Chapter VIII: The Mid-Years

“It’s comical, isn’t it, to see those woe-begone faces erstwhile so gay and cheerful?” said Clarissa, meeting Julia one morning in January at the foot of the main stairs of Fay House. “Let us stand here and watch the martyrs pass.”

“Laughing at your fellow sufferers!” responded Julia; “surely you are not out of misery yourself.”

“No, indeed, I have two more; but I’d rather die with my boots on, as the miners say, than be killed by inches. Now just look there!”

As Clarissa spoke two girls approached, one stumbling along with her eyes fixed on a book, the other wearing dark green glasses that made her pale face look almost ghostly.

“You can’t pass without speaking!” Clarissa’s voice compelled attention, and the girl with the book looked up, showing the usually bright face of Elspeth Gray, while the girl in glasses responded in the accents of Polly Porson.

“I’m nearly dead, I really am, with one examination to-day and another to-morrow! I had a perfectly lovely time the first week, for not one of my mid-years came early. I went to two matinées and a Symphony Concert, had a girl from New York over to spend the week with me; but the next week when I began to study I found I’d lost the taste for cramming, and I’ve sat up nights since. It was three A.M. when I went to bed last night, or this morning—which was it?—and my eyes are nearly wrecked.”

Polly from a seat on the stairs looked up at Clarissa, who was standing in front of her.

“I’m glad that I can’t see very well,” she continued. “I should hate to discover that you were laughing at me, Clarissa.”

“Well, I do think that you are very silly.” Clarissa drew herself up. “Look at me! I’ve gained two pounds since the first of January.”

“Why! haven’t you had to work? You are an exception, and this is only your first year, too.”

“Certainly I have been working,” responded Clarissa, “but I haven’t been worrying. There’s little difference to me ’twixt ‘A’ and ‘B’ and ‘C’ and ‘D.’”

“Very well,” said a Junior, overhearing, “we shall see. I felt that way myself when I was a Freshman. But a change came over the spirit of my dream when I received my marks. I’d always thought myself a pretty bright person before that, but when I found that I had nothing higher than a ‘B,’ and that in only one course, while ‘C’s’ were alarmingly prevalent on my record, I made up my mind after that to take examinations seriously. I did better in June—I really did.”

“Yes, indeed,” interposed Polly. “I mean to do better in June myself.”

“According to your own account, you did not plan well for these mid-years. Wouldn’t it have been better to have spent an hour or two earlier in the year in study instead of cramming it into a week? Wouldn’t that have been more consistent?” asked Julia.

“It might have been more consistent,” responded Polly, “but it wouldn’t have been half as pleasant. I never _did_ believe that consistency was a diamond of the first water. Besides, it’s _much_ more exciting to leave most of your work to the last. If I were running a race I’d always make my greatest effort on the last round. To be sure, I’d feel a little better now if my eyes weren’t so troublesome. But I must go on. Elspeth and I have some German to attack—just a trifle, you know: ‘Minna von Barnhelm,’ ‘Wilhelm Tell,’ ‘Iphigenia,’ and one or two other little things of that kind,” and she made a gesture of affected carelessness. “Well, good-bye! Elspeth furnishes eyes for me at present, and looks up all the words in the dictionary, while I provide the free translations. Free enough,” she concluded with a laugh, as she disappeared up the stairs.

“There,” cried Clarissa, “I can see that Polly is worried. She’s been summoned to the office once or twice for cutting, I hear. She told of it herself,” she added, lest Julia should wonder how Clarissa had learned this.

Many Radcliffe girls, undoubtedly, took their examinations too severely. They withdrew to their rooms at the beginning of the mid-years, and came out only to get books from the library or for examinations. Yet though cramming is a bad habit, it is so firmly fixed on all students that until examinations themselves are abolished it will last. Poor students, who have wasted the lecture hours and neglected the prescribed reading, cram because otherwise they might fail outright, and so bring their college course to an untimely end. Good students, who have neglected nothing through the term, cram to assure themselves that they have done the very best by their chosen subjects. Between the men and the women students of Cambridge, however, there is one marked point of difference. With the growth of Harvard the profession of tutor is of increasing importance. Young men of small money and large ability after their Freshman year often defray the greater part of their expenses by tutoring. Many, indeed, of the youths who seek the aid of tutors have never even tried to keep up with the regular lectures. By some occult reasoning they calculate that it requires less mental effort to wait until the approach of the examinations for their great spurt. The gist of the courses they desire is then given them by an expert who in a few hours covers the work of the half-year. Lazy men, athletic men, and men lacking the mental momentum to carry them through college are the mainstay of numbers of impecunious students. Radcliffe as yet has had no attractions for girls disinclined to study. The majority have had high standing in the preparatory schools, and they go to college intending to do their best. If the Polly Porsons have been inattentive to some lectures, or if they have neglected part of their reading, they work with a will in the weeks just before examinations. But they scorn the help of tutors, or of printed notes. At the worst they borrow the note-books of some other girl, or they meet in little groups of two or three to put one another to the test with difficult questions. Informal meetings of this kind are the nearest thing that Radcliffe can show to the Seminars (disapproved by the Faculty), devised for the smoothing of the way for Harvard students.

Clarissa was one of those who liked to study in company.

“I am twice as sure of myself when I have done a little thinking aloud. Come on, Polly, one more hour will make us perfect in English. I need you to hear me say the ‘Canons,’ and exercise me a little on ‘shall’ and ‘will,’ and then I shall know whole pages of the English Literature Primer. It’s too bad that we haven’t had more courses together, for we work together splendidly; don’t you think so?”

“Yes,” said Polly, “especially as you have eyes and I haven’t. I am going to make up questions out of my head to test you, for I mustn’t look much on my book.”

“Oh, that will be all right,” responded Clarissa. “Besides, I have some examination papers—those of the past two or three years—and I am going to use them for your especial torment. It will strengthen your mind to answer the questions.”

“Thank you, but if my mind required strengthening I don’t believe that cramming would help. A cup of good strong coffee would be more to the point.”

“There,” cried Clarissa, “you’ve given yourself away. I have been wondering how you kept yourself awake until three A.M. as you boast of doing. If coffee does it I have only half as much respect for you as I thought I had. If I could look in upon you some midnight soon, and find you drinking strong coffee, with your head swathed in wet towels—for this I am told is the habit with coffee-bibbers—I’d punish you as you deserve.”

“I plead guilty,” cried Polly, “to the coffee drinking. Why not, since I have a little gas-stove of my own? But the wet towels, ugh! I could not stand anything so clammy. But come! time flies, and if you are in earnest about that symposium, let us hasten to my rooms.”

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.

Her disinclination to be one of a crowd stood in the way of Lois’ popularity. Her fellow-students admitted that she was bright and amiable, and that she seldom said sarcastic things. But they felt that she was not deeply interested in them as individuals, and in consequence they were inclined to criticise her. It was harmless criticism, but it tended to increase the feeling that Lois was not exactly popular.

Julia and Ruth, studying together, rejoiced that they had the same electives. Ruth was unduly flurried and worried, and she and Julia sat up until midnight many nights when they might better have been in bed.

“The worst of it is,” sighed Ruth, after her last examination, “my cramming hasn’t helped me an atom. Not one of the four papers had a question that I could not have answered before I began to cram.”

“Yes, and if you hadn’t sat up so late grinding you would probably have been in a better state for work. You’ll take things more sensibly in your Sophomore and Junior years. Only Freshmen and Seniors work themselves into a fever. Freshmen are inexperienced and nervous, and Seniors never feel quite sure that they are going to pass in everything; but Sophomores and—”

“I can’t say that I agree with you, Miss Darcy,” said Jane Townall. “I’ve always tried to do my duty by all my instructors, but I never went into an examination, even in my Sophomore and Junior years, without an enormous amount of preparation. It seems to me that most girls do the same.”

“Oh,” responded Elizabeth carelessly, “it all depends on the kind of girls one knows. _Your_ friends, of course, are more serious than mine. But you all make a mistake. You have lost five pounds, and you look as if you had lost your last friend, too.”

With this Elizabeth hurried off to join Polly Porson, for they both belonged to the same clique of rather lively girls just at this time beginning to promote theatricals, tableaux, and other frivolities, calculated to show that Radcliffe girls had other talents besides the purely scholastic.

“It’s easy for Miss Darcy to talk,” said Jane Townall, turning to Ruth, as Elizabeth moved away. “The loss of a grade would not hurt her; she is not going to teach, and it will be all the same to her whether she gets a plain degree, or a _cum laude_.”

“She does pretty well, though,” interposed a girl who had just joined the group. “She showed me her marks last year, and there was nothing, I think, below ‘B.’”

“Oh, there’s an art in getting marks, just as there is in achieving greatness of any other sort. Perhaps you are not aware, Freshmen,” and the speaker turned toward Ruth and Julia, “that one principle in selecting courses is to choose those demanding the least work, and at the same time yielding the highest marks. There’s a curious relation between the two. The easier the course and the smaller the amount of work in it, the higher the mark. Elizabeth goes in for such things as Semitic 12 and Fine Arts 1, and—oh, well, we know the list. They are studies that make for culture and high marks.”

“Also,” said another girl, “Elizabeth believes in making a good impression on her instructors. She will break into a lecture three times in the course of the hour to ask a question which sometimes has only the slightest connection with the subject. But often it gives the instructor an opportunity for a series of footnotes to the lecture in the shape of original remarks, and he ends by believing Elizabeth to be the most intelligent girl in his class. He keeps this in mind when her blue-book falls into his hand. This is one secret of her succeeding without working, for _she_ says that she does not work, and _you_ say that she gets good marks.”

“In other words, she ‘swipes’ marks,” interposed Clarissa.

Jane Townall looked uncomfortable at the tone of the discussion. Personalities were distasteful to her.

“Miss Darcy is very pleasant,” she ventured; “every one likes her. I envy a girl who has the faculty of making herself agreeable to every one.”

Jane meant to pay Elizabeth a very high compliment, but the two Juniors in the group laughed heartily.

“That’s just it,” said the taller of the two. “Elizabeth does try to make herself agreeable to every one. She would rather be called uneducated than unpopular. I shouldn’t wonder,” she concluded with a smile, “if she had designs on the Idler. But then, she’d make a fairly good President.”

“Oh, but what a change after Miss Witherspoon! Besides, I’d rather see a girl like Lois Forsaith.”

“Oh, well, of course. By the time she is a Senior her turn may come, but at present it’s out of the question. Indeed, I doubt that she’d ever be elected, however strongly some of us might wish it. She’s too independent; and though she doesn’t make enemies, she wouldn’t have enough people to work for her at an election. She hasn’t many intimate friends. You’ve got to belong to a clique if you want to hold office, or else be tremendously and surpassingly beautiful or rich.”

“Well, Lois isn’t that exactly. She’s just a good all-round kind of girl with considerable talent, and she’s so independent that nobody ever quite appreciates her.”

“Well, I’m sure,” said Jane Townall primly, as the group broke up, “I feel as if in some way I had done Miss Darcy an injury. I really did not mean to make her a subject of discussion when I spoke of the ease with which she takes her examinations. I hope that I didn’t do her any injustice. I’m sure that I didn’t mean to.”

“Of course you didn’t, Jane; you wouldn’t hurt a fly, we all know that,” exclaimed one of the Juniors with a surprising flippancy. Jane was Julia’s Senior adviser, and her four months at Radcliffe hadn’t lessened her awe of Seniors in general, and of Jane in particular. For although Jane was awkward—unused to conventional society—and wrapped up in her studies, she had more than once gone out of her way to help Julia; and while she was timid about offering advice, when asked to give it she was always logical and painstaking in what she said.