Helen Leah Reed

“ To do her best is the most that can be asked of any girl, and if only she tries to learn from her errors, whatever her past faults, she can turn hopefully to the future.
Julia, fortunately, had comparatively little occasion for self-reproach; for if she had made the very most of her opportunities at Radcliffe—if she had left nothing undone that should have been done—she would have been the only one of her kind. Thoughts like these of Julia’s presented themselves to nearly every girl in the class—from Pamela the over-conscientious to careless Polly. ”

“ They had turned their faces from the pleasantly idle life of the average American girl, and from seventeen to twenty-one had been hard workers. Every one of them had sacrificed something in order to achieve her end, and almost all of them intended that their education should benefit others. Although the majority of Julia’s guests—like the majority of the class—meant to be teachers, several were looking forward to other useful work. Even Annabel, in her secret soul, had an idea that she was to reduce the frothiness of the social set into which she should be thrown in Washington. ”

“ Hardly had Julia and Ruth stepped into the Auditorium that Saturday afternoon when a girl with a ribbon badge greeted them warmly. From a table near the door she took two slips of paper, and, pinning one on Julia’s dress, said pleasantly, “You must excuse my being so unceremonious, but we find that this is the best way of making girls acquainted with one another, by giving them slips of paper with their names written on them. I honestly think that you feel more like talking to a girl if you know her name. Your slips are white, but we old girls wear blue.” ”

“ As the others had not yet arrived, Julia and Nora tiptoed around, looking at the curious gray and blue steins on the mantle-piece, the fencing foils and masks on the wall, the two or three old colored prints of stage coach and sporting scenes.
“Hm, hm,” cried Nora, “whoever he is, the classics do not occupy all his time. Just look at those membership certificates; he seems to belong to every athletic society in the college. ”

“ Brenda’s disposition, too, was as volatile as Arthur’s, and she carried a blue parasol, wore blue flowers, and altogether seemed to have forgotten the existence of Harvard and her former love for Harvard red. It was hard for Julia to understand such heartlessness as this,—for so she had to regard it,—as until very lately all Brenda’s college feeling had been for Harvard. Yet Brenda herself would not admit that it was really a strong personal preference for Arthur that had made her forego her Harvard allegiance. ”

“ She listened with interest to all that these lighter-hearted girls had to tell of their vacation experiences, and she bent with redoubled energy to her work. May was at hand, and nobody can be utterly down-hearted in May, with the trees bursting into bloom, and the air growing softer and sweeter, and the bright spring sun touching everything with gold, making even literary Cambridge a pleasant place for the hundreds of students who cross the Yard to the halls of Harvard, or walk through Garden Street to Fay House. ”

“ But in her own room that evening, Julia pondered long over the perversity of Fate, that hampered girls like Jane and Pamela and Lois, who loved study for its own sake, while many others were able to glide through college with no thought of the great privileges that were open to them. “The worst of it is, the girls whom one would like to help are always the proudest.” Then Julia put her mind on the subject, and decided that if she could help it Lois should not leave college. ”

“ Yet in her heart Julia realized that as they grew older she and Brenda were likely to see less rather than more of each other, their tastes were so very different. Brenda had still a year more of school before her, and when that was completed she would enter society. For a few years life would be a whirl of pleasure, and she would give comparatively little time to serious things. She was bound to be a butterfly of fashion, though her father and mother would have encouraged her had she wished to take life more seriously. ”

“ Indeed, I have had her continue several of her studies; but she owes something to society, and college cuts a girl off so from social life.”
“But we have social life here—and masculine society, too,” she concluded with a smile.
“Yes, indeed,” responded Mrs. Gostar, glancing around the room, in which Harvard students were almost as numerous as Radcliffe girls. Standing in corners, seated on divans, walking toward the refreshment tables, were youths and maidens enjoying one another’s society to the same extent as if in a crowded ball-room. ”

“ Yet sometimes she sincerely pitied herself. “It isn’t exactly pleasant to be living in a house without a single corner that I can call my own. I can never invite any one here to see me. For although Miss Batson is very kind, I know that she regards me as ‘help,’ a refined species of ‘help’ to be sure, but still only ‘help.’”
She had felt strongly drawn to Julia Bourne, and she hoped that she might be able to see much more of her. ”

“ Philip, to tell the truth, was surprised to find himself encouraging the girls in their college career by even these scraps of information. He liked Julia so well that he could not reconcile himself to her going to college.
“It is different,” he had said to her magnificently one day at Brenda’s, “it is different, of course, in the case of a man. If he doesn’t go to college he doesn’t amount to much. People think it’s because he can’t get in, and that kind of thing. But for a girl, why you know that it really hurts her in the opinion of most people if she goes to college.” ”

“ But college festivities were not the only pleasures offered the girls. Not a few of the class who lived at home in Boston or Cambridge or the suburbs entertained at their own houses. An occasional tea, an evening of private theatricals, all these things relieved delightfully the monotony of study. Yet to a popular girl they offered great temptations for wasting time, and in college life, as in the outside world, it was hard to draw the line between necessary and unnecessary amusements. ”

“ There was hardly a Radcliffe girl who did not go about with a wilted air, as if life had lost all its charm. The cool corners of Fay House were occupied by students, and the beauty of the tree-shaded streets and the flower-laden gardens was wasted on them.
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Julia, Ruth, and even the discreet Pamela herself were no better than their fellows in this matter of examinations. Pamela, indeed, was especially nervous in her dread of falling below “A” in something. With the hope of a scholarship before her, she felt that she could afford nothing less than perfection. ”

“ There was the cabinet, for example, with its wedgewood vases, and the mosaics collected in Europe, and the little book-shelf with its tiny volumes of the Italian poets, bound in vellum, and the half-dozen miniatures on the mantle-piece of Miss Ambrose’s parents and other relatives,—all these and many other things claimed Lois’ attention, although most interesting of all was Miss Ambrose herself. A well-cultivated mind has always a strong charm for a thoughtful girl, and Miss Ambrose had certainly more culture than belongs to the average college graduate, man or woman. ”

“ It was time, indeed, for Polly to make this resolve, for without intending it she had gained the ill-will of several by using her powers of mimicry too freely. “Ill-will” is perhaps too strong a word, although it takes more than the average amount of philosophy to make a girl proof against ridicule. Comparatively few persons really care to see themselves as others see them, and annoyance, if nothing stronger, is apt to be felt against the individual, whether friend or foe, who attempts to portray us as we appear to those about us. ”

“ Clarissa now reached them, grasping Julia’s hand with a hearty “Well, I am glad to see you!”
“Have you chosen your electives yet?” asked Julia, after a minute or two. “Aren’t they bewildering?”
“It isn’t the elective, I’ve been told,” responded Clarissa, “but the man who gives them that makes the difference. The younger the instructor, the worse his marks. He thinks that he shows his own importance by making ‘A’ and ‘B’ marks few and far between. I’m going in for all the starred courses I can get, for then there’ll be more chance of my having real professors to teach me.” ”

“ As the Alumni came in, taking position some distance from the Tree, the girls caught sight of Dr. Gostar and two or three sedate Bostonians of his age seating themselves on the grass, and looking as cheerful and merry as the youngest undergraduate there. The Alumni had marched within the enclosure with a band of music at the head, and then had followed the Freshmen, with the Sophomores second and the Juniors last. Each formed a separate circle around the Tree, and when the signal was given all rose and cheered lustily for every college official from the President to John the Orangeman. ”

“ Often about ten P.M. when I’ve finished studying I’d slip in and talk with you. Sometimes I knock on the zoölogical door, but if they let me in I feel like a criminal, for I can see that they are making a great effort to be polite, while they wish me a thousand miles away. They like to study well into the small hours, but as they pay for their own oil nobody can well object. I’m not half as entertaining to them as those squirmy things they keep in bottles. The only real gaiety in which they ever indulge is an ethical discussion with Pamela; just imagine the combination, ethics and zoölogy! ”

“ Barlow, gathering up her voluminous skirts, marshalled her quartette to the narrow wicket gate through which so many, many thousands of persons have entered Sanders Theatre, and up the broad stairs into the great amphitheatre. Toby stayed behind to take his chances with the ticketless throng, crowding around the outer door.
“It’s like a garden,” said Ruth, gazing about on the rows of seats rising tier above tier, filled for the most part with young women and girls, whose light gowns and flower-trimmed hats gave the place the aspect of a flower garden. ”

“ It was natural that there should be many little coteries at Radcliffe, and that some should be more devoted than others to study, and others more devoted to the lighter side of college life. Julia, now that she and Ruth were less inseparable, found herself turning more and more to Lois, and for Lois she began to feel even more sympathy than for Pamela. ”

“ Brenda, of course, was at the play, and a large party of her gay young friends from the City. In the party were Tom and Will and a number of college men, and Julia, sitting among them, felt that she was almost as merry in spirit as they. Yet more than the praises of these young people, Julia appreciated those of her uncle and aunt who sat in the tier of seats just behind; for her aunt was apparently satisfied by the commendation she received for the operetta that her devotion to her work was not going to separate her entirely from young people of her own age. ”

“ She gave a hop, skip, and a jump, undignified, perhaps, for a Sophomore, though expressive of her feeling.
“Hundreds of dollars!” she cried. “My dreams have been filled with them since yesterday, and we have sold nearly all our tickets.”
“But there will be expenses, dear child. You mustn’t forget that,” said Polly, who was one of the group.
“Oh, of course, but there will be enough left. I’m glad, too, that the whole performance will be so creditable, and we ought to be thankful enough that no one has been ill, or for any other reason obliged to give up her part. ”

“ I love study, too, and I should be afraid that if I were to put aside my plans for college, even for a single year, I might in the end regard college work as a task, and wake up too late to find society all hollow. No, it is better as it is, although Aunt Anna feels that she has failed in her duty to me, because she cannot introduce me formally to society.”
To some girls situated as Julia was, the line of work that she had laid out would have been hard to follow; for although not a great heiress, she had inherited fortune enough to make her perfectly independent. ”

“ One afternoon a dozen or more Seniors were up at Fresh Pond. Clarissa skated almost as well as Annabel, but Polly and Julia were less expert, although they were both better skaters than Ruth. “Don’t go over by the ice-houses,” cried Polly, skimming past Julia and Clarissa. “There’s a thin place there and they are just going to rope it off. I was asked to warn everybody.”
“Oh, we know it is thin, thank you,” responded Julia.
“Yes,” added Polly, “only a goose would skate over there; any one can see it’s thin, the ice is so dark. ”

“ Hardly had she left when there came a loud rapping at the door.
“Come in!” cried Ruth. “It must be Percy Colton. He often runs up after school,” she added in an aside to Pamela.
The door was thrown open with a bang, and there on the threshold stood Clarissa, tall, almost overpoweringly tall, with a smile on her face, a flush of crimson on her cheeks, and a winter coat of a much brighter crimson on her back. Two other girls were with her, whom she immediately introduced to Ruth as Miss Burlap, of Kansas, and Miss Creighton, of Maine. ”

“ Many girls studied wholly by themselves. Pamela was one of these, and Lois another. Pamela in this, as in other things, was solitary from necessity rather than from choice. She had hardly a speaking acquaintance with most of the girls in her classes, and it occurred to none of them to ask her to join them. She for her part was too timid to make the first advances. Lois, on the other hand, would have been welcomed by many a little study group. But she was of a decidedly independent disposition, and she felt that she could accomplish more by herself, and with a smaller expenditure of time. ”