Brenda's Cousin at Radcliffe: a Story for Girls
Copyright© 2024 by Helen Leah Reed
Chapter 10: Discussions and Discussions
The Easter vacation had come and passed, and Pamela was pleased to find herself again attending lectures. She had been a little lonely, for almost all of her classmates had been away somewhere “for fun or for clothes,” as Polly Porson put it. Polly and Clarissa had gone together to New York, where the former had an aunt, and their talk now turned on Art exhibitions, Waldorf musicales, and things of that kind. Julia, yielding to her aunt’s entreaties, had fixed her mind more or less attentively on clothes. Lois had had to put her own time and strength into remodelling and shaping the lighter summer clothes. Whereas in Julia’s case her greatest sacrifice of time came in the unescapable “fittings” which she had to undergo at the dressmaker’s. Pamela had had neither fun nor new clothes to console her in the vacation. She had been unable to afford the trip to Vermont, and indeed she did not intend to return home for the summer holidays, unless she should fail to find some employment in vacation that would help her pay her expenses during the next college year. Her one luxury through the recess had been frequent trips to Boston. She had wandered to her heart’s content through the Art shops, and she had spent many hours in the Art Museum. She had saved car-fare by walking one way to Boston, and this exercise in itself had probably been an advantage to her, as in winter she had had little time for long walks. The fresh spring air as she walked along blew many cobwebs from her brain. For Pamela was not of a hopeful temperament, and she could not help wondering where she should get her income for the coming year. Her aunt’s letters were not altogether cheerful. Between the lines she could read that continued disapproval of her ambition for a college degree. “If you had gone to the Normal School,” read one of the letters, “you’d be almost ready now to take a school. Perhaps you might have had a chance at the Academy. They say that Miss Smith is going to be married.”
“They’ll feel better if I tell them that I’m likely to get a scholarship at the end of another year. Oh, I do hope that I shall take second-year honors! That will make the scholarship almost certain. If I could earn fifty dollars above my expenses this summer, and if Miss Batson will give me the same chance next year, why, I can certainly hold on until I get a scholarship. Ah, me!”
The sigh was perhaps not to be wondered at, for Pamela saw clearly the uphill road that lay before her. Sometimes she could not help contrasting herself with Julia and Clarissa, and the others before whom life seemed to spread out so delightfully. 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. Yet despite spring sunshine, Pamela shrank into herself, and even Julia could not drag her out of her routine.
“It isn’t right,” Clarissa remonstrated, “to think so much of Xenophon, Plato, and Euripides. They may have been very able men, but to think of them alone will make you one-sided.”
“If you had studied Greek you’d be less frivolous,” remarked Julia, as Clarissa picked up a slip of paper with printed questions that fluttered from one of Pamela’s books. Clarissa read aloud from the paper:
“‘IX. Write on the results, to logic and ethics, of the work of Socrates, and the impression which it made on his contemporaries as illustrated in “The Clouds.”’ Is it strange,” she commented, “that Pamela is half in the clouds and here? ‘Write an account of the life and professional activity of Lysias.’ It would be more seasonable to write an account of the professional activity of the catcher on the Harvard nine. Throw aside this foolish paper, Pamela! Why, the heading says, ‘Divide your time equally between Lysias and Plato.’ Your aunt in Vermont ought to know about this.”
“Don’t crumple it,” cried Pamela, flushing under this badinage. “I save all my examination papers; that was a mid-year.”
“To make a scrap-book?” queried Polly, who had joined the group. “Excuse my smiles, but it seems so comical to care tenderly for examination papers. Why, I tear mine up, and throw my blue-books into the fire. Lecture notes are more entertaining. Clarissa’s, for example! Clarissa, if your notes in History 100 should be published, they would contribute greatly to the gaiety of nations. You must not let them fall into the hands of the profane.”
The lecturer in History 100 had a rather original method in dealing with his subject. His style was colloquial, and when in his opinion the occasion demanded it, he used expressions that bordered pretty closely on slang. Nevertheless, he had a fine command of his subject, and that he was a valued member of the Faculty was shown by his standing near the head of his department. That he shattered some of the idols that his students had worshipped did not lessen the value of his teaching. After expressing his own views fully (and sometimes jocosely), he would always refer them to numerous books, by reading which they could inform themselves on the other side of the subject. Although open, perhaps, to some criticism from an academic point of view, Professor Z (for so he was nicknamed from one of his most popular courses) was a stimulating instructor, and his Radcliffe students set a high value on what they learned from him.
Nevertheless, Polly and even the sedate Pamela were almost convulsed with laughter as Clarissa read from her note-book what she claimed to be one of Professor Z’s lectures. “Stage directions,” as Clarissa called them, had been used very freely. “Here he frowned.” “At this point he stroked his moustache and looked inexpressibly bored.” “At quarter-past three he told us that he thought that Cromwell did not deserve any further attention, at least from him, and that we’d all be happier for a little respite from Puritanism. Whereupon he left us—fifteen minutes to the better.”
“How would you like Professor Z to see your note-book?” asked Polly mischievously.
“Why, I shouldn’t care. I never do behind any one’s back what I could not just as well do before his face. The worst, I suppose, that he could give me would be a ‘D;’ but I think, on the whole, that he would be rather amused that I had had sufficient interest to take notes at once so literal and so copious.”
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