Chapter II: The Freshman Reception

When Julia approached Fay House on Thursday, the opening of the term, there were girls on the steps, girls in the halls, girls besieging the Secretary’s office with questions; old students stood about discussing all kinds of things, from their summer experiences to their proposed courses of study. But the Freshmen were less often in groups. In single file they waited their turn at the office, or sat in the conversation room, catching scraps of wisdom from the lips of the older girls who passed by.

“Oh, last year I had five and a half courses, but I’ve promised papa to be more sensible and limit myself to four, so as to have some time for other things.”

This from a serious-looking girl, and then from another more frivolous, “Well, I tried to forget everything this summer, except how to have a good time. It was delightful not to have even a theme or a forensic on my mind. I was a walking encyclopedia last June, but now I feel absolutely empty-headed.”

“What in the world,” came from another group, “possessed you to take Pol. Econ. this year? I thought you were trying for honors in classics.”

“So I am,” in a rather melancholy tone; “but I’m tired of having nothing but Greek and Latin. My future bread and butter may depend on them, as I’m to be a teacher of the classics, but I’m indulging in Pol. Econ. as a luxury.”

“A luxury! Well, you’ll pay for it.”

Julia, seated at the reading table, was not only amused by these bits of conversation, but was interested in watching the passing girls.

“Isn’t it great?” cried Ruth, joining her. “It’s a little like the first day at school, and yet it’s different. Who is that queer-looking girl, she’s actually bowing to you,” with an intonation of disapproval; “why, you don’t know her, do you?”

“Yes, I met her yesterday. She’s a Freshman from the West.”

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.”

Ruth hurried Julia away from Clarissa to an appointment with a history professor. He had wished to talk with them before consenting to their entering his class. He was pleased to find them so interested, adding, as he gave his consent:

“You must be prepared for hard work, as Freshmen are rarely permitted to take this course. I hope that you read Latin at sight, for you may have to make researches in some old books.”

Then he bowed and left them, and Ruth looked at Julia, and the latter, understanding the question that Ruth would ask, replied, “Of course I’ll help you;” while Ruth, whose Latin was weaker than Julia’s, responded, “You always were a dear.”

Julia and Ruth had arranged to board in the same house, having separate bedrooms, but sharing a large study. This was a square, corner room, with three windows. One looked down on a bit of old-fashioned garden, and the other two gave a view of some of the stately houses on Brattle Street. Their landlady, or hostess, as she liked to be called, was the widow of a Harvard instructor, who, besides a widow and two children, had left a slim little book on the Greek accusative. Mrs. Colton always had the book in plain sight on her library table, and she believed that had her husband lived he would have been one of the most distinguished of the faculty. She had long refused to open her house to Annex, or Radcliffe, students. Like many other conservative people, she did not approve of the presence of women students in Cambridge, and she did not care to encourage the new woman’s college by taking its students to board. But when the new Harvard dormitories made it harder for her to get the right kind of students to take her rooms, she began to think about the possibilities of Radcliffe. When she happened to hear that Mrs. Robert Barlow was looking for a home for her niece, she immediately sent word that she would be very glad to have her consider her rooms. She saw that it would give her house prestige to have Julia and Ruth her first Radcliffe boarders. Mrs. Barlow and the girls were well pleased with the rooms, especially as Mrs. Colton was to take no other boarders.

Ruth and Julia would hardly have been girls, however, had they been perfectly satisfied with the arrangement of the furniture as planned by Mrs. Colton and Mrs. Barlow. With the exception of a few pictures, the study was supposed to be in perfect order on that first Thursday of the term. But Julia, when they went upstairs after luncheon, decided that the divan must be moved from the windows to the corner opposite the fireplace, and Ruth suggested that the library table should go from the centre to a recess near the mantle-piece. Chairs ranged stiffly against the wall they pulled out into more inviting positions, and moved many other things. They both agreed that several pictures must be rehung, and Ruth began to jump about from mantle-piece to table to make the changes.

“Oh, do be careful!” cried Julia, as Ruth stepped from a chair to the table, with a framed Braun photograph under her arm, and a half-dozen picture nails in her hand. “Do wait,” she added, “until we can find some one.”

“Wait for whom? We can’t call the chambermaid, and Mrs. Colton would be of no more use than—well, than you, Julia. Besides, I’ve hung more pictures than you could count; and—why, what’s that?” she concluded, as a very loud knocking at the door sounded through the rooms. Forgetting the picture under her arm, as she turned she let it fall with a crash to the floor.

“Gracious!” cried Master Percival Colton, astonished at the sight of one Radcliffe girl standing on a narrow mantle-piece with another sitting on the floor picking up fragments of broken glass.

“I hope nothing’s hurt,” said Percival politely, though hardly concealing his curiosity as he handed Julia two letters. Then he turned away rather sadly, as the girls neither explained what had happened nor what they intended to do about it.

“Come down, Ruth,” cried Julia, as Percy disappeared. “Clarissa Herter, that Kansas girl, has sent her card with these letters that she found on the bulletin board. She thought that we might like to have them. Oh, they’re invitations!” she added, as she opened her envelope.

“The Senior, Junior, and Sophomore classes at home in the Auditorium, Saturday, September 30. 4 to 6.”

“Our first college invitation, and from the upper classes, too! Well, it’s evident that they don’t intend to haze us.”

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.”

“But how did you know which slips of paper to give us?” asked Ruth, as she received a decoration like Julia’s.

“Oh, I was interested, that is, I asked particularly who you were the other day,” replied the older girl in a flattering tone. “But now I must find your Senior for you,” she concluded; “perhaps you haven’t met her.”

“My Senior?” asked Julia. “Why, how in the world do I happen to have one?”

“Excuse me, then, until I find her. She will tell you all about it.”

Soon Julia found herself standing before a tall, plain girl with glasses, who wore her Senior’s gown ungracefully.

“This is your Senior adviser, Miss Townall, Miss Bourne. I am sure that you will like each other;” and the vivacious usher, asking Ruth to accompany her, turned away to find Ruth’s Senior.

“Miss Darcy is always bright and cheerful,” said Miss Townall, making an effort to talk to Julia.

“Yes, indeed, I like her immensely. She’s a Sophomore, I suppose?”

“Yes, and very popular.” Jane looked at Julia, as if at an utter loss for a subject of conversation, until Julia asked her to explain the system of assigning Senior adviser. In giving information Jane waxed eloquent, and explained that the Emmanuel Society made the arrangements, bringing it about that each Senior should take charge of one Freshman, holding herself ready to give her any needed advice.

“Some of them have two,” added Ruth, who had rejoined them.

“Oh, naturally, for there are always more Freshmen than Seniors; but dear me, it’s bad enough to have one on your mind,” said Jane tactlessly.

“There, I didn’t mean that,” she apologized, at once conscious of her own awkwardness. “Of course I’m delighted to be of help to any Freshman, but there is so much danger of giving the wrong advice, and—” so Jane went on explaining and explaining, as people are apt to when once they have made a mistake, without greatly improving the state of affairs.

“But where is your Senior, Ruth?” asked Julia, to put Jane more at ease.

“Oh, I left her talking to that Western girl. She seemed so deeply interested in her that I thought I might be in the way. We have been introduced, however, and if she wishes to speak to me again, she may take the trouble to find me.”

Julia wondered if Ruth’s annoyance had come from anything said or done by Clarissa. Already she had seen that Ruth did not like the Western girl.

As the rooms began to fill with girls, Julia and Ruth recognized many whom they had seen at examination time, and among them a number from their own classes. Coffee and chocolate and sherbets were served from small tables, and the girls who served and the ushers who helped them were kept busy.

“Not sherbet, but college ice,” corrected a girl at one of the tables. “You’ll grow heartily sick of it in the next four years.”

Then Clarissa, to whom she spoke, replied, “Oh, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; and therefore, as a Freshman I’ll ask for another glass. I suppose that our class will never again be as important as now.”

“Probably never again at Radcliffe, at least until the end of your Senior year. We take the Freshmen up tenderly, treat them very kindly on the first Saturday of the term, and then drop them suddenly. Unless a Freshman shows unusual ability, we are apt to forget all about her.”

“Then I’ll see what I can do to make myself remembered,” retorted Clarissa, as if accepting a challenge.

In the meantime Julia and Ruth had again run across Miss Darcy, and the latter had inquired if it would be an unheard-of thing for her to change her Freshman adviser.

“You can do it, of course. It has been done occasionally, but if I were you I’d wait. So few girls do make a change.”

“I fear that you think me notional.”

“Oh, no,” responded Miss Darcy. “I feel that you are going to be—that is, that you _are_—the typical Radcliffe girl, and that naturally means everything agreeable.”

“Yes, indeed, if we may judge by those who are here to-day.”

“Ah! we are in holiday attire now, but you will like us even at our worst.” And Julia and Ruth, looking about them, agreed that Radcliffe in holiday attire was well worth seeing. The rooms were prettily decorated, and most of the girls wore light and becoming colors. There was little formality, and each girl was not only at liberty to speak to her neighbor, but was sure to be met more than halfway.

Finally, before they separated, the Glee Club girls gathered around the grand piano, and one merry song after another was sung, to the great delight of the Freshmen. One that made the most impression was “The Only Man,” which, although unfamiliar to many of the new girls, was already counted a classic of its kind. Even Jane Townall had been known to laugh at its merry strains.

The song told of a young man who was invited to a Radcliffe tea, who, when he reached Fay House, saw only women in sight:

“The poor young man stood trembling there,
And looked about for aid,
He’d never been afraid before,
But now he was afraid.
He gave one long, last lingering look,
Then rushed out at the door.
I think that he’ll think twice before
He comes here any more-ore-ore.

“Now all you Harvard men attend!
If ever you get a bid
To a Radcliffe tea, be sure and see
If any others did.
Do you think that you could face the fate,
From which our hero ran,
Among four hundred Radcliffe girls,
To be the only man-an-an?”

There were several other stanzas, and as the hero was described as a particularly brave athlete, the refrain following each stanza was particularly entertaining, for it went somewhat in this fashion:

“He could face the Yale rush line,
He’d been captain of the nine,
He was not afraid to dine
On the new Memorial plan;
But he’d never thought to be,
At a full-fledged Radcliffe tea,
The only—only—only—only—man.”