
by including twenty plates, facsimiles of the pages which he
marked with the sharpest interest. One can almost look over
his shoulder and see the pen move. A deeper intimacy with
him begins to grow. It is a closeness in mind like that sym-
pathy of feeling which comes from reading his letters. We
realize not only by the profuse underlining but by the ap-
pearance and. Miss Spurgeon says, by the texture of the
pages, which plays he most frequently read. Some of the
plates have been handled with such care that the dark surface
of the margin, worn by his thumb, is still visible. The Temp-
est, ./ Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet follow-
through 1817—1818, The Tempest especially influencing the
writing of Endymion. The plays serve as a kind of barometer
of mental temper throughout his life. He underscored heavily
the passages which pleased him in their imaginative quality;
usually he drew down the margin beside lines whose meaning
seemed particularly cogent. The impression of a respectful
familiarity with his mental reactions is so strong that one
reads the plays Miss Spurgeon reproduces at the end of the
volume, anticipating his pleasure, thinking that two pages
ahead there is a phrase which Keats is going to like!
Together with this fuller appreciation of his sensitive-
ness to literary expression, admiration for Keats as a semi-
professional critic increases through reading the markings
in his own hand. His articles on Kean define Keats's ability
regarding the drama in general, and Shakespeare especially.
He reasserts the claim forcibly in the notes he writes in the
'Princeton copy', as the books in Mr. Armour's library have
been called. In The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's
Dream he suggests two valuable emendations to the text. In
this somewhat formal aspect his criticism is more than worthy.
Even when he is laughing shamelessly at Doctor Johnson's
stolid appraisals which are appended in his edition to each
play, Keats strikes at the center of the question raised. Once
again one is impressed by his perfect poise of mind, — and his
sense of humor. Through Johnson's paragraph at the end of
All's Well Keats draws whirling circles, and with apt malice
quotes "Wilt thou ever be a foul-mouthed, calumnising (sic)
knave?"
When Cowden Clarke read aloud to him after school
hours at Enfield, Keats began his discovery of Shakespeare.
42 The Smith College Monthly
As Keats grew the association grew in vital significance,
spreading and deepening. In 1817 the first book he unboxed
on the damp, solitary, and portentous journey to the Isle of
Wighl was "a Shakespeare 'there's my comfort1 ". In 1820.
the last year of bis creative life, be wrote to Fanny Brawne,
"My greatest torment since 1 have known you has been the
tear of your being a little inclined to the Cresseid." 'This de-
veloping relation of bis personality with Shakespeare's is the
study of .Mr. J. Middleton Murry's recent book (Keats and
Shakevpean Oxford 1924). It is bis belief, not only thai
Keats was more like Shakespeare than any other English
poet, but further that it was inevitable that Keats should
accept finally no other guide, should stand close to no other
poet. It is a brilliant piece of critical insight. The amazing
part of it is that aside from the letters, be bad as basis only
Keats's markings of the folio edition, in which he read very
few plays. Quite aside from its intrinsic importance, Keats's
Shakespeare is interesting in that it sustains and amplifies
M p. M urry's book.
It is necessary to insist upon this connection in justice to
.Miss Spurgeon. With all the unpublished material before
her eyes, with Keats's own Shakespeare in her hands, she was
still closely limited. Interpretation had been put upon the
material before the materia] itself was found. Earlier biogra-
phers bad suggested the influence of Shakespeare on Keats.
Mr. Murray had treated it definitively. Miss Spurgeon docs
with scholarly care what remained for her to do. Essentially
this consists in making the material of these books available to
all students of Keats. Without a thesis to develop, she merely
describes or reproduces their content in part, presenting "an
authentic record of the study and the love of our greatest
poel by one whom many today place nearest him." She re-
cognizes Keats's attitude towards Shakespeare with fine un-
derstanding, relating the plays to his life and poetry as did
Keats himself. Because of Mr. Murry's book, proof and con-
troversial discussion were unnecessary. She writes with ease,
lucidly, sometimes with a simple eloquence. There is no em-
broidery, very little decoration of the essential substance.
The materia] of her tremendous discovery is presented with a
\ U \\ to sijbst;iiit ia1 ing the work of other scholars, or to facili-
tating that which will follow. She might say with Amy
Lowell,
The Smith College Monthly 48
"You marked it with light pencil upon a printed
page,
Thus, with denoting finger, you make of yourself
an escutcheon to guide me to that in you which
is its essence.
But for the rest,
The part which most persists and is remembered,
I only know I compass it in loving and neither have,
nor need, a symbol."
S. S. S.
THE DESERT ROAD TO TURKESTAN
Owen Lattimore Little, Brown and Company 1929
An Atlantic Month! // Press Publication
A simple experiment may be performed to illustrate one
of the perils to which writers, especially those dealing with
territory to the East of the Caspian Sea, are exposed. The
subject, who should possess average sensibilities and no more
than the conventional literary and historical equipment, is
seated in a comfortable chair; the experimenter then declaims
a series of words such as "sarong", "topaz", "Samarkand",
"Taj Mahal", "sandalwood", "monsoon", "musk". The re-
actions of the subject are plainly visible to the most unskilled
observer; their intensity, considering the simple nature of
the stimulus, is remarkable, and the lack of discrimination
therein displayed is no less noteworthy. Possibly the patient
is dimly aware that these words differ in the categories of
human knowledge to which they refer, and even in geographi-
cal distribution; but to most of them he responds with hearty
impartiality. The danger here is obvious. Finding that a few
unconnected words, together with the opalescent fog that
seems to emanate from them, have such power, the writer is
tempted to shift onto them the burden of his task of interest-
ing and amusing the reader.
Mr. Lattimore has not escaped the temptation. Proper
names like Ku Ch'eng-tze are not as effective for purposes of
reading aloud as are the place-names of Western Asia; but
when craftily scattered over a page they lead the eye smooth-
ly along, while what one likes to call one's critical faculties
are lulled, by a wholly unfounded sense of unity with foreign
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The Smith College Monthly 45
lands and strange races, into a delicious somnolence. Mr.
JLattimore has also, in the manner of a nervous orator who
fears the roving eye and shuffling goloshes of a bored audi-
ence, fallen back on a common fallacy about the invariable
comicality of lice. Social Service workers and even tourists in
Italy, — as well as the patrons of the motion picture — are by
this time aware that, as far as a large proportion of the
earth's population is concerned, lice are of fairly frequent
occurrence; that they are undesirable as close acquaintances,
multiply rapidly, and when crushed emit a slight pop and
a faintly disagreeable odor. Also that man even in a state
of comparative civilization is not fond of bathing. But in Mr.
Lattimore's estimation these indisputable phenomena appar-
ently retain all the charm of novelty; and they are trotted
out faithfully at every opportunity.
The most deplorable feature of these defects is that they
arise, apparently, more from Mr. Lattimore's appraisal of
his audience than from his own inclinations. The continuity,
the complex unity of history is his basic theme — one which
through all variations played on it has never become trite.
His journey from Pekin to Urinehi and beyond was underta-
ken, he says, "in a longing to travel the caravan ways in the
old manner of caravans, because I had a glimpse of what
they meant — a survival from the past but more than that:
one of the sources or headwaters of our life as it is." Possessed
of wide experience and study in inner China, knowledge of
the discoveries of other travelers, and familiarity with the
language, he went not as the officially- fostered Competent
Traveler, with an eye to the Picturesque and the Quaint,
but as a sharer of the trials and dangers of the camel- pullers
themselves, accepted by them as "an understandable person
of their own type." The combination of this attitude with an
unfortunate fancy in regard to the reading public has led to
a series of irrelevant interpolations in Avhat might have been
a fine study of existing conditions.
The result is a disconcertingly uneven book. After pages
of fresh and vivid description come phrases like "the clangor
of their bells pulsing through the pastel evening" which might
have been created by any twelve year old in the throes of her
first romance about the Arab chieftain and his maiden fail*.
At intervals throughout a detailed and interesting chapter on
camels and the traditions of the road, the author feels it neces-
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The Smith College Monthly 47
sary to refer to the tact thai "the stink is thrice wonderful and
past all whooping." At the conclusion of a serious discussion
of the economic disorder of China lie smirks self-consciously:
"and as 1 thought all these high thoughts, I scratched my-
self— ." In the midst of his most facetious curvetings he
suddenly pauses to remark, with no transition whatsoever,
"He fixes its position at 40° 43' 9" north and 106° 0' 0"
east. . . he reached it on his thirteenth march from Wang-yeh
Fu in roughly a straight line and describes it as 4352 feet
above sea level. He then crossed the Hurku hills and the
Kuei-hua-Uliassutai road on his way to Urga, which he
reached on September 17. Thus Bain-tuhum would be
roughly a third of the way between Waii-yeh Fu and Urga."
And these digressions into the fine points of geography are in
turn thickly interlarded with passages of sheer Halliburton.
Mr. Lattimore had here, both in his general theme and in
his specific knowledge and experience, a meaty subject. But
in his consideration for the delicate digestion of his readers
he has chopped the good red beef so fine as Aery nearly to
disguise it, and mixed it with an assortment of cabbages and
pungent but not very nourishing condiments. The resulting
stew is tasty and high- flavored. But it seems nevertheless
somewhat thin ; one's sensations on completing it are not those
of entire satisfaction; and one suspects that it is the taste of
the garlic that will linger most persistently.
E. P.
BOSTON
A CONTEMPORARY HISTORICAL NOVEL
Upton Sinclair Albert and Charles Boni, 1928.
Upton Sinclair calls his recently published "Boston" —
"a contemporary historical novel." Such a phrase is, from its
very associations, unfortunate, for we are inevitably re-
minded of all the great historical novels of the past — the
brilliant canvases of Scott or Dickens. Perhaps, however, the
use of "contemporary" saves it from too odious a comparison.
As a tragedy, also, the novel suffers. Mr. Sinclair is not con-
tent to follow in the steps of Sophocles — to choose one aspect
from a well-known story. On the other hand, he must tell
the story of Sacco and Vanzetti from beginning to end. The
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The Smith College Monthly 49
resulting novel, therefore, was too long- to be published in
"The Bookman9' in its entirety as first planned. The con-
cluding chapters, we learn, were issued in a separate pam-
phlet for the benefit of interested readers; and the book,
when published, filled two volumes.
In any novel, however, historical or otherwise, we de-
mand that the characters live. Mr. Sinclair chooses Back Bay
inhabitants as the objects of his satire. He sends little old
Cornelia Thorn well, wife of a former governor of Massachu-
setts, down to Plymouth to be fellow boarder of Bartolomeo
Vanzetti. Consequently, she turns Radical, and arouses the
antagonism of her Back Bay family when she sides with
Sacco and Vanzetti throughout their trial. She, as well as
the other characters, are mere puppets in the hands of Mr.
Sinclair. When he jerks the string they move — with very
wooden gestures. For this reason, they serve as foils to Mr.
Sinclair's main thesis, which is to justify Sacco and Van-
zetti and the eyes of the world.
As propaganda Upton Sinclair's book is admirable. If
we are not already converted to the cause, so to speak,
we are soon won over by endless repetition — monotony. It
is like the drone of the law court that he so despises, and we
are tempted to suggest that a law report would have been
more successful under Mr. Sinclair's handling than a novel.
But then, the book is saved from utter mediocrity by a
number of clever and epigramatic witticisms. Then, too, Up-
ton Sinclair's daringly flippant treatment of men in high
places, as well as his audacious satire of the country as a
whole, make his book in that sense memorable. Yet, even
details of this order do not save "Boston " because, in general,
the style is too monotonous, the canvas too unlighted to hold
our interest. Indeed, we may venture to say that — as a novel,
Boston is nothing — as an historical novel, less than nothing,
while as propaganda, it is excellent.
Barbara Damon Simison.
THE WELL OF LOXELIXESS
Radclyffe Halj. Covici-Friede. New York 1928
"What arc the roots that clutch, what brandies grow
Out of this stony rubbish?"
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The Smith College Monthly 51
A problem that has long puzzled mankind is that of
the standards by which a work of art should be judged, and
particularly now when standards are confused or dispensed
with altogether, the question becomes of overwhelming im-
portance.
"Art is unmoral," cry the supporters of one school, 'lis
function is neither to instruct, uplift or chastise. Art is its
own excuse for being." On the other hand there are those
critics who say that art should be a moral and spiritual influ-
ence towards divorcing man from his baser passions. It is
not our purpose to argue the respective merits of these points
of view but it is our desire to point out the unfortunate re-
sults of mingling the two.
A book, The Well of Loneliness, by Radclyffe Hall,
banned in Xew York last week, was also suppressed in Eng-
land. The book, as every newspaper-reading person in the
world must by this time know, discusses a problem of sexual
inversion in a manner which appeared to certain authorities
unnecessary and unpleasant, leading them to take action
against it. Following the news of its suppression in Eng-
land the book received great notoriety, promptly succeeded
by its appearance, disappearance and wide fame in this coun-
try. We need not repeat the praise that has been lavished
on it by its supporters, nor the blame cast by its detractors,
we are concerned with the question of whether or not. artist-
ically, it is a valid piece of writing.
Considering Tlie Well of Loneliness, as a work of
art, then, the book is unsuccessful. It is written in an incred-
ible style that belongs with three-decker novels and the Vic-
torians. The ponderous solemnity of the innumerable pages
creates a breathlessness in the reader. There are a few
touches of pathos, whimsy, or what you will, in the beautifully
English, sentimental treatment of animals. The favorite
horse shot on the spot where he was first mounted, the adop-
tion of a stray dog in Paris, these conventional bits of comic
relief lumber so obviously into the story that the pages of a
childhood classic, where the villain is redeemed by <i'ivin<>'
sugar to the garbage man's horse, Hash before the eyes. Ex-
cept for these elephant-like touches of humor the book plods
steadily and drearily along. As a book it has no excuse for
being, as a sociological study of a case it need only have occu-
pied a quarter as many pages. Written undoubtedly with a
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The Smith College Monthly 53
great deal of sincerity and feeling, it provides a perfect ex-
ample of the statement that sincerity and a photographic at-
tention to details are not enough, there must be something
more to make ''roots clutch" and "branches grow out of this
stony rubbish."
Compton Mackenzie in a recently published book used
a very different method of attack. His characters gamboled
through three hundred pages of the most fantastic idiocy
and fairly amusing silliness. No serious moral problem is
discussed, there are no solemnities, and despite the rather1
repetitious quality of its levity the book is fairly successful,
in a thoroughly slight and frivolous way. That a competent
and able author should waste his time on such a futile book
seems far more extraordinary than his women.
Proust, on the other hand has pictured M. de Charlus
and Albertine with a keen insight, and a complete lack of
sentimentality, with an intellectual honesty and a detached
impartiality, besides which the dreary Stephen, two-dimen-
sional and unconvincing, can take no stand. Proust makes
no attempt at justification, at preaching a theory. He states
a fact, explains causes and consequences, analyzes the
farthest depths of human consciousness with that delicate in-
strument, his pen, and when by means of the casual phrase
or gesture of a character he has through twenty pages laid
bare that character's soul, Proust neither praises, blames
nor accuses.
Miss Hall's book, however, has a good deal of the tract
in its substance. It attempts to prove the rightness of a
stand against the world, and for that reason it cannot be
completely honest and accurate, it must be prejudiced and
over-emphasized. Lacking in all capacity for suggestion,
the details are generally given a neat twist by the use of a
generalization or cliche.
If we have treated the book harshly it is because the
confusion of two standards of criticism has been so very ap-
parent. To ban "The Well of Loneliness" for its subject
matter is an insult to intelligent minds, it should have been
banned long ago for sheer bad style and stupidity. There
is as much of a fallacy in calling it a bad book, from the point
of view of morals, because of its subject, as there would be
in calling it a good book, from the point of view of art. be-
cause of its suppression. Lei its dismissal be that it is boring.
5 I The Smith College Monthly
( Granted thai it is boring, why make all this fuss about
it then?" some reader may ask. and it is a fair question. Cen-
sorship gi\ < s a look presl ige <»f a sort, and usually a wide, it'
underground, circulation. In an institution of learning, of
course, we do not expect intelligent and educated readers to
be tempted by the juiciness of Forbidden fruit without noting
the rottenness of its skin. We write this for that misguided
minority, however, which, dazzled by the censor's magic, eag-
< rl\ swallows down all tasteless pap that publishers dish up.
salted wit 1 1 the appreciation of intelligent reviewers, pep-
pered with the damnation of the Old Lady From Dubuque.
P. S. F.
r^
'No excess weight,
my answer is ~Iju$t smoke
alucky"
>J George Gershwin
Noted Composer
"When people ask me how I keep in physical
trim— with no excess weight, my answer is,
T just smoke a Lucky whenever I crave
over-rich pastries which fatten.' There's
nothing to equal that wonderful flavor,
so appetizing yet never interfering, with
one' snormal appetite for healthful foods."
George Gershwin
THE modern common sense w.i\
reach for a Lucky instead of a fattening
sweet. Everyone is doing it. Men keep fit,
women retain a trim figure. Lucky Strike,
the finest tobaccos, skilfully blended,
then toasted to develop a flavor which is
a delightful alternative for that craving
for fattening sweets.
Toasting frees Lucky Strike from impur-
ities. 20,679 physicians recognize this
when they say Luckies are less irritating
than other cigarettes. That's why folks
savt^It's good to smoke Luckies."
%&c
Authorities attribute the enor-
mous increase in Cigarette
smoking to the improvement in
the process of Cigarette manufac-
ture by the application of heat. It
is true that during the year 1928,
Lucky Strike Cigarettes showed a
greater increase than all other Cig-
arettes combined. This surely con-
firms the public's confidence in the
superiority of Lucky Strike.
"REACH FOR A LUCKY
INSTEAD OF A SWEET."
Its toasted'
No Throat Irritation-No Cough.
Coast to coast radio hook-up every Satur-
day night through (he National Broadcast-
ing Company's network. The Lucky Strike
Dunce Orchestra in "The Tunes that made
Broadway, Broadway."
1929, The American TobaccoCo.,
Manufacturers
SA
<nn
M£
BOARD
OF
EDITORS
Vol. XXXVII APRIL. 1929 No. 7
EDITORIAL BOARD
Editor-in-chief, Elizabeth Shaw, 1930
Managing Editor, Sallie S. Simons. 1930
Booh Review Editor, Priscilla S. Fairchild, 1930
Elizabeth Wheeler, 1929 Mary F. Chase, 1931
Patty H. Wood. 1930 Elizabeth Perkins, 1931
Art Editor, Nancy Wynne Parker, 1930
BUSINESS STAFF
Business Manager, Mary Sayre, 1930
Advertising Manager, Esther Tow, 1931
Circulation Manager, Sarah Pearson, 1931
Nancy Dabney, 1930 Eleanor Mathesius, 1931
Agnes Lyall, 1930 Eleanor Church, 1932
Mary Folsom, 1931 Ariel Davis. 1932
The Smith College Monthly is published at Northampton, Mass., each month
from October to June, inclusive. Terms $2.00 a year. Single copies 25c.
Subscriptions may be sent to Mary Sayre, Park B, Northampton.
Contributions may be left in the Monthly Box in the Note Room.
Entered at the Post Office at Northampton, Mass., as second class matter.
Metcalf Printing & Publishing Company, Northampton, Mass.
"Accepted for mailing at special rates of postage provided for in
Section 1203, Act of October 3, 1917. Authorized October 31, 1913."
All manuscript should be in the Monthly Box by the fifteenth of the
month to be considered for the issue of the following moyith. All manuscript
should be signed with the full name of the writer.
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CONTENTS
Pursuit
Revenge Is Sweet
No, I Can't Marry You
Voices
Phantom
Loneliness
Fear
The Dead
Mars
Editorial
Book Reviews
The Bishop Murder Case
The Amenities of Book Collecting
Elizabeth Wheeler
Elizabeth Boies
Patty Wood
Lucia Weimer
Edith Stark*
Edith St arks-
Barbara Damon Simison
Helen Paul Kirkpatrick
Lucia Weimer
11
10
17
16
21
29
31
31
32
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Smith College
Monthly
PURSUIT
Elizabeth Wheeler
SHE old logging road, so long forgotten, was again
remembered by one who had known it well. Across
it the shadows of the trees were pushing eastward
when a man came into view, running swiftly. He leapt over
the sodden ties from log to log where the logs still were, and
where they were not, he bounded hastily in the grass. On
he came with unchanging pace, till suddenly his head jerked
up and he ran faster. Where a dying silver birch leaned
outward from the oaks on his right hand he turned aside and
ran with unfaltering feet along an invisible trail. When the
road behind him was quite lost to view, he stopped and
leaned against a tree, listening.
Amid the vast remoteness of the forest he was a sinister
figure. His clothes alone made him that. They hung on
his thin frame like the clothes on a scare-crow, and they
were gray, with horizontal stripes. His hair was clipped
short all over his head, giving him a shorn look which in-
tensified the grayish pallor of his face, such a pallor as
comes only from living long behind damp and dark stone
walls. It was a gaunt face with a mouth and chin set in
determination and a pair of hollow eyes that peered out with
a vacant intensity, seeing nothing. His whole body was
strung taut with listening.
But the only sound that came to his ears was the call
of a hermit thrush. He relaxed suddenly, and a light broke
over his face. "God, it's good to hear you again," he said
6 The Smith College Monthly
softly. His eyes were seeing now with a restless hunger,
hut also they were anxious.
A few swift minutes passed while he stood there. Then
he struck off into a forest apparently trackless and illimit-
able. Hut he walked as one who knows his destination, and
again la- picked out an invisible trail among the trees and
crowding undergrowth. Dead leaves and twigs hardly
crackled beneath his step; he knew the Indians' secret, and
his stride was rhythmical and tireless, leaving behind him a
hundred and a thousand trees. Before him they climbed the
ever-steepening slope in whispering legions whose vanguard
camped upon the shoulders of the mountains. Around him
reared their trunks- the smooth gray of beeches, the deep-
furrowed hark of oaks and maples, and the ghostly white of
the lady of the woods— reaching up through the shadows to
the green leaves gilded by the falling sun. And behind the
tracery of the leaves he could see the sky. Above him and
around him the horizon of his sight was hounded only by the
limit of his vision; and beyond his vision he felt that the
space of trees and sky was limitless. .
The line of his mouth relaxed and the anxiety dwindled
in his eyes. He looked about him lingeringly, as a man re-
turned from exile looks on the remembered things of home.
The sun, slanting through the trees, was warm on his hack,
and the fragrance of balsam breathed securely. A chipmunk
Hashed across his path, scurried up a tree and sat scolding at
him from a high branch. "Don'1 you give me away, you lit-
tle devil," he said, shaking his fist, and looked hack reluctant-
ly as he passed in his swinging stride.
The sun was climbing higher up the trees and the way
was growing steeper. He slackened his pace to case the
unaccustomed thumping of his heart. Where an ancient
hemlock had fallen in the trail he stopped again to listen,
and was answered only by the' myriad voices of the- woods
the whistle of a thrush, the- busy tapping of a flicker, the' soft
pat of dropping pine needles, and the sound of a hrook pour-
ing over stones. Around a bend in the trail he- found it and
knell lo drink, plunging his face in the icy water. When he
rose again, it was to breathe deeply and fling wide- his arms.
Then his eyes caughl a vista through the trees. He was
high on the mountain now. Below him the forest fell away,
so dense thai the foliage made a solid pattern, the black of
The Smith College Monthly 7
conifers interwoven with the light green of the hardwoods.
Down in the valley where the forest stopped, the fields
stretched away to the mountains beyond; but in the midst
of the fields he found what his eyes sought — a grim cluster
of red brick buildings with narrow windows, narrower still
when you looked out of them from behind the gray walls of
a cell. He threw back his head exultantly and then turned
his back on the valley. A cold shadow crept up out of it as
the sun's rim touched the mountain-top beyond.
He sped on, his feet making no sound in the deepening
silence, his eyes never missing the trail in the waning light.
The world that he had left dropped away from him; only
the vast forest-clad mountains lay before him, stretching
northward unbroken to the frontier, eastward to the sea,
wrapped in the stillness of descending night.
Suddenly the silence was rent with the long-drawn wail
of a siren. Midway in his stride he halted, and caught hold
of a young sapling; it shook beneath his grip. He held his
breath. The sound rose out of the valley, echoing among
the mountains, filling the upper air till the whole universe
was engulfed in it. Then it died only to wail again, and die,
and again it wailed and died above him on the rocky summits.
His face had gone gray, and his knees turned to water. He
strained his eyes downward through the trees, but he could
not see. In one swift instant night had come upon him, the
black night of the forest, dropping from the mountains like
a cloud, without warning and without light.
Xow it is one thing to find an invisible trail by day with
high hope in your heart, but quite another thing to find it
by night in an unlit dark with pursuit at your heels. Immedi-
ately he knew this, and shivered with something other than
cold. But he set his teeth and stepped resolutely forward
with his right hand outstretched, groping, to guide him in
the path. His left arm he held crooked before his face as
a shield against the leaves and branches that brushed him
and snatched at him. The trees were no longer numberless
hosts advancing before him, league upon league, and re-
treating behind him as he passed; they were become a wall
of darkness, moving nearer, barring his way with their trunks
and boughs, compassing him about with the knowledge of
their presence. At each step they tore at his clothes and
slashed at his hands and face; at each step he shrank, expect-
8 The Smith College Monthly
ing them, but steadily plodded on. No longer his feet trod
silently. They tripped over roots. Dead twigs snapped
and stones rolled behind him.
He stopped to listen. A stone brought up against a
tree far below with a thud that was magnified in the- silence.
Hut after that, there was no more silenee. A thousand small
noises travelled over the ground and through the trees, rust-
ling, sliding, whispering, crackling. The forest was moving
nearer. The dark was alive with sound, so that he could
not hear. He strained his ears to listen; and his eyes ached
with the intense effort to probe the blackness. Bui there
were no lights anywhere in the forest. Far above in a
murky sky wandered a few burnt-out stars.
lie started on his way again. The woods were blacker
than before. The noises followed him. were all about him,
creeping closer. A clammy chill ran up his spine, making
him jump sideways and face about, holding up his arm to
ward oft' a blow. None fell, hut the chill remained, so that
now he shrank also from what might he behind him.
The way grew steeper and his progress slower. lie had
been groping step by step, but now he was crawling on his
hands and knees over rock ledges. He did not know where
the trail was. nor if he had lost it. hut only that he must he
nearing timber line. The leaves that brushed his face had
given way to the needled prongs of spruces that jabbed at
him. And the trees must he getting shorter for an icy wind
chilled him as it passed. lie heard it whir in the spruees:
then it roared in the pines below, and rustled the leaves as
it swept down into the valley. Faintly and far-oil' a hound
bayed, and his blood ran cold. Hut as the baying grew
louder, his reason told him it was only an owl. So he strug-
gled on again.
He moved like a snail now, for his legs were leaden
weights to he dragged after a body chilled with cold, faint
with hunger and weariness, driven only by the fear that
followed him. I lis knees smarted from the cuts of the rocks.
1 1 is arms ached from the strain of lifting himself over the
ledges; and he had to clench his teeth to keep them from
chattering. He Stopped often now. utterly spent, and lax-
huddled among the rocks. Hut he could not rest, for always
his nerves were tense with listening. I lis eyes throbbed and
jerked like the eyes of one in a high lexer. And he was cold.
The Smith College Monthly 9
colder than he had ever been even in the damp of a prison
cell. But this was the price of his liberty, not yet won, so he
dragged himself on onee more. The trees shrank; he could
feel their tops now. But the rocks were steeper. lie was
sure that an hour had gone before he let himself rest again.
The night was passing. The blackness faded to gray
and the stars were snuffed out. It grew lighter, but still he
could see nothing. It was as if the black bandage over his
eyes had been exchanged for a gray veil. The dawn had
come, wrapped in an impenetrable shroud of fog. Out of it
loomed the jagged ramparts of the rocks, towering above
him, their battlements lost in the cloud. They were cold and
wet and he was colder than ever, but the summit was nearing.
At last he reached it and fell panting in the stiff grass
between two boulders. His lungs felt near to bursting and
a wave of faintness darkened his sight. For a moment, all
too short, he kneAV nothing. Then he remembered, and sat
up. At a distance of ten feet on all sides a gray wall of
cloud shut him in like the walls of a prison, and the gray
roof of the cloud pressed above his head. He could hear the
thumping of his heart and his labored breathing, but outside
there was silence, the dead silence of oblivion. The world
that he had known was lost to him, its myriad noises muffled,
forest and valley blotted out, and he was lost to the world.
iHe was safe amid the fog as he had not been safe in the
dark of the forest. But he was also a captive. Beyond
those intangible gray walls the mountains and the secret-
sharing forest rolled away to the frontier and to the sea.
But where? Which was north and which east? And which
the fateful way that led back, crossing straight the serpen-
tine trail of his flight, to the valley and the prison?
He dared not leave the summit till he knew. Mean-
while he shook with cold and his head swam with hunger.
Furthermore, he reflected, in the shelter of the forest climb-
ing would be easy now. It was this that goaded him to ex-
olore the summit for a sign, however dim, to point his way.
But in his gropinars he stumbled upon a patch of mountain
cranberries, a dull red carpet in the mist. He picked with
both hands. They were hard and sour but he ate greedily
all he could find. Yet still unrelaxing he kept his guard,
listening for a sound in the silence, watching for a rift in the
cloud.
10 The Smith College Monthly
At length the sign was given. For a brief instant the
cloud rolled hack, unveiling the shadowy cone of a nearby
peak. Hut it was enough. As the fog pressed in upon him,
he started once more upon his way. a lonely hut a resolute
figure. The gray striped clothes hung on his shivering
frame, wet, soiled and torn. His hands were scratched and
blue with the cold, his face haggard and weary. Hut the
set mouth and the steady eyes bespoke an unshaken purpose.
Unfaltering he limped away over the rocks. The mist en-
gulfed him. and presently he was received into the forest
whose seen t trails were the warders of his fate.
NO, 1 CAN'T MARRY YOU
Patty Wood
Bright in the morning,
Quaint at afternoon —
() I am certain-sure
Of what will he your tune.
Charming in the evening,
Sweet (ah sweet!) at night,
'Tis pleasing music, yes.
For something rather light.
Hut mornings full of brightness,
A fternoons nil quaint
i You said yourself mine wasn't
The patience of a saint)
Every evening charming,
Night upon sweet night
1 )arling, all my life I couldn't
Smile and he polite.
The Smith College Monthly 11
REVENGE IS SWEET
Elizabeth Boies
St*]E had just missed "Ignorance is Bliss." Every noon
vly as we hurried home from school just on the corner
jggggj we used to meet a tall lanky girl coming from school
:35 on the hill. She had braids which were tied up with
purple ribbons, never any other color, and she held her head
which, I always said, was all nose, high, high in the air as
she walked disdainfully by us. She never turned it when
we called her hook nose or beak face or even when we at-
tempted to pull off her purple ribbons. All she ever did
was to say with a half smile which annoyed us beyond any-
thing, "Ignorance is bliss." So that became her name, a
name which she seemed to enjoy, for the more we shrieked
it the louder her irritating "Ignorance is bliss" rose accom-
panied with that half smile. But this day we missed Ignor-
ance. Certainly we had hurried just as fast as ever before
and arrived at the same time as usual. — but no Ignorance.
Scarcely concealing our disappointment we walked deject-
edly toward home, all zest for food gone.
"Darn it", said Pancake-batter named thus because
of his flattened face which he said he got from running full
force and unexpectedly into a wall in the dark. "Darn it,"
he exclaimed again. "Elmer is the only one who ever got
a purple ribbon off her ding braids and I bet him five allies
that I'd get one today, but how ya going to do it when the
old Ignorance don't show up?"
"First time she's missed too." replied Gut sadly.
"Well, it doesn't matter much to you." said Pancake
viciously. "What if you'd bet five allies. Brand new allies
at that," he added in an undertone.
"Ah, don't be such a milk weed, Pancake," cried
Gronie, a fat jolly boy who concocted all the plans for our
gang. "You aren't the only one who's mad. Heck, I've
been kept after school for a whole week now and missed her
every da v."
12 The Smith College Monthly
Bui jusi at this moment Kendall Jones appeared
around the corner and immediately our attention was di-
verted. Kendall was his mother's darling. He played the
ukelele beautifully at all her bridge parties and before we
had me! Ignorance he had been our chief amusement; and
so his appearance at this crucial time hanished Ignorance
and aroused ns to great things.
"Sissy, sissy. Kendall," screamed Mayor, my sister, and
much the most cruel of all of us when it came to teasing.
"ill's mother has to wash his ears. His mother has to — ."
"Children, children !"
We looked up. Mrs. Pierce was leaning from the sec-
ond story window of her house. "How- can yon be so vul-
gar? I wan! this nonsense to stop at once. Do yon hear?"
"Yes, .Mrs. Sourface," muttered Pancake under his
breath.
'And besides," Mrs. Pierce went on, "Mrs. Sharpe is
asleep." Mrs. Sharpe was her twin sister who lived across
the street and who was almost as disliked as Mrs. Pierce.
Elmer claimed that she was worse because she had once
thrown a glass of water down on him when he was taking
her gate of]' the hinges on Hallowe'en. "Just like her to
have been looking out," he had said. "At least old Piercie
went to visit her aunt in Moosie 1'or that night. Can't see
why she couldn't have taken her dear Sharpie with her."
However, I disagreed with his opinion of Sharpie because
she usually had to call on Mrs. Pierce for help. "And," 1
said, "she hardly ever had an inspiration like that glass of
water one unless her sister was with her."
"Never mind." Elmer had said, "that glass of water
was cold!"
Bui now .Mrs. Pierce had slammed her window loud
enough to awaken Mrs. Sharpe, even if she had lived at
the other end of the block.
"Well, I guess I'll go get some lunch," said Gut, But
she did no! go before we had vowed eternal hatred for the
twin sisters and had decided to meet soon again in order to
formulate a plan to "get even" with the hated "old crabs."
"So they'll never forget US," ended Pancake with his fists
clenched.
The next day at school we let Rubber Neck into our
club for the destruction of Mrs. Sharpe and Mrs. Pierce.
The Smith College Monthly 13
We let her in because she was always necessary on adven-
tures like this. She had the unique quality of being able
to stretch her neck so that she could see far above any one
else and could look into almost any window not too far
from the ground. As yet we had no concrete idea for their
embarrassment or destruction but we felt that sooner or
later Rubber Neck would come in handy. She always did.
That afternoon as we were roller skating furiously up
the Pierce's avenue, as we called it, on our way to Elmer's
house where our meeting was to be held, Mrs. Sharpe leaned
from her window:
"Not so much noise. Mrs. Pierce is asleep."
"Yes, — I was, — before all this clatter came," Mrs.
Pierce called from her window where she had been sitting
sewing all of the time and she had been, too, because Rub-
ber Neck saw her and Rubber Neck can see things like that.
"We have got to act at once," said Gronie with a force-
ful air. "This thing has gone entirely too far."
"You said it, Gronie," Mayor replied as both win-
dows slammed simultaneously, after a few more scathing
remarks which we pretended not to hear.
"I think it would be fine to set both their houses on
fire!" said Gut as we were settled on the floor in Elmer's
cellar.
"Nix, Gut," said Gronie. "They could put it out
before they burnt up."
"Well, we might tie them up," I ventured.
"Tie them up, hump, pretty funny. Who's going to
do it I'd like to know?" cried Pancake.
"I'd like to put some dead gold-fish down Piercie's
back," said Mayor. "I heard her tell Mrs. Jones once that
dead fish gave her goose flesh. Now I ask you, — what is
goose flesh?"
"I know what it is," said Rubber Neck. "Once when
my canary died I was going to bury it in a shoe box and
mother saw it and got measles all over her for a minute.
They didn't stay on longer than that but she wouldn't let
me touch the canary and I — ."
"Oh, never mind, Rubber Neck," interrupted Elmer,
"we aren't interested in your old canary and goose measles
or whatever it is. This meeting was called," he went on
14 The Smith College Monthly
slamming his list on an upright box, '"this meeting was
called to decide upon. — to decide- upon — ."
1 1<>\\ we'd gel even with the old crooks/* finished
Pancake quickly. "Let's gel down to business or we'll
nt \ er decide."
"\\\11. 1 have a wonderful idea," Gronie said. "1 have
a nice dead rat. all smelly 'nd everything, \W might put
it on the- doorstep."
'When eliel you get it. Gronie?" I asked, filled with awe.
"Oh. 1 took it from the- rat trap in the- pantry and kept
it for awhile."
"Gee, Gronie, that's wonderful."
"You bet. We- e-oulel elo something with that. .Make
them mad as hops when they trie-el to nmu- out the- front
oor.
'Can't you sec the olel crabs when they see- it ? Gee
whiz!" Pancake whistled through his teeth.
"Whose- doorstep shall we put it on?" inquired Elmer
looking at the- practical side-. Therein ensued a bitter ar-
gument as to who deserved it the more and ended only when
Gronie agreed to take- another from the' trap so they would
both be treated alike-.
"We may have to wait a few days," Gronie said, "be-
cause we may not catch one- for awhile' and even when we
do we've got to wait until it smells like- the- first one."
At last the' day arrived when both rats were- ready.
We carried them in boxes to school and hid them behind
an ash barrel until after the- afternoon session, which was the
appointed time- for our de-e*el.
"Who's going to put them on the- doorstep?" I whis-
pered to Pancake as he- stood ne-xt to me- at the- blackboard.
"Don't know," muttered Pancake, "but say. how many
times does twenty seven go into this damn number?"
Finally the- last e*lass was over. Gronie and Elmer
were given the honor of placing the- rats on either doorstep
while we stood hidden around the- corner of .Mrs. Pierce's
house.
Elmer quickly performed his duty, having deposited
his r.'it in front of Mrs. Sha rp< \ door, hut something seemed
to be wrong with Gronie. lie did not return at once. We
red around the corner. Gronie pointed at the Pierce
baby who was sleeping on the porch.
The Smith College Monthly 15
"Fraid I'll wake it," he murmured.
"Ah, go on, Gronie," said Pancake.
"Shut up, Pancake. Do it yourself if you are so
anxious." replied Gronie a little too loudly because the baby
after a few spluttering noises began to cry.
It was at this point that Gut conceived her great and
miraeulous idea.
"Here," she said handing Rubber Neck a handful of
little stones and pebbles from a nearby flower bed, "drop
these in the baby's mouth. Quickly. That'll shut it up."
"Yes, go on, Rubber Neck," we all cried, marveling at
the brilliance of the suggestion.
So Rubber Neck with careful manoeuverings reached
the railing of the porch near which the baby's carriage was
placed. She climbed up on to the ledge on the outside of
the railing; then stretching her long neck, she located the
baby's open mouth, and deliberately dropped the pebbles
one by one down into it. With a gurgling strangle the cry-
ing stopped and Gronie placed the rat quickly in its strate-
gic position in front of door. But Mrs. Pierce, aroused
by the baby's crying, had come to the window almost at the
same moment that Rubber Neck began dropping the pebbles,
and for once we saw more than Rubber Neck who was too
interested in her own job. Mrs. Pierce and Mrs. Sharpe
were coming out of Mrs. Pierce's door toward Rubber Neck
— but no — . They screamed at the sight of the rat ; screamed
again at the sight of Rubber Neck and the pebbles ; and then
before poor Rubber Neck could get away both Mrs. Pierce
and Mrs. Sharpe, being scared to go near the mat, had
jumped from the window onto the porch, one saving the
baby from strangling and the other practically strangling
Rubber Neck. We left at this point, quickly hurrying down
the back alley where we could not be seen and to our ap-
pointed meeting place for discussing the effects of our plans.
"Whee, — " groaned Gronie, "that was narrow. Poor
Rubber Neck, what do you suppose they are doing to her?
We ought to go back and help her."
"Yes," said Elmer sarcastically. "I'd like to know
who's going? Not me, I can tell you that."
"Well anyway," said Pancake, "it was worth it. Did
you ever see such expressions in all your life as the old
j 6 The Smith College Monthly
crooks had when they saw the rat? (ice-. 1 wouldn't have
missed it even if I had had to be Rubber Neck."
14 Rubber Neck didn't see their faces/1 1 said.
"Oli. 1 know,'' replied Pancake, "hut I mean — even il
1 had to be strangled.'1
"Well, 1 hope they haven't really killed her," said
.Mayor sadly.
'Pooh/' replied Gronie, "they couldn't do that. They'd
be murderers if they did and the policemen could shoot holes
through them."
"It was great though,'1 Elmer muttered happily, recall-
ing the shrieks of the twin sisters. "The only thing which
could have been better would have been to have old Sharpie
at home instead of over at Piercie's" Although 1 don't
know-. They did look pretty funny jumping out of the
window on top of Rubber Neck."
At this moment Rubber Neck, a disheveled and tattered
Rubber Neck, appeared at the far end of the alley. We all
rushed to meet her.
"Say, vou were wonderful."
"Hot stuff, Rubber Neck, old pal."
"You sure were the cat's whiskers. Rubber, old girl!"
"Yes, a regular heroine," 1 added.
"Well," said Rubber Neck, wiping her bloody nose. "If
I am a heroine I resign the position —forever."
PHANTOM
Edith Starks
One strange night
( )ne dark nighl
In the half-light
1 saw the ghost of an old sail.
Close by the rock
Where fog lay
.Misty and grey
And lulled in the spray
That washed on the dock
I saw the ghosl of an old white sail . . .
She was all lighted up from helow
And the waves took her hv . . very steady . . . very slow
The Smith College Monthly 17
VOICES
Lucia Wiemer
o
HE group in front had been so interested in the cave
that until the crash came they had not noticed each
other. Then it was too late. When the land slid it
severed the wires and at the same time shut out any vestige
of daylight that might have crept so far. It also shut out
the rest of the party.
A man's voice — pleasantly young and a little breathless
said, "Boy! was that a narrow escape?!"
There Avas a silence pricked by the sighs of people
catching their breath. Then, a little in front of them, another
man spoke, "We seem to be rather trapped." he said, "There
was a slide in front of us too." His voice was very English
and a little slow.
A woman's hysterical tremulo wanted to know, "Hasn't
someone a match? It's so dark."
While the pleasant boy-voice stated proudly that it was
in training, and a new man piped something about nervous
breakdowns and not smoking, the Englishman's lighter
flared — throwing golden lights on his face, caressing his
cheek-bones, recoiling from the black sockets of his eyes.
Over in the corner a figure stood tight against the wall.
"Who is that?" he asked sharply. A woman's low voice
picked its way carefully through the statement, "It is I. My
name is Lola Bentham."
Half embarrassed by the evident cultivation of her
voice the Englishman bowed slightly, "How do you do", he
said, and it was indicative of the state of their minds that lfo
one laughed. There was a quick snap and the flame went
out.
"Don't put it out." The sweetly hysterical voice rose in
sudden terror.
The Englishman explained gently, "It is our only light.
I haven't filled it for several days and we may be in here
for some time. Besides", he added, "There is no use in
burning up oxygen."
18 The Smith College Monthly
"Oh."
Darkness closed in. Nobody had thought about ox-
ygen. Now their minds began to grasp the significance of
the situation. The boy-voice said." "My God this is ter-
rible'1 several t imes and shook.
After a time the man with the nervous breakdown be-
gan to cry. "1 can't stand this/' lie said. 'I tell you 1 can't
stand it. All alone in the dark. I can't see you it's like
voices in my mind as if I were going mad. I've got to
touch someone." His body scuffed against the wall as he
pulled himself to his feet.
"Don't! Don't conic near me!" The hysterical voice
ripped the darkness.
"Perhaps none of us had heller move. The electric
wires may be lying about." The tightly level voice of Lola
Bentham came forth in little .jets of energy as though she
paused to catch her breath before each phrase.
When she had finished there sounded the slither of the
man's body as it sank to the ground.
"Jolly little place this. Talk about your Black Hole of
Calcutta." the boy-voice no longer shook. Its owner had
made his adjustments. In the darkness the Englishman
smiled, hut no one talked. Each person sat in complete
insularity. Voices, in the blackness, sounded sudden and
strange; seemed to wander about the narrow prison seeking
an outlet and to return to their owners as though they had
never gone out. One question was in every mind "Will
they get to us in time?"; hut no one dared to ask it. So
lhcv sat while the man with the nervous breakdown moaned
and someone hit his nails.
After time had made itself unbearable, the hysterical
voice shattered itself in a question, "Couldn't we have light
for just a minute?"
The little scratch of the wheel announced the flaring of
llghl below the. what now seemed beautiful, face of the
Englishman. lie took out his watch and held it close to the
flame. "Eleven o'clock." he told them. They had been there
eight hours. lie snapped the lighter shut and put it in his
pocket again.
I am like God, he thought, holding light and dark-
ness in niv hands. lie could not know how near to a God
The Smith College Monthly 10
he was to those others out there in blackness. He was to
them the only tangible person in a sea of unknown voices
and blank sound. They trusted him because they had seen
him. The others might be anything — in their fevered imagi-
nations became everything.
It was beginning to get stuffy now and his head ached
a little. Too bad there had to be so many of them. Now
two could have lived maybe a day and a half. Twenty hours
would do tor five of them, A horrible thought seized his
mind —
It occurred to him that the same thought might have
struck someone else. He would be the one they would get
too. His position had been clearly defined by the light. The
heavy breathing of someone seemed to come nearer, but he
did not move.
He wished absurdly that he could see them. In the
darkness they all became potential murderers. His fancy
inflamed, he now felt their faces surrounding him — grotes-
que and distorted. If only he could see them! Probably they
had kind stupid faces — ordinary candid eyes; but, after all,
he could not, even in a situation like this one, go around with
his lighter saying, "Let me see your face."; and so they re-
mained for him almost disembodied demons — voices in the
dark.
Thus, some time later, when the voice of Lola Bentham
wrenched out a request for light, he braced himself as the
flame sprang into existence; but nothing happened. — only
the silly quaver of the boy-voice, "What an ad for a lighter
this would make."
Surprised to find himself still alive the Englishman
snapped the device shut and replaced it.
Darkness stood like a wall in front of him; pressed in
on him. To die like a rat in a hole — strangling within your-
self and only voices to hold to ! The hysterical voice had not
spoken for hours now. Perhaps she had fainted. Perhaps —
Well — they could all live half an hour longer if she had.
It was the man with the nervous breakdown who heard
the first faint sounds of digging. "They're coming" he
whimpered, "For God's sake, hurry!"
It had gotten to the point where they were pushing with
their chests in order to breathe, but four of them scuffled to
20 The Smith College Monthly
their feet and the Same of the* Englishman's lighter shone
like a star.
Quite still they sat and waited the Englishman cross-
legged with the lighter in front of him, like an ancient fire-
god. Lola Betham's voice had passed into silence. A
litth- later the lighter sputtered and went out.
The Englishman spoke, "And J suppose when they gel
to us there- is a e'hanev of this part's falling in on lis."
The boy-voice was only a whisper now. "] wouldn't
mind dying," he- said, "if 1 could only have a little- light to
see- what 1 was doing."
The- noises of digging e-ame- nearer: echoed through the*
hot stillness. The man with the* nervous breakdown scratched
feebly at the- imprisoning stones — tossed them frantically
aside. One fell at the Englishman's feet. The knocking be-
came a roar. There was a crash of rock, and a stream of
cool air rippled through the cave. It was swe-e-t like- jasmine
and clover. Through the hole a grimy hand appeared, hold
ing a lantern which the man with the nervous breakdown
took and held, like a child with a toy.
There was calling and heaving and grunting and the
sound of people running about, and then they were all out in
the air. and there- was light and the Englishman could see-
the- people- who stood over him. They had noses and mouths
and eyes and they smiled at him. There was color too greys
and blues and wistaria in the' sky— -white and black and dull
and green in the* rocks. It was all keen and very, very
beautiful after the1 sick smudge of yellow which had hern his
light Tor sixteen hours and which had seemed so precious
not lone ago. Suddenly lie remembered his lighter and
struggled to his feet. "] le-ft something must (i>eit it." he'
explained and started towards the- cave. Somebody caught
him hv the- shoulder and as he- stood he- saw the- crawline slide
of land that buried his lighter forever.
A little sick, he turned around in lime- to see' two cars
drive away. "The two gentlemen", somebody told him,
"The ladies have been taken to the- hospital."
The Englishman smiled. So he would never see them
voices thev would alwavs remain. But it didn't matter now.
The Smith College Monthly 21
LONELINESS
Edith Starks
This new loneliness is stern
Yet ground as fine
As ivory sand
That sweeps the long sea line
Where green salt-waters burn ;
Stern — as the great hand
Of the wind who rides
Along the beach's curving way
All day
Unmindful of the tides.
22 The Smith College Monthly
FEAR
Barbara Damon Simison
Q"ETEB could not remember a time when he had not
been afraid. Fear came as naturally to him, was as
Hg much a part of him, as snow comes to winter, as the
roof is a pari of the house that the snow covers. It had al-
ways been thus, he reflected, as he walked along only, as
tlu- years slipped by, there had been more and more fears in
his life. Perhaps he grew more sensitive to them as he grew
older, or else things happened so as to accentuate them.
■ lust when his mother and father were helping him to over-
come a particular fear something occurred that tended to
deepen it. It had been so all his life, he recollected, and
those things he had not feared from the first were, by the
lime he reached young manhood, installed in his mind as
fears, events, people, things. lie was afraid of airplanes,
yet he knew* that in a few years airplanes would become so
common that he would he compelled to ride in them. lie was
afraid of people, yet he must meet them every day talk
with them the people he was afraid of along with people
who bothered him less, lie had been afraid of death, and
death had come into his family, taking away John, only to
make him more afraid, after lie had apparently weathered
tin storm of its passing. In crises, it is true, lie seemed to
possess no terror, but the terror always existed, even though
it was buried too deeply to appear on the surface. When
he was apparently the bravest, indeed, he was most afraid.
Such had heen his fear for the old man with the white horse.
Souk of the fears he had had as a child had long since
passed away, and he could now- laugh at them. There had
in i n a little girl in the past who had given him many of these
fears ;t little girl with a wide mouth, and long, fair braids
tied al the ends w ith pink ribbons. Her legs had heen longer
than Peter's, and she used to climb trees faster, like a
monkey . There was nothing she did not know, at least thai
is how she appeared to Peter when he was young and knew
no better himself. It was Dorothy who had taucrhl him to
The Smith College Monthly 23
be afraid of bhe fat women with brown skin who came down
liis street tugging big bundles that looked like clothes; the
dark men who carried suit-cases and spread out beautiful
laees for his mother to see. "They are gypsies," Dorothy
would say, "Peter, hide under the hammock quick. They
are gypsies. They steal children, too." And Peter hid,
crouching under the hammock on his stomach until Dorothy
said they were out of sight.
Peter had never been afraid of thunder-storms. His
father had taken him by the hand to show him how beautiful
they were from the window. He had even taught Peter a
game to play: told him to count two, three, four between the
thunder and lightning. If one counted three the storm was
three miles away. And his mother used to tell him that the
rolling of the thunder was Zeus scolding the gods upon
Olympus, or Rip Van Winkle's dwarves playing at nine pins
in the mountains. Peter had never been afraid of it. He
loved the twisting snake of the lightning, th£ fiery slit it tore
in the sky. He loved it all until Dorothy taught him to be
afraid. "Peter! Peter!" she would scream, "The lightning
will kill you, Peter, if you don't come in." Peter had
trembled, had become afraid. He had remained so until just
lately when he cast aside this fear.
Peter always loved the sea — the salty smell of it, the
scallop of the waves curling around his pink toes. The Nova
Scotia sea captain's blood in his veins made him love all that
until a man carried him out, out to sea on his shoulders
against Peter's will. Then Peter had looked down, down
into the water that was no longer blue, and he was afraid.
Even after he learned to swim, to love the churn of the water
around his shoulders he never swam beyond his depth like
the other boys because of the fear in his mind which was as
all the other fears that seized him in their network when he
was off his guard for a moment. A moment ago, for in-
stance, his fear of the old man with the white horse had come
to the surface again, as he had never thought it could, after
so many, many years. Just the mere sight of a sleigh with an
erect old man sitting in it, and driving a white horse, made
him turn a corner he had not meant to turn. It was as if he
were running away from the past, a fear of that past, which
was a fear no longer. Then, suddenly, Peter had stopped
2 I The Smith College Monthly
and remembered thai he was twenty, not five, and with thai
consideration the whole story Hooded his memory.
I [e had been five, almost six when the nice old man with
the white beard had frightened him. Before thai Peter had
always given the white horse sugar, and i\d him apples.
Once, there had heen a box of blue dishes for his mother:
once a bright red sled lor Peter and .John. Peter used to
run to the door when he heard the old man's voice, "Slow-
up. Jerry!" Then the old man would clank an anchor-thing
down hard on the road to make the horse stop in front of the
house. The old man with the white horse reminded Peter of
Santa Clans, and he would run to the door when he heard
the sound of the heavy anchor falling. lie had even gone
up to the horse, and had not been afraid to touch its warm
nose with his hand. The horse had liked him. and made a
long snorting noise deep down in his throat. Sometimes the
old man put a cloth bag over Jerry's mouth so he couldn't
speak, or make smoke come out of his nose. 'There was
food in that bag, the old man with the white heard told
Peter; he said the horse was too busy eating to make smoke.
The old man had been nice like that to Peter until one
day he turned ogre in a fairy talc. When Peter trotted to
the door, his brown curls nodding no and down on his fore-
head, Peter's little brother John had tagged at his heels. The
old man looked behind Peter and saw John. "Peter," said
he. "Who's that?"
"My brother John, sir," Peter spoke reluctantly.
'Tin going to take your little brother away to he tny
little boy next time I come." Peter noticed that tin old man
looked hard at John as John began to whimper. John was
such a very little boy. He was only four, and still wore
rompers. Peter's mother told him to watch out for John
because he was so little. So Peter stared hack at the old
man, who was eyeing John closely. Peter put out his hand
for the parcel. "Come on. John." He took John by the hand.
The old man began to laugh aloud. "Nexl time. Mister
Peter, John will he my little boy." Peter saw John screw up
his mouth as if he were going to cry. Peter did not tell his
mother what the old man had said. Indeed, the next time.
!i< did not pro to the door at all. He look John upstairs in-
stead, to hide him under the bed so the gypsy with the horse
COuldn'i steal him. Dorothy said uypsies stole children. 'This
The Smith College Monthly
man took children to be fiis own. He must be a gypsy, Peter
reasoned.
And when he met the old man on his way to Sunday
School — with John trotting behind him on fat, little legs,
Peter stood still in front of John until the man was far up
the street, turning the corner even with his white horse. This
day the old man had not seen Peter, and his heart stopped
going up and down inside by the time his mother looked
down at him. "Peter, what is the matter?"
Peter pointed his finger up the street. "That man is a
gypsy. He is going to steal John the next time he conies
with a bundle." Peter saw his mother button her lips together
tight.
"Did he tell you that?" Peter nodded. His mouth felt
dry inside, and he gulped. "Peter, don't you ever let me
hear you say that again. Of course he couldn't steal John,
nor would he if he could." Peter looked up the street, then at
his mother. Perhaps his mother did not know. He remem-
bered the old man shaking his white beard at him, looking
like an ogre at John. His mother said the man couldn't, but
Peter knew he had a fast horse, if he cracked his whip hard
enough. Peter didn't like that old man. His mother glanced
at him again, "Will you, Peter?" Peter gulped. "No,
Mother." But inside he was afraid. The old man had said
he was going to take John, and it never occurred to Peter
then that a man would tell a lie to a child for a joke. And
long after Peter stopped seeing the old man with the white
horse he was afraid.
The old man he had seen today was a gentlemanly old
fellow — driving a sleigh. He wore a fur coat and leather
gloves. But he had a long, white beard and a white horse.
So Peter had turned the corner suddenly when he forgot
that he was twenty. Fear was like that. It came upon one
suddenly when one saw things, met people. In fact, when
he least expected it Peter had fear in his heart — not an ab-
stract, faraway fear, but a close, concrete fear that stole
upon him like a ghost — only in the passing became sharply
distinct and utterly real. But Peter started back past the
corner he had turned — walking fast.
20 The Smith College Monthly
THE DEAD
IIki.kx Paul Kirkpatrick
They say that he is dead. They do not know;
They do not understand what death can be.
They are so blind, his friends, they cannot see
That thev died long before they found him so.
' i '
I walked the cliffs, and met him there tonight,
I T\) in the tall sand grass above the sea.
Where he had pointed out the waves to me.
And showed the island carved of salt gray light.
I have his eyes, hut their eyes still are blind:
They would see water from the cliff, and sand;
They could not know, and so they could not mind
That he would eall it more than sea and land.
And I am sure, though he has died, they say,
Thai \\a\cs break with his laughter in the bav.
' i <
' i '
Ihe Smith College Monthly 27
MARS
Lucia Weimeb
Yj*\ HAT do you know about Mars?" Strident of voice
vi/ and flushed of cheek, Gaynor greeted her father at
HH supper time. She had been waiting all afternoon to
ask that question; ever since Mr. Bolton had finished telling
the class about stars. They were all as big as the earth, he
had said, and Mars, some people thought, might be inhabited.
It had come as a blow to Gaynor, who had gotten as
far as Junior High School without thinking of the stars as
anything more tangible than flowers on the robe of night or
diamonds in the hair of the wind. Her mother encouraged
her in these conceptions and they made Gaynor feel that the
world was a very lovely place. But with a few words this
lovely place had become non-existent. In a minute her
whole foundation had been swept from her. When she had
run out from the dingy school-building into the clear blue
autumn afternoon, she had felt like one who, coming back
to consciousness, asks "Where am I?" The sky was no
longer a pretty blue canopy but a roaring void. There were
other worlds as big a's this one out in that void. The houses
and people around her had looked small — infinitesimal un-
derneath the great million-mile space. She had shuddered
and tried to talk about it to the rest but they had only said
coolly, "Sure — I guess it's true." and organized a game of
"Cops and Robbers."
She had left them and gone inside to look up "Mars" in
the Book of Knowledge. Yet when the book was in front
of her, she so dreaded the disclosure of some new overwhelm-
ing truth that it took all her courage to open it at first.
Pictures of trains shooting off into ether in the direction of
the various planets gave a reassuring touch of reality to the
whole idea. But when she read the labels and discovered that
even though they went at the dizzy speed of eighty miles an
hour, they could not reach the nearest planet in less than
ninety years, she felt herself once more engulfed in uneasi-
ness. The remoteness stood like a wall around her. There
H The Smith College Monthly
were places that she would never see, could never see. No
one could ever know what was happening on those worlds
out there in the horrid nothingness. Her hands were cold
at the thought. Hut Mars was nearer. She had waited al-
most hysterically for her Father he would know- about Mars.
And so. strident-voiced and flushed, she greeted him
with the question, "What do you know about Mars?"
"Nothing much. It's so far away that even through tele-
scopes they can make out nothing hut little lines which are
probably mountains and rivers. Some people claim it's in-
habited although there has never been any evidence to jus-
tify it, 1 think.'1 lie stopped and looked suspiciously at her
wide eyes and nervous hands. "But why so excited? Come
on and eat your dinner and forget it."
Playing tag on the lawn afterwards, she could not shake
oil' the oppression of space that had fallen on her. Every-
thing seemed miniature; the voices of the children sounded
thin and tinkling as though dissipated in eternal atmos-
phere; and when the light of the stars began to pierce the
gray haze of the late summer evening, she shivered and went
inside.
Even in bed she could not sleep hut lay feverishly try-
ing to conceive of space — space with worlds, billions of
worlds separated from each other by billions of miles bil-
lions of years. There was no end to it all. When she though!
she had eome to the end she realized in terror that there must
be something beyond that. An awful vastness surrounded
her. It was like the silence following the blast of a trumpet.
She had a sudden fear of falling into this vastness falling
falling for ever. And she clutched her bed. Hut she
would not fall. There was gravity,- gravity which held her
tight. She was clinging like an insect to a revolving mass.
Out in that awful space other worlds were revolving too.
A crazy endless whirling of thousands — millions— billions of
worlds. All turning turning white shining spirals. And
she was alone in the middle. All alone in this mad frenzied
twirling. Softly. "Mother" she said. Then, "Mother" she
shrieked. And sobbing in her mother's arms. "Hold me ()
hold me!"
The Smith College Monthly 29
EDITORIAL
BT was said to us that in the spring people may he di-
vided into three elasses: those who have new clothes,
those that wish they had, and those who are just going
to get some. Yes, that is quite true and we know perfectly
Avell which class we should like to belong to ; but is there not,
perhaps, a more important distinction to be made among
those who wander or ride about in the spring? We should
divide them into those who make worn-out remarks and those
who listen to them. The ratio is easily twenty of the first
to one of the second. It has come to such a point already
that when someone starts to mutter convulsively, "In the
spring a young m — " we take pity on Tennyson and our-
selves to interrupt hastily, "Oh, yes, lovely day, isn't it?
Where did you say he went?" Sadder than she with no new
clothes is she that lacks a confidante in the spring. And
there are perforce many of them.
One of the saddest cases was that of a Dong — do you
remember Edward Lear and your Nonsense Book? He had
an unhappy affair with a Jumbly Girl and instead of flock-
ing to hear his sad tale, whenever he went by all the neigh-
bours merely stuck their heads out of their windows and said
coolly, dispassionately, (and very likely disagreeably) :
"He goes,
"He goes,
"The Dong with the luminous nose."
That is no way to treat anyone, least of all a Dong who
was disappointed in love but who still went (somewhere),
and who still kept his nose luminous and with it doubtless
hope. Of course, if they had stopped him and asked him
sympathetic questions he would probably have begun in a
mournful tone, "In the spring a young Dong's fancy — " And
they would have gone off and left him but he would have
been much happier.
30 The Smith College Monthly
Monthly has had no sad love affair, perhaps she thought
once bui no, it was not to be. She is an unromantic maiden.
Nevertheless she often feels thai she has much in common
with the Dong. She tries very hard with her luminous nose.
Fu< I may run short hut she endeavours to keep a bright light
though it may be small.
"All swathed about with a bandage stout.
"To keep the wind from blowing it out."
And Northampton is a very windy place.
.Monthly may <_* ft some new- clothes in the spring, but
new clothes arc far from being an unmixed blessing: new
shoes are less confident, they often slip and may not fit. Hut
like the Dong she likes attention. "In the spring the Month-
ly's fancy "? Perhaps. Hut then, the l)on^>' may have had
something very interesting to sa>\ and we are sure lie hated
having people merely remark:
"He goes,
"lie goes,
"The Dong with the luminous nose."
I I( wanted attention and interest.
The Smith College Monthly 31
BOOK REVIEWS
THE BISHOP MURDER CASE
By S. S. Van Dine
Since detective stories have reached their present pin-
nacle of perfection, they have been stamped with the approv-
al of all those whose brains, weary of abstruse problems, turn
in relief to the lesser complicated questions of "who stsole
the revolver?", "where is the missing necklace?" and most
important of all, "who did it?"
Scientists and bankers devour mystery stories, and col-
lege professors, we have lately been informed, are kept in
touch with sanity by the nightly solution of criminal cases.
For the mind burdened down with too much work, and the
spirit crushed under the usual number of Spring papers we
know no better release than the latest triumph of that eru-
dite amateur detective Philo Vance. His triumph is spec-
tacular, his progress towards the denouement not a steady
plodding advance, but made up of checks and successes in a
most realistic manner. Xot only does S. S. Van Dine baffle
the reader completely until the very end of the book is
reached, but to the mystification of the reader by legitimate
mystery story methods he adds a kind of cultural element, to
soothe the more intelligent of his readers, and no doubt to
complete the bewilderment of the average peruser of detec-
tive stories.
For those who are tired of the crime passionel, or the
murders of the white-haired savant in the oak-panelled lib-
rary, or the cold-blooded slaughter of three maiden ladies in
a rickety house on Lonely Point, we advise this crime that
takes place in the higher realm of pure mathematics. It is
true that there are a few of the well-known figures of the de-
tective story, but there are also a great many new ones. You
32 The Smith College Monthly
ma\ find tin familiar butler with yellow face and twitchim
r-»
fingers, but you will also discover references to Eddincrton,
Einstein and tensorial calculus. You may greet the literal
minded detective from headquarters as an old friend, hut
you will surely be startled by seeing nanus such as Georgia
O'Keefe and "Die Meistersinger" in such a context.
For the person bored with the crimes committeed in ut-
ter contradiction of all Psychology "The Bishop Murder
Cast" will prove an excellent excursion into abnormal psy-
chology. Let whoever scorns the detective story as too easy
and simple for his consumption, attack a chapter called
"Mathematics and Murder", where he will find material to
occupy his mind for some time.
The fault of the hook rests more or less in spoiling the
taste for simpler, less theoretical, and more easily worked out
detective stories. If Philo Vance, and one is tempted to sus-
pect Philo Vance of being the incarnation of S. S. Van Dine
as he would like to he. keeps on with his series of remarkable
discoveries, the tone of this type of writing will change, will
become more philosophic, subjective and involved. The
form of fiction which has become an escape, a release for
over-worked brains, will alter until only the most highly-
trained and indefatigable minds will dare to open the covers
of a "murder case" and plunge bravely in at the first page,
to struggle out at the last, exhausted not only from contend-
ing with an assassin, hut also with "space-time", the quan-
tum theory, and modern art.
P. S. 1\
THE AMENITIES OF HOOK COLLECTING
By A. Edward N ewton
The most satisfactory thing in the world is to discover
something with which nobody else is acquainted and then
to have the fun of introducing this something, whether it he
a person, a hook, or a vegetable to one s friends. Hut this is
a rare pleasure and most of us must he content with the ne\t
Ixsl thing, an introduction to that same person, hook, or
table through the medium of some friend whose judge-
ment we trust. Accordingly I would like to thank a certain
Mr. Washburn from Boston manv times for his enthusiasm
The Smith College Monthly 33
over The Amenities of Book Collecting. About four years
ago, one evening, we were talking about books and people
and Mr. Washburn was speaking of Ellery Sedgwick with
whom he roomed in college and through whom he bad met
Mr. A. Edward Newton. At once he asked me if 1 had read
The Amenities; 1 replied that I had not, so he promised to
send me a copy. Within a few days the book arrived, and
since my first hurried perusal, at which my interest was im-
mediately aroused, as the book is beautifully illustrated with
prints and facsimiles, I have read and reread it many times.
I have often heard popular science condemned on the
grounds that it attempts to educate people to an understand-
ing of Einstein, to take an extreme example, who have not
learnt the principles of Newton. This argument might be
applied to the writing of popular books on book collecting
for people who have never read a catalogue and who are only
vaguely suspicious of what a binding "in boards" might be.
But the analogy is slight and falls to pieees when the sub-
ject is eonsidered. It would be almost impossible to write
an informal essay on Motion, for instance,; the essay might
be popular in the sense that scientific terms were carefully
explained and that the most easily recognizable illustrations
were used, but in nature it would be technical. An essay on
book collecting, on the other hand, makes a most delightful
excuse for an informal essay and one which affords a wide
field for digression. It may be technical in so far as it dis-
cusses the fine points of binding, printing, etc., but its nature
is informal.
In The Amenities of Booh Collecting, Mr. Newton has
included not only a discussion of certain of his favorite
books and authors, but has also brought in all his best friends
and casual acquaintances with a hundred ramifications there-
of. He writes a chapter on Association Books, and this word
"association" gives the keynote to his whole book, for The
Amenities is, properly speaking, a description of the sympa-
thetic bond existing between Mr. Newton and his tastes.
Nothing irrelevant is introduced; by irrelevant I mean un-
related to Mr. Newton. Dr. Johnson, one feels, must have
been in a direct line of spiritual descent with Newton, while
Trollope was more recently adopted by him.
Literary criticism does not intrude itself; "the hard
facts of the emotions" seem to be the only criteria bv which
34 The Smith College Monthly
M i'. Newton praises or condemns. And yet his likes and dis-
likes are fairly contagious and it is almost impossible to close
the book without being convinced that there must be some-
thing Fundamentally noble in the man who enjoys .Johnson.
.Mr. Newton gathers to himself a motley collection of
authors: William Godwin, Blake, Oscar Wilde. Boswell,
I. ami) and others, in all of whom he finds something congen-
ial. What does it matter if Mr. Newton makes himself the
center of this little grouping and if their genius appears to
shine only in the reflected light of his own personal appre-
ciation! lie describes his characters so charmingly and seems
to take such a huge pleasure in the telling of little incidents
in connection with them, that we enjoy the situation all the
more. As a matter of fact, this is very flattering for .Mr.
Newton with great scorn excludes from the inner circle all
those who cannot share his tastes, thereby striking the uncon-
scious reader in a most vital spot, for it is somehow gratifying
to know that you and .Mr. Newton agree regardless of the
opinion of the whole rest of the world.
This leads ns to a consideration of the conceit in A. Ed-
ward Newton. It must he admitted that in his writings he
is frankly conceited and it follows that he is even patronizing,
lie invariably speaks of such and such an eminent person as
"my very good friend, Mr. So-and so" in a manner which
leaves no doubt in one's mind as to the value of Mr. New-
ton's friendship. He has rather an offensive way of speak-
ing of the superiority of everything English to everything
American". And yet this conceit, it seems to me, is perfectly
natural and altogether likeable. It is difficult not to become
pedantic in writing or talking about any one thing in which
one is tremendously interested. There is a bit of the pedant
in all of us which, unless it become unduly exaggerated, is
no more than a natural pride. In talking about one's books.
Ibis tendency simply cannot be suppressed, nor would it be
admirable to do so. In The Amenities, Mr. Newton is ad-
dressing those who love books and who have supposedly this
same pedantic quality in more or less degree. His conceit
adds ;i flavor to the account of his failures and successes in
th< I )<>ok collecting game and its ret ract ion would be a decid-
ed loss to the personality of the book.
Eleanor S. Atterbun .
Spaulding & Sinclair
FLOWERS
192 Main St. Northampton
Tel. 1290
FURNITURE
UPHOLSTERING
SLIP COVERS and CUSHIONS
Visit our Sample Room
CHILSON'S
UPHOLSTERY SHOP
34 Center St. Tel. 1822
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To add charm to dainty
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Chiffon hosiery — plain or clox
to harmonize.
Fleming's
BOOT SHOP
189 MAIN STREET
ERIC STAHLBERG
Book Collecting is now
College Sport
Old Books and Prints
from England
The Hampshire Bookshop
aiSffi!^
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191 MAIN ST-ftCer PHONE /J07
Northampton, Mass.
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A GIFT STORE
Every Week in the Year
Offering:
Choice and Unusual Things from
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Featuring:
interesting Novelties in Bridge
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The Hall Building
Springfield, Massachusetts
Allison Spence
Photographer
100 Main St.,
Northampton ■
PHOTOGRAPHS LIVE FOREVEB
STUDIO I
SO, WHY NOT HAVE THE BEST
52 CENTER ST.
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TEL. 173
18 MASONIC ST.
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Leaves the hair soft and fluffy
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Do you want a permanent wave th it
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Or a soft round curl?
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277 Main St.
Tel 688-W
Higgins
!
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Dry Goods
Rugs
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The Mary Marguerite
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Send us your order and any date
We'll send you a loaf of our famous
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To be had only, now make no mistake,
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21 State Street
FRANK BROTHERS
Bflfc AveaMie Boot Shop
Between 47 <h and 48!h Streets, New York
Footwear of Quality
Moderately Priced
The Green Dragon
229 Main Street
Gifts of Distinction
ROOM FURNISHINGS
Order Early
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Wedding Invitations
and
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BRIDGMAN & LYMAN
108 Main St.
cGJalluttt'B
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&tore
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TEAROOM
LOCATED IN"
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SMITH COLLEGE"
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MRS. M A. T. SCHOENECK, Mgr.
Boston Fruit Store 1
The Pioneer Fruit House of \
Northampton
Patronize
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Stay at the
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283 East L7 Street 1
Telephone Algonquin 790U j
Transient rooms at $2.10 and $2.70
)>er night
Dormitory cubicles $1.80
(20$ less for club members)
The latchstring is out for all Smith |
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! 23 Green Ave. Next to Scott Gym.
Tel. 409-R
THE
NEW HOTEL GARAGE j
Storage, Washing, Supplies j
Stephen S. Sullivan Phone 8050 j
OPP. HOTEL NORTHAMPTON j
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Good Shoes
[65 Main St., Northampton, Mass.
SMART FOOTWEAR
| for
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THOMAS F. FLEMING j
THE SHOE SHOP
Exceedingly Smart Models
— and moderate prices —
Painstaking, Courteous Service
12 CRAFTS AVENUE
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1 GREEN ST.
Reminding you of the
Girdles
that mould the figure to the
fashionable silhouette
of today
THE TARDIFF SHOP
Antiques and
Reproductions
40 CENTER ST.
Careful attention given to packing and
shipping Students' Furniture.
Tel. 2867-M
The Frank E. Davis Store
Watches, diamonds, high class gold
jewelry, silverware, clocks, fountain
pens, novelties, leather goods and an
especially good variety of costume
jewelry. Some of the most attractive
being very moderately priced. Watch
and jewelry repairing solicited.
FRANK E. DAVIS
164 Main St.
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Made by Bass
Hand sewed vamps
Choice Matched Leathers
$5.90 to $7.45
Other beautiful sport oxfords in wide \
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LaMontagne Boot Shop
Near Post Office I
ARTHUR P. WOOD
! THE JEWEL STORE
197 MAIN TEL. 2898
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SUNSHINE LUNCH
i
PLEASANT ST.
Opp. Post Office Northampton
Speaking of silver linings
When the hair-dresser lets
you down on the eve of a
party . . . and your new
shoes don't come . . . and
the youth is Unavoidably
Detained . . . and it's rain-
ing . . . then, oh then, what
sweet consolation there is in
a Camel ... a cigarette just
so downright good that no
grief can prevail against it!
*a
Q1929, R. J. Rrynol.U Toharro Co., Winrton-Salrm. V C.
Smith College
May
1929
BOARD
OF
EDITORS
Vol. XXXVII MAY, 1929 No. 8
EDITORIAL BOARD
Editor-in-chief , Elizabeth Shaw, 1930
Managing Editor, Sallie S. Simons, 1930
Booh Review Editor, Priscilla S. Fairchild, 1930
Elizabeth Wheeler, 1929 Mary F. Chase, 1931
Patty H. Wood, 1930 Elizabeth Perkins, 1931
Art Editor, Nancy Wynne Parker, 1930
BUSINESS STAFF
Business Manager, Peggy Sayre, 1930
Advertising Manager, Esther T. Tow, 1931
Circulation Manager, Sarah Pearson, 1931
Nancy Dabney, 1930 Eleanor Mathesius, 1931
Agnes Lyall, 1930 Eleanor Church, 1932
Mary Folsom, 1931 Ariel Davis, 1932
The Smith College Monthly is published at Northampton, Mass., each month
from October to June, inclusive. Terms $2.00 a year. Single copies 25c.
Subscriptions may be sent to Mary Sayre, Park B, Northampton.
Contributions may be left in the Monthly Box in the Note Room.
Entered at the Post Office at Northampton, Mass., as second class matter.
Metcalf Printing & Publishing Company, Northampton, Mass.
"Accepted for mailing at special rates of postage provided for in
Section 1203, Act of October 3, 1917. Authorized October 31, 1913."
All manuscript should be in the Monthly Box by the fifteenth of the
month to be considered for the issue of the following month. All manuscript
should be signed with the full name of the writer.
An odds-on favorite
Good things have a way of
making themselves known
in this world, whether at
Longchamps, or Saratoga, or
Epsom Downs. . . . And in
these places, where people
gather who are accustomed
to rely upon their own taste
and judgment, you will find
Camels the odds-on favorite.
. . . They have a winning way.
n
© l'>20, R. J. Reynold* TobMOO Co., Winston-Salem, N. C.
CONTENTS
Extremities
Myrtle Brady, 1930 5
Missionary
Aline Wechsler, 1932
Entertainment
Ellen Robinson, 1929 9
Southward
Frances Robinson, 1930 16
The Princess Who Wanted the Moon Aline Wechsler, 1982 17
Rain Must Drop Gently Mary Paxton Macatee, 1930 19
White Instant
Lucia Weimer, 1930 20
Claim
Sallie S. Simons, 1930 23
Sofa Corner
27
Book Reviews
31
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Smith College
Monthly
EXTREMITIES
Myrtle Brady
SO judge people by their legs is doubtless immediately
to be damned as being dogmatic or whimsical and
these attributes are, possibly, two of the least sought
after in the world today. Yet something may be said for
them: nay more, something should be said and I have half
a mind to take up their defense instead of pursuing the sub-
ject which has been suggested by the grand opening infin-
itive phrase. (See above.) But, childishly, I am forever
defending that which is popularly scorned (I enjoy seeing
the wondering, incredulous stare in my opponents' eyes
and their faces growing a dull belligerent red), so that if
I continue so, I fear people will no longer take me seri-
ously— an attitude which I have long apprehended. There-
fore it would on the whole be a better thing if I were to
adhere to my original plan, laying aside all extraneous con-
siderations of dogmatism and whimsicality. We are now
back to judging people by their legs and I can tell by your
expressions that any further digressions will not be welcome.
But there; no sooner do yon decide to write an informal
essay than some one instantly loses the spirit of the thing
and insists on a formal interpretation and the title which
proclaims your work as being "On" such and such a thing.
If I were to give my efforts such a name it would be sheer
deception of the public and as such to be assiduouslv avoid-
ed.
However, it happened that yesterday when I had part-
ed from a casual friend whom I had considered making
something more than casual, I paused a moment and idly
6 The Smith College Monthly
watched her figure go down the hill. A good head, a nici
back, broad hips of the extremely potential mother, quarters
sloping si >thlv enough. 1 smiled, unconsciously pleased,
and then something told me to look a little lower. My eyes
dropped too quickly to her calves and the swiftness of their
descenl made me realize more than the sight itself that my
friend lacked the goodly sweep of thigh which other friends
of mine have always had. In the twinkling of an eye, her
thigh had become a calf and I did not like it in the least.
It worried me and I thought twice before I permitted myself
to measure the distance from the calf to the ground. It
was as 1 feared. My eye. jaundiced perhaps by this sud-
den disillusionment, saw that if it had not been for that hi<>'
heavy treading foot, nothing would have stopped that calf
from being at one with Mother Earth. The notion did not
please me, hut as yet I could not turn away. I became fas-
cinated by the indomitable motion of her legs as thev pro-
pelled her body surely towards her next class. She would
get there all right, all right. Nothing would stop her. No.
I forced myself to turn away for I began to feel a little sick.
Later in the agreeable legless desert of my room I
though! it all out. I knew then that my friend's thoughts,
which I had hitherto considered as particularly appealing,
were nothing but a defense mechanism provided for her by
nature suddenly embarrassed at turning out another baldly
businesslike personality. And then. I proceeded to defend
myself: no. certainly, 1 had not been gullible throughout
the apprenticeship of our acquaintance,-— credulous, yes,
hut not gullible. Surely I always realized that when she
tried to place herself at an angle other than right to the
earth, it was almost impossible for her and if by (hut of
sheer will-power she succeeded for an imperceptible space'
of time, she always e\*nne' back to normal like one of those
small toy dolls which Cannot he upset because of their rounel
weighted bottoms. I never really saw her drift gracefully
< \ en at an angle of seventy-five degrees. Always she- would
topple hack, yet talking frantically to maintain the* illusion
that she was still a little- foreign to this planet. And what
was it that kepi her from escaping? Of course, her round-
ed weighty legs. They forced her hack inevitably; her trunk
mighl bend and pull and her head toss wildly hut she1 would
I" rendered only the more ridiculous by her struggles. She-
The Smith College Monthly 7
was indigenous to the soil and I must always have known
it. Except that now I knew why.
In spite of all this, I have never considered myself a
stickler for beautiful legs. (If I were, I would be miserable
all day long). A "well-turned" ankle does not move me to
rapture, in fact I have always thought them rather lewd
looking, but that may immediately be laid up to jealousy
and middle-class morality. But I know that no one, whose
leg is as well-grounded as that of my former friend can ever
claim a corner in this heart. Bow-legged people, thick-
ankled people, even people over at the knees, yes I have
rarely found fault with any of these. It is true that I have
never had the pleasure of seeing some of them soar above
me in the surrounding ether, but if that be the case, it is
because they have not tried. They have not pretended and
thus they have not been betrayed by their legs as my friend
had been by hers.
Have I been dogmatic or whimsical? God grant that
I have. For without dogmatism there is much which is soul-
destroying and without whimsicality there is the "true sense
of humor" which leads to practical joking with intense
physical discomfort in its wake. These are not for me. Rath-
er let me force upon my audience ultra obscurantist teach-
ings with some show of fire in my eyes than lie scarcely
breathing somewhere in the underbrush of lethargy; rather
suffer me to commit a gently whimsical act, or to tell a faint-
ly whimsical story than pour a pail of water onto the head
of the person on the street below. But refrain from direct-
in i>- toward me the finder of Freud.
The Smith College Monthly
MISSIONARY
Aline Wechsleb
Vou grovel low to Ikabod,
That puny, sightless, wooden god.
And as an antidote for vice,
You cast a cautious sacrifice
Unheeded, at his rotting feet
Your prayers are honeyed and discreet.
But Ikabod-of-wooden-ear,
Ikabod will never hear.
Come and worship Hetsakai
Keen of ear and cold of eye.
Lofty in a temple where
Sinners supplicate in prayer,
Pompons in his robes of state.
Richly broidered and sedate.
Hetsakai wil grant you aid, —
He is carven out of jade.
The Smith College Monthly
ENTERTAINMENT
Ellen E. Robinson
f^TlHE moon had just risen and stared down with un-
|vl/| ashamed curiosity at the group of buildings in the
E&jSfl center of the woods — at the three-story hotel with its
porches one above the other in front and in back, the com-
missary with its high steps, and the few small unpainted
houses. Barely fifty people and yet the surveyors' map
called the clearing "London".
"And we'll be having a chamber of commerce yet,"
said Jim Woods, the proprietor of the hotel and the owner
of the commissary. He shifted his weight on the steps of
the commissaiy. "Some day we will be the queen city of
Alabama. And I'll live to see it, too."
There were ten young engineers on the top floor of
the hotel — thin, laughing men from Eastern colleges. They
slept in two large rooms and, if they had not been exhausted
every night at nine-thirty, the}^ would have been a noisy lot.
Noisy enough on Sunday mornings as it was! Then there
were three married engineers and the superintendent and
his wife, who all lived in the poor little houses built on
stilts. They pretended to a certain home life, but they re-
turned to the hotel for Sunday dinner.
Donald Mclnness and his wife, Caroline, still lived at
the hotel, but their house had been going up for four months.
"Anybody would think," Donald said, "that it was a
house we were asking for. How those niggers can waste
all this time with a few boards and a little plaster . . . ':
"I don't mind so much, Don dear. You know I told
you I can't cook much."
"Cook! Didn't I tell you that you could have just as
many niggers as you want. Five of them. Ten of them. . ,!
"I know, dear — but there aren't any cooks. And the
other women say it's best — "
"But, darling, I don't want you — "
"Oh, I'll like it." Her mind flashed back over these
six months. She saw their arrival at the hotel; everybody
had dressed up for them. The women were open-mouthed
10 The Smith College Monthly
at the magnificence of her going-away suit. Their room —
\( i\ small, but full of finery lent for the occasion.
'"The bridal suite," Jim Woods railed it as he opened
tin door for them. A blast of pink from the bed — that was
Mrs. Howell's best spread: a flaming dragon writhing over
a bit of painted glass that was the shade on Mrs. Edwards'
lamp; a small wicker chair donated by .Jim Woods himself.
I ain't been able to get into it since 1909. You might
as well keep it. "i It was the only chair in the room and a
great satin cushion — piercingly yellow — filled it completely.
She had come down to breakfast the next morning in
light blue silk with a wide pleated ruffle about the neck.
Josy the waitress stared at her. rolling her eyes, and dropped
a plate of biscuits.
Hut Caroline learned. She bought some gingham at
the commissary and sewed up on the second floor porch
w ith Anetta Woods, Jim's daughter and the only unmarried
white woman in a radius of twenty-live miles. They sewed
all day long; there was nothing else to do; even walking was
forbidden them. ("Had niggers hiding in these woods, dear.
1 think I'll get a shot-gun soon.") They made gingham
dresses for themselves, and for all the servants, gingham
curtains, gingham bed-spreads, and gingham shirts for tin
men. It was a single-thread machine and Caroline was slow
in learning. Donald was eloquent over the first shirt she
made him, but he came home with the collar oil', and the
next day with a sleeve out. "I just pulled a little thread.
dear. I'm awfully sorry."
She thought of the wedding notices in the papers back
home. "Mr. and .Mrs. Mclnness will be at home on October
1Mb in London. Alabama." And she thought of all those
(ailing cards buried in one of the trunks — down underneath
the chiffon negligee, the rose taffeta evening-dress, and Don-
ald's dress-suit.
It was Saturday night- and late. The hotel dance was
over. Caroline sat (nit on the steps of the porch, waiting for
Donald, who had been called over to the negro settlement
near the mine to set a broken leg. Another light. More
whiskey. More razors. She was used to Donalds being
called away on Saturday nights: and he rather liked it. be-
ing one of those men whose great regret is that they (\u\
not si ndv medicine.
The Smith College Monthly 1 1
She thought she could still hear the victrola in the din-
ing room, though the windows were black. Leaning her
head against an unpainted post, she thought lazily of the
dance. Dance! Ten couples — no, five couples and ten ex-
tra men. Quite an ideal arrangement in a way. They had
made Donald and her do their stunt again. That silly
vaudeville thing — she yodelling and he clogging. Not very
good — but it was fun doing it for these people. And just
as much appreciation as on the night of their first nervous
performance.
The moon hung just over the edge of the woods —
smug, safe, with a sudden fearful prominence when the
clouds left it entirely free. The edge of the woods was a
sharp semi-circle before her and the lower parts of the trees
were visible, unobscured by any underbrush except the fit-
ful clumps of berry bushes. She followed a path with her
eyes ; it was the same dull red as the mud at the foot of the
hotel steps. The lights of the houses went out one by one.
Underneath the hotel she could hear the grunting of pigs,
still content with the garbage thrown over the back-porch
after supper. Far off, directly under the moon, it seemed,
a whippoorwill cried — and suddenly it was as though he cried
within her.
The moon poked maliciously between the trees and a
breath of mist rose reluctantly, standing ghost-like in the
clearings between the berry bushes, or clinging low and close
to the tree trunks, with a tortured immobility. Then a slight
breeze, and the earthly mist mocked the heavy clouds now
tumbling about the moon.
Caroline looked up. A tall, thin negro stood at the
bottom of the steps. His lips bulged out from his face
and seemed to be swelling rapidly. He wore brown and
white checked trousers — high on his ankles and tight — and
an old red-velvet smoking jacket, almost maroon in the
moonlight. He leaned toward her and she saw a long pink-
ish scar on the top of his head- — ridiculously like the path
in the woods. Half the back of the smoking jacket hung
in a three-cornered tear.
"Mis Minnus, I'm Jeff'son Shakespeare. Yo' husband
he say he want yo' should come help him. They's bavin a
baby an' Mr. Minnus he say come quick."
She was down the steps in a moment. How exciting!
12 The Smith College Monthly
Donald and she helping these people. Donald calling on
her. Something to do at last. She didn't know much, but
at Kast she could boil water or pour out medicine or some-
thing. She hurried to the path in the woods. Jefferson a
little ahead of her.
It wasn't a path after all, bui a road. Jefferson Pell to
the rear and they walked in silence. Sometimes a damp
hit of mud made her slip. Always before her in the distance
was a wall of mist just on the next curve of the road. Hut
when they reached the- curve the wall was further e>n and
only a Jew still pull's were left on the ground. She thought
it was the same road she- and Donald had walked one Sunday
morning, when he had taken her to see' the shafts. Hut
Jefferson saiel Donald had left the settlement and gone fur-
ther on. the other side of the mine.
She walked on. watching her feet and thinking that
she- would have to net Donald to take her into Birmingham
soon. New shoe's, for one thing. Perhaps they could go
to a movie. Her first movie in six months! — "Mr. and
Mrs. Mclnness will he at home in London. Alabama/' She'
laughed a little'. Jefferson thought she' had spoken and
came abreast of her for a moment.
"No, nothing .... hut is it much further?"
■ In some' ways it ain't. .Mis' Minims, an' in some ways
t*is."
The' fog reached above her head now. Only the road
was clear of it. hut at the sides the- grey masses menaced
her. She could see- no moon and yet a light came from some-
where and struggled with the motionless grey walls.
It had been foggy like this the third time' she' met Don-
ald no. the' fourth time'. At a suhway entrance. lie had
a paper under his arm and an overcoat too large for him. A
hojse had pushed his head suddenly at them through the fog.
And they had laughed at his mournful eyes.
Jefferson was a little' nearer. lie evidently IV!! the
in i d of e-on\ ersal ion and began to te-ll her of a ham \\ eel mine
near them over to the hit. A cow had fallen into the old
shaft and died. Three' nights later Jeff< rson and his friends
'.ini' by and the ghost of the' cow white' and terrible— pur-
sued Hi* in. Half-way through his story she remetobered
thai two of the engineers had run oil' with one' of the hotel
The Smith College Monthly 13
sheets and had come back covered with mud and mooing
ecstatically at each other.
Jefferson now walked parallel to her but a few feel
away. She asked again if they were almost there and he
made no answer. The fog now surrounded them but al-
ways at a distance of five or six feet. Jefferson seemed to
know the road well and took the turnings instinctively. The
light had grown dimmer and she could see only his great
lips and the whites of his eyes as he glanced sideways into
the woods — or, rather, where the woods must be, swallowed
up in the fog.
She was tired but she hurried more and more. It
seemed as though she had been walking all her life along
this road, slipping a little, her shoes gradually heavy with
mud, her voile skirt limp and clinging. The fog was close
about her; she wanted to push through it with her hands.
It pressed against her — against the front of her and all
about her ears. She almost heard the noise of its advance —
a rumbling. Or was it just the silence that rumbled ? What
was noise? What was silence? What was tangible and
what was intangible?
Jefferson was a little ahead. She kept close to him,
her eyes on the tear in his coat, through which his black
skin ^listened a little. Once she stepped on his heel. He
said, "'Seuse me. Mis' Minnus." And his voice was thun-
der, resounding back behind the grey walls and rolling along
the ground beneath.
Her throat was thick and rough. She wanted to speak
but she was afraid somehow to make herself known to this
creeping greyness. Her hair twisted beseechingly across her
face and when she pushed it aside it was heavy and wet.
Jefferson was hardly visible. She listened for the faint
squush of his feet down somewhere in the fog. How far
down? Miles perhaps.
She had ceased to think. Her mind was grey and dam])
and thick. In all the world there was nothing but the squush
squush of Jefferson's feet. And her listening became so in-
tent that she lost her sense of herself — and of everything.
It was as though she were prone on the ground — listening.
A blurred light struggled off to the right. She felt
that it must have been there all the time, but that she had
somehow just seen it.
14 The Smith College Monthly
"Hen w< are, Mis' Minnus," said Jefferson. Some
when there was a sound of clapping hands and stamping
feel and the music of a bad violin.
Tin wall of a house stepped up to them quietly. A
door opened and they were inside a lighted room.
The clapping and stamping stopped and the violin gai <
• in last tortured note. A crowd of negroes parted and
Jefferson walked through them to the center of the room.
Caroline followed him. her eyes still on the three-cornered
tear.
Jefferson turned and pointed toward her with his open
hand. Sin stared at the huge pink palm.
"Here she is." he boomed. They all looked at her.
The attention of a mass of dark shining faces hundreds
of them, she- thought.
A short fat woman in blue calico lumbered up to her.
"Mis1 .Minims, we's been havin' a pahty an1 we thought as
how you-all might come an' make yo' noise for us. Jeff'son
done said yo' do it mighty wunnerful." Caroline looked
at her; the black folds under her chin Happed a little.
Jefferson came up, "Y'know, .Mis' Minnus, like yo'
done it at the hotel eb-ry Sa'day night. That pretty noise-
sort of way up high like."
A heavy grey em-tain went up slowly in the back of
her head. Where was she? Out alone in the Black Belt-
not another white person the great black muscles of these
men what did they want? Where was Donald?
"Aw, Mis' .Minnus. like yo9 done at the dance tonight."
Dance! Was thai tonight, only a few hours ago? She
and Donald in a stunt. Something silly. Her yodelling
Oh. that was what they wanted. Yodelling, She would
have to do it. Poor things! Only children really. Hut
such a long walk. Where was Donald?
She turned to Jefferson and nodded her head. Tie
nodded to all the others and they seemed to sigh a little—
and waited. She cleared her throat and lifted up her head
tn sing.
She finished, liny were motionless. She took their
silence for appreciation and sang again. And a third time.
Then she was tired and looked at Jefferson.
Il< turned abruptly and went to the door. She fol-
lowed him. The crowd moved slowly together again, smil-
The Smith College Monthly 15
ing at her. An old man tuned a violin thoughtfully. The
door shut and she could hear the slow stamping and a dull
measured clapping. Great pink palms. . .
The fog squeezed about the house. Jefferson found the
road and taking hold of his coat she followed him. Once
she shut her eyes and the greyness pushed at her lids until
she opened them in defence.
There was no sound. There was nothing. Only this
greyness and a hit of red velvet in her hand.
SOUTHWARD
Frances Robinson
Morning
Snowflakes
Powdering down the air
With soft insistence
Blot out the smoke-covered walls,
Narrowing the world to us,
While the engine stands,
Black and impatient ;
And your last kiss
Touches my lips as lightly as the snow.
Evening
Cherry blossoms
Loosened by the nimble fingered breeze,
Fall, as the evening falls,
Slowly and restfully,
Sounding full tones on the southern night air.
The harmony will remain unbroken;
I will return —
The petals will be fashioned back to snowflakes
Falling on you
From the magic that is over us,
For there's a charm that's flung about the day
Feathering it in.
16
The Smith College Monthly
rilK PRINCESS WHO WANTED THE MOON
A MM. Wl.CHSI.KK
ly^iHE little princess lived in a marble palace built high
\vU upon a clipped green lawn on which cedar trees were
§5 planted in well-spaced rows. It was entirely surround-
ed by a lake whereon swans floated lazily and miniature
boats spread their silken sails in the breezes. 'This was the
princess' kingdom, and as far as she was concerned, the
boundaries of the lake were the farthest corners of the world.
Here she lived, surrounded by her prime minister, seven
ladies-in-waiting, and a little page who stood respectfully
beside her throne, when the princess was pleased to sit there,
and ran errands i'or the ladies-in-waiting. Every week the
court magician was summoned before the princess to de-
\ ise new games and toys for the amusement of her highness,
and she played with these for a few hours and then threw
them listlessly aside. The truth of the matter is that she
\\ as bored.
One night as she was standing on the terrace, leaning
over the balustrade and looking out into the night, she no-
ticed a crescent-shaped piece of silver suspended from a
wisp of nothing in the dark heavens. She clapped her hands
and the little page appeared, with a waxen taper in his hand.
The princess pointed upward to the roof of the sky.
"What is that ?" she asked. "Thai shining thing up
there? Do you think it is made of crystal, white gold or
diamonds ?"
"Why. your highness," said the little page, "that is the
moon, and none can say of what it is made, for none1 has
ever reached it. for all that men have tried."
"II is eery pretty," observed the princess. "Il looks
like a tiara, or a strange, shining comb. 1 think I would like
to have it to wear in my hair. Do you think it would look
nice V*
"Beautiful, your highness!" said the page. "Your hair
would he the brilliance of the sun. enhanced by the chill
splendor of the moon. II would he lovely! Hut I am
The Smith College Monthly 17
afraid that the sun will have to shine alone, for the moon is
inaccessible and none may ever reach it."
"I am not like other people," said the princess, "Some
day 1 will he a queen, and kings and queens may do as they
please."
"Even kings and queens have aspired to the moon,"
said the page. "And none has ever reached it."
"How dare you!" said the princess. "Send for the
magician and the prime minister at once."
The magician and the prime minister were wakened
and brought before the little princess.
"I would like to have the moon," she said. "There is
nothing else in the whole world that can satisfy me. 1 must
have the moon. Bring it to me tomorrow at midnight."
"But, your highness, — " said the magician and the
prime minister with one voice. The princess, however, had
already swept past them into the palace, her royal nose tilted
high ; and they were left alone.
"If we do not procure her the moon," said the prime
minister somberly "we will be decapitated in the morning."
"Horrors!" said the magician. "There is only the
faintest glimmer of a hope, — but I will see what can be
done."
He brewed a potion in a silver kettle, muttering gloom-
ily, and walking around in circles as he did so. The kettle
began to sing and moan, and at last a voice was heard, escap-
ing in the thin clouds of steam that exuded from the caul-
dron.
"I am the spirit of night," said the voice. "What is
it you wish of me? Speak!"
"Our princess desires the moon for a prize," faltered
the magician. "She is not to be dissuaded!"
All was silent for a long time.
The voice said, "The moon is avid of human soul ;. She
crushes them until they are limp and useless and then tosses
them back to their owners. Perhaps, with the offer of a
soul or two, she could be persuaded . . . just for one night.
I know of no other way ..."
The voice faded and receded until it was one with the
heavy silence of the black skv, — and the magician and the
prime minister looked at each other. The prime minister
blew a silver whistle and in a moment, the whole court was
18 The Smith College Monthly
assembled, the seven ladies-in-waiting with their heads bob-
bing in neat curl papers, and the little page still holding his
\\ axui taper.
The prime minister cleared his throat. "Ahem," he
began impressively. "Hit highness, the most illustrious
princess Bramble, has commanded that the moon be brought
to her tomorrow at midnight."
A little flutter from the direction of the ladies-in-wait-
ing.
And." continued the prime minister. "'Hie only way
in which the moon may he procured is witli the offering of
.1 human soul. Which of you will (L>ive his soul, that the
princess may play with the moon?"
"Not l," said the first lady-in-waiting. "Nor I," echoed
the second and third and fourth.
"1 would gladly offer my own," said the prime minister,
"but unfortunately, we men of affairs must retain our souls.
They are invaluable in matters of state. And the magician
here sold his to a black witch, many years ago. . . Will hoik
of you give his soul ? No one \ . . ."
''I will," said the little page, and he handed it to the
magician.
The magician took the soul of the little page in his
hand and whispered softly to it. Then he flung his hand
upward and the soul departed on its journey to the moon.
The court retired for the second time that night, all hut
the little page who sat down with his hack to the door of
the room where the princess slept and kept solitary watch
throughout the night.
The next evening there was great commotion in the
court. It had become known that the princess was to be
presented with the moon, sharp at the hour of midnight.
The little princess was clothed in a dress tinted the warm
golden shades of the sun; her eyes were bright and her hail-
tin color of honey. She sat upon her throne, the little page
standing by her side as usual, and waited for the long min-
utes to pass . . . At last the clock struck, slowly, one. . . .
I w <• ... . three .... four .... and so on, until finally,
twelve! A dread hush, then a little whirring sound, and a
silver package dropped into the lap of the princess She
unfastened it eagerlv, with trembling fingers, the ladies-in-
The Smith College Monthly 19
waiting crowding around her. At last it was opened and the
princess held it up for all to see.
"It is very pretty," said the ladies-in-waiting politely.
The princess hugged it to her, and then she looked at it
for the first time. Suddenly she stood up, her eyes blazing,
her little fists clenched with rage.
"How dare you, how (hire you!" she cried to the whole
court. kI will have all your heads cut off' in the morning!
How dare you humiliate me in sueh a manner!" And she
threw the package on the ground before her.
The moon was nothing but a piece of green cheese.
The package rolled down the carpeted steps of the
throne, and a white substance, limp and inert, dropped at
the feet of the little page. Nobody noticed it, lying there,
crumpled and forlorn. Not even the little page could recog-
nize it. It was nothing but his soul, lifeless and still, re-
turned bv the moon when she had crushed it to death.
RAIN MUST DROP GENTLY
Mary Paxton Macatee
The rain must drop quite gently on the pond,
Or else it will crack open with its blows
The brittle net of sunlight Hung across
This sullen water where a greyness flows.
Rain must not pierce too deeply to its heart.
This little shower will not break the seal
That holds the water calm, and gives it still
A loveliness, because it seems unreal.
The sun is drowned within a lake of clouds,
But all day long it had a chance to make
The gossamer of sheen upon the pond.
To spread the fragile light no rain must break.
20
The Smith College Monthly
WHITE INSTANT
Lucia Weimeb
a didn't answer Daphne's first letter. It was scrawled
in her large, rather hold handwriting on fragile crest-
ed notepaper and said something like— "So Philip.
it seems, has discovered this castle on whose grounds, they
say. a unicorn disports itself. Of course there was nothing
for it hut that he rent it for the Spring months and we are
to have unicorn hunts and things. Do drop in some week-
end and help."
1 remember throwing the letter in the waste basket.
Although 1 had known her and played big brother to her ever
since we were children. 1 had little sympathy with her chic
whimsies and less inclination to set forth for the wilds of
Northern England. 1 felt that unicorn hunts could hold
for me only the intense boredom which characterized her
too well-remembered week-end parties. So I threw the let-
ter away.
She followed it up. however, a month later with an-
other note1 very short this time. "Please come up. It is
lonely and 1 want to talk to you." she said. The tone of
the note, so dill'erent from her usual hard flippancies, wor-
ried me. After all I felt a certain responsibility for her — if
she really was depressed up there — . I packed my bag and
in sentimental willingness even to hunt unicorns if it
would please her — my guns and left.
She met me at the station in the car. "Philip is at
home. I told him not to bother." she explained. A yellow
felt hat drooped around her face so that I could not see
much ol* it. hut I felt somehow that she was not looking well.
Her hands on the wheel were thin and milky.
"I say. Daphne," 1 began, "if this place is getting on
your nerves why stay? Don't tell me Philip is still crazy
on this unicorn idea ?"
"Oh it's not Philip," she told me impatiently, "he
wanted to leave long ago. It is I who insist upon staying.
There's something Bui I want you to see it for yourself.
Jim."
The Smith College Monthly 2]
A little later we turned in a stone gateway. At out
right was a stretch of green-gold woodland and in front
of us the castle rose against the sea. It was beautiful and
removed — "Like fairyland", I whispered.
The normal sound of Daphne's voiee came sudden and
strident like the shriek of a locomotive on a summer night.
"A terraee runs down to the sea," she said. Then dreamily,
"So very lovely it is."
I looked at her sharply. It was not like Daphne — this
gentleness. Another pose perhaps? But she was not given
to posing for my benefit. Always we had retained that
casual frankness of our childhood days.
Philip was waiting for us on the terrace. I liked to
look at Philip, for he was tall and fit — the kind of man whose
picture the papers published bob-sledding at St. Moritz.
"Good to see your face again, Jim." he said. And then,
with the pleasant laugh lines crinkling about his eyes, "Sor-
ry I can't say as much to my wife."
Daphne laughed and swept off the hat. I had not
noticed until then how badly she looked — or maybe it
was just different. At any rate her mouth, usually red and
satiric, was now a sweet streak of pale rose and her flat
vivid blue eyes had faded to a translucent aquamarine. Her
voice cut through my dismay. "Dinner is at seven-thirty.
See you then. You two have a talk."
She was gone and I turned to Philip. "Daphne's look-
ing awfully shot."
His good-looking face clouded. "I know it, Jim. It's
this place. But I can't seem to do anything about it. Can't
get her to leave. God knows I wish we had never come. It's
all that damned unicorn too. She thinks she hears it. And,"
he laughed a little embarrassedly, "there is something. Hear
it myself. Probably a stag. But this loneliness is getting
on my nerves."
I was surprised that a man as healthy and phlegmatic
as Philip had always seemed to be should allow himself to
be worked up to the state where he was half ready to credit
a unicorn, but something happened as we were sitting over
our coffee after dinner that made me understand. A silence
had fallen — one of those lulls in the conversation — when
through the stillness there sounded a crashing and then a
kind of musical snort — like nothing so much as a sweet
22 The Smith College Monthly
klaxon. Daphne sprang to her feet and stood there tremb-
ling, her face dead white against her ash-blonde hair. 1
stood too. The sound had given me the curious feeling that
1 must go and gel something that 1 had forgotten. And
then i looked at Daphne wit ii her hands trembling faintly
attains! the white mist of her dress and suddenly 1 knew she
- connected with it all. It was something that Daphne
and i could find together. 1 felt that it' only 1 could hear
the sound again 1 could remember remember — . It was
like waking up in the night and knowing nothing trying to
force facts from blackness.
And then it had passed and Philip was talking to us
irritably. "What has gotten into you two? A deer crackles
a little underbrush and you go into trances about it." He
reached out calmly enough for his coffee hut 1 noticed his
hand trembled.
I talked to Daphne about it the next day — a strangely
different Daphne with a small white i'ace and nervous hands.
"Tin glad you l'eel the same way. Jim." she told me, "1
keep thinking that it is something very important and that
if we could see the unicorn —I'm sure that's what it is.
aren't you? — it would all he so clear — so clear."
One night not long after this it happened. Philip had
gone to his room early and Daphne and 1 sat talking on the
terrace. 'There was a moon lighting the sky to ultramarine
and sifting silver on the trees. The lawn spread out be-
fore us. a lush midnight blue. Daphne lay Hung on her
chair, the silver on her white dress sparkling faintly. Sha-
dows rippled across the pallid surface of her face. She was
as I had never known her to he before lovely — quiet- -gla-
mourous— . "Daphne — Daphne— ' I said.
A shrill melodious neigh startled the night. Daphne
slipped to her feet. Her pale hair was a silver casque on her
head. "Come," she said. "Oh come before it is too late."
Like two children we ran hand in hand acros the lawn
into the woods. I low long or how' far we ran. 1 don't
know. There were crashes and we followed them. And
then before us in a pale blue clearing stood the unicorn. Me
was white as milk and his horn gleamed silver under the
moon. In tin soft stillness I knew everything. 1 turned
!" Daphne and found her looking at me all white as any
Uossoni on a tree. She knew too. And then a shot tore
The Smith College Monthly 23
through the blue and .silver haze and the unicorn fell.
Daphne's voice shrieked thinly across miles to me — "All my
loue I doe thee giue. Yea and your leman for to be," and
then everything went back. The next thing I remember is
Philip crawling through the bushes disheveled and apolo-
getic.
"Jove — it was a unicorn. But it was upsetting you so
Daphne, dear," — this last to a strange and silent Daphne
who sat wanly near the spill of white.
When he picked her up in his arms she did not speak
and he carried her into the house.
The next morning the unicorn was gone. I like to
think that it melted into moonlight. At any rate it was
gone and so was the precious knowledge it had brought me.
All that remained was that strange sentence of Daphne's —
the sentence which made me think that perhaps she might
remember, that it at least might serve as a key to make
her remember.
I had to leave the next day and she was ill for a long
time after so that it was a year before I saw her again. It
was at the Lido — and although I had rather dwelt on the
idea of talking it over with her — when I saw her I changed
my mind. She had red and blue beach pyjamas on and she
was running, her golden head like a fiery comet against the
blue sky. Philip and some men ran after her and when
they came within a few feet of her she stopped and turned.
Her eyes blazed blue and her mouth curved stringent and
scarlet. I left before she saw me because I didn't want to
have to talk to her.
2 I The Smith College Monthly
CLAIM
Sai in: S. Simons
Y~T|()\VKK seven in car eight,'1 I told the porter, and fol-
IX lowed him down the platform. 1 did not want to
§ leave. I wondered that 1 could walk on evenly, take
the train, and go away. Angry, I beat against my own will.
"Shall I i > i j i tlu- bags lure, ma'am?" said the porter.
Abruptly the windows and the seats and the people of the
Pullman became real to me. Looking down I saw a woman
with white hair occupying my seat in section seven. She
did not appear to he transient; her Luggage, respectable,
hut going grey at the edges, lilled most of the opposite seat.
The porter put mine where he could, standing one suitcase
on end. 1 felt dubious about it. and hoped she would. I
was aware of being imposed upon. As she continued ob-
livious, anger at myself gratefully changed to irritation
against her. Evidently she either did not know or refused
to recognize the conventions of train travel. 1 was on the
point of suggesting them to her when 1 remembered that
one is courteous to old ladies. Increasingly ill-tempered, 1
sat silent, staring out the window at the marsh grass. Ab-
sorbed in my irritation. 1 had almost forgotten her. the cause
of it. when she remarked conversationally, "Do you mind
riding backwards?" The voice was slack, toneless, and rather
pitiful. I looked at her again. She wore a black dress.
plain, unobstrusive, and her face had a faint, fresh color,
she was younger than I had imagined, probably not over
fifty. .My thoughl swung in again upon myself. I did not
like riding backwards. It made me nakedly conscious that 1
I had no control over the speed or even my own eyesight.
Things shrank thin in the distance before I could frame an
image that was immediate or true. It made me dizzy; I
fell helpless. I [ere the car lurched suddenly, driving two
of her bags against my arm where the typhoid needle had
gone in. I sprang lip, the other hand at my shoulder. The
w om.'in had been watching me patiently and now, taking this
for an answer, she turned away. I Rung myself down in the
seal across the aisle, (daring. She was not visiblv disturbed.
The Smith College Monthly
After dinner the ear filled rapidly, and I returned to
number seven, intending to finish my hook. Presently the
woman began to breath loudly, almost snorting. I was
frightened, but her eyes were placid, apologetic. Below her
skirt her knees showed, covered by tan cotton bloomers.
Seeing them. I felt indecent. Leaning forward with a gasp-
ing breath she said hurriedly. "I am Mrs. Murphree."
"How do you do," 1 managed to answer and went back
to my book.
After a few minutes she approached me again, elbows
on knees, awkward and ugly. "You know. I had a son about
twenty-one." A smile, unsure and trembling, parted her
lips. The toneless voice continued, "He went out hunting
with his best friend a year ago — and his friend shot and
killed him. On purpose, but I don't know why." She
paused, and smiled again, "That's why I'm wearing mourn-
ing."
She seemed to expect no answer and I sat appalled,
listening, scarcely able to understand. "It don't seem right.
He was such a bright boy. In Clinton, where I live, the
town took up a collection and paid his first semester bills at
the Boston Tech. He worked his way and won two schol-
arships in gold. He was so popular." She began to cry. her
face grew red. and sweat shone on her forehead. She could
talk about the actual shooting: it was unreal. Now she
turned to me. wanting some word, painfully wanting some-
thing that neither I nor anyone could say. I went back to
the book, almost shaking, seeing her black dress wrinkled,
her red face, her lips shaping words she hardly heard. I
did not know what I felt ; it was much too big for pity.
She was still talking in a flat, tragic, monotone. "And
so I'm coming down to see my girl. She's going to have a
baby, but I guess she's happy. After I go back to Clinton
I'll never see her again. Clinton's so far away. We don't
get on like the boy and I did. but just the same I wish she
was nearer."
I began to hear the clicking of the rails, the rain on the
windows, and slowly I realized that the voice was still. The
tightness inside of me inside of me melted, melted to a hot
rage. What right had she to make me feel this? What right
had she to tell me? I ought not to have heard it. It was hers;
it had nothing to do with me. I turned on her, furious.
26 The Smith College Monthly
"Do you like to read, young lady?" she asked before
1 could speak. 1 sank hack, mechanically answering and she
continued, "I didn't get much out of this, but you'll like it,"
handing me True Romance Magazine, 1 laughed, aching
with relict'.
She had rearranged herself,- her dress was neat and
her skin only lightly flushed. She seemed to have forgot-
ten, We chatted about train riding, and 1 began to like
h r for having delivered me back to the commonplace, how-
ever unconsciously. She undertook a confidential whisper.
"I'm getting off at midnight. You know, I really haven't
gol tin's seal at all; I ought to be in the coaches but I know
the conductor."
"Indeed?" I said.
"But," she went on, "if you do want to go to bed he-
fore I get off. you can have the upper berth made down."
"Oh yes, thanks." I had passed beyond surprise, or
Peeling of any kind. No formulas applied to her; she fitted
no conceivable pattern. I did not know in what relation-
ship I stood to her or she to inc. Probably, after all. I hated
her. Urgent, exigent, and yet impersonal, she had made
claims upon me which I could not deny. For one inescap-
able moment she had involved me in her life.
"It's Mrs. Murphree, — don't forget," she called, step-
ping down into the night.
"No," I said, "goodbve."
lhe Smith College Monthly
27
THOUGHTS OX THE MAGPIE
(To T. S. Eliot and a Dark Lady)
H. M. S. P.
0 spirit blithe! When first I heard thy song,
A sunny shaft did I behold;
For though much travelled in the realms of gold,
And, be it right or wrong, other birds among,
1 wandered lonely as a cloud,
Until thy music, sweet and loud,
My ear saluted.
Ye little birds that sit and sing,
(Call for the robin and the wren,
And the late lark twittering in the skies!)
Go pretty birds, to prune the wing;
For the bonnie Magpie goes up the glen.
Give gladness, souls, for its bold cries!
And hear, ye ladies that despise:
All my past life is mine no more.
Had we but world enough, and time ....
(O. happy those early days when I — )
The Smith College Monthly
What shall 1 say. in earth-bound rhyme
Of her, the bird of fortune and man's ever
Magpie! that thou shouldsi be living at this hour!
Wilt thou forgive that sin where 1 begun,
When you and I have played this little hour?
I "in glad to know thee, thing uncommon,
And 'tis not. Magpie, in our power
To lei thy teaching go for naught,
Or new acquaintance be forgot.
() world, he nobler for her sake;
Awake. Aeolian lyre, awake'
Farewell, thou art too dear for my possessing,
Thou youngest virgin daughter of the skies:
The charter of thy worth uives thee releasing.
Pardon, Magpie, my bold cries;
And go on your untrodden way;
And rather ve rosebuds while ve maw
KKFKHFAC KS TO ENGLISH LITERATURE
Anonymous: The \uf Brown Maid.
Binyon, Laurence: () World, be Nobler.
Burns, Robert: Auld Lang Syne.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor: Glycine's Song.
Constable, Henry: On the Death of Sir Philip Sydney.
Donne. John: A Hymn to (rod the Father.
Dryden, John: Ode.
Rtherege, Sir ( reorge:
To a Lady Asking Him How Long He Would Love Her
Fletcher, John: Hear, ye Ladies.
Gray, Thomas: The Progress of Poesy.
Henley, William Ernest: Margaritas Sorori.
Herrick, Robert: To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.
Heywood, Thomas: The Message; Matin Song.
I [ogg, James: Kilmenp.
Keats, John: On First Looking into Chapman's Homer.
Marvel, Andrew: To his Cov Mistress.
The Smith College Monthly 29
Parker, Gilbert: Reunited.
Pope, Alexander: On a Certain Lady at Court,
Rochester, Earlot: Love and Life.
Shakespeare, William: Sonnets ii, ix.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe: To a Ski/lark.
Vaughari, Henry: The Retreat.
Webster, John: A Dirge.
Wordsworth, William :
Daffodils-. England, 1802, i; Lucy, ii.
Wvatt. Sir Thomas: Revocation.
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Chiffon hosiery — plain or clox f
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The Smith College Monthly 31
BOOK REVIEWS
THE CHOSEN PEOPLE:
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN EUROPE
By Jerome and Jean Tharaud
Longmans, Green & Co. 1929
In the trend of popularisation to which almost every
field has been recently subjected, History has been one of
the most pitiful victims. Of peoples treated thus, the Jews
have suffered most, for in Jewish History there is much to
attract an historical writer whose main desire is a point of
view supported by chosen details. It is easy to say of them
"how romantic" and to write a book so rilled with such
phrases as "dramatic aspects", "the love of the marvellous
characteristic of the Jewish soul" that the facts which should
bear this out are forgotten. In "The Chosen People" the
Tharauds have been so skilful in the employing of these
comfortably established terms that one is likely never to
realize that the "dramatic aspects" are not definitely de-
scribed or even named; they are hinted at obscurely. One
feels continually that the next chapter will bring forth the
promised definite explanation — and the next chapter speaks
vaguely of "the all-powerful authority of the church."
To make Jewish History even more entrancing to writ-
ers of this kind, the point of view they wish to take is already
so firmly established in the minds of their probable readers,
particularly the Gentiles, that it will require little support
and almost no proof. Mr. Zangwill and Mr. Browne have
prepared the way, and the Tharauds, following it blindly.
can talk blithely of the narrowness of the ghetto, of the
revolt against the old ritual, of the persecutions. Their read-
ers, having seen it all before, will never question it, so where
32 The Smith College Monthly
is t Ik ii< ( tl of proof, of anything more than vague discussion
and theory \
Tins discussion and theory may be very excellent of its
kind, but its kind is obviously not historical, and the
Tharauds themselves insist that they have written a "short
history of the Jews in Europe". Under the mistaken im-
pression thai dates and definite information discourage the
popular reader they have, when faeed with a quite unavoid-
able fact, blushed, and skirted it by saying, as they did of
Maimonides, that he was "born in the Middle Ages". They
have not even given a satisfactory descrption of the life of
the- .Jew: they merely mention frequently the word 'ghetto1
under the apparent impression that it alone draws a com-
plete picture.
This is a book of sentimental phrases about a people of
whom the popular tradition is that they have been deeply
and continually wronged, both by themselves and by other
peoples. The Tharauds take advantage of this tradition, as
of others and speak pityingly of the wronged .Jewish race,
not. of course, illustrating or explaining to any sufficienl
extent. While they are doing this, it apparently never
occurs to them that, by giving the Jews such light and flip-
pant historical treatment they are adding another insult to
a list which they insist is already quite long enough.
M.C.
CAVENDER'S HOUSE
Edwin Arlington Robinson Macmillan. 1929
It has been said that Edwin Arlington Robinson's
themes illustrate "the success of failure, or the failure of
success." While this statement is perhaps not entirely true.
it is obvious that he is greatly attracted by worldly failures.
II< salutes the gallanl ones, but has no weak sympathy for
those w ho fail from vaingloriousness and cowardice. The
distinction may be made clear by comparing Flammonde
and Miniver Cheevy, whose very names reveal their char-
act< rs. Bui Robinson is neither blinded, by the inner victory
thai may l>< achieved, to the warping elf eel of lack of worldly
success, nor hasty, in spite of his lack of sympathy, to judge
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The Smith College Monthly 35
contemptuously the complete failures. He records what In
finds in his characters with scrupulous fidelity and tolerance,
and his dealing with persons who are in some way unsuccess-
ful is really the manifestation of an intense interest in the
"mapping of the human heart," an interest which is some-
what one-sided because of his own temperament. His latest
poem, Cavender's House, illustrates this interest. Cavender,
who is himself both characters in an imaginary dialogue with
his wife twelve years after he has killed her, suspecting that
she is unfaithful to him, is certainly a failure, in a spiritual
rather than a material way; but the emphasis is not so much
on this fact as on the meticulous analysis of the tortured
mind of Cavender.
There is an obvious resemblance to Browning in Rob-
inson's interest in creating character instead of stressing his
own emotion, and in the use of the dramatic narrative for
this purpose; although in Cavender's House the form is not
monologue, but a mixture of narrative and dialogue. Rob-
inson's philosophy, however, is in strong contrast to Brown-
ing's buoyant optimism and faith in the essential soundness
of the universe. He perceives fully the cruelty of life and
makes no attempt to disguise it, but he finds a certain amount
of satisfaction in facing it without cowardice. He sees hu-
man beings always in the grasp of unknown powers, but he
knowrs also "the faith within the fear," and the possibility
that there is some reason for existence. Both the doubt and
the fear are fully set forth in Cavender's House:
"There are still doors in your house that are locked;
And there is only you to open them,
For what they may reveal. There may be still
Some riches hidden there, and even for you,
Who spurned your treasure as an angry king
Might throw his crown away, and in his madness
Not know what he had done till all was done.
But who are we to say when all is done?
Was ever an insect flying between two flowers
Told less than we are told of what we are?
Cavender, there may still be hidden for you
A meaning in your house why you are here."
Another resemblance to Browning is found in the intel-
lectual demands made on the reader, though not by elusive-
3f> The Smith College Monthly
tiess of expression ; Robinson's obscurity is instead dependent
on a deceptive quietness and lack of ostentation. The most
notable quality of his style is economy of the point of frugal-
ity. Ill docs not lack genuinely passionate feeling, hut while
such feeling is strikingly obvious in Browning, Robinson's
restraint leads often to a prosaic understatement which pre-
vents the average reader from realizing the remarkable depth
and power of his feeling. If evidence is needed, it may be
found in lines like the following:
"The man who makes a chaos of himself
Should have the benefit of his independence
In his defection. lie should wreck himself
Alone in his own ship, and not he drowned.
Or cast ashore to die. for scuttling others.
I have been asking, Cavender, since that night,
Where so malicious and inconsiderate
A devil could hide in you Tor so long time.
There may he places in us all where things
I jvc that would make us nm if we should see them
It' only we could run away from them!
Hut, Cavender, we can't: and that's a pity."
Cavender'g House strengthens the impression made by
Tristram, that Robinson's best work is found in his long
poems rather than the short ones, since they furnish a better
vehicle for continuous thought and for the observation of
human character and its operations which is the material of
his art. The succession of his most prominent themes lias
been described by .Mi*. Herbert Gorman as: first the creation
<>f single imaginary characters, then the revitalizing of his-
torical personages from the data and atmosphere left behind
them, then the original representation of legendary figures
who stand for certain spiritual manifestations, their re-appli-
cation, as it were, to our modern times, and. finally, the crea-
tion of groups of imaginary figures in juxtaposition, acting
nut liiv. In Cavender's House the juxtaposition is not
strictly of figures, since one of the two persons is expressed
through the other's ((construction of her, hut it <_* i \ cs the
contacl of individualities, whose clashes reveal the perplexed
mind and heart of Cavender. At the same time Robinson's
skill in the subtle analysis of a single character is highly dc-
\< loped. As an analysis it is more convincing than the leg-
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The Smith College Monthly 39
endary material he has dealt with in earlier poems, because
in spite of the universal traits presented in these poems
some sense of anachronism is almost inescapable.
In Calender's House as in his other work Robinson has
made no experiments with new or unusual poetie forms. His
blank verse is extremely careful, and its most notable qual-
ities are simplicity and dignity. There is no rich imagery, no
senuous music, no exquisite moment. But readers who
reject the obvious and prefer a sharp, fine flavor, a special
rather than a general audience, will always appreciate the
distinction of Robinson's work; and Calender's House will
be found as excellent technically as the work which has pre-
ceded it, and an advance over this work as regards penetrat-
ing analvsis of character.
Ruth D. Pillsburv.
^KXi^leiXX^l£iXX^^iXXi3^eiX^^l£iX^^
Smith College
Monthly
RJiifs
June 1929
»
BOARD of EDITORS
Vol. XXXVII
JUNE, 1929
No. 9
EDITORIAL BOARD
Editor-in-chief, Elizabeth Shaw '30
Managing Editor, Sallie S. Simons '30
Book Review Editor, Priscilla S. Fairchild '30
Elizabeth Wheeler '29 Mary F. Chase
Patty H. Wood '30 Elizabeth Perkins
Art Editor, Nancy Wynne Parker '30
'3i
'3i
BUSINESS STAFF
Business Manager, Mary Sayre '30
Advertising Manager, Esther Tow '31
Circulation Manager, Sarah Pearson '31
Nancy Dabney '30 Eleanor Mathesius '31
Agnes Lyall '30 Eleanor Church '32
Mary Folsom '31 Ariel Davis '32
The Smith College Monthly is published at Northampton, Mass., each month from October
to June, inclusive. Terms $2.00 a year. Single copies 25c. Subscriptions may be sent
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CONTENTS
i
PAGE
Comfield Valley Anne Lloyd Basinger 5
Mary Augusta Jordan Prize Honourable Mention
Snapshot Barbara Damon Simison 20
Discovery Barbara Damon Simison 20
Mary Augusta Jordan Prize Honourable Mention
Return Frances Adams 21
Black Poppies Edith Starks 27
Is It Death ? Edith Starks 27
Pilgrimage Downstream Elizabeth Botsford 28
Purchase Ernestine Gilbreth 32
Before Catching the 12:15 Train Constance Pardee 40
Flying Boats Ellen Robinson 41
Through A Glass, Darkly Ruth Rodney King 44
"Old Men Sitting in the Sun" Frances Ranney 48
Editorial 52
Book Reviews 55
An Inn of Colonial Charm
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SMITH COLLEGE
MONTHLY
COMFIELD VALLEY
Anne Lloyd Basinger
I
OME giant going for a walk down North America,
eons ago, made a gouge with his stick where the
Berkshires today fall away southward into small
perverse bumps. The gash healed; the pile of
dirt thrown up from the furrow weathered into soft green
mountains; rocks uncovered at that time continued to
nuzzle out through oaks, soft wood trees and evergreens;
and hollows in the mountains filled with water, to spill
over into the crannies below. Very early — fifty years be-
fore Independence — colonists had already established them-
selves here, cut clearings, built houses, and begun the
process of civilization. Possibly these colonists were
Puritans; though I doubt if they ever exalted the interests
of religion above good, worldly pursuits. Yet they have
never looked like Puritan stock, to me. Perhaps they sus-
pected that Lucifer, and not God, scooped out Cornfield
Valley for them; for they took care to render unto Caesar
the things that were Caesar's; and repaid the giant arch-
angel penny for penny in the hard coin of pride.
The motorist from New York remembered his drive
through the Valley. He remembered it not only because
the large estates or cheap modern cottages of New York
and southern Connecticut threw it into relief. It was an
individuality; its features etched themselves upon the mind.
Winding among hills and second-growth woods, the road
straightened across two hay-fields; and suddenly passed
between white houses set well back from the street. Elm
6 SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
shade and maple shade fell upon the road; the houses were
sunny. Their simplicity was unaffectedly colonial; their
owners unsentimentally painted them when they greyed
with exposure; they bespoke insolent conservatism. Corn-
field Valley had not seen fit to idealize herself; she harbored
a very ugly group of little stores in her midst; she had no
back-streets; she was a sepulcher unwhited. Slightly be-
yond the stores, the high-road split; and in the triangle
ancient elms and a monument marked her center. If you
took the left road, you were soon out of town again, rising
a little above the Valley floor, yet lying in the protection
of an intimate hill-ridge; and soon, through tangled hedge-
rows, over stone walls propped by wooden posts and
tangled with wire and vines, you saw the patch-work
theme of fields connected by other hedge-rowTs, picked out
in darker green by inconsistent woodland patches. The
right road, holding to the town a little longer, dipped
across a sunny field and a meandering brook in its second
childhood; then climbed stubbornly out of the Valley, and
twisted about the face of a dwarf mountain. This rocky
knob jutting from smaller hills went half-naked like a
beggar, in tattered bushes and vines; it sat like an East
Indian philosopher surveying the long ridge opposite,
across a brilliant swamp below. A little higher the road
passed a handful of ghost-grey shacks, still climbed,
attained the top of the little range, and loitered along it,
to let you see blue hills rolling over one another on three
sides, like the sea; yellow or light-green fields again; knobs
and knolls again, breaking the Valley with their knuckles;
and two lakes cupped like flat pieces of lapis lazuli in the
hollow of the Valley's hand. A moment on that hill; you
would remember it after passing; then down on the other
side, the treacherous, rolling side, where careless motorists
lost their lives every season. Cornfield Valley only said,
"I told you so," when cars left the road there and smashed
into the trees or the rocks; it gained stories to tell; it was
indifferent to the vicissitudes of tourists. Besides, Allyn
Hill was outside; the dropping-off place; the farewell of
the town to a stranger. People who invade such a private
hollow must expect a rude awakening on the other side.
II.
Little babies in Cornfield Valley were wise; they ignored
the wild mountains, and gave their full attention to their
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 7
feeding. In this they imitated intelligent town-people, who
disliked fishing, or tracing up their brooks to their sources,
or berrying on steep hills. These Valley-dwellers preferred
contemplation of each other on flat porches, while the
season allowed; for winter brought wildness soon enough.
No amount of sticky pink laurel or purple-bloomed berries
attracted them.
But little boy babies grew out of their wisdom with
their Christening dress; and soon took to spending all their
days in summer along the brooks with their lines, or in the
field with their pails, coming down at night-fall as full of
nettles as pin-cushions with pins, to sell from door to door.
And large boys who wouldn't grow into men ran away from
their work to loaf on high land. They lay on their backs
in fields that curved out like fat pillows; their hats over
their eyes, and slept. Their wives shook their heads; but
the neighbors never troubled to think of them at all. For
in Cornfield Valley many things are taken for granted. No,
they wouldn't think of them at all — except sometimes, in
passing Willie Jones on the street. The sight of Willie
Jones, the gray, tough, brown man with pale eyes, made
anybody think. And that, notwithstanding that it had
happened to him fifty years before. He made them re-
member— and shiver.
They remembered that Bill Jones took Willie out fishing
when the boy was only six years old ; and in the heat of the
day fell asleep beside the stream. When he woke up, Willie
was gone. So he called him by name: u Willie — Willie
Jones!" But nothing answered him save the rocks on the
hill opposite. He tried to hunt, but couldn't find anything,
not so much as a foot-print, so thick were the low-growing
laurel-bushes. He must have waked about four of that
summer day; and he hunted until dark. Then he ran down
to the Valley and asked for help. Other men went out; then
still others; then the whole town heard, and everybody
went to Town Hall to wait for news. The mother was there
too, crying. They sat waiting all night, while their men
hunted; but in the morning Willie wasn't found; so they
went away about their work; only, the mother sat and held
her hands in her lap. Hunting parties kept combing the
mountains. None of the men worked at anything else;
they would sleep a little, and then go hunt. You wouldn't
think a little boy could wander so far! At last there came
B SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
a rumour from the mountains. Ryan, the old bell-ringer,
leaped at the ropes in Town Hall tower, and again the
town-people came running. They waited three hours.
Then, about two o'clock of the third night Willie rode back,
carried high on the shoulders of tall mountaineers, who had
sed up the father too as they swung down the road.
With torches and shouts, they marched into Town Hall,
sw< pi up the mother, and set her on the platform to receive
her son. The people of Cornfield Valley shouted wildly.
But Mrs. Jones only looked at her boy, and then she wrung
her hands. They fell silent and looked too; and it came to
them all at once — something was wrong with the child.
Willie Jones was crazy — as mad as a dog; and he never
recovered. He knew nobody; he continually saw something
else behind them. After that the Valley people hated the
mountains with renewed force; and they feared them, too.
III.
I have been careful to say that town-people feared the
mountains. You are not to think that all the inhabitants
of Cornfield Valley were town-people. Since the beginning
there had been a queer division in the region: two parties,
utterly distinct; and nobody knew wThich was the older.
There was the Valley stock, and the mountain stock. They
seldom intermarried. They hated each other always, and
even along the back edges of town, wThere the factions
mingled, living side by side, they were as oil and water.
The mountain people loved the lonely streams and woods,
where the sweet-fern scented the air. They were too proud
to rub sleeves with anybody, even though their own might
be patched and sweat-stained, while the other man's was
made of clean new cloth. The mountain people had their
own names for places; it must have been one of them who
named the little, tattered mountain north of town Barak
Mai iff, a Welsh name, and the only one of the towrnship.
lor years they had used the warped huts beyond Barak
Mai iff for their center; and the town-people used to refer
to that place as Disturbance Corner. Here dwelt four main
families, named, by coincidence, after animals: the Foxes,
the W'olfes, the Coons and the Lyons. They used to fight
with one another, when they were drunk; and twice some-
one had been killed. Valley people let them alone; for
they preferred to manage their own affairs, even in law.
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 9
They seldom attacked people outside of their own kind;
remained fiercely aloof; and bred among themselves, until
the blood ran thin with disease. They were not immoral,
they simply had no morals. It was a public scandal that
one of them had sold his daughter on the trains; and the
affair of the two brothers was public property. These two,
living together in adjacent houses, found that they pre-
ferred each other's wives. So they traded; but since one
woman was superior to the other in strength and fruitful-
ness, a cow was thrown into the bargain to even the value.
This happy arrangement was discussed in the Valley; but
town-people wrere mainly indulgent. The mountaineers
had always conducted their affairs so.
Valley people preferred to live under the nation's and
the state's law. They wrere of that middle class nowrhere
so special in position as in New England; yet they had
sent out governors and judges to the outside world. Here
too, certain names recurred frequently: Allyn, Todd, Corn-
field. There were millionaire Allyns and Todds, and
Cornfields, and there were poor Allyns and Todds and
Cornfields. In the Allyn family the relationship was as
close as second cousin; but neither branch spoke to the
other. They were of ancient English stock, and could, if
they chose, use their coat of arms. None of the Todds or
Cornfields were related; the only explanation I know for
them is that certain retainers of the earliest Todd and
Cornfield had taken the family name. In the case of the
Cornfields, at least, proof was to be had; all old members
of town knew the Cornfield family tree well, since they
had ruled the Valley for so long that their history was
also town history. This was not like Puritan New England ;
but Cornfield Valley was individual, not typical.
As I say, most of the Cornfield Valley people were
middling in family and fortune. But they had their
paupers. The two poorest families in the whole township
lived on the community by petty thievery and by begging;
and they were tolerated because one could not see them
starve. In both cases children wTere born every year,
despite ill health, poor feeding and poverty. The Dick
Todds were stringy and dark; silent and self-sufficient. A
strain of the rare mountain blood came in somewrhere.
They scrabbled a living by animal cleverness; a sick breed,
who ate cheap candy in preference to plain food, and looked
at your chin, slant-eyed, in passing on the street. The
io SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
Pillings, on the other hand, made a disturbing appeal, by
the innocent delight with which they received each baby.
Their hovel stood in the very ditch, like a beggar indeed;
and the grass of its meagre yard was worn from the face
of the soured ground by the poisons of human beings and
chickens. The mother could be seen almost any day on
her bleak little porch, holding up her baby and kissing it,
her eyes turned side-ways shining to be admired. She had
been very beautiful, with blue-black hair and deep blue
3. Now her teeth were broken and gone; her skin
coarsened. But she kept the slim lines of beauty, like a
ship which ages; and her tall husband, who had been blond
and handsome as Apollo, would still be a man if he could
stop drinking.
Town-people were not so very much better than moun-
tain-people for morals. They were too old as a community
to fear consequences. They were set, dangerously; and
after convention, expediency was their only brake. I do
not mean that they sinned enthusiastically. They merely
remained passive. They tolerated much that might have
been prevented; because it was not their business to act.
They loathed no crime so heartily as inquisitiveness; and
rather than look, they would bandage their eyes. The
work of the ministers in Cornfield Valley was desperately
trying; because they expected the Lord to mind his own
business as they did theirs. Sermons must be agreeable;
religion, sluggish. So two things happened in the town-
ship; in one church, ministers changed every two or three
years, as new men tried and failed to stir the old mixture;
in the other, a very frail old gentleman recommended him-
self to everyone's heart for a reason which he alone knew.
He bowed to that reason every Sunday as he took the desk
to preach. "There they sit. Sinners — why, I dare say not
one of them deserves Purgatory, even. Well, I must teach
them their own nobility. . ." For this was his belief: that
you could coax the human animal farther by praise then
by abuse; because, in cultivating his self-respect, you may
make him be what he thinks he is. This elderly clergyman
saved more souls in his year than many men do in a life-
time. As I say, the proof of his success was that nobody
knew his secret.
Noah Cornfield of Cornfield Valley differed from every-
one, lie was, of course, their ruler. I believe that his
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY u
manipulation of local politics through relatives and de-
pendents proceeded along Medicean lines; he made every-
body his dependent. He owned or controlled nearly a third
of town property; and could look for miles across land un-
trespassed by any save those whom he invited. Of the
Valley people by birth and education, he allied himself
with mountaineers in his love of woods and their lore; he
camped with them, knew them familiarly, and commanded
their respect by blood, wisdom and attainments. They
either hated or loved the courtly gentleman; there was
cause for both; but such love or hate was intimate. Corn-
field touched his neighbors more intimately than any other
among them; yet was more alien. He was an institution,
like the old minister and the chimes and Town Meeting.
IV.
In summer, wimpling shadows dappled the lawns of
Cornfield Valley; the air was champagne; robins, song-
sparrows and thrushes, particularly bold in that country,
made a shimmer of sound to accompany the leaf-dance;
and the fire-flies were drunken stars fallen to the fields at
night. You might live there for months, thinking this
heaven; unless rainy weeks like those of last summer dis-
couraged you into pessimism.
A summer visitor would never know much about Corn-
field Valley. He would remain ignorant simply because
town-people would not bother to undeceive him. The
Valley's reserve with strangers did not admit of compromise.
Even the hotel received strangers reluctantly, as if grudging
space to aliens. Sometimes a traveller "of the wrong type"
would find everything full; so full that no extra meal
could be served; and it did not matter if the chairs were
empty, the rooms vacant, he must look farther. Others,
more fortunately received, might sit upon the porch for
weeks, rocking — the only sport to be found in the Valley —
and never meet a town-person. He would see one or two
laborers go by in sweaty blue shirts, carrying spades or
pitchforks; he would see straggling children, or Mrs. Todd
pushing her latest baby down town in a dilapidated carriage ;
he would see decently dressed men about the post-office
steps Saturday night, and the ball-team on Sunday; and
automobiles and sagging buggies; but he would not see
Cornfield Valley. He would know nothing.
i2 SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
The fall might bring more or less understanding to him.
The foliage turned pastel, then flame, picked out in dark
evergreens, like a tapestry; tall vaporous clippers sailed the
deep blue sky; the crystal air left a stinging remembrance.
The wind would tease the leaves, and twist them down;
the country would bleed with Virginia Creeper; the sun
through oak-leaves would glow as it does in the thin ear of
a gnarled old man in cold weather. Town-people put on
sweaters over their cotton shirts or dresses; sent their
children to school; and urged their last duties to farm and
wood-pile intensely. They wore an expression of finality.
The keen observer could recognize a change in them.
Finally came the stealthy dropping of leaves every day;
and then a great storm and wind, lashing with flails; then
lemon-colored sunlight on a cold Valley; and the trees' bare
branches smoke-purple along the hills; and the house-
holders built fires; and the gardens laid down, sickly brown;
and the streets would be desolate. That was fall.
Winter no outsider saw. Secrecy fell with the whiteness
of snow; and hid Cornfield Valley. The town was a woman
with a secret malady which she dragged herself away to
protect from inquisitive eyes; it was an epileptic wrhose
crises were not to be investigated. From the long oblivion,
pierced by stabbing pain, she woke exhausted in the spring.
Towards February news would sometimes come through to
the papers of other cities, of a murder, or of fire, or illness.
Pneumonia and influenza took their toll. A boy lost his
road on a snowy night, and fell through the ice of a lake
to drown in his car. The others burned a succession of
barns, because they found it "too damn' dull." An old
mountaineer vented a long-harbored grudge by setting fire
to his enemy's house. A few more men would begin to
drink heavily. One sought recreation in physical danger;
abused his family; brooded upon his own degeneracy, and
finally killed himself. Horror entered every imagination,
as grey-whiteness impressed the retina. Cornfield Valley
rested three months petrified with cold and shadow, eye-
brows raised, eyeballs rolled till the whites gleamed; lips
peeled back in a grin from the teeth, nostrils distended.
And foam flecked its lips. Then in the spring it gradually
relaxed, stirred, shivered uncontrollably; took stock of its
losses; and little by little picked up its old life. Nerves
would twitch; tales wrould be told that made the tellers and
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 13
the listeners sick; new criminals would be tolerated for old
sentiments; and nobody stoned his neighbor, because he
knew that the winter had not left him guiltless. Children
quite innocent in the fall would have learned suffering and
passion; men at their prime in the fall would be old when
the thaw came; women would be more silent, or talk with
a fiercer defiance.
Gradually they calmed themselves. But not before
clashes had occurred that ran the gamut from tragedy to
farce. Spring quarrels were bitter, but soon passed over.
There was Tom Allyn the grave-digger, who met Bet on
the street. He had been to school with her; they were old
friends. Bet was a fragile little lady, her white hair very
pretty; her pointed features puckered impulsively. Her
hands shook in the spring.
"Tom Allyn, when are you going to fix my lot?"
"I have fixed your lot seven times."
"Tom, you are an old cheat. I paid you to fix that lot
three years ago; and it still looks a sight. My father must
turn in his grave to lie under that wilderness."
"I planted young arbor vitae seven times. They die. I
told you they wouldn't grow without you manured the
ground. It ain't nothing but weeds and gravel."
And so on, until Allyn, who had quarreled with her
happily those sixty years, broke suddenly into anger and
ground out, "Well, I guess you're the meanest woman God
ever made. And I warn you to be looking for a new grave-
digger, Bet; for before I'd dig your grave after this I'd see
you lie on top the ground and rot!"
Then Bet fled for her home moaning, and sobbed pri-
vately into her pillow for fear of being left to rot above
ground.
At the same time a girl left the Valley for the city to
hide; the children in the schools wrenched themselves out
of all control by the teacher; and the ministers walked the
streets meekly with an anxious frown, deliberately cut by
those who feared to be made sources of prayer. One lad
who had always been wild, coming from a shaggy mountain
family, shot up, developed slender, faun-like grace, and
coolly plotted a succession of cruelties, defiantly, osten-
tatiously, thus beginning a criminal career in disdain of all
law.
1 4 SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
Such was the secret of Cornfield Valley. The secret of
her indulgences, her grimness; her decadence.
V.
Those tardy, haunted spring months of that country are
always associated in my mind with the sound of wood-
chopping; and the dingy, grass-smothered place which
bordered the property we bought on the north. Our own
house was old enough, and sadly in need of paint; but the
house next door seemed sealed with cob-webs, caterpillar-
tents and dirt. In the very center of the Valley, flanked by
neat lawns and decent houses, it looked slovenly and forlorn.
In the dawn, as early as five o'clock, when the sky was
scarcely lighter than at night, and the earth still deep blue,
1 would wake to hear an irregular chop-chopping from the
yard on the north. The dawn was a time of cold and
siknee in Cornfield Valley — a misty, lifeless hour when the
earth held its breath to listen. In such perfect stillness,
the sound of the wood-chopping echoed from one side of
the Valley to the other with as sharp a concussion as if the
abrupt mountain walls to east and west were being struck
with something flat like a plank. It sounded terribly
lonely. I think it even had an element of mysticism for
me then; for the chopping stopped with the coming of day
and the stirring of people in other houses.
Like all singular things, this sound held a fascination.
It would have drawn me to the window to see — I don't
know what wreird chopper; but it made me so conscious of
the warm shelter of bed that movement was impossible.
Then at last my curiosity broke the trance, carrying me to
the north side of the house on a morning clammy with
(loud-blankets. Why the sight that I found should have
oppressed me as it did I cannot tell. It was merely the
gnarled figure of a woman, with stringy grey hair and
faded blue dress, taking large heavy pieces of wood from
a pile on her left, and cutting them into stove-lengths
which she threw into a basket on her right. When the
basket was filled, she picked it up, slanting her narrow
shoulders to accommodate herself to the weight, and
walked unevenly into the house.
We asked the workmen on our place who lived next
door; and they told us, "The Hodders. Old Hodder, he's
a busy-body; and say — you want to nail things dowrn
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 15
around here. Mis' Hodder is so close, she'd squeeze blood
out er turnip."
We saw that round jelly of a man, John Hodder, next
day. He came to tell us what to do with our house. But
the close woman kept indoors while we were awake, and
we knew she resented us. Then one day she saw us scrap-
ing and preparing to oil some old furniture; and came to
watch us curiously, over the fence. She didn't seem for-
midable. Her eyes were hollow, with a washed-out look.
She told us that she had some old "stuff" she was cutting
up for fire-wood; and that "The wooden bed's real pretty,
all made of cherry; only Mr. Hodder likes everything to
be nice and modern, so he's got him some good brass ones."
Finally she asked us to see her trash : eight Hitchcock chairs,
the bed and a table! So far we had made no offers of friend-
ship or curiosity; but now we asked her the price of the
pieces. Ten cents apiece! Today people are wiser. We
gave her a much fairer part of their real worth, and carried
them home triumphant. I remember her face then; the
expression of her body. The money she handled reverently,
touching it with her rough finger-tips. Her eyes clouded
with a vague regret at losing her "truck" that she had
been fond of. But her attitude towards us had changed.
She said, "Just think. When you folks come here, I used
to get up to do my chores at four in the morning, so's not
to have to be looked at by you. Why, even I wouldn't do
that scraping work!" And from that time she performed
any dreary piece of work under our eyes, her air almost
insolent with contempt for us.
She did not annoy us, however. She was too drab and
tired to be anything but pitiful. Even when she fulfilled
the prophecy of our workmen, and came to "beat us down"
on some petty bargain, we could not blame her. In our
short stay at Cornfield Valley, we had already seen the
parsimony of her husband, whose good blood and gentle-
man's education had become a pretext for idleness. In that
house over the north line, there was no order, no division
of labour, no leisurely family life. One child had grown up
and married; another had died. The Hodder place was
kept from disintegration by one person, Mrs. Hodder. One
could hardly estimate the nature and extent of her deso-
lation. She cut herself off from sympathy, because this
entailed criticism of Hodder, whom she admired as a
1 6 SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
master. 1 [elp or gifts of any kind were considered shameful
in the Valley; a present was charity there; and she con-
sidered anything for which she did not pay an insult and
a punishment. She had always been held by the bright
Bowers we set out; yet even after she had become our
friend, she would not take a root from us. Something held
her hands. "When 1 get around to it," she said, "I don't
know but I might." But she never got around to planting
flowers. She feared to let herself go. She had lost all
patience with life; and found it easier not to struggle. And
she feared interests which would make her do so. At times
a cruel fault in her character rode her, filling her with a
mania to hurt those about her, as if in revenge for her own
suffering; and then she preferred to hurt those whom she
loved. Again, she was an automaton. Down-town the
shop-keeper set his jaw when Mrs. Hodder came in to
market. She was uncommonly shrewd at driving a bar-
gain— a shrill-voiced, brittle, dry creature wThose horny
hand opened very reluctantly on the little money held
within. She had a shameless mode of attack bred of des-
peration, having long ago lost all dignity, and being broken
to humiliation as a horse is to a bridle.
I saw her first in the spring; and it was springtime when
she paid us the call. She had never come into our yard, or
entered our front door. Never, until that May day, when
the apple trees burst with pink blossoms, the grass suddenly
made a sally into unstable sunlight, and pink knobs on
the rugged oaks pushed off last year's leaves. Then we saw
her walk up to our door and knock, for a formal call. But
even then we did not guess the importance of this visit,
until she told us her news, in a matter-of-fact voice. "I
saw Doctor yesterday. I ain't felt just right this winter;
so I saw him. He said he guessed I'm going to die in a
month or so." She turned her faded eyes upon us, simply
looking to see how it would make us feel. There was not
a vestige of emotion in those eyes. "Well," she said, "I
guess I ain't sorry. Don't know but it'll be a good thing.
Family don't need me. Mr. Hodder won't have to pay for
my food. 1 It'll be better at the girl's house."
There was little to say. She only wanted us to listen.
"You know, I'm real glad they found out. It'll be a nice
month. John I [odder can spare it for me to use on myself!
Been years since I've got around to doing what I like.
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 17
There is a piece of embroidery I started when I was a bride.
I used to do real nice embroidery, when there was time.
I'll finish it before I die."
She stayed for an hour or more. She wished to explain
her visit.
"I guess you are the only people I have to talk to. I
have come to feel real friendly, living next door and all."
Then she nodded with a smile and went away.
When she told her family, they were paralyzed with the
news. So she took control of preparations. From the bed
to which she was soon confined, she directed the house-
cleaning and the work on the lawn. It was her thought to
make her funeral a credit to the Hodder family; and like
a general she laid her plans. I hear that the burial robes
were beautiful — trimmed with a piece of exquisite embroid-
ery that had taken forty years in the completing. Thus
Mrs. Hodder spent her last weeks, working needle and
brain ; and never, after that hour's visit at our house, open-
ing her lips to speak to any soul save to command when
that was necessary. John Hodder and the girl had become
meek; and too fearful to regret her. She rode to the ceme-
tery almost unattended, save for the family and the minister.
She was buried beneath the embroidery.
But Mrs. Hodder had liked stark solitude.
VI.
It is easy to think that Mrs. Hodder symbolized the
Valley, in her life and in her death. Easy to think of that
as a dying town, whose mortality indeed exceeded the
births, dragging through its last years in ugly indignity,
dying forlorn and defiant. Yet this conception is only the
faulty judgment of a weakling who cannot look further
than the winter toll of tragedy. Another death symbolized
Cornfield Valley.
Old Mrs. Winship lived in a little house close in the
corner of the road. She had grown out of the soil from a
stubborn, upstanding family; had inherited the stubborn-
ness, and from sheer exuberance of life transformed herself
into a little tyrant. Her mind cut like a razor, in a twinkle;
her tongue did foolish things. She flirted with men of
many stations in her girlhood; and finally, after much
managing, married a man older by years, and socially her
superior. It was useless to play the lady there where she
iS SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
had grown up; but her wit carried her far; she made her
husband pay for his comforts by spoiling her; and she
busied herself with intrigue and quixotic kindnesses. Now
at the close of her life she had taken to going to church
i very Sunday, in a stiff black silk dress and bonnet; and
sat under the young minister, whoever he might be at the
time, fixing him pertly with her blue eyes. Her mouth
folded neatly into nothing, like a picnic-cup; for she was
toothless. She prayed with her eyes open. Her daughter,
who was nearly seventy, went to early church so as to be
free for household duties later; but Mrs. Winship played
Mary, and sat through the long service. Afterwards she
stood and conversed outside the church doors. Her talk
ran somewhat like this.
"Good day, good day; it's a lovely summer. And I'm
ve-ry glad it is, for it's likely to be my last on earth."
"Why, what do you mean, Mrs. Winship?"
"This time next year I'll be in Realms Above."
"Get out, Mrs. Winship — an old sinner like you? You
aren't even good enough for dying, yet."
"Har-har! Well, maybe I ain't. You know, I'm a-goin'
to steal this minister-man here."
"You can't. He's mine." (From the minister's wife.)
"Oh yes I kin. I've a turrible way with the men when
1 want. I'm a wild woman."
"I won't let him out."
"Well, you wait. Say, I wouldn't go listen to that old
goat thar," (as the old minister from the other church
approached.) "He ain't handsome. Got one foot in the
grave." She would raise her voice for him to hear.
"Go 'long, Minnie Winship. I just remind you that
you're no chicken yourself; that's why you don't like me."
"Yes. That's so. I like 'em young; and I'm an old fool;
for eighty-seven years have passed over my haid, and the
angels will come for me soon."
She lived on and on, aging imperceptibly, until she was
unable to leave her house. But still when people came to
her she began by saying, "Soon I'll be in Realms
Above;" and ended by cackling at her own jokes.
She had added a prophecy, however. "I'm an old fool
now; but 111 be a bigger before the end. An ugly woman
that's funny is fit to live; but an ugly simpleton should be
put out." True enough, her mind was failing her; she
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 19
became increasingly forgetful; and her efforts to recollect
herself were so painful that her friends ceased to go to
the house. Then one of the severe winters wrought a tre-
mendous change. Mrs. Winship had become quite mad.
She recovered much of her strength; used to run out into
the street in her night-dress, and only with the greatest
difficulty could be persuaded to return to the warm kitchen.
The Winships had become very poor. Her daughter had
always been tyrannized by Mrs. Winship's stronger will;
and now scarcely knew how to cope with a situation which
left her mistress for the first time. The fear she had always
felt of her mother prevented her from controlling the mad
woman; so passers-by in the street often saw a gaunt figure
in the window or doorway, with yellow skin of parchment,
fingers like clawed hooks, skull almost naked of flesh;
smeared with snuff, her short white hair wild about her
face in a cloud. Thus old Mrs. Winship wandered pite-
ously as she had foreseen she would, seeking the Realms
Above. One day a change came. She slept heavily, and
never awoke. The angel had come for her after all.
They all went to see her before the funeral, and followed
her to the grave. She lay in a mass of flowers, in black silk,
a deep lace about her throat. Her snowy hair was smoothed
back from her high forehead. Her eyelids were thin and
white, as emotional as a Spanish woman's; so light on her
cheek, they seemed to flutter with life. The wrinkles had
been smoothed away; the lips had fallen naturally into a
long level smile of serenity. About the oval face there was
an almost royal fineness; a pride which explained all, ex-
cused all. It was a pride in her own sufficiency within
herself, as of one who had elected to conduct her own soul
to its destiny independent of God; and who preferred to
destroy herself rather than win luke-warm salvation from
religion. Yet the dead woman's face was not the face of
one damned. It seemed to tell that God had admired her
spirit, and accepted her.
-o SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
SNAPSHOT
Barbara Damon Simison
a :
I ride past hills torn jagged by the pines,
But I dismiss them when I wave my hand,
And look instead at birches' flowing lines,
Or rivers cutting mazes in the land.
I say a "Charming!" in response to falls,
That tumble on down into larger streams,
And stony pastures running far from wralls;
Past woods all dappled by the slanting beams
Of sun that gilds the fields; and then I find
Myself with lack of words to even speak
Of look of tired roads that dip and wind,
Or cowslips that go wading in the creek.
They give me prose and verse and life to live;
I only give to them what others give!
DISCOVERY
Barbara Damon Simison
I saw pathos
In a crocus
Coming back in
Spring, to find that
Young De Quincey
Saw it too, but
Long ago.
I liked pale smoke
Trailing up from
Blown-out tapers
Only to read that
Keats put it in a
Line or so.
But, the other
Day I found my
Love for you all
Hidden away; nor
Poet, nor you could
Find it first — and
That — I know!
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 21
RETURN
F. Adams
ES, it was odd, she thought, walking slowly home
across the yellow windswept golf course in the
smoky aftermath of an early sunset — it was odd
that in the last long years away from home, this
noxious sweetness of her brief returns had never drugged
her quite as now. At first, it was just an overpowering
inertia — a slow adjustment of all processes, but in the end,
she succumbed with the abandon of a lover to the steady
throb of that life which let her go for a time, then sucked
her back as resistlessly as flotsam in a tide. She had al-
ways been glad to go again, to shake off the atmosphere
which settled so familiarly around her, to expand and feel
herself a full-grown personality in an environment which
did not know her, in situations which she could consciously
create. She liked to feel the old existence sliding from her,
knowing it to be an everpresent undercurrent to which she
inevitably returned, exposing herself indifferently to a life
which meant nothing either way — nothing but a remote
consuming paralysis useless to fight, puzzling to feel. Life
here was a still pool, and yet, like some great fish swerving
suddenly near the surface, through the tangled weeds of
her consciousness, she felt a vague presentiment, a thought
trembling near firmer realization, that flashed back into
the depths, a will o' the wisp, and left her dreaming by the
pool.
What was it now that swelled up within her, crying to
be released, aching through every limb until she could
hardly breathe for the queer tumescent throbbing? Some
Celtic chant the winds had played, sweeping through her
body to answer a half-forgotten tune that long had sung
itself into her being, some dim subliminal fragment
struggling towards light.
It must be spring, she thought, gazing at the pale new
grass on the greens, the lace of the buds against the sky,
the dogs rolling ecstatically on the fairways. But all
springs were the same, — there had always been this un-
acknowledged pain, a pain that surged through all living
things, that found its consummation in universal creating,
eternal life. And there had always been a happiness greater
22 SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
than the longing, a mad enthusiasm for all places, all things,
all experience, a recurrent seasonal excitement correlated
with a frenzy to experiment. It was natural that the
approaching resurrection of the naked trees, the stiffened
earth, should communicate a similar sensation of rebirth
to her. It was natural that the long train of the feathery
hills and the curve of the golf course, steeped as they were
in familiarity, and linked with the earliest memories of her
life should touch off a peculiar emotional set, but why,
now, did it transform itself into a fierce desire, beating
wildly through her pulses, pulling her out of her soft shell
of contentment, to fray each open nerve? She had never
remained home for longer than a sweeping glance at the
house, the people, the country, then the longing to escape
returned, and there was always a means at hand, an excuse,
and once more independent, a free-lance to comb the
minute centers of the world at hand. Time that seemed so
measured here, split up when she left into a thousand
varied particles. This moment of acute consciousness had
severed her mind, then suddenly resynthesized the ele-
ments into an unexpected unity. She had lost all personal
feeling in that momentary cataclysm. She was no longer
an individual but a human expression of the surrounding
earth. All vestige of her own character had disappeared,
she was mystically identified with the primordial oneness
of this place, which the diverse encounters with a wider
world had displaced for a time, until she thought she had
forgotten. Subconsciously those first reactions must have
persisted, moulding her, however unwillingly, in their
fashion, until at last a crisis brought the two parts into
conflict, and the shock momentarily obliterated all more
recent experience.
The country club loomed distantly across a wraith-filled
void — a low colonial building, full of nationally historic
ghosts, headquarters of Lafayette in the Revolution; an
old house, nursing its stately memories to the soft cascade
of a waterfall in the wet, earth-scented ravine. A servant
held the door, taking her golf-bag quietly. She wandered
through the rooms, holding back the flood of memories
clinging to the scent of leather, cigarettes, and flowers, the
drowsy warmth of hot chocolate after skating, New Year's
Eve and egg nog; the soft arms of the sofa after tennis;
the tremulous desperation of first dances when older girls
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 23
seemed sure and effortless. She was older now, she re-
flected. Funny how the effort seemed to fade — success or
not, it didn't much matter. She watched the gardener
arrange a bowl of flowers.
"Same old snap dragons, John," she sighed. It seemed
painful somehow that things didn't change, but there was
a queer aesthetic satisfaction in the uniformity, as if it
squared with her persisting recollections that were not
buried after all.
She heard the door slam shut behind her as she sauntered
homeward across the deserted clock-golf green, wondering
if they would fill in the holes for the garden party in May,
in the immemorial manner. The deep park around the
house was haunted with the shadows of vast trees thrown
out across the mist. She paused a moment by the brook,
kicking loose the dried leaves of last autumn, watching
them eddy noiselessly toward the bridge.
"How sombre it is," she thought, "the silence and the
fog." Further on there was a pool where two white swans
floated through the gloom. She had swum there surrep-
titiously on hot summer nights, and lain naked in the
moonlight on the thick turf, trembling to a thin wild song
like the "Lohengrin" prelude. She often felt that curious
singing in her ears, particularly on sultry nights, and the
sweet high sound made her think of milk and ice, and
moonlight. . .
The swans circled near her, and she was suddenly re-
minded of two white peacocks on an island in Maggiore;
on a terrace of heavy flaming flowers and marble benches
blindingly white in the Italian heat. Queer — that contrast
in this blurred Corot dusk of greys and browns. Some part
of her color vision had died, become absorbed in shadow.
An unscrupulous mixing of the strongest paints will pro-
duce a pigeon grey or muddy brown. There had been too
many colors, she thought, the canvas hurt the eyes, and
suddenly they had all run together — cancelling each other,
leaving nothing but the residue of their component chemi-
cals. Well — she was glad ; she was sick of purple patches —
pure line was more beautiful.
But this emotion robbed her of free-will; she could not
calculate its strength. It had been a force hid deeply under
her consciousness, emerging unexpectedly to dominate it.
How could she know which line to follow — the instinctive
24 SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
impulse, irrational in its demands, or the reasonable obli-
gations her superficial life directed? If one could resist this
torn-, which she doubted now in the face of her desire to
yield, should one? Was not the old sensation more legiti-
mate because more fundamental? Or was it just a palpable
example of "evil genius" attempting to undermine her sane
behavior? If it was Mephistophelean, she was still free
ause her soul was uncommitted, but a decision must be
reached. She would not yield yet by a strong effort of will.
She would banish the shaggy-coated Satyr twisted by her
tortured eyes from the soft-forming mist beneath a sumach
bush. It all seemed pantheistic, absurd. She was acting
like a landlocked character in one of Hardy's novels.
The house was drowned in fog as she came up to it,
submerged below the mastlike tulip trees. Only the yellow
lights from the wandows riddled the shroud like mouse
holes in a cheese. In the firelit room she found the vener-
able dachshund on the hearth, reflecting a running pattern
of flame against his sleek dark coat, his rabbit-hunting nose
pillowed on his paws, the silky ears framing his dazed,
somnolent eyes. Across the room sat the other, chiselled
into a repose so deep that she hesitated before entering.
"If time could be disintegrated now," she thought, "I
could hold this moment static for eternity. . ."
The figure moved, and all the threads of the Chinese
coat she wrore turned gold in the firelight. Her deep-sunk
eyes fastened on the girl as she sank into the chintz-covered
chair beside the hearth, exhausted. The well-known sur-
roundings surged in upon her nostalgically, the temptation
to unmask her struggle seized her, while unconsciously she
fought against the asthmatic progress of the grandfather's
clock, velvet lv insinuating the quarter hours on its golden
dial.
"Shall I speak?" she thought, "try to tell her? Somc-
times I can't stand this reserve this secrecy of feeling.
Hut now it's too late— we've been growing individual hedges
around ourselves for too many years to tear them down in
this short hour." She gave tip the attempt and ran her
toe absently across the dachshund's back. A thousand
sparks shattered the air between them as the lire suddenly
leaped into the circlet of diamonds on the thin fingers
holding the outstretched cup of tea. The girl took it
Bilently, watching the- brooding way in which the hands
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 25
dropped back, cupped within each other to her lap, curved
hands that were ever crooked together in some task, whether
it was infinitesimal embroidery on her childhood dresses,
straightening a twisted flower stalk or falling reminiscently
among the keys of the old piano. She followed the upward
lift of her cloudy hair against the patterned sofa, the
column of her neck fluted into thin chords, the deep lines
in her face, the eyes, unfocussed once more when she sank
back, losing the twin spots of light they held when she
spoke. They were black shadows now, below the curving
brows, but still they seemed to see beyond her.
"But what?" thought the girl half-frightened, wondering
what they visioned through her, through the chair, beyond
the walls of the house. She shivered a little. Often it used
to be that way; she would look up, about to speak, and see
that lost, deep look, so that she forgot, and the words died
on her lips, or the thought became a triviality. She was
not unsympathetic — it was rather that she saw a greater
distance, and the altered perspective robbed other prob-
lems of much significance. It was with her that one cursed
one's limited horizon, and longed to lift the veil. Curiously
blended with this strange passivity was a current of vitality
which ran through everything she touched, a magnetizing
power that seemed to spring from the brown curves of her
hand, furrowed by the garden, quickening into life even
the trampled flowers that the dogs prostrated in their
careless rambles, an electricity that one felt might almost
insulate death itself.
"What is it?" she wondered, "constituting this curious
personal equation, a separation I cannot cross. Why
should this atmosphere creep over me like slow frost at
night, until I am solidified before I can discover it? What
keeps her aloof, unbound, consonant with this harmony,
but at the same time free? She is so remote."
The flowery tea stabbed through her with the scent of
hyacinths and the golden freesias at the window. She must
speak, tell her before she went away that nothing else
mattered — it was here, here by the fire where the dachshund
pursued a dreamy senility, where she filled the tea cups
silently as the shadows gathered, crowding in close around
them, here where life moved soundlessly, and days were
full of exercise and sunlight, or rain and worn out books;
where to live was effortless and not to live a torture, that
26 SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
she found the realest happiness, a contentment worn as
smoothly as a sea-surrounded stone; to tell her that she
could not stay because it was too perfect, too serene, a
level still beyond her grasp. She wanted to make her
understand that the long months away at college, the long
summers, studying or travelling were not to get away from
home because it bored her, but to temper a metal merely
forged in that earlier dream-life; to try the steel where it
found most resistance, and to gain the prerogative of
strength to one day make this a reality, not a mere sunken
city, like Lyonesse in the ancient fairy tale, where it lay
far below the life she must lead, tolling its bells dimly at
such times as this.
The older woman raised her eyes, inscrutably levelled
against the girl's hesitant glance. She faltered a minute —
no, she could not speak. And so it would always be this
way — both dumb when it came to emotion, armoured in
reticence — a spell as it were that must not be broken lest
the whole fall in ruins around their ears.
She went out again into the mist and the darkness. The
fog heavy with scent, rolled all the faint aromas of the
night into one multiple fragrance, quivering in her nostrils,
to catch in her throat. From the pond, the mysterious song
of the frogs reached her softly like a dirge. Now that the
passion rested there was surcease of pain — only a thin
black rim of melancholy seemed to edge her thoughts.
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 27
IS IT DEATH?
Edith Starks
The world grows dim
And in the starlight
Charon comes for me,
His long back bent across the oar;
But I shall welcome him
For through the river's swollen night
None guide so well as he.
We shall scrape safely on that further shore
Where the old ghosts drift down to greet the new,
And after this long waiting I shall again find you
And clasp your hand, who have known death and all of this
before.
BLACK POPPIES
Edith Starks
My love for you
Is like black poppies blooming.
Cool in the moonlight
And as darkly mysterious against your cheek,
As softly caressing
As the night air itself.
Langorous in the sunlight, and sombre,
Half -closed, swaying in the breeze,
Dreaming always of the night
When you will press these trembling petals
To your mouth again.
My love for you
Is like black poppies blooming.
28 SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
PILGRIMAGE DOWNSTREAM
Elizabeth Botsford
|N a full blown August day, old Tom Cook became
haunted by a curious restlessness. When the
third faded maple leaf drifted past his skiff in the
shadowed water, he moved uneasily and shoved
out from under the willow bank into the sunlight. Out
over the meadow a flock of blackbirds circled raucously in
the top of an elm tree. He watched them a moment,
squinting into the sun, and a look of surprise deepened in
his moist eyes as though he had become conscious of some
tremendous fact. Then, abruptly, he drew in his wire line
that sang on the sandy bottom, put the oars in the locks
and with a few hurried strokes was out in the channel.
In the gray of the following dawn, the rivermen of
Minnieska found Tom Cook down at the docks packing
his sparse belongings into the stern of his skiff. He stood
up at their questions. Beside their sturdiness he looked
small and frail. Although he grinned with his wide tooth-
less mouth, his pale eyes held still the tearful puzzlement
that had come into them the day before. "I reckon it's
about time I was getting home," he said in his thin voice.
One of the men held the boat for him while he stepped in,
for his hands were trembling. No one spoke and yet the
silence was full of knowledge. The prow swung outward
into the current. He leaned over his poised oars, his
crumpled face sunk behind his knuckles. "Well, boys,
goodbye." The rivermen answered in a deep embarrassed
chorus which fell flatly on the water. "Goodbye." It did
not occur to them to say any more. They stood in a stiff
line along the dock and watched him row downstream until
a tatter of mist trailed between them. The fog swelled up
from the bottom lands, obscuring the sunrise.
Out on the blank river with the fog creeping about him
and filling his ancient brain, Tom Cook did not stop to
wonder why he was there. He was answering an instinct
that had stirred within him. It is probable that he did
not even realize what he was doing, for, as he passed camps
and fishing holes familiar to him for more than half a
century, the years crowded around him with insistent
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 29
memories. He had long since lost track of time, living so
much in the past as he grew older that it became more
real to him than the present. Now, out of the shifting
mist figures took shape which were dust, and in the half
revelation of shore line and jutting dam he saw himself
and his friends in a dim reincarnation. His boat moved
more with the impetus of the great swinging river than of
his feeble oars, and the downstream motion carried him
back through the long quiet years. His mind washed back
and forth on the current, like a piece of driftwood.
Under the enormous elm which stood up over Point No
Point, Bill Houston and he had slept beneath an over-
turned skiff in a cloudburst. There, where Indian Slough
cut sharply back toward the hills, was his famous hole for
bass. On Box Dam, he had sat for hours with old Craig
when the crappee were biting. He remembered the sleepi-
ness of the sun on his shoulders. Fifty Four, Bass Island,
Belvidere, Crooked Slough, the names made a slow and
reminiscent melody in his ears, falling in the rhythm of his
oars. Chimney Rock stood clear of the fog with the August
noon pouring upon its serried crest. There the ladyslippers
grew so thickly that a patch of ground was solid yellow
with them. He knew one high slope where you could
always find the rare and delicate pink ones — it was a
secret of his. He said the flowers over to the empty boat,
tasting their fragrance — bellwort, may-apple, hypaticas,
honey-suckle, shooting stars. A bunch of full alert shoot-
ing stars clenched in the hand of a child who had torn her
bare knees on wild rose bushes. Steaks sputtering over a
charcoal fire. A launch filled with deep picnic baskets and
ferns. Women in stiff white waists, whose skirts swayed
graciously as they walked. All this was Chimney Rock.
At Fountain City Tom Cook tied up at a water-logged
boat-house. He felt exhausted until he heard John Smoker's
voice. A glass of beer cooled his hot throat. He peered
blindly about the empty beer-garden, looking for Pete.
The brilliance of the river was still in his eyes and head.
John Smoker told him Pete was gone. "Down the river?"
said Tom dully. His life fell into the bewildering patterns
of a kaleidoscope, changing at every touch.
"Maybe," said John Smoker.
"I'll see him," said Tom, "I want to tell him his beer
has gone stale again."
3o SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
"You'll see him," John Smoker told him gently.
He could not understand why the Lady Grace was not
running between Fountain City and Winona that after-
noon, (that decrepit passenger launch which had been
abandoned for years). "I thought mebbe they'd tow me
down," he complained. "I'm in kind of a hurry." His
tired eyes looked frightened again, and his face curled as
though he were going to cry. John Smoker saw him off,
a little bent man huddled in the middle of his skiff. "Good-
bye, Harry," said Tom thoughtfully. The boat slid rapidly
downstream. Tom hardly heard the answer. One long
and freighted word. "Goodbye." Nothing else.
He passed the head of the Old River and peered down
along its still course where the trees hung down, covered
with trailing grape vines, from the crumbling banks. The
turtles were out on the dry logs, the pickerel working in
the weeds, and the redstarts dancing among the dark
warm leaves. Once the river packets had steamed over
that placid water, and its silent reflections had been shaken
by the slow cadenza of the leadman as he flung back the
soundings to the pilot. The channel ran in close past
Burlinhame's Cottage with its fallen roof. Half a mile
farther down he passed a houseboat tied close in to the
shore. Weighing on his oars, he stared at it. Funny there
was no one home, no girls running bare-legged on the sand,
no launch creaking against the dock. It was queer. He
had wanted to step there a moment. He could not remem-
ber ever having found this camp deserted. He wagged his
head sadly. "Goodbye," he said, and shivered in the heat.
Well, he must hurry home. The shadows under the trees
looked cool after the glare of the wide river, but the levee
was waiting for him, the warm benches, the straying dogs,
the swallows ducking out of the high wagon bridge. He
could sit still to watch the steam boats dock and barge
away, and the fishermens' skiffs slide past with their long
poles dangling over the stern. He could sleep in the sun,
and his memories would gather close about him protecting
him from the heavy years.
Betsy Slough. Now he had only to round Black Bird
Inland to see the Old Stone House wrhich had been built
into the bluff which rose sturdily out of the water. Then
he could look down the river to the city in the distance,
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 31
behind the tracery of the high bridges, its towers and smoke-
stacks softened by the haze of the blue August afternoon.
He paused, with a sense of expectancy rising in his throat,
looking at the hills. Suddenly the shadows rose up out of
their secretive valleys. The deep breathing of the river
faded in his ears.
When the skiff turned the corner, it had whirled around
so that Tom was facing downstream. But he did not see
the end of his pilgrimage.
33 SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
PURCHASE
Ernestine Gilbreth
'MORROW Martha would return to college.
Today she had come to the city to finish her
shopping, to drink in the atmosphere of New
York and steep it in her memory. Today she
had hurried up and down Fifth Avenue, purchasing, but
more often standing before the shop windows, or relaxing,
giving herself to the crowd. The incessant motion, the
busy click of heels on the pavement always excited her.
She was tired as she turned down Thirty-Fourth Street
toward the Tube; that wrarm kind of fatigue that is never-
theless pleasing. It had been a successful day, gloves,
pocket-book, those brown suede slippers with just the right
heel, the new hat concealed now in an aristocratic but
exceedingly difficult box. Martha looked down at the
bundles approvingly. There were certainly a lot of them,
every size and description — impossible to hold gracefully.
Her arms stretched about them tingled, ached. She was
tired, awfully tired. She'd been a fool to wear such high
heels shopping; might have known they'd be killing her by
the end of the day. Her head throbbed. That blue hat
must have shrunk through the summer, or her head — .
Certainly her forehead had seemed strangled all day. Per-
haps she might be getting cerebral hemorrhage or some-
thing. "School-girl swoons in Herald Square. Lovely
Miss Martha — " Some dresses in a shop window caught
her attention. She stared with distaste at their embroidery
and fringe. "Everything but modern plumbing." Some-
one bumped into her, sent her spinning forward. She
gasped and smiled pleasantly. New York. It always gave
her that sense of the unexpected, the thrilling realization
that she was young, powerful.
She had reached the crossing now. The huge clock in
front of Gregg's Inc. indicated five o'clock. Half an hour
before her train! That meant that she would have time to
slip into the store just for a minute, to recall the summer
she had been a salesgirl. It was always such fun to in-
tensify memories before returning to college, to contrast
this sort of life humming with physical action and sen-
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 33
sation with school, mental indulgence, "opportunity knock-
ing at the door but once."
She would leave tomorrow, returning to her last year.
It had been three long years since she had been behind the
counter, a contingent flung from department to depart-
ment, meek, black-dressed and sixteen. She had done it
purely for excitement, exulting in her role, admitting only
that she came from "Jersey." The answer for some reason
had discouraged further questioning, had admitted her to
the selling "elite." She had been privileged a totally new
side of life, had used it later for her freshman themes,
"The Psychology of Selling," a searching essay on floor-
walkers, original and rather delightful, she thought. Won-
derful field for writing — Gregg's, such a huge place, so
rushed, alive with strenuous salesgirls. A good store,
catering obviously to the house-aproned type of customer,
ponderous and squeaky shoed, grim-faced and violent over
the special sales.
Martha hurried into the store, past two guards standing
at the entrance. They wouldn't remember her of course.
She thought with approval of the felt hat sweeping down
over one eye, of her sheer stockings and high heeled shoes.
"808 Contingent," but she was Martha now, an individual,
all-powerful. She was walking through the main floor,
looking critically at "Today's Specials," at the tables piled
high with bargains, rayon shirts brilliantly hued, $.69,
hand embroidered nightgowns that seemed made of sheet-
ing, long woolen underwear stretched and begrimed. A
busy day, good values! The customers were pushing,
elbowing. She watched them distantly. Great, hulking
animals — she had never recovered from her disgust at
them. The girls looked tired; they always did at five
o'clock. Standing all day, or ducking down behind the
counter for fresh goods, poor devils! She recalled how their
legs must ache behind the knees, how their backs must
feel strained, wrenched out of position. Thank heavens
she wasn't going back to that — tomorrow.
Her enthusiasm rose as she mounted to the second floor.
She stared about her a minute and then jumped on the
escalator to the third. She even dared to run up the last
few steps, pushing past two customers who swayed and
searched frantically for their high black shoes. Young,
she was young! Let the sour old things grumble about her;
34 SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
let them pant and heave to their hearts' content. She
hurried to the floor and glanced about her. Sure enough —
she had sold in that very place, women's house dresses,
wasn't it — striped broadcloth in tremendous sizes? There
had been one dreadful customer, most grotesque bulk of a
woman, and going to get married that afternoon. Martha
remembered trying to stretch her arms about the heaving
waist, grunting as she had attempted to tie the belt in the
rear somewhere — she would never forget the sensation.
That was a good day, all the girls had made their quotas.
She went on swiftly from aisle to aisle, surveying the
counters quickly. Women's clothes. As usual they were
in frightful taste, poor lines and trimming. The store
needed a new buyer. Old "Dora" (they always called her
that) was getting too ancient; she was so difficult.
Martha found herself looking for anyone who had been
there before. There was a red-headed girl like one she had
known, but she looked too old, lines about her eyes and
mouth. Still — three years, you couldn't tell. Perhaps Mr.
Crosby — . She glanced about briskly. He had certainly
been insolent, perfectly impossible. But he wouldn't act
that way now — indeed no, why he'd just cringe. It was
only with the girls that he .
She found herself in the sweater department. Instinc-
tively she began to finger critically. Much better lot this
year — less stripes and a more secure weave. There were
still better ones on the counter, arranged in neat piles of
every color. She hurried over to make sure. "These are
nice — awfully good-looking," she smiled at the girl behind
the counter. "I might take one back to school." She had
dumped her bundles with a sigh of relief. "There — I'd like
a size 32, I think. Isn't that a nice shade of blue!"
The salesgirl blossomed immediately. "You know Miss,
I like that the best myself. It would look pretty on you!"
There was something young and confidential about her, a
radiating friendliness. "Still the green's nice, too. A lot of
the young ladies have been buyin' green — " She drew a
"green" from its immaculate tissue covering. Martha
watched approvingly. Nice girl, she liked her. They began
to talk, of the store, the customers. Martha confessed that
she had worked in Gregg's once — a contingent — by the end
of the summer she had been exhausted — no, she was going
back to school, but she might work in the store some day —
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 35
a lot of the girls did that when they "got-out." She was
relieved to learn that Mr. Crosby had recently been fired,
that one of the girls had finally complained. The girl
smoothed the sweaters gently. "Sure was time, Miss, he
was pretty terrible at times, cutting up something awful,
though he never tried nothin' definite on me — "
They talked until Martha suddenly remembered. She
had to catch the train home. There was a clock near the
escalator — quarter after five. Less than twenty minutes
for the Tube and those dreadful stairs on the other end.
She would have to tear. "I'll take the green, yes, size 32,"
the words hurried out, "C.O.D. — I won't have to wait!"
She gave her name and address in a frenzy of haste, and
swept up the bundles from the counter. The girl was
writing busily, mouthing each letter. Martha glanced at
her for a minute. She felt something ceremonious, almost
sacred in that look. It was as though her two personalities,
the salesgirl and the schoolgirl were meeting on common
ground, gripping hands mutely, beautifully. Martha real-
ized it suddenly, so sharply that she could have cried. But
instead she pressed the bundles to her chest and started
to run toward the elevator. No, they would be slow,
crowded. She decided on the stairs and wheeled about.
Her heels were making a resounding clatter over the floor.
"Lightfoot the Deer" — it was her habit to whisper friendly
names at herself. She gathered speed, momentum and
plunged toward the front of the store.
She was suddenly aware of the guards that seemed to
fill the store. But then Gregg's had always viewTed every
customer as a prospective thief — nothing particularly new
about that. You couldn't blame them either; something
was missed every day. All the departments boasted of
harrowing experiences. Of course they had to look out for
things, catering to a class of customer always in search of
bargains. Still, there were so many guards, hundreds of
them! Martha hurried past, half aware of their grim faces
and forbidding stature, of the pearl grey of their uniforms.
How suspicious and distrustful they seemed, nerve-rack-
ingly so. Already she had begun to feel guilty, like a
criminal on his getaway.
She found the stairs at last. Only one chance in a million
that her train would wait, a wreck or something. Still,
she'd try — . The bundles were slipping down almost to
36 SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
her waist. She clutched them, plunging down one step
after another. "Stay up ankles!" (they had always been
weak, but never like this) "Keep to the steps there, feet,
or there'll be hell to pay!" Talking to herself as usual.
Perhaps she would outgrow the habit some day, but you
couldn't be sure about infantilisms. Grey uniforms melted
in and out of the haze. Lord, dear Lord, what a store;
Sing Sing must give something of the same impression.
But it made you almost want to steal something, that was
the awful effect, to steal something just to see whether or
not you could — but how foolish! Too great a risk, and
besides those grey uniforms weren't meant to conceal a
sense of humor. Asinine thing even to imagine!
The door at last! She hurtled through it and out to the
street. She found herself emerging from the vest of a fat
man. "Pardon me" — but the bundles at least, were still
intact. Poor thing! Landing full force like that, must
have knocked the wind out of him! She collected her
dignity. "Entitled: Hurrying for a train!" Her blasted
monologue again; but it cheered her as she started across
the street against the traffic, warmed her as she dodged a
taxi. The crowd on the side-wralk swept her back as she
mounted the curb. "Heave ho, my laddie!" She had
never felt more completely happy, exuding a sort of in-
dividual sunshine. Her shoulders swayed with self-satis-
faction. Noise, ceaseless rush, the elevateds roaring by, a
policeman whistling and swearing at a smug-faced and
apparently deaf taxi-driver. Good old New York! Martha
loved it; she felt as though she must tell it so, hug it.
"Wonderful, wonderful city!" No other city ever had such
a sky sharp and blue above those buildings. No other
city — She had bumped headlong into the man selling rubber
dolls on the corner. "Pardon me! Always a lady!" She
breathed deeply. She must remember every bit of it, even
that disgusting little man — store it up for the winter days
musty and intellectual. That green sweater would be all
right for school, she'd have to pack it in her suitcase — the
trunk might burst during the night, as it was — thirty-two
was the right size — it wouldn't bag on the shoulders — the
girl had said so — nice girl!
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 37
Her arms ached — so many bundles — she'd never seen so
many! Martha squeezed them approvingly — that nice little
pocketbook, the heels on the shoes were just per " but
her thoughts refused to come; they seemed sickeningly to
be stiffening, freezing somewhere. "Why, you poor ass,
don't tell me you did that!" She had stopped stock still
before the subway entrance — of all things, talking out loud
to herself there! People pushed back and forth, staring at
her. What must they think — in the middle of the rush
hour, standing bolt still like a blooming dummy! But she
hadn't bought it; she didn't want it — my God and there
it sat as big as life, all unwrapped and indecent. She stared
again. Sure enough, a green sweater, size thirty-two,
identical to the one she had sent home. She swayed back
and forth. It was too awful — so she had picked it up and
run clickety-click out of the store, stolen it! She stood
horror-stricken, oblivious of the bumping of the crowd.
She would have to be calm, to think. She led herself
gently toward a shop window and leaned on it heavily.
Picking up the bundles of course — but how dreadful — and
what must the nice girl have thought, how could she have
any faith in human nature left? All those grey uniforms —
and they hadn't even noticed — kleptomaniac, shoplifter,
halfwit
Well, that wasn't constructive thinking. Action, positive
action was what she needed. Martha thought of dropping
the sweater, of watching it trampled and mashed under
incessant feet. She would wave farewell and disappear
forever into the subway entrance. Mystery woman! But
people didn't throw sweaters around New York streets and
disappear. She must go back, return it personally to that
nice girl. "I'm awfully sorry. I seem to have gone off
with this!" Could she explain? It was the only decent
remedy certainly. Besides it would be rather a noble
gesture, — honestly personified. But her face felt hot and
dry. How funny! Still, there was nothing humorous —
nothing at all funny. Fool! Great blurbing fool! She was
kicking the pavement now, crushing her bundles together.
She turned and started back across the street. A trolley
swung past in front of her. Close shave! She wished she
had hit it, had knocked it for a row. The crowd was in-
furiating, too. She fairly hurled people out of the way.
Plunging ahead she felt relieved for a minute.
38 SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
But suppose she should be caught on the way to the
third Boor, returning the nasty thing? Nothing very noble
about that — distinct anti-climax instead. And all those
awful grey uniforms again. She would never get by them,
never in the world! By now a general alarm must have been
sent through the store anyway. Twenty years old — looks
like nice young lady (she did, didn't she?) but — Martha
didn't care to fill in the "but" — "wearing blue felt hat and
dirty gloves!" She rebuked herself silently. That wasn't
nice; no time for joking. The floorwalker might be waiting
for her upstairs, in ambush somewhere behind a tree of
dresses. He would appear briskly, slightly pink about the
eyes. "This young lady took a sweater, did she — just a
minute, just a minute!" Important, pencil behind one ear
— Martha knew the type.
"Bringing back the sweater." She captioned it neatly,
as she started through the revolving door. She was half
amused by the sound of it. "My dear, I was never so
embarrassed in my life; you didn't say a word all evening!"
My goodness, she just insisted on keeping cheery, smile,
smile, smile! But she was taking it back — up to the third
floor. Tense minute, frightful situation — if it were only a
dream from which one could wake — Martha walked for-
ward with an air of determination. If she used the esca-
lator perhaps — What? They weren't even going to let her
in? They were going to push her out? Complications! So
they were crying for her to keep it; but she didn't need two
sweaters — couldn't possibly — . A grey uniform was sud-
denly before her, eyes cold and stern. She was afraid,
desperately afraid. A hand was grasping her arm. "You
are under arrest!" She waited breathlessly. No, he wanted
her to "get out lady; the store was closing."
"But you don't understand. I want to return something."
She could return it tomorrow. The store opened at nine
o'clock every morning. Now it was five-thirty and no
customers could enter.
The strain had begun to tell on Martha. She was going
to cry. How awful — it would be indecent to cry before a
Gregg's guard! Her lips too — that sickening twitch at one
corner.
But resolutions shot through her mind suddenly. She
would simply have to give it to him. Perhaps it wouldn't
be so awful just take it calmly so — from the pile of bundles
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 39
and hand it to him! There was something suddenly glorious
in the whole situation. Courage — it would take courage!
Martha realized it at the very moment she found herself
placed firmly on the sidewalk. "At nine o'clock tomorrow,
lady!" The voice trailed away through the revolving door.
Her heart was pounding with rage. Stupid — why he
didn't even deserve to keep his job — blind as an owl — and
when she was trying to return it! She could feel anger
stiffening her face, a hot, steaming rag of fury. "Listen
here," her voice at least was steady. "You'll have to help
me then. You see — I took this by mistake." She held out
something green, something half-concealed in tissue paper.
"It's a sweater. I must have picked it up — by mistake."
The guard shot to attention. Business-like! His eyes
gleamed hard, penetrating. Martha was being drawn
firmly toward the inner door.
"And now girlie — ". Of course he thought she had
stolen it. He could keep right on thinking so, too! But
that would mean jail.
Martha would have liked to strike out his eyes, to pound
his chest with her fist. "I was hurrying — I bet I've missed
my train now too — returning the old thing — "
She understood that he was not interested.
"It isn't every customer that would return — I'm so
sorry. I came running right back."
An inner struggle seemed to be taking place. She watched
him note the price of her shoes, the cut of her suit, finally
her face hot and miserable.
Did she look honest? Had she remnants of gentility?
For the first time Martha questioned herself impersonally.
She pitched her voice lower, a little tearfully. "I'm most
embarrassed. I hope you'll pardon me, I really do!"
Before she had finished, she realized its perfection; the
charm was about to work.
The guard unbent suddenly. My Lord! So he could
smile — and such teeth! No wonder he didn't do it more
often. He was speaking now, a rollicking lilt to his voice.
"We don't have this happen much, Miss. It's all right
though!"
Then unbelievedly, she was out on the street again. But
now there was no feeling of relief, no appreciation of the
4o smith COLLEGE MONTHLY
humorous. Instead she was muttering to herself — "Fool —
blasted idiot!" Martha pushed her way toward the tube,
using her dhows mercilessly. There, so there! She set her
teeth resolutely but it didn't help. Fool, fool, senseless,
blundering fool! Her heels caught the rhythm in a strange
unhappy clatter.
But looking around at the mass of faces, impersonal,
disinterested, she began to be comforted. They didn't
know; they couldn't guess! What a joke!
>€&&&•
BEFORE CATCHING THE 12.15 TRAIN
Constance Pardee
I wish I knew why clocks are slow
And when this class will let me go.
Will there be time to catch my train ;
And is it really going to rain?
Or is it cold enough to snow?
Why communistic movements grow
And wrhat they mean I do not know.
What is the matter with my brain?
I wish I knew.
0 will the sweet cool night wind blow
Among the pines, and stars hang low?
And will you take me down the lane
Where small spring voices sing, again?
WThy do I have to love you so?
1 wish I knew.
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 41
FLYING BOATS
Ellen Robinson
OR an hour David had been waiting for a bite.
He drew in his home-made tackle and laid it
carefully beside him. Then he stood up and
stretched himself, his arms high above his head.
He scowled down at the still, black water.
He was standing on a bridge, and a very unusual bridge,
too, for it stopped in the middle of the river. Twenty years
earlier the failure of a short-lived and over-ambitious rail-
road company had resulted in this incomplete structure —
two cement arches and then a blunt end, with four rusty
rails still extending to within a foot of the edge. It was on
this last foot of cement that David now stood, teetering
back and forth a little, as if taunting the water with his
security.
He reached behind his worm-can and brought out a
handful of those bright-colored squares which kindger-
garten teachers turn to so many absorbing uses. He began
folding one of them slowly, his dirty thumb-nail pressing
the creases and his tongue passing hesitatingly over his
lower lip. Finally he held out a little orange boat and sur-
veyed it with one eye shut. He took a leafy twig from a
pile he had evidently brought with him and stuck it up in
the center as a mast. Then with a long, arc-like swing of
his arm he sent the boat over the edge to the water below,
and immediately knelt to watch it. It had landed on its
side and was sinking fast. Stubbornly he set to work on a
blue square. Again his tongue moved slowly between his
lips.
A shadow passed over his work; he looked up so quickly
that he bit his tongue and grimaced. A girl in a pink cotton
dress stood near him, staring down into the water. After
a few minutes she turned toward him.
"What you doing, sonny?"
"Making boats."
A long silence. She watched his fingers. At last he threw
the blue boat over and it sank as the other had.
"Too light, sonny. Try putting dirt in 'em."
42 SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
He appeared to consider the suggestion and finally drew
out of his back pocket an egg-shaped pebble, quite smooth
and white. He placed it beside him while he made another
boat ; then he arranged the pebble as ballast and tossed the
boat out; but the stone fell out before the tiny craft hit the
water.
"Lemme show you." She snatched a shiny black sheet
of paper and began to fold quickly, her long orange-red
nails trembling a little. Silently she held out her hand and
he gave her a pebble. She continued to fold, somehow
enclosing the weight underneath the center of the boat.
He took it in his hand, examined it carefully, and threw it
out. It landed gracefully, floating on down the river and
around the bend.
"It it's heavier, it falls closer?" he said.
"Yes." She was gazing directly down over the end of
the bridge.
"If I jumped from here, would I make much of a splash?"
She jerked around toward him. "What made you think
of that?"
"Well, I know about Horatius. . ."
"Who? . . . Oh, never mind." She sighed.
"Would I?"
"Would you what?"
"Splash."
"Not much. Too little, I guess."
A long pause. She wiped the palms of her hands on a
bright handkerchief.
"Would you?"
"Would I what?"
"Splash."
"No — yes — I don't know." She seemed to forget him
and began to talk to herself in a low voice. He tried to
make a boat like hers, but he spoiled several and crumpled
them up and threw them away. He struggled with a yellow
one. She clutched his arm.
"Say, got a pencil, sonny?"
Leaning forward he felt in his back pocket again and
brought out a stub of red crayon. She grabbed the last
square of paper, another black one, and began to write on
the white back of it.
He had just thrown the yellow boat over, and with fair
success. She folded the paper once.
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 43
"Listen, sonny."
He looked at her; her large mouth jerked.
"You know the gas station on the state road? Right
across from the post-office?"
He nodded. "It's red."
"Yes, and you know Bill there?"
He thought a minute. "He took Annie Wilcox to the
Chatauqua every night last week."
"Oh, I know, I know ... all right. Get this straight
now, sonny. You gotta go right now and give this to Bill.
Hear?"
He felt the slippery surface of the paper. She took out a
string of large green beads and held them out to him.
They looked like marbles; he put them in his pocket.
He started back to the village by a short cut known only
to himself, first heading toward an old deserted barn. He
had just rounded one of its grey, rotten corners, when the
black paper slipped from his hand. He bent to pick it up —
and stopped suddenly in a half-crouched position, listening.
Then he straightened up and turned back. "I guess she
did do it. Sounded like a good one, too," he said aloud.
He reached the end of the bridge and looked down.
Everything was the same, except for a few widening circles
on the dark water and four or five bubbles. "Didn't even
get to the bend either. Must be pretty deep."
He sat down and twisted about uncomfortably until he
had removed another pebble from his back pocket. He
played with it a bit and then began to crease the black
paper, but with the written side out.
"Can't ever see the black ones from 'way up here."
It landed nicely. "Never had one with figures. It's
pretty."
He wound his line about his pole and, slinging his worm-
can over one shoulder, went off toward the old grey barn.
44 sMITII COLLEGE MONTHLY
THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY
Ruth Rodney King
HE countryside slipped swiftly past the window
as the train pushed into the coming twilight.
Quickly a town would pass, with tall factories
and houses that soon grew fewer, and became
countryside once more. The girl looking out the window
noticed this absently as she thought "It is over. I've seen
him and said good-bye. It is over." It had been so swift,
like a cloud passing over the sun.
Going down through this landscape the day before, she
had felt a little sick with excitement. She had thought of
the week-end with the tremulous delight that anticipation
arouses. She was going to see him, for the first time since
he had been in Africa. That was seven months. She was
going to see him, be wTith him, the wrhole week-end. Her
heart surged suddenly in realization, and a tremulous
joyousness filled her so that she sang beneath her breath,
looking out the window. "See him, see him. I'm going to
see him."
Then she had told herself. "Now, this is your chance.
Show him — Oh, make him feel it again. Be clever, gracious,
friendly. Ah, that's it, friendly, but not eager. No, no,
not too eager. That time last spring — No, no more of that.
Be master all the time. Make him feel it again." She had
planned very clearly what she would do, when the train
pulled into the station, incredibly sooner than she expected,
and she was on the platform before she was prepared to
meet him, unable to see clearly in the broad sunlight after
the dark train.
He had come towTard her, taken her suitcase, shaken
hands with her, and she was in the roadster, while he
Started the car, with familiar brown hands on the wheel,
his familiar bare head twisted over his shoulder to watch
tlu traffic as he swung around the street out of the station.
Everything about him and about being with him seemed
so familiar that her tense excitement diminished to ner-
vousness that forced her to talk rapidly about the train
trip, the nice day, and the cold spring, pulling on one glove
a- -In- talked, meticulously fitting each linger with the
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 45
fingers of her other hand. She was aware that she was not
fulfilling her new-made plans, but the strain of the present
kept her chattering on, scarcely daring to relax enough to
look at him.
At last she had turned her head, and seeing him so
clearly, she caught her breath. Oh, she was there, beside
him, with him. But she had said, ''Well, how are you,
since your long trip?"
He had turned his blue eyes on her, faintly smiling.
"Just the same," he had answered.
And so he was in every respect the same, "but," she told
herself with quick defiance, "I'll do it. I'll be master.
But there's plenty of time. All afternoon, and tonight, and
tomorrow. All that time — " as she realized this her breath
quickened. Anything could happen in all that time. She
made conversation: "Was Africa nice?"
"Hardly nice, very interesting. Dirty place though — Fez.
Thousands of little shops, arches, walls, mosques, you know
the type. The Arabs I liked. They all over study the
Koran and sit cross-legged for hours in meditative silence.
'If Allah wills it' is their philosophy. I like that, too. But
I grew tired of it."
"Is there anything you don't grow tired of?"
"No."
A flat answer, and she had resented it, and resented the
conversation. "Why does he always go off that way? He
never thinks of me even when I'm here, beside him. He
liked the Arabs. But I'll make him, I'll make him. Soon,
now, soon." They were at his house then. She ran up the
steps to greet his mother and left him to change for luncheon.
Her excitement rose again while she was alone. Now, she
thought, now it will all start.
But through luncheon he had argued about a book review
with his father, and she had made talk with his mother.
After lunch he said, "Let's play tennis. We can get a
lovely tan, today."
The tennis had been nice. They talked little and played
hard. It seemed to bridge the strangeness better than con-
versation. They played till supper time and walked home
in silence. She felt relaxed, and drawn closer to him by the
peace of the spring evening. As they entered the cool dark
house and flung themselves into low chairs to smoke and
rest, fear laid a finger on her heart; the time was slipping —
4f> SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
but there's tonight, tonight, she cried to herself. The
mystery of a spring night.
Her spirits rose swiftly, and impelled by them she crossed
to where he lay sprawled, a cigarette in one lean hand, a
magazine in the other.
"It's so nice to be seeing you again," she said smiling
down at him. He looked up at her and smiled absently in
return.
"I think the tripe in this sheet is incredible. Listen to
this — " and he read her an article which she did not hear,
looking at his curly head and brown cheek.
Supper passed as luncheon had. The evening was soft
and dark, with faint stars. They had gone for a long ride
into the country. Being with him, she felt suspended in
time, unable to think, or carry out what she wished to
think, and the evening slipped by in careless easy chatter,
and comfortable silences. When they had returned, and
were walking up the lawn, he had pulled her to him gently,
and kissed her. It had seemed a part of the soft night, and
she had felt no other emotion at it. It was only later, when
she was in bed that she knew most of the time was gone.
"He kissed you, you fool! Why didn't you do something
then? Oh, tomorrow I will! Tomorrow!"
She awoke late in the morning, and had a lonely break-
fast. He was still asleep, his mother said. She had felt a
hurt resentment that he had not wranted to wake early,
and she wished for him while she wratched his mother
straighten a pile of books, stopping to blow ashes off the
table top.
"He smokes too much," she said to the girl, who agreed.
Talking like that, as if he were a naughty little boy, and
so intimately, with his own mother. When he came down,
very late, she had been brisk in her greeting. She sat at the
table while he ate, and they had talked desultorily. She
fell wildly impatient to be off, to do something, to start,
but the weight of the present moment crushed her thoughts
into impotent anxiety.
Hut they had played tennis again, and were in the middle
of a game when his father came out on the verandah and
called to them. He had been confused by the daylight
saving system, and her train left sooner than they had
expected. In excited haste she had packed and said good-
bye to his parents, and was in the roadster, while his
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 47
brown hands busied with the car, his head over his should( r
he backed out of the drive.
"It's been grand, seeing you again." Oh, quick! there's
no time left, no time. "I've enjoyed it. You change so
little. It's nice to find something that changes little."
He smiled at her. His blue eyes — oh hurry, hurry. But
what can I say? What can I do?
The dream-like quality of the moment persisted and she
was unable to focus her thoughts. They were at the station,
shaking hands. A despairing mist swirled around her
thoughts. It's over, it's over. She said "Good-bye, and
thank you so much. Good-bye."
A smile, bare head in the sun, and the train pulling away
as he walked back to the car. She had found a seat beside
a window, and looked out at the twilight country absently
as she thought, "It's over. I've seen him, and said good-
bye. It's all over."
4S SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
44 OLD MEN SITTING IN THE SUN"
Frances Ranney
LD Mr. Muse sal in the warm afternoon sunlight,
watching the people4 on the verandah of the hotel.
Girls with bare arms and tanned legs, men in
flannels or golf knickers, older women sipping
their tea— he liked to watch them all, sitting there in the
sun and dreaming dreams about them.
Young people he liked best of all, their senseless chatter
and their noisy laughter. He wished that one of them, that
tall girl with the laughing eyes, perhaps, might come over
and talk to him for a few minutes some day. But of course
they had no time to waste on an old man, a twisted, crippled
old man at that. They were always so busy, those young
ones — swimming, golf, and tennis all day and dancing until
three in the morning. Nothing seemed to tire them, to
bore them; but then, they were young.
He, too, had been like that. He liked to congratulate
himself that he had done everything, everything. And there
was nothing he regretted. After the first stroke, his doctor
had said, "You'll have to take it easy, man — you've been
going it too hard." He had only laughed and bought a
new polo pony. Why live at all if you have to mark time,
he had reasoned? The second stroke had paralyzed his
left side and made him almost helpless, but still he re-
gretted nothing he had done. He had paid for what he
had received at the hands of Fate, and what he had re-
ceived he deemed worth the price.
Now, an old man, bent and shrivelled, he sat waiting in
the Bermuda sun, waiting for the stroke that would put
an end to everything. Occasionally, he would hear women
gossiping over their teacups — "Pathetic, isn't he? I do
pity him. So handsome, too, and, my dear, they say — "
Or he would see them watch with sympathetic eyes his
painful progress down the verandah steps. Pity him? Bah!
H< pitied them, their clumsy bodies and their faded eyes.
What he loved was youth!
The sun was casting oblique shadows on the verandah
(loor. Soon it would be time for the tea-dancing to begin.
He would go inside where he could watch the whirling
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 49
couples. He reached for his cane and tried to pull himself
to his feet.
"Mr. Mase!" A solicitous, anxious voice hurtled itself
through the afternoon warmth.
The old man looked up and saw a strong, capable-looking
woman leave the shade of one of the huge parasols on the
lawn and come hastily toward him. Her eyes squinted
against the glare of sunlight on the white hotel, and her
mouth was puckered with anxiety.
Mr. Mase sat back in his chair and watched her approach,
peevishly. He had forgotten Miss Whitby for the moment;
but she was one he could not forget for long. For the past
three years she had been as a part of his physical being,
doing for him the things he could no longer do, running
errands for him, writing letters, combining the offices of
nurse, secretary, and companion, until now, with her pro-
fessional, yet flurried solicitude, she seemed to him almost
parasitic. At first he had admired her strength and energy,
had realized his helplessness without her, but of late she
had become almost intolerable to him. Her vitality of
movement when he walked only with difficulty, her cease-
less care for his well-being and comfort, her worried brows
and anxious mouth — why couldn't she leave him alone for
a time?
Miss Whitby hurried on to the verandah, breathless and
a little damp. "Do be careful, Mr. Mase! Why didn't
you call me if you wanted to get up?"
She put a strong arm about his shoulders and half lifted
him to his feet. The old man shook the arm aside im-
patiently and pounded his cane on the floor.
"Get away! Get away! I can walk all right, I guess."
Slowly, painfully, he moved across the porch, dragging
his paralyzed leg and leaning heavily on his cane. "Poor
old man, I pity him," he heard someone say. "But good-
ness knows, I pity his nurse the more. What she must put
up with!"
He smiled to himself — "What she must put up with!"
Of course Miss Whitby put up with a lot. That was what
he paid her for. If only she wouldn't keep reminding him
that he was old, that he was helpless!
Inside the orchestra was tuning up and the tables around
the edge of the floor were rapidly filling. Miss Whitby
pulled his chair out for him, and he sank into it with a
5o >MITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
sigh of relief. Every clay it was getting harder for him to
move. Soon he would have nothing to look forward to
except sitting in the sun, sitting, and watching — and
waiting.
"Tea, with cream," Miss Whitby was telling the waiter.
"And plain bread and butter — cakes don't seem to agree
with him."
"Bread and butter!" he exploded. "Can't I even order
what I want? Get away! Get away! Leave me alone!"
The floor was as quiet and glassy as a Wisconsin lake on
a summer evening, he thought. Pretty girls in cool, float-
ing dresses fluttered from table to table like great pastel-
colored butterflies. He wished that one would float his
way. But no, they had no time! Sitting in the sun — that
was all old men were good for.
The orchestra started up with a crash, then swung into
a slippery, lilting melody. "It's a Precious Little Thing
(ailed Love," he heard a girl at the table next to his sing
to her companion. Honeymooners, he catalogued them
briefly. He was sorry. They were too young, too happy
to be married. Marriage was for the middle-aged. He was
glad he had never succumbed.
Couple after couple whirled into the middle of the floor,
dipping, swirling, side-stepping, until the whole room
became an ever-changing kaleidoscope of tanned, laughing
faces, pastel colors, and white flannel trouser legs. He was
happy through the process of identification. He himself
was floating along the mirrored floor, that tall girl in
yellow in his arms.
"I've brought you a magazine, Mr. Mase." The harried,
anxious voice grated against his ear drums and scarred the
surface of his dream.
Magazine be damned! He didn't want to read. "Take
it away. Don't want it. Leave me alone!" he shouted
test ily.
"But I should think you'd want to do something," per-
sisted the solicitous voice. "You can't just sit all day."
Mr. Mase did not answer her; he was already lost in the
mazes of his dream. "Lover, come back to me," the violin-
ist was wailing through a megaphone. He had never gone
back, never —
The girl in the yellow dress swung by him, her eyes
laughing into his. Suddenly he had an idea. He would
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 51
dance! What had been holding him back all these years?
The mere words of an over-cautious doctor? He'd show
him; he'd show Miss Whitby; he'd show those lumpy old
women on the verandah; he'd show everyone! Why, the
music alone would carry him along, once he got to his feet.
He reached for his cane and tried to pull himself up. His
hands shook with the effort, and his breath came in hard,
fast gusts. Would he have to call for Miss Whitby to help
him? No, by God, he would not! He'd get up by himself.
The music beat against his head, pounding, pounding. He
sank back into the chair again. A drink, that was what he
needed, a good strong Scotch and soda. Tea — bah! Miss
Whitby be damned!
He summoned a waiter.
The Scotch seemed to fill his veins with a cool, energizing
fire. How many? Why it was four years since he had
tasted anything stronger than tea. What a fool he'd been!
He felt better already.
Once more he reached for his cane. The music was
pulsing more rapidly now. Faster and faster the couples
whirled, until the whole room was a hazy blur of color
and sound.
A high, thin voice, higher, even, than the shrieking saxo-
phones, came floating through the blur to him. It held a
familiarly anxious note. "Mr. Mase!" it called from a great
distance. "Do be careful!"
The old man glared about the room, but he could see
nothing, nothing save the blurring, changing colors, dipping,
whirling about. That had been Miss Whitby's voice. Where
was the fool? Thought she could boss him, did she? Well,
he'd show her. He was going to dance!
His muscles strained until they stood out in great knots
on his neck as he tried to pull himself to his feet. He could
feel the warm blood rushing toward his head. He must get
up before Miss Whitby came. He must dance!
The music, pounding rhythmically, frantically on, crashed
against his body in heavy waves of sound. His knees
crumpled under him and something inside his head snapped.
He was falling, falling. It was true what Miss Whitby had
said. The only thing old men were good for was sitting in
the sun.
EDITORIAL B
In a recent review of Monthly the advertisers were
praised for, at least, our worthy reviewer found, they
aspired, and advertised those aspirations, to something
"new and different." Behold a more than worthy prompt-
ness in taking a hint. The advertisers' word was taken for
the originality of their products. Certainly. One should
always take an advertiser's word. Monthly has bought
herself a new dress and like the professional mannequin
her dress is to advertise the products of her house. She
is too vain in her new clothes? Well, perhaps; but she has
found a new idea with which to back them up.
Did we say a new idea? — because we were mistaken. It
is not a new idea at all. In adopting it Monthly is only
following the example of her elders and betters. It is only
a new idea to her, it is a very old and wellworn idea to
many other magazines. It has often seemed a pity that,
in a magazine that comes as often as every month, the
literary form should be so strictly and entirely limited to
the regular monthly progression of the writing courses in
College. One can trace the assignments of plot and charac-
ter-drawing, the accumulation of hours, in the contents
of Monthly and this leads often to a certain monotony
of form. It is obvious that in a college of this size there
are other subjects worth writing and reading about than
those one chooses for a theme course.
And so with her new dress (thank you, she is glad you like
it) Monthly announces the opening of a Forum. Yes, we
called it a Forum but we would be glad of any more original
su ggestions. ' 'A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
There has always been more than enough material in College
that should be written up, but that finds no place either
in Weekly, Monthly or the late Cat. Monthly institutes
a home for these very important waifs and strays. For
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 53
example everyone is interested in the new dormitories
which will soon be started, the consequent abolishment of
old houses and the effect which this change of location will
have upon the college as a whole. The Forum is a place
for your opinion on any such interesting subject that
deserves to be well written up. There are plenty of them
both in College and outside, those subjects which form the
basis for so many interesting discussions. Do you remem-
ber the table conversations through the weeks Mr. Fay
was lecturing on reparations or, to hark back, during the
presidential elections in the fall? It has always seemed a
pity that the College literary magazine should represent
so little the current trend of thought and opinion among
the students; and we are all of us almost as interested in
learning what others are thinking as we are in telling
others what we think. It is moreover hoped that the
faculty opinions may from time to time reveal themselves
in Monthly's forum.
Monthly is optimistic about her new venture. Her
new cover has helped to give her the courage of her con-
victions and she is further encouraged by the generosity
of the Alumnae in this Senior issue. She hopes to start
her Forum in the fall and that it will find her with a wider
representation of contributors.
♦^r
Compliments of
Class of
IOIO
Qotnpliments of
Class of
1928
BOOK REVIEWS
THE BURNING FOUNTAIN
Eleanor Carrol Chilton The John Day Co. 1929
A critic on the New York Times recently reviewed The
Burning Fountain as "a -poet's novel," tentatively implying
some disparagement of it on this account. It is not clear
whether he means that the book is too poetic to exist as
prose, or whether it is a book which appeals particularly
and exclusively to poets — one of which, I gather, he is not.
As is the way with labels, this disposes too simply of a
rather difficult novel. Whichever interpretation is attributed
to the reviewer's phrase, either one is equally undiscerning;
they overlook the serious intent with which it was written,
and fasten or try to fasten on what is purposely elusive.
It does not, of course, need to be defended against such
criticism, but its special qualities are brought out by the
juxtaposition. The term "poetic" as applied to prose has
many vague implications, but, broadly, it suggests a funda-
mental unimportance, an indefiniteness of plan, a certain
tendency to pause and ramify with delightful inconsequence,
and style a little too lyrical to be good. Since the critic
obviously is not using the word in Virginia Woolf's sense,
it must be these faults that he condemns in The Burning
Fountain, on what evidence I cannot see. One of the
questions, if not the special question, of the book has to do
with the nature of reality. It is not often that metaphysical
theory is embodied in the characters of a novel: when it is,
such a novel is apt to be more than ordinary, and unlikely
to be described appropriately as "poetic."
The answer Miss Chilton offers to the question is a
double one. Like Miriam Henderson in Dorothy Richard-
son's series, the characters of The Burning Fountain,
Lynneth, of course, excepted, are projections of an im-
56 SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY
agination which is Idealistic in the strict philosophic sense.
They act on the principle that the essence of the universe
is mental; they arc free subjects of their own wills. When
Janet and Douglas were married they considered soberly
whether they wanted children and how many. Alan and
Joan were the results, in a sense, of rational prcarrangement,
and. as Janet hoped, they grew up to be interesting and
pleasant people, depending on their own ability to reason
and to will. All of them, Alan, Joan, Claire and Douglas,
have the consciousness of self, the analytical, introspective
attitude of mind which is evident in so many of the young
characters in modern novels. But there is Lynneth, the
child of impulse and storm-madness, grown into a girl of
nineteen, polite but abstracted, asking nothing of anyone
except freedom to go out under the rain and lightning. She
is an Eternal Principle in the shape of a human being,
never a human being acting according to principle. And
whatever the principle is that she embodies, — innocence,
impersonality, "elemental tenderness," blind instinct, — it
is definitely non-rational: the spiritual substance which she
is cannot be understood on Idealistic premises. All of the
other Kenwyns, and Clair and Douglas, are wholly human
beings, and they are guided by rational law, but Lynneth's
life suggests that beyond the phenomenal world there is a
reality other than that of mind. If, in all strength, it is
manifested in this world it conflicts with the manifestation
of Mind, and cannot continue to exist. It kills itself, being
too powerful, except as it is expressed frugally, sown
shallow in every man. Without effort, Lynneth had over
all those in the Kenwyn house an influence so strong as
to be nearly tangible, and yet so subtle as to defy analysis.
Each of these very sane people had a strange, sometimes
perverse, sympathy for her. She seemed in some way to
be inside of them. Perhaps this other reality she repre-
sents is not only non-rational, but suprarational. Irre-
spective of whether or not this speculation of Miss Chilton's
i^ true, and, after all who shall say? — it is worth writing
a book about, and probably worth the thought of that
anti-poet, the reviewer on the New York Times, who,
seated at a desk that seemed fairly solid and "looking out
at a couple of hotels made of brick by men with trowels,
found it difficult to succumb to Miss Chilton's fantasy."
Fantasy is another odd label for The Burning Fountain.
SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 57
The execution of the idea is at once very able and a little
out of balance. The novel is planned with extreme care,
swinging in a circle beginning at The Tree with the passion
of Donald and Janet which produced Lynneth, and ending
at The Tree with her death by lightning. There is practi-
cally no plot, and what narrative there is develops casually,
without special regard for sequence. The interest centers
in the people surrounding Lynneth and in the effect she
produces on them. We are told that Lynneth behaves
badly in thunderstorms, we begin to feel the dread of them
that stirs the Kenwyns, and then, in the eventual April
storm, we realize something of the madness which made
her try to kill Donald and all the pity that gave Joan the
desire and the strength to set her free. With a minimum
of incident, Miss Chilton produces very dramatic suspense.
The same care for pattern shows in the thoughts of the
characters, which may revolve and intertwine among
seemingly alien elements but which are brought into re-
lation, sometimes tenuously, with the movement of the
novel. It is in characterization, however, that Miss Chilton's
balance is not perfect. Lynneth is indefinite, neither real
or unreal; she is comprehensible only in her influence on
others, she never exists in her own right. The rest of the
characters are interesting and well differentiated, especially
Douglas. It is to the method that the author uses to define
them that objection may be made. Their conversations
are brief, relatively unimportant, but authentic. If Miss
Chilton had trusted more to the dialogue she handles so
sensitively and accurately, she would have avoided the
extended tedious pages in which each character describes
himself by his thoughts. They would produce a more
direct, convincing impression if they acted what they were,
and their thoughts, clarified, more distinct, and less ex-
pository, would profit by the reduction.
In a recent book on prose writing Miss Edith Rickert
quotes passages from Conrad, Meredith, Hudson, and
others which, in sustained intensity, tone, and rhythm are
prose poems. There are many passages in The Burning
Fountain of which the same may be said, particularly in
Part One and Part Three. "Then, far off, thunder rolled
over the sky. The spell of the long stillness was broken
and a gust of wind came across the hills. They could see
it coming, as the forest bent before it, laying a red-gold
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carpet of triumph. It came closer and closer. Now it was
a silver track in the meadow, and, a breath later, the
flowers about them stirred, Janet's wide skirts and a lock
of her hair blew sideways, the trees rocked and swayed
over their restless patches of shadow, and the first golden
leaf fell and caught in Janet's dark hair. It was only for a
moment. The wind trailed off, pushing the opposite hill-
side before it, but the hypnotic quiet was gone with the
fallen leaf, and over their heads the leaves were still stirring
on motionless branches." In this sense, it is true that Miss
Chilton's prose proves that she can write poetry when she
cares to. The images she uses have the heightened im-
agination and a freshness of perception which mark many
of her poems in Fire and Sleet and Candlelight. The level
of writing, — and it is a high one, — is maintained with un-
usual ease, even when the thought substance of her charac-
ters grows redundant.
s. s. s.
FURTHER POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON
Ed. Martha Dickinson Bianchi
Little, Brown & Co. 1929
"Not any more to be lacked,
Not any more to be known —
Denizens of
Significance
For a span so worn —
Even Nature, Herself,
Has forgot it is there —
Too elate of her multitudes
To retain despair.
Of the ones that pursued it
Suing it not to go —
Some have solaced the longing
To accompany;
Some rescinded the wrench —
Others — shall I say?
Plated the residue of
Woe
With monotony."
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The last part of this poem seems to express the feeling
of most of the Further Poems of Emily Dickinson, which
have just been discovered and published after having been
withheld by her sister. The volume is rather disappointing
beside The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, and the
poem quoted indicates a reason. Lascelles Abercrombie
says that withdrawing from the external world is not al-
ways a merely negative gesture; it often represents a very
positive faith in the greater value of inner experience — in
the superiority of things conceived over things perceived.
This was true of Emily Dickinson — when her world was
shattered, she built herself another which was entirely one
of vision and soundless contemplation, of "quietness dis-
tilled," interrupted only by small low sounds like the hum
of the bee. Her images were mostly of things vividly seen,
and others were apt to be achieved by visual figures —
"caravans of sound," and "the blue, uncertain, stumbling
buzz" of the fly. Some of these visual figures are present
in the new volume though they are less frequent than in
the first, but the book on the whole seems to point to the
fact that the world of escape she built for herself has
become a prison, and that she wearied of too much inward-
ness and of too much contemplation substituted for human
contacts. She seems to long for freedom from herself and
not to know quite how to attain it:
"Me from Myself to banish
Had I art,
Impregnable my fortress
Unto foreign heart.
But since Myself assault Me
How have I peace,
Except by subjugating
Consciousness?
And since We're mutual
Monarch,
How this be
Except by abdication
Me— or Me?"
Aside from this weariness, the qualities of the new book
are not very different from those of the earlier poems. She
displays the same rapt intimacy with nature, though as has
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been justly pointed out, the word "mystic" is inappropriate
for her in that it denies her unequalled general sensibility;
for mysticism implies indiscriminate ecstasy. The follow-
ing poem reveals a deep delight in nature, but the very
manner of expression is an argument against the idea of
the poet's identifying herself with it or of her taking it
only as the outward manifestation of a supreme and ulti-
mate reality:
"Heaven has different signs to me;
Sometimes I think that noon
Is but a symbol of the place,
And when again at dawn
A mighty look runs round the world
And settles in the hills,
An awe if it should be like that
Upon the ignorance steals.
The rapture of concluded day
Returning to the West, —
All these remind us of the place
That men call 'Paradise'."
Her mysticism, if she has any trace of this quality, cer-
tainly is not for external nature; rather it is shown in her
"identification of love and death in eternity," and this
feeling is very fully revealed in the new book. Its most
passionate expression is perhaps the following poem:
"A wife at daybreak I shall be,
Sunrise, hast thou a flag for me?
At midnight I am yet a maid —
How short it takes to make it bride!
Then, Midnight, I have passed from thee
Unto the East and Victory.
Midnight, "Good night"
' I hear them call.
The angels bustle in the hall,
Softly my Future climbs the stair,
I fumble at my childhood's prayer —
So soon to be a child no more!
Eternity, I'm coming, Sir, —
Master, I've seen that face before."
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This feeling and the reverence for nature Emily Dickinson
exhibits should be adequate refutal of the charge of irrever-
ence which is often made against her. The irreverence is
for the Puritan conception of God, and it is probably a
misinterpretation of this fact combined with her whimsical
charm which refers to God as "Papa above,' ' that has led
critics to find a feeling which does not exist. An excellent
example of her attitude toward the Puritan God is found
in this book:
"God is a distant, stately Lover,
Woos, so He tells us, by His Son.
Surely a vicarious courtship!
Miles' and Priscilla's such a one.
But lest the soul like fair Priscilla,
Choose the envoy and spurn the Groom,
Vouches, with hyperbolic archness,
Miles and John Alden
Are synonym."
But she makes fun only of an attitude which she finds
untrue and despicable. The following poem is as devout
as any hymn:
"Life is what we make it,
Death we do not know;
Christ's acquaintance with him
Justifies him, though,
He would trust no stranger,
Other could betray,
Just his own endorsement
That sufhceth me."
Emily Dickinson's whole feeling toward death, which is
one of her most remarkable qualities, is closely bound up
with her brilliant understanding, gained through great
anguish, of the human heart and its sufferings. "The
tragedy of Emily Dickinson's life, a great love tasted in
ecstasy and put by in honor, is given to the world, like
Shakespeare's sonnets, in quintessence, not in circum-
stance." This quintessence is first a longing for death as
the ultimate satisfaction of her love, which develops into
a more general, though not a less passionate, feeling that
death is pleasure rather than pain —
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SMITH COLLEGE MONTHLY 67
"You'll find it when you come to die
The easier to let go,
For recollecting such as went
You could not spare, you know.
* * *
And thought of them so fair invites,
It looks too tawdry grace
To stay behind with just the toys
We bought to ease their place."
It is in such poems as this that the new book of Emily
Dickinson's does not suffer by comparison with the old.
Perhaps they were withheld because they seemed not
reticent enough to be given to the world, while the best of
the less personal poems had already been published and
those left for this volume must of necessity seem a little
disappointing.
The technical quality of the work in the book, as one
might expect, does not differ greatly from that in the
earlier one. There is the same passionate brevity and
incisiveness, the same absence of artistic finish and care-
lessness of everything but the absolutely definitive word
and phrase. The poet is less concerned with art than with
expressing the profound feelings of the human heart, and
her keen sense of words makes this expression perfect,
though she gives a distinct impression of first thought
rather than afterthought. This characteristic makes her
poetry sometimes as difficult of immediate comprehension
as Blake's, but on this point the final comment has been
made by T. W. Higginson in his edition of selections from
her poems, " After all, when a thought takes one's breath
away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence."
R. D. Pillsbury
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© 1929, R. J. Reynold. Tobirco Co.. Wimton-Salem, N. C.
SEP. (Ml
A* of*'