Chapter VII: School Days (1)

Serious as was my girlhood, as the sombre experiences and the resolutions which grew out of them show, it was by no means always so shadowed as this record would indicate. And it is a relief to turn from the detailed account of much of my inner life when a schoolgirl to more of the objective life, to sunnier memories, to the life within the school-house walls, even though to do so I go back for a little to the care-free days of early girlhood.

In school I was a dutiful little girl of the goody-good sort, but from about thirteen onward my badness cropped out and I became a little terror. My mates were equally unmanageable. In the senior department we could keep a teacher only a short time because of our “insubordination and irregularities,” as one dignified principal said when he came in to chastise us. And I, though demure in appearance, was one of the chief offenders among the girls. How fertile we were in devising ways to annoy the teacher! We would agree to hum a tune in an undertone, so arranging it that when the teacher would steal up to the desks whence the humming issued, pupils in another part of the room would take up the tune, and the baffled teacher would wander from desk to desk trying in vain to “spot” the offenders. The very diligence with which we were studying at such times should have enlightened her.

One day the whole roomfull broke out in paroxysms of sneezing. The ring-leaders when discovered were made to promise never to bring snuff to school again. I kept my word but sought to get a similar effect some other way: An arbor-vitæ tree grew near the school-yard, and somehow, I found that by irritating the nostrils with those rough sprigs, we could induce sneezing. It worked, though less successfully than the snuff. I had my triumph when the teacher accused me of having broken my word. Flatly and indignantly I denied it; we had had no snuff, I declared emphatically. No, and no pepper, either. Nevertheless, she kept me after school, whipped my hands, then, taking me on her lap, wept and talked religion to me. Her leniency should have melted me, but it did not. I was unregenerate indeed. I remember the casuistry I used, which she herself must have repeated, for one of the students in the academic department rallied me on the way I had defended myself for sneezing in school. I had put a hypothetical question to her: If the Lord made something grow that tickled the lining of my nose, was I to blame that I could not control the sneeze? The youth would get that off with variations till it teased me so that I was fairly punished for my naughtiness. We also brought soda biscuit to school and ate them fast, inducing hiccough. And the boys would strike matches, then report that they _thought_ they smelled something burning--all sorts of schemes were devised to annoy the poor teacher. Finally the Board of Education sent one of their members to sit in the schoolroom and keep order. He was a great fat man I had known from childhood. When I was little he had called me “Sis Arnold,” and I had called him “Piggie Hanford.” Mother used to remonstrate with me, but it was not so disrespectful as it sounded; we understood each other. He always had a Jackson ball to give me when we met on the street, but first he would pretend to bite my hand. Once, I remember, he did bite hard enough for the print of his teeth to show at the base of my thumb. But he didn’t hurt--just liked to scare me, and I liked being scared. It was such fun to see him coming toward me, big and black and frowning; to be snatched up, while he pretended to bite me; to struggle; then to be put down, when I would hold fast to him while he hunted for the Jackson ball, after which I would run away calling, “Good bye, Piggie, Piggie Hanford!”

It was years after that when he came to keep order for Miss O----. I liked to have him there, for he helped me with my examples, and I needed help sorely then and always. We were as good as pie when he was there. But one day when he was strutting past my desk, a recollection of my childish freaks coming to me, I whispered mischievously, “Piggie, Piggie Hanford.” He turned on me such a stern look that for an instant I almost screamed, as I used to when he would grab me up as a child. But I soon saw the smile coming, and he bent down, saying in a low tone, “That won’t do here, Sis Arnold,” and walked solemnly away. They hired a more competent teacher the next term, and “Piggie” came no more to keep us within bounds

In the academic department, becoming interested in my studies, and having to work hard, I kept out of mischief. Still there was nonsense going on even there--whispering and writing notes, and passing them surreptitiously, chiefly for the fun of disobeying the rules, especially with the preceptress. More afraid of the new principal, we toed the mark better for him, dreading his ready sarcasm too much to risk it often.

Mathematics was always a bugbear to me. Passing the Regents early in the other elementary branches, and also in many of the Intermediate studies, I was long in passing in arithmetic. It was not only dry, it was incomprehensible. I detested it. Professor Durland was patient with me. I verily believe he would have let me drop the study if he could have. (To this day I often dream of being back in school and sneaking out of the arithmetic class, only to be discovered by “Prof.” and sent back to my hated recitations. What present-day duties am I longing to shirk, the Freudians will inquire?) I tried Regents in arithmetic three times before I passed. I well remember the last time: Professor Durland had coached me diligently for weeks, and I had felt desperately that I must succeed this time. The whole department was interested. It was unusual for one so advanced as I was in other studies to be so stupid in this.

It was Father’s day for being present during the Regents examination. (The different members of the Board of Education took turns in coming, to see that all was fair play.) How my heart thumped when the principal opened the sealed questions sent from Albany, handed a paper to Father, and glanced rapidly over the questions himself! I knew how much he wanted me to succeed, and I wanted to for his sake as well as for my own. Soon he nodded satisfactorily. Knowing I was watching him, it was as though he said to me, “It isn’t so hard--you can do it,” and as he put the slip of printed questions on my desk he said in a low voice, “You will pass this time, Eugenia.” That cheered me; it sounded so confident; and he knew my limitations. He had drilled me so well on the ground covered by the questions that I myself felt, on setting to work, that there was a fair chance of getting through.

“Prof.” came often to my desk, overlooking my paper. Once (it was not fair, I know, and he knew), he drew his pencil across an example I had worked. I did it over, somewhat conscience-stricken even at that hint, for at the close of each examination we had to listen to an oath read, stating that we had neither given nor received help from any source; then had to write these solemn words: “I do so declare,” and sign our names. Had I not been conscientious about this oath, I should long before that have cheated in arithmetic examinations.

When I handed in my paper, “Prof.” said, “Don’t go home till I look it over.” Returning to my desk, I waited. The suspense while Professor Durland and Father were bent over my paper was harrowing. It was a real vivisection for me. I saw by their faces when an answer was right, and when one was wrong, and saw them estimate the number of counts the Regents would probably allow on each answer. Other students, too, were eagerly watching the result--girls I had helped write compositions, who, in turn, had worked my examples for me, were anxious for me to be rid of the troublesome study.

Finally those two men lifted their heads. They had evidently marked me strictly, so as to be sure beyond a doubt that the more rigid Regents Board would not turn me down. Professor Durland now nodded his head vigorously, and Father beamed with joy. How gaily I walked out into the hall, my feet scarcely touching the floor! While I was putting on my wraps the door softly opened, “Prof.” stepped out and said, “You are through this time, Eugenia!” It was one of the happiest moments of my life; but though choking with emotion and gratitude to him, I don’t suppose I expressed it at all. Still I think he knew; knew also that I was fond of him. Along with several of the other girls, I had a schoolgirl’s infatuation for him. He was our hero--a silly, sentimental fondness of the adolescent period, but then, and always afterward, redeemed by genuine affection and gratitude. He was then, I suppose, a man in the thirties, and we were girls of sixteen and seventeen. I have since thought how wise and kind he was never to seem to notice or to take advantage of our romantic feelings, and never to make us appear ridiculous on that score, for he must have seen it all. (There was a time when we treasured everything he said or did. I even remember once that a certain girl and I kept count how many times he glanced at us in a forenoon; though his glances were doubtless of surveillance, we treasured them just the same.) He pursued just the right course with us, and our sentimental adoration did us no harm. It probably helped us in our studies. We blossomed under his approval, and withered under his biting sarcasm. Yet we often teased and annoyed him. He was surprisingly forbearing at times, and especially indulgent with me, giving me freer rein than some others to indulge certain whims and idiosyncrasies. I half consciously recognized this, girl that I was, and sometimes took advantage of it. I used to love to hear him pronounce my name; he said it a different way from any one else. What is it Whitman says--

Did you think there was but one pronunciation to your name?

I had nearly as hard a time with algebra as with arithmetic, and often became rebellious. Feeling that I could not go through the struggles and humiliations that I had with arithmetic, I tried repeatedly to get out of going to the class. I simply could not comprehend the study, and was always behind the others. Girls that were as stupid as stupid could be about tasks that were play to me would do things on the blackboard as impossible for me as the labours of Hercules. How glibly they explained what they had done! How painfully I toiled to perform the simplest tasks! Oh, those miserable days! Professor Durland tried all kinds of methods with me; he sometimes lost patience and would make cutting remarks, not, however, without having first tried to persuade me to work harder. I would not study if I could possibly help it, vainly hoping he would overlook me in class or give me something easy (which he often did), that my stupidity would not be so patent.

One day when sent to the blackboard, knowing that the task was beyond me, I refused to try. He insisted, saying he would help me. I hung back. That angered him. “You can go up to the blackboard, can’t you?” he tauntingly asked. I walked up to the board boiling with rage. He stood near giving me points and explanations which, had I not been so incensed and obstinate, would have enabled me to do the work. But I was angry to my fingertips. I fumbled with the crayon and it broke. I was powerless to do a thing but stand there and sulk. The tasks of the other students nearing completion, one by one they took their seats; one by one rose to explain their work; and still I stood, alone now, before the long blackboard, my work untouched, my eyes blinded with angry tears, my listless hand holding that useless piece of crayon, and those meaningless symbols staring me in the face.

What an awareness I had of my figure as I stood there, my back to the school! I could see just how the back of my drooping head looked, my long braids hanging below my waist. It was such an uncomfortable awareness of my disgraced self that I had as I stood there. The class-work ended, there was an ominous pause, I still standing helpless and hopeless. Then the storm fell. Before the whole school he launched forth a reprimand, every word of which cut me cruelly, the burden of it being that I was not so stupid as obstinate (I think he said “mulish”); that I thought I knew better than any one else what I ought to study; but that I would soon find that I was tremendously mistaken; that a “bird that can sing, and won’t sing, must be made to sing”; that algebra has its uses as well as rhetoric and physiology (oh, what scorn as he said these words--my pet studies!) and that hereafter I was to get my algebra lessons before being allowed to recite in anything else.

I got so angry I was cold, and oh, so still! I remember the awful stillness I felt within myself as I stood there. I knew what he said was just, but it hurt my pride that he would speak that way to _me_, and before the whole school!

I don’t know how I ever left the blackboard and faced the others. He kept me after school and patiently showed me how to do the work. I was maddened for days after to see how, to conciliate me (who did not want to be conciliated), and perhaps to avoid the risk for me of another ignominious failure, he gave me such easy work that I could not fail to do it. At that I felt insulted. Perhaps I did study harder thereafter, but I went in and out of school for a period (perhaps only a week, but it seems ages) with an air of offended dignity that must have been absurd. I thought myself a martyr. Avoiding his glances at recitations, I refused to smile at his jests and pleasantries; showed no interest in the things about which I was wont to be enthusiastic; and was on my highest heels of offended dignity. If I had the courage to look at some of my old diaries I should doubtless find my injured feelings faithfully and minutely recorded in them; but there is a limit to one’s endurance of self-scrutiny.

Some of “Prof.’s” efforts at reconciliation were obvious; and though they pleased my vanity, my obduracy would not yield. The girls pleaded with me to soften my heart; I hardened it instead--the memory of that hour at the blackboard froze me. Then, too, I was pleased to be of so much importance. I remember one of the things he tried to soften me: It was before I had studied Virgil, but always when the class in Virgil was reciting I had made little pretense of studying, listening to the translations instead. At this “Prof.” sometimes shook his head disapprovingly, motioning me to attend to my studies; and sometimes he suggested that it would be well if those not in the class in Virgil would kindly study their Cæsar; that there was abundant need of it, and so on. But I had noticed that he seemed secretly pleased at my attention when, the students having given their lame translations, he would take it up and, in his beautiful, smooth rendering, read on and on, himself carried away by the beauty of it. At such times I could not help but drink it in; it was a daily dissipation that I struggled against, but yielded to. Time and again I would pretend to be studying, but really listening; till, in spite of myself, I would have to glance up, always to find him looking at me as he translated the beautiful epic. I think he took a mischievous pleasure in this; he knew I could not resist it, and it was a tribute to his translation, as well as to the poet.

Well, after our “quarrel” he tried Virgil as a pacifier. Knowing that he was seeking to draw some sign of interest from me, and pleased and angered at the same time, still was I deaf to the charm. But, one day, in order to counteract its effect, I seized my algebra and, stimulated by the excitement of it all, dashed off a parody on Hamlet’s Soliloquy--on the study of algebra. It was rather clever (the girls thought it wonderful), and it helped to relieve my wounded feelings, for in it I spoke rather freely of the principal.

Shortly after this, when things were running fairly smooth again, “Prof.”, who was helping me with my algebra lesson one day, taking up my book to show me some rule, chanced to see that parody written on the fly leaves. After reading a few lines he turned fairly white with rage. In low tones of concentrated anger he said, “I always knew it was pure mulishness in you; you could master your algebra as well as anything else, if you would; you spend your time writing things like this, instead of honestly studying. I have lost all patience with you--‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.’”

Then followed another period of strained relations when, after days of obduracy on my part, he enlisted Coleridge to break the spell. It was in the literature class. Whether by accident or design, I don’t know, but he read the sonnet on “Severed Friendship” in which are the words:

“Each spoke words of high disdain and insult to the other,”

and also,

“And to be wroth with one we love doth work like madness on the
brain.”

Reading this in class, as he always read poetry, beautifully, feelingly, while I sat bursting with this teapot-tempest which I was dignifying into a tragedy, he melted my stony heart. I barely escaped dissolving in tears; and when the class was dismissed, the skies were again clear.

He had never again mentioned to me that wretched parody of the previous year till one day shortly before graduation: One of the lower-class girls had been using my algebra that term. We were grouped together during recess, talking over the approaching Commencement, when “Prof.” came up and asked where my algebra was. “Lizzie has it,” I said, curious as to why he asked. Thereupon he sat down at Lizzie’s desk and copied my wicked parody. I mildly protested, but half smiling, he continued copying, looking grave as he proceeded. Touched and flattered, the memory of my silly actions, and of his forbearance, and the thought that our school days were soon to end, made me repentant and remorseful. I would have given a good deal to have changed some of the lines in the old thing that I had thought so clever; and would have given much more to have told him how sorry I then was for my stubbornness; how grateful for his help; but I couldn’t. He never knew until years after (when I obeyed an impulse and wrote him), unless he then divined my contrition.

One other time in school he was severe with me: I had habitually helped certain girls with their compositions. It was play for me. They were poor stuff, but better than the others could do, and I always made theirs inferior to my own. One week I thought it would be fun to experiment a bit, so, instead of having the girls that I usually aided write a part of their own essays, I told each one that I would write her entire essay, if she would not tell a soul, and, after copying it, would destroy my copy. Each girl jumped at the chance. How the literary ardour possessed me that week! To write four or five essays besides my own, all of which were to be read in one afternoon, I must vary my style so that no one could detect the authorship. I flattered myself I was versatile enough to do this. Glowing with pride I read them to myself before handing them over to the girls.

On the momentous afternoon I assumed a calm, indifferent manner while the various essays were being read; and when my turn came, at the last, read in my usual faltering voice, my knees trembling so that I felt I must run from the platform before I was half through. As usual, mine was greeted with applause, and I took my seat with cheeks aflame, a sense of elation all through me. It had been an exciting afternoon, but as I had sworn each girl to secrecy, I could share it with no one.

At the close “Prof.” arose and said the exercises, though longer than usual, had been uncommonly interesting; that the choice of subjects had been varied, well chosen, well presented (I glowed more, with scarcely concealed pride); but--and here he paused--he would like to add that it seemed a little selfish, not to say conceited, for one person to be so pleased with her ability that she insisted on being represented five or six times in one afternoon! Instantly every eye was turned upon me. Each girl, knowing her own false position, suspected the others, and his remarks were so pointed that all the others guessed. He rubbed it in by saying that it was a well-laid plan, but was rather unflattering to the instructors to suppose them incapable of detecting it. Were we not aware that our teachers knew what each student was capable of? Then he launched forth in withering scorn of those who had been so helped, not only then, but throughout the year. But of what he said to them I cared little; for my own disgraceful part I felt the deepest chagrin. He made me realize how culpable I had been in helping them to sail under false colours. It was a bitter lesson for all of us, but did not keep me from lending a hand (or pen) when we graduated. It was known then, I’m sure, but winked at. One girl boldly said: “You’ve helped us all along, you can’t leave us in the lurch now.” In fact, I wrote outright the graduating essay of an upper-class girl who graduated the year before I did; and of the fourteen essays in our class, I had a hand in six, two of which (my own and another’s) I wrote outright. My itch for writing bothered me at an early age, and I _had_ to scratch. Not that there was any merit in the schoolgirl effusions; it was only a facility for stringing words together, an aptness for quotation, and a tendency to moralizing and to figurative writing, that let themselves loose in them.

It has always irritated me to see persons too credulous, and I enjoyed punishing them for their credulity. One of our classmates could be made to believe the most absurd things. Sometimes we had spelling bouts the last few minutes before the close of school, and the principal would require us to define the words spelled. Sprinkled in with the long columns of English words were occasional Latin ones. A demon of some sort possessed me one day on seeing _Sal Atticum_ in the spelling lesson. It was my first year of Latin and I chose Bessie Barnes, the credulous one, who had not studied Latin at all, for my victim. Whispering to her I said, “Shall I tell you the definition of the Latin words in to-day’s lesson?” Of course she was glad of help, so, telling her correctly the meaning of the others, when I came to _Sal Atticum_, pausing and laughing (perforce at the absurd joke I meant to perpetrate on her) I turned it off by saying that it was such a funny thing to have in the spelling lesson; and the little goose believed me when I told her it meant, “With Sal in the Attic”! We both laughed at the absurdity of it, then I went on soberly to explain that “Sal” was just Sal, because proper names do not change; then, reminding her that in Latin the words do not come in consecutive order, as in English, I said that “_cum_” means “_with_”; that “attic” is the same in both languages, and that “attic” being in the ablative case, “in” is understood, thus making the translation, “With Sal in the attic.” Then, drilling her on the meaning of all the foreign words in the column, I got heaps of fun every time she came to _Sal Atticum_ and gave the ludicrous definition. And as we both laughed at the comical phrase, she said she hoped it would not fall to her to define it. I have forgotten the outcome. I can’t be sure, but think we gave “Prof.” the tip and got him to ask her its meaning; but I remember distinctly her indignation when she learned how I had hoodwinked her.

I formed a romantic affection, perhaps in my seventeenth year, for a new girl who moved into our village. She appealed to my imagination, being so different from the girls I had known. Beautiful, with deep, proud, dark eyes, she was a good student; had read much more than I had; and could translate Virgil far better, all of which made me look up to her. Strange to say, I wasn’t jealous of her. We studied Greek and Roman history together, and astronomy. There were four of us girls, and two of the boys, who met at our various homes certain evenings studying together. The old Greek and Roman names, and the constellations, are inseparably linked in memory, particularly with that lovely dark-eyed girl and, yes, those two boys. It was a good fellowship I had with the boys, no nonsense--at least, hardly any. The boys had their own sweethearts who met with us, as a rule, though they were less studious than we were.

I think at that time I was vaguely conscious of being liked by these boys in a different way than they liked their sweethearts--because I was a girl and because I was companionable besides. There was always a certain piquancy about it. And this has always been a pleasing consciousness in connection with my men friends. I never could be satisfied with a friendship taking cognizance of but one of the factors. At the time of which I am speaking, though, I would have been distinctly annoyed at any open manifestation on the part of the boys of interest other than _camaraderie_. In fact a little later I was angered at occasional demonstrations in one who was a faithless swain; for he would often manage to take his sweetheart home first and thus walk home alone with me. I felt sorry for her because she had so little spirit; chided her for letting him tyrannize over her; upbraided him for being fickle; and tried to be a disinterested friend to both. Yet as time passed there were a few occasions when, silencing my scruples, I permitted advances on his part of which I was heartily ashamed. He would take us both for a drive, and after leaving her at her home, would attempt to put his arm around me. Although at first repulsing him angrily, at length I suffered it, knowing all the time that it was wrong. How tender and persuasive his tones as we drove along, yet he would be talking about the most commonplace things, and I would sit there straight and unyielding with burning cheeks. I knew it was wrong for two reasons--because he was Bessie’s “beau,” and because I didn’t really like him that way; yes, and also because it was wrong to let any one put his arm around you. The second reason seemed the stronger, and I was ashamed of myself for being susceptible to his wooing tones and ingratiating ways while really despising such faithlessness. Had he tried to kiss me, I think I should have annihilated him on the spot. In fact, I think I hardly dreamed of such an advance to _me_ then being possible. I doubt if any other boy of my acquaintance would have believed that I would permit any one to do as this one did.

I was really more attracted to Walter, the other youth with whom we studied. We were the best of friends. One night he came to our door and asked me to come out on the veranda--an unusual request. “Come out and see the stars,” was all he said. Wonderingly I went out: it was a cold night, my teeth chattered. We walked to the west end of the veranda and stood in silence for a little looking at the stars. I remember how Orion shone; we spoke but little, but I recall how his voice trembled; I did not understand it, but it moved me. It was such a little thing, and perhaps I make more of it than there was, but there seemed something in his impulsive request and the silent contemplation of the stars that was electrical--youth and propinquity, I suppose. Nothing came of it. I think at the time I was undoubtedly more attracted to him than he to me, but I don’t believe he ever dreamed of it. In fact, the boys and girls were wont to look upon me as a little aloof from them. The sweetheart of this same youth said to me one Monday morning: “Genie, when I see you in church Sunday nights, you seem so far away; your face looks so serious, and as though I would never dare speak to you; but when I see you in school and hear you laugh and talk you seem like one of us.”

Most of the girls had had their beaux who had sent them valentines and bestowed upon them juvenile gifts, but my experience in this field had been very meagre. When a child, before I had learned to write, I remember being pleased with a little boy who drew me home on his sled, and once I printed him a note. I hardly think I ever intended giving it to him, but I tucked it under the zinc of our sitting-room stove and my sister found and read it. The mortification I endured hearing her repeat it cured me. I so hated after that to hear “Freddie boy’s” name mentioned that I was glad when he moved out of town. I recall no other sentimental affairs till I was perhaps fifteen or sixteen, when one of the academy boys and I had a clandestine correspondence. He liked a lot of the girls, was very popular, and wrote to several of them; they used to brag about it and show their notes, but I told no one that he wrote to me. The notes were usually trivial affairs, questions as to where the grammar lesson was, and the like, although there were a few I blush to remember. I was quite infatuated for a time; he was the hero of my daydreams, but far more interested in another girl than in me; he doubtless had no inkling of what was passing in the mind of his prim little school-mate. Some time after this, when we were discussing our futures, he told me of his intention of being a minister. I remember his earnest voice and shining eyes as he spoke of our anticipated careers, and said that we ought to do a great deal of good in the world. When, later than this, Walter, the youth of whom I have spoken, announced to me that he was going to study law, I recall the occasion vividly: It was an August night when a lot of us young people and our mothers were in the creek, in swimming. Since I have known more of the world, I have wondered that there was never anything unpleasant to look back upon in those associations. But we had all been well brought up and were comparatively innocent, although we did not know it then. (I saw this the other day: “‘I learned of my own existence,’ said Innocence, ‘only when I ceased to exist.’”) We mingled together, youths and maidens, on geological excursions, star-gazing, in the woods botanizing, in the water learning to swim, and never thought of the possibility of anything but the frank, chaste comradeship there was among us. I recall what a display of meteors there was that night, and how the sight thrilled us. We had gone to the willows before sundown and had lingered in the water till the stars came out. During a pause between one of the trials when Walter was teaching me to swim, we stood transfixed by the sudden appearance of a great fiery ball which seemed to burst just over our heads and fall into a near-by meadow. Walter’s arms tightened as he held me; awestruck, we stood there an instant, a thrilling one (perhaps it was not all due to the meteor). Whenever after that I would think of that night, it always made me blush; why, I did not know, unless because I had to admit to myself that I liked to feel those strong, firm arms around me.

A broken arm sustained in my school days is closely linked with another of my girlish romances: One May day, instead of going directly home from school to help with house-cleaning, as I had promised, I went to drive with one of the girls. She was bringing home a seamstress. As we neared the railway track, an approaching train, and simultaneously a newspaper fluttering at the horse’s feet, made him shy and jump. Essie was cool enough, but the seamstress shrieked and grabbed the lines, making the horse wheel, which swung the buggy round and down a bank, throwing us out.

The woman who had caused the accident, though unharmed, howled with all her might, adding to the confusion. Essie picked herself up and chased her horse. I picked myself up and stood, a little dazed, with gravel and cinders ground in my cheeks and hands, with a general bruised sensation, and with my left arm hanging in a limp, queer way.

To a man who asked me if I was hurt, I answered, “No, only my arm is broken.” The by-standers laughed incredulously, but I insisted. They told me to move it; I tried, but could not tell whether it moved or not, till I put my other hand on it to follow it. It felt dead. Putting the pale seamstress and me in a wagon, they drove us home, she groaning and shrieking most of the remaining mile and half-fainting, so that I had to support her with my sound arm.

As I went up the steps, Mother and Sister came toward me, frightened at my bruised face and disordered appearance, and that limp arm. “I’ve come to settle the house,” I said, trying to make light of it, but as they started to cry I begged, “Don’t cry, Mother, or I can’t stand it.” And quickly she braced up and began preparations for the Doctor, only the tremor in her voice showing her anxiety.

Father and the Doctor soon came; neighbours flocked in; someone asked, “Are _both_ bones broken?” Even in my distress I was amused at what, in my recently acquired knowledge of anatomy, I considered woful ignorance--“both” bones, when there is only one in the arm proper!

I can see now the frightened faces of the children peering in at the window as I lay on the couch while the arm was being “set.” I almost wanted to laugh, they looked so distressed. They said I was very brave. There were weighty reasons for my good behaviour, vanity being the chief: Already I had decided to study medicine, and thought that any weakness on my part now would show my unfitness for it; but mainly, I wanted to appear well before the young doctor who was then the hero of my dreams and of those of my friend, Annette. For months previous we had romanced and whispered about him, recording in our diaries every glance he chanced to bestow upon us. Though scarcely aware of our existence, he dwelt in all our air-castles, and we shared him between us in a way girls have before they learn what jealousy means. And now something had happened that brought him right into my home! Here he would speak to me, look at me, and take an interest in me--for we never deceived ourselves that he had ever really shown any interest in us. It was all this that made me oblivious to the pain, if, indeed, there was much pain. I was quietly elated. While driving home I had exulted in the thought that as our family physician lived so far away, Father would be sure to call the young doctor.

While he was working over me I could hardly wait to see how Annette would look when I should tell her all about it. What a silly happy girl I was with my broken arm! Even having to stay out of school was compensated for by his daily visits. I treasured his lightest word. He whisked in, breezy and cheery. It was delightful to hear him speak my name--his rich, full voice, and his slight stammer--I doted on them. Days when the splints had to be changed and the bandage loosened were red-letter days, as his calls were then lengthened.

One day just before he came I had read two statements in the Bible that had amused me: “A horse is a vain thing for safety,” and, “The arms of the wicked shall be broken.” He laughed heartily when I told him what I had found, and leaning over my chair as he looked on the page, asked with engaging stammer, “Is th-that really in the B-bible, Genie?” That was told with unction to Annette when she came after school--ostensibly to keep me informed about the lessons, but chiefly to get reports of the daily visits. She envied me then, but her time of rejoicing came later when he treated her for jaundice; only, she complained, jaundice wasn’t as interesting as a broken arm--one “looked such a fright”; and, if the truth must be told, by the time her jaundice developed we had both become somewhat disenchanted.

Our unfeeling idol remained in ignorance of our adoration, and actually wooed and married an attractive young woman of his own age! We tortured ourselves with watching the progress of this courtship, and tried hard to pose as blighted beings during the week of his wedding. At the fatal hour that gave him to another, we agreed to withdraw from the gaze of the cold world and battle with our sorrow alone. It fell to me to pick Grandma’s raspberries at that hour; but the hands could perform their task though the heart was wrung with grief. The seclusion of the berry-patch was welcome; there would I wrestle with this cup. I thought of Annette and hoped she was as secluded as I, and wondered if her heart was as heavy. Picking the berries, I recited aloud “The Lonely One” (the most melancholy poem I could think of) and tried to picture the long years of desolation ahead of me. But my recollection is that, try as I would, I could not induce the requisite degree of misery. And not long after, Annette and I confessed to each other, rather guiltily, that for some time our feelings had not been as heartfelt as we had led each other to suppose.

Thus ended our romance about “Apollo,” as we named him in our diaries.

It must have been three years before I left school that I conceived the idea of studying medicine; it was during the period when I was so religiously inclined. I had been to a Sunday-school excursion on Seneca Lake that day when the idea came to me. There I had heard much talk of a girl in our class who, having received a severe fall some months before, and whom we had considered hopelessly injured, was now improving surprisingly under the care of a woman physician from a distant town. Her parents were too poor to procure these services, but an aunt had recently sent for the physician; and the girl’s recovery then seemed assured. All this I heard without apparently hearing, giving it scant heed in the hustle and gayety of our lake picnic. An old negress on the boat had told our fortunes that day, predicting beaux and happy or unhappy marriages for all the girls but me. When someone asked, “Isn’t _she_ going to marry?” she replied:

“Go ’long thar, her father doan’t want her to marry--she hain’t got no call to get married.”

I was rather pleased at this: if it showed anything, I thought, it showed that I was to have something different from a merely domestic career; but I had no idea what my course in life was to be, nor what I wanted it to be; and I think I was not then particularly concerned about my sick schoolmate.

It was that night after returning home, as Mother and I sat on the “stoop” in the darkness, talking in a desultory way, that this news about Dora’s improvement occurred to me. Our talk was mingled with my own dreams and cogitations as to what my future was to be. I knew I must do something, but what that something was I did not know. Music had been prohibited, teaching was out of the question because of my incompetency in mathematics--suddenly into my mind there came the strange, hitherto undreamed-of idea, and I said, first to myself, then to Mother, “I will be a doctor.”

It all came in a twinkling--how scarce women physicians were, how much they must be needed, and that if there were more of them in the smaller towns, poor modest girls like Dora, who had refused treatment from a man, need not suffer so for lack of means to employ them.

I can hear now the dismay in Mother’s voice as she said, “Oh, Eugenia!” Fired with the idea, I talked eagerly and rapidly; it seemed clear that it was to be; there was no question about its fulfilment; but how it was to be accomplished, so far as finances were concerned, I was puzzled to know. For Father’s health was precarious then--two bank failures and hard times made just the ordinary expenditures hard to meet. I did not see how it could be done, but knew it would. Elated over the project, the very suddenness with which it had come to me convinced me of its ultimate accomplishment. I felt annoyed at Mother’s objections. When she demurred, I insisted on her giving a reason. Her chief one, that it was going out of my sphere, irritated me. In those days (I hope I am less so now) I was very intolerant of another’s point of view, and Mother’s illogical way of meeting questions tried me exceedingly. Her insight, her intuition, her faith, her estimate of character, were strong, but her logic was poor. Probably then, knowing me as she did, she felt it would be a life for which temperamentally I was not suited; perhaps she divined some of the disappointments and failures I have since experienced; but she was unable to give a reason and could only protest in a pitying way. I can hear her tones yet, her words of regret and dismay, as I announced my intention with a finality she seemed to realize.

That night I wrote in my diary, doubtless sentimentally, of this new idea. I think I rather gloried in Mother’s objections, and in the ridicule of my sister when she heard of it. (She probably felt much as some other girls and boys did: some boys who remembered my hyper-sensitiveness and timidity as a child thought I would never have “sand” enough to study medicine.)

For a little I chose to consider myself a martyr. Years later, in looking over the diaries of that period, much of what I had written seemed so at variance with what I then felt, that it seemed like the experience of another person--so false, so sentimental, such a pose! In shame and disgust I destroyed the records.

From the time, though, that the idea came to me, it was persistently held. In school I worked with added zeal, paying especial attention to studies I thought would be of use to me, and feeling impatient at those which were distasteful, and which I thought little likely to be helpful. But how poorly qualified was I then to judge of this! I know now that just because of my failure to buckle down to what was hard for me (particularly mathematics and physics), I missed the mental training I most needed in those years. The education of the attention, the moving along calmly from proof to proof, the deductions, the synthesis, the exactness, the close, true ways of thinking, the patience, the calmness; in short, the mental discipline which mathematics would have given me, I failed to acquire; and I can now see how handicapped I have been because of this failure. With senses so acute, and the emotional nature so intense, the proper balance would have been found in a more rigid intellectual training. The deficiencies have had to be made up, when made up at all, at too great a cost; and the efficiency in my chosen field of work has fallen far short of what it might have been had I been more tractable then, more heedful of the advice of my elders.

Confiding my hopes to a few intimates, from them I got the sympathy I craved. Gradually my ambition became known in the school. It was perhaps two years later before a word was said to me on the subject by my father. I thought it strange that he who showed such an interest in my studies should be so indifferent in this which meant so much to me. But I learned in time that it was not indifference. It seems he told Mother not to be anxious over it and not attempt to dissuade me.

“If it is a mere whim,” he had said, “it will soon pass, and no harm will be done; but if she is in earnest, she will do it, and opposition will only make her more intent on it.”

When he saw it was not a whim, he acted promptly enough; and when the time came for me to go to college, he smoothed the way as only the most unselfish of fathers could. And so did Mother and Sister; their ready help was given, their own economies and self-sacrifices were cheerfully contributed that I might accomplish my purpose.

A certain noon as I started for school as usual Father said:

“Eugenia, hurry up to the office when school is out; I want to take you to see Dr. Barnard.”

To my questioning look he explained:

“If you are bound to be a doctor, you may as well begin to find out something about it. I have talked with the Doctor; he says he will take you as a student; you can read in his office Saturdays and get a start in that way.”

I wonder if my father knew how happy he made me that day. As I went back to school I trod on air. A radiance suffused my whole being. There was very little studying that afternoon--whispered explanations to a favoured few, wonderful tolerance on the principal’s part at my inattention to studies and open disregard of rules. We whispered and wrote notes and were in a delicious flutter of excitement. As Father, the Doctor, and the Professor were great cronies, I presume my teacher knew of the plan long before I did.

Dr. Barnard was a man of perhaps thirty-five, though to me he then seemed much older. He was comparatively a newcomer in the town but, being a Mason, found favour in Father’s sight. A good man with whom to be associated, a student of human nature, kind, easy-going, with a keen sense of humour, he was wide-awake as a physician and, what is especially to the point, he did not take me too seriously, but wisely concealed from me that he did not. I think he cured me of some whims and susceptibilities; and I can see that he helped to develop my sense of humour and to counteract some of my strenuous, sentimental views of life. But it was done tactfully. He never shocked, though often surprised me.

That memorable first day he talked to me about the study of medicine, about college life, its requirements, the difficulties to be encountered, and the courage necessary. All that I could hope to do while in school, he said, was to occupy the time I might otherwise spend in desultory reading, in studying advanced physiology and anatomy, thus making my first year in college easier. I could prepare my lessons and he would quiz me on Saturdays.

So, in addition to my school work, I studied Gray’s Anatomy. He let me take home a box of bones, and I felt proud indeed to be learning about each little groove and facet and tuberosity. On Saturdays I recited and sometimes went with him into the country, often reading to him from books on _materia medica_ or on pathology as we drove lazily along. Occasionally he took me into the houses to see an interesting case, but as a rule I held the lines during his visits (and was always nervous till he was back in the buggy). Once I went with him when he reduced a fractured arm. I got angry at the rough, coarse-voiced woman who stood by ridiculing her husband for his groans and sighs; she called him a calf, and said he ought to have a few babies, then he _might_ make a fuss. The Doctor was much amused at my embarrassment.

My preceptor moved away before I was graduated from the Academy, and I then carried on what studying I did by myself, and later with another girl, who, though ridiculing me at first, finally decided to go to Boston with me to study medicine. No urging of mine influenced her; on the contrary, I was rather disappointed at her decision. Secretly pleased, as I was, to be different from the others, Belle’s determination to study medicine robbed me of this distinction. Then we had never been especially congenial. Totally unlike in tastes and temperament, we had always been on opposite sides of the fence--she a Democrat, I a Republican; she a Baptist, I a Methodist--we had quarrelled over politics and argued over religion, and there was no love lost between us. But, as she told me later, she had had me “dinged” into her ears by her mother and sister so long that she had come to think she must do as I did. This is why she decided to study medicine.

At our last rhetorical exercises before graduation, we had the usual history and prophecy, and felt the sentiments and emotions usually felt on leaving school. We resurrected an old song we had sung in the lower grades--“Twenty Years Ago”--its sentiment appealing to us now that we were already beginning to feel a yearning for the old place:

I’ve wandered to the village, Tom,
I’ve sat beneath the tree
Upon the school-house play-ground
Which sheltered you and me;
But none were left to greet me, Tom,
And few were left to know
Who played with us upon the green
Just twenty years ago.

Although the boys had jeered at its sentiment, and objected to its solemnity, they joined in it at the close of the exercises as feelingly as we could desire. There seemed a world of pathos in it as our young voices sang it that June afternoon just before we were dismissed for the last time from the old walls. As the sounds died away, “Prof.” stepped to the bell-rope, traces of emotion on his face, and rang the bell--the signal for the close of school. We packed our books, closed our desks, and dispersed, never more to return to the place that had grown so dear.

Commencement exercises! There in the old church packed to overflowing, parents and friends gather to hear the boy or girl on whom their hopes are set deliver the oration or read the essay that is a marvel of eloquence and wisdom.