.
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
TEN STORIES BY
JOSEPHINE DODGE DASKAM
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS
MCM
Copyright, 1 900, by Charles Scribner s Sons
D. B. Updike, The Merrymount Press, Boston
T0 my Mother, who sent me to college,
I offer these impressions of it.
J. D. D.
PREFACE
IF these simple tales serve to deepen in the
slightest degree the rapidly growing con
viction that the college girl is very much like
any other girl that this likeness is, indeed,
one of her most striking characteristics the
author will consider their existence abundantly
justified.
J. D. D.
CONTENTS
I
The Emotions of a Sub-guard I
II
A Case of Interference 37
III
Miss Biddle of Bryn Mawr 67
IV
Biscuits ex Machina 85
V
The Education of Elizabeth 123
VI
A Family Affair 151
VII
A Few Diversions 205
VIII
The Evolution of Evangeline 247
IX
At Commencement 279
X
The End of It 321
THE FIRST STORY
THE EMOTIONS OF A SUB-GUARD
I
THE EMOTIONS OF A SUB-GUARD
f ^HEODORA pushed through the
I yellow and purple crowd, a sea of
I flags and ribbons and great paper
* flowers, caught a glimpse of the red
and green river that flowed steadily in at the
other door, and felt her heart contract. What
a lot of girls ! And the freshmen were always
beaten
" Excuse me, but I cant move ! You 11 have
to wait," said some one. Theodora realized that
she was crowding, and apologized. A tall girl
with a purple stick moved by the great line
that stretched from the gymnasium to the
middle of the campus, and looked keenly at
Theodora. "How did you get here?" she
asked. "You must go to the end we re not
letting any one slip in at the front. The jam
is bad enough as it is."
Theodora blushed. " I m I m on the Sub-
team," she murmured, "and I m late. I "
"Oh!" said the junior. "Wh/did you
come in here ? You go in the other door. Just
pass right in here, though," and Theodora,
quite crimson with the consciousness of a hun
dred eyes, pulled her mackintosh about her
and slipped in ahead of them all.
c i ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
Oh, here 9 s to Ninety-ye/tow,
And her praise we ll ever tell oh y
Drink her down^ drink her down y drink her
down, down!
the line called after her, and her mouth trem
bled with excitement. She could just hear the
other line:
Oh, here s to Ninety-green,
She s the finest ever seen !
and then the door slammed and she was up
stairs on the big empty floor. A member of the
decorating committee nodded at her from the
gallery. "Pretty, isn t it?" she called down.
"Beautiful!" said Theodora, earnestly.
One half of the gallery her half was all
trimmed with yellow and purple. Great yel
low chrysanthemums flowered on every pillar,
and enormous purple shields with yellow nu
merals lined the wall. Crossed banners and
flags filled in the intervals, and from the mid
dle beam depended a great purple butterfly
with yellow wings, flapping defiance at a red
and green insecl of indistinguishable species
that decorated the other side. A bevy of ushers
in white duck, with boutonnieres of English
violets or single American beauties, took their
places and began to pin on crepe paper sun-
[a]
EMOTIONS OF A SUB-GUARD
bonnets of yellow or green, chattering and
watching the clock. A tall senior, with a red
silk waist and a green scarf across her breast,
was arranging a box near the centre of the
sophomore side and practising maintaining
her balance on it while she waved a red baton.
She was the leader of the Glee Club, and she
would lead the sophomore songs. Theodora
heard a confused scuffle on the stairs, and in a
few seconds the galleries were crowded with
the rivers of color that poured from the en
trance doors. It seemed that they were full
now, but she knew that twice as many more
would crowd in. She walked quickly to the
room at the end of the hall and opened the
door. Beneath and all around her was the hum
and rumble of countless feet and voices, but in
the room all was still. The Subs lounged in the
window-seats and tried to act as if it was n t
likely to be any affair of theirs : one little yel
low-haired girl confided flippantly to her
neighbor that she d "only accepted the po
sition so as to be able to sit on the platform
and be sure of a good place." The Team were
sitting on the floor staring at their captain,
who was talking earnestly in a low voice
giving directions apparently. The juniors who
coached them opened the door and grinned
[3]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
cheerfully. They attached great purple stream
ers to their shirt-waists, and addressed them
selves to the freshmen generally.
"Your songs are great! That Alabama
Coon* one was awfully good ! You make twice
the noise that they do !"
The Team brightened up. " I think they re
pretty good," the captain said, with an at
tempt at a conversational tone. "Er when
do we begin ?"
"The Subs can go out now," said one of
the coaches, opening the door importantly.
" Now, girls, remember not to wear yourselves
out with kicking and screaming. You re right
under the President, and he 11 have a fit if you
kick against the platform. Miss Kassan says
that this must be a quiet game ! She will not
have that howling ! It s her particular request,
she says. Now,goon. And if anything happens
to Grace, Julia Wilson takes her place, and
look out for Alison Greer she pounds awfully.
Keep as still as you can ! "
They trotted out and ranged themselves on
the platform, and when Theodora got to the
point of lifting her eyes from the floor to gaze
down at the sophomore Subs across the hall
in front of another audience, the freshmen
were off in another song. To her excited eyes
[4]
EMOTIONS OF A SUB-GUARD
there were thousands of them, brilliant in pur
ple and yellow, and shouting to be heard of
her parents in Pennsylvania. A junior in yel
low led them with a great purple stick, and
they chanted, to a splendid march tune that
made even the members of the Faculty keep
time on the platform, their hymn to victory.
Hurrah ! hurrah ! the yellow is on top !
Hurrah ! hurrah ! the purple cannot drop /
We are Ninety-yellow and our fame shall never stop,
Rah, rah, rah, for the freshmen!
They sang so well and so loud and strong,
shouting out the words so plainly and keep
ing such splendid time, that as the verse and
chorus died away audience and sophomores
alike clapped them vigorously, much to their
delight and pride. Theodora looked up for
the first time and saw as in a dream individ
ual faces and clothes. They were packed in
the running-gallery till the smallest of babies
would have been sorely tried to find a crevice
to rest in. A fringe of skirts and boots hung
from the edge, where the wearers sat pressed
against the bars with their feet hanging over.
They blotted out the windows and sat out on
the great beams, dangling their banners into
space. She could not see the Faculty behind
[5]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
her, but she knew they were adorned with
rosettes, and that the favored ones carried
flowers the air where she sat was sweet with
violets. A group of ushers escorted a small
and nervous lady to the platform : on the way
she threw back her cape and the sophomores
caught sight of the green bow at her throat.
Oh, here 5 to Susan Beam,
She is wearing of the green,
Drink her down, drink her down, drink her down,
down, down!
they sang cheerfully.
Just behind her a tall, commanding woman
stalked somewhat consciously, decked with
yellow streamers and daffodils. The junior
leader consulted a list in her hand, frantically
whispered some words to the allies around
her box, and the freshmen started up their
tribute.
Oh, here s to Kath rine Storrs,
Aught but yellow she abhors,
Drink her down, drink her down, drink her down,
down, down!
Miss Storrs endeavored to convey with her
glance, dignity, amusement, toleration of
harmless sport, and a repudiation of the per
sonality involved in the song; but it is to be
[6]
EMOTIONS OF A SUB-GUARD
doubted if even she was satisfied with the re
sult. Theodora wished she had seen the Presi
dent come in. She had been told how he
walked solemnly across the hall, mounted the
platform, unbuttoned his overcoat, and dis
played two gorgeous rosettes of the conflict
ing colors his official and exclusive privilege.
And she had heard from the Team s retreat
the thunder of applause that greeted this tra
ditional rite. She wondered whether he cared
who won: whether he realized what it was to
play against a team that had beaten in its
freshman year.
A burst of applause and laughter inter
rupted her meditations. She felt herself blush
ing was it the Team? No: the sophomore
Subs were escorting to the middle of the floor
a child of five or six dressed in brightest em
erald green : a child with a mane of the most
remarkable brick-red hair in the world. She
wore it in the fashion of Alice in Wonderland,
and it grew redder and redder the longer one
looked at it. She held a red ribbon of pre
cisely the same shade in her hand, and at the
middle of the floor the sophomores suddenly
burst away from her and ran quickly to their
seats, revealing at the end of the ribbon an
enormous and lifelike green frog. The child
[7]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
stood for a moment twisting her little green
legs undecidedly, and then, overcome with
embarrassment at the appreciation she had
evoked, shook her flaming locks over her
face, and dragging the frog with her, some
times on its side, sometimes on its head, fled
to the sophomores, who bore her off in tri
umph.
"They got her in Williamsburgh," said
somebody; "they Ve been hunting for weeks
for a red-haired child, and that frog was from
the drug store oh, my dear, how perfectly
darling!"
Alone and unabashed the freshman mas
cot took the floor. He was perhaps four years
old and the color of a cake of chocolate. His
costume was canary yellow a perfect little
jockey suit, with a purple band on his arm
adorned with Ninety-yellow s class numerals.
He dragged by a twisted cord of purple and
yellow a most startling plum-colored terrier,
of a shade that never was on land or sea, with
a tendency to trip his master up at every step.
In the exact middle of the floor the mascot
paused, rolled his eyes till they seemed in
danger of leaving their sockets, and then at a
shrill whistle from the balcony pulled his yel
low cap from his woolly head and made a deep
[8]
EMOTIONS OF A SUB-GUARD
and courtly bow to his patrons. But the storm
of applause was more than he had been pre
pared for, and with a wild look about the hall
and a frantic tug at the cord he dragged the
purple and protesting animal to a corner of
the room, where a grinning elder sister was
stationed for his comfort.
Theodora s heart beat high : theirs was the
best ! Everybody was laughing and exclaim
ing and questioning; the very sophomores
were shrieking at the efforts of the terrier to
drag the little darkey out again; one member
of the Faculty had laughed himself into some
thing very like hysteria and giggled weakly
at every twitch of the idiotic purple legs.
"It was Diamond Dyes," Theodora heard
a freshman just above call out excitedly, "and
Esther Armstrong thought of it. They dyed
him every day for a week "
The mascot and the dog had trotted up
again, and as they ran back and the animal
gave a more than ordinarily vicious dart, the
poor little boy, yielding suddenly, sat down
with exquisite precision on his companion,
and with distended eyes wailed aloud for his
relative, who disentangled him with difficulty
and bore him away, his cap over his ear and his
little chocolate hands clutching her neck. In
[9]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
the comparative silence that followed the gale
of laughter some bustle and conference was
noticed on the sophomore side, and suddenly
the leader rose, lifting her green and red stick,
and the front line of sophomores and seniors
intoned with great distinctness this thrilling
doggerel :
I never saw a purple pup :
I never hoped to see one :
But now my mind is quite made up
I d rather see than be one !
This was received favorably, and the gal
lery congratulated the improvisatrice, while
Theodora wondered if that detracted at all
from the glory of the freshmen ! The chat
tering began again, and she drummed ner
vously with her heels against the platform,
while the Centre, sitting next her, prophesied
gloomily that Grace Farwell felt awfully blue,
and that Miss Kassan had said they were
really almost too slight as a team the soph
omores were so tall and big. Harriet Foster
had said that she was perfectly certain she d
sprain her ankle then who would guard
Martha Sutton ? It was all very well for Caro
line Wilde to say not to worry about that
she had n t been able to guard her last year !
[ 10]
EMOTIONS OF A SUB-GUARD
She was just like a machine. Her arm went
up and the ball went in; that was all there
was to it. And Kate was as bad. They might
just as well make up their minds
"Oh, hush !" cried Theodora, her eyes full
of nervous tears; "if you can t talk any other
way, just keep still !"
"Very well," said the Centre, huffily, and
then the chattering died away as Miss Kassan
made mysterious marks on the floor, and the
coaches took their places with halves of lemon
and glasses of water in their hands. A door
opened, and in a dead hush the sophomore
team trotted in, two and two, the Suttons
leading, bouncing the big ball before them.
There was such a silence that the thudding
feet seemed to echo and ring through the hall,
and only when Martha suddenly tossed it be
hind her at nothing and Kate from some cor
ner walked over and caught it did the red and
green burst forth in a long-drawn single shout:
"Ninety-gre-e-e-e-e-n !"
Miss Kassan looked apprehensive, but no
Rah, rah, rah! followed; only,
Here s to Sutton M. and K.
And they ll surely win the day,
Drink em down, drink em down, drink em down y
down, down !
C " ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
Theodora set her teeth. "Humph! Will
they?" she muttered savagely.
"Here they come !" cried the Centre, and
they ran in, the big yellow numerals gleam
ing effectively against their dark suits, their
braids bobbing behind them. Grace Farwell
was quite pale, with one little spot of red in
each cheek, but Harriet Foster was crimson
with excitement, and the thick braids of au
burn hair that fell over her breast bumped
up and down as she breathed. The thunder
of recognition died away, and they tossed the
ball about nervously, with an eye on Miss
Kassan, who handed a ball to her assistant
and took her place on the line to watch fouls.
"All ready !"said the assistant. There was
a shuffling about, a confusion in the centre, a
concentration of eyes. Harriet Foster took
her place by Martha Sutton and sucked in her
under lip; Grace lined up with Kate in the
centre, clasping and unclasping her hands.
Near her stood a tall slim girl with green nu
merals on her sleeve. Her soft dark hair was
coiled lightly into a Greek knot it seemed
that the slightest hasty movement must shake
it over her sloping shoulders. It grew into a
clean-cut widow s peak low on her smooth
white forehead ; below straight, fine brows two
EMOTIONS OF A SUB^GUARD
great, sad, gray eyes, wide apart, wondered at
life ; her oval face was absolutely colorless and
threw out the little scarlet mouth that drooped
softly at the corners. Her hands lightly folded
before her, she swayed a little and looked
dreamily over the heads of the others; she
seemed as incongruous as a Madonna at a
bull-fight.
"Who is that lovely girl in the middle ?"
said some one behind Theodora.
"That is a Miss Greer," was the reply.
"She is one of the best "
"Play!" called the assistant, and the big
ball flew out of her hands into Kate Sutton s.
Kate gave an indescribable twist of her shoul
der, the ball rose in the air, passed over an
utterly irrelevant scuffle in the centre, and
landed in Martha s hands. Martha balanced it
a moment and threw it into the exacl middle
of the basket, while the sophomores howled
and pounded and the freshmen looked blankly
at one another. They had not been accustomed
to such simple and efficacious methods.
"One to nothing!" said the assistant,
quietly. "Play!"
Theodora caught her breath. She dared not
look at Grace, but she stared hard at Harriet.
What was Harriet thinking? Not that she
[ 13 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
could have done anything Martha was two
inches taller and had the ball tight in her hands
two seconds after the assistant had tossed it
Ah, what was that ?
The ball had reached the floor and Grace
had somehow gotten it. She threw it to Vir
ginia Wheeler, whose hands were just grazing
it when something shot like a flash of light
ning upon her. She fell back and some one
slapped the ball from between her very fin
ger-nails up, up into the air, where Kate caught
it, and a few short, sharp, instantaneous passes
got it into Martha s relentless hands. When
it dropped into the basket Alison Greer was
looking beyond the tumult, across the gallery,
into the sky white and unruffled. Theodora
winked and tried to think that some one else
had swooped down from her place six seconds
before.
The sophomores were shouting yet. Some
one said: "That s as pretty a piece of team
work as you 11 often see, is n t it ? Those twins
have eyes in the backs of their heads."
" Two to nothing play ! "said the assistant.
Theodora did not see the next goal won.
Through a mist she stared into the gallery.
Her eye caught a face she knew, and she won
dered angrily how Miss Carew could smile so
[ H]
EMOTIONS OF A SUB-GUARD
nonchalantly it was her own class ! From the
plume in her exquisite toque to the tip of her
patent leather toe she looked the visiting lady
of leisure. The little lace handkerchief dan
gling from her hand hadagreen silk monogram
in the corner how dared she wear green? She
nodded at a senior, across the game, and fanned
herself. The freshmen broke into a roar of de
light that ended in a long-drawn A-a-a-a-hl
There was a scuffle, a little cry, a flash from
Alison Greer s corner, and the assistant s
"Three to nothing play!" was drowned in
the sophomore shouts.
"You see the freshmen have no chance,
really," said some one behind, calmly, and as
if it made little matter at best. "They are ter
ribly scared, of course, and they Ve never had
the training of a big game. The sophomores
have been all through this before they don t
mind the crowd. And then, they beat last year,
and that gives them a tremendous confidence.
They re so much bigger, too "
Theodora turned and stared at her. She was
very pretty; she had a bunch of violets as big
as her head pinned to her dress, and her hands
were full of daffodils. That was like the Fac
ulty ! To take their flowers and talk that way !
"Horrid thing ! Horrid thing !" she muttered,
[ 15]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
and the Centre, looking angrily at Miss Greer,
assented.
"She s a perfect tiger ! Look at her eyes !
She knocked Virginia right over you
could n t stop her with a steam-engine Oh !
Oh ! Oh! Ninety-yellow! Rah, rah-a-a-a-ah!"
Right out of their hands it had slipped*, and
the two girls slid across the floor, fell, reached
out, missed it, and gritted their teeth as the Cen
tres, with a long-practised manoeuvre, passed
it rapidly from hand to hand to Martha, whose
long arm slid it imperturbably into the basket.
"That Guard doesn t accomplish much, 5
said somebody.
"Good heavens, how can she ? Look at the
girl ! She lays it in like like that," was the
answer, as the assistant called, " Five to noth
ingplay I"
Theodora looked up at the purple and yel
low gallery. The freshmen stared as if hyp
notized at their steady misfortune, their faces
flushed, their mouths tremulous: when the
players ran to suck the half-lemon or kneeled
to tighten their shoes, their class-mates held
breath till they returned; when Grace got the
ball or Virginia pushed it aside, they started a
cheer that faded into a sigh as Alison Greer
drove everything before her or Kate sent that
[ 16]
EMOTIONS OF A SUB-GUARD
terrible Sutton throw to her sister. Theodora
suddenly started. Just before the ball left Kate,
she threwup her left hand with the palm slightly
spread, and some instind: moved Theodora to
glance at Martha. Her left hand went up in
stantly as if to throw back a braid, but it
waved toward the right, and while Harriet
braced herself for a jump the ball flew into
the air far off to the right and the instinctive
motion toward Martha left the way clear for
one of Alison Greer s rushes and sudden, bird-
like throws. In a moment Martha had it, and
as Harriet bent forward to guard, and the ball
toppled unsteadily on the edge of the basket
and fell off, in the midst of the hubbub and
scuffle some one pushed heavily on Harriet,
four hands grasped the ball firmly, somebody
called, "Foul, foul !" and as five panting girls
hurled themselves against the wall and the as
sistant tossed up where it fell, to make sure
of fair play, Harriet dropped with her foot be
neath her and did not get up. Martha put the
ball in from an amazing distance, and in the
storm of applause no one noticed the fresh
man Guard, till the cry of, "Six to nothing
play!" found her still sitting there.
The ball was dropped, and they ran up to
her. Two doctors hurried out; she half rose,
[ 17]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
fell back and bit her lip. The freshmen
craned out over the gallery, the sophomores
shook their heads; "Too bad, too bad!" they
murmured. Two freshmen made a chair, lifted
Harriet quickly and ran out with her, the doc
tors followed, and in the dead hush they heard
her voice as the door closed.
"I m so sorry, girls go right on don t
wait "
"Plucky girl," said a man s voice. "It s a
shame!"
The freshmen looked very blue; the team
stood about in groups; the sophomores waited
politely at one side. Martha went over to
Grace and held her hand out: "I m terribly
sorry," she said earnestly, "it s too bad. They
say your Subs are very good, though."
Grace nodded, and ran over to the coaches,
who walked aside with her for a moment, talk
ing earnestly. Presently they came over to the
platform and the Centre nudged Theodora
enviously. "Go on!" she whispered. "Grace
wants you !"
Theodora gasped. "Not me not me!"
she objected feebly. "Me guard Martha
Sutton!"
" Go on ! " said somebody, and they pushed
her out.
[ 8 ]
EMOTIONS OF A SUB-GUARD
"Come on, Theodora hurry up, now!"
The people seemed to swim before her; for
one dreadful moment she longed for her home
as she had never longed before. Her knees
shook and the clapping of the class sounded
faraway. With her eyes on the floor she moved
out ; halfway to the centre Virginia Wheeler
stepped to meet her and put her arm over
Theodora s shoulder.
"Don t be scared, Theo," she said, "don t
be scared, but help us out heaven knows
we need it !"
"Watch Martha don t take your eyes off
her !" whispered the coach as she handed the
lemon to the new Guard.
As in a dream Theodora passed to the
lower basket. Martha patted her on the shoul
der. " Hello ! " she said in a bluff, friendly way,
and then the assistant called, "Six to nothing,
play!" and threw the ball. It dropped in the
middle, and there was a terrible scrimmage for
at least four minutes, while the people swayed
and sighed and clapped and screamed, for the
freshmen were getting terribly excited and
rapidly losing their self-control, as it became
evident that their team was struggling des
perately and making one of the longest rights
on record for the ball they were determined
[ 19]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
to have. It was almost in the basket, it tot
tered on the edge, it fell, and Kate Sutton
caught it how, no one knew, for it was no
where near her. The freshmen were shriek
ing with rage, the sophomores clapping with
triumph. Every eye in the hall was fixed on
Kate Sutton every eye but Theodora s.
She watched Martha, and saw above her head
that long brown hand wave ever so slightly to
the left as she tossed her hair back. She braced
herself, and just as Martha made a dash to the
right, Theodora let her go and flew to the left.
She went too far, but even as Martha dashed
up behind her and put up her hands, Theo
dora jumped, caught the ball with her left hand
and with her right hit it a ringing blow that
sent it straight over to the other basket. It
hit Alison Greer s head as she rushed toward
it, and while she was raising her hand Grace
Farwell snatched it from her shoulder, glanced
desperately at the Home, who had lost them
two balls, and bounded across, throwing the
ball before her. The roar of delight from the
freshmen was literally deafening, and as Grace
put it into the basket it seemed to Theodora
that the roof would surely drop.
"Six to one and the first half s up," said
somebody, and Theodora was pushed along
[20]
EMOTIONS OF A SUB-GUARD
with the Team her team into the sanc
tum of their rest. But as they neared the door,
the applause became a song, and before she
quite understood what the verse was, it rang
out above her head:
Here s to Theodora. Root y
She s our dandy substitoot,
Drink her down, drink her down, drink her down,
down, down!
Any one who has never been a subject of
song to some hundreds of young women can
not perhaps understand why the mention of
one s name in flattering doggerel should be
so distinctly and immediately affecting. But
any one who has had that experience knows
the little contraction of the heart, the sudden
hot tightening of the eyelids, the confused,
excited desire to be worthy of all that trust
and admiration. It is to be doubted if Theo
dora ever again felt so ideally, impersonally
devoted to any cause, so pathetically eager to
"make them proud of her."
In the little room the Team dropped on the
floor and panted. The coaches bustled in with
water, shook the hand of the new Guard and
told her to lie flat and not talk. A strong odor
of spirits filled the room, and Theodora, turn-
[ai ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
ing her head languidly for she felt very tired
all at once saw that one of the juniors was
rubbing somebody with whiskey. Grace was
nursing an elbow and excitedly asking every
body to sit on Alison Greer : " She works her el
bow right into you ! She runs you right down "
"There, there!" said one of the juniors,
"never mind, never mind, Gracie ! She s a
slugger, if you like, but you ve got to beat
her ! Don t be afraid of her."
"It s no good," said the Home that had
missed two balls, "we re too "
" That s enough of that," interrupted the
coach who was fanning Virginia Wheeler.
"You re playing finely, girls. Now all you ve
got to do is to make up your five goals. Don t
you see how low you ve kept it down? You
did some fine centre work. Last year it was
eight to something the first half. You tried
to put it in standing right under the basket,
Mary stand off and take your time."
They trotted out to the music of the soph
omore prize song. It was a legacy from the
seniors, who had themselves inherited it. It
leaped out at them a mocking, dancing, de
risive little tune to which everybody kept
time.
It was repeated indefinitely, and at every
[22]
EMOTIONS OF A SUB-GUARD
repetition it went faster and more furious, and
strangers who had not heard it laughed louder
and louder.
Grace smiled grimly. The Team remem
bered her words just before the door opened.
" Girls, it is n t likely that we 11 win, but we
can give ^em something to beat ! "
And as the ball went back and forth and
could not get free of the centre, the sopho
mores realized that they had "something to
beat." The freshmen had somehow lost their
fear; they smiled up at their friends and grinned
cheerfully at their losses, which is far better
than to try to look unconscious. A little bow-
legged girl with a large nose and red knuckles
accomplished wonders in the centre, and won
them their second basket by stooping abruptly
and rolling the ball straight between Kate Sut-
ton s feet to Grace, who sat upon it and threw
it so hard at Alison Greer that it bounded
out of her hands and was promptly caught by
Virginia Wheeler and put into the basket.
This feat of Grace s was due entirely to her
having quite lost her head, but it passed as the
most daring of manoeuvres, and received such
wild applause that Miss Kassan very nearly
stopped the game.
" What shall I do ? This is terrible. I never
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
heard such noise as the freshmen are making ! "
she mourned, with an apprehensive glance at
the platform. At that moment the ball soared
high, fell, was sent up again, and caught by a
phenomenal leap on the part of the little bow-
legged girl, who got it into the basket before
the Home knew what was happening. The
war broke out again, and Miss Kassan beheld
two members of the Faculty pounding with
their canes on the platform.
" Did you see her jump ? George! That was
a good one ! Did you see that, Robbins ? "
But Robbins was standing up in his interest
and cheering under his breath as Martha Sut-
ton snatched a ball clearly intended for some
one else, quietly put it in the basket, and smiled
politely at her enthusiastic friends.
" Lord ! What a Fullback she d make ! " he
muttered, as Alison charged down into the
centre. The lavender shadows under her eyes
were deep violet now; her mouth was pressed
to a scarlet line; her eyes were fixed on the
ball like gray stars. People seemed to melt
away before her: she never turned to right or
left.
Theodora saw nothing, heard nothing but
the slap of hands on the ball, the quick breaths
that slipped past her cheek. She knew that the
EMOTIONS OF A SUB-GUARD
score was nine to five now; a little later it was
nine to six. She caught the eye of thegirl in the
toque: she was standing now, her cheeks very
red, and the little lace handkerchief was torn
to shreds in her hands.
ic Does she really care ? " thought Theo
dora, as she jumped and twisted and doubled.
Back on the senior side sat Susan Jackson,
her eyes wide, her lips parted; Cornelia Burt
was breathing on her hands and chafing them
softly. "Nine to seven play ! " called the as
sistant.
Harriet sat near the fireplace, her bandaged
foot on a bench before her, her hands twist
ing and untwisting in her lap.
Here s to Harriet Foster ,
And we re sorry that we lost her,
Drink her down, drink her down, drink her down,
down, down!
sang the freshmen. Would Harriet have done
better ? Would she have Ah !
" Ten to seven play ! "
And they were so near, too ! They were
playing well Grace and Virginia were great
they could have done something if that
stupid Home Oh !
Theodora leaped, missed the ball, but
[25]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
danced up in front of Martha and warded off
the girl who slipped in to help her. Martha
uttered an impatient exclamation and scowled.
The freshmen howled and kicked against the
gallery, and as the freshman Home woke out
of an apparent lethargy and put the ball in
neatly Theodora clapped and cheered with
the rest.
" Ten to eight play ! "
There was a scuffle, a fall, and a hot dis
cussion. Two girls grasped the ball, and the
captains hesitated. Miss Kassan ran up, and
in the little lull Theodora heard from the
platform :
" Oh, give it to the freshmen ! They de
serve it!"
"No, Miss Greer had it!"
"She knocked the girl off it, if that s
what " A rebellious howl from the yellow
gallery as Miss Greer bore off the ball, and
a man s voice:
"Oh, nonsense ! If you don t want em to
howl, don t let em play ! The idea to get
em all worked up and then say: No, young
ladies, control yourselves! How idiotic! I
don t blame em I d howl myself Jiminy
crickets ! Look at that girl ! Good work ! Good
work ! "
EMOTIONS OF A SUB-GUARD
"Eleven to eight play !"
"Good old Suttie ! Good girl! Ninety-
gre-e-e-en !"
Theodora s mouth was dry, and she ran
to the coach for a lemon. The junior s hand
shook, and her voice was husky from shouting.
" It s grand it s grand ! " she said quickly.
"Martha s mad as a hatter ! See her braid !"
Martha had twisted her pale brown pigtail
tightly round her neck, and was calling with
little indistinct noises to her sister. Adah Levy
was talking to herself steadily and whispering,
"Hurry now, hurry now, hurry now!" as she
doubled and bent and worried the freshman
Home out of her senses. Grace Farwell was
everywhere at once, and was still only when
she fell backwards with a bang that sickened
the visiting mothers, and brought the fresh
men s hearts into their mouths. A great gasp
travelled up the gallery, and the doctor left her
seat, but before she reached the players Grace
was up, tossed her head, blinked rapidly, and
with an unsteady little smile took her place
by Alison Greer. And then the applause that
had gone before was mild in comparison with
the thunder from both galleries, and Miss
Kassan looked at her watch uneasily and
moved forward.
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
Now everybody was standing up, and the
men were pushing forward, and only the gasps
and bursts of applause and little cries of dis
appointment disturbed the stillness the
steady roar had stopped.
Theodora knew nothing, saw nothing: she
only played. Her back ached, and her throat
was dry ; Martha s elbow moved like the piston
of a steam-engine; her arm, when Theodora
pressed against it, was like a stiff bar; she tow
ered above her Guard. It was only a question
of a few, few minutes could they make it
"eleven to nine"?
She must have asked the question, for
Martha gasped, "No, you won t!" at her,
and her heart sank as Miss Kassan moved
closer. The ball neared their basket; the little
bow-legged girl ducked under Alison s nose
and emerged with it from a chaos of swaying
Centres, tossed it to Grace, who dashed to the
basket
"Time s up!"
The freshmen shrieked, the Team yelled
to its captain: "Put it in ! put it in !" The
sophomore Guards had not heard Miss Kas
san, and Grace poised the ball. A yell from
the freshmen and she deliberately dropped
it.
[28]
EMOTIONS OF A SUB-GUARD
"Time s up," she said, with a little break
in her voice, and as Miss Kassan hurried for
ward to stop the play she gave her the ball.
Through the tumult a bass voice was heard:
"I say, you know, that was pretty decent!
I m not sure I d have done that myself!"
And as the assistant and Miss Kassan re
tired to compare fouls, and the noise grew
louder and louder, the freshman team, with
drawn near the platform, heard a young pro
fessor, not so many years distant from his own
alma mater, enthusiastically assuring any one
who cared to hear, that "That girl was a dead
game sport, now !"
For a moment the feeling against Grace
had been bitter the basket was so near ! But
as the sophomores were openly commend
ing her, and as Miss Kassan was heard to say
that the Team had played in splendid form
and had given a fine example of "the self-con
trol that the game was supposed to teach,"
they thought better of their captain with every
minute.
"Eleven to eight, in favor of Ninety-green
fouls even !" said Miss Kassan, and the
storm broke from the gallery. But before it
reached the floor, almost, Martha was ener
getically beating time, and above the miscel-
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
laneous babble rose the strong, steady cheer
of the sophomores:
Rah, rah, rah !
Rah, rah, rah !
Rah, rah, rah ! Ninety-ye-e-e-e-llow !
"Quick, girls! quick!" cried Grace, for
Miss Kassan was running toward them with
determination in her eye.
Rah, rah, rah !
Rah, rah, rah !
Rah, rah, rah ! Ninety-gre-e-e-e-n !
Then it was all a wild, confused tumult.
Theodora had no distinct impressions; peo
ple kissed her and shook her hand, and Kathie
Sewall carried Grace off to a swarm of girls
who devoured her, but not before Martha,
breathless from a rapid ride around the floor
on the unsteady shoulders of her loyal team,
had solemnly extended her hot brown hand
to the freshman captain and said, with sin
cere respect, "That was as good a freshman
game as ever was played, Miss Farwell
we re mighty proud of ourselves ! Your cen
tre work was simply great ! And and of
course we know that that last goal was was
practically yours ! "
Theodora had expected to feel so ashamed
[30]
EMOTIONS OF A SUB-GUARD
and sad and somehow she was so proud and
happy ! The sophomores last year had locked
themselves in for one hour and expressed
their feelings; but the freshmen could only
realize that theirs was the closest score known
for years, and that they had made it against
the best team the college had ever seen; that
Martha had said that in fifteen minutes more,
at the rate they were playing, nobody knew
what might have happened; that Miss Kassan
had said that except in the matter of noise she
had been very proud of them; and that Pro
fessor Robbins had called their captain a
Dead Game Sport !
It would not have been etiquette to carry
Grace about the hall, but they managed [to
convey to her their feelings, which were far
from perfunctory, and in their enthusiasm
they went so far as to obey the Council s ear
nest request that the decorations should re
main untouched. They cheered Theodora and
Virginia and Harriet and the bow-legged girl
till you would have supposed them victorious;
and when Harriet told Grace, with a little
gulp, that it was all up with her, for her
mother had said that a second sprained ankle
meant no more basket-ball, the little sympa
thetic crowd brightened, and all eyes turned
[31 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
to Theodora, who breathed hard and tried to
seem not to notice. Could it be ? Would she
ever run out bouncing the ball in that wait
ing hush? . . .
They were out of the Gym now, and only
the ushers bonnets, the green and yellow
flowers that the Council had not controlled,
the crumpled, printed sheets of basket-ball
songs, and the little mascots posing for their
pictures on the campus made the day differ
ent from any other.
"Come and lie down," said somebody, re
garding Theodora with a marked respect.
"You ll want to get rested before the din
ner, you know."
And as Theodora stared at her and half
turned to run after Grace, whom Kathie Sew-
all was quietly leading off, the girl she was
in the house with her held her back.
"I d let Grace alone, if I were you," she
said. "She s pretty well used up; she hurt
her elbow quite badly, but she would n t say
anything, and Dr. Leach says she 11 have to
keep perfectly quiet if she wants to be at the
dinner wants to ! the idea ! But she said of
course you were to come. They say they re
going to take some of the Gym decorations
down. What ! Why, the idea! Of course
EMOTIONS OF A SUB-GUARD
you 11 go ! You re sure to make the Team,
anyhow, for that matter ! I tell you, Theo
dora, we re proud of you ! It was n t any joke
to step in there and guard Martha Sutton
with a score of six to nothing!"
Theodora paused at the steps, her mackin
tosh half off, her hair tangled about her crim
son cheeks, her sleeve dusty from that last
mad slide.
"No," she said, with a wave of reminis
cence of that sick shaking of her knees, that
shrinking from a million critical eyes. "No,
it was n t any joke not in the least !"
And she climbed up the stairs to a burst
of applause from the freshmen in the house
and the shrill cry of her room-mate:
"Come on, Theo ! I Ve got a bath-tub
for you !"
[33 ]
THE SECOND STORY
A CASE OF INTERFERENCE
II
A CASE OF INTERFERENCE
""W ^W" THAT I want to know/ said
% /% / the chairman of the committee,
^y ^ wearily," is just this. Are we go
ing to give the Lady of Lyons,
or are we not ? I have a music lesson at four
and a tea at five, and while your sprightly and
interesting conversation is ever pleasing to
me"
"Oh, Neal, don t ! Think of something for
us ! Don t you want us to give it?"
"I think it s too love-making. And no one
up here makes love. The girls will howl at
that garden scene. You must get something
where they can be funny."
" But, Neal, dear, you can make beautiful
love!"
"Certainly I can, but I can t make it alone,
can I? And Margaret Ellis is a stick a per
fect stick. But then, have it ! I see you re bent
on it. Only I tell you one thing it will take
more rehearsing than the girls will want to
give. And I shan t do one word of it publicly
till I think that we have rehearsed enough
together. So that s all I ve got to say till
Wednesday, and I must go !"
The door opened shut; and before the
[37]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
committee had time for comment or criticism,
their chairman had departed.
"Neal s a trifle cross/ suggested Patsy,
mildly. "Something s the matter with her,"
said Julia Leslie. "She got a note from Miss
Henderson this afternoon, and I think she s
going to see her now. Oh, I have n t the
vaguest idea What? No, I know it s not
about her work. Neal s all straight with that
department. Well, I think I 11 go over to the
Gym and hunt out a suit. Who has the key
to the property box now?"
The little group dissolved rapidly and No. 1 8
resumed its wonted quiet. "There s nothing
like having a society girl for a room-mate, is
there, Patsy?" said the resident Sutton twin,
opening the door. She and her sister were dis
tinguishable by their room-mates alone, and
they had been separated with a view to pre
venting embarrassing confusion, as they were
incredibly alike. " Could n t I make the Alpha
on the strength of having vacated this hearth
and home eighteen times by aclual count for
its old committees?"
" I ve put you up five times, Kate, love, but
they think your hair s too straight. Could n t
you curl it ? "
Kate sniffed scornfully. " I ve always known
[38]
A CASE OF INTERFERENCE
that the literary societies had some such sys
tem of selection," she said to the bureau.
"Now, in an idle moment of relaxation, the
secret is out ! Patsy, I scorn the Alpha, and the
Phi Kappa likewise."
"I scorn the Phi Kappa myself, theoreti
cally," said Patsy.
"Do you think they 11 take in that queer
junior, you know, that looks so tall till you
get close to her, and then it s the way she
walks ? "
"Dear child, your vivid description some
how fails to bring her to my mind."
" Why don t you want her in Alpha ? But be
careful you don t wait too long ! You re both
leaving me till late in the year, you know, and
then, ten to one, the other one gets me !"
"A little violet beside a mossy stone is a
poor comparison, Katharine, but at the mo
ment I think of no other. I am glad you grasp
the situation so clearly, though."
" But, truly, I wonder why they don t take
that girl is n t her name Hastings ? into
Phi Kappa ? She writes awfully well, they say,
and I guess she recites well enough."
The other Sutton twin sauntered in, and
appearing as usual to grasp the entire conver
sation from the beginning, rolled her sister off
[39]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
the couch, filled her vacant place, and entered
the discussion.
" But, my dear child, you know she won t
make either society ! She s too indifferent
she does n t care enough. And she s off the
campus, and she does n t go out anywhere,
and she is always alone, and that speaks for
itself"
"Oh, I m tired of talking about her ! Stop
it, Kate, and get some crackers, that s a dear !
Or I 11 get them myself," and Patsy was in
the hall.
Kate shook her head wisely at the bureau.
"Something s in the air," she said softly.
"Patsy is bothered. So is Neal. And there
are plenty of crackers on the window-seat !"
Miss Margaret Sewall Pattison sauntered
slowly down the stairs. For one whose heart
was set on crackers she seemed strangely in
different to the hungry girls standing about
the pantry with fountain pens and ledure
books and racquets and hammocks under
their arms. She walked by them and out of
the door, stood a moment irresolutely on the
porch, and then, as she caught sight of Cor
nelia Burt coming out of the dormitory just
beyond, she hurried out to meet her.
"Busy this hour, Neal?" she said.
[40]
A CASE OF INTERFERENCE
"No," said Cornelia, briefly. "Where shall
?> j
VY^ & VX .
"We can go to the property box and get
some clothes," said Patsy, "and talk it over
there."
In the cellar of the gymnasium it was cool
and dim. The beams rose high above their
heads, and a musty smell of tarlatan and mus
lin and cheese-cloth filled the air. Patsy sat
on an old flower-stand, and pushed Cornelia
down on a Greek altar that lay on its side with
a faded smilax wreath still clinging to it.
" What did she say to you, Neal ? " she asked.
Neal looked at the floor. "She was lovely,
but I did n t half appreciate it. I was so both
ered and vexed. Pat, I did n t know the
Faculty ever did this sort of thing, did you ?"
" I don t believe they often do," said Patsy.
"Did she read that thing to you, too ?"
"Yes. Patsy, that s a remarkable thing.
Do you know, when I went there I thought
she was going to call me down for taking off
the Faculty in that last Open Alpha. The
girls say she hates that sort of thing. You
know she always says just what she thinks.
And she said, c l want to read you a little
story, Miss Burt, that happened to come into
my hands, and that has haunted me since." 1
[41 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
"How do you suppose she got hold of it ?"
queried Patsy.
"I don t know, I m sure. I certainly
should n t pick her out to exhibit my themes
to ! I never saw them together."
"I think I saw them walking once well,
go on !"
" For the Monthly? said I.
" No, said she. C I think the author would
not consent to its publication. And then she
read it to me. Pat, if that girl has suffered as
much as that, I don t see how she stays here."
"She s too proud to do anything else,"
said Patsy. "Go on."
"Then Miss Henderson said: C I needn t
tell you the value of this thing from a literary
point of view, Miss Burt.
" c No, said I, you needn t.
" Very well, said she; c then I 11 tell you
something else. Every word of it is true/
" I m sorry, said I."
"Oh, Neal ! I cried when she read it to
me ! I blubbered like a baby. And she was
so nice about it. But I hated her, almost, for
disturbing me so."
"Precisely. So I said: c And what have you
read this to me for, Miss Henderson? And
then she told me that the girl in the story was
A CASE OF INTERFERENCE
Winifred Hastings. She has always lived with
older people and been a great pet and sort of
prodigy, you know, and was expelled to do
great things here, and found herself lonely,
and was proud and did n t make friends, and
got farther away from the college instead of
nearer to it, and all that. And I said, C I sup
pose she s not the only one, Miss Hender
son/ And she looked at me so queerly.
c Mephistopheles said that/ said she/
"Oh ! Neal ! How could you ? I why are
you so cold and "
" Unsympathetic ? I don t know. We all
have the defects of our qualities, I suppose.
Miss Henderson was quite still for a moment,
looking at me. I felt like a fly on a pin. c Why
do you try so hard to be cruel, Miss Burt?
said she, finally. c I think you have an immense
capacity for suffering and for sympathy. Is it
because you are afraid to give way to it ? And
I said, Exactly so, Miss Henderson. I never
go to the door when the tramps come.
" Neither did I, once, said she, but I
found it was a singularly useless plan. You ve
got to, some time, Miss Burt.
" That s what I ve always been afraid of,
but I m putting it off as long as I can, said I.
"And then she told me that this was the
[43 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
first time that she had done anything of this
kind for a long while. c I don t believe in help
ing people to their places, as a rule/ she said.
They usually get what they deserve, I fancy.
But this is a peculiar case. You suppose she
is not the only one, Miss Burt ? I hope there
are very few like her. I have never known of
a girl of her ability to lose everything that she
has lost. There are girls who are queer and
erratic and somewhat solitary and perhaps dis
contented, but they get into a prominence of
their own and you call it a "divine discon
tent," and make them geniuses, and they get
a good deal out of it, after all. There are girls
who are queer and quick-tempered, but good
students, and devoted to a few warm friends,
and their general unpopularity doesn t trouble
them particularly. There are the social leaders,
who don t particularly suffer if they don t get
into a society, who are popular everywhere,
and get the good time they came for. But
Winifred Hastings has somehow missed all
these. She got started wrong, and she s gone
from bad to worse. She is not solitary by na
ture, and yet she is more alone than the girls
who like solitude, even. She is not naturally
reserved, and yet she is considered more so
than almost any girl in college. I believe her
[44]
A CASE OF INTERFERENCE
to have great executive ability. I consider her
one of the distinctly literary girls in her class,
and if there is anything in essentially "bad
luck," I do honestly believe that she is the
victim of it. Her characteristics are so balanced
and opposed to each other that she can t help
herself, and she does things that make her
seem what she is not. Her real self is in this
story. You can see the pathos of that !
Neal drew a long breath. "Did she say that
to you?" she concluded.
"No, not exactly. She told me that she was
speaking to me as one of the social influences
of the college. I felt like a cross between Ma
dame de Stael and Ward McAllister, you
know. And then she spoke of the power we
have, the girls like me, and how a little help
oh, Neal ! it does mean a good deal, though !
I can t make people take this girl up, all
alone ! The girls are n t "
"They are ! They re the merest sheep ! If
you do it, they 11 all follow you. That is, if
she s really worth anything. Of course, they
are n t fools."
"She sat on me awfully, though, Neal ! I
said, c I suppose you think we ought to have
her in Alpha, Miss Henderson. She gave
me a look that simply withered me. My dear
[ 45 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
Miss Pattison, said she, in that twenty-mile-
away tone, c I am not in the habit of suggest
ing candidates for either of the societies: I
must have made myself far from clear to you.
And I apologized. But it s what she meant,
all the same!"
" Of course it is. Well, I suppose she s
right. It is n t everybody would have dared
to do that much. I respect her for it myself.
You are to launch her socially, I am to "
"Neal Burt, I think you ought to be
ashamed ! Did n t Miss Henderson tell you
how Winifred Hastings admired you ? "
"Yes. She said that I was the only girl in the
college whose friendship Oh, dear! I wish
she had gone to Vassar, that girl ! Heavens !
It s half-past three ! I must go this minute.
Well, Patsy, we re honored, in a way. I don t
think Miss Henderson would talk to every
one as she has to us, do you ? "
"No," said Patsy, gravely, "I don t. You
know, Neal, just as I was going, she said, Of
course you realize, Miss Pattison, that only
you and I and Miss Burt have seen this story ?
C I understand, said I. Perhaps I have done
this because I understand Miss Hastings bet
ter than she thinks, she said. c I I was a lit
tle like her, myself, once, Miss Pattison !
[46]
A CASE OF INTERFERENCE
"Yes," said Neal, "she told me that."
" I don t see why Miss Henderson doesn t
take her up herself, if she understands her so
terribly well," scowled Patsy. "She looks just
like the kind of girl to be devoted to one per
son and all that, you know. Miss Henderson
could go for walks with her and "
" Too much sense ! " said Neal, briefly.
"She wants to get her in with the girls. That
sort of thing would kill her with the girls, and
she knows it."
"Oh, bother! Look at B. Kitts she s a
great friend of Miss Henderson s, and look
at yourself! "
" Not at all," Neal returned decidedly.
" Biscuits was in with your set long before she
got to know Miss Henderson, and I knew
Marion Hunter at home before she came up
here. It s all very well to chum with the Fac
ulty if you re in with the girls, too, but other
wise as my friend Claude says, Nay, nay,
Pauline! Besides, Miss Henderson doesn t
go in for that sort of thing anyhow she J s
too clever."
" Oh, well, I suppose it is best for us to do
it. I guess she s right enough," said Patsy,
rising as she spoke, "and I suppose we can
do it as well as anybody, for that matter."
[47 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
They mounted the stone steps and came
out into a light that dazzled them. "There
she is !" said Patsy softly, as a tall girl, plainly
dressed, walked quickly by them. Her face
was strangely set, her mouth almost hard, her
eyes looked at them with an expression that
would have been defiant but for something
that softened them as they met Neal s. She
bowed to her, hardly noticing Patsy s "Good
afternoon, Miss Hastings ! " and hurried off
to the back campus. Behind were two fresh
men loaded with pillows. "Isn t that Miss
Hastings ? " said one.
" Yes. She s going to leave college."
" Oh ! Well, we can lose her better than
some others I could mention," said the pret
tier and better dressed of the two. Then,
catching sight of Patsy and Neal, she stopped
and blushed a little. " Did did you get my
note, Miss Burt ? Will you come ? " she asked
prettily. Neal smiled.
" Why, yes, I shall be pleased at four on
Saturday, I think you said ? " And then as
the two moved on she added, "I heard you
say something about Miss Hastings: is it true
she s going to leave ? "
" Yes," said the other freshman, impor
tantly. "Immediately, she told Mrs. White.
[48 ]
A CASE OF INTERFERENCE
I m in the house with her. I think she said
next week. She s disappointed in college, I
guess. Well, I should think she would be.
She"
" I trust the college has given her no reason
to be," said Neal, gravely. "I sometimes think
her attitude if that should happen to be her
attitude somewhat justifiable." And before
the freshman could recover, Miss Burt and
her friend were halfway across the campus.
Patsy sighed with admiration. " Oh, Corne
lia, how I reverenceyou ! " she said. " I could n t
do that to save my soul. No. Once I tried it,
and the freshman laughed at me. I slunk
away positively slunk."
But Neal did not laugh. "I can t see what
to do," she half whispered, as if to herself.
"Next week next week! Why then, why
then, it s all over with her. She s thrown up
the sponge ! "
Patsy peered into Cornelia s face and caught
her breath. "Why, Neal, do you care? Do
you really care ? " she said. Neal looked at
her defiantly through wet lashes. "Yes, I do
care. I think it s horrible. To have her beaten
like this ! I have to go now. Be sure to come
to Alpha to-night ! "
" When Cornelia leaves, she leaves sudden,
[49]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
said Kate Sutton, from the window. "Coming
up?"
Patsy stamped slowly up the two flights,
and rummaged in a very mussy window-box
for a silk waist. Her room-mate listened for
some expression of grief or joy togive the tone
to conversation, but none came; so she began
on her own account.
" Martha says," indicating her twin, who
was polishing the silver things with alcohol
and a preparation fondly believed by her to be
whiting, but which incessant use had reduced
to a dirty gritty gum, "Martha says she knows
who s going in to-night."
"Oh, indeed?"
"Yes. She says it s Eleanor Huntington
and Leila Droch. She knows for certain."
" Great penetration she has they Ve never
been mentioned," returned the senior, absent-
mindedly, grabbing under the chiffonier for
missing hair-pins.
A shriek of triumph from the twins brought
her to her knees.
"Aha! I told you they were n t in it! Per
haps you 11 believe me again ! Perhaps I can t
find out a thing or two!"
The twins shook hands delightedly, and
Patsy, irritated at her slip, grabbed again for
[ 50 ]
A CASE OF INTERFERENCE
the hair-pins, incidentally discovering a silver
shoe-horn and a fountain pen.
"Very clever you are very, "she remarked
coldly. "Quite unusual, and so young, too. No
wonder your parents are worried!"
This was a bitter cut, for the twins were in
dustriously engaged in living down the report
that the Registrar had in their freshman year
received a note from Mrs. Sutton imploring
her to curb if necessary their passion for study,
which invariably brought on nervous head
aches. This was peculiarly interesting to their
friends, who had never remarked any undue
application on their part and were, of course,
proportionately eager to caution them against
it. They squirmed visibly now and changed
their tone abruptly.
"They say that Frances Wilde was terribly
disappointed about making Alpha she d
much rather have got Phi Kappa," said Kate,
with a mixture of malice and humility.
Patsy was silent. Martha grinned and took
up the conversation.
" But her heart would have been broken if
she had n t gotten in this year," she returned
amiably.
Patsy turned and glared at them, one arm
in the silk waist.
c 51 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
"What utter nonsense!" she broke out.
"As if it made any matter, one way or the
other! As if it made two cents worth of differ
ence ! You know perfectly well that it s no
test at all making a society. Look at the
girls who are in! It s a farce, as Neal says "
She stopped and scowled at them defiantly.
The twins gasped. This from a society girl to
them, as yet uncled! Even for a conversation
with the Sutton twins, with whom, owing to
their own contagious example, truth was bound
to fly out sooner or later, this was unusual. It
was odd enough to discuss the societies at all
with perfectly eligible sophomores who might
reasonably expect to enter one or another some
time and who were nevertheless yet uncalled;
but the twins discussed every thing with every
body, utterly regardless of etiquette, tradition,
or propriety, and their upper-classroom-mates
had long ago given up any ideas of reserve and
discipline they might have held.
Martha gasped but promptly replied.
"That s all very well for Cornelia Burt," she
said, with the famous Sutton grin. "Anybody
who made the Alpha in the first five and was
known well enough to have been especially
wanted in Phi Kappa and even begged to re
fuse "
A CASE OF INTERFERENCE
" How did you know that, Martha Sutton ? "
"Oh! how did I? The President confided
it to me one day when he was calling. As I say,
Neal Burt and you can afford to talk; you can
say it s a bore and all that and make fun of the
meetings "
"I don t!"
"You do! I heard you growling about it to
Neal. And Bertha Kitts said she d about as
soon conduct a class prayer-meeting as Phi
Oh, not to me, naturally, but I know the girl
who heard the girl she said it to ! Heard her
tell about it, I mean.
"It s all very well for you, but you d feel dif
ferently if you were out! It s just like being
a junior usher. There are plenty of spooks
in, but there are n t many bright girls out.
Everybody knows that lots of the society girls
are pushed in by their friends and pulled in
for heaven knows what certainly not brains !
But, just the same, you know well enough that
you can count on one hand all the girls in the
college that you d think ought to be in and
are n t. You don t know anything about it, for
you were sure of it and everybody knew it,
but the ones that are n t, they re the ones that
worry ! Why, I know sophomores to-day that
will cry all night if they don t get their notes
[53]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
and their flowers and their front seat in chapel
Monday!"
"Oh, nonsense!"
"Oh,nonsense,indeed!Won tthey, Katie?"
"Sure!" returned her sister, placidly.
" I guess Alison Greer will cry all right, if
she s not in!"
Patsy bit her lip and tapped her foot ner
vously. Then she shrugged her shoulders and
opened the door, turning to remark, "You
don t seem to be wasted away, either of you!"
" Oh, we ! We re all right ! " replied Martha,
comfortably. "We never expected it sopho
more year, anyhow. Nothing proddy about
us, you know. Too many clever girls in the
sophomore class, you see. But we exped: to
amble in next year, we do. And violets from
you. And supper at Boyden s. Oh, yes ! Don t
you worry about us, Miss Pattison, we re all
right!"
Miss Pattison sighed: sighs usually ended
one s conversations with the twins, for nothing
else so well expressed one s attitude.
"It s a pity you re so shrinking," she con
tented herself with observing. " I m afraid
you 11 never come forward sufficiently to be
known well by either society !" And she went
down to get her mail.
[54]
A CASE OF INTERFERENCE
ii
THERE was a full meeting of the Alpha
that Saturday night. The vice-president
was lobbying energetically in behalf of a soph
omore friend who would prove the crown and
glory of the society, if all her upper-class pa
troness said of her could possibly be true.
There was but one place open for the rest of
the term, for the society had grown unusually
that year, and some conservative seniors had
pressed hard on the old tradition that sixty was
a suitable and necessary limit, and put a mo
tion through to that effect, and every possible
junior had been elected long ago. So the vice-
president was distinctly hopeful. Amid the
buzz and clamor of fifty-odd voices, the presi
dent slapped the table sharply. "Will the
meeting please come to order !" she cried. A
little rustle, and the handsome secretary arose.
"The regular meeting of the Alpha Society
was held " and the report went on.
"Are there any objections to this report?"
asked the president, briskly. "Yes. It s fartoo
long," muttered Suzanne Endicott, flippantly.
The president looked at her reproachfully,
and added, "If not, we will proceed to the
election of new members I mean the new
member. As you probably know, there is but
[55]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
one place left, according to the recent amend
ment, and I think that we will vote as usual
on the three that are before us, and elect the
one having the most affirmative ballots. Are
there any objections to this method?" There
were none. The vice-president glanced ap-
pealingly at the girl she was not quite sure of
and smiled encouragingly at the sophomore
she had successfully intimidated. The secre
tary rose again. "The names to be voted on
this evening are Alison Greer, 9, Kath
arine Sutton, 9, Marion Dustin, "9," she
announced. "I may add that Miss Sutton has
the highest marks from the society, and that
if we don t take her this time there is very
little doubt that Phi Kappa Psi will. They 11
be afraid to risk another meeting."
"That s true," said somebody, as the buzz
ing began again. "We re carrying this point
a little too far. I declare, it s harder to decide
on the people that are n t prods than anybody
would imagine. We know we want em some
time, but we put it off so long "
"Kate Sutton s awfully bright ! I think she
should have been here before. I ve been
trembling for fear we d lose her by waiting
so long "
"Still, Marion is such a dear, and it s pretty
[56]
A CASE OF INTERFERENCE
late for a girl that s been known so well for
so long, without getting in, it seems to me,"
said the vice-president, skilfully. "Why
did n t she get in before if she was so bright ?"
"And there s Martha, too. They re just
alike. I think Martha s a little brighter, if
anything. Shall we have to take em both ? "
"No. The girls all say to give her to Phi
Kappa, and tell em apart by the pins !"
"Like babies!"
"How silly!"
"To be perfectly frank, Miss Leslie, I
must say I don t think so. Alison is an aw
fully dear girl, and all that, but I hardly think
she represents the element we hope to get into
Alpha. I m sorry to say so, but "
"The voting has begun," said the presi
dent. "Will you hurry, please?"
" Miss President," said Cornelia Burt, ris
ing abruptly, "may I speak to the society be
fore the voting?"
"Certainly, Miss Burt," said the presi
dent. There was an instant hush, and the girls
stood clustered about the ballot-table in their
pretty, light dresses a charming sight, Neal
thought vaguely, as she hunted for the words
to say.
"I know perfectly well that what I am about
[57]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
to propose is quite unconstitutional," she be
gan, and to her own ears her voice seemed far
off. How many there were, and how surprised
and attentive they looked ! They were no fools,
as she had said. They represented the clever
est element in the college, on the whole, and
they had, naturally enough, their own designs
and inclinations why should they be turned
from them in a moment ?
"I know that no girl is eligible for voting
upon until she has been read two meetings
before, and been properly put up for mem
bership, and all that," said Neal, quietly, with
her eyes fixed on Patsy s, who tried to evade
them. Poor Patsy. She wanted Kate to get the
society in her sophomore year ! " But I am
in possession of certain facts that seem to me
to warrant the breaking through the consti
tution, if such a thing can ever be done."
The silence had become intense. An omi
nous look of surprise deepened on the girls
faces, and the president looked doubtfully at
the secretary.
" I think I am quite justified in believing
that I have not the reputation of a sentimental
person," said Cornelia. She had herself well
in hand, now. The opposition that she felt
nerved her to her customary self-possession.
[58]
A CASE OF INTERFERENCE
A little grin swept around the room. She was,
apparently, quite justified.
"I have been in the Alpha as long as any
one here/ said Neal, quietly still, "and in
all this time I have never proposed any one
for membership in it. I have voted whenever
I knew anything about the person in ques
tion, and I have never blackballed but once. I
think I may say I have done my share of
work for the society "
There was a unanimous murmur of deep
and unqualified assent. "You have done more
than your share/ said the president, promptly.
"I mention these things," said Neal, "in
order that you may see that I recognize the
need of some apology for what I am about to
propose. I want to propose the name of Wini
fred Hastings to-night, and have her voted
on with the rest. If it is a possible thing, I want
her elected. That she would be elected with
out any doubt, I am certain, if only I could
put the facts of the case properly before you.
That she must be elected, now, to-night, is
absolutely necessary, for by another meeting
she will have left the college left it for the
lack of just such recognition as membership
in the society will give her."
Cornelia Burt was a born orator. Never
[59]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
was she so happy as when she felt an audi
ence, however small, given over to her, eyes
and ears, for the moment. She stood straight
as a reed, and looked easily over their faces,
holding by very force of personality their at
tention. She spoke without the slightest hesi
tation, yet perfectly simply and after no set
form. Insensibly the girls around her felt con
viction in her very presence: they agreed with
her against their will, while she was speak
ing.
"Before I go any farther, I want to tell
you that Miss Hastings is no friend of mine,"
said Neal. "I hardly know her. Only lately
I have learned the circumstances that led me
to take this stepo I feel that I must do this
thing. I feel that we are letting go from the
college a girl whose failure in life, if she fails,
will be in our hands. We can elect these others
later: Winifred Hastings leaves the college
next week. And, speaking as editor of the
college paper, I must say that she carries with
her some of the best literary material in the
college. You ask me why we have never seen
it I tell you, because she is a girl who needs
encouragement, and she has never had it. She
can do her best only when it is called for.
Some of you may think you know her may
[60]
A CASE OF INTERFERENCE
think that she is proud and solitary and dis
agreeable: she is not. This is the real girl !"
And, stepping farther into the circle, Cor
nelia, by an effort of memory she has never
equalled since, told them, with the simplest
eloquence, the pathetic story of Winifred
Hastings life, as she had written it. She did
not comment she only related. Her keen
literary appreciation had caught the most ef
fective parts, and she had the dramatic sense
to which every successful speaker owes so
much. Under her touch the haughty, solitary
figure of a scarcely known girl melted away
before them, and they saw a baffled, eager,
hungry soul that had fought desperately, and
was going silently away beaten.
Cornelia Burt had made speeches before,
and she made them afterward, to larger and
more excited college audiences, but she never
held so many hearts in her hand as she did
that night. She was not a particularly unself
ish girl, but no one who heard her then ever
called her egotistic afterward. Her whole na
ture was thrown with all its force into this
fight for it was a fight.
Perhaps there is nowhere an audience less
sentimental and more critical than a group of
clever college girls. They see clearly for the
[61 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
most part, and, like all clever youth, somewhat
cruelly. They objecT; to being ruled by any
but their chosen, and however they admired
her, Cornelia was not their chosen leader. It
was not because her speech was able, but be
cause it was so evident that she believed her
self only the means of preventing a calamity
that she was striving with all her soul to
avert, that she impressed them so deeply.
For she did impress them. When she ended,
it was very quiet in the room. " I have broken
a confidence in telling this," she said. "The
girl herself would rather die than have you
know it, I m sure, and now I feel afraid.
It has been a bold stroke; if I have lost, I
shall never forgive myself. But oh ! I cannot
have her go !"
She sat down quickly and stared into her
lap. The spell of her voice was gone, the girls
looked at each other, and a tall, keen-eyed
girl with glasses got up. " I wish to say," she
said, "that while Miss Burt s story is terribly
convincing, still this may be a little exagger
ated, and, at any rate, think of the precedent !
If this should be done very often "
"But it won t be !" cried some one with -a
somewhat husky voice, and Patsy rudely in
terrupted the speaker. Dear Patsy ! She
[62]
A CASE OF INTERFERENCE
crushed her handkerchief in her hand and
said good-by to Kate: she would have liked
to put her pin in Kate s shirt-waist, and now
now Phi Kappa would get her! When Patsy
spoke, it was with the voice of eleven, for she
carried at least ten of the leading set in the
Alpha with her.
" I think we are all very glad to realize that
there won t be many such cases most peo
ple have compensations we ought to be will
ing to break the constitution again for such
a thing, anyhow and, Miss President, I
move that Miss Hastings be voted upon by
acclamation !"
"I second the motion," said the vice-presi
dent, quickly.
"It is moved and seconded that Miss Has
tings be voted upon by acclamation," said the
president. "All in favor "
"Miss Hastings has yet to be proposed,"
said some one, after the vote.
The president looked at Cornelia.
"I propose Winifred Hastings, 9, as a
member of the Alpha Society," said Cornelia,
with flaming cheeks and downcast eyes. She
dared not look at them. Were they going
to punish her? She heard the motion an
nounced, she heard the name put up.
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
"All in favor please signify by rising/ said
the president, and only when the Alpha rose
in a body did Cornelia lift her eyes.
They were all looking at her, and she stepped
a little back.
"I cannot thank you," she said, so low that
they leaned forward to hear. "It was no affair
of mine, as I said. But I think you we
shall never regret this election." And then
they applauded so loudly that the freshmen
on the campus could not forbear peeping un
der the blinds to see what they were doing.
They saw only the president, however, as she
stepped back to the table and said with an air
of relief for, after all, emotion is very wear
ing "We will now proceed to the literary
programme of the evening!"
"But Neal, dear," said Patsy, as they set
tled themselves to listen, "do you think she ll
stay ? (Oh, Neal ! I m so proud of you !)"
" Shut up, Patsy ! " said Neal, rudely. Then,
as she thought of what Miss Henderson had
told her of Winifred Hastings: "You are the
only girl whose friendship" she blushed.
Then, assuming a bored expression, she looked
at the girl who was reading. " I fear there s
no doubt she will!" said Cornelia Burt.
THE THIRD STORY
MISS BIDDLE OF BRTN MAWR
Ill
MISS BIDDLE OF BRYN MAWR
" "W" WOULD N T have minded so much,"
explained Katherine, dolefully, and not
I without the suspicion of a sob, "if it
-^ was n t that I d asked Miss Hartwell
and Miss Ackley! I shall die of embarrass
ment I shall! Oh! why could n t Henrietta
Riddle have waited a week before she went
to Europe?"
Her room-mate, Miss Grace Farwell, sank
despairingly on the pile of red floor-cushions
under the window. "Oh, Kitten! you didn t
ask them? Not really?" she gasped, staring
incredulously at the tangled head that peered
over the screen behind which Katherine was
splashily conducting her toilet operations.
"But I did ! I think they re simply grand,
especially Miss Hartwell, and I 11 never have
any chance of meeting her, I suppose, and I
thought this was a beautiful one. So I met her
yesterday on the campus and I walked up to
her I was horribly scared, but I don t think
I showed it and, said I, c Oh, Miss Hartwell,
you don t know me, of course, but I m Miss
Sewall, 9-, and I know Henrietta Biddle of
Bryn Mawr, and she s coming to see me for
two or three days, and I m going to make a
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
little tea for her very informal and I Ve
heard her speak of you and Miss Ackley as
about the only girls she knew here, and I d
love to have you meet her again!"
Miss Farwell laughed hysterically. "And
did she accept?" she inquired.
Katherine wiped her face for the third time
excitedly. "Oh, yes ! She was as sweet as peaches
and cream! C I shall be charmed to meet Miss
Biddle again, and in your room, Miss Sewall,
she said, and shall I bring Miss Ackley?* Oh,
Grace, she s lovely! She is the most "
"Yes, I Ve no doubt," interrupted Miss
Farwell, cynically; "all the handsome seniors
are. But what are you going to say to her to
day?"
Katherine buried her yellow head in the
towel. "I don t know! Oh, Grace! I don t
know," she mourned. "And they say the
freshmen are getting so uppish, anyway, and
if we carry it off well, and just make a joke of
it, they 11 think we re awfully f-f-fresh ! " Here
words failed her, and she leaned heavily on the
screen, which, as it was old and probably re
sented having been sold third-hand at a sec
ond-hand price, collapsed weakly, dragging
with it the Bodenhausen Madonna, a silver
rack of photographs, and a Gibson Girl drawn
[68]
MISS RIDDLE OF BRYN MAWR
in very black ink on a very white ground.
"And if we are apologetic and meek," con
tinued Miss Farwell, easily, apparently undis
turbed by the confusion consequent to the
downfall of a piece of furniture known to be
somewhat erratic, "they ll laugh at us or be
bored. We shall be known as the freshmen
who invited seniors and Faculty and town-
people to meet nobody at all ! A pretty repu
tation!"
"But, Grace, we couldn t help it! Such
things will happen !" Katherine was pinning
the Gibson Girl to the wall, in bold defiance
of the matron s known views on that subject.
"Yes, of course. But they must n t happen
to freshmen !" her room-mate returned sen-
tentiously. " How many Faculty did you ask ? "
"I asked Miss Parker, because she fitted
Henrietta for college, at Archer Hall, and I
asked Miss Williams, because she knows
Henrietta s mother Oh ! Miss Williams
will freeze me to death when she comes here
and sees just us ! and I asked Miss Dodge,
because she knows a lot of Bryn Mawr peo
ple. Then Mrs. Patton on Elm Street was a
school friend of Mrs. Biddle s, and oh !
Grace, I cant manage them alone ! Let s tell
them not to come !"
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
"And what shall we do with the sand
wiches ? And the little cakes ? And the lem
ons that I sliced ? And the tea-cups and
spoons I borrowed ? And that pint of extra
thick cream ?" Miss Farwell checked off these
interesting items on her fingers, and kicked
the floor-cushions to point the question.
"Oh! I don t know! Isn t there any
chance "
"No, goosey, there is n t. See here !" Grace
pulled down a letter with a special delivery*
stamp from the desk above her head, and
read with emphasis:
DEAR Kitten, Just a line to say that Aunt
Mary has sent for me at three days notice to
go to Paris with her for a year. It V now or never,
you know, and I *ve left the college, and will come
back to graduate with 9. So sorry I cant see
you before I go. Had looked forward to a very
interesting time, renewing my own freshman
days, and all that. Please send my blue cloth suit
right on to Philadelphia C. O. D. when it comes
to you. I hope you had nt gotten anything up for
me. With much love,
Bryn Mawr, March 5. HENRIETTA BlDDLE.
" I don t think there s much chance, my
dear."
MISS RIDDLE OF BRYN MAWR
"No," said Katherine, sadly, and with a
final pat administered to the screen, which still
wobbled unsteadily. "No, I suppose there
is n t. And it s eleven o clock. They 11 be
here at four ! Oh ! and I asked that pretty
junior, Miss Pratt, you know. Henrietta
knew her sister. She was in 8-."
"Ah," returned Miss Farwell, with a sus
picious sweetness, "why did n t you ask a few
more, Katherine, dear ? What with the list we
made out together and these last extra ones "
"But I thought there was n t any use hav
ing the largest double room in the house, if
we could n t have a decent-sized party in it !
And think of all those darling, thin little sand
wiches ! Oh well, we might just as well be
sensible and carry the thing through, Gracie !
But I am just as afraid as I can be : I tell you
that. And Miss Williams will freeze me stiff."
The yellow hair was snugly braided and wound
around by now, and a neat though worried
maiden sat on the couch and punched the
Harvard pillow reflectively.
" Never mind her, Kitten, but just go ahead.
You know Caroline Wilde said it was all right
to ask her if she was Miss Biddle s mother s
friend, and there was n t time to take her all
around, and you know how nice Miss Parker
[71 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
was about it. We can t help it, as you say, and
we 11 go and get the flowers as we meant to.
Have you anything this hour?"
With her room-mate to back her, to quote
the young lady herself, Miss Sewall felt equal
to almost any social function. Terrifying as her
position appeared and strangely enough, the
seniors appalled her far more than the Faculty
there was yet a certain excitement in the situ
ation. What should she say to them ? Would
they be kind about it, or would they all turn
around and go home? Would they think
"Oh, nonsense!" interrupted Grace the
practical, as these doubts were thrust upon
her. "If they re ladies, as I suppose they
are, of course they 11 stay and make it just as
pleasant for us as they can. They 11 see how
it is. Think what we d do, ourselves, you
know!"
They went down the single long street, with
the shops on either side, a red-capped, golf-
caped pair of friends, like nine hundred other
girls, yet different from them all. And they
chattered of Livy and little cakes and Trigo
nometry and pleated shirt-waists and basket
ball and Fortnightly Themes like all the
others, but in their little way they were very
social heroines, setting their teeth to carry by
MISS BIDDLE OF BRYN MAWR
storm a position that many an older woman
would have found doubtful.
They stopped at a little bakery, well down
the street, to order some rolls for the girl
across the hall from them, who had planned
to breakfast in luxury and alone on chocolate
and grape-fruit the next morning. " Miss Car
ter, 24 Washburn," said Grace, carelessly,
when Katherine whispered, "Look at her!
Isn t that funny ? Why, Grace, just see her !"
"See who whom, I mean ? (only I hate to
say c whom. ) Who is it, Kitten?"
Katherine was staring at the clerk, a tall,
handsome girl, with masses of heavy black
hair and an erect figure. As she went down
to the back of the shop again, Katherine s
eyes followed her closely.
"It s that girl that used to be in the Candy
Kitchen don t you remember? I told you
then that she looked so much like my friend
Miss Biddle. And then the Candy Kitchen
failed and I suppose she came here. And she s
just Henrietta s height, too. You know Hen
rietta stands very straight and frowns a little,
and so did this girl when you gave Alice s num
ber and she said/ Thirty-four or twenty-four?
Is n t it funny that we should see her now ?
Oh, dear ! If only she were Henrietta !"
.[73 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
Grace stared at the case of domestic bread
and breathed quickly. "Does she really look
like her, Kitten?" she said.
"Oh yes, indeed. It s quite striking. Hen
rietta s quite a type, you know nothing un
usual, only very dark and tall and all that. Of
course there are differences, though."
"What differences ?" said Grace, still look
ing intently at the domestic bread.
"Oh, Henrietta s eyes are brown, and this
girl s are black. And Henrietta has n t any
dimple, and her hands are prettier. And Hen
rietta s waist is n t so small, and she has n t
nearly so much hair, I should say. But then,
I have n t seen her for a year, and probably
there s a greater difference than I think."
"How long is it since those seniors and the
Faculty saw Henrietta?" said Grace, staring
now at a row of layer chocolate-cakes.
Her room-mate started. "Why why,
Grace, what do you mean ? It s two years,
Henrietta wrote, I think. And Miss Parker
and Miss Williams have n t seen her for much
longer than that. But but you don t mean
anything, Grace?"
Grace faced her suddenly. "Yes," she said,
"I do. You may think that because I just go
right along with this thing, I don t care at all.
[74].
MISS RIDDLE OF BRYN MAWR
But I do. I m awfully scared. I hate to think
of that Miss Ackley lifting her eyebrows the
way she will ! And Miss Hartwell said once
when somebody asked if she knew Judge Far-
well s daughter, c Oh, dear me I suppose so !
And everybody else in her class theoreti
cally ! But practically I rarely observe them !
Ugh ! She 11 observe me to-day, I hope !"
"Yes, dear, I suppose she will. And me too.
But"
"Oh, yes ! But if nobody knows how Miss
Biddle looks, and she was going to stay at the
hotel, anyway, and it would only be for two
hours, and everything would be so simple "
Katherine s cheeks grew very red and her
breath came fast. " But would we dare ? Would
she be willing? Would it be "
"Oh, my dear, it s only a courtesy ! And
everybody will think it s all right, and the
thing will go beautifully, and Miss Biddle, if
she has any sense of humor "
" Yes, indeed ! Henrietta would only be
amused oh, so amused ! And it would be
such a heavenly relief after all the worry. We
could send her off on the next train Hen
rietta, you know and dress makes such a
difference in a girl !"
"And I think she would if we asked her
[75 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
just as a favor it would n t be a question of
money ! Oh, Katherine ! I could cry for joy
if she would !"
"She d like to, if she has any fun in her
it would be a game with some point to it ! And
will you ask her, or shall I ? "
They were half in joke and half in earnest :
it was a real crisis to them. They were only
freshmen, and they had invited the seniors
and the Faculty. And two of the most promi
nent seniors ! Whom they had n t known at
all ! They had a sense of humor, but they were
proud, too, and they had a woman s horror of
an unsuccessful social function. They felt that
they were doomed to endless joking at the
hands of the whole college, and this apprehen
sion, though probably exaggerated, nerved
them to their coup d etat.
Grace walked down the shop. "I will ask
her," she said.
Katherine stood with her back turned and
tried not to hear. Suppose the girl should be
insulted ? Suppose she should be afraid ? Now
that there was a faint hope of success, she real
ized how frightened and discouraged she had
been. For it would be a success, she saw that.
Nobody would have had Miss Biddle to talk
with for more than a few minutes any how, they
[76]
MISS BIDDLE OF BRYN MAWR
had asked such a crowd. And yet she would
have been the centre of the whole affair.
" Katherine," said a voice behind her, "let
me introduce Miss Brooks, who has consented
to help us !"
Katherine held out her hands to the girl.
"Oh, thank you ! thank you !" she said.
The girl laughed. "I think it s queer," she
said, "but if you are in such a fix, I d just as
lief help you as not. Only I shall give you
away I shan t know what to say."
Grace glanced at Katherine. Then she
proved her right to all the praise she afterward
accepted from her grateful room-mate. "That
will be very easy/ she said sweetly. "Miss
Biddle, whom you will will represent, speaks
very rarely: she s not at all talkative ! "
Katherine gasped. "Oh, no!" she said
eagerly, "she s very statuesque, you know,
and keeps very still and straight, and just looks
in your eyes and makes you thinkshe s talking.
She says ( Really ? and c Fancy, now ! and f I
expect you re very jolly here, and then she
smiles. You could do that."
"Yes, I could do that," said the girl.
"Can you come to the hotel right after din
ner? " said Grace, competently, " and we 11 cram
you for an houror so on Miss Biddle s affairs."
[77 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
The girl laughed. " Why, yes/ she said, " I
guess I can get off."
So they left her smiling at them from the
domestic bread, and at two o clock they car
ried Miss Henrietta Riddle s dress-suit case to
the hotel and took Miss Brooks to her room.
And they sat her on a sofa and told her what
they knew of her alma mater and her relatives
and her character generally. And she amazed
them by a very comprehensive grasp of the
whole affair and an aptitude for mimicry that
would have gotten her a star part in the senior
dramatics. With a few corrections she spoke
very good English, and "as she d only have
to answer questions, anyhow, she need n t talk
long at a time," they told each other.
She put up her heavy hair in a twisted crown
on her head, and they put the blue cloth gown
on her, and covered the place in the front,
where it did n t fit, with a beautiful fichu that
Henrietta had apparently been led of Provi
dence to tuck in the dress-suit case. And she
rode up in a carriage with them, very much
excited, but with a beautiful color and glowing
eyes, and a smile that brought out the dimple
that Henrietta never had.
They showed her the room and the sand
wiches and the tea, and they got into their
[78 ]
MISS RIDDLE OF BRYN MAWR
clothes, not speaking, except when a great box
with three bunches of English violets was left
at their doorwith Grace s card. Then Katherine
said, "You dear thing ! " And Miss Brooks
smiled as they pinned hers on and said softly,
"Fancy, now ! "
And then they were n t afraid for her any
more.
When the pretty Miss Pratt came, a little
after four, with Miss Williams, she smiled
with pleasure at the room, all flowers and tea
and well-dressed girls, with a tall, handsome
brunette in a blue gown with a beautiful lace
bib smiling gently on a crowd of worshippers,
and saying little soft sentences that meant any
thing that was polite and self-possessed.
Close by her was her friend Miss Sewall,
of the freshman class, who sweetly answered
half the questions about Bryn Mawr that Miss
Biddle could n t find time to answer, and
steered people away who insisted on talking
with her too long. Miss Farwell, also of the
freshman class, assisted her room-mate in re
ceiving, and passed many kinds of pleasant
food, laughing a great deal at what everybody
said and chatting amicably and unabashed
with the two seniors of honor, who openly
raved over Miss Biddle of Bryn Mawr.
[79]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
As soon as Katherine had said, " May I pre
sent Miss Hartwell Miss Ackley ? " they
took their stand by the stately stranger and
talked to her as much as was consistent with
propriety.
"Is n t she perfectly charming ! " they said
to Miss Parker, and "Yes, indeed," replied
that lady, "I should have known Netta any
where. She is just what I had thought she
would be ! "
And Miss Williams, far from freezing the
pretty hostess, patted her shoulder kindly.
"Henrietta is quite worth coming to see," she
said with her best and most exquisite manner.
" I have heard of the Bry n Mawr style, and now
I am convinced. I wish all our girls had such
dignity such a feeling for the right word ! "
And they had the grace to blush. They
knew who had taught Henrietta Biddle Brooks
that right word !
At six o clock Miss Biddle had to take the
Philadelphia express. She had only stopped
over for the tea. And so the girls of the house
could not admire her over the supper-table.
But they probably appreciated her more. For
after all, as they decided in talking her over
later, it was n t so much what she said, as the
way she looked when she said it !
[80]
MISS RIDDLE OF BRYN MAWR
But only a dress-suit case marked H. L. B.
took the Philadelphia express that night, and
a tall, red-cheeked girl in a mussy checked suit
left the hotel with a bunch of violets in her
hand and a reminiscent smile on her lips.
"We simply can t thank you; we haven t
any words. You Ve helped us give the nicest
party two freshmen ever gave, if it is any
pleasure to you to know that," said Katherine.
"And now you re only not to speak of it."
"Oh, no! I shan t speak of it," said the
girl. "You need n t be afraid. Nobody that
I d tell would believe me, very much, any
how. I m glad I could help you, and I had
a lovely time lovely ! "
She smiled at them: the slow, sweet smile
of Henrietta Biddle,late of BrynMawr. "You
College ladies are certainly queer but you re
smart ! " said Miss Brooks of the bakery.
[81 ]
THE FOURTH STORY
BISCUITS EX MACHINA
IV
BISCUITS EX MACHINA
B. S. KITTS this was the signature
she had affixed in a neat clerical back
hand to all her written papers since
the beginning of freshman year; and
she had of course been called Biscuits as soon
as she had found her own particular little set of
girls and settled down to that peculiar form of
intimacy which living in barracks, however ad
vantageously organized, necessitates. She had
a sallow irregular face, fine brown eyes sur
rounded with tiny wrinkles, a taste for Thack
eray, and a keen sense of humor. It was the
last which was subsequently responsible for
this story about her.
She was quite unnoticed for two or three
years, which is a very good thing for a girl.
During that time she quietly took soundings
and laid in material, presumably, for those sa
tiric characterizations which were the terror of
her undergraduate enemies and the concealed
discomfort of those in high places. During her
junior year she began to be considered terri
bly clever, and though she was never what is
known as a Prominent Senior, she had her lit
tle triumphs here and there, and in the matter
of written papers she was a source of great com-
[85]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
fort to those whom custom compels to demand
such tributes.
She was the kind of girl who, though well
known in her own class, is quite unobserved
of the lower classes, and this, if it deprived her
of the admirations and attentions bestowed on
the prominent, saved her the many worries and
wearinesses incident to trying to please every
body at once the business of the over-popu
lar. She had a great deal of time, which may
seem absurd, but which is really quite possible
if one keeps positively offcommittees, is neither
musical nor athletic, and shuns courses involv
ing laboratory work. It is of great assistance
also in this connection to elect English Lit
erature copiously, when one has read most of
the works in question and can send home for
the reference books, thus saving an immense
amount of fruitless loitering about crowded
libraries.
Biscuits employed the time thus gained in
a fashion apparently purposeless. She loafed
about and observed, with Vanity Fair under
one arm and an apple in the other hand. She
was never the subject or the object of a violent
friendship; she was one of five or six clever
girls who hung together consistently after
sophomore year, bickering amicably and in-
[86]
BISCUITS EX MACHINA
dulging in mutual contumely when together,
defending one another promptly when apart.
The house president spoke of them bitterly
as blase and critical; the lady-in-charge re
marked suspiciously the unusual chance which
invariably seated them together at the end
of the table at the regular drawing for seats;
the collector for missions found them sceptical
and inclined to ribaldry if pushed too far; but
the Phi Kappa banked heavily on their united
efforts, and more than usually idiotic class
meetings meekly bowed to what they them
selves scornfully referred to afterward as " their
ordinary horse-sense."
One of the members of this little group was
Martha Augusta Williams. Sometimes she re
tired from it and devoted herself to solitude,
barely replying to questions and obscurely
intimating that to ennui such as hers the prat
tle of the immature and inexperienced could
hardly be supposed even by themselves to be
endurable ; sometimes she returned to it with
the air of one willing to impart to such a body
the mellow cynicism of a tolerant if fatigued
femme du monde. In the intervals of her retire
ment she wrote furiously at long-due themes,
which took the form of Richard Harding
Davis stories she did them very well or
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
modern and morbid verses of a nature to dis
turb the more conservative of those who heard
them. At any expression of disturbance Mar
tha would elaborately suppress a three-vol
ume smile and murmur something about
"meat for babes;" a performance which de
lighted her friends especially Biscuits be
yond measure. Her shelves bristled with yellow
French novels, and on her bureau a great ivory
skull with a Japanese paper snake carelessly
twined through it impressed stray freshmen
tremendously. She cut classes elaborately and
let her work drop ostentatiously in the middle
of the term, appearing at mid-years with ringed
eyes and an air of toleration strained to the
breaking point. She slept till nine and wan
dered lazily to coffee and toast at Boyden s
an hour later, at least three times a week, with
an air that would have done credit to one of
Ouida s noblemen.
And yet, in spite of all this, Martha was not
happy. The disapproval of the lady-in-charge,
the suspicions of the freshmen, the periodical
discussions with members of the Faculty, who
"regretted to be obliged to mark," etc., "when
they realized perfectly that she was capable/
etc., all these alleviated her trouble a little,
but the fads remained that her own particu-
[88]
BISCUITS EX MACHINA
lar set would never treat her seriously, and
that her name was Martha Augusta Williams.
Fancy feeling such feelings, and thinking such
thoughts, and bearing the name of Martha
Augusta Williams ! It is, to say the least, dis
piriting. And nobody had ever called her any
thing else. Harriet Williams was called, indif
ferently, Billie and Willie and Sillie. Martha
Underhill took her choice of Mattie, Nancy,
and Sister. A girl whose name was Anna Au
gusta Something had been hailed as Gustavus
Adolphus from her freshman year on; but
below her most daring flights of fiction must
ever appear those three ordinary, not to say
stodgy, names. That alone would have soured
a temper not too inclined to regard life with
favor.
Martha might have lived down the name,
but she was assured that never while Bertha
Kitts remained alive would she be able to ap
pear really wickedly interesting. For Biscuits
would tell the Story. Tell it with variations
and lights and shades and explanations adapted
to the audience. And it never seemed to pall.
Yet it was simple horribly simple.
Martha had invited a select body of sopho
mores to go with her to the palm-reader s.
There were two clever ones, who vastly ad-
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
mired her Richard Harding Davis tales, two
curious ones, who openly begged for her opin
ions and thrilled at her epigrams on Love
and Life and Experience, and, in an evil hour,
the Sutton twins, whom she admitted into the
occasion partly to impress them, and partly
so that if anything really fascinating should
come to light, Kate Sutton could impart it to
her room-mate, Patsy Pattison.
When they were assembled in the palm-
reader s parlor, Martha gravely motioned the
others to go before her, and they took their
innocent turns before the little velvet cush
ion. The Twins were admirably struck off in
a few phrases, to the delight of their friends,
and the palm-reader s reputation firmly estab
lished. In the case of one of the curious girls,
peculiar and private events were hinted at
that greatly impressed her, for "how could
she have known that, girls?" The clever girls
were comforted with fame and large "scrib
bler s crosses," also wealthy marriages and so
cial careers, but they looked enviously at
Martha, nevertheless, and she smiled mater
nally on them, as was right. There remained
only the other quiet little girl, and she mod
estly suggested waiting till another day, "so
there 11 be lots of time for yours, Miss Will-
[90]
BISCUITS EX MACHINA
iams;" but Martha smiled kindly and waved
her to the seat, suggesting that hers might
not be a long session, with an amused glance
at the empty, little pink palm.
The palm-reader turned and twisted and
patted and asked her age, and finally an
nounced that it was a remarkable hand. The
dying interest revived, and even Martha s
, eyebrows went up with amazement as the seer
spoke darkly of immense influence; tact to
the nth degree; unusual amount of experience,
or at the least, "intuitional discoveries;" two
great artistic means of expression; previous
affairs of the heart, and an inborn capacity for
ruling the destinies of others marked re
semblance to the hands of Cleopatra and Sara
Bernhardt. It was hands like that that moved
the world, she said. The sophomores regarded
their friend with interest and awe, noted that
she blushed deeply at portions of the revela
tion, recollected her Sunday afternoon impro
visations at the piano and her request for a
more advanced course in harmony, and at
tached a hitherto unfelt importance to her
heavy mails.
Martha may have regretted her politeness,
but she smothered her surprise, sank, with an
abstracted air, upon the chair before the cush-
[91 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
ion, and with a face from which all emotion
had been withdrawn and eyes which defied
any wildest revelation to disturb their settled
ennui, awaited the event. The palm-reader
glanced at the back of the slim hand, noted
the face, touched the finger tips.
"How old are you, please?" she asked.
Martha wearily announced that she was
twenty-one. She was conscious of its being
a terribly ordinary age. The palm-reader
nodded. "Ah !" she said easily. "Well, come
to me again in a year or two. I can t really
tell much now."
Martha gasped at her. "You can t tell
much!"
The palm-reader took her hand again.
"There s nothing much to tell!" she ex
plained. "The hand isn t really developed
yet it s the opposite from the last young
lady s, you might say."
She became conscious of a cold silence
through the room, and added a few details.
"There s a good general ability ; no particular
line of talent, I should say; orderly, regular
habits; a very kind heart; I can t see any
events in particular; you Ve led a very quiet
life, I should say; fond of reading; I shouldn t
say you d met many people or travelled
[92 ]
BISCUITS EX MACHINA
much" she scrutinized the hand more
closely "you 11 probably develop a strong
religious feeling "
She stopped and smiled deprecatingly. "It
is really impossible to say very much," she
said, "just now. It s what we call an imma
ture hand !"
For months after that Martha woke in the
night and tried to forget the nightmare of a
terrible figure that led her to an amphitheatre
of grinning enemies, and leered at her : // V
what we call an Immature Hand I She could
have suppressed the others, but the Sutton
twins were beyond earthly and human sup
pression. It seemed to her that she never met
them or passed them in a corridor without
hearing their jovial assurance: "Oh, Martha
Williams is all right ! Why, the idea ! She s
as kind a girl as ever lived she s nothing
like that story. Gracious, no ! She s never
been to Paris she lives in Portland. Why,
her father s a Sunday School Superintendent!
Oh, bother ! She s as good as Alberta May,
every bit ! She has a strong religious " and
somebody passed on, assured heavens, per
haps admiring her character ! At such times
Martha would read furiously in her French
novels or regard the skull pensively or sit up
[93 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
all night, which annoyed her room-mate and
the lady-in-charge. Her room-mate was an
absolutely unimportant person, and does not
come into the story at all.
It is now time to revert to the Twins.
When they appeared in the house, two sol
emn-eyed, pigtailed imps from Buffalo, they
were packed away together in a double room
on the third floor, and except for their amaz
ing resemblance, were absolutely unnoted. The
matron uneasily fancied a certain undue dis
turbance on the third floor, the evening of
their arrival, but on going to that level she
found all as still as the grave, and immedi
ately went back downstairs. It is only due to
her, however, to say that she never again
made such an error. From that time on any
abnormal quiet in the house was to her as the
trumpet to the war-horse; and she mounted
unerringly to the all-too-certain scene of ac
tion. Their plans for the first year were rather
crude, though astonishingly effective at the
time. It was they who invented the paper bag
of water dropped from the fourth floor to
burst far below, and waken the house with
the most ghastly hollow explosion; it was
they who let a pair of scissors down two flights
to tap against the pane of an unfortunate en-
[94]
BISCUITS EX MACHINA
emy in the senior class, and send her into con
vulsions of nervous and, as they said, guilty
fear. It was they who stuck new caramels to
their door-knob, and oblivious to the ma
tron s admonitions of the hour, waited till in
exasperation she seized the knob, when they
met her disgust with soap and apologies; it was
they who left the gas brightly burning and the
door temptingly ajar at i o. 1 5, so that the long-
suffering woman pounced upon them with
just recrimination, only to find her stored-up
wrath directed against two night-gowned fig
ures bowed over their little white beds, as it
were two Infant Samuels. It is doubtful if a
devotional exercise ever before or since has
roused such mingled feelings in the bosom of
the chance spectator.
It was they who beyond a shadow of doubt
won the basket-ball game for the freshmen
an unprecedented viclory by their marvel
lous intuition of each other s intentions and
their manner of being everywhere at once and
playing into each other s hands with an un
canny certainty. This gave them position and
weight among their mates, which they duly ap
preciated. They were the recognized jesters of
the class, and their merry, homely faces were
sure of answering grins wherever they appeared.
[95]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
When they returned sophomore year more
alike than ever, with happy plans for the best
double room on the second floor, they were
met by quite another kind of grin: its owner,
Mrs. Harrow, would have perhaps described
it as firm and pleasant the Twins referred
to it bitterly as hypocritical and disgusting.
"No, Martha, no. It s no use to coax me
I can t have it. I cannot go through an
other such year. If you wish to remain in the
house, you must separate. You can have No. 10
with Alberta Bunting, and Kate can go in with
Margaret she says she is perfectly willing,
rather than give up the room, and Helen is
not coming back till next year. Now, I don t
want to have to argue about it; I think you
are better apart."
No one ever accused Mrs. Harrow of tact.
Her placid firmness was almost the most ex
asperating thing about her. Her decisions, if
apparently somewhat feather-beddish, ranked,
nevertheless, with those of the Medes and
Persians, and the Twins walked haughtily
away beaten but defiant.
Of course it never occurred to them to leave
the house, and Kate, after a time, grew quite
contented, for Miss Pattison was eminently
pleasant and tadful, kept the room in beauti-
[96]
BISCUITS EX MACHINA
ful order, and spent a great deal of time in the
Dewey with her sister, an instructor in the col
lege, and her great friend Cornelia Burt, who
was off the campus. This left the room to the
Twins, who were almost as much together as
of yore. But Martha was in quite another case.
In her the insult of a dictated separation
rankled continually, and her hitherto mild
contempt for Mrs. Harrow deepened into a
positively appalling enmity. Circumstances
unfortunately assisted her feeling, for beyond
a doubt Alberta May Bunting was not adapted
to her new room-mate.
She was a wholesome, kindly creature, with
high principles and no particular waist-line.
She drank a great deal of milk, and was a
source of great relief to her teachers, her reci
tations being practically perfect. From her
sophomore year she had been wildly, if sol
idly, addicted to zoology, and to her, after
hours spent in the successful chase of the
doomed insect, the grasshopper was literally
a burden, for she slew him by the basketful.
She rendered the surrounding territory frog-
less in her zeal for laboratory practice, and in
her senior year it was rumored that stray cats
fled at her approach: "She ll cut me up in
my sleep," said Martha, gloomily, "and soak
[97 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
me in formaline in the bath-tub the idiot !"
For, although the "h Arrow-that-fly eth-by-
day-and-the-terror-that-walketh-by-night,"as
Martha Williams, in a burst of inspiration,
had named her, could not, of course, have
known it, Sutton M., as she was most com
monly called, loathed and despised bugs, rep
tiles, and crawling and dismembered things
generally, more than aught else beside. She
regarded an interest in such things as an in
dication of mild insanity, and as a character
istic of Alberta May s such a predilection as
sumed the proportions of a malignant in
sult.
"It s bad enough to have her drink milk
like a cow, and eat graham crackers like a
like a steam-engine" she confided to her sym
pathetic sister, "and smell like a whole bio
logical laboratory, and glower at me, and bob
ble her head like a China image whenever I
open my mouth, and call me Mottha, which
I despise, and say, c Why, the ideal Why,
Mottha, the idea I What do you mean, Mot
tha ? without putting little bottles of Things
all around, and my having to upset them.
My gym suit made me sick to put on for a
week because I upset some nasty little claws all
pickled in something per cent, alcohol on the
[98 ]
BISCUITS EX MACHINA
sleeve, and I kept thinking the legs were walk
ing on me ugh ! they were leggy claws !"
The h Arrow-that-flyeth-by-day had fondly
hoped that Alberta would "do Martha Sut-
ton a world of good," because of her exem
plary, regular habits and her calm, sensible
nature, but this consummation, though de
voutly to be wished, was fated never to be
witnessed. Everyone heard the wails and gibes
of Sutton M., but to few or none were the
woes of Alberta May made known. But that
she must have had them, her attitude at the
time of the crisis conclusively proved.
The Twins, in the course of their myste
rious loitering, overheard a somewhat senti
mental discussion between Evelyn Lyon and
an extremely stiff and correct young man from
Amherst, as to whether chivalry and openly
expressed devotion to the fair were not dis
appearing from the earth. "Men like shirt
waists and golf-shoes," Evelyn had been heard
to murmur, with a glance at her fluffy chiffon
and bronze slippers, and the senior had pro
tested that they did not, and that emotion, if
controlled, was as deep as in the balcony-sere
nade days. "In fact," said he, finally, " Esta-
brook and I will serenade you Wednesday
night."
[99]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
"You would never dare," said Evelyn, with
a glance at his eye-glasses and collar, which
for height and circumference might have been
a cuff. "You d be afraid the girls would
laugh." The senior looked nettled. "Expect
us at ten on Wednesday next," said he. "It
won t necessarily be the Glee and Banjo Club,
you understand, but it will be a real, old-fash
ioned serenade." Then, as Evelyn smiled ma
liciously, he added, "Only you must appear
at the casement, and throw flowers, you know
that s what they did." Evelyn frowned, but
agreed. "At the end of the song, I will," she
said, with visions of the night-watchman hast
ing to the scene.
The Twins were unaccountably strolling
about as the senior left the house, and won
dered with great distinctness and repetition
why on earth Evelyn should say she d be in
14 at the front when of course she d be in
the East corner on the first floor. "She has
some game up," shrieked Martha, and Kate
called back, "Of course she has some one
will be awfully left, that s all !"
The senior listened, grinned, muttered that
women told everything they knew, and went
his way. On next Wednesday night, the entire
house being congregated in the hall near
BISCUITS EX MACHINA"
No. 14, where Evelyn, not to be found want
ing in case they should get through a verse, was
sorting carnations, a husky burst of song en
livened the East corner, a mandolin and a
guitar having raced through a confused prel
ude under the spur of a youth hopping with
nervousness and sputtering as he punched
the mandolin-player: "Hang it all, Pete, get
along, get along ! He 11 be here in a minute
whoop it up, can t you ?"
A muffled baritone began, standing so close
to the window with a light in it that its owner
could have touched the sill with his shoulder:
Last night the nightingale waked me,
Last night when all was
The shade went up, the window followed,
and the eyes of the musicians beheld, below
an audience of house-maids, the only people
at present on that side of the house, an enor
mous woman, with gray hair in curling-kids,
and a blanket-wrapper which added to her
size, grasping a lamp in her hand and regard
ing them with a mingling of amazement, irri
tation, and authority that caused their blood
to curdle and their voices to cease. Pattering
feet, a lantern turned on them, and a voice:
" Ere, ere, what you doing? H all h off the
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
campus after ten get along, now!" com
pleted their confusion, and they left, with an
attempt at dignity and a slowness which they
had occasion to curse; for as they passed the
front of the house, from out of the air above
their heads, apparently, two sweet and boyish
voices, a first and second soprano, lifted up
to the fresh October sky an ancient and beau
tiful hymn:
Sometimes a light sur/>r/ses
The Christian while he sings y
It is
A window banged forcibly, and the min
strels stood upon no order but fled to their
carriage and rattled out of town.
Evelyn Lyon, with set teeth and artistically
loosened hair, rushed down the hall behind
Martha Sutton, who made the room she was
aiming for, slammed the door, realized that the
key was lost, and dragged the first piece of fur
niture that came to hand against it. This was
Alberta May s desk, and upon it were the col
lected results of her vacation work at Wood s
Holl. Six jars upset under the impact of Eve
lyn s weight, a dozen mounted cross-sections
jingled in the dark, a pint bottle of ink soaked
a thick and beautifully illustrated note-book;
and as the Terror- that- walketh-by- night
I02
BISCUITS EX MACHINA
headed Evelyn to her door and mounted a
flight to quell the rising tumult, Sutton M.,
with a hysterical sob, for she was tingling with
a delicious excitement, huddled the desk back
into the corner, hoped hone of the bugs were
around the floor, and dropped into bed, won
dering how ever Alberta May could sleep
through such a night.
And now though perhaps you may have
imagined that there was never going to be any
story now we are coming to it, and though
it is short, all the characters appear. Alberta
May, with an ugly brick-red flush, told Sut
ton M. that she need never speak to her again,
for no answer would be forthcoming, and that
she must have her things out of the room be
fore night. Martha was really horribly fright
ened, and begged to be allowed to copy the
note-book and hire some one to make the
slides and re-pickle the scattered Things; but
Alberta May merely shook her head, replied
that she accepted apologies but could not speak
again, and kept her word, for she never noticed
Martha from then till the lid of June.
The h Arrow-that-flyeth-by-daygave Mar
tha an address that reduced her to a pulp, and
having sent the Twins off to cry in each other s
arms till dinner-time and got the doclor for
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
Evelyn, who had sprained her ankle in the
rush, she sat down to a cup of tea and coun
cil.
To her entered Biscuits, and they talked
of odds and ends till Mrs. Harrow had grown
a little calm. The girls in the house accused
Biscuits of a hypocritical and unnatural inter
est in the h Arrow: Biscuits denied this, alleg
ing that she was merely ordinarily courteous
and saw no occasion for treating her like a
dog, which somewhat strong language was
addressed with intention to a few of her friends
who certainly did not display any undue con
sideration in their manner to the lady in ques
tion. She was wont to add calmly that she saw
no sense in having those in authority hate you
when a little politeness would so easily pre
vent it. And many times had she successfully
interceded for the offender and gained seats
for guests and obtained the parlor for danc
ing purposes on nights not mentioned in the
bond. On these accounts she made an unusu
ally fine house president in her senior year,and
though as a sophomore she had been but sus
piciously regarded by that officer, she made
as firm a bond as is perhaps possible between
powers so hostile as those with which she
struggled.
[ 104 ]
BISCUITS EX MACHINA
To-day she listened sympathetically as Mrs.
Harrow held forth, concluding with,
"Now, Bertha, something must be done. I
hate dreadfully to make a change, so early in
the year, too, but Alberta is decided, and says
that she will leave the house to-morrow unless
Martha leaves to-night. And Alberta is per
fectly justified : nobody could be expected to
put up with it. I don t know whom to put her
with: she certainly can t be trusted with her
friends, and I can t feel that I have any right
to put her anywhere else. I hate to have to
admit that I can t manage them Miss Rob
erts insists that they re fine girls and will out
grow it all, and I have great respect for her
opinion, and yet think of that disgraceful
performance last night ! It would have done
credit to a boarding-school ! I was so dis
gusted "
"Yes, indeed, and I Ve talked to them,
Mrs. Harrow, and told them just how the
house feels about it, but don t you think that it
was rather boarding-schoolish in Evelyn ? She
started it all, you know."
"Oh, well, of course. Evelyn shouldn t
have but then she is a good, quiet girl, and
Oh, not that I would excuse her ! "
"Certainly not," said Biscuits, briskly. This
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
was good management on her part, for Evelyn
had one friend in the house to the Twins ten,
though a favorite with Mrs. Harrow.
"Now, Mrs. Harrow, I Ve got an idea, and
truly, I think it would work," she added per
suasively. When she had unfolded the idea, the
lady-in-charge could hardly believe her ears.
"Why, Bertha Kitts, you must be crazy !
Nothing could induce me to think of it for
a moment nothing ! It would be the worst
possible influence ! "
Biscuits argued gently. Her three years of
consistent good sense and politeness stood in
her favor, and though Mrs. Harrow had no
sense of humor whatever, she was enabled to
perceive a certain poetic justice in the plan set
before her.
"You know, Mrs. Harrow," she concluded,
" that at bottom they re both nice girls ! They re
awfully irritating at times, and of course you
feel that they Ve both occasioned a great deal
of trouble; but they re both honorable, and
I m sure it will be all right: truly, I d be
willing to take the responsibility if I can get
them to consent to it!"
" Very well," said Mrs. Harrow, unwillingly,
" you know them both better than I do, Bertha,
of course, and it certainly could n t be any
[ 1 06 ]
BISCUITS EX MACHINA
worse than it is! But at the first outbreak I
shall take the matter into my own hands, and
act very severely, if necessary !"
Biscuits went directly upstairs and sought
out Martha Williams, who lounged on the
couch with Loti in her hand and a bag of
chocolate peppermints in her lap. Her room
mate, observing that Biscuits glanced at the
clock as she entered, murmured something
about getting a History note-book and oblig
ingly disappeared.
"That s a good harmless creature," ob
served Biscuits, approvingly.
"Yes, she s in very good training," the
creature s room-mate returned. "Have a pep
permint?"
"Pity she can t room with Alberta May,"
said Biscuits, lightly; "she d give her no trou
ble!"
" Lord, no ! " Martha agreed; " she would n t
trouble a fly!"
Biscuits wandered about the room and ab
sent-mindedly picked up a sheaf of papers.
"Themes back?" she inquired. Martha
nodded.
" Me see em?" Martha shrugged her
shoulders in a manner to be envied of the
Continent.
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
Biscuits opened at a poem that caught her
eye, and read it. Martha s eyes were apparently
fixed on Madame Chrysantheme, but they wan
dered occasionally to .Biscuits face as she read.
The poem was called,
THE LIFTING VEIL
Do you love me now ?
Ah, your mouth is cold !
Yet you taught me how
Are we growing old ?
Did you love me then ?
Ah, your eyes are wet !
If the memory s sweet,
Why will you forget ?
Could you love me still ?
Hush ! you shall not say !
Love is not of will
Shall I go away ?
Dare you love me now ?
Let me burn my ships !
I, myself, am not so sure
Am I worth your lips ?
Um ah yes," said Biscuits, "sounds
something like Browning, doesn t it?"
Martha looked only politely interested.
" Do you think so ? " she said impersonally.
[ 108 ]
BISCUITS EX MACHINA
"Yes. I like that line about the ships/
added Biscuits, tentatively; "it er seems
to er imply so much!"
Martha looked enigmatically at the skull.
"Does it?" she asked.
Biscuits caught a glimpse of a long, hastily
written story, and gasped.
"Why, Martha, did you really hand that
in?" she demanded.
" Certainly I did," said Martha; "why not ? "
"Because it s really shocking, you know,"
Biscuits replied. "What did she say?"
Martha hesitated, but a twinkle slipped
into her eye and she smiled as she replied.
"Look and see," she said.
Biscuits turned to the last page, passing
many an underlined word or phrase by the
way, and read in crimson ink at the bottom :
Mallock has done this better: you are getting
very careless in your use of relatives. At which
Biscuits smiled wisely and reassured herself
of an announcement she had made in the mid
dle of her junior year to the effect that even
among the Faculty one ran across occasional
evidences of real intelligence.
"Martha," she said abruptly, "I meant
what I said about Mary and Alberta they d
make a very good pair."
[ I0 9 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
"And Miss Sutton and I " returned
Martha, sardonically.
"Precisely," said Biscuits, "Miss Sutton
and you. Oh, I know nobody has the slight
est right to ask it of you and we all supposed
you would n t, but at the same time I thought
I d just lay it before you. I firmly believe,
Martha, that you are the only person in this
house capable of managing Martha Sutton!"
"I ?" And Madame Chrysantheme dropped
to the floor.
"Yes, you. Now, Martha, just look at it:
you know that the girl is a perfect child you
know that she means well enough, and in her
way she has a keen sense of humor. Now you
are much more mature than the average girl
up here and you take er broader views
of things than most of them. You would n t
be so shocked at the, things Suttie does; you
could, very gradually, you know, convey to
her that her ideas of humor were just a little
crude, you know, and that would strike her
far more than the lectures that Alberta used
to read her by the hour."
"Oh! Alberta!" Martha gasped. "Alberta
was enough to drive anybody to drink!"
"Just so. Well, as I told Mrs. Harrow,
you were the one, but of course no one had
BISCUITS EX MACHINA
the least right to press it. And of course, in
your last year, and all that, and naturally you
have n t any special interest in her, and it s
all right if you won t."
Martha scowled for a moment and appeared
to be reviewing her own past life, rapidly and
impartially.
" It would be a good thing to have her kept
out of the halls, at least," she announced, at
last, irrelevantly.
"That s what I told Mrs. Harrow," said
Biscuits, eagerly. "You see, Alberta bored her
so, Martha. She s a clever child and she likes
clever people. She needs tact, and Alberta
has n t the tad: of a hen. Only, you see, Mrs.
Harrow felt that in a great many ways the
example "
Martha rose and confronted her guest. " I
hope you understand, Biscuits, that if I ever
did go into the kindergarten business I should
know how to conduct myself properly. I have
never for one moment tried to fit everybody
to my own standards : I appreciate perfectly
that things are er relative, and that what
may be perfectly safe for me is not necessarily
so for others."
Biscuits coughed and said that she had al
ways known that, and it was for just that rea-
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
son that she had hesitated to ask Martha to
give up her ways and habits : habits which if
harmless to the unprejudiced observer were a
trifle irregular, viewed from the strictest stand
point of a college house.
"There s no particular reason why you
should," she concluded, "and perhaps, any
how, as Mrs. Harrow says "
"Perhaps what?" snapped Martha.
"Oh, nothing! Only she doesn t believe
you could do it, and of course she perfectly
loathes having to make a change this way
she says it s a terrible precedent and "
" See here, Biscuits," said Martha, solemnly,
" never mind about my habits. I suppose,"
magnificently, "it won t hurt me to get to bed
at ten, once in a way, and it s only till June,
anyhow. She is a bright enough child, and as
you say, she needs tact. If it keeps the house
quiet and saves you dinging at em all the time,
I can do it, I suppose. I might try studying for
a change before mid-years, too."
Biscuits got up to go. "I appreciate this
very much, Martha," she said gravely. "I
know what it means to you, but I really
think you 11 do her a lot of good I mean,"
at a sudden pucker of Martha s brows, "I
mean, of course, that a person to whom her
[ *]
BISCUITS EX MACHINA
badness does n t seem so very terrible will be
a revelation to her."
"Oh, yes!" said Martha.
Biscuits waylaid Sutton M. on the stairs
after dinner and suggested a conversation in
her own cosey little single room. Sutton M.
accompanied her, suspiciously.
"Now, what do you think you re going to
do ?" she inquired bitterly, as Biscuits offered
a shiny apple and tipped Henry Esmond off
the Morris chair. "Going to put me with
some spook or other, I suppose I 11 leave
the house first. I ve had enough of that !"
"No, you won t, either," Biscuits replied.
"You 11 be as good as Kate is, and not make
me curse the day I was elecled house presi
dent. Now,Suttie, I m going to tell you some
thing that must not go beyond this room
beyond this room," she repeated impressively.
"Not Kate? I have to tell Kate," said Sut
ton M., but with an air of deepest interest.
Outsiders rarely confided in the Twins.
"Well, Kate then, but nobody else. Prom
ise?"
Sutton M. nodded.
"I m going to do what might be greatly
criticised, Suttie, I m going to tell you that
I think it would be a very good thing for
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
Martha Williams if you would quietly go in
and room with her and let Mary come in with
Alberta. Now, I Ve done no beating about the
bush I Ve told you out straight and plain.
What do you say ?"
" I say it s a fool arrangement, and that I
won t have a thing to do with it," said Sutton
M., promptly.
"All right," returned Biscuits, calmly,
"that s all. Is that apple green? I don t
mind it, but it makes some people sick."
"You know perfectly well Martha s the last
girl in the world we d fight night and day."
" I know she s one of the brightest girls in
the college, and that she s getting low in her
work, and it s a shame, too," said Biscuits.
"Would I make her higher?"
Sutton M. tried to be sarcastic, but she
showed in her manner the erFedt of the con
fidence.
"Yes, you would," said Biscuits. "Mary
Winter s just spoiling her. She s a perfect non
entity, and she studies like a grammar-school
girl it just disgusts Martha. And Mary ad
mires her so that Martha just rides over her
and gets to despise good regular studying be
cause Mary does it so childishly. If some one
could be with her who was bright and jolly
[ "4]
BISCUITS EX MACHINA
and liked fun and had a sense of humor and
did good work, too, for you two do study
well I 11 give you that credit it would be
the making of her. And Mary s such an idiot.
She shows that Martha shocks her so much
that Martha just keeps it up to horrify her "
"I know," said Sutton M., wisely, "like
those cigarettes Martha never really liked
them."
"Exactly," Biscuits agreed, though with an
effort, for the Twins certainly knew far too
much. "The moment I told Martha that it
was n t in the least a question of morals with
us but entirely a matter of good taste that
we did n t think she was wicked at all but that
it was very bad for the house, and that when
we were all represented in the Police Gazette
as trotting over the campus with cigarettes in
our mouths, the college would get all the credit
and she would n t get any why, she stopped
right away. And considering how it irritated her
I think she was very nice and sensible about
it."
"But just because Kate and I studied, Mar
tha would n t, would she ?"
"Yes, I think she would. She d feel that
it was an example to you if she did n t. And
she s so bright. It s a shame she should flunk
[ "S]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
as she does. She knows we all know she could
get any marks she chose, so she does n t care."
Sutton M. looked thoughtful. "I think
her stories are fine," she remarked. "And I
suppose I d have to go with some spook, if
I don t," she added gloomily.
"Mrs. Harrow feels bad enough about the
change," Biscuits interposed, "and she said
she d act very severely next time. I persuaded
her that you d that is, I didn t persuade
her, I m afraid. Of course, she feels that if you
should by any chance drag Martha into your
kiddish nonsense, why she does n t like
Martha any too well, you know, and "
"Biscuits," interrupted Sutton M., hastily,
"if I should go in with Martha, and I must
say I should think anybody d be welcome to
her after that stick of a Mary Winter, I
would n t drag her into a thing truly, I
would n t. I d be careful ! Kate says that
Patsy says she s lots of fun and awfully jolly
and nice when you know her," she added.
Biscuits assented warmly. "And you un
derstand, Suttie," she continued, "that it s
not everybody I d speak to in this way or
that Martha would have. Martha s rather par
ticular: she understands that Alberta May is
a little trying, good and kind as she is. But I
[ "6 ]
BISCUITS EX MACHINA
realize what a good thing it would be for Mar
tha to be with somebody who would n t be so
shocked whenever she said anything to that
skull."
"Oh, that skull !" said Sutton M., with a
wave of her brown hand. She looked up and
caught Biscuits eye with the sharp, uncom
promisingly literal Sutton twinkle. "Biscuits,"
she demanded, "did anybody ever know of
anything really bad that Martha ever did
ever?"
"Never," said Biscuits, promptly.
Sutton M. chuckled: "That s what we al
ways thought," she said, and added: "Well,
I 11 try it, and," very solemnly, "you can trust
me, Biscuits I promise you."
When Biscuits went back to Martha s room
she missed the skull, and beheld on the newly
dusted bookshelves a decorous row of histori
cal works and an assortment of German clas
sics. This gratified her, for it was with the Ger
man department that Martha s erratic methods
of study most obviously clashed. Martha was
detaching from the wall a pleasing engraving
representing a long white lady with her head
hanging off from a couch, on which she some
what obtrusively reclined, an unwholesome de
mon perching upon her chest and a ghastly
[ 117]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
white horse peeping at her between gloomy
curtains. This cheerful effect was entitled
"The Nightmare," and as it left the wall,
Martha fell upon an enlargement in colored
chalk of one of Mr. Beardsley s most vivid
conceptions, and laid them away together.
"Why, Martha!" she exclaimed, "this is
really too much there s no reason why you
should take your things down !"
Martha smiled tolerantly. "Oh, it makes
no matter to me," she said indifferently. "I
know the Loti by heart, anyhow, and though
none of these things affecl: me in the slightest
way I really can t see anything in them one
way or the other still I frankly refuse to take
any responsibility. If the child should happen
to feel that the skull, for instance "
Biscuits grinned. "It s one less thing to
dust, anyway," she remarked, and left Mar
tha to her work of reconstruction.
She wandered in, one evening, two or three
weeks later, to get a German dictionary, and
beheld with a pardonable pride the Twins
gabbling their irregular verbs in whispers by
the lamp, while Martha, stretched on the couch
beneath the gas, communed with Schiller and
the dictionary. The Twins gave her one swift
ineffable glance, kicked each other under the
[ "8 ]
BISCUITS EX MACHINA
table, and bent their eyes upon their gram
mars: Martha nodded to her, indicated the
Twins with one of her three-volume smiles,
and drawled as she handed her the dictionary,
"In the words of Mr. Dooley and the Cu
bans, c Pa-pa has lost his job, and all is now
happiness and a cottage-organ !"
THE FIFTH STORY
THE EDUCATION OF ELIZABETH
V
THE EDUCATION OF ELIZABETH
i
FROM Miss ELIZABETH STOCKTON
TO Miss CAROLYN SAWYER
Lowell^ Mass., Sept. 10, 189-.
MY DEAREST CAROL : The thing we
have both wished so much has
happened! Papa has finally con
sented to let me go to college ! It
has taken a long time and a great dealvi persua
sion, and Mamma never cared anything about it,
you know, herself. But I laid it before her in a
way that I really am ashamed of! I never thought
I d do anything like it ! But I had to, it seemed
to me. I told her that she had often spoken of
what a mistake Mrs. Hall made in letting Mar
jory come out so soon, and that I should cer
tainly be unwilling to stay at Mrs. Meade s an
other year. I m doing advanced work now, and
I m terribly bored. The girls all seem so very
young, somehow ! And I said that I could n t
come out till I was twenty-two, if I went to
college. I teased so that she gave way, but we
had a terrible siege with Papa. He is the dear
est man in the world, but just a little tiny
bit prejudiced, you know. He wants me to
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
finish at Mrs. Meade s and then go abroad for
a year or two. He wants me to do something
with my music. But I told him of the fine Mu
sic School there was at Smith, and how much
harder I should work there, naturally. He
talked a good deal about the art advantages
and travel and French you know what I
think about the terrible narrowness of a board
ing-school education ! It is shameful, that an
intellectual girl of this century should be tied
down to French and Music ! And how can the
scrappy little bit of gallery sight-seeing that
I should do possibly equal four years of ear
nest, intelligent, regular college work? He
said something about marriage oh, dear ! It
is horrible that one should have to think of
that ! I told him, with a great deal of dignity
and rather coldly, I m afraid, that my life
would be, I hoped, something more than the mere
evanescent glitter of a social butterfly ! I think
it really impressed him. He said, "Oh, very
well very well!" So I m coming, dearest,
and you must write me all about what books
I d better get and just what I d better know
of the college customs. I m so glad you re on
the campus. You know Uncle Wendell knows
the President very well indeed he was in
college with him and, somehow or other,
THE EDUCATION OF ELIZABETH
I Ve got a room in the Lawrence, though
we did n t expect it so soon ! I feel inspired
already when I think of the chapel and the big
Science Building and that beautiful library!
I Ve laid out a course of work that Miss Bev
erly that s the literature teacher thinks
very ambitious, but I am afraid she does n t
realize the intention of a college, which is a
little different, I suppose, from a boarding-
school^] I have planned to take sixteen hours
for the four years. I must say I think it s
rather absurd to limit a girl to that who really
\sperfettly able to do more. Perhaps you could
see the Register if that s what it is and
tell him I could just as well take eighteen, and
then I could do that other Literature. I must
go to try on something really, it s very hard
to convince Mamma that Smith is n t a sum
mer resort ! Good-by, dearest, we shall have
suchfoautiful times together I msure you ll
be as excited as I am. We shall for once see
as much of each other as we want to I wish
I could study with you ! I m coming up on
the 8. 20 Wednesday morning.
Devotedly yours,
ELIZABETH.
C5]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
ii
FROM Miss CAROLYN SAWYER
TO Miss ELIZABETH STOCKTON
Lake Forest, III., Sept. 17, 189-.
DEAR BESS: I m very glad you re com
ing up it s the only place in the world. I m
not going to be able to meet you I m com
ing back late this year Mrs. Harte is go
ing to give our crowd a house-party at Lake-
mere. Is n t that gay ? I met Arnold Ritch this
summer. Heknows you, he said. I never heard
you speak of him. He s perfectly smooth his
tennis is all right, too. For heaven s sake, don t
try to take sixteen hours on the campus,
too ! It will break you all up. You 11 get on
the Glee Club, probably bring up your
songs, by the way and you 11 want to be on
the Team. Have you got that blue organdie ?
You 11 want something about like that, pretty
soon. If you can help it, don t get one of those
Bagdad things for your couch. I m deadly
sick of mine. Get that portiere thing you used
to have on the big chair at home. It s more
individual. We re getting up a little dance for
the a6th. If you know any man you could
have up, you can come it will be a good
chance to meet some of the upper-class girls.
[ 1*6]
THE EDUCATION OF ELIZABETH
We may not be able to have it, though. Don t
tell Kate Saunders about this, please. She d
ask Lockwood over from Amherst, and I Ve
promised Jessie Holden to ask him for her.
We shall probably have Sue for class presi
dent this year I m glad of it, too. There
will be a decent set of ushers. I suppose you 11
want me for your senior for the sophomore-
senior thing. I 11 keep that if you wish. I shall
get up by the 24th. I m in the Morris. Don t
forget your songs.
Yours in haste,
C. P. S.
in
FROM MRS. HENRY STOCKTON
TO MRS. JOHN SAWYER
Lowell, Mass., Sept. 23, 189-.
DEAR ELLA: In spite of great uncertainty
on my part and aclual unwillingness on her
father s, Lizzie has started for Smith. It seems
a large undertaking, for four years, and I must
say I would rather have left her at Mrs.
Meade s. But her heart is set on it, and it is
very hard to deny her. She argues so, too;
really, the child has great ability, I think.
She fairly convinced me. It has always seemed
to me that a girl with good social surround-
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
ings, a good home library, and an intellectual
home atmosphere does very well with four
years at so good a school as Mrs. M cade s,
and a little travel afterwards. Lizzie has quite
a little musical talent, too, and I should have
liked her to devote more attention to that.
Very frankly, I cannot say that I have been
able to see any improvement in Carrie since
she went away. I suppose it will wear off, but
when I saw her this summer she had a manner
that I did not like so well as her very pleas
ant air three no, two years ago. It seemed
a curious mixture of youth and decision, that
had, however, no maturity in it. Katharine
Saunders, too, seems to me so utterly irre
sponsible for a young woman of twenty-one,
and yet so almost arrogant. I expecled she
would know a great deal, as she studied Greek
before she went, but she told me that she al
ways skipped the Latin and Greek quotations
in books ! She seems to be studying nothing
but French and Literature and History; her
father could perfectly well have taught her all
that, and was anxious to, but she would hear
nothing of it. She wanted the college life, she
said. Ah, well, I suppose the world has moved
on since we read Livy at Miss Hopkins ! I
picked up a Virgil of Lizzie s yesterday and
[
THE EDUCATION OF ELIZABETH
was astonished to find how it all came back.
We felt very learned, then, but now it is noth
ing.
I hope Carrie will be good to my little girl
and help her perhaps with her lessons not
that I fear Lizzie will need very much help !
Miss Beverly assures me that she has never
trained a finer mind. Her essay on Jane Austen
was highly praised by Dr. Strong, the rector
of St. Mary s. Of course,dear Ella, you won t
resent my criticism of Carrie I should never
dream of it with any one but an old and valued
friend, and I shall gladly receive the same from
you. But Lizzie has always been all that I
could wish her.
Yours with love,
SARAH B. STOCKTON.
IV
FROM MR. WILLIAM B. STOCKTON
TO Miss ELIZABETH STOCKTON
Boston, Mass., Off. 16, 189-.
MY DEAR NIECE : Your mother advises me
of your having just entered Smith Academy.
I had imagined that your previous schooling
would have been sufficient, but doubtless your
parents know best. Your mother seems a lit
tle alarmed as to your success, but I have re-
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
assured her. I trust the Stockton blood. What
ever your surroundings may be, you can never,
I am sure, set yourself a higher model than
your mother. I have never known her to lack
the right word or action under any circum
stances, and if you can learn that in your
schooling, your friends and relatives will be
more than satisfied.
I enclose my cheque for fifty dollars ($50),
in case you should have any special demand on
your purse not met by your regular allowance.
I remember many such in my own schooldays.
Wishing you success in your new life, I re
main,
Your affectionate uncle,
WILLIAM B. STOCKTON.
FROM Miss ELIZABETH CRAIGIE
TO Miss ELIZABETH STOCKTON
New Haven, Conn.^ Off. 21, 189-.
MY DEAR ELIZABETH: Sarah tells me that
you are going to college. I am sure I don t see
why, but if you do, I suppose that is enough.
Children are not what they used to be. It
seems to me that four years at Mrs. Meade s
should have been enough; neither your Aunt
Hannah nor I ever went to college, though
THE EDUCATION OF ELIZABETH
to be sure Hannah wanted to go to Mt. Hoi-
yoke Seminary once. I have never heard any
one intimate that either of us was not suffi
ciently educated: I wonder that you could for
one instant imagine such a thing ! Not that I
have any reason to suppose you ever did.
However, that is neither here nor there. Your
Aunt Hannah and I were intending to give
you Mother s high shell-comb and her garnet
set for Christmas. If you would prefer them
now for any reason, you may have them. The
comb is being polished and looks magnificent.
An absurd thing to give a girl of your age,
from my point of view. However, your Aunt
Hannah thinks it best. I trust you will be very
careful of your diet. It seemed to me that
your complexion was not what it should have
been when you came on this summer. I am
convinced that it is nothing but the miscella
neous eating of cake and other sweets and
over-education. There has been a young girl
here from some college I think it is Welles-
ley and her complexion is disgraceful. Your
Aunt Hannah and I never set up for beauties,
but we had complexions of milk and roses, if
I do say it. Hannah thinks that the garnets
are unsuitable for you, but that is absurd.
Mother was no older than you when she wore
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
them, and looked very well, too, I have no
doubt. I send you by express a box of Katy s
doughnuts, the kind you like, very rich, and
a chocolate cake. Also some salad and a loaf
cake, Mrs. Harding s rule. I trust you will
take sufficient exercise, and don t let your
hands grow rough this winter. Nothing shows
a lady so much as her hands. Would you like
the garnets reset, or as Mother wore them ?
They are quite the style now, I understand.
Hoping you will do well in your studies and
keep well, I am,
Yours lovingly,
AUNT LIZZIE.
VI
FROM Miss ELIZABETH STOCKTON
TO MR. ARNOLD RITCH, JR.
Lawrence House , Northampton, Mass.,
Nov. i, 189-.
MY DEAR ARNOLD: It is only fair to you
to tell you that it can never be. No, never !
When I if I did (which I can hardly be
lieve) allowed you to think anything else,
I was a mere child. Life looks very different
to me, now. It is quite useless to ask me I
must say that I am surprised that you have
spoken to Papa. Nor do I feel called upon
C 13* ]
THE EDUCATION OF ELIZABETH
to give my reasons. I shall always be a very,
very good friend to you, however, and very,
very much interested in you.
In the first place, I am, or at least you are,
far too young. The American woman of to
day is younger than her grandmother. I mean,
of course, younger than her grandmother is
now. That is, than she was then. Also I doubt
if I could ever love you as you think you do.
Love me, I mean. I am not a man s woman.
I much prefer women. Really, Arnold, it is
very strange how men bore me now that I
have known certain women. Women are so
much more interesting, so much more fasci
nating, so much more exciting! This will prob
ably seem strange to you, but the modern
woman I am sure is rapidly getting not to need
men at all ! I have never seen so many beau
tiful red-haired girls before. One sits in front
of me in chapel, and the light makes an aure
ole of glory about her head. I wrote a theme
about it that is going to be in the Monthly for
November.
I hope that you won t feel that our dear
old friendship of so many years is in any way
changed. I shall never forget certain things
I am enjoying my work very much, though
it is easier than I had thought it would be, and
C 133 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
the life is different in many ways. If I did not
think that Miss Sawyer had probably invited
you, I should be very glad to have you come
up for the Christmas concert, but I suppose it
is useless to ask you. I had no idea you were
so fond of tennis !
Your friend always,
ELIZABETH WOLFE STOCKTON.
VII
FROM MR. HENRY STOCKTON
TO Miss ELIZABETH STOCKTON
Lowell, Mass., Nov. I, 189-.
MY DEAR ELIZABETH : Yours received and
read with my usual attention and interest.
I am glad that your college life continues to
be pleasant, and that you have found so many
friends. I was much interested, too, in the pho
tograph of Miss Hunter. I find the blue prints
are more common than I had supposed, for I
had imagined that they were something quite
new. It is certainly very accommodating in
your teachers to allow themselves to be so
generally photographed. Your mother seemed
much pleased with Miss Hunter, and glad that
you were in the house with her and liked her
so much. I was surprised to see her so young
in appearance. I had very foolishly imagined
[
THE EDUCATION OF ELIZABETH
the typical old style "school-marm," I sup
pose. But it seems that she was graduated only
a few years ago, herself.
Now, my dear Elizabeth, I am going to
speak to you very seriously. I trust that you
will take it in good part and remember that
nothing can be more to my interest than the
real happiness and well-being of my daughter.
The tone of your letters to both your mother
and me has seemed for some weeks unsatis
factory. I mean that we have found in them
a nervous, strained tone that troubles me ex
ceedingly. I cannot see why you should close
with such expressions as this (I copy verba
tim): "Too tired to write more ;" "All used
U p lots of Latin to do can only find time
for a note ;" "Tired to death because I m not
sleeping quite as well as usual, just now ;" et
cetera, et cetera.
I have been to see Mrs. Meade, and she
assures me that your preparation was more
than adequate : that your first year should
prove very easy for you, in Latin especially.
Now what does this mean ? You left us well
and strong, considering that you have always
been a delicate girl. It was for that reason, as
you know, that I particularly opposed your
going to college.
[ 135 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
But there is more. Mrs. Allen s daughter,
Harriet, has been at home for some days to
attend her sister s wedding. Your mother and
I naturally seized the opportunity of inquir
ing after you, and after some questioning from
us she admitted that you were not looking very
well. She said that you seemed tired and were
"going it a little too hard, perhaps." That
seemed to me a remarkable expression to ap
ply to a young girl ! My endeavors to find out
exactly what it meant resulted in nothing more
explicit than that " Bess was trying to do too
much."
Now, my dear girl, while we are naturally
only too pleased that you should be striving
to stand well in your classes, do not, I beg of
you, imagine for one moment that any intel
lectual advancement you may win can compen
sate us or you for the loss of your health. You
remember Cousin Will, who carried ofFsix hon
ors at Harvard and came home a nervous in
valid. I fear that the Stockton temperament
cannot stand the strain of too continued men
tal application.
I must stop now, to attend to some busi
ness matters, and I will add only this. Do not
fail to remember my definite conditions, which
have not altered since September. If you are
[ 136]
THE EDUCATION OF ELIZABETH
not perfectly well at the Christmas holidays,
you must remain with us. This may seem se
vere, but I am convinced, your mother also,
that we shall be acting entirely for your good.
Yours aff.,
FATHER.
VIII
FROM MR. ARNOLD RITCH, SR.,
TO Miss MARION HUNTER
New York, N. r., Nov. 4, 189-.
MY DEAR Miss HUNTER: You may re
member meeting, five years ago, in Paris, in the
Louvre, an old American, who had the great
pleasure of rendering you a trifling assistance
in a somewhat embarrassing situation, and who
had the further pleasure of crossing on the
Etruria with you a month later. I was that
man, and I remember that you said that if
ever there should happen to be an occasion
for it, you would be only too happy to return
your imaginary debt.
If you really meant it, the occasion, strangely
enough, has come. I know well enough from my
lifelong friend, Richard Benton, whose family
you have so often visited, that you are an ex
tremely busy young woman, and I will state
my case briefly. I never make half-confidences,
[ 137]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
and I rely implicitly on your discretion in the
following clear statement. My only nephew
and namesake, incidentally heir, has been for
some time practically engaged to Miss Eliza
beth Stockton, the daughter of an old friend.
The engagement has been entirely satisfactory
to all parties concerned, and was actually on
the eve of announcement, when the young lady
abruptly departed for Smith College.
My nephew is, though only twenty-four,
unusually mature and thoroughly settled : he
was deeply in love with the young lady and
assures me that his sentiments were returned.
She now quietly refuses him, and greatly to
her parents dissatisfaction announces that she
intends remaining the four years and "gradu
ating with her class," which seems a strong
point with her.
Her father and I would gladly leave the
affair to work itself out quietly, were it not
for an unfortunate occurrence. Ritch, Jr. has
been offered an extremely good opening in a
Paris banking-house, which he must accept, if
at all, immediately, and for six years. He is
extremely broken up over the whole affair,
and says that unless Elizabeth returns to her
old relations with him, he will go. This will
be in three weeks.
[ 138 ]
THE EDUCATION OF ELIZABETH
I am not so young as I was, and I cannot
leave America again. I can only say that if the
boy goes, my interest in life goes, to a great
extent, with him. He does not mean to be
selfish, but young people, you know, are
harder than they think, and feel deeply and,
for the moment, irrevocably. He says that he
is certain that this is merely a fad on Miss
Stockton s part, and that if he could see her
for two weeks he would prove it. I should like
to have him try.
This is my favor, Miss Hunter. Elizabeth
respecls and admires you more than any of her
teachers. She quotes you frequently and seems
influenced by you. Arnold has made me prom
ise that I will not ask her parents to bring her
home and that I will not write her. I will not.
But can you do anything? It is rather absurd
to ask you to conspire against your college,
to give up one of your pupils: but you have
a great many, and remember that I have but
one nephew! It is all rather a comedy, but a
sad one for me, if there is no change within
three weeks, I assure you. They are only two
headstrong children, but they can cause more
than one heartache if they keep up their ob
stinacy. Elizabeth has forbidden Arnold to
come to Northampton on the score of her
[ 139 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
work, and wild horses could not drag him
there.
I offer no suggestion, I ask nothing defi
nitely, I merely wonder if you meant what you
said on the Etruria^ and if your woman s wit,
that must have managed so many young idi
ots, can manage these?
Yours faithfully,
ARNOLD M. RITCH.
IX
FROM Miss MARION HUNTER
TO MRS. HENRY STOCKTON
Northampton, Mass., Nov. 7, 189-.
MY DEAR MRS. STOCKTON: As you have
certainly not forgotten that I assured you in
the early fall of my interest, professionally and
personally, in your daughter, you will need no
further explanation, nor be at all alarmed,
when I tell you that Elizabeth is a little over
worked of late. In the house with her as I am,
I see that she is trying to carry a little too
much of our unfortunately famous "social
life" in connection with her studies, where she
is unwilling to lose a high grade. She entered
so well prepared that she has nothing to fear
from a short absence, and as she tells me that
she does not sleep well at all of late, she will
THE EDUCATION OF ELIZABETH
have no difficulty in getting an honorable fur
lough. Two weeks or so of rest and freedom
from strain will set her up perfectly, I have no
doubt, and she can return with perfect safety to
her work, which is, I repeat, quite satisfactory.
Yours very cordially,
MARION HUNTER.
x
FROM MRS. HENRY STOCKTON
TO Miss ELIZABETH STOCKTON
(^Telegram)
Lowell, Mass., Nov. 8.
Come home immediately will arrange with
college and explain myself.
MOTHER.
XI
FROM Miss MARION HUNTER
TO Miss CONSTANCE JACKSON
Northampton, Mass., Nov. 10, 189-.
DEAR CON: I m afraid it will be impossi
ble for me to accept your seductive invitation
for Thanksgiving. We re pulling the girls up
a little sharply this year, and it would hardly
do for me to come back late. But it would be
good to hear a little music once more!
It was rather odd that you should have men-
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
tioned that idiotic affair of mine in Paris
the hero of it has just written me a long letter
apropos of his nephew, who wants to marry
that little Miss Stockton, whose Harvard
cousin you knew so well. That portly squire
of dames is actually simple and straightfor
ward enough to suggest that I precipitate the
damsel into the expectant arms of his nephew
and heir-apparent he is used to getting his
own way, certainly, and he writes a rather at
tractive letter. I owe him much (as you know)
and if Elizabeth, who is a dear little thing and
far too nice for the crowd she s getting in
with you knew Carol Sawyer, didn t you?
has such a weak-kneed interest in college
as to be turned out of the way by a sight of
the destined young gentleman, I fancy she
would not have remained long with us in any
case. She s a pretty creature and had cunning
ways I shall miss her in the house. For I
don t believe she ll come back; she s not at
all strong, and her parents are much worried
about her health. It is more than probable
that the Home will prove her sphere.
Personally, I don t mind stating that I
would it were mine. When I consider how my
days are spent
You might not believe it, but they grow
[ 14* ]
THE EDUCATION OF ELIZABETH
stupider and stupider. Perhaps I Ve been at
it a bit too long, but I never saw such papers
as these freshmen give one.
And they have begun singing four hymns
in succession on Sunday morning! It s very
hard why they should select Abide with Me
and Lead, Kindly Light for morning exercises
and wail them both through to the bitter end
every Sunday in the year is one of the local
mysteries.
I must get at my papers, they cover every
thing. Remember me to Mr. Jackson; it was
very kind of him to suggest it, but I must
wait till Christmas for the Opera, I m afraid.
If I should not come back next year and it
is more than possible that I shan t I may
be in Boston. I hope in that case you won t
have gone away.
Yours always,
M. I. HUNTER.
XII
FROM Miss ELIZABETH STOCKTON
TO Miss CAROLYN SAWYER
Lowell, Nov. 2O.
CAROL DEAR : I am writing in a great hurry,
as I have an engagement at four, to tell you
that I have decided not to return to-day, as I
[ H3]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
intended. Will you get the key of 32 from
Mrs. Driscoll, as Kitty goes home over Sun
day, so it will be locked, and get out my mink
collarette and my silver toilet things and my
blanket wrapper, and I think there is twenty
dollars in my handkerchief case. I am ex
tremely disturbed and confused when one
is really responsible for anything one feels
very much disturbed. Of course, I don t be
lieve a word of it it s all folly and nonsense
but still, six years is a long time. Of course,
you don t know at all what I mean, dear, and
I m not sure I do either. I forgot to say that
I m probably not coming back to college this
year. Mamma feels very worried about my
health you know I didn t sleep very well
nights, and I used to dream about Livy. Any
way, she and Papa are going abroad early in
the spring, and really, Carol, a college edu
cation is n t everything. If I were going to
teach, you know, it would be different, but
you see I was almost finished at Mrs. Meade s
I was taking advanced work and it is n t
as if I had had only the college preparation.
Then, if we go abroad, I must do something
with my French. You know there was simply
no chance to practise conversation in such a
large class, and I was forgetting it, which Ar-
[ 144 ]
THE EDUCATION OF ELIZABETH
nold thinks would be a pity. He speaks very
fine French himself. Then, you see, there 11
be all the galleries and everything and the
Sistine Madonna and the cathedrals they re
so educative everybody admits that. It s
hardly to be supposed that Geometry and Livy
are really going to be as broadening to me as
a year of travel with Papa and Mamma, is it ?
And though I never said anything to you
about it, I really have felt for some time that
there was something a little narrow about the
college. They seem to think it is about all
there is of life, you know, with the funny lit
tle dances and the teas and all that. Even that
dear Miss Hunter is really un peu gdtee with
it all she thinks, I believe, that a college
education is all there is for anybody. She told
Mamma that I was n t well she wanted me
to keep my high grade. Oh ! Carol ! there are
better things than grades ! Life is a very much
bigger thing than the campus even ! I think,
dear, that one really ought to consider very
frankly just what we intend to do with our
lives if we are going to marry, we ought to
try to make ourselves cultivated and broad-
minded, and in every way worthy to be Oh,
Carol, dearest, I m terribly happy ! It is n t
settled, of course: I am utterly amazed that
[ 145 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
they all seem to think it is, but it is n t.
Only probably if I still feel as I do now,
when we get back, I shall ask you, dear, what
we promised each other to be my brides
maid the first one ! I m thinking of asking
Sally and Grace and Eleanor all our old set
at Mrs. Meade s, you know. I think that
pink, with a deep rose for hats and sashes,
would look awfully well on all of you, don t
you ! It seems a long time since I was in
Northampton: the girls seem very young and
terribly serious over queer little lessons or
else trying to play they re interested in each
other. Arnold says he thinks the attitude of
so many women is bound to be unhealthy,
and even in some cases a little morbid. I think
he is quite right, don t you ? After all, girls
need some one besides themselves. I always
thought that Mabel Towne was very bad for
Katharine. Will you send, too, my Shelley
and my selections from Keats ? The way I
neglected my reading real reading, you
know oh ! cetait ajfreux ! I m learning the
loveliest song Arnold is very fond of it:
Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie?
Uheure senfult, le jour succede au jour.
Rose ce soir, demain fletrle
Comment vis-tu, tot qui n^ as pas a" amour?
[ H6 ]
THE EDUCATION OF ELIZABETH
I m going out now for a walk. I m sure
you 11 like Arnold I think you said you met
him. He does n t remember you. Remember
me to all the juniors I met, and if you see
Ethel Henderson, tell her I 11 write to her
when I get time. Excuse this pointed pen
I m learning to use it. Arnold hates a stub.
Yours always,
BETTY.
THE SIXTH STORY
A FAMILY AFFAIR
i
VI
A FAMILY AFFAIR
HERE are Jacksons and Jacksons.
As everybody knows, many, possi
bly most, of those who bear that title
might as well have been called Jones
or Robinson ; on the other hand, I am told that
certain Massachusetts families of that name
will, on solicitation, admit it to be their belief
that Eve was a Cabot and Adam a Jackson.
Without asserting that she was personally con
vinced of this great fact, it is necessary to state
that Susan was of the last-named variety of
Jackson. She was distinctly democratic, how
ever, and rather strong-willed, and for both of
these reasons she came to college. It did not
entirely please the family : neither of her sis
ters had gone, and her brothers in particular
were against it. It is probable that she would
have been decoyed from her plan had it not
been that her cousin, Constance Quincy Jack
son, had been for a year one of the young
assistants who dash like meteors through the
catalogue and disappear mysteriously, just as
astronomers have begun to place them, into
the obscurity whence they came.
Constance, like Susan, had been persistent,
and was studying at Oxford before the family
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
had quite made up its mind how to regard her;
later, she frequented other and American in
stitutions of learning and bore off formidable
degrees therefrom, and at about that time it
was decided that she was remarkably brilliant,
and that her much commended thesis on the
Essential Somethingness of Something or
Other was quite properly to be ranked with
her great-grandfather s dissertation on the Im
mortality of the Soul.
She would do very well ; she could be relied
on; and entrusted to her and further armed
with letters of introduction to the social mag
nates of the vicinity which, I regret to say,
she neglected to present till her sophomore
year Susan began her career. Of the emi
nent success of this career, it is not the pur
pose of this story to treat. Beginning as fresh
man vice-president, she immediately identified
herself with the leading set of her class, and
in her sophomore year was already one of
the prominent students in the college. She
was one of Phi Kappa s earliest acquisitions,
and belonged to three or four lesser societies,
social and semi-educational; she had been on
the freshman Team; she was twice a mem
ber of the Council; in her senior year she was
literary editor of the Monthly and class presi-
c 15*1
A FAMILY AFFAIR
dent, besides taking a prominent part in Dra
matics. She fulfilled all these duties most ac
ceptably, taking at the same time a very high
rank in her classes : in one department, indeed,
her work was pronounced practically perfect
by a somewhat exigent professor. And in ad
dition, she was well born, well bred, and well
dressed, and considered by her most enthu
siastic admirers the handsomest girl in the
college, though this was by no means the
universal opinion.
You might imagine that Miss Jackson was
therefore intolerably conceited, but in this you
would err. She took no particular credit to
herself for her standard of work; she had a
keen mind, and had been taught to concen
trate it, and her grandfather, her father, and
two uncles had successively led their classes
at Harvard. It seemed perfectly natural to her
to be told that she was the one young woman
on whose shoulders a golf cape looked really
dignified and graceful had not her grand
mother and her great-aunt been famed for their
"camel s-hair-shawl shoulders"? A somewhat
commanding manner and a very keen-sighted
social policy had given her a prominence that
she was conscious of having done nothing to
discredit; and as she had been quite accus-
[ 153 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
tomed to see those about her in positions
of authority, and had learned to lay just the
proper amount of emphasis on adverse criti
cism, she steered her way with a signal success
on the perilous sea of popularity. Her idea of
the four years had been to do everything there
was to be done as well as any one could do it,
and she was not a person accustomed to con
sider failure.
I mentioned at the beginning of this story
the two classes of Jacksons. Emphatically of
the former and unimportant variety was Elaine
Susan Jackson of Troy, New York. Mr. Jack
son kept a confectionery shop and ice cream
parlor, going to his business early in the morn
ing and returning late in the evening. This he
did because he was a quiet-loving man, and
his home was a noisy one. Mrs. Jackson was
a managing, dictatorial woman, with an un
expected sentimental vein which she nour
ished on love-stories and exhausted there.
From these books she had culled the names
of her daughters Elaine, Veronica, and Doris;
but prudence impelled her to add to these the
names of her husband s three sisters a tri
umph of maternal foresight over aesthetic taste
and they stood in the family Bible, Elaine
Susan, Veronica Sarah, and Doris Hannah.
[ 154]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
Mr. Jackson was not a sentimentalist him
self, and read nothing but the paper, sitting
placidly behind the peanut-brittle and choco
late mice, and relapsing sometimes into ab
solute idleness for hours together, deep in
contemplation, perhaps, possibly dozing
nobody ever knew. At such times he regarded
the entrance of customers as an unwelcome
intrusion and was accustomed to hurry them,
if juvenile, into undue precipitance of choice.
From this even quiet he emerged seldom but
effectively : when Veronica entertained the un
attractive young men she called "the boys,"
later than eleven o clock, when Doris went
to the theatre more than twice a week, or when
they had purchased garments of a nature more
than usually unsuitable and pronounced. Then
Mr. Jackson spoke, and after domestic whirl
winds and fires the still voice of an otherwise
doubtful head of the family became the voice
of authority.
Elaine gave him no trouble of this sort. She
did not care for young men, and she never
went to the theatre. Her clothes, when she
had any choice in the matter, were of the plain
est, and she had never teased her father for
candy since she began to read, which was at
a very early age. / Say No, or the Love-letter
C 155]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
Answered, was her first consciously studied
book, and between ten and fifteen she de
voured more novels than most people get
into a lifetime. Incidentally she read poetry
she got books of it for prizes at school
and one afternoon she sandwiched the Golden
Treasury between two detective stories. She
did not care for her mother s friends, gossip
ing, vulgar women, and she loathed her sis
ters . She had a sharp tongue, and as parental
discipline was of the slightest, she criticised
them all impartially with the result that she
was cordially disliked by everybody she knew
a feeling she returned with interest. She
found two or three ardent friends at school
and was very happy with them for a time, but
she was terribly exacting, and demanded an al
legiance so intense and unquestioning that one
by one they drifted away into other groups and
left her.
In her second year at the high school they
read the Idylls of the King, and she discovered
her name and saw in one shame-filled second
the idiotic bad taste of it Elaine Susan ! She
imagined the lily maid of Astolat behind her
father s counter and became so abased in
her own mind that the school found her more
haughty and disagreeable than ever. From that
[ 156 ]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
moment she signed her name E. Susan Jack
son and requested to be called Susan. This
met the approval of the teachers, and as the
schoolgirls did not hold much conversation
with her, the change was not a difficult one.
By the time she had been three years in the
high school she was considered by every one
the most brilliant student there, and the prin
cipal suggested college to her. This had never
occurred to her. Though they had never lacked
for necessities, Mr. Jackson s business was
not conducted in a manner to lead to marked
financial success, and though he said little
about his affairs, it was evident to them all
that matters were slowly but surely running
down hill. Doris and Veronica were eager to
leave school and spend a term at the Business
College, some friends of theirs having done
this with great success and found positions as
typewriters, but their father insisted on their
staying at school for two yearsatleast.lt would
be time enough to leave, he said, when they
had to. It was significant of the unconscious
attitude of the family that there had never
been any question of the oldest daughter s
leaving school: Elaine had always been real
bright, her mother said, and as long as books
was all she took any interest in, she might as
[ 157 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
well get what she could she presumed she d
teach.
But this acquiescent spirit changed immedi
ately when she learned that her husband had
told Elaine he would send her to college for
two years anyway, and as much longer as he
could afford. It seemed to Mrs. Jackson a
ridiculous and unwarranted expense, particu
larly as he had refused to allow the term at
the Business College partly on the financial
score. She lectured, argued, scolded; but he
was firm.
"I told her she should, and she shall," he
repeated quietly. "She says she thinks she
can help along after a while, and you need n t
worry about her paying it back she will, all
right, if she can. I guess she s the best of the
lot of us ; she s worth the other two put to
gether. You let Lainey alone, Hattie, she s
all right!"
This was during her last year at school,
and as she had on her own responsibility taken
the classical course there, finding a fascination
in the idea of Greek, she accomplished the
preparation very easily.
Her mother, bowing to the inevitable, be
gan to plume herself on her daughter "who
was fitting herself to go to Smith s College,"
[ 158]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
and rose many degrees in the social scale be
cause of her. But their ideas of the necessary
preparations differed so materially, that after
prolonged and jarring hostilities marked by
much temper on both sides, the final crash
came, and after a battle royal Elaine took what
money was forthcoming and conducted her
affairs unchallenged from that moment. It was
a relief to be freed from the wearisome squab
bles, but she cried herself to sleep the night
before she left she did not perfectly know
why. Later she told herself that it was be
cause she had so little reason to cry when she
left home for the first time.
She went to the train alone, because the
girls were at school and her father at his busi
ness. She said good-by to her mother on the
porch, with the constraint that had grown to
characterize her attitude towards them all, but
her mother was suddenly seized with a spasm
of sentiment, and kissing her wildly, bewailed
the necessity that drove her firstborn from her
to strangers. Later the girl found it sadly char
acteristic of her life, that absurd scene on the
porch; with her heart hungry and miserable
for the love and confidence she had never
known, she endured agonies of shame and
irritation at the demonstration that came too
[ 159]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
late. She went away, outwardly cold, with
tight-pressed lips ; her mother read Cometh up
as a Flower, and wept hysterically that Fate
should have cursed her with such an unfeel
ing, moody child.
It is hard to determine just what incident
convinced Susan for she dropped the initial
on her registration that life had not changed,
for her because she was to live it in Northamp
ton, and that she must be alone there, as she
had been in Troy. Just before she left col
lege she decided that she had known it im
mediately: that from the moment when she
plunged into the chattering, bustling crowd in
the Main Hall, where everybody knew some
body and most people knew all the others, a
vague prevision of her four years loneliness
came to her: a pathetic certainty that she could
not, even with the effort she was too proud
to make, become in any reality a part of that
sparkling, absorbed, unconscious current of
life that rushed by her.
Sometimes she dated her disillusionment
for she had had her dreams: she knew them
only by the pathetic disappointment of the ob
stinate awakening from the day that she saw
her namesake laughing in the midst of a jolly
group of girls to whom she was presenting
[ 160]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
her father and her aunt. They were handsome,
well-dressed people with a distinct air, and they
were tolerantly amused at Sue in her new en
vironment and showed it in a kindly, cour
teous way that was much appreciated. As Su
san passed the group there was a great laugh,
and she heard Sue s voice above the rest.
"Truly, Papa, I thought you d finished!
You know, whenever I interrupted, Papa
used to make me sit absolutely still for a quar
ter of an hour afterward it s not so long ago
he stopped, either !"
Her father laughed, and patted her shoul
der, and Susan went on out of hearing. It was
only a flash ; but she saw the gracious, well-
ordered household, the handsome, dignified
people, the atmosphere of generations of good
breeding and scholarship, as clearly as if she
had visited them, and her heart swelled with
angry regret and a sickening certainty that all
the cleverness in the world could not make
up for the youth she had been cheated out
of. She thought of the bickering, squabbling
family table in Troy and tried to imagine her
father teaching Doris and Veronica not to in
terrupt: her cheeks burned.
In class Sue was often near her; she knew
that she was recognized chiefly by the fad that
C 161 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
she was Susan Jackson, too. On the first day,
when the instructor had called " Miss Jackson "
and they had both answered, "Miss Susan
Jackson," when they still replied together, and
finally "Miss Susan Revere Jackson, "when the
matter was* cleared up, Sue had looked at her
with interest, and after the class made some
little joking remark. If the other had answered
in the same spirit, nobody knows whether this
story need have been written. But Susan had
heard Cornelia Burt ask: "Is she related at
all, Sue ?" and heard Sue s answer, "Oh, dear,
no ! From Troy, I believe."
Now Sue meant absolutely nothing but
what she said, but her namesake read into the
words a scorn that was not there either in
intention or facl. Her heart was sore with a
hot, vague jealousy: this girl, no longer there
than she, had stepped so easily into a place
prepared, apparently, for her; she knew every
body, went everywhere; admired by her own
class and made much of by the upper-class
girls, she was already well known in the col
lege. She was a part of it all Susan only
watched it. And. because of this and because
she admired her tremendously and envied her
with all the force of a passionate, repressed
nature, the poor child answered her little re-
[ 162 j
A FAMILY AFFAIR
mark with a curtness that was almost insolent,
and the manner of an offended duchess. Sue
flushed a little, lifted her brows, threw a swift
glance at Cornelia, and walked away with her.
Susan heard them laughing in the hall, and
bit her lip.
She could not know that Sue had described
her in a letter to her father as " a queer, haughty
thing, but terribly clever. Nobody seems to
know her I imagine she s terribly bored up
here. I said some footless thing or other to
her the other day, and she turned me down,
as Betty says. Did you meet Dr. Twitchell?
He was stopping with the Winthrops. . . ."
Susan used to wonder afterwards if it would
all have been different had she been on the
campus. I know that most college people will
say that it would, and it is certain that cam
pus life was the best thing in the world for
Martha Williams: nobody knows with what
self-conscious egotism she might have been
spoiled if her friends and foes had not con
spired to laugh it out of her. But, on the other
hand, those who have watched the victims of
that reasonless, pitiless boycotting that only
women can accomplish so lightly so uncon
sciously, do you think? know the ghastly
loneliness of the one who, in the very centre
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
of the most crowded campus house, is more
solitary than the veriest island castaway.
There is no doubt that Susan needed a
great deal of discipline. She had been for so
many years superior to her surroundings, so
long not only the cleverest but the finest-
grained, most aristocratic of all those she saw
about her, that although she had perfectly ap
preciated the fact that she would probably no
longer be in that relative position, she had not
estimated the difficulty of the necessary ad
justment, and it is only fair to those who gave
her her hardest lessons of calm neglect to state
at once that her manner was a trifle irritating.
To begin with, she had made herself un
pleasantly conspicuous at the time of their
first freshman class-meeting by rising after
half an hour of unventilated and tumultuous
altercation, and leaving the room. Now it is
not the custom of popular freshmen to leave
their first class-meeting in this manner not
as if one were faint or demanded at recitation,
but as merely intolerably bored and not a lit
tle contemptuous; and the scrambling, squab
bling class regarded her accordingly. Susan
Revere Jackson was bored, too unspeakably
bored; but she sat indefatigably in her chair
in the front row, applauded nominations, dis-
C 164]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
cussed the presumably parliamentary features
of the occasion, smiled and agreed, differed at
proper intervals, and left the room vice-presi
dent. It is hard to know just how much en
thusiasm Sue really felt: Susan, to whom she
soon became the visible expression of all the
triumph and ease and distilled essence of the
successful college girl, used to wonder, later,
as older than Susan have wondered, how much
of her college life was ingenuous and how much
a perfectly conscious attitude. For long before
she left, Susan realized that she had greatly
misjudged a large proportion of the girls,
whom the event proved more practically wise
than she, and that they who fill the role of
"fine, all round girl" with the greatest suc
cess are often perfectly competent to fill others,
widely different.
This she did not understand at first, and
as a result of her ignorance she included them
all in her general condemnation: she found
them immature, boisterous, inclined to be silly ;
or narrow-minded and dogmatic when they
were less flippant. She was somewhat exacting,
as has been said before, and the solemn, pon
derous attitude of the occasional girl who wal
lows before the abstract Higher Education,
and lectures the Faculty gravely on their fail-
[ 165]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
ure to conduct her to its most eminent peaks
during the freshman year, appealed as strongly
to her sense of humor as if she had not herself
been sadly disappointed in the somewhat re
stricted curriculum offered her at that period.
This was through no fault whatever of the
college, but because the girl had absolutely no
practical basis of expectation and knew no more
of the thousand implications of college life than
she did of normal girlhood with its loves and
disciplines and confidences, its tremendous lit
tle social experiences, its quaint emotions, and
indispensable hypocrisies. Her vague concep
tion of college life was modelled on The Prin
cess: she imagined graceful, gracious women,
enamoured of a musical, poetic, higher knowl
edge, deliciously rapt at the wonderful ora
tory of some priestess of a cult yet unknown
to her: a woman beautiful and passionate,
who should understand her vaguest dreams
and sympathize with her strangest sorrows as
no one she had yet known or seen could do.
She found a crowd of jostling, chattering
schoolgirls, unformed, unpoised; many of
them vulgar, many stupid, many ill-bred;
overflowing a damp, cold hall that smelled of
wet, washed floors; reciting, in a very average
fashion, perfectly concrete and ordinary lessons
[ 166.]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
from text-books only too familiar, to business
like, middle-aged women, rather plain than
otherwise, with a practical grasp of the matter
in hand and a marked preference for regular
attendance on the part of freshmen.
It was characteristic of her that what cut
deepest in all the disillusionment was not the
loss of the hope, but the shamed perception
of the folly of it, the realization of the depth
of practical ignorance it implied, the perfectly
conscious pathos of a life so empty of real ex
perience of the world as to make such na ive
visions possible. She did the required work
and kept her thoughts about it to herself, but
the effect of what she secretly felt to have been
a provincial and ridiculous mistake showed it
self in her manner ; and the occasional hauteur
of her namesake, who had inherited a very ef
fective stare of her own, was diffidence itself
compared with the reserved disdain that cov
ered her own smarting sensitiveness.
Girls who had tumbled about with their
kind from babyhood, who had found at home,
at church, at school a varied if simple social
training, resented her formality and could not
see that pure shyness of them, pure wonder
at their rough-and-ready ease of manner, their
amazing power of adjustment, their quick grasp
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
of the situation and each other, lay at the root
of her jealous dignity.
So she called them " Miss," and they thought
her affected ; she waited for invitations that
she should have taken for granted, and they
thought her haughty ; she made no advance
in a place where only the very favored are
sought out and most must earn even the hum
blest recognition with honest toil and assidu
ous advertisement, and they quietly let her
alone. She was not on the campus, and as the
girls in the small boarding-house with her were
industrious and ordinary to the last degree and
became very early impressed with her realiza
tion of this fad, she saw little of them, and her
one opportunity of getting the campus gossip,
which is the college gossip, grew smaller and
smaller. She took solitary walks, thereby con
firming the impression that she preferred to be
alone for who need be alone among a thou
sand girls unless she wishes it ?
On such a walk, late in the fall, she stood
for some time on one of the hills that rise
above the town proper, looking for the hun
dredth time at the mountains, outlined that
afternoon against the dying light of a brassy,
green sky. The trees were bare and black about
her; the lights in the comfortable houses were
[ 168 ]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
flushing up the windows with a happy evening
red ; belated children were hurrying home; and
now and then groups of girls, fresh-cheeked
from their quick walk, swung by, in haste for
supper and their evening engagements. Over
her heart, hungry and misunderstood, there
poured a sudden flood of passionate longing
for one hour of unconscious happy comrade
ship with homes and girls like these ; one
hour of some one else s anybody else s
life ; one taste of dependence on another than
herself. It fell into rhythm and fascinating
phrases while she gave herself up to the
mood, and she made a poem of it that night.
In two days she was famous, for High Au
thority publicly placed the poem above any
thing yet done in the college ; it was seized
by the Monthly, and copied widely in the
various college publications ; to the editorial
board and the Faculty who did not have other
reason for knowing her, she became "the girl
who wrote At Autumn Dusk." It was long be
fore she equalled it, though almost everything
she did was far above a college standard; and
one or two people will always think it her best
poem, I have no doubt, in spite of more recent
and perhaps more striking work.
For this poem was only the beginning, it may
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
as well be admitted now, of Susan s career as a
genius. This degree is frequently conferred, no
doubt, when unmerited ; but the article is so
susceptible of imitation, the recipe for produc
ing the traditional effect so comparatively sim
ple, that it is to be wondered at, on the whole,
that the aspirants for the title should be, among
so many clever young women, so relatively few.
To a frank and recently awakened interest in
Shelley, Keats, Rossetti, and Co., it is only
necessary to add a vacant abstraction, a for-
getfulness of conventional meal hours sup
per, for choice a somewhat occult system of
reply to ordinary remarks, and the courage of
one s convictions in the matter of bursting out
with the irrelevant results of previous and pro
longed meditation irrespective of the conver
sation of the moment. Any one who will com
bine with these infallible signs of the fire from
heaven as much carelessness in the matter of
dress as her previous bringing up will allow
though this is naturally a variable quantity
and a certain unmistakable looseness of coiffure
was there ever a genius with taut hair?
heaven avert it ! may be reasonably certain
of recognition. It is understood, of course, that
with the qualifications above mentioned a taste
for verse and an ear for rhythm, in conjunction
C 170]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
with the frank appreciation of the poetical firm
also above mentioned, have produced their in
evitable result.
The character of the output naturally has
something to do with the extent of the repu
tation, and although Susan, the most promis
ing candidate for the degree then in the field,
had alarmingly few of the most obvious signs
of her rank, this was indulgently passed over,
and she was allowed her laurels.
But it was Sue Jackson on whom all the
first congratulations were heaped : roses and
violets, that blossom at the slightest excuse in
Northampton, covered the hall table in the
Hubbard House, where she spent her first two
years ; affectionate and mock-reverential notes
crowded the bulletin board for her; a spread
was actually got up and the guests invited be
fore the mistake was known. To do her justice
she would have promptly despatched the notes
and flowers to her defrauded namesake, but the
donors, whom she consulted, would have none
of it.
"Why, Sue ! Why, the idea ! Didn t you
write it? Oh, girls, what a joke ! How per
fectly funny ! Send em to her? Not at all.
Why on earth should Neal and I send that
girl flowers ? For that matter, she cut us dead
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
day before yesterday, on Round Hill, did n t
she, Pat ? And she s in our Greek, too. We 11
have the stuff to eat, anyhow. You re a nice
old thing, Sue, if you can t write c this extra
ordinary poem !"
Susan, who heard next to nothing of col
lege news, heard about this. She heard how
Sue had gayly responded to toasts: "The
Poem I did not write," "My Feelings on
failing to compose my Masterpiece" this
was Neal Hurt s, and she was very clever over
it and others. The only thing she did not
hear about was Sue s half-serious response to
"My gifted God-child," suggested by an up
per-class friend. She made a little graceful fun
and then added quite earnestly, "And really,
girls, I do think she ought to be here ! After
all, the Class, you know Let s take down
the flowers and all the fudge come on ! She
can t do more than squelch us !"
The very girls who had scoffed at the idea
before were naturally the ones to take it up im
mediately, and they were hastily gathering the
things together, when the bell rang. They
could not hope to get there and back before
ten, and most of them were already deep in
the matron s black list for reported lights; so
they gave it up, and put the flowers in the
A FAMILY AFFAIR
tub, where a sudden frost over night struck
them and they perished miserably.
To Susan it was the bitterest thing of all; it
took the sweetness from her success; it dulled
the piquancy of her sudden position. She could
not possibly know how little it meant to Sue;
that it was only one of many spreads, and by
no means the triumphal feast she imagined;
that after the first they forgot why they had
planned it, almost. To her it was her chance
at life, her long-delayed birthright, and Sue
had taken it, too, along with everything else.
"She might have left me that!" it was her
thought for more than one unhappy night.
Before she went home in June she had
written a Chaucer paper that became vaguely
confounded in the matter of literary rank with
the works of its famous subject, in her class
mates simple minds, so great was the com
mendation of Another High Authority in
regard to its matter and style. It came out
in the May Monthly, in which were some
pretty little verses of Sue s. They were para
phrased from the French Sue had taken
any amount of French before she came up
and Susan spent her time at chapel in look
ing harder than ever at her namesake as she
laughed and chattered and took her part in
[ 173 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
the somewhat crudely conceived jokes that
seem to amuse girls so perennially. Less flex
ible, as she afterwards considered, less hypo
critical, as she irritably felt then, she marvelled
at the mental make-up of a girl capable of ap
preciating the force and pathos of De Musset s
best work and expressing it so accurately, and
able at the same time to find content in such
tiresome, half-grown nonsense.
When the Monthly came out, she was amazed
to receive a dozen copies with a hasty note:
DEAR Miss Jackson : Here are the copies you
wanted never mind the money. There
are always a lot left over since we enlarged the
edition. If you want more^ after we J ve sent out
the Alumna list^ we Y/ give them to you.
H. STUART.
It was only one of the many notes intended
for Sue that had been coming to her since the
beginning. But none of the invitations to din
ner, to Alpha and Phi Kappa, to walk, to ride,
to wheel, to eat a box from home, had the
effect of this one. For Sue came after her
Monthlies and in a ten minutes conversation
wrought more ruin than she would have be
lieved possible.
" Did you get all mine and your own, too ? "
[ 174]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
she asked laughingly. "I should send away
a hundred, more or less, if / did Absolutely
satisfactory Chaucer papers! I should be
that proud. . . .
"You see, Papa has to have the Monthly ,
if there s anything of mine in it, tout de suite
directly now. He was wild with rage at
me because he learned about that little fool
story I had in, once before, from Cousin Con,
4 long afterwards/ he said it was only a
week! And then, other people, you know. . . .
"Did you get any of these off, before I
came? Because it s all right if you did I
don t need a dozen. Is n t it funny I don t
get any of your things? You must be some
what cloyed with my notes and stuff I should
think you d be bored to death. It s very wear
ing on me, Miss Jackson, explaining all the
time, c No, I m not the one! I assure you I
didn t write it. You ve no idea. . . .
"My cousin is on the Harvard Monthly
board, you know he telegraphed congratu
lations to me. He was that set up over it!
It was really very funny. . . .
"I m afraid I m keeping you were you
going out? Shall I tell Helen Stuart to send
yours down? She may think we Ve both got
all we want. Do you know what Alpha s go-
[ 175 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
ing to be to-night? Somebody said it was go
ing to be Dr. Winthrop he s my uncle,
you know, and I thought if it was I d go
down to the station. . . ."
She had not the slightest idea that her
thoughtless and, to tell the truth, somewhat
embarrassed chatter was one succession of
little galling pinpricks to the other. Her fa
ther, who expected his daughter s little tri
umphs to be his own, as a matter of course;
her cousin at Harvard; her uncle who lectured
to the Alpha; her notes and flowers she
must know that there was the best of reasons
for her not getting her namesake s ! her light
implication that everybody went to Alpha;
her very expression : " No, I m not the one ! "
seemed to the girl s angry sensitiveness a
studied insult. Not the one ! As if there were
any one else ! She did not know how unbear
ably formal and curt she seemed to the other,
nor how strongly she gave the impression of
wanting to be let alone.
Sue went away to mail her Monthlies, and
Susan locked her door and considered at
length and in detail the humor of her visit
or s light remarks as applied to herself. She
fancied At Autumn Dusk zn&AStudy of Chaucer
demanded by an enraged father, and smiled
[ 176]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
a very unpleasant and ungirlish smile. More
over, it is possible that she did her father an
injustice here. While it is improbable that he
would have persisted in lending them about
among his friends, to his wife s open amuse
ment, as did Mr. Jackson of Boston, and not
withstanding the fad: that he would doubtless
have failed to appreciate them fully, he might
have liked to see them. Later, much later, Susan
was to find a number of her poems and stories
clipped with care from the magazines and pasted
into an old scrapbook, with the glowing notices
of her first really well-known work; the book
hidden under a pile of old newspapers in her
father s closet. She cried over them for days
he was dead then and published Blind
Hearts shortly afterward. None of her class
mates, most of whom gave or received that
exquisite sonnet-cycle for Christmas that year,
could have known that the roots of it struck
back to her freshman year at college.
After a stupid, hot vacation, in which she
lost touch more than ever with her people,
from whom she was to draw slowly apart, it
seemed, forever, she came back with a little,
unowned hope for other things: a vague idea
that she could start fresh. She told some
body, afterwards, that just as she got to un-
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
derstand girls a little she lost all connection
with them; she did not lose connection with
them just then, so it must be that she did not
then understand them.
Indeed, what was, perhaps, her greatest
mistake was made at this time, and colored the
year for her. It happened in this way. The
Alpha had the first chance at the sophomores
that year, and for a wonder, the sophomores
were not only clever but possessed that in
tangible quality, "the Alpha spirit," in a
gratifying degree. The ticket for the first draw
ing included the two Jacksons, Cornelia Burt,
Elizabeth Twitchell, and to fulfil that tradi
tion that inevitably elects one perfectly un-
explainable girl, Kate Ackley, a young person
of many and judiciously selected friends. At
the very night of the election it was suddenly
rumored that Sue Jackson had openly de
clared her intention of refusing Alpha in favor
of the rival society, on the ground that she
liked Phi Kappa better and had more friends
there.
Now aside from the fact that this report
was utterly baseless, for Sue would have pre
ferred the Alpha, if only to go in among the
first five of all, it was aside from the point.
As some irritated seniors afterwards explained
C 178 ]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
with much temper and reiteration to the chid
den society. Alpha was sufficiently honor
able in the sight of the college to endure very
calmly rejection at the hands of any fresh
man whatsoever, whether or not they had any
certainty of the truth of the rumor. But the
girls were struck with the solemn necessity of
immediate and drastic action, and with a grati
fying thrill of excitement they struck off Sue s
name and put in Margaret Pattison s, the
sixth in order, whereat Phi Kappa greatly re
joiced and promptly elected Sue the next
week.
Now it is very sad that the only person who
seriously misunderstood this whole affair was
Susan Jackson of Troy. Sue very quickly
learned the whole matter; what her feelings
may have been is not certain. Phi Kappa
made a jubilee over her, and she became, as
is well known, a great light in that society.
Miss Pattison, by some mysterious free ma
sonry the girls who are "in everything"
seem to absorb all such matters through their
pores soon found out her luck, and was
frankly grateful for it. Alpha retained the
courage of her convictions and assumed a dis
tinctly here-I-stand-I-can-no-otherwise atti
tude. Phi Kappa chuckled privately and
[ 179]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
looked puzzled in public. But Susan had made
a great mistake, and what is worse, never
knew it. A little gossiping freshman in the
boarding-house she had moved into, who had
been injudiciously petted by the seniors and
imagined herself in everybody s confidence,
told Miss Jackson, with many vows of se
crecy, that there had never been such a time
in Alpha in the history of the college: they
had meant to have Sue- oh, of course! but
there had been a terrible mistake at the bal
loting and names had been confused, and
though etiquette forbade any expression of
their real feeling, they were nearly wild at their
clumsiness.
It is hardly to be wondered at that Susan
jumped to her conclusion. She had got so
many things intended for Sue why not this?
She knew that cleverness and even college
fame are not the only calls to a society, and
she had no real friends in either of the two
organizations. She could not believe that the
Alpha would purposely omit Sue: if they had
chosen both, it would have been different, but
as it was . . .
So she received their very earnest congratu
lations with a constraint that chilled them.
They reasoned that she was perfectly certain
C 1 8 ]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
of the election and took no pains to hide it,
and though they could not blame her for this,
they thought her more conceited than ever,
and regarded her accordingly. The poor child
was suffering from actual humility, however,
not conceit. She could not know that her
mark on both society lists was the highest
ever given; that Alpha would cheerfully have
sacrificed any two, or even three, of the others
for her; that much as they regretted Sue, they
wasted less sorrow over her now that they were
sure of the leading girl in Ninety-red. For that
was what they called her the girls that she
thought patronized her. They took her after-
successes almost as a matter of course. "Oh,
yes ! she was far and away the most brilliant
girl in the college !" they said. But she never
heard them.
The house she had moved into with an un
acknowledged hope of getting more in touch
with them was the last house she should have
chosen. It was filled from cellar to roof with
freshmen, and not only are they notoriously
clannish under such conditions, but there were
at least eight or ten of them from the same
prominent preparatory school, and among
them was their class president. It was not
possible for Susan to join herself to this little
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
circle of satellites, and they controlled the en
tire house in a very short time. So she took
to visiting the head of the house, a faded,
placid soul with a nominal authority and a
gentleness that moved even her worst fresh
men and a bad freshman combines the bru
tality of a boy with the finesse of a woman of
the world to a little shamed consideration
during their periodic fits of social reform. Sit
ting by her fire in the dusk, with the smell of
hot cooked chocolate drifting in from the hall,
and the din of the assembled tribes in the
president s room overhead, Susan passed long,
bored, miserable hours. Half listening to the
older woman s talk, half sunk in her thoughts,
she alternately chafed with rage at the idea of
her college life drifting out in solitary walks
and tired women s confidences, or took a sad
kind of comfort in one fire where she was
always welcome, one friend that loved to talk
to her.
For Mrs. Hudson grew very fond of her,
and something in the girl s own baffled, un
satisfied soul must have helped her to under
stand the stress and pathos of the tired little
woman s life. Few of the girls who afterwards
read Barbara: A Study in Discipline , would
have believed that the high-hearted, wonderful
A FAMILY AFFAIR
heroine was based on Miss Jackson s study of
their freshman landlady. But most of Susan s
knowledge was gained from such unscheduled
courses.
In her junior year she let her work go, to
a great extent, and spent much time in the
town libraries, reading omnivorously. As a
matter of fact, her class work deteriorated not
a little, as much by reason of dangerously ex
tended cuts as anything else. But it all failed
to interest her, somehow: the detailed cam
paigns, the actual value of money, the soul
less translations, the necessarily primary char
acter of the beginnings of any study of modern
language. She felt with growing irritation that
she should have learned genders and verbs
earlier in life, and she surprised her expectant
teachers with poorer and poorer recitations.
Mademoiselle had no means of knowing that
though Miss Jackson stammered through the
subjunctive she was reading dozens of novels
and plays with a very fair ease; Fraulein could
not tell from her imperfect handling of the
modal auxiliaries that she had written a better
paper on Faust than many a six years student
of German, and already knew most of Heine
by heart.
This year she made a few friends, chiefly
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
in Phi Kappa, for some reason or other, which
irritated the Alpha girls a little. To do her
justice, she was utterly ignorant of this re
sult of her connection with Bertha Kitts and
Alida Fosdick, nor would it have resulted in
the case of an ordinary girl. But Susan was
more prominent than she ever realized, and
her whole connection with the others being
official and logical rather than social and actual,
her conduct and opinions were very sharply
criticised from a rather exacting standpoint.
Nor was this wholly unfair, for she was her
self an unsparing critic. More than one of the
Faculty smarted under her too successful epi
grams ; various aspirants for popularity and
power in the Alpha or the class learned to
dread her comments ; her few friends them
selves were never quite sure of her attitude
toward them. But she was not, for her part,
sure of them : it is hard to make friends in
one s junior year. And though she saw quite
a little of Biscuits and Dick and Neal Burt
always her constant admirer she never
for a moment lost the consciousness that she
was no friend of their friends, that she had no
place in those groups long since formed and
shaken into place. They were a little jealous of
her, too, and resented her selection of this girl
C 184]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
and that from among them, though they could
not but admit that her judgment was good.
Her sources of irritation were the same al
ways. Their very flexibility, the ease with which
those she had chosen out slipped from her to
their other friends (they laughed with her at
them, even, after the manner of girls did they
laugh with them at her?), filled her with a
hopeless jealousy. It was not their nice clothes
and their good times she grudged them, though
she wanted both : it was their connections, their
environments, their very disciplines. When
Biscuits with loud lamentations elecled Phi
losophy at the decree of her father ; when
Neal took up two courses of Economics in
order to help her mother with "some footless
syllabi in mother s literary club;" when Betty
Twitchell endured the gibes of her friends every
rainy day because " Papa won t let me wear a
short skirt ; he hates a woman in one I think
it s perfectly horrid of him, too ! Wait till I get
pneumonia ! As if I d c get a carriage to take
me from the Hatfield to College Hall !" Susan
would have given every rhyme in her head for
one year of their conventional, irresponsible
lives.
It was not money she longed for : Neal
Burt was poor enough, and made no secret
[ 185]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
of "my cousin s boots, my dear, and my aunt s
silk waist, and Patsy s gloves that don t fit her,
that I have on this minute !" But Neal gave
her one of her worst quarter-hours, at the time
her mother came up. She was a pretty little
woman with Neal s eyes ; her simple clothes
had, like Neal s, a distinct air of taste and se-
leftion about them ; her interest in everything
was so pleasant, her manner so cordial and
charming, that she made an easy conquest of
the girls and Neal s friends in the Faculty
that came to meet her and drink tea in the
quiet house where Neal lived almost alone,
much petted by her landlady, an old family
friend. Mrs. Burt was interested in Economics
that year "the dear thing has a new fad
every time I go home!" and a prominent
professor of Economics from one of the uni
versities happening to be in town just then,
one of Neal s friends among the Powers in
vited mother and daughter to meet him. Mrs.
Burt was equally charmed and charming ; the
distinguished professor begged to be allowed
to send her a copy of his book, in which she
had been much interested, "and she went home
proud as Punch ! " in the words of her daughter.
Every word the kindly little woman had
with Susan and she had a great many, for
[ 186]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
Neal had interested her mother in her friend
brought closer home to her what had steadily
grown to be the consuming trouble of her life.
She tried to imagine her mother drinking tea
with a roomful of strangers ; finding the right
word for every one, talking with this girl about
her friends, with that about the last book, with
the other about college life in general. She
fancied her meeting the distinguished profes
sor and discussing his book so brightly and
saw the closet-shelves where Marie Corelli and
the Duchess jostled Edna Lyall : Mrs. Jack
son said she liked some real heavy reading
now and then, and Edna Lyall had a good
many problems in her books. She had a sick
ening consciousness that her mother would in
evitably defer to the girls, particularly to the
confident, well-dressed ones ; and every time
that Neal patted Mrs. Hurt s shoulder or
kissed the tip of her ear, she felt her heart
contract with a spasm of that terrible gnawing
envy that is surely reserved, with their equally
terrible capacity for loving, for a certain small
proportion of women, and women only. It is
a very sad thing for a girl to be ashamed of
her mother.
In her junior year occurred one of her great
est triumphs. The senior class had petitioned
[ 187]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
vainly for the privilege of giving Twelfth
Night as their Commencement play: the re
fusal, based on the obstacle presented by the
part of Sir Toby, and couched in the undy
ing phrases of the Greatest Authority "he
should be neither drunk, nor half drunk, nor
bibulous, nor rioting " impressed very deeply
those more susceptible to the humorous. With
a commendable intelligence the dramatics com
mittee decided that under the limitations above
quoted the play would lack in verisimilitude,
and cast about for another, but that was not
the end of it; for Susan, in whose hands the
Alpha farewell-meeting had been unreservedly
placed, wrote, staged, and directed the per
formance of an elaborate parody entitled First
Night, from which "the objectionable element
in the unfortunate William s comedy," to quote
the preface, was successfully and unsparingly
expurgated.
Not only were the most obvious situations
cleverly treated; not only did Sir Toby, spare
and ascetic, in a neat flannel wrapper, call deco
rously for "a stoup of thin gruel, Maria!"
not only did he and his self-contained friends
walk through a kind of posture dance with
killing solemnity, chanting the while a staid
canon in which the possibilities of "Why,
[ 88 ]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
should I drink on one day ? " were interpreted
with a novel and gratifying morality; not only
did Malvolio utterly eschew an article of ap
parel too likely to bring the blush of shame
to the cheek of the Young Person, but pains
takingly assume, in the eyes of the delighted
audience, heavy woollen stockings, a constant
and effectual reminder of his hidden tradi
tional garb : but a parody within a parody ran
cunningly through the piece. The trials of the
committee, the squabbles of the principal aft
ers, open hits at the Faculty, sly comments
on the senior class, which had been active in
reforms and not wholly popular innovations
all these were interwoven with the farce;
and this not in the clumsy harmless fashion
of most college grinds, but pointed by a keen
wit, a merciless satire, an easy, brilliant style
already well on to its now recognized maturity.
Most of the principal actors in the play fi
nally selected by the seniors, with more than
half of the committee, were that year, as it hap
pened, from Alpha, and their delight knew no
bounds. Susan did not act herself, but she was
a born manager; and the actors that cursed
her unsparing drill and absolute authority dur
ing the long rehearsal season that made it
the most finished affair of its kind, blessed her
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
vociferously on the great night of its produc
tion. It was the most perfect success of her life
though the girls who thought she scorned
her college triumphs would have laughed had
she told them so, later. Every point was eagerly
caught and wildly applauded; the stage setting,
the funny, clever costumes, the irresistible cari
catures, the wit and humor of the thing, all
acted with a verve and precision unusual in
college dramatics, where criticism is too often
forced to take the will for the deed, all called
for a tremendous and well-earned apprecia
tion. The author was frantically summoned
again and again; the seniors exhausted a con
gratulatory vocabulary on her. Her classmates
shook her hand many times apiece.
Nor did the triumph end with the night,
for the juniors, unable to contain their pride,
gave surreptitious bits of the play to chosen
seniors in Phi Kappa, and it was even ru
mored that the other society was going to
request a revival of the combination enter
tainment, now out of vogue, with a view to
having it repeated. This was suppressed by
the Powers, but it got about that one of the
few type-written copies of the piece had fallen
into the hands of an Influential Person prob
ably through Neal Burt, who admired it in
[ 190 ]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
proportion to her own far from ordinary abil
ity and that the Person had assembled a se-
lecl: gathering of her Peers for the sole purpose
of reading it, with unmistakably appreciative
comments, to them. Some members of the
Faculty, old Alpha girls themselves, and pres
ent on the occasion of its production, expressed
their admiration in unstinted terms, and alto
gether the Alpha gained a tremendous prestige.
This and her appointment as editor-in-chief
of the Monthly for her senior year marked
the height of Susan s prosperity. She used to
think, afterwards, that the play was the only
pure pleasure she had ever had: it was cer
tainly the only one that her namesake had left
to her unspoiled. Fate ordered it that she
should take off the bulletin-board with her
notice of editorial appointment a note hastily
addressed to S. Jackson, 9-. She opened it
mechanically.
DEAR Old Sue : It s a miserable shame ! You
ought to have had it! But it seems that it
makes no difference what we want, nor who would
work in best with the girls. Genius is nt every
thing, always but you know what I wanted!
Tour disappointed
H. S. K.
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
The note was not sealed, and she folded it
and put it back quietly. A moment later she
received her congratulations, but to every
one s "Of course you re not surprised. Miss
Jackson!" she smiled strangely. Sue used the
phrase, fresh from her own congratulations
as literary editor, and the concentrated bit
terness of three years flashed out in the other s
curt answer.
"Of course you re not surprised "
"Are you?"
Sue s startled flush was all the proof she
needed, and crushing in her hand the note that
had meant the highest college honor to more
than one of the girls who had got its like, she
went home to bear alone the sharpest disap
pointment she had yet known.
There was no one to tell her that the senior
editor whose initials signed the note for Sue
had been one of only two in Sue s favor; that
the board, so far from acting unwillingly un
der the direction of the Rhetoric department,
as she inferred from the note, had been prac
tically unanimous for her, particularly as the
two opposed held relatively unimportant po
sitions and were far from popular. She did
not know that the note itself was a gross
breach of etiquette, anyway, and that both
[ 19* ]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
officially and socially its writer had risked the
gravest censure; so much so that Sue, far
from being pleased, was heartily ashamed of
it and never told a soul about it till long after
wards. The person who could have explained
most effectively to her how perfectly her elec
tion met the favor of everybody, herself in
cluded for Sue would have been as surprised
to find herself placed above her gifted name
sake as to have found herself omitted entirely
from the board was too chagrined at the
abrupt answer to her congratulations to dream
of mentioning the matter further.
So Susan got out her first two numbers of
the Monthly with none of the delighted im
portance of most editors. It was all spoiled
for her. She knew that she deserved it: it
was impossible for her not to realize that, so
far as originality and power went, nobody in
the class, or the college, for that matter, could
touch her work. It was not the position that
meant so much to her: she was perfectly com
petent to fill it easily and acceptably, and she
knew it. But she wanted them to think so,
too, and be glad to give it to her and she
did not believe they were.
Shortly after her success of First Night,
she got one of her rare letters from home. She
[ 193 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
had little correspondence with them, and had
grown to regard their letters with dread, since
each one had brought unpleasant news, from
Doris , to announce her engagement to one of
"the boys," a flashy, half-disreputable fellow,
to her mother s, enclosing a cheque, with
gloomy forebodings that it might be the last,
and a disheartening chronicle of family affairs
growing daily more sordid. The sight of her
charaderless, uncultivated handwriting always
threw the girl into a gloomy, irritable mood,
and as she opened this one the remorse that
had begun to prick her more sharply of late
at her inability to help them, if not in the way
she would like, at least in the most obviously
necessary manner, crept over her and sad
dened her even before she reached the crisis
of the letter. It was very simple: she must
come home. There was no more money; there
had been none for some time, but her father
was bent on her staying, and had put it off
longer than he should have done. It had been
a foolish expense, and she might have had a
position long ago. There was car fare and a very
little over, and it was hoped that she had no
bills. They were going to move into an apart
ment over the store, and Veronica was going
to keep her father s books. And that was all.
A FAMILY AFFAIR
Perhaps her mother felt sorrier than she
knew how to say; perhaps it was only the con
straint of years and lack ofsavoirfaire that made
the letter so cold and curt; but there it was,
with nothing to break the shock : no regret for
her, to lighten her sense of selfishness; no ap
peal to her, even, to help them. They could get
along very well; to give up the house would
be a great financial relief, and she would be
more a hindrance than otherwise. She knew
that: she knew that her presence would be a
constant irritation, her criticism, impossible
to conceal, a constant source of strife and es
trangement. It was only that they had no more
money for her that was all.
She walked out to the long bridge, and
sat down on a stone near the end of it. For
perhaps the first time a complete conscious
ness of how bitterly she loved the place came
to her. She, of whom many of the Faculty
afterwards wondered that she stayed as long
as she did, credited by all her acquaintances
with infinite boredom at its restrictions and
wearisome routine, dreaded to leave it as
she herself could hardly endure to think.
For three years she had taken a place, un
challenged, among people of a class she had
never known before. Unknown, unhelped,
[ 195 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
she had by sheer personality and natural
power made herself not only respected but
respected to an unusual degree. She had
patronized girls who would not have ac
knowledged her existence three years be
fore; whether they loved her or not, her class
was proud of her. Her going would be no
ticed oh, yes indeed !
She rose to go home, and a little beyond
the bridge turned to look back : something
told her that she should not know that view
soon again. Meadow and river and softly cir
cling hills with the beautiful afternoon haze
thick on them, she stamped it on her heart
and with it a sudden nearing figure. Down
the long arch, slim and shapely against the
blue background of the tunnel, Sue flew
toward her on her wheel. Her hands swung
by her sides she had ridden from childhood
her feet were off the pedals, her perfectly
fitting heavy skirt hung out in graceful fluted
folds. Beneath her soft, trim hat her cheeks
glowed rose-color, her eyes shone like stars.
The sun caught her smooth, thick hair and
framed her face in a glittering halo. She sat
straight as a dart, her lips parted with the
sheer physical delight of the swooping, effort
less sensation she was tremendously hand-
[ 196 ]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
some. To the other girl she was victory incar
nate; the essence of ease and triumph and per
fect bien-etre ; her hopeless envy and despair.
As she flew by she spread out her hands in
a quick, significant gesture, half graceful and
high-bred half pert and of the music-hall:
it typified her and her friends perfectly to Su
san, who never forgot her as she saw her then,
and whose Mademoiselle Diana, much admired
by Sue and her family, is nobody more nor
less than Sue herself.
She found a letter waiting for her at home,
a letter that the maid explained had just been
brought from the house where the other Miss
Jackson lived it had been kept there by
mistake and neglected for two or three days.
It was hoped it was not important. She opened
it in the hall, read it hastily through, read it
again, looked at the date, and asked for a
time-table. The maid, suspecting bad news,
was officious in assistance and eagerly agreed
to pack her things and get a man to box the
books when she had gone, which would be in
the morning, she said, with a strange, absent-
minded air. She gave the girl her last fifty
cents, and while Maggie folded and packed,
she wrote a letter home.
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
" T T seems foolish for me to come to Troy ; I
J- should only have to go right back to Boston
again" she said in it. "They want me to begin to
colleff the stories right away and do some reading
for them besides so I must be there. There is a
new magazine they have just bought, too, and I am
to do some work on that. It is a very good posi
tion and will lead to a better, they say, and I am
very fortunate to get it. They say very nice things
about my work in the "Monthly" the college
paper that I was elected editor of they seem to
have read them all. I must go on immediately.
Their letter was delayed, and I shall try to get
there to-morrow. I will let you know when I find
a place to stay. I hope to be able to help you soon.
"Hastily, -SUSAN."
She wrote a note to the Registrar and one
to Neal Burt, whom, in her letter of resigna
tion, she recommended strongly to the board
as her successor, overlooking the constitution,
which provides for the literary editor s filling
the first place when it falls vacant, and refus
ing supper, she walked out over the campus.
The dining-rooms were opened to the soft air;
the cheerful clatter of plates came out from
every window; she could see the maids hurry
ing about. She sat for an hour in one of the
[ 198 ]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
hammocks, and then walked about the larger
buildings. The last dance of the season was
on in the Gym; the violins rose above the
tramping and the confused uproar inside.
White-armed girls passed the windows and
leaned out into the cool.
"How is it? " one called up from below.
"Mortal slow, dearie, but don t say I told
you!" the other answered in a stage whisper
from above, and the music dashed into a
two-step.
"Be^A/El Cap-i-tan!"
It haunted Susan s dreams for nights, that
tune it seemed impossible that the dancers
hearts should not ache as hers did. She lin
gered, fascinated, while the violins sang it
over and over, and over again at the storm of
clapping that followed it.
"BeM^/El Cap-i-tan!"
It was a hideous, cruel tune, light and utterly
careless, and yet with that little sadness in it
that some sensitive ears find always in good
dance music is it because dancing must so
obviously end so soon ? and Susan has
loathed it all her life. Indeed, at a recent lunch
eon given in her honor by the alumnae of
New York, she requested that the orchestra
stop playing it after the first few bars these
[ 199 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
people of genius are so delightfully eccentric!
She left college as quietly as she had en
tered it ; there is no doubt that they would
have made her Ivy Orator, had she stayed.
The mail that took the notice of her lodging-
house to her family crossed one of Sue s to
her Uncle Bradford, of the well-known Bos
ton publishing firm. Among other things she
said:
I M glad you like her so well / knew you
would. She s really much better for the place
than Con. And Pm sure it was better to write to
her directly she does n t like any of us very well,
except Neal and Biscuits, and I have an idea
she really almost dislikes me. I knew that when
you saw that essay on the French and English as
short-story writers, you d want to give her the
chance. And she was the very girl to leave col
lege, too // is n t everybody would be so glad
to go just before senior year. Not but what I would,
fast enough, if I had her future before me Mon
dieu ! she s the only girl I ever thought I y d
rather be you should see the poem she left with
Neal for the " Monthly " / She turns them off over
night, apparently. It y s a loss to the class, of course,
but everybody is very glad for her she always
seemed so out of place up here, somehow. If one
[ 200 ]
A FAMILY AFFAIR
does n t care for the little footless stunts, it must
be a terrible bore, I should think. And when she s
famous we can fat each other on the back and say
we done it -partly. With a great deal of love
for you and Aunt Julia,
SUE.
THE SEVENTH STORY
A FEW DIVERSIONS
VII
A FEW DIVERSIONS
" "W" WISH you would ask her up, Nan/
I said Mrs. Harte, confidentially. "I want
I her to see the place. So far as I can judge,
-*" it s the best thing for her. There isn t
any doubt that she s a very bright girl, but she s
getting thoroughly spoiled here. You see, she
does just as she pleases she s the only young
person in the family and I know we spoil
her terribly. Her mind is made up to come
out in the winter, here in Chicago, and they 11
refuse her nothing her father and mother."
"They don t seem what you d call oppress
ively strict with her," remarked Anne, twirl
ing her racquet.
"Now what I want is for her to get some
where where she is n t the only clever girl; to
see that other girls can read and talk and play
the guitar and wear nice clothes and order silly
young men about. And judging from those of
you that I Ve seen, you can !"
"We do our little best," said Anne, mod
estly.
"And I wanted her to see you all: that s
one reason why I planned the house-party. I
was so disappointed when she came so late.
You see, her cousin Georgiana was was un-
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
fortunate. She went to Yale and Columbia and
goodness knows where, and she had short hair
and was such a frump and she wore such hide
ous spectacles and talked about Socialism or
was it Sociology ? all the time. I remember
she was always trying to persuade us to join
clubs and protest against something or other
it was very wearisome. So Madge got to de
spise the whole thing: she has always thrown
Georgiana at me when I mentioned college.
It was perfectly useless to try to make her un
derstand that every girl need n t be like Geor
giana. She s very obstinate. But she s a nice
girl, too, and if she can only get out of her
present atmosphere for four years "
"Pity she couldn t have seen Ursula, if
she s afraid we re all frumps," Anne sug
gested.
"Yes, is n t it ? But I think she stayed pur
posely. Now, you she says you re an ex
ception ; that there can t be many like you.
You see, Madge has a standard of her own ; she
says she d be ashamed to go through college
the way some of the boys do, with just a good
time and as low marks as they can safely get.
She says she d want to be a student if she pre
tended to, and yet she must have a good time,
and"
[ 206 ]
A FEW DIVERSIONS
"And she thinks it can t be done? Dear me,
what an error ! Well, if she 11 come up I 11
be very glad to have her, I m sure. I can trot
out our little pastimes and er omit the more
sociological side," said Anne, with a grin.
Mrs. Harte leaned forward eagerly. "Yes,
that s just what I mean ! She got enough of
that from Georgiana. I want her to watch
you "
"Sport about on the lawn? Gambol through
the village ? c Make the picturesque little lake
echo with sweet girlish gayety, as the news
paper gentlemen say?"
"Yes, that s it," and Mrs. Harte patted
Anne s broad shoulder. "That s what I mean,
you silly child. Just let her see that there are
a few diversions!"
Miss Marjory Cunningham, who was just ,
then coming up from the lake, was a tall,
well-grown young woman of seventeen, with
a handsome, assured face and unexceptionable
garments. She looked fully twenty, and was
young enough to find satisfaction in this cir
cumstance. She had been brought up, in the
orthodox American fashion, to take a promi
nent part in the household, particularly in the
entertainment of her mother s many guests;
and this, added to the fact that she happened
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
to be much cleverer than the young women
with whom her social lot had hitherto been
cast, inclined her to regard any one under
thirty with a patronage somewhat offensive,
if mild.
She dropped down beside Anne as her aunt
left the broad piazza, and smiled politely.
"Aunt Frank says you re going to-mor
row," she remarked, adding a little curiously,
"Shall you be glad to get back?"
"East, you mean? Why, yes. You see I m
a week late. They ve started up the show
without me, so to speak, and naturally it s
rather hard for them to worry along. They
may have given me up and laid my new little
single room at Lucilla Bradford s feet, which
would more than trouble me."
"Do they allow you to come back when
ever you want to?"
Miss Cunningham s tone was that of an in
dulgent aunt toward a pet nephew on his
Christmas holidays, and Anne s reply was
framed accordingly.
"Oh, easily ! They only insist on our being
back for the Glee Club concert. They re just
bound up in that, you know. So we usually
make a point of it. I must say," she changed
her tone, "I d like to hear Carol Sawyer s
[ 208 ]
A FEW DIVERSIONS
explanations to Miss Roberts ! Carol has a
fine imagination, but she s used it so much
of late that she 11 have to surpass herself this
time to make much impression on Robbie.
You see I have the great good fortune to pos
sess an accommodating relative: the Amia
ble Parent is far from well, and asked me if
I d wait a week till he could go on, and cheer
his last moments smooth his pillow, as it
were. So, since I ve never gone away early
once and only come back late twice before,
and once with an excuse, I thought I was safe
to stay. And I told him that, notwithstanding
the fact that I was languishing among dirt
courts and single-piece drivers and Saturday
hops and and your noble family, I d stick
it out a week longer. Said I to the Amiable
Parent:
" My own convenience count as nil;
It is my duty, and I will !"
Next morning, when Nan came down to
breakfast, pink under her tan and with that
air that she always carried of having just come
out of the tub, Marjory really regretted her go
ing. She mentioned to her aunt that she would
have liked to see more of her, and that if she
did go to New York in the spring she should
surely go up to Northampton. It was not
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
only because Miss Gillatt danced and golfed
and drove and played tennis so well that Mar
jory s interest was for the first time roused in
a girl of her own age, nor because her clothes
were nice and her ways amusing; what struck
Miss Cunningham was her guest s entire ab
sence of surprise at what she utterly failed to
recognize as an unusual amount of interest on
Marjory s part.
"This is Marjory how do you do, Mar
jory ? " she had said easily on their first meeting,
and she had never cared to learn that Marjory
intended her own " Miss Gillatt" for a lesson
to forward schoolgirls. And she had taken
Marjory s growing attentions quite as if she
were accustomed to have handsome young wo
men talk to her and row her about and give
her their photographs. When she had herself
mentioned looking Nan up in Northampton,
her proposition had not evoked the grateful
surprise that might have been expected.
"Glad to see you any time," the future
hostess had returned. " Better come up in the
spring; it s a lot prettier." And Madge had
decided then and there to go, though her sug
gestion had been more or less perfunctory.
She would never have considered it for a
moment had it not been perfectly obvious that
A FEW DIVERSIONS
the college girl did not regard herself at all in
the light of a possible example. Georgiana s
lectures on the Higher Education of Women
and its Ultimate EffecT: on the Sex were not to
be thought of in connection with this athletic
damsel, whose quotations, though frequent,
indicated a closer study of Lewis Carroll and
W. S. Gilbert than her alma mater s official
catalogue would suggest. She referred very lit
tle to the college and then only as the scene
of incidents in which she and her "young
friends," as she invariably called them, had
taken amusing or amazing parts. Marjory s
chief impression had been that of the jolliest
possible crowd of girls, who seemed to derive
great comfort and entertainment from one an
other s company, and it was a half-envious
desire to see if they really did this to the ex
tent that Anne implied, that drew her to
Northampton one fine day in the late spring.
As she stood on the station platform look
ing in vain for a tall girl with broad shoulders
and a persuasive grin, she heard her name
called, and turned to meet the outstretched
hand of a very different person. This person
was small and slender, with a plain, distin
guished little face, intelligent eyes, and a low
and charming voice. From the very Parisian
[21! ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
arrangement that topped her shining coils of
hair to the tips of her tiny shoes, she was one
of the most thoroughly well-dressed young
women Marjory had ever seen. She reminded
one vaguely, though not disagreeably, of Mr.
Wenzell s piclures, and Marjory failed ut
terly in a dazed attempt to correlate her and
Georgiana.
"You are Miss Cunningham, are you not ?
I am Ursula Wyckoff. Nan is so sorry, but
Hodgkinson Davids or Davidson Hodgkins
I can t remember the way has come up
from New York to play over the course to
day, and of course all the golf people have to
be out there. She and Caroline have been there
all the afternoon, and I m to bring you out a
little later, when they serve the tea. Is n t it
dreadfully warm ? Nan s next to Caroline and
Caroline holds the championship, so they re
naturally interested. I don t play at all. I was
so sorry to miss you at the house-party: we
all fell in love with your aunt. Oh, no, New
York, but I Ve lots of Western friends: you
know I ve met your aunt before, in Lon
don. We bought some Liberty things, and we
were staying at the same hotel, and they sent
us each other s parcels, so we got acquainted
picking them out. There was a lovely fan; she
A FEW DIVERSIONS
said it was for her niece. Was it you ? I dream
of that fan yet."
They walked slowly up the long street,
Ursula chatting easily, and Marjory wonder
ing how many of thegirls they passed belonged
to the college. They paused before a drug
gist s window, all Huyler s and violet soap,
and Ursula walked by a long, shining soda
fountain to a room in green and white, with
little tables and a great palm in the centre.
The tables were very nearly filled, and there
was a cheerful clatter of tall spoons and a busi
nesslike bustle of clerks with trays.
"This is Kingsley s," said Ursula, with a
comprehensive gesture. "Will you have a
chocolate ice ?" While absorbing the inviting
and pernicious mixture, Miss Cunningham
looked about her with interest. In one corner
four girls with rumpled shirt-waists and dusty
golf stockings squabbled over scores, and il
lustrated with spoons preferred methods of
driving and putting. Their voices rose above
the level prescribed for drawing-room conver
sation, and they called each other strange
names. In another corner a tall, dark girl with
a grave expression talked steadily in a low
voice to her companion, a clever-looking crea
ture, whose bursts of laughter grew hysterical
]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
as the dignified one continued, with a perfectly
impersonal manner, to reduce her to positive
tears of mirth. To them Ursula bowed, and
the narrator, politely recognizing her, went on
with her remarks, to an accompaniment of gur
gling protest from her friend. Near them a
porcelain blonde, gowned in a wonderful pale
blue stuff with a great hat covered with curly
plumes, ate strawberry ices with a tailor-made
person clothed in white pique, mystic, won
derful. She was all stiffness and specklessness,
and she looked with undisguised scorn at the
clamoring athletes, a white leather card-case
in her hand. Near one window a gypsy-faced
child in a big pink sunbonnet imparted mighty
confidences to her friend, who shook two mag
nificent auburn braids over her shoulders with
every chuckle.
"And I heard a knock at the door and of
course I thought it was Helen or some of the
girls, and I called to come in and, my dear,
who do you think it was? It was the express
man! Will you sign this book? said he, and
he brought the book right up to the bed and
I leaned on my elbow and signed it! My dear,
was n t that perfectly "
"Oh, well, it s awfully funny here, any
way. That beastly old laundry tore my lovely
[2,4]
A FEW DIVERSIONS
lace nightgown to shreds and it was new, and
I put in an old dressing-sacque that was all
in rags and I was going to throw it away, and
they mended it carefully before they sent it
back!"
As they left the room and Ursula waited
while the clerk looked up her soda ticket, the
door flew open and an impish little creature,
with a large, deprecating, motherly girl in her
wake, slipped into the shop.
"Now don t make for the back room,
Bertie dear, for there is n t time. We Ve got
lots of places to do yet ! " she called, and catch
ing sight of Ursula she dashed up to her.
"What do you think Alberta and I are do
ing? We re so bored, and we re going to stop
at every drug store on this side and have an
ice-cream soda, and the same going back on
the other side. Is n t that interesting? I tell
Alberta it s bound to be sooner or later!"
"Is that a freshman?" Marjory inquired
competently, and Ursula s eyes twinkled as
she replied gravely:
"No, that s a senior. She has fits of idiocy,
but in her better moments she s quite a per
son to know. She s in the Lawrence with me.
Why on earth she should go and get Alberta
May and drag her into degradation and dys-
[ 215 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
pepsia, nobody knows, but she always does."
They rested for a while in Ursula s room,
which was "more than enormous," as Anne
said it was intended for a double room
and furnished very delightfully. There were
some beautiful Copley prints and a cast or two
and a long low shelf of books and fascinating
wicker chairs with puffy cushions. There was
the inevitable tea-table and chafing-dish para
phernalia and the inevitable couch with a great
many Yale pillows; but there were not more
than a dozen photographs of girls in any one
place and only one Gibson girl, and she was
very small. There was a beautiful desk all lit
tered with papers and little photographs of
Ursula s family and her horse at home, and
a lot of the pretty little cluttering things one
picks up abroad. Marjory saw no girl with
such consistently fascinating clothes as Ursu
la s during her visit, nor did she sit in any
room so charming as hers, the college girl be
ing a generation behind her brother in this re
gard; but first impressions are strong, and
Ursula s silver brushes, her beautiful etching,
and the two wonderful rugs that nearly covered
her shining floor formed the stage setting for
all Marjory s subsequent imaginary dramas.
They went out to the links by trolley,
A FEW DIVERSIONS
through the long quiet street, past pretty
lawns and pleasant houses, into the real coun
try of fields and scattered cottages. Marjory
learned how "the crowd" had vacationed to
gether more than once; how they were going
up to Carol Sawyer s place in Maine next sum
mer for "the time of their lives"; how, after
their Commencement obsequies, they were go
ing for two weeks to Nan at Sconset and live
in a house all by themselves, and then four of
them were going abroad together with Nan s
father "the dearest thing in the world";
how Caroline was going to study medicine in
Germany and Lucilla Bradford was going to
be married and continue to illumine Boston,
and Ursula and her sister were going to stay
indefinitely in France or Italy with various
relatives.
They seemed to have a very intimate knowl
edge of one another s affairs, Marjory decided,
as they got out at the links and strolled up to
the tiny club-house. A straggling crowd was
gradually melting away there: hot, dishevelled
girls with heavy bags, cool and fluffy girls with
tea-cups, men arguing in white flannels and
men conversing in frock coats. Important small
boys professors sons and their friends from
the town caddied for the great man and his
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
followers, patronizing the urchins who ordi
narily amassed wealth from this employment,
and a crowd of interested golfers from the
town trailed about the holes, admiring, criticis
ing, and chattering. Here and there a crimson
coat shone out, some of the ladies tilted gay
parasols, white duck dotted the grass every
where. It was all very jolly and interesting, and
when Nan came up with a white-flannelled
youth and a cheerful if exhausted friend whom
she introduced as "one of my little mates
Caroline Wilde," Marjory could have thought,
as she sipped her tea and learned the score, that
she was back on the links at home.
Caroline had learned much and Nan had
held a reverent conversation with the cham
pion and was basking in the recollection of it.
Marjory met an ardent golfer in marvellous
stockings, who was with difficulty restrained
from illustrating, by means of his empty cup
and the parasol his fellow-professor was guard
ing, the very latest method of effecting a tre
mendous drive from a bad spot in the course,
and his friend turned out to be a classmate of
her brother s; and so they started from Yale,
which is a very good conversational starting-
point, and their reminiscences attracted Ur
sula, who, with an adoring little freshman
[ "8]
A FEW DIVERSIONS
Ursula was never without a freshman and
the Church and the Law wrangling pleasantly
over a lost ball, was holding her court in a near
corner. They drifted up, and the Church and
the Law were so amusing and well set up that
Marjory quite lost her heart to them and wished
they would come "West," as they persisted in
calling Chicago, remarking confidentially that
nothing seemed to upset a person from Chi
cago so much as that!
They rode home with the Church and the
Law, while the assistant in that great under
taking, the higher education of women, raced
the trolley on a Columbia Chainless, to the
wild delight of the passengers, who cheered
his futile efforts and bribed the motorman to
an exciting rate of speed.
"Do you have lessons with him, really?"
Marjory demanded, as they left the rapidly
churning golf stockings behind for the mo
ment. Nan grinned. "Do you, Ursula?" she
repeated. Ursula sighed but said nothing, and
Nan explained that in the midst of his artless
prattle last week he had mentioned a written
lesson in the near future, based upon certain
reference reading. "It comes off to-morrow,"
she added cheerfully, "and the young Lu-
cilla is hastily sprinting through the volumes
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
and gathering information. She sought the
seclusion that a cabin grants last night, and
when I howled at her through the keyhole
that we were going to Boyden s for the even
ing meal, she said that if she got through two
hundred pages and her notes by then she d
be along. Ursula does it bit by bit, and then
tells us to go to the ant, thou sluggard, but
little Lucy thinks she knows him better than
we do, and she said he would n t do it. I told
her, go to, he would; I saw it in his eye. So
Caroline started to fill her fountain pen she
calls it that from force of habit but what
she really does is to fill the room, and what
drips over "
"There s Lucilla!" said somebody, and
they got off the car and teased Lucilla a
small, tired person with a prim little face and
beautiful manners all the way down to Boy-
den s. A striking, sulky-looking girl with a
stylish golf suit that made her look like the
costumers plates of tailor-made athletic maid
ens, was holding a table for them, and she
turned out to be Carol Sawyer. She was the
first girl of "the crowd" Marjory did not like.
Her voice was loud and her manner a little
overbearing; she wore too many rings and her
attitude toward the college was very different
[ 220 ]
A FEW DIVERSIONS
from the harmless nonsense that in the case
of the other girls covered plenty of good work
and a real interest in it. She was evidently very
wealthy, and Marjory caught herself wonder
ing if that was why the others put up with her.
When they had half finished their supper
and a very good little supper it was a large
girl, almost too tall for a girl, in a mussy short
skirt and badly fitting shirt-waist sauntered
into the room. From their own table and most
of the others a chorus of welcome went up.
"Hello, Teddy !" "Don t hurry, Dody !"
"Come over here, Dodo !" "Theodora, dear
child, your side-comb is nearly out !" "Have
some berries, Ted?"
She included them all in a cheerful
"Hello!" and strolled up to Nan s table.
"This is little Theodora Bent," said Nan,
kindly. " She is very shy and unused to com
pany, but her heart "
"Her heart," little Theodora interrupted,
dragging a chair from somewhere and quietly
appropriating Ursula s creamed chicken, "is
not here. It is with our friend, Mrs. Austin,
who sits at a lonely table wondering where her
loved ones are to-night. I met her at the door.
Dorothea, said she and why she persists
in calling me Dorothea we shall know, per-
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
haps, when the mists have cleared away
c Dorothea, there is hardly a Friday night that
you girls are in to supper. I m sure I can t
see why ! I said that it was strange, but it
just happened so. Then she insisted on know
ing why; so I suggested that perhaps you
found the noise in the dining-room trying "
"Dodo! you didn t!"
"Certainly I did. I should suppose you
might. Anybody who sits near you certainly
does ! And she said that some freshman or
other had been decorating the piazza all the
afternoon, lying in wait for me to tutor her,
and suggested that I ought to manage better.
And I told her I d tutored three hours and
a half to-day and I had a written lesson and
Phi Kappa Farewell to-morrow night, and I
thought that if she did n t object to the fresh
man I d leave her there till next week. So I
left her standing in the door "
"A thing she has never done before!" sang
Nan, softly, and they laughed long and mer
rily, as people laugh who are not very ancient,
and who have just had a good supper and are
the best of friends.
It was a little after that that the Glee Club
sang on the steps of Music Hall, while crowds
of girls streamed out and sat on the grass and
[ 222 ]
A FEW DIVERSIONS
wandered up and down or listened on dormi
tory steps. They sang sweet songs and funny
songs, and the audience sitting on the campus
clapped and clapped again. Their repertoire
amazed Miss Cunningham, who had been
firmly impressed with the idea that A Spanish
Cavalier and Aunt Dinah s Quilting Party were.
necessarily sung by the college girl to the ex
clusion of all other melodies. She was used
to them now, used to pigtails and puffs, shirt
waists and evening dresses, Western rolled r s
and Eastern broad a s, handsome matronly
young women, and slim, saucy little chits, soli
tary walkers, devoted pairs, and rollicking
bands. The light faded imperceptibly, turn
ing the ugly brick to a soft pink, bringing out
the pal mingling of colors that spread over
the smooth, green campus, with here and
there a girl vivid in crimson or violet. The
leader raised her hand and they started a
medley, with queer changes and funny little
turns.
Three blind mice !
See how they run !
They all ran after the farmer s wife
For she was the jewel of Asia,
Of Asia,
Of Asia
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
How happy they seemed, how well able to
amuse each other!
Then, as the faces on the steps grew indis
tinct and the little night noises grew plainer,
just as the Club turned to go in somebody
called, " Mandalayl" The crowd took it up
and "Mandalay!" sounded from all the
groups. Three or four girls with guitars
turned up from somewhere, and a mandolin
was produced from the Hubbard; a tall, slen
der girl stepped out a little from the rest and
turned upon the waiting audience the kind of
soft, rich voice that sounds rough and strained
indoors, but only a little thrilled and anxious
in the open air.
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin eastward to
the sea,
There s a Burma girl a-settin an I know she thinks
o me !
Some of the girls perched on balcony rail
ings; some leaned on each other s shoulders;
the strolling pairs and groups stopped, inter
locked, and listened as attentively as if they
did not already know it by heart; their white
dresses glimmered among the shrubbery. Ur
sula and Theodora Bent, a strange pair, Mar
jory thought, had dropped down on a bench,
the little graceful figure balanced on the back
[ 224 ]
A FEW DIVERSIONS
of the seat with one arm over the broad shoul
ders of her big, careless friend. Nan s merry
face took on the almost wistful look that music
always brought there, and Marjory wondered
if the silent, waiting group knew how soft their
eyes grew and how much alike they all looked
suddenly.
An the dawn comes up like thunder out er China
crost the Bay !
A moment of silence, a burst of applause,
and the crowd was scurrying away as if a bell
had struck. The chatter rose again, the faces
changed, and to crown the transformation a
tall, dark girl with a handsome face the girl
they had seen at Kingsley s rose languidly
from the top step of the Washburn and sang
with a startling imitation of the first singer,
to a group of girls about her:
Oh, that Road to Mandalay !
Must we hear it night and day ?
For the author d swear like thunder if he heard it
sung that way !
Wild applause and a cry of, " Second verse,
Neal! second verse!" followed, and as they
walked past the Hatfield by a group of girls
audibly disapproving of the parody and its
singer, they caught the second verse:
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
For they sing it ev ry evening, and they sing it ev ry
morn ;
They will sing it at my fun ral was it sung when
I was born ?
Just as soon as I reach heaven, and they teach me
how to play,
Oh, I know the tune I learn on will be Road to
Mandalay !
The juniors chuckled, and as Nan com
mended the abilities of the cynical senior,
Marjory remembered her face as it had been
a few minutes before, and wondered.
They took her to her boarding-house and
left her to get to bed, for she was tired. And
in the morning she went, by previous arrange
ment, to the Lawrence, whence Dody Bent took
her down to Boyden s to eggs and toast, and
coffee in a shining silvery pot, and said that in
consequence of the apparently unchanged in
tentions of Dr. Robbins she should necessa
rily be much engaged from ten until eleven
and the few scant minutes preceding those
hours, and that Misses Gillatt, Bradford, and
Wyckoff expelled to be similarly occupied.
Caroline Wilde, however, who apparently did
little but work in the laboratory and keep
out-of-doors, would be charmed to row her
about Paradise.
A FEW DIVERSIONS
Accordingly, at a few minutes after nine,
Marjory stood at the foot of the main stair
case, swaying backward and forward in the
chapel rush, and picked out Caroline, saunter
ing down with a cheerful "Hello!" for every
body on the stairs and that air of leisure that
was the despair and admiration of the perpet
ually rushed; for she was one of the notori
ously busy people in the college always "at
everything," distressingly competent in sev
eral of the stiffest courses offered, the first aid
to the injured in any capacity, and the prop of
more committees than she had fingers. She
was always perfectly well and always wore a
shirt-waist, and she was one of the exceedingly
few people who are equally popular with stu
dents, Faculty, and ladies-in-charge.
She pulled Marjory about in the most
scientific manner over a somewhat restricted
body of water boasting a great deal of scenery
for its size, conversing at length on basket
ball, in which she had been twice defeated,
and not at all on golf and tennis, in which she
held the college championship. In the course
of her remarks it became apparent that Ur
sula and Dodo formed one third of "their
crowd," she and Nan another third, and Lu-
cilla and Carol Sawyer one sixth each.
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
Of Lucilla there seemed to be little to say:
she was of extensive ancestry and made the
best fudge in the place. She was also a good
person to tell things to and was always quiet
and polite. Dodo spoke very literally for
herself. She was one of the best adresses in the
college; she had some very bad quarter-hours
back of her continual nonsense; she was poor,
and there was something the matter all the
time at home. Ursula was one of the all round
girls of the college; she did beautiful work,
and wrote very well and knew a lot and her
clothes ! She dressed for the crowd. Nan was,
of course, the best girl in the world, as might
be seen by anybody with an eye in its head.
And Carol ? Oh, Carol was all right. You
had to come to know her, that was all. Peo
ple did n t understand Carol. Her mother died
when she was a baby, and she did n t like
her Eastern aunt, who took care of her part
of the time. They were really ridiculously
wealthy, and her father was well, her father
was n t very attractive. She had lived a great
deal in San Francisco, and in the West girls
do very much more as they please, you know.
There was n t a more generous girl on the face
of the earth. She was a mighty good friend to
her friends. People said she was being tutored
228
A FEW DIVERSIONS
through college. It was n t so. And what if she
was ? Look at the men ! Her bark was worse
than her bite: she said more than she did. If
all the things she had done for people up here
were known but she would be horribly angry
if they were.
It occurred to Marjory during that morn
ing and afterwards, as she was handed impar
tially from one to the other of the six juniors
who constituted her entertainment commit
tee, that it was well to have five friends to
take care of your character with the world.
In the evening she went, by favor of Ursula
and Dodo, in the character of a distant rela
tive, to the entertainment proper of the Phi
Kappa Farewell, a play given to the seniors
of that honorable body by the juniors. Noth
ing but a detailed account of the drama could
worthily treat of it, and that cannot be given.
It was a melodrama based on the Spanish
War, adapted from ablood-and-thunder novel
into a play of five acts with three and four
scenes to the act. A large cast presented it, com
prising revolutionists, Cubans, spies, U. S.
Army and Navy, native population, planters,
New York belles, and English nobility, and
there were slow deaths, ghastly conspiracies,
horribly pathetic separations, magnificent pa-
[ 229 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
triotic tableaux, and a final and startling ad
justment that exceeded in scenic display the
wildest expectation of the enraptured audi
ence.
From the first act, in a Fifth Avenue par
lor, furnished with a toy piano perched on a
card-table and a Vision of Elegance accom
panying, with much execution and one finger,
a rival Vision who rendered My bonnie lies over
the ocean with dramatic fervor and a sob that
recalled Bernhardt, while Dodo, in irreproach
able evening dress and a curly mustache, de
votedly turned the half-inch sheet music, one
elbow ostentatiously leaned on the twelve-inch
piano; to the ecstatic finale in the Havana Ca
thedral, where two marvellous brides in win
dow-curtain-trained wedding dresses, orange
blossoms, and indefinite yards of white mos
quito netting were led to the altar by a no
ble naval officer and a haughty peer of the
realm, the entire cast in the character of bri
dal party performing an elaborate ballet to the
Lohengrin March, the procession preceded by
a priest two-stepping solemnly at the head, it
was the most astonishingly, cleverly, unspeak
ably idiotic performance M arj ory had ever seen.
Revolvers went off, victims shrieked, dons
and donas sneered, terrible shell-trimmed,
A FEW DIVERSIONS
tawny-skinned natives leaped and brandished
and gabbled, virtue pleaded, and villainy cried
" Ha, ha ! " and everybody called upon Heaven
except the peer of the realm, who very prop
erly called upon England. They rolled their
r s and smote their chests and spoke in a vi
brating contralto, while at the proper places
the audience groaned and clapped and hissed
and at the end fairly thundered its applause.
Nobody who had seen the two heroines un
der a trusty Spanish escort travelling through
a mountain gorge, half of the escort placidly
dragging a ramping, double-breasted rocking-
horse cart, and the other half cavorting grace
fully about with a small mounted horse under
his arm, could ever forget the sight; nor the
languishing ladies in glorious Spanish cos
tumes tossing their trains behind and coquet
ting with enormous fans as they conspired in
dramatic and deep-chested asides to the audi
ence.
Ursula, Dodo, and another genius had
adapted this never-sufficiently-to-be-praised
work, and they appeared flushed and panting
from the wedding scene, to receive the ovation
prepared for them. Ursula said that to have
seen Martha Williams in undisguised hysteria
and B. S. Kitts and Susan Jackson collapsed
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
in their chairs was honor enough for her, and
that she would willingly have worked twice
as hard as she did for it. Then they went over,
costumes and all, to the Dewey, to eat ices and
go home, for the play had occupied two hours
or more and such a strain was naturally some
what enervating, as Biscuits said.
They took breakfast next morning in Ur
sula s room: strawberries and rich chocolate
and rolls and scrambled eggs. Lucilla cooked it
in two chafing-dishes, and Carol and Caroline
came over from the Morris to share it, Carol
in a magnificent fluffy party-cloak with a gor
geous crepe kimono under it, Dodo in a hide
ous house-jacket, and Caroline in the inevi
table shirt-waist. Then Ursula went to church
in a heavenly lavender batiste and white-rab
bit gloves, as Nan called them ; Lucilla accom
panied her in a demure little checked silk, and
Carol sulked in her room, wrapped in the
kimono.
Dodo wrote some difficult letters home,
and took a walk to get over them; Caroline
tramped out to Florence, where she conducted
afunny little Sunday-school in a shirt-waist;
Marjory and Nan strolled out to Paradise and
talked. They dined in state with the house and
its guests on the traditional Sunday turkey,
A FEW DIVERSIONS
Nan speculating solemnly on the exhaustless
energy of Providence, except for whose cease
less intervention the race of turkeys must long
since have become extinct. Later they retired
to the parlor and sat on sofas while the after-
dinner Sunday music was performed an
apparently mechanical process where the same
girls offered the same things to the same au
dience with the same expression that they had
presented the Sunday before. The Marche
Funebre received the usual sighs of pleasure,
an optimistic young lady rendered the love
song from Samson et Dalila, and at unmistak
able evidences of approaching Mandalay the
occupants of the sofa nearest the door mur
mured something about letters and melted
away.
To vespers, referred to by the devout as
"the sweetest of the college services," entitled
by the profane "the Sunday strut," owing to
the toilets of the carefully selected ushers
and the general prevalence of millinery, Mar
jory did not go, for returning from a walk
with Lucilla,they found Miss Gillatt pinching
the ears of a gentleman upon whose lap she
sat, whose not too abundant hair she had ar
ranged in peculiarly foolish spirals that bobbed
over his ears as he responded to the introduc-
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
tion, "Voila le fere aimable! II est arrive avec
un box enorme c esf un enfant bien gentil, nest-
cepas? Nous en manger ons to-morrow night, mon
Dieu, and for once nous aurons quelqu chose fit
to eat hein? A moi, Lucille il y aura une
chaleur excessive dans la ville ancienne ce soir!"
Le pere aimable greeted Marjory with an
unfeigned interest, and when to his inquiring
"Cunningham? Cunningham? I don t remem
ber Cunningham, do I, Nannie?" Nan re
plied easily, "Oh, no, she s not a regular in
mate!" Marjory felt suddenly left out and
undeserving, somehow, of all the joy in store.
It was worth being away from home to be
one of the four girls who hung upon the
Amiable Parent the next day as he wandered
happily through the campus, distributing Al-
legretti and admiration as he went. He beamed
upon them all, annexing the pretty ones re
gardless of expense, as his irreverent daughter
put it. He chartered a tally-ho, and they tooted
off to Chesterfield and broke the horn be
yond repair, convulsing him with laughter all
the way. Caroline cut her laboratory for it and
enjoyed it "with a serene and sickly suavity
known only to the truly virtuous," to use her
friends quotation; Dodo was a continuous
performance all the way; and at Chesterfield
[ 2 34 ]
A FEW DIVERSIONS
they ate till there was little left in the village,
as it had not been sufficiently forewarned of
their invasion.
They got back in time to dress, and here
Marjory s ideas sustained a distinct shock.
She had always perfectly understood from the
fiction devoted to such descriptions that it was
the custom of young ladies at boarding-schools
and colleges, when they wished to be peculiarly
uproarious and sinful, to gather in carefully
darkened apartments, robed in blanket-wrap
pers and nightgowns, with braided or dishev
elled hair, in order to eat olives and pickles
with hat-pins from the bottles, toasting marsh-
mallows at intervals, and discussing the suit
ability of cribs and the essential qualities of
really earnest friendships. But the consump
tion of the "box enorme" was differently or
ganized. If she had n t brought any evening
dress it did n t matter, Nan assured her, but
they considered the event more than worthy
of it, though it was n t an occasion for a Prom
costume by any means.
All the way down the corridor she smelled
it, that night at seven. It was necessarily far
from private envious upper-class girls not
invited sniffed it from afar, and the three little
freshmen who waited on them glowed with
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
pride and anticipation. It was in Ursula s
room, for Nan s was too small and the guests
used it for a cloak-room. Mrs. Austin greeted
her cordially at the door, and Marjory, who
had always supposed that those in authority
were constitutionally opposed to spreads, could
not realize that her wreathed smiles were gen
uine. She did not know that the Amiable
Parent had dutifully called upon Mrs. Austin
in all good form, openly discussed the spread,
and cannily presented the lady with a fasci
nating box of Canton ginger-buds ginger
being the Amiable Parent s professional in
terest.
When they were assembled, a baker s dozen
of them, the Amiable Parent grinning, as his
dutiful daughter expressed it, like a Cheshire
cat over his capacious shirt-front, Marjory
made their acquaintance over again from the
evening-dress standpoint. Against the dark
furniture and bookbindings their shoulders
shone soft and white ; their hair was piled high ;
they looked two or three years older. Ursula
in pink taffeta, with coral in her glossy dark
coils, was a veritable marquise ; Nan in white
with lavender ribbons, and a pale amethyst
against her throat, was transformed from a
jolly, active girl to a handsome young woman
A FEW DIVERSIONS
with charmingly correct shoulders; Caroline
was almost pretty; Lucilla s small prim head
was set on the most beautiful tapering little
neck in the world. Only Dodo in an organdie
many times laundered was the same as ever,
bony, awkward, and the greatest fun possible;
while Carol s strange half-sullen face looked
more impassive than ever under her heavy
turquoise fillet.
The freshmen, shy but delighted, passed
them "food after food," as Dodo called it: cold
roast chicken, lobster salad on crisp, curly
lettuce, delicious thin, little bread-and-butter
sandwiches with the crusts off, devilled eggs,
stuffed olives, almonds and ginger. There was
a great sheet of fudge-cake, which is a two-
storied arrangement of solid chocolate cake
with a thick fudge filling and a half-inch icing,
a compound possible of safe consumption to
girls and ostriches only .There were dozens and
dozens of a fascinating kind of thin wafer filled
with nuts, and there were plates of chocolate
peppermints. Also there were many bottles of
imported ginger ale, which the freshmen pre
sented in graceful, curved glasses after the Ami
able Parent had with much chuckling pulled
the corks, the freshmen pitching these last
cheerfully down the corridor at their friends
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
who came to scoff but went away to pray. That
immediate amalgamation with the class of her
hostesses which always occurs to guests made
Marjory regard the pretty waitresses with up
per-class patronage, till it occurred to her that
they might be older than she, and that after
all. . . .
One in especial, whom the Amiable Parent
insisted on feeding from his own plate, was
very pretty and apparently very popular. But
why the brown-eyed, red-cheeked adorer of
Ursula should be Theo Root, while Miss Bent
was always Dodo ; why Alida Fosdick was Dick,
but Serena Burdick was Serena ; why Eliza
beth Twitchell was Twitchie, but Elizabeth
Mitchell was Betty ; why Ursula was always
Ursula, and Nan was often Jack and some
times Pip (it was because Captain Gadsby was
one of her famous parts) Marjory could not tell.
When they were through and not another
of all those two pounds of almonds could be
eaten, and the freshmen had carried off the
remains to dispose of them in the most ob
vious and economical manner, they proceeded
to "do stunts," to the boundless joy of the
Amiable Parent. Dick Fosdick, a plain, heavy-
eyed senior, arose, draped in a black cashmere
shawl, and delivered a leclure on the suffrage
[ 238 ]
A FEW DIVERSIONS
in a manner to cause one to pinch oneself to
make sure it was not a dream and she was not
forty-five and horrible. The Amiable Parent
choked to suffocation, vowed she was the
cleverest aclress this side the water, and called
for the next. Dodo, with lifted skirts and ut
terly unmoved features, jumping up heavily
and landing on both feet with turned-in toes
she followed the good old custom of tan
walking-boots with evening dress droned in
a monotonous nasal chant, to which her thud
ding feet kept time, an unholy song of no tune
whatever :
Oh, it s dance like a. fairy and sing like a bird y
And sing like a bird,
And sing like a bird,
It s dance like a fairy and sing like a bird y
Sing like a bird in June !
Anybody who has not seen this done by a
solemn-looking girl of five feet seven or so,
who divests a naturally humorous mouth of
any expression whatever, and lands on the
floor like an inspired steam-roller, is not in a
position to judge of the comic quality of the
performance.
Nan, with much coy reluctance and very
Gallic gestures, rendered what was pessimisti
cally called her "naughty little French song."
[ 239 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
Its burden was not discoverably pernicious,
however, consisting of the question, " O Jean
Baptiste^pourquoi?" occasionally varied by the
rapturous answer, "O Jean Baptiste, voila!"
But there was accent enough to make any
thing naughty, and she looked so pretty they
made her do it again.
Lucilla resisted many appeals, but suc
cumbed finally to the Amiable Parent, who
could wheedle the gate off its hinges, accord
ing to his daughter, and delivered her "one
and only stunt." She had performed it steadily
since freshman year, always with the same wild
success, never with a hint of its palling. Mar
jory wondered why they laughed so they
all knew it by heart and asked if anybody
else never did it; their amazed negative im
pressed her greatly. She stood before them
slim and straight, this daughter of a hundred
Bostonians, a little cold, a little bored, a little
displeased, apparently, and with an utterly
emotionless voice and a quite impersonal man
ner delivered the most senseless doggerel in
the most delicately precise enunciation:
Baby sat on the window ledge,
Mary pushed her over the edge.
Baby broke into bits so airy
Mother shook her finger at Mary.
[ 240 ]
A FEW DIVERSIONS
Sarah poisoned mother s tea,
Mother died in agonee.
Father looked quite sad and vexed
"Sarah, my child," he said, "what next?"
Any one to whom this seems a futile and
non-humorous piece of verse needs only to
hear Lucilla s delivery of it, and catch the
almost imperceptible shade of displeasure and
surprise that touched her slender eyebrows at
the last line, to realize that all similar exhibi
tions must seem forever crude beside it.
They begged Marjory to sing and got her
a guitar. As it had slowly dawned on her that
most of the girls in the room played some
thing, and that at least one third of them be
longed to one or another of the musical clubs
besides the many other organizations they
carried, and thought nothing whatever of it
or concealed it if they did her estimate of
a hitherto much prized accomplishment had
steadily decreased. She sang a little serenade
for them, however, more tremulously than she
had been wont to sing for a crowd of young
people, and took an unreasoning and dispro
portionate amount of pleasure in their hearty
applause. She sang again, and when Miss Cor
nelia Burt, who turned out to be the dark girl
she had watched at Kingsley s and recognized,
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
thanked her particularly and told her with a
smile that she should "come up" and sing
that with the Glee Club, Marjory remembered
that she was a prominent senior, and found
her heart beating a little faster when her friend
Miss Twitchell, also prominent, repeated the
suggestion. It could not be, she asked herself
a moment afterwards, that she was proud to
have them notice her ?
There were more stunts, for the Amiable
Parent could not have enough of what Nan
called Dodo s Anglo-Saxon attitudes. Only
the bell brought a stop to the proceedings,
which had grown more and more hilarious,
ending with a toast in ginger ale, to the de
lighted hero of the feast :
Oh, here s to Nannie s Dad, drink him down!
Oh, here s to Nannie s Dad, drink him down!
Oh, here s to Nannie s Dad,
He s the best she could have had,
Drink him down, drink him down, drink him down,
down, down!
Nan and he and Marjory went out into the
cool, dark campus, and they marched to " Balm
of Gilead" all the way to Marjory s boarding-
house. She watched them from her window,
tramping arm-in-arm down to the hotel, where
Nan was to stay the night with him. Nan had
A FEW DIVERSIONS
explained that while of course it would be a
trial to her to be obliged to select her own
breakfast, still her relative had desired it, and
she had as usual bidden him "her own con
venience count as nil."
Marjory undressed slowly, humming the
tune they had marched to and surveying the
plain boarding-house bed-room. It seemed
lonely after the Lawrence, and there was no
dashing about in the halls, nor glimpses of
fudge-parties and rarebits and laughing, busy
people through half-shut doors.
"Still, that Miss Burt was off the campus,"
she murmured as she braided her hair; and
as she set the alarm-clock somebody had
loaned her for she took an early train
and climbed into bed, she explained to an
imaginary aunt that people on the temporary
list with no campus application whatever often
"got on" miraculously Lucilla had done
that, and Caroline !
[ 243 ]
THE EIGHTH STORY
THE EVOLUTION of EVANGELINE
VIII
THE EVOLUTION OF EVANGELINE
f ^O those who knew her afterward it
1 may seem an impossible condition
1 of affairs, but it is nevertheless quite
-^- true that until the night of the soph
omore reception she was utterly unheard of.
Indeed, when her name was read to the chair
man of the committee that looks up stray
freshmen, yet uninvited, and compels them
to come in, the chairman refused to believe
that she existed.
"I don t believe there s any such person,"
she growled, "and if there is, there s nobody
to take her. I can t make sophomores ! Evan-
geline Potts, forsooth ! What a perfectly idiotic
name! Who s to take her? Where does she
live? Where s the catalogue?"
"She lives on West Street," somebody vol
unteered, "and Bertha Kitts freshman is sick,
or her uncle is sick, or something, and Bertha
says that lets her out she never wanted to go,
anyhow and now she s not going. Could n t
she take her?"
"Not going!" the chairman complained
bitterly. "If that s not like B. Kitts ! Go get
her, somebody, and send her after Evangeline,
and tell her to hurry, too ! Don t stop to argue
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
with her, there is n t time. She 11 prove that
there is n t any reception, if you let her. Just
get her started and then come right back. I
promised to send three Bagdads over, and I
can t get but two."
The messenger paused at Miss Kitts door,
sniffed scornfully at the sign which read:
"Asleep ! Please do not disturb under any cir
cumstances whatever! * and entered the room
abruptly. Miss Kitts was curled comfortably
on the window-seat, with Plain "Tales from the
Hills in one hand, and The Works of Christo
pher Marlowe in the other. From these vol
umes she read alternately, and the pile of cores
and seeds on the sill indicated a due regard for
other than mental nutriment. At intervals she
lifted her eyes from her book to watch the file
of girls loaded down with the pillows, screens,
and palms whose transportation forms so con
siderable a portion of the higher education of
women. Just as the door opened Biscuits was
chuckling gently at the collision of a rubber-
plant with a Japanese screen and the conse
quent collapse of their respective bearers, who,
even in their downfall, poured forth the apol
ogies and regrets that take the place of their
brothers less considerate remarks upon simi
lar occasions.
[ 248 ]
THE EVOLUTION OF EVANGELINE
But her mirth was rudely checked by the
messenger, who closed the Marlowe and put
the Kipling under a pillow.
"Hurry up," she remarked briefly, "and
find Evangeline Potts and tell her that you
can t sleep at night till you take her to the
sophomore reception. Nobody urged her to
attend and yours is sick."
"She s not, either," returned B. Kitts,
calmly. "She s quite well, and "
" Oh, don t possum, Biscuits, but get along.
Sue s nearly wild. It s her uncle, then; we
know you were n t going, so we know you can
take her. Can I take this couch cover along?
She s on West Street, and I can t stop to dis
cuss it, but we depend on you. Now do hurry
up; it s three already."
Biscuits freed her mind to the heap of pil
lows in the middle of the floor, for there was
no one else to hear her. Then, still grumbling,
she put on her golf cape and walked over to
West Street. In a pessimistic frame of mind
she selected the most unattractive house, and
on inquiring if Miss Evangeline Potts lived
there and ascertaining that she did, she aston
ished the slatternly maid by a heartfelt ejacu
lation of" Sherlock Holmes ! " adding, with
resignation, "Is she in?" She was in, and her
[ 249 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
guest climbed two flights of stairs and knocked
at her door.
Although Evangeline Potts was not fully
dressed and her room in consequent disorder,
she did not appear at all embarrassed, but fin
ished buttoning her shirt-waist and attached
her collar with calm deliberation. She was a
large, tall girl, with masses of auburn hair
strained back unbecomingly from a very frec
kled face and heaped in tight coils on the top
of her head. Her eyes were a rich red-brown;
they struck you as lovely at first, till after a
while you discovered that they were like glass
or running water, always the same and abso
lutely expressionless. She had large hands and
feet and a wide, slow smile, and she was dressed
in unmitigatedly bad taste, with sleeves two
years behind the style and a skirt that could
have had nothing to do with it at any date.
"I came to to see if you had been if
you were going to the sophomore reception,"
said Biscuits. "I m Miss Kitts, Ninety-red,
and and I Ve nobody to go with me and
and I shall be glad "
Biscuits was frankly embarrassed. She was
a clever girl, and clever girls of her age are
invariably conscious and more or less sensi
tive. She knew how she would have felt if she
THE EVOLUTION OF EVANGELINE
had been a freshman and a "left over": she
would have resented such an eleventh-hour
invitation and shown impossibly. But if Evan-
geline Potts bore any resentment it was not
apparent.
"No/ she said quietly, "I haven t been
asked and I d just as lieve go with you."
"Oh, that s very nice!" returned Biscuits,
cheerfully, "then that s settled. And what
color is your gown? I should like to send
you some flowers."
"I m not sure what I will wear," said
Evangeline; "what will you?"
"My dress is pink," and Biscuits carefully
kept her surprise out of the answer. Miss
Potts did not look like the kind of girl to
possess more than one evening gown.
"How is it made?" Evangeline pursued.
She was not curious, and yet she was not talk
ing vaguely to cover any embarrassment: she
merely desired information.
"Oh, it s quite plain," and Biscuits rose to
go ; she was a little bored and there was noth
ing in Miss Potts room to give any clew to
her apparently pointless character. Biscuits
prided herself on her ability to get at people
through their belongings, and graded her
friends as possessors of Baby Stuart, the Barye
051 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
Lion, a Botticelli Madonna, or the imp of
Lincoln Cathedral.
But Evangeline did not rise. "I mean, is
it low neck and short sleeves? * she insisted;
and as Biscuits nodded, she added, "Does
everybody wear them?"
" Why, yes," said Biscuits, hastily ; and then,
"That is, a great many do. It s not at all nec
essary, though : you 11 see plenty of girls with
out. Any light organdie will do perfectly."
"I don t think I ll go, then," remarked
Evangeline, calmly; "my dress would n t do."
She was not in the least apologetic or pa
thetic or vexed : she merely stated a fact, and
it occurred to Biscuits, who was somewhat
susceptible to personality, that she meant pre
cisely what she said. Although absence from
the reception was just what Biscuits had pre
viously planned, she did not care to please
herself at this price, and though Evangeline
Potts was the last person she would have se
lected for her companion, and visions of the
pretty little freshman she had had in mind on
filling out her programme flashed before her
with irritating clearness, she smiled encourage
ment and remonstrated cheerfully.
"Oh, nonsense ! Why, anything will do, I
tell you ! You don t need evening dress ! One
THE EVOLUTION OF EVANGELINE
of my friends last year had all her clothes
ruined by a pipe or something that burst in
the closet and she went in white duck. And
she was one of the best-dressed girls in the
class, really "
"Yes, but I m not/ interrupted Evange
line, "and that s different. I m just as much
obliged to you for asking me. Miss Kitts, but
I have n t any evening dress and I should n t
go without one."
It was characteristic of Biscuits that she at
tempted no further argument. She knew that
Evangeline Potts would not go unless she had
an evening dress, and it seemed, somehow,
imperative that she should go. She realized,
too, that borrowing was out of the question.
"Why don t you cut one of your dresses
out?" she suggested after a moment. "Su
zanne Endicott did that once when she was
unexpectedly asked to a dance and had n t any
low waist with her."
"I can t sew," Evangeline replied, "and I
should n t know how to cut it."
In proportion as she seemed convinced of
the impossibility of going, Biscuits waxed
more eager to change her determination.
"See here," she said suddenly, "if I get
Suzanne over here, will you let her cut one of
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
your dresses out? I think she would; she s
awfully clever about that sort of thing and
she s very obliging, sometimes."
She was prepared for any answer but the
one forthcoming.
"Why, I don t care," said Evangeline, in
differently, "only she d better hurry, had n t
she?"
Biscuits was by now so impressed with the
vital necessity of getting Suzanne that she had
hardly time to wonder at her haste or her ner
vous fear that the young lady might not be at
home. She trudged up the two flights and
sighed with relief at the sound of Suzanne s
mandolin. Miss Endicott was not fond of the
mandolin and played it solely for the purpose
of annoying the senior next door, who had a
nasty habit of rising early to study, and mak
ing her bed violently, driving it into the wall
just opposite Suzanne s pillow. When remon
strated with she returned with calmness that
she had not been accustomed, when herself a
sophomore, to objecl: to the habits of seniors,
and that excitable young people who came to
college for heaven knew what, had better ac
quaint themselves with habits of study in
others, since that was their only probable
source of knowledge of such habits.
l>54]
THE EVOLUTION OF EVANGELINE
Henceforth it became at once Suzanne s
duty and pleasure to give what she modestly
called "little recitals from time to time/ ac
companied by her mandolin, which instru
ment maddened her neighbor beyond endu
rance. As Biscuits entered she was giving a
very dramatic rendering of the Jewel Song
from Faust, and to her guest s opening re
marks she replied only by a melodious burst
of laughter and the arch assurance :
"Non, non! Ce n est plus toll
Ce rfest plus ton visage ! "
Biscuits obeyed an imperative gesture and
held her peace till the song was over, when the
performer, with an inimitable grin at the wall,
laid down her mandolin and pointed to a chair.
" due voulez-vous, ma plus chere? Vous avez
Fair"
"Oh, for heaven s sake talk English, Su
zanne ! I want you to come over and cut out
Evangeline Potts evening dress. Will you ?
She s freckled and big, and she won t go un
less you do. She s got to go, too. We can t
leave anybody out. Will you come?"
"Mais quavez-vous donc^ ma chere Berthe?
Est-ce que fsuis couturiere, moi?"
"Yes," said Biscuits, obstinately, "you are,
and you know it. You might be able to make
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
her look like something. She s a perfect stick
now."
Suzanne shot one of her elfish glances at her
visitor. It was impossible to know what she
would do.
" Mais certainement vous avez assez de joue,
vous!" she suggested. Biscuits did not reply,
but watched the clock on the desk.
Suzanne shrugged her shoulders.
"Ehbien!" she said cheerfully, "me voila
sage, Petits-pains, sage et bien aimable ! Ou de-
meure-t-elle done, votre amie?"
" Bless you, Suzanne, her name s Evange-
line Potts ! and she "
" Mon Dieu ! Evangeline Potts ! Mais quelle
horreur ! Est-ce que je saurais prononcer ce nom
ajfreux?" babbled Suzanne, while Biscuits
found her golf cape and hustled her out of
the door. Those who relied too long or too
securely on Miss Endicott s moods were fre
quently disappointed in the end.
She had been born in San Francisco and
brought up, alternately, in Paris and New
York, by her brother, a rising young artist,
whose views were as broad as his handling, and
whose regret at parting with her was equalled
only by his firm determination to fulfil the
promise he had made their mother, long dead,
[256 ]
THE EVOLUTION OF EVANGELINE
to educate her properly. Only his solemn as
surance that she should come back every sum
mer if she would behave, and finally conduct
their joint establishment in Paris with the An
gora for chaperon and the silky Skye for but
ler, kept her from taking the first steamer back
from the seaport nearest the town she had
hated consistently since she left that scene of
delicious little suppers and jolly painter-peo
ple and nights at the play and ecstatic exhi
bitions when Brother was "on the line."
Now a wealthy young woman from San
Francisco who chooses to spend from two
to four years at an Eastern college is a suffi
ciently complicated type in herself; when she
has grown up in studios and done very much
as she pleases all her life, she affords even
more food for thought to the student of char
acter.
People who disliked Suzanne called her un
principled and shallow and lazy; people who
admired her called her brilliant and irresponsi
ble and lazy; people who loved her called her
fascinating and spoiled and lazy. She could
dance like a leaf in the wind; she could make
herself the most bewitching garments out of
nothing to speak of; she could create a Japan
ese tea-room with one parasol and two fans,
[ 257]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
and make a Persian interior from a rug, an
inlaid table, and a jewelled lantern; she could
learn anything perfectly in half the time it
would take anybody else to get a fair idea of
it, and she could, if so minded, carry insolence
to the point of a fine art. She was far from
pretty, but her clever little brown face, with
its strange gray eyes, compelled attention, and
her hair had that rare silvery tinge that is an
individuality in itself. She was never without
two or three devoted admirers, but her class
disliked her, and it took all their self-control
to bear with her to the extent that was neces
sary in order to profit by her special abilities.
She was no more to be depended upon than
a kitten, and her periodical bursts of rage ren
dered her unendurable to that large majority
which objeds to flaming eyes and torrents of
assorted abuse, to say nothing of the occa
sional destruction of bric-a-brac.
And yet, to the wonder of these righteous
critics, Suzanne kept her warm friends. There
was always some amiable Philistine to watch
her erratic movements with delighted awe, to
run on her errands, to listen to her amazing
confidences, and to stand up for her through
thick and thin. Though Biscuits and her little
circle were, even in their sophomore year, be-
[a 5 8]
THE EVOLUTION OF EVANGELINE
ginning to draw away from her, vaguely con
scious of a necessary parting of the ways,
frankly puzzled at the vagaries of this girl who
was half a spoiled baby, half a woman of the
world, at intervals the fascination of her per
sonality drew them back for a while, and they
wondered that they could have thought her
irresponsible and selfish at heart.
To-day, as Biscuits walked beside her, con
vulsed by her narration of a recent tussle with
the lady-in-charge "I was only putting an
accordion-pleated crepe-paper frieze above the
moulding, with thumb tacks, and if she had
kept out of the way pig! What do you
think you came to college for, Suzanne ? Cer
tainly not work of this sort ! c Oh, no, Mrs.
Wylie, of course not. I have long realized that
our real object in coming here was to save the
maids trouble ! " she almost forgave her that
curt refusal to have anything to do with the
reception decorations: "You d far better save
me for the Prom I 11 manage that, but I
won t do both, vous savez, cest un peu trop
fort!" she had remarked royally, and the com
mittee had smothered their wrath and agreed,
and cursed her afterwards in detail, after the
manner of practical young women who are far
from the short-sightedness of allowing their
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
emotions to interfere with their intentions.
Also, they do not enjoy giving needless pain
on the spot. This is one of the sweetest at
tributes of woman.
They knocked at Evangeline s door, and
omitting preliminary ceremonies, demanded
the dress. Evangeline produced a dark red
cashmere: Suzanne shook her head. A much
washed white lawn with what appeared to be
blue palm-leaf fans scattered over it was next
offered for consideration: Suzanne gasped,
" Mon Dieu /" A gray gingham decorated with
yellow spirals met her demand for "a summer
thing," and caused the artist to sink upon the
floor with a tragic groan.
"Mais, Evangeline, vous me serrez le cceurl
Cest horrible! C est effrayant!"
Evangeline smiled politely but offered no
further suggestion.
Suzanne looked at her searchingly through
half-closed eyes. "Have you any thing black? *
she demanded.
"I have a black silk," said Evangeline, and
she brought out a heavy, corded, ribbon-
trimmed affair with a pointed vest that would
have been highly suitable for a maiden aunt
who had, as Suzanne remarked, seen misfor
tune. Biscuits sighed, but Suzanne rose rapidly
[ 260 ]
THE EVOLUTION OF EVANGELINE
to her feet and clutched the scissors she had
brought with her.
"Enfin! Cay esf!" she cried. "Put it on
her, Biscuits!"
She persisted in utterly ignoring Evange
line, or, more exactly, in treating her as if she
had been a doll, talking to her in a pitying
tone that required no answer and comment
ing upon her deficiencies in a manner that
made Biscuits squirm visibly and glance apolo
getically at the object of such impersonal criti
cism.
"Perhaps Miss Potts does n t care to have
such a such a nice dress cut/ she suggested,
as Suzanne, with what seemed a perfectly care
less gesture, slashed at the sleeves.
"Quet malheur!" replied the artist, indif
ferently, and Evangeline added, " I d just as
lieve."
With pursed lips Suzanne snipped and
pinched, while Biscuits followed her every
motion and Evangeline silently adjusted her
self to each new position as Suzanne pulled
and pushed her arms and neck about. At
length with a sudden motion Suzanne stripped
off the detached sleeves as if they had been
gloves, and snatched away the top of the scant
middle-aged waist with a quick movement.
[ 261 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
"Voila! " she said, and Biscuits gasped: for
Evangeline Potts was a transformed creature.
Her arms and neck were ivory white and as
soft and smooth as satin; the lovely curves of
her throat and shoulders could never have
been guessed at under the stiff black seams
of the waist.
Suzanne patted her arms appreciatively. "I
might have known it, with that hair and those
freckles!" she murmured. Then, calmly, to
Evangeline: "The trouble with your kind is,
you never have any eyebrows and your eye
lids get red, n est-ce pas?"
She went a few steps back from the mo
tionless figure and stood silent.
"You could twist a black scarf," suggested
Biscuits, hastily. Suzanne waved her hand.
"Tu me degoutes, a la fin I" she said coldly;
"Get your cape on!" Then, to Evangeline:
" Undo your hair ! " As the thick coil tumbled
over her shoulders, the diredress of ceremo
nies deliberately selected a light inner tress
and snipped it off.
. "Take it down town and match it in vel
vet if you can, in silk if you can t," she com
manded. "And get enough, get two, three
yards!"
"But will Miss Potts want to spend "
262
THE EVOLUTION OF EVANGELINE
Biscuits looked doubtfully at the white-armed
goddess who contemplated herself quietly in
the glass. It was impossible to know what she
was thinking; she was apparently quite accus
tomed to strangers who dressed her in low-
cut evening dresses and snipped her hair and
spent her money.
Suzanne stamped her foot. " Va-t-en ! " she
cried, and then, with an irresistible mimicry
of Evangeline, "She Vjust as lieve!"
When Biscuits returned with a great strip
of tawny velvet, it was taken from her at the
door, and she was instructed to get from Su
zanne s room her make-up box and the gold
powder that had so unaccountably disappeared
after the play last week.
"They borrowed the eyebrow pencil and
that, the night of the dress rehearsal, and they
swore to bring them back beasts! What
have I to call my own? Rien! Never, never,
never will I lend anything again ! II faut faire
un fin^ vraiment!"
It was a long hunt for Biscuits, and more
than once it occurred to her that she had re
fused to go on the decorating committee with
a view to escaping just such wearisome trot
ting about. When she handed the box to Su
zanne and suggested that the result should be
C 263 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
extremely pleasing to justify such toil, the red
spot in the artist s either cheek and her wide-
opened eyes indicated the happy absorption
to which no effort seems worthy of mention.
Biscuits, not allowed to enter the room, sat
wearily on the stairs, longing to go home but
unwilling to abandon Suzanne. It was very
nearly six, and she was not dressed; she had
left the necessary perusal of The Works of
Christopher Marlowe till late in the day, think
ing to devote the evening to it; she took little
interest in Evangeline Potts, and she did not
care much for dancing.
But for the moment her resentment van
ished when Suzanne called her in and she be
held the objecl of her labors under the gaslight
in a carefully darkened room. Her milk-white
shoulders rose magnificently from folds of
auburn velvet that her wonderful hair re
peated in loose waves about her face and a
great mass low on her neck. Her long, round
arms gleamed against the black of her skirt
and melted into the glow of her velvet girdle.
In the white light her freckles paled and her
eyes turned wholly brown, and said myste
rious things that could never by any possi
bility have occurred to her.
"Tiens! J ai eu la main heureuse, rfest-ce
THE EVOLUTION OF EVANGELINE
pas? Vous la trouvez charmante?" said Su
zanne, turning her about as if she had been
a dummy and indicating her opinion that the
back view was, if anything, more satisfying
than the front.
"You re a genius, Suzanne! She s simply
stunning! How did you do it?"
Suzanne smiled. " C est pas grand chose" she
said modestly. But she looked contentedly
at Evangeline and loosened her hair a little.
"Now remember, don t put on those hideous
rings," she commanded, "and don t wear any
thing on your head. Do you dance well?"
she added.
Evangeline hesitated. "I dance a little,"
she replied, "pretty well, I guess."
Suzanne promptly encircled her waist and
whistled a waltz. After a few turns she stopped.
"You dance very badly," she said encour
agingly. "If I were you, I d sit out most of
them. You can say it bores you they 11 be
glad enough. Besides, you might get red and
then you d not be pretty. Now don t move
about much, and when Miss Kitts brings you
the white roses put them just where I told
you."
"Very well," said Evangeline, and as the
other two prepared to go she gave them one
[265 3
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
of her long, slow smiles. "I m much obliged
to you both, I m sure," she said; "you Ve
been very kind."
" Adicu>mon enfant a plus tard!" and Su
zanne seized the door knob. She turned in
the door and threw a quick, piercing look
at her handiwork. "If you take my advice,
you 11 never put on that dreadful shirt-waist
again, tres chere" she said lightly. "You ll
spoil all this splendor, if you do. Give it
away or, no, don t! you d corrupt the taste
of the poor burn it up, and the others with
it, and get a black suit and a black silk waist
and wear a big white tie, if you like. And a
white tarn one of those pussy ones. Wear
one color c est plus distingue and if you
want a big black hat with plumes, I 11 make
it for you. Et maintenant, regarde-toi dans la
glace I"
With this invocation they left her, and Bis
cuits, learning that Suzanne had exhausted
her energy and proposed to inform her fresh
man that she was ill and unable to attend the
reception, became possessed by the idea that
she was responsible for this particular illus
tration of the artistic temperament, and went
without her dinner to hunt up a substitute.
She wasted no time in argument with Suzanne,
[ 266 ]
THE EVOLUTION OF EVANGELINE
who lay luxuriously on her couch pillows with
her hands under her head, and planned cos
tumes for Evangeline Potts all the evening,
but tramped angrily over the campus till quar
ter of seven to find an unattached sophomore,
forgetting that Evangeline s flowers were yet
to be purchased. Coming up with them in her
hand, a little later, she was forced to stop and
explain to the substitute the intricacies of Su
zanne s programme, breaking off abruptly to
beat her breast like the wedding guest, for she
heard the loud bassoon and fled to her room,
tearing her evening dress hopelessly and com
pleting her toilette on the stairs. The substi
tute suffered from a violent headache as the
result of her unexpected exertions, and the
little freshman cried herself to sleep, for she
had dreamed for nights of going with Suzanne,
whom she admired to stupefaction.
But of all this Evangeline Potts knew lit
tle, and, it may be, cared less. She was one of
the successes of the evening, and her few re
marks were quoted diligently. She could have
danced dozens of extras, had so many been
possible, and Biscuits was considered to have
displayed more than her ordinary cleverness in
procuring a creature so picturesque and dis
tinguished.
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
This did not surprise her, nor did she partic
ularly resent being pointed out by more than
one freshman as "the sophomore that took that
stunning Miss Potts"; but her amazement
was undisguised, the next morning but one,
at the sight of Evangeline walking out from
chapel with a prominent junior, the glamor of
the evening gone, it is true, her face some
what heavy and undeniably freckled, but nev
ertheless an Evangeline transformed. From
her fluffy white cap to the hem of her digni
fied black skirt she was the realization of Su
zanne s parting suggestions, and the distinct
intention of her costume had its full effect.
She was far more impressive than the jolly
little short-skirted junior, whose curly yellow
hair paled beside the dark richness of Evan-
geline s massive coils, and Biscuits, remember
ing that she had called her "a perfect stick,"
marvelled inwardly.
She went to call on her a little later, but
Evangeline was not in; and feeling that her
duty was done, Miss Kitts gave no further
thought to what she considered an essentially
uninteresting person, but devoted herself to
a study of the campus house into which she
had moved only that year.
She saw Evangeline very rarely after that,
[ ,68 ]
THE EVOLUTION OF EVANGELINE
except at the dances and plays, where her
white shoulders framed in auburn velvet ap
peared very regularly. Once, happening to sit
beside her, she began a conversation, but she
could not remember afterward that Miss Potts
said anything but, "Yes, indeed," or, "Yes, I
think so, too." Her surprise was therefore
great when, on hearing the result of the sopho
more elections the next fall, and audibly com
menting on the oddity of Miss Evangeline
Potts in the position of sophomore president,
she was indignantly assured by a loyal mem
ber of that class that the vote was almost
unanimous and that she was one of the ablest
girls in the class.
Even this she did not consider long, for the
sophomore presidency is the least important
of the four; but when among the first five
sophomores to be triumphantly ushered into
Phi Kappa Psi she was asked to consider the
name of Evangeline Potts, she remonstrated.
" But she s not clever ! She s not half so
bright as lots we have n t got !" she objected.
"Why do we want her?"
"She s no prod, of course, but she s a
prominent girl and class president," was the
answer, "and she s really very strong, I think
they say she does fair work, and everybody
[ 269 j
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
but you wants her. Do you really disapprove
of her?"
"Oh, no !" said Biscuits, and watched Miss
Potts with interest. She received her congratu
lations quietly, with a manner that made one
wonder if they had been quite in good taste,
and adled altogether as if she had fully ex
pected to enter the society with Ursula Wyck-
offand Dodo Bent. The senior class president
took her out of chapel at the head of the file,
with a bunch of violets as big as her two fists
pinned to her belt, and Biscuits was asked to a
supper in her honor in the campus house she
had recently entered.
One of the other guests was the little fresh
man Biscuits had first asked to the sophomore
reception, herself a sophomore now, and one
of Phi Kappa s first five.
"Was your class surprised at the elections?"
asked Biscuits, glancing half unconsciously at
Evangeline. The sophomore smiled gently,
with a hardly perceptible recognition of Bis
cuits look.
"Oh, no," she replied; "we expedted them
except, perhaps, one or two." Her polite
little blush showed her traditional surprise at
her own success, and the junior gave the
equally traditional deprecating smile.
THE EVOLUTION OF EVANGELINE
"Who s the other?" she inquired bluntly.
The sophomore was taken off her guard and
glanced again at Evangeline.
"Why, some of us did n t exactly see we
think Alison Greer s terribly bright we
did n t expect and yet, I don t know! After
all, I think perhaps we were n t so awfully
surprised!"
"Now, I wonder if you really were n t, or if
you re lying?" thought Biscuits, and then,
remembering suddenly, "but that s just the
way we all talked last year about Evelyn
Lyon!"
That summer Evangeline spent in France
with Suzanne, who informed Biscuits before
they sailed that though she could n t find out
anything about Miss Potts parents, she had
learned of the existence of a well-to-do uncle
in New Hampshire who intended leaving quite
a little money to his uncommunicative niece
he had given her the money to go abroad.
"She planned it all out, and asked to go
with me, and I could n t well refuse," said
Suzanne, "though Brother will be wild with
rage he hates women who are not clever:
il est un pen exigeant^ monfrere."
By senior year Biscuits had very nearly lost
track of Suzanne, who left the campus and
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
spent most of her time sketching. Brother
had shown some pen-and-ink portraits of hers
to a great critic, who had declared that Brother
had by no means exhausted the family genius,
and Suzanne, heavily bribed, had returned to
her last year of durance. The day of the Jun
ior Prom Biscuits received a very French lit
tle note inviting her to "une premiere vue"
and with the full expectation of a pen-and-ink
collection, she confronted Evangeline, glori
ous in white satin and gold passementerie, with
an amber chain and a great amber comb in her
hair.
"Vous rappelez-vous cette premiere fois,
hein?" Suzanne asked, with a grin. " Ca date
de loin,, n y est-ce pas?" Adding cheerfully,
" L onc/e est mort et nous avons une jolie dot!"
Biscuits was not surprised to learn that
Ursula Wyckoff had moved heaven and earth
to get her cousin from Columbia for Evange-
line s escort; she had heard how Nan Gillatt
actually took her own brother to the Glee
Club concert because Evangeline preferred the
youth selected by Nan for herself, and she
remembered how she had hunted from shop to
shop for the velvet that matched that auburn
hair. It was not that Evangeline insisted: she
did not beg favors. But her habit of receiving
THE EVOLUTION OF EVANGELINE
a proposition in silence filled one with an irre
sistible desire to better one s offer, and even
the improvement seemed poor in the calm
scrutiny of those red-brown eyes.
"What I can t see is, who pushes her!"
mused Biscuits.
"Who? who?" repeated Suzanne. "Par
exemple! Why, she herself, of course! Who
else?"
" But how? " Biscuits persisted. " Now Eve
lyn made up to everybody so she earned
her way, heaven knows! And Kate Ackley
was a sort of legacy her sister s reputation
started her and she was rushed so freshman
year that you could n t blame her for failing
to realize what a fool she really is. And the
Underbills coming in with the crowd they
did, explains them. But nobody rushes Evan-
geline particularly "
" C esf bien dommage!" Suzanne interrupted
with mock sympathy. "Seule au mondel Don t
be an idiot, Biscuits, we all rush her, and
we shall till she begins to see what a bluff
she s making! The beauty of Evangeline is,
that she fools herself maisparfaitement! She
really thinks she s somebody voila tout I"
"I suppose that s it," assented Biscuits,
thoughtfully.
[ 273 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
"Ursula," Suzanne remarked oracularly,
"is so anxious to please that sometimes she
does n t, and even Susan the Great has her lit
tle plans mats out! But Mile. Potts does n t
care a sou. It s all one to her, vous savez, she
agrees with all ; and what s the result ? Tout le
monde I* admire! C est toujours comme fa!"
For some reason or other her large and
shapely figure was the most prominent feature
of Biscuits Commencement. She was a junior
usher, of course, and in aisles or under lan
terns, at Phi Kappa Farewell or Glee Club
promenade, her calm, heavy face and delib
erate movements attracted Biscuits eye.
The mob had not appealed to Miss Kitts
as a desirable method of dramatic debut, and
she was, consequently, one of the few seniors
in the audience on the night of her class dra
matics. Between the acts she wandered down
to the door, and caught a bit of conversation
among a group of ushers.
"And all Ursula s friends were in the mid
dle aisle, and she begged Evangeline to
change, but she would n t. Ursula could have
had a seat then, with Dick Fosdick s people,
and she was frightfully tired, but Evangeline
would n t."
"Pooh! did you expect she would?"
THE EVOLUTION OF EVANGELINE
"Oh, no! She s terribly selfish, of course,
but you d think, considering how nice Ursu
la s been to her "
"Oh, my dear ! As if that made any differ
ence to Evange sh, here she is ! What
stunning violets, Evangeline ! That J s your
Prom dress, is n t it ? It s terribly sweet !"
Evangeline smiled and sank into the seat
a little freshman promptly and adoringly va
cated for her, and Biscuits went back to her
place.
Suzanne stopped in America that summer,
and with the promise of five subsequent years
in Paris, prolonged her stay till the following
June. She went so far as to come up to North
ampton to her class reunion, assuring her
friends that she had forgotten a few oppro
brious epithets in her final anathema and had
returned to deliver them in person.
As they stood in the crowd on Ivy Day,
watching the snowy procession, the cameras
suddenly snapped rapidly all about them and
an excited voice murmured: "There she is!
Is n t she grand? My dear, she had eleven in
vitations for the junior entertainment! Mar
tha Sutton took her " Evangeline Potts
walked slowly by.
"And you ought to have seen her Com-
C 275 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
mencement flowers ! She had a bathtub full
literally! She wouldn t take em out and
the tub could n t be used "
"She s president of Phi Kapp, I hear,"
said Biscuits.
"Oh, yes," replied Suzanne, "and on the
dramatics committee, you know. She has lots
of friends."
"I wonder why," said Biscuits, absently.
" Sais pas! They re clever girls, too. She
knows the pick of the class but then, she
always did, you know."
"I suppose she ll marry money," mused
Biscuits, the student of human nature.
"Dutout!" Suzanne returned, "she won t
care about that. It s clever people she wants
she always went with the clever ones: elk
aime les gens d esprit. She s got money enough;
she 11 marry some clever man who knows the
best people and will make her one of them
vous r verrez ! "
And the prophecy was fulfilled, for Evan-
geline very shortly married Walter Endicott,
the well-known artist, whose portrait of her
in white and gold attracted so much attention
at a very recent Salon.
THE NINTH STORY
AT COMMENCEMENT
IX
AT COMMENCEMENT
DRAMATICS
IT is the Saturday night performance of
the senior play. The curtain is about to
rise. The aisles and back of the house are
packed with people struggling for seats;
alumna and under-class girls who have admis
sion tickets only, are preparing to sit on all the
steps; the junior ushers are hopelessly trying to
keep back the press. It is to be supposed that the
orchestra is playing, judging from the motion of
arms and instruments. The lights are suddenly
lowered and the curtain rises. The struggle for
seats at the back, the expostulations of the ushers,
and the comments of the alumna and students,
who have seen the play twice before and conse
quently do not feel the need of close attention, com
pletely drown the first words of the scene.
Back of house. Large and fussy mother, look
ing daggers at the sophomores squatting beside
her, giggling at the useless efforts of a small
worried usher to prevent a determined woman,
escorted by her apologetic husband, from prancing
down into the orchestra circle; and unimportant
senior.
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
Mother. What ? What ? Who is this, Emma ?
Where are we?
Emma. That s Viola, Mother. She s just
been shipwrecked, you know.
Mother. Oh, she s the heroine. She s the
best actor, then?
Emma. Dear me, no. Malvolio s way by
the best. And then Sir Toby and Maria
they re awfully good you ll see them pretty
soon now. I don t care for Viola much. She
tries to imitate Ada Rehan
Curtain drops on First Scene.
TJ" Orchestra Circle. Handsome, portly father,
exceptionally well set up, his wife, and head of
department.
Father, with enthusiasm. By Jove ! Is that
a girl, really? You don t say so! Well, well!
Sir Toby, eh? Well, well! And who s the
little girl? Maria? Did you ever see anything
much prettier than she is, Alice?
His Wife. She s very charming, certainly.
Head of Department. She s about the best
of them. A very clever girl. But you ought to
see Malvolio ! I don t care for Sir Andrew
Father. Alice, look at him! Did you ever
see anything so odd? Now I call that clever
I must say I call that clever! To think
[ 280]
AT COMMENCEMENT
that s a girl well, well ! See him shiver, Al
ice! Capital, capital! Do they do this them
selves costumes and acting and ideas and
all?
Head of Department. They make the cos
tumes, I believe, most of them. Then they
have a trainer at the last. It s amazing to me,
but as a matter of fact their men s parts are as
a rule, considering the proportionate difficulty,
you know, much better than their women s.
Comedy parts, at that. I Ve never seen but
one woman s part really well done.
Father. Really? Now why do you suppose,
sir, that is so?
Head of Department. I can t say. But they re
very artificial women, as a rule. Overtrained,
perhaps.
^f A group of last year s graduates and two ush
ers on the platform of the fire-escape upstairs.
First Graduate. I suppose you re nearly
dead, poor child?
First Usher. Heavens! I never slaved so in
my life! Did you see Ethel Williams mother
insist on going down into her seat ? I don t see
how people can be so rude.
First Graduate. Going better, to-night, is n t
it?
[281 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
First Usher. Goodness, yes! I think it s fine.
Don t you? Is n t Dick simply fine! There she
is ! C A burst of applause as Malvolio and Olivia
enter.)
Second Usher. Do you know, they say that
Kate Ackley thinks it s half for her!
Second Graduate. Not really?
Second Usher. Yes, really. She is stunning,
there s no doubt.
Second Graduate. Oh, yes, she s stunning.
Is that her own dress?
Second Usher. Yes. Her aunt gave it to her.
It s liberty satin. But she s a stick, just the
same. Do you like Viola ?
Second Graduate, parrying. She looks very
well. I was rather surprised she got it, though.
Second Usher. You know Mr. Clark wanted
her for Sir Andrew, and she would n t. He was
very angry, and so was the class. They don t
care for Ethel at all. But it was Viola or noth
ing. She s seen it four times and she thinks
she knows it all, they say. I do think she does
some parts very well indeed.
First Usher. Oh, Miss Underbill, is n t
Viola grand ? Don t you think she s fine ?
Second Graduate, sweetly. Yes, indeed. She
looks so cunning in that short skirt !
Curtain falls on First Att.
282
AT COMMENCEMENT
^[ Two fathers standing at back.
First Father , smiling affably. A great sight,
I assure you, sir ! All these young girls, and
parents, and friends a proud moment for
them ! And how well they do ! That one
that takes the part of Malvolio, now, that
Miss Fosdick pretty smart girl, now, is n t
she?
Second Father. That s my daughter, sir.
First Father. Well, well ! I expect you re
pretty pleased. You ought to be.
Second Father, confidentially. I tell you, sir, I
never believed she had it in her, never ! Her
mother and I were perfectly dumfounded
perfectly. I don t know where she got it from;
certainly not from me. And her mother
could n t take part in tableaux, even, she got
so nervous.
First Father. Just so, just so ! Now, I want
to tell you something, Mr. Mr. Fosdick.
These colleges for women are a great thing,
sir, a great thing ! You take my daughter.
When she came up here, she was as shy and
bashful and helpless as a girl that s an only
child could possibly be. Could n t trust her
self an inch alone. Never went away from
home alone in her life. Look at her now !
She s head of this whole committee: you may
[ 283 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
have noticed their names on the back of the
programme. Costumes, scenery, music, lights,
stage properties, scene shifting all in her
hands, as you might say ! I slipped up to the
stage door, and I begged the young woman
there to let me step in and see her a moment.
Girls do it all, you know ! She was on police
man duty there. But she let me in and I just
peeked at Mary, bossing the whole job, as you
might say! It was "put this here" and "put
that there" and taking hold of the end and
dragging it herself, and answering this one s
questions and giving that one orders I tell
you, I could n t believe it ! Short skirt and
shirt-waist, note-book in her hand Lord! I
wished I had her up at the office with me!
Second Father. Then you re Miss Mollie
Vanderveer s father?
First Father. Yes, sir, James L. Vander-
veer.
Second Father. Pleased to meet you. Lida
often speaks of her. She said to her mother
and me to-night just as she went down to "be
made up," as they call it, that Mollie was a
brick and no mistake. It seems she s doing
two girls work to-night.
First Father. Yes, one of the committee is
sick. After all, it s a pretty hard strain, it
[ 284 ]
AT COMMENCEMENT
seems to me. Mary s pretty strong, but she
said to me yesterday that if there had been
another performance
Curtain rises on Second Aft.
^f Lobby. College physician and junior usher.
Physician. Will you just step over to the
drug store across the street and get me some
brandy quickly, please ?
Usher. Oh, certainly, Dr. Leach !
Physician. Here, child, stop ! Put on a cloak
are you crazy ?
Usher. But I m quite warm, Dr. Leach !
Physician. Put on a cloak ! With your neck
and arms bare ! It s damp as a well outside.
(Usher runs out.)
A ubiquitous member of the faculty suddenly
appears. What s the matter ? Anybody sick ?
Physician. Oh, no ! Not much. Miss Jack
son was resting in her dressing-room and
somebody leaned over the sill and spoke to
her you know she s on the ground floor.
She s quite nervous, and she got a little hys
terical slight chill. My brandy was all out,
so I Oh, thank you! (Usher disappears
breathless.)
Ubiquitous Member of Faculty, gloomily. I Ve
always said there should be understudies
[ 285 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
always. What will they do without their Viola?
It s a ridiculous risk
Physician, hastily. But Miss Jackson is all
right, or will be as soon as I get yes, I m
coming! Oh, nonsense! She s all right:
there s no need for an understudy, I assure
you! No, keep them all out! No, she has
enough flowers in there now ! Yes, keep peo
ple away from the window !
^[ Curtain rises on Third Scene.
Group of ushers collapsed on stairs leading to
gallery.
Nan. (White organdie over rose pink silk;
rose ribbons.) Oh, girls, I m nearly dead !
Ursula. (Black net over elecJric blue satin;
silver belt and high silver comb; black gloves.)
There s one good thing, we re downstairs
to-night. Last night I got so dizzy hopping
up and down those steps
Leonora. (Yellow liberty silk cut very low;
gold fillet; somewhat striking Greek effecJ.) Oh,
what do you think I just did ? I was so tired I
stumbled just behind the orchestra circle (af
ter I d shooed that funny woman out of three
seats) and I fell almost flat ! And the nicest
man helped me up and made me take his seat,
and who do you think it was Pit was Mr. Fos-
[286]
AT COMMENCEMENT
dick. He went and stood back, and I sat a
long time then. Was n t he ducky ?
Sally. (White dimity with green ribbons; a
yard or more of red-gold hair ; babyish face. )
Where s your own seat, dear ?
Esther. (Pale blue silk with long rope of mock
pearls.) Oh, Piggy s given it to her little
friend, as usual ! It s a great thing to have
( The door swings open, and the affors* voices are
heard: "There dwelt a man in Babylon, lady,
lady!" Another usher comes out.)
Nan. How d the song go ? Better ?
Usher. Oh, grand ! They made her do the
second verse again. Miss Selbourne says that
she s the best all round clown they ve ever
had.
Sally. Oh, does she? I heard her tell Dr. Ly-
man that the plays deteriorated every year
(Enter another usher.)
Second Usher. Girls, you must be quiet ! That
woman at the back says she can t hear a
word
^[ Curtain rises on Fourth Scene; applause, as
audience takes in stage setting. Row of enthusiastic
alumna in upper box.
First Alumna. (Happy mother of three ; head
of sewing circle ; leader of the most advanced set
C 287 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
in her college days; president of the Anti-En
gagement League, junior year.) Oh, girls, did
you ever see anything so lovely? How do they
manage it ? We never imagined anything like
it, I m perfectly willing to admit. Are n t those
lords and ladies fine ? Why, look at them
there must be forty or fifty ! And are n t the
costumes beautiful ? How handsome Orsino
is!
Second Alumna. (Rising journalist; very well
dressed; knows all the people of note in the audi
ence; affects a society manner; was known as the
Gloomy Genius in her college days y and never
talked with any one who didn t read Browning.)
Quite professional, really ! How that Miss
Jackson reminds one of Rehan! I wonder if
Daly sends the trainer? That little Maria,
now she s quite unusual. Lovely figure,
has n t she ? Elizabeth Quentin Twitchell.
Dr. Twitchell of Cambridge, I wonder ? Do
they set that stage alone ?
Third Alumna. (Blonde and gushing; sister
in the cast.) You know, that Miss Twitchell
was the best Viola, too, they say. Peggy tells
me Mr. Clark says he wished she could play
them both. She s very popular with the class.
But Miss Jackson does everything. Writes,
acts, plays basket-ball, beautiful class work
[288 ]
AT COMMENCEMENT
Oh, is n t that sweet ! (Clown and chorus of
ladies with mandolins and guitars sing to wild
applause.)
Fourth Alumna. ( Tall, thin, dark, and dowdy ;
very humble in manner; high-principled; worth
two millions in her own right; slaved throughout
her entire college course.) I don t see how any
body can say that girls can t do anything in the
world they set out to. Isn t it wonderful ? You
can say what you please, but it s just as Ella
says they do ten times what we did and do
it better too. I think they re prettier than they
used to be, don t you ? And they re just like
real actors I m sure it s prettier than any
play I ever saw ! They make such wonderful
men ! Would you ever know that Sir Toby was
a girl ? And Malvolio he s just too good for
anything !
Curtain falls on Fourth Scene.
*[[ tfhere is a long wait in total darkness. The
audience smiles, then settles down to be amused.
Somebody faints and is restored with shuffling,
apologies, and salts.
Slender, dark-eyed, gray-haired man, with
non-committal expression, uncle of one of the
Mob; with his wife, who grows more frankly
puzzled as the play advances.
[ 289 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
Uncle. I suppose they Ve outdone them
selves in this garden scene.
Aunt. Yes, Bertha says they Ve worked
tremendously over it. Henry, what do you
think of it ?
Uncle. Very ingenious, my dear.
Aunt. But Henry, their voices
Uncle. They are a little destructive to the il
lusion, but you hear the gentleman behind me.
He assures us that he thinks they are men !
Aunt. Oh, Henry !
Uncle. It s a pity they have n t more like
Maria. Viola could take a few points from her.
Aunt. But Bertha says that they adore
Viola. She writes, and plays basket-ball, and
stands high in her classes, and
Uncle. But she is n t an aftress, that s all.
She should n t grasp all the arts ! She s too
melodramatic she rants.
Aunt. Bertha says the trainer admires her
very much he wants her to go on the stage.
Uncle. Oh! does he?
Aunt. Did you know that even the mobs are
trained very carefully? Bertha says she goes to
rehearsals all the time. And the principal parts
Malvolio worked six hours with Mr. Clark
one day and eight the next. And Viola had
to do more. And the stage committee slave y
AT COMMENCEMENT
Henry, they simply slave. Little Esther
Brookes is worn to a shadow not but what
they love to do it.
Uncle. And when did Malvolio and Viola
and the stage committee do their studying?
Aunt. Oh, they keep up with their work.
It s a point of honor with them, Bertha says.
Of course they can t do quite so much, I sup
pose
Uncle. I suppose not.
Aunt. But Bertha says that they would give
up anything in college sooner than that. Viola
and Malvolio, both of them, say that they re
gard it as the most valuable training they Ve
gotten up here. They say it s quite the equal
of any of their courses.
Uncle. Ah! do they?
T| Curtain rises on a very elaborate garden scene
of arbors and flowers ; frantic applause, doubled
at the entrance of Sir Toby and Sir Andrew.
Group of cynical alumna on fire-escape.
First Alumna. As for that Sir Toby
Second Alumna. Hush, my dear, that may
be the bosom of her family forninst us !
First Alumna, lowering her voice. I think
he s indecent and ridiculous.
Second Alumna. H e 11 be the pride of the class,
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
my little cousin says. They re raving over him.
First Alumna. Then they re idiots. My
dear, we may have had our faults, but we were
seldom vulgar, if we weren t remarkable!
Third Alumna. What I mind so much is that
all the papers are filled with that trash about
gracefulness and womanliness and girlish deli
cacy and the great gulf between us and the
coarse professionals, and as far as I can see,
we are filling in that gulf as fast as possible.
We seem to be striving after the very thing
First Alumna. Precisely. In a word, it s
Daly, not Shakespeare. And they don t see
that Dalyism takes money we have n t the
scenery and costumes for it.
Second Alumna. That horrible Sir Andrew!
Fourth Alumna. But Malvolio
First Alumna. Oh, Malvolio s all right.
As far as a girl can do it. The question is, can
a girl do it? I think she can t.
Third Alumna. And as for allowing that Miss
Jackson to imitate all Ada Rehan s bad points,
when she naturally fails of her good ones
Fourth Alumna. But, my dear, the men like
it. They re all pleased to death. They think
it s the cleverest thing they ever saw. They
say Viola s magnetic
Third Alumna. Hgh ! She s coarse, if that s
AT COMMENCEMENT
what you mean! The whole tone of the thing
is lowered. I think that way she afted the
duel scene last night was simply vulgar. But
the girls all howled with laughter.
Fourth Alumna. Well, if they re pleased
First Alumna. They should n t be pleased !
Fourth Alumna. Surely, Annie, you think
this garden scene is funny!
First Alumna. Why, I laughed. It s a good
acting play. But I wish the Literature depart
ment had more to do with it and the trainer
confined himself to
Usher interrupts. If you please, I must ask
you to make less noise. You are disturbing
the people near the door!
^f ^he curtain has fallen on the Fourth Att. A
group of last year s graduates standing at the
back in party-cloaks^ with a few of the Mob in
shirt-waists and make-up.
Recent Court Lady, tentatively. Did you like
the dance?
First Graduate. Oh, it was fine ! It was terri
bly pretty, Ellen, the whole thing!
Recent Court Lady , relieved. I m so glad you
liked it. Was n t Sue grand !
First Graduate. Yes, indeed, but I liked
Malvolio so much!
[ 293 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
Court Gentleman. Good old Dick ! My, don t
we love her! Orsino s going to do him at class
supper, you know. And Olivia s going to be
Sir Toby.
Second Graduate. How noble! Sir Toby is
about the best I ever saw, May.
Court Gentleman. Is n t she that? She s go
ing to be Viola. She squirms and twists just
like her
Court Lady. Oh, come on, May Lucy, and
get to bed! (They go out whistling airs from
the play and are violently suppressed by a group
of ushers^ whose excited remonstrances are loudly
criticised by a large and nervous lady in the rear y
greatly delighting the contingent from the Mob.)
First Graduate. Now, Katharine, just tell
me, perfectly impartially of course, how you
think it compares with ours.
Second Graduate. Well, girls, frankly I must
say I m a little disappointed. (Nods from the
others.)
Third Graduate. It s not that it s not well
done, for it is, but it s such a fine play it
ought to have been well done by anybody.
And for all that Sue Jackson s such a won
der, I must say
Fourth Graduate. Yes, exactly. She s too
heavy for the part, I think.
[ ^94 ]
AT COMMENCEMENT
Second Graduate. Of course Toby was fine
and Malvolio and Maria
Fifth Graduate. Well, then, with three fine
ones I should think
Second Graduate. But Olivia and Sebastian
and Orsino were such sticks
Fourth Graduate. Still, those third and
fourth and fifth scenes in the second acl: were
beautiful.
Second Graduate. But the others were so
plain. They just stacked on the good ones.
Still, I suppose they did the best they could.
Mary Vanderveer has just slaved over it.
Fifth Graduate. We know what that is !
Second Graduate. Well, honestly, I think
this is a -prettier play than ours, but I do feel
that ours was a little better done! Here, let s
see Sue in this. I think she s pretty good.
The curtain has fallen on the Fifth Aft.
and ISiola come out of their dressing-room
to the street^ and slip out of a crowd of ushers
and under-class girls. A general flutter of con
gratulation and sympathy follows them.
Oh, Miss Jackson, it was great ! Simply
fine ! Susy, my child, say what you d like and
it s yours! Where s Lida Fosdick? Lida!
Dick ! She s gone long ago. Where s Toby?
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
Gone, too. Somebody has some flowers for
her. Oh, take em up to the Wallace ! Well,
good-night! Wasn t it grand! Grand!
There s Betty ! Hi, Betty ! Oh, Miss Twitch-
ell, it was so
Miss fwttchett) mechanically. So glad, so
glad you liked it we loved to do it ! Oh, yes !
Oh, dear, no ! Just a little, yes. The making-
up was so long. Mother thank you, thank
you Mother, where is the carriage? Oh,
thank you so much !
Mrs. fwitchtll^ nervously. Yes, indeed, she s
tired to death. I m very glad, I m sure, if you
liked it. Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Waite?
Yes, here she is. Bessie, here is Mrs. Waite.
You see she sat in the Opera House since
five o clock to be made up, and only sand
wiches and all the strain yes, indeed. Fanny
looked very pretty, I thought. In the dance,
was n t she ? Yes, so pretty. I m sure I wish
Bessie had only been in the dance Oh, here s
the carriage, dear !
^[ Malvolio and Viola^ slipping quietly past the
crowd; make-up not off; arms on each other s
shoulders.
Malvolio. I suppose Dad s holding that
carriage somewhere.
[ 296 ]
AT COMMENCEMENT
Viola. Well, I can t help it. I simply can t
talk to everybody.
Malvolio. Do you know your speech ?
Viola. I think so. It s so short, you know.
I hate to have the president s speech long.
( A pause.)
Malvolio. Well, it s over, Susy Revere !
No more glory for little Lide and Sue !
Viola. All over ! Well, we Ve had the time
of our lives, Dick ! I d I d give anything
to do it over again, three nights !
Malvolio. Me too. It s a pleasant little spot
up here, fffuy walk to the campus in silence.)
^[ Recent court lady and two young gentlemen,
brothers of her friend, the stage manager. Her
eyes are underlined heavily , and she has not got
ten the rouge quite off her cheeks.
Recent Court Lady. Oh, thank you, it would
be such a help ! Mollie is nearly wild, and these
things must be got out to-night. If you would
take this and this and this, and oh, Father,
would you please carry this tankard and the
cups ? And could you take those two swords ?
I 11 take the distaff and the mandolin. Jack,
have you room for the moon ? Will, here
are more poppies, and I promised Ada that
I d put that rubber-plant in her room to-
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
night. You re so good ! You re sure you
don t mind carrying them ? Now don t get
laughing, Father, and drop the cups.
ARecent Court Gentleman. Good-night, dear !
I knew you d like it. Oh, I think everybody
seems to feel it s the best yet. Of course, last
year they had so much better opportunity, so
much easier scenery. But with four such stars
yes, indeed. It was so much harder to find
people to take oh, she did! She thinks that
just because it does n t all depend on one or
two people, it s easier ? Well, just find your
extra people, that s all! Did you like it? Most
people seemed to think it was a pretty dance.
Well, we rehearsed enough, heaven knows.
Did you know Orsino s fiance was there ? She
said she felt like such an idiot. Too bad Sue
got scared, was n t it ? Well, good-night.
^ Steps of the Dewey House. Three ushers
propped against the pillars. The night watchman
approaches with lantern.
Watchman. Well, well, well ! Want to get
in ? Hi // bet yer do ! (First usher nods her
head.) Are yer h ushers ? Fine play, wa n t
it ? (Second usher nods her head.) Well, you
do look tired! You pretty tired, Miss Slater?
(Third usher murmurs something about sleeping
[ 298 ]
AT COMMENCEMENT
// // noon, and second usher chuckles feebly and
mentions Baccalaureate. They stumble into the
Dewey, and the watchman shuts the door.)
ii
IVY DAY
THE sun is glaring down on the campus. A
crowd of parents and other relatives is surg
ing toward an awning near the steps of College
Hall-, a stream of white-dressed seniors continually
flows toward the Hatfield House, where a proces
sion is forming. Forty junior ushers struggle with
a rope wound with laurel, which is to encompass
the column of seniors. A few scattered members
of the Faculty and a crowd of alumnae wander
aimlessly about, obstructing traffic generally.
Small imperious mother, dragging large good-
humored father toward the awning. Hurry up,
Father, hurry up !
Father. But Mother, I want to see em !
Mother. Well, you Ve got to take your
choice of seeing em and not hearing a word
of the speech or
Father. You go right along, Mother, and
I 11 get there on time. I want to see Hattie
marching.
^f A crowd of girls with cameras rushes up and
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
lines both sides of the walk. Two ushers sail up
the path, clearing a way with white-ribboned
sticks. The crowd becomes unmanageable, torn by
the desire to watch the progress of the march and
at the same time to secure a good place at the ex
ercises. People summon each other wildly from
various points of the campus.
A group of strolling sophomores, dodging some
ushers and wheedling programmes from others,
screws its way in a body to the best possible posi
tion in the front, smiling at the efforts of the dis
placed to reinstate themselves.
First Sophomore. There they come ! There s
Sue and Betty Twitchell ! My, what roses !
Second Sophomore. Roses ? Did the ushers
Third Sophomore. Oh, goodness, Win,
have n t you heard that yet ?
Second Sophomore. No tell me !
Third Sophomore. Why, Miss Tomlinson s
fiance sent her fifteen dozen American Beau
ties, and there wasn t any room for them in the
house, and she asked if the class would like to
carry them, and first they voted no and then
they voted yes, and some of the girls don t
like it, but they are doing it just the same
Oh, isn t Helen Estabrook s gown stunning!
There s Wilhelmina Hello, Will! Sue looks
well, don t you think ?
[ 300 ]
AT COMMENCEMENT
Second Sophomore. Fifteen dozen American
Beauties ! Great heavens !
First Sophomore. I think it s perfectly ab
surd and bad taste, too. The idea !
Third Sophomore. Well, she s not to blame,
is she ? They re certainly lots prettier than
laurel or daisies or odd flowers Oh, girls, /
think Louise Hunter is too silly for anything !
She feels too big to live, leading the way ! I d
try to look a little less like a poker if I was
an usher !
^[ The Ivy Procession marches to the steps two
and two, each girl with an enormous American
Beauty in her hand. At every step the girls with
cameras snap and turn^ so that the sound resem
bles a miniature volley of cannon. There is a com
parative silence during their progress.
Mother and daughter standing on their seats
under awning, clutching at the heads of those
near them for support.
Mother. Who is that with Susy, dear ?
Daughter. That s the vice-president I
don t know her name. Sue looks pale, does n t
she?
Mother. And that s Bess Twitchell next
with the tucks. She s Ivy Orator, you know.
I think Sue s dress drops too much in the
[ 3 01 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
back Ah, Miss Fosdick has stepped on it !
Good heavens right on that Valenciennes !
( She sits down abruptly.)
^[ The procession winds slowly up and groups
itself on the steps. The last third stands a long
while before the awning and exchanges somewhat
conscious remarks with its friends outside the
rope, which the ushers endeavor to carry without
straining or dropping: this attempt puckers their
foreheads and tilts their hats.
A group of last year s graduates standing close
to the enclosure.
First Graduate. Stunning gowns, aren t
they?
Second Graduate. Awfully. Prettiest I ever
saw. And so different, too ! And yet they re
all alike organdie over silk or satin, mostly.
Is n t Sue Jackson s lovely?
Third Graduate. I like Esther Brookes ;
it s so plain, but there s not a more artistic
Fourth Graduate. How do you like Lena
Bergstein s?
Fifth Graduate. What s that ?
Fourth Graduate. My dear, have n t you
seen that? It s solid Valenciennes as far as I
can see. I think it s altogether too elaborate.
But I tell you, it s stunning, all the same!
[ 3 02 ]
AT COMMENCEMENT
Fifth Graduate. Ah, I see it! Poor taste, I
think.
Fourth Graduate. I know it. Betty Twitch-
ell s is so simple
First Graduate. Simple, yes ! It s imported,
I happen to know!
Fourth Graduate. Really! I tdoes hang beau
tifully! Oh, they re moving: there s Sir
Toby. You know nobody ever heard of her
before, girls. Isn t that funny? Wasn t she
great, though?
Second Graduate. Well, they won t forget
her in a hurry. I think it s a mighty good
thing that Dramatics brings out that kind
of girl and gives her a place in the class. It
keeps two or three girls like Sue Jackson
and Twitchie and Mollie Van from running
everything. Well, going to stay here?
^f A Ubiquitous member of the Faculty suddenly
dashes from her seat and pushes through the crowd,
which lets her out, under the impression that she
is faint.
Ubiquitous Member of Faculty , to a scared
usher. Where is Dr. Twitchell? Is he back
there?
Usher. I I don t know ! Is he big?
Ubiquitous Member of Faculty. Big? Big?
[303 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
What do you mean? A pretty thing to have
the father of the Ivy Orator have no seat ! He
must be found!
Usher. I I 11 go see
Ubiquitous Member of Faculty. Do you know
him?
Usher , helpless but optimistic. No, but I 11
Ubiquitous Member of Faculty, suddenly dash
ing through the crowd into a lilac clump and pro
ducing, to every one s amazement, a large and
amiable gentleman from its centre. Well, well!
Are you going to remain here long, Dr.
Twitchell? Why aren t you in your seat?
Dr. Twitchell, somewhat embarrassed at his
-prominent position, but beaming on every one.
Why, no that is, yes, indeed ! Certainly.
I only wanted to see Bessie march along with
the rest. A very pretty sight remarkably so !
All in white I counted ninety couples, I
think. Has has she begun? Is her mother
Ubiquitous Member of Faculty. We re all in
the front row, and they ve not begun. The class
president will be making her speech in a mo
ment there is plenty of time, but we were a
little anxious ( They enter the enclosure.)
^[ The class is crowded upon the steps and over
flows before and behind them. The sun is in
[ 304 ]
AT COMMENCEMENT
their eyes, and they look strained and pale. Under
the awning a few hundred relatives fan them
selves, and smile expectantly.
The class president makes an indistinguish
able address, in which the phrases " more glad
than I can say," "unusual opportunity" "wom
en s education" "extends a hearty welcome"
rise above the rest, and sinks back into the crowd.
The leader of the Glee Club frowns at her
mates and leans forward : the class sings "Fair
Smith" with a great deal of contralto. The Ivy
Orator steps back and upward instinctively, with
an idea of escaping from the heads and shoulders
that are packed like herring about her, realizes
that the audience is entirely out of her reach, steps
down to meet them, becomes lost to view, and with
a despairing consciousness that nothing can better
the most futile position she has ever occupied, steps
back to her first place and shrieks out her opening
phrases.
Two mothers sitting on a bench just behind the
enclosure, looking over the campus.
First Mother. So you did n t get a seat?
Second Mother. Well, I did n t try, to tell
the truth. I m interested in the speech, but
my daughter tells me that I can see it in the
Monthly next fall, and as I got here so late, I
could n t possibly hear it from the back.
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
First Mother. I was sorry to leave, for Kate
wanted me to hear Bessie so much; but after
Miss Jackson s speech I had to go the heat
made me rather faint. And as you say, one
can read it.
Second Mother. That s what every one seems
to think see them all walking up and down
here. One of the old graduates a friend of
my daughter s told me that this was the
chance for them to talk with the professors!
First Mother. Well, I suppose if they will
have it outdoors, very many people can t ex-
peel to hear. It s very hard to speak in the
open air.
Second Mother. Yes, indeed. What a fine-
looking girl that Miss Ackley is the dark
one did you notice her ?
First Mother. That is my daughter, so I Ve
noticed her quite a little!
Second Mother. Oh, indeed! I m sure I
did n t know
First Mother. It is n t necessary to be told
thatjy0# have a daughter here, Mrs. Fosdick!
Second Mother. No, everybody seems to
think that the resemblance is very strong in
deed. Is n t it pleasant to meet people so
strangely, and without any ceremony, like this?
It s a very pleasant place, anyway, is n t it?
[306]
AT COMMENCEMENT
First Mother. Yes, indeed. It s beautiful
all the spring, but particularly beautiful now,
I think, with all the girls in their pretty
dresses and the general holiday effecl.
Second Mother. What I like so much is the
spirit of the place. When we found out from
things in my daughter s letters and stories
she would tell us in the vacations that all her
little set of friends were very much richer than
she and could afford luxuries and enjoyments
that she could n t, Mr. Fosdick and I were
quite worried for fear that she would feel hurt,
you know, or want to get into a style of living
that she could not possibly keep up. But, dear
me, we need n t have worried! It never made
the least difference, just as she assured us.
We were very glad to find that she was the
friend of some of the leading girls in the class,
when we saw that she went right along as she
had to, tutoring and selling blue prints and
going about just as contentedly as if her shirt
waists had been their organdies. Not that that
sort of thing ought to make any difference, but
sometimes it does^ you know. She was telling
me about Bess Twitchell s Commencement
dress, and Sue Jackson s, and I grew quite
alarmed, for I thought that perhaps that was
expecled, and we couldn t possibly afford any-
[ 307 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
thing like it. But, dear me, it was all the same
to her! She was perfectly satisfied with muslin,
and when I asked her if she was sure she d
prefer to walk with Bess, she actually made
me feel ashamed! Bess herself said that it
wasn t every one who could have the honor
of walking with Malvolio, and she d like to
see herself lose it!
First Mother. Oh, of course ! Why, I have
always understood, both from Kate and her
cousin who graduated three years ago, that
some of the leading girls in every class were
poor. The girls seemed prouder of them, if
anything. As you say, it s the spirit of the
place. Now Kate herself well, it s a little
thing, I suppose, but her father and I well,
I suppose any one would think us silly, but
we actually cried, we were so touched. Her
father gave her her dress it was really lovely.
Not elaborate, but it was made over beautiful
silk, and he gave her a handsome string of
those mock pearls they wear so much now,
you know. It was very becoming to her in
deed, and she was delighted with it.
Well, just three weeks ago I got a long let
ter from her saying that Eleanor Hunt s father
had lost every cent he had in the world and
that they were in a dreadful condition. Elea-
[308 ]
AT COMMENCEMENT
nor s mother had sold her Commencement
gown and Eleanor was going to wear an old
white organdie that she d worn all the year to
dances and plays. She said that Eleanor was
feeling very bad indeed about it and especially
about Commencement time. They had planned
to walk together in all the processions they
are great friends. So she asked me if I thought
Papa would mind if she wore her old organ
die, too, to all the things, because Eleanor
seemed to feel it so. Her father offered to give
Eleanor onefor a Commencement present from
her, but she would n t have that she said
Eleanor would n t like it she was feeling
very proud about gifts, just now.
Well, her father was more pleased than I Ve
seen him for years. You see, Kate has always
thought a great deal of her clothes, and she s
always had a good allowance, besides lots of
presents from us and her aunts. And being an
only child, you know well, I would n t say
she was spoiled at all, but she certainly was a
little thoughtless, perhaps selfish, when she
came up here. Her father and I feel that it has
done a great deal for her. He says that he d
call it a good investment if she d never learned
anything in all the four years but just how to
do that one thing!
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SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
Second Mother. Yes, indeed ! We feel, Mr.
Fosdick and I, that my daughter s friends
have been almost as good for her as what she
learned, though that comes first, as she must
teach, now. She was always so solitary and re
served and never cared for the girls at home,
but here she has such good friends and loves
them all so she s grown more natural, more
like other girls; and we lay it all to her hav
ing been thrown in from the beginning with
such pleasant, nice girls as these. You know
them, I suppose Bessie and Sue and Bertha
Kitts
^f Two alumna strolling between the houses and
the enclosure , chatting with friends and spying
out acquaintances.
First Alumna. Good gracious, is n t she
through yet ? I pity the poor girls, standing
all this while !
Second Alumna. Yes, that s just it ! Arrange
the oration to suit the girls, do! If they re
tired, let them sit down ! It s absurd to criti
cise the one really academic exercise of the
whole affair entirely on the basis of the girls
comfort, I say !
First Alumna. But, my dear, the poor things
have done so much and stood so much any-
AT COMMENCEMENT
how and I should think Miss Maria would
be tired herself.
Second Alumna. Then it s her own lookout.
She should have dropped one or the other.
They try to do too much. I can tell you that
we were proud enough to stand twenty min
utes when Ethel Richardson talked, and she
did n t feel that it was beneath her notice to
devote all her time and attention to that one
thing, either. We did n t make so much of
these universal geniuses then, but I doubt if
we had poorer results from the less widely
gifted.lt s too much strain; one simply can t
do everything.
First Alumna. No. They re way ahead of
us in lots of things, but I m glad I came
when I did. Don t you remember what a good
time we used to have spring term ? Dear old
last spring term ! Do you know there is n t
any, now ? Don t you remember how we
dropped ev well, a good deal, and lay in
the hammocks in the orchard and mooned
about and took a long, comprehensive fare
well to all our greatness ? We d made or lost
our reputations by then, and we just took it
all in and oh, I suppose we did sentimen
talize a little, but it all meant more to us ap
parently. . . . Well, it s all gone now. They
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SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
begin on the play so early, and it s all re
hearsing, and then they can t let their work
drop, so they keep everything right up to the
pitch according to their story. And there are
six societies to our one, you know. And all
the houses give receptions to them right in a
bunch, and every one is so bored at them
at least Kitty says they are. But you can t
always tell by that, I suppose.
T| Applause from the enclosure and a general
scurry as the ushers crowd up to surround the
class , who begin their Ivy Song a piece of mu
sical composition something between a Gregorian
chant and a Strauss waltz, with a great deal of
modulation,in which the words "hopes and fears"
"coming years" "plant our vine" and "still en
twine occur at suitable intervals. They wander
away in a bunch, frantically surrounded by the
ushers and the chain, to another side of College
Hall, where the Ivy is interred. A general break
up then begins, the orator and the president join
their admiring families, and people begin to stroll
home, the prominent members of the class pausing
at every sentence to have their pitlures taken.
Two members of the class and one of the Faculty.
First Member of Class. It was the funniest
thing I Ve heard this year, really ! You know
AT COMMENCEMENT
the girls simply slave for her they slave. They
can t help it, you know, for she thinks that s
all there is in the world and if you don t have
your note-book made out she looks at you in
such a way oh, well, it makes Mollie s spine
cold, she says. Mollie s done splendid work
for her not that she does n t do it for every
body but she was determined to make her
see that she could be at all the rehearsals and
take the observations, too. The only thing
she did n t do was to go the last two or three
nights, but gracious, she d more than made
that up ! I thought I did pretty well when I
put in five hours of Lab., but those girls have
done eight and ten hours a week some weeks,
note-books and observations and all. Just to
satisfy her, you know they love to work for
her. And what do you think she said the last
time they met ? Do you know about Astron
omy, Mr. Brooke ? If you do, I shall spoil the
story for you, for I don t know the first thing.
But I think it was the parallax of the sun.
"Now, I should think you could just step out
between the acts," said she, calmly, "if you
could n t get out for all the evening, and take
your note-book with you, Miss Vanderveer,
and just take it it s a beautiful observation !
And you Ve taken one, and it will be a great
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SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
thing to tell your children that you Ve gotten
the parallaxes of the sun yourself!"
Second Member of Class. And when we
thought of Mollie dancing about there with
her collar undone, trying to make those idi
otic men understand something and being
everywhere at once between the adls, you
know, being a fairly occupied time for her
when we imagined her walking out of the gar
den scene or Orsino s house to take the what-
do-you-call-it of the sun (though I don t see
how she could take it of the sun at night it
must have been the moon, Ethel).
Member of Faculty. And what did Miss
Vanderveer say?
First Member of Class. I m sure it was the
sun, Teddie, Mollie said sun why, she
coughed and said, "I certainly will, if I get
time, Miss Drake!"
Member of Faculty. Great presence of mind,
I m sure.
^f Group of relatives and three members of the class.
First Member. Mamma, this is Miss Twitch-
ell and Miss Fosdick Maria and Malvolio,
you know.
Mother. I am pleased to meet you both. I
want to tell you how much I enjoyed, etc.
[314]
AT COMMENCEMENT
Misses Twitchell and Fosdick. We re so glad
if you did, etc.
Mother. I was not able to catch much of
your speech, but Ellen tells me we can have
the pleasure of reading it later.
Miss Twitchell, moving away. I m afraid
you will have the opportunity but I tried
to make it as short as I could !
Mother. And now I suppose you re going
home to sleep all day ? I should think you d
need it.
Miss Twitchell. Oh, dear, no ! I m going to
the Alpha on the back campus this afternoon,
and I want to look in at Colloquium, and then
there s the Glee Club to-night, you know.
I Ve no more worry now, nothing to do but
enjoy myself.
Aunt. What is this, Ellen? The Glee Club
Ellen. Why, Aunt Grace, the Glee Club
promenade, don t you know ? That s when
the lanterns are all over, and they give a con
cert, and we all walk about, and it s so pretty
don t you remember I told you?
Aunt. Well, then, I 11 go right home and
take my nap, if I m to go out to-night. Are
you going to all these things, too, Ellen ?
Ellen. Well, practically. Only I m going to
Phi Kapp and Biological instead. But I am
[315]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
going to lie down I m so tired, I can t think
straight, and you know I m on the Banjo
Club, and we have to have a short rehearsal
^[ I he crowd gradually disperses, and the campus
is practically deserted; men begin to put up poles
and wires for lanterns ; others gather and arrange
scattered chairs. Stray relatives hunt for each
other and their boarding-places or inquire with
interest which is the Science Building and the
Dewey House. Belated members of the class wan
der homewards or patiently seek out their fami
lies^ whose temporary guardians are thus relieved.
Abstracted member of the class and large ^domi
neering woman in black satin^ before the Morris
House gate.
Large Woman. This is the Hatfield, is it not?
Member of Class. Oh ! I beg your pardon ?
No, it s the Morris.
Large Woman. Ah ! I was told it was the
Hatfield.
Member of Class, simply. Well, it s not.
Large Woman. And that over there (point
ing to the Observatory J, that is the Lilly House?
Member of Class. No, that s the Observa
tory. Lilly Hall is up farther. It s just be
yond the Dickinson no, the Lawrence I
mean the Hubbard Home !
AT COMMENCEMENT
Large Woman. And where is the Hubbard
House ?
Member of Class. Oh, dear ! (pulls herself to
gether with an effort) it s up in a line, the one,
two, three, third from here.
Large Woman. Thank you. And I wish to
see the Botanical Gardens, too. Where are
they ? (Member of Class points out their posi
tion.)
Large Woman. And where is the Landscape
Garden ?
Member of Class, vaguely. Why, I suppose
it s over there, too. I don t exactly it s all
landscape garden, I suppose it s not big
Large Woman, severely. I was told there was
a fine landscape and botanical garden are
you a member of the college ?
Member of Class, leaning against the post.
Why, yes, but it s all botanical garden, for
that matter. ( Catches sight of a tree with a tin
label tied to it and points luminously at it.) That s
botanical, you know all the trees and shrubs !
Large Woman, with irritation. I am quite
aware that it is I
Member of Class, despairingly. Oh, excuse
me, I mean it s it s / mean they all have
labels! (Large Woman stalks majestically away ;
Member of Class makes a few incoherent gestures
[317]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
in the air, murmurs, " I am such a fool, but I m
so tired ! " Throws out her hands wearily and
trails into the Morris House.)
THE TENTH STORY
THE END OF
X
THE END OF IT
f ^HERE are two methods of con-
i ducting a class supper. The first is
I something like this: you pick out
-^- three utterly unrelated girls who
never had anything to do with one another in
their lives, and call them the supper commit
tee; you pick out two clever, uninterested girls
and call them the toast committee; you pick
out an extremely busy girl who lives half a
mile off the campus and call her the seating
committee; you pick out a popular girl who is
supposed to be humorous because she laughs
at everybody s jokes and knows one comic
song, and call her the toast-mistress.
And this is the result of it: The supper
committee meets, wonders what under heaven
induced the president to appoint the other
two, finds out what caterer they had last year,
and after a little perfunctory argument em
ploys him again without further action, with
the result that one end of the table has five
kinds of ice cream and the other a horrifying
recurrence of lukewarm croquettes; the toast
committee spends a great deal of time in hunt
ing out extremely subtle quotations from
Shakespeare and Omar Khayyam, with the
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
result that no one of the toasters gets the least
idea of how she is expefted to elaborate her
theme; the seating committee is so harassed
by everybody that she gives up her diagram
in despair, and successive girls erase and sign
and re-erase till nobody but the three or four
leading sets in the class are satisfied, and they
are displeased because the toasters are either
put in a line at the head or scattered about the
tables, and that separates them from their im
mediate cliques; the toast-mistress turns out
to be more appreciative than constructive, and
worries her friends and bores her enemies be
yond previous conception. The main body of
unimportant necessary people are crowded off
by themselves and feel somewhat flat and
heavy and irritated at the noisy groups beyond
them; the toasts are apt to be a little sad and
vague because the girls don t fit them and talk
too much about enduring friendships, the
larger life, four years of stimulating rivalry,
and alma mater. Why they do all this at this
season and this alone, only the Lord who
made them knows.
But Ninety-yellow did not employ this
method. It occurred to Theodora somewhat
originally, perhaps, as she looked around her
that last Tuesday evening, that a better class
THE END OF IT
supper was never arranged. It can hardly be
asserted that it was a really good supper, for
it is to be doubted if a hundred and seventy-
five women ever sat down to a really good sup
per; but there was almost enough of it, and it
was very nearly hot. Kathie Sewall had picked
the supper committee well, and they knew
one another thoroughly enough to give it all
to the chairman to do and to make fun of her
till she was spurred on to a really noble ef
fort. She knew that it is always damp and cold
class supper night, and planned accordingly.
Kitty Louisa Hofs tetter managed the toasts,
and though Kitty Louisa was uneven and a
little vulgar at times, she was clever in her
unexpected hail-fellow-well-met way and pop
ular with the class for the most part. She had
a genius for puns of the kind that grow better
as they grow worse, and they were shamelessly
italicized in the toast-cards, which caused great
merriment before the toasts had begun. And
the seating was very well done, for the class
was nicely broken up and mixed about among
the tables till everybody was within four or
five of a reasonably important person.
As for the toast-mistress well, you see,
Theodora s opinion of her might have been
a trifle exaggerated, for she was Theodora s
[ 3^3 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
best friend. How little she had changed, Theo
thought, as she watched her rumple her hair
in the same funny, boyish way that she had
freshman year. Theo had seen her first in the
main hall, floating with the current of fresh
men that pushed its way almost four hundred
strong to meet its class officer and find out
that O. G. meant Old Gymnasium. That far-
off freshman year! Theo smelt again the clean,
washed floor; saw again the worried shepherds
herding their flocks into the scheduled stalls
and praying that the parents might go soon
and leave their darlings, if misunderstood, at
least unencumbered ; heard again the buzz and
hum of a thousand chattering, scuffling girls,
bubbling over with a hundred greetings for
each other.
"Hello, Peggy! Peggy! I say, hello
Peggy!"
"Oh, hello! Have a good time?"
"Grand! Did you?"
"Perfectly fine I saw Ursula and Dodo
and Oh, Ursula! hello! Here I am!"
"Why, Peggy Putney, you dear old thing!
When did you come? They say you re in
the Hatfield how did you get there?"
"Two ahead of me and they dropped out.
Miss Roberts only just told me "
THE END OF IT
Theodora had felt very lonesome and home
sick just then everybody but herself knew
so many people ! And then Virginia had hap
pened along and jostled her and begged par
don, and they had fallen into a conversation
on the relative merits of the Dewey and the
Hatfield. Later they had studied Livy to
gether and confided their difficulties to each
other. Virginia s mother was a Unitarian and
her father was an Ethical Culturist, and her
room-mate was a High Church Episcopalian
and never ate meat in Lent ! She thought Vir
ginia would very probably be damned, if not
in the next life, certainly in this, and she inti
mated as much. Virginia thought it was very
hard to live with somebody who disapproved of
you so much.
Theodora had been brought up to be a neat,
self-helpful little person, and her room-mate,
Edith Bliss, had never even seen her bed made
up and left her clothes in piles on the floor just
as she stepped out of them. She was horribly
homesick and wept quarts every Sunday af
ternoon, and confided to Theodora in mo
ments of hysterical relaxation that she thought
every girl owed it to herself to have soup and
black coffee for dinner and that she was going
to wire Papa to take her home immediately.
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
Theo looked at her now, eagerly devour
ing a doubtful lobster concoclion and openly
congratulating herself on the olives at her left.
She was fond of Frankfurters now, was Edith,
and had recently alarmed the authorities by
her ingenuous scheme for annexing a night-
lunch cart and keeping it on the campus: it
would have been so nice, she said regretfully,
to slip out and get a Frankfurter between
hours !
How pretty the Gym looked! The juniors
had decorated it as well as they could at odd
minutes, and they had lingered in a bunch as
the class came in to lean over the balcony and
sing to them.
Theodora remembered how the Gym had
looked the night of the sophomore reception:
all light and music and girls and a wonder of
excitement. She had never had an evening
dress before, and her little square-necked or
gandie had been dearer to her than any other
gown before or since. They played Rastus on
Parade, and she had such nice partners and
some of the girls were so lovely and had such
white, beautiful shoulders they seemed to
count evening dress but a slight and ordinary
thing. By junior year house-dances are wont
to pall, and seniors have been known to make
THE END OF IT
rabbits and read Kipling in preference; even
among the freshmen Theodora had found
some disillusioned souls who lamented the
absence of men and found the sophomore
reception slow!
Across the table an odd, distinguished-look
ing girl, with a clever face and dark, short
sighted eyes, smiled at her, and Theo s thoughts
flashed back to that great day when she first
really loved the class the day of the Big
Game. What a funny, snub-nosed little no
body Marietta Hinks had been then ! But
how she played ! How she dodged and dou
bled and bounced the ball, and how they
cheered her !
Oh, here s to Mari^/ta,
For we shall not soon forget her
Well, well, how they had grown up ! Now
she was " Miss Root " to the little, dark-eyed
girl in the back seat in chapel, who smiled so
shyly at her when the seniors led out down
the middle aisle. Theo was wearing her roses
to-night, and as she scratched off a little note
to thank her she had seemed to see herself,
another little dark-eyed girl, sending anony
mous roses to Ursula Wyckoff. Dear me !
would anybody ever again combine such
graces of mind and body as that ornament
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
of Ninety-purple ? She had gone on wheel-
rides with Theo, and once she had asked her
over to wait on the juniors at a spread
Theo had sat up and got her light reported
in order to write home about it.
There are those, I understand, who disap
prove strongly of this attitude of Theodora s
happy year : dogmatic young women who have
not learned much about life and soured, mid
dle-aged women who have forgotten. I am
told that they would consider Theodora s
adoration morbid and use long words about
her long words about a freshman ! I have
always been sorry for these unfortunate peo
ple: their chances for reconstructing Human
Nature seem to me so relatively slight.
When Theo had gone home that summer
with hands almost as well cared for as Ursula s,
sleek, gathered-in locks, and a gratifying hold
on the irregular verbs (Ursula spoke beautiful
French), her mother had whimsically inquired
if Miss Wyckoff could not be induced to re
main in Northampton indefinitely and con
tinue her unscheduled courses ! But perhaps
she was a morbid mother.
Her mother ! The plates and flowers swam
before Theodora s misted eyes, and the sight
of Virginia so kind that year brought back
[328 ]
THE END OF IT
somehow those waves of desolation that would
come over her again and again, in leclure
rooms, in her own dear room, at meals all
that clouded sophomore year. It was just as
her good fortune came through the mail to
her a room in the Nicest House that her
mother died, and rooms mattered little to
Theo, then. There were kindly aunts and
other children, and she was not needed at
home; so it seemed best to go on, and she
had come up the steps of the Nicest House,
a little black-dressed figure, and into the arms
of the Nicest Woman.
It seemed to her that there was never a
room so cheerful, nor pictures so lovely, nor
a fire so red, nor tea and bread and butter so
good, nor a smile so comfortable as the Nicest
Woman s. Mademoiselle and Fraulein and
Miss Roberts were sweet and kind, and the
girls did all they could, but it was to the Nicest
Woman that one came when conditions and
warnings were in the air or one s head ached
or one had eaten too much fudge or been an
noyed by somebody s banjo practice. When
the seniors of the Nicest House were eating
and laughing there at night, it was a gay room
the Nicest Woman s; but it was very dim
and quiet in the dusk, when Theodora slipped
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
in by herself with reddened lids, and sat on the
couch, and they talked of things that started
to be sad but somehow always turned out
cheerful; for when it was about the children
and Will at Yale little jokes were sure to
come up, and when Theo wondered if perhaps
she had n t been careless about writing home,
and if Mother had gotten more letters in
the spring, maybe the conversation always
changed, and she found herself feeling so glad
and thankful that she d gone right home in
June and not visited at Virginia s.
Virginia had gone into Phi Kappa that win
ter, and Theo had been so proud of her. She
was in the first five, and as she really had n t
expecled it at all it was quite exciting. Ade
laide Carew went in too, and though she went
about with the seniors a great deal and called
most of her class " Miss," she was much more
generally liked than in her freshman year, and
Virginia had got to know her better and better.
Through her Theo had seen more of Ade
laide, and she had been amazed to find out
how really kind-hearted and human she was
beneath her unapproachable ways.
But then, you never could tell girls were
so queer! Only last night, when they were
walking about under the lanterns after the
[330]
THE END OF IT
concert, she and Virginia and Adelaide, with
two of the junior ushers, and the juniors, so
phisticated young people, had cynically sug
gested that perhaps they d better take them
selves away in order that the three might seek
out their Ivy and bedew it with their final tears,
Adelaide had coughed a little huskily and sug
gested that perhaps when they d planted their
own Ivy they would n t be feeling so gay !
They had stared at her blankly, hesitated,
decided that coming from such a source it
must have been an extraordinarily acute sar
casm, and gone away giggling, leaving Theo
to wonder and Adelaide to flush and talk very
hard about Bar Harbor and the comfort of a
big room all to yourself once more.
Such a strange room-mate as Theo had had
that year she seemed fated to room with
girls who had never made up their beds. This
one had lived freshman year with friends in the
town, and had had everything done for her,
and when Theo asked her one day if campus
life was wearing on her, she had turned two
stormy gray eyes on her and burst out, "Oh,
no, Theodora, but I am so deadly tired of
picking up my night-gown every single morn
ing, I think I shall die!"
On one historic occasion, early in the year,
[331 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
Theo had happened to make up her bed for
her, and upon her pleased recognition of the
fresh linen it had come out that she had been
for some weeks accustomed to change her up
per sheet and leave the under one undisturbed
on the bed it had seemed more logical, she
said, and how was she to know ? They had
teased her about it till the Nicest Woman in
terfered and fined every girl who mentioned
it, and they bought Sentimental Tommy with
the money, and read it evenings in the Nicest
Woman s room after supper.
Well, well, they d sit about her fire no
more, as the poem said that somebody wrote
to go with the silver tea-ball the seniors gave
her when she served them their last tea.
They d come in no more after Alpha and
Phi Kapp to tell her all about it how nice
she had been when Theo got into Alpha !
That was junior year and they took her to
Boyden s for supper, and her bowl and
pitcher were full of violets for days. Every
body seemed so glad, and Martha Sutton had
pinned her own pin on Theo s red blouse.
Kathie Sewall had taken her over nobody
dreamed that Kathie would be senior presi
dent then and what a hand-shaking there
had been ! And such a funny, clever play, with
THE END OF IT
butlers and burglars and lady s-maids it was
illustrative of American literature, she learned
later, but it was not a pedantic illustration.
Theodora loved plays, and she had delighted
in her very humble part in the House play. She
was a little house-maid, and said only, "Yes,
madam," and "No, madam," and, "Oh, sir,
how can you a poor girl like me !" but she
had a great American Beauty and two bunches
of violets, and she sent the programme home.
Next to its basket-ball decorations she remem
bered the Gym arranged for a play, with the
running-track turned into boxes and the girls
prettier than ever against the screens and pil
lows. She had been chairman of the stage-set
ting committee, and the Monthly had espe
cially commended the boudoir scene.
Were they ready for the toasts so soon ?
Where had the time gone? she thought, as
Virginia, with solemn pomp, called upon Miss
Farwell to respond to "Our Team." Dear old
Grace she stammered a little when she was
excited, and she was not the most fluent of
speakers, but they cheered her to the echo.
"Team ! Team ! Team !" they called, and the
teams, freshman and sophomore, Regulars and
Subs, had to stand on their chairs and be sung
to. As Theo balanced on a tottering seat, she
[ 333 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
caught sight of a crowd of girls moving to
ward the Gym, and as they sat down a shout
from below greeted them :
Oh, here s to Ninety-j///0w;,
And her praise we ll ever tell oh,
Drink her down, drink her down, drink her down,
down, down!
A cheerful, aimless creature at the bottom
of one of the great tables, whose one faculty
was for improvised doggerel, instructed her
neighbors rapidly, and they sent back a tune
ful courtesy:
Oh, here s the Junior Ushers,
And I tell you they are rushers !
Theodora had "ushed," in classical phrase,
in her day, and the bustle of last year, so much
more exciting somehow than this one, came
back to her. Her little, white-ribboned stick
was packed now in fact, everything was
packed: she was going away for good! Some
one else would lounge on the window-seat in
her room in the Nicest House, and light the
cunning fire. . . .
Who was this ? Oh, this was Sallie Wilkes
Emory, responding to "The Faculty." Kitty
Louisa, whose soul knew not reverence, had
attached to this toast the pregnant motto,
[334]
THE END OF IT
That we may go forward with Faculties unim
paired, an excerpt from one of the President s
best-known chapel prayers, and Sallie was de
veloping the theme in what she assured them
was a very connotative manner. Theo saw
them pass in review before her, those devoted
educators, from her dazed freshman Livy to
her despairing senior Philosophy that was
over, at least ! Theodora was not of a techni
cally philosophical temperament. Sallie was
quoting liberally from a recent famous essay
of her own : The Moral Law, or the End-slim
of Human Aftion According to Kant, apropos
of which she had remarked to the commenda
tory professor that she was glad if somebody
understood it ! Sallie was a great girl how
grand she had been in the play ! Theo had
been in the mob herself, having first tried
for every part, and had enjoyed every minute
of it, from the first rehearsal to the last dab
of make-up. She had been an attendant and
had n t an idea how pretty she looked, nor
how many people spoke of her and called
her graceful.
It may have been because Theo had so few
ideas about herself that she had so many
friends. And how many she had ! She took
great pride in them, those fine, strong, good-
[ 335 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
looking girls that hailed her from all direc
tions, and always wanted a dance or a row or
a skating afternoon with her. She wondered
if anybody so ordinary for Theo knew she
was n t clever ever had so many jolly good
friends. There was the Mandolin Club, now
all friends of hers. She got on late in junior
year and played in the spring concert. Her
father came up and said he d never seen such
a pretty house in his life packed from or
chestra circle to balcony with fluffy girls alter
nated with dapper, black-coated youths. He
gave Theo such a darling white gown for it, all
ruffled with white ribbon, and she had her pic
ture taken in it, holding the mandolin, and sent
it to him in a big white vellum frame covered
with yellow chrysanthemums, with "Smith"
scrawled in yellow across one corner. He kept
it on his desk and was tremendously proud
when his friends asked about it.
Here were the class histories. Theodora
thought she listened, but though she laughed
with the rest and applauded the grinds, it was
her own history that she was reading as face af
ter face recalled to her some joke or mistake or
good luck. Not that it was sad oh, dear, no!
If any member of the class of Ninety-yellow
dared to be sad that night there was a fine, and
[336]
THE END OF IT
more than that, the studied coldness of the
class directed toward her: it was an orgy, not an
obsequy, as Virginia elegantly put it. Just as
the junior history, which is always the best/or
some unexplained reason perhaps because
of the Prom was finished, there was a loud
knock, and a big bunch of yellow roses from the
class that was having a decennial supper some
where was brought in by a useful sophomore.
They clapped it and sent some one back to
thank them a point of etiquette that some
self-centred classes have been known to omit
and then they remembered that Ninety-
green was supping at its first reunion in the
Old Gym, and sent over some of the table
flowers to them. Virginia motioned to Theo,
and proud of the mission and blushing a little
at the eyes that turned to her as she went, she
took them over. They clapped and sang to
her:
Oh, here s to Theodora^
And we re very glad we sor her !
Martha Sutton waved to her and the toast-
mistress thanked her for the class, and she
went back alone, because, being an older
class, Ninety-green did n t need a delegate.
On the way, two juniors met her, and they
condoled with her cheerfully : " How do you
[ 337 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
feel, Theo dear ? Is n t it kind of dreadful ?
Do you keep thinking it s the last time ?
Goodness I should!" One of them threw
a sympathetic arm over her shoulder and
looked at the moon, but Theo grinned a lit
tle and said that she was tired as a dog and
that if there was one place in the world she
wanted it was her room At Home. And as
the juniors gaped at this matter-of-fact atti
tude, Theodora added, pausing at the Gym
door, " Of course I Ve had a perfectly grand
time here, and all that, but I Ve been here
four years and that s about long enough, you
know. And they want me, of course, and I
want to come ! I think it gets a little well,
toward the end, you know "
But Theo was tired, and so are seniors all,
and until three or four generations of them
have learned how to do it easily, so will they be.
They were doing stunts upstairs : Clara
Sheldon had seen Cissie Loftus who had seen
Maggie Cline who sang Just tell them that you
saw me, and Clara, who was the most tailor-
made and conventional creature imaginable to
the outward eye, was forced by those from
whose farther-reaching scrutiny she was never
free, to imitate the imitator at all social func
tions that admitted song. She used stiff, ab-
[338 ]
THE END OF IT
surd gestures and a breathy contralto that
never palled upon her friends. Cynthia Lov-
ering danced her graceful little Spanish dance
for them, and Leslie Guerineau told them her
best darkey story in her own delicious South
ern drawl. And then there was a murmur that
grew to a voice that swelled into a shout as
they drummed on the table and called, " We
want button ! We want button ! We want but
ton, Dutton, Dutton!"
She said no ; that she d had a toast ; that
they knew all her stunts by heart but they
hammered on her name with the regularity of
a machine till she got up at last with a sigh
and," Well, what do you want ?" They wanted
a temperance lecture, and she drooped her head
to one side, and with an ineffably sickly smile
and a flat nasal drawl she told them " haow
she d been a-driving raound your graounds,
and they re reel pleasantly situated, too, dears,
and your President, such a ^^gentlemanly man,
accompanied me, and pointed aout to me your
beeyutiful homes and I said to him, c Oh, what
a beeyutiful thought it is that all these hundreds
of young souls are a-drinking water, nothing
but water, all the time and every day !
She was going to teach in a stuffy little
school in the wilds of Maine, and Ethel Eaton,
[ 339 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
who had been taught in that school, was going
to travel abroad for a year it was a strange
shuffle.
What, was it half-past eleven? Impossible !
But somebody had started up their great song
that had been their pet one since freshman
year, and they were shouting it till the Gym
rang:
Hurrah ! hurrah ! the yellow is on top^
Hurrah ! hurrah ! the purple cannot drop ;
We are Ninety-yellow and our fame shall never stop,
Rah, rah, rah y for the seniors!
They sang all the verses, and then the
watchman and the superintendent of build
ings, waiting like sleuth-hounds to prevent
any demonstration from without, gritted their
teeth and dashed furiously down the wrong
stairs as Ninety-green, who had softly assem
bled at the back of the Gym, having come
from different directions, burst into the tradi
tional tribute:
Oh, here 5 to Ninety-jri/few,
And her fame we ll ever tell oh!
" Ere, ere! stop that now! Miss Sutton,
it ain t allowed will you please to go ome
quietly! No, they ain t a-comin h out till you
go e says they ain t!"
[ 340 ]
THE END OF IT
"Oh, come now! We aren t students any
more! We can do what we like "
"Oh, come on, girls! Don t make a fuss;
we don t want to stay, anyhow!"
They sang themselves away, and the class
upstairs looked around the tables and thought
things, for it was time to go. And here I am
afraid I shall lose whatever friends I may have
gained for Theodora, for it is necessary to
state that none of those comprehensive, sol
emn moments of farewell, known to us all to
be the property of departing seniors, came to
her. She was conscious of a little vague ex
citement, but all the last days had been more
or less exciting generally less and her
mind was occupied with irrelevant details.
Had Uncle Ed remembered to change at
Hartford? Had Aunt Kate packed her black
evening dress? Would the post-office forward
that note to the little freshman? Could she
get Virginia up in time for the 9.15? Had
she lost the slip with the Nicest Woman s
address on it? And had she given Marietta
that senior picture yet?
There had been one moment when her
throat had contracted and her eyelids had
crinkled: it was that very evening, when An
nie, the cook, had beckoned to her in the hall
[341 ]
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
of the Nicest House, and said: " There s
three o them little cakes on a plate on your
table. Miss The dora. I shan t be bakin em
agin, an I know you do be terrible fond of
em!"
"Thank you, Annie," she had said, and
shaken her hand warmly. Annie had cooked
fifteen years in the Nicest House, and what
she and her mistress did n t know about girls
you could put in a salt-spoon. It was n t every
girl that Annie liked, either.
Grace was getting up, and they stood a
moment irresolutely by the chairs.
"Let s make a ring, girls, and sing once
round, and say good-by till next year," she
said; and then there was a little quick shuf
fling, and the carefully divided sets got to
gether and stood as they had stood for the
last two or three years. Theo took tight hold
of Virginia and Adelaide, and they moved
slowly around the tables, a great circle of girls,
so quiet for a moment that Ninety-green,
singing one another home around the campus,
sounded as loud and clear as their own voices
a moment ago. They listened with a common
impulse as the rollicking Tommy Atkins song
paused awhile under the Washburn windows;
they had been very fond of Ninety-green.
THE END OF IT
Ninety-green she is a winner,
Ninety-gmTz she is a star,
Is there anything agin her ?
No, we do not think there are!
There have been some other classes,
Other seniors have been seen,
But they cannot match the lasses
That are wearing of the ra? /
They smiled a little and remembered the
great mass of green flags and ribbons that had
waved to that song in last year s Rally. But
they did not answer with one of their own; a
little of the first faint conviction that the college
owns all her classes, the feeling that grows with
the years, came to them, and as the circle pressed
closer and closer and their steps fell into an even
tramp, Grace called out, "Now, girls, here s to
old Smith College ! " and they sent it out over
the campus, so strong and loud that the de
cennial people and the groups of Ninety-green
and the juniors and the belated sophomores
lurking about heard them and joined in:
Oh, here y s to old Smith College, drink her down !
Oh, here 9 s to old Smith College, drink her down !
Oh, here s to old Smith College,
For it s where we get our knowledge,
Drink her down, drink her down, drink her down,
down, down !
[ 343 ]
COLLEGE STORIES
PUBLISHED BY
MESSRS. CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS
NEW YORK
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES
BY
JOSEPHINE DODGE DASKAM
izmo, $1.50
AN animated picture of a particularly aftive-minded
and picluresque community is contained in Miss
Daskam s volume. "Smith" may be taken as an epitome
of the woman s college world; and these ten stories have
a real value accordingly in showing what the undergrad
uate life of many thousands of American young women
really is in its varied phases, illustrating their ambitions,
manners, occupations, and traits.
The stories, however, show that a good deal of human
nature exists within college walls, and they will certainly
appeal as strongly to the fidlion-lover as to the sociologist,
being written with great cleverness and sparkle, and
clearly the work of a born writer of stories.
TITLES OF THE STORIES
The Emotions of a Sub -Guard
A Case of Interference
Miss Biddle of Bryn Mawr
Biscuits ex Machina
The Education of Elizabeth
A Family Affair
A Few Diversions
The Evolution of Evangeline
At Commencement
The End of It
OVER
Princeton
PRINCETON STORIES
BY
JESSE LYNCH WILLIAMS
<)th Thousand
izmo, $1.00
TTERE is the evanescent charm, the touch of poetry
1 *- and sentiment, that pervades a thousand unpoetic
and rather reserved young men. You will find here the
good fellowship depicted without any rant about it.
There is n t a prig in these stories, . . . that are well
written and well constructed, judged from the standard
of good American short-story writers. Droch in Life.
TpHEY breathe a spirit of commendable vigor and
-- manliness. Princeton men are fortunate in having
the life of their college so favorably presented to the
outside world. Atlantic Monthly.
THE ADVENTURES OF A FRESHMAN
BY
JESSE LYNCH WILLIAMS
Illustrated, 12 mo, $1.25
THE new story of college life by the author of "Prince
ton Stories" is a stirring tale of experiences at col
lege, and has already been pronounced (by the New York
Evening Sun) "a better picture of college life than the
same author s Princeton Stories " (which is now in its
ninth thousand). The Independent says : "Hazing, the ups
and downs of athletics, manliness and boyishness happily
blended, escapades and adventures all tending to the
building up of a typical American character, brim the
book with genuine life."
CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS, PUBLISHERS
153157 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
"Taoiarestf-
32166
