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Page 17 text:
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As if one evening of pleasure were not enough for them to provide, 1901 gave us a fancy dress dance There is a new class in Bryn Mawr, in Bryn Mawr, They ' ve come from places near and far, near and far ; And to them all we raise three cheers To banish all their youthful fears, ' ' resounded through the Gymnasium. But by the second or third of November, our newness was rapidly vanishing. Then the other classes might, from their costumes, be mistaken for Freshmen had they not destroyed the illusion by behaving with so much less conscious dignity. That evening, dressed in our caps and gowns, we stood waiting in front of Denbigh. The night was dark and warm. Not even a breath of wind stirred the ivy leaves. Pallas Athene Thea drifted over from Pembroke. Slowly the procession of Sophomores advanced, discernible only by the soft fantastic light of the lanterns each one carried. Still singing, they entered our hollow square. Each of us received a lantern as we sang, in return: Shining dimly through the shadows Of our Freshman night. Freshman night was meant in a poetical sense. In singing these words, we made the mistake of supposing 1901 ' s literary appreciation as developed as our own; but, instead of appealing to them as a charming literary license, it awakened an unpoetic response in their hearts. They made what they vul- garly termed a Freshman night of it. Namely, they hazed. Now, readers, if you wish to peruse a sensational article on Bryn Mawr Hazing, sto p reading this paragraph right where you are, and buy and read a Philadelphia Sunday paper next fall. I read one the second Sunday of last October. It said the hazing was growing much milder at Bryn Mawr. It pic- tured graphically how in 1904, Freshmen were taken out at night and left tied to trees in the Vaux woods. Do you believe this of 1907? I most emphatically do not. At any rate, most of the hazing to which we were subjected was of a milder sort and in one case I took an especial interest, because it happened in my hall. Corinne Blose ' s shoes vanished from her closet shelf! But enough of this ; the date of our play was approaching. In imitation of the upper classes, groups of Freshmen began to hang about the class-room doors. You could not squeeze in or out of a lecture- room without seeing three or four of us pulling down our belts as we conversed mysteriously and with a kind of conscious air, peculiar to those about to give a play. The date, November nth, came in due course with no disappointments to speak of. True, it was a ' 3
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Page 18 text:
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matter of doubt whether anyone but Sara Montenegro would remember her lines. It was equally uncer- tain whether the costumes would come from Van Horn ' s in time, and whether step ladders could be arranged so that the chorus might disappear behind the castle wall and appear again without breaking their necks. What of that? The audience were all coming. Every member of that audience came with a firm determination to have a good time, and everyone did. For this, thanks are due to their own state of mind, and to the songs that Claris Crane originated, and that the Princess A. B. (Elizabeth Stoddard), Heir of Ph. D. (Sara Montenegro), Prince Charming, Jr. (Patty Jenkins), Prince Knowitall (Harriet Spencer), Prince New (Joe Hartshorne), and others sang on the stage. Anne Rotan was encored again and again when she sang I Arise from Dreams of Thee, and Helen Wilson ' s Timid Little Thing was hardly less popular. As for the jokes, they were as popular as the songs and even more plentiful, and came pouring out knocking each others heads so fast that one could hardly make the plot out — a great merit of this style of dramatics. A few nights later we met in Denbigh and unanimously elected our chairman president. Cornelia Bruere was chosen secretary, and Harriet Murray, treasurer. The unanimity of this election was in reality merely the lull before the storm on a matter of much more importance to most of our sex — I will not say to most of our class — namely, dress. Indeed, I refrain from giving the details of a certain evening spent in the Radnor students ' parlor, because so much feeling was aroused in deciding on our Gym suits. We had each sufficiently recovered from our annoyance with the other eighty-six members of 1902, to be laughing when we started home for Xmas. We came laughing back after the vacation, expecting to continue our good time indefinitely. This illusion was rudely broken, one morning, when Miss Mad- dison posted mid-year examination schedules on the Taylor bulletin board. Mid-year exams! The idea seemed a fantastic one, and we looked at the board again with a firm determination not to be easily misled. No, we were right ; the more we looked the more we were con- vinced of the accuracy of our previous impression. There was work written as legibly before us as if W-O-R-K were printed in huge red letters across the entire board. Out came the upper classmen ' s books. They red-inked first one page and then another, first one book and then another. Nor were we Fresh- men to be outdone. We ran about in all directions, collecting bottles of red ink and note books galore, and spending much time planning studious coffee parties to meet late at night. Though we were not as concentrated and systematic and our results were not as good as those of the upper classmen, still, as we did it from the heart and enjoyed it more, I candidly confess I preferred our style of studying to theirs. Successful or unsuccessful, when the next term began, we were able to demonstrate our lack of newness to the four half-breeds. We no longer arrived at our lectures the moment they were scheduled to begin. Freshman after Freshman entered the campus from one or other of the halls, and, looking up at Taylor 14
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