Bryn Mawr College - Bryn Mawr Yearbook (Bryn Mawr, PA)

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quadrangle, and are moving toward us; in some magic way they have unfurled themselves in a great semi-circle before us — a semi-circle of flashing blue light; the last Akoue has swelled from some depth of melody and melted into silver clearness, and our lanterns are in our hands. No longer strangers, newcomers, intruders, but acknowledged children of Bryn Mawr, and no longer an accidental and heterogeneous collection of units, but the Class of 1910, with our scholars ' gowns upon our backs and our symbolical lanterns in our hands, we march forth to our inheritance. Katharine Liddell. Cfte amasona BECAUSE I begin with the thing I remember best about Banner Night, pray don ' t think me flippant. But it made such an impression on me, and raised me to that desirable position, the center of an admiring throng of envious class-mates, that my innocent pride, which cannot be suppressed even after three years, must be pardoned. Emily Fox wore my white duck trousers! You may smile at my childish pride, but if you think back to the commotion that caused in your own jealous beings, you may understand my eagerness to recall that thrilling event. And so, with a really personal interest in the play, far exceeding that another member of the class might have, I set out. Thrills began the moment the doors were opened, for it isn ' t every day we can be led to our seats by imposing Amazons (I may say, the point of their costumes didn ' t penetrate until many weeks later). And then the play began— we marvelled at the whole thing, and were suffused with laughter, even when Emily Fox, trousers and all, fell off the stage. Again my pride soared, for were not my trousers to break her fall. It seems like a long step from Pinero to the most serious of Freshmen events, the presenting of the banner which is to stand by you all through college; but when one has heard white wings for the first time, one forgets everything but its meaning— everything but the fact that your friends are giving you your own banner and making you part of the college. Our feelings cannot be expressed. May the song speak for us the impression we carried away that night. Freshmen and friends as ever Will be true to each other and true to the blue. Elizabeth Tenney. 17

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3Untern il?tgl)t THE first few weeks of college life had gone by in a whirligig of noise and glare, varied externally by class meetings, hockey games, physical appointments, medical appoint- ments, hazing, song rehearsals, lectures receptions, plays, English Reader interviews, upperclassmen teas, and writing home for money; internally by quick alternations of dizzy rapture and horrible depression; and unified throughout its diverse phases by a sub- stratum of intense physical fatigue. Shades of the past, how tired we were in those early Freshman days ! Even now I can rarely pass through Pembroke Arch, where we spent the tag-ends of so many strenuous, whirling days, without some shadow of the old weariness striking across my spirit. Small wonder that we looked forward to Lantern Night with apathy, and anticipated — so far as we had time to anticipate anything — a repetition of Rush Night, with the fancy costumes slightly varied. It is in this spirit indeed that we make ready for the evening ' s events. Clad in our shiny, brand new gowns and the wonderful caps, which we have carefully pinned on hind part before, we dash over to Pembroke Arch to break into the Sophomore line. Where- upon we are flung out as unceremoniously and indignantly as if this were not an occasion of mutual love and peace, and, burning with mortification, we dash on again across the dark campus, locate our own forces, and hitch on to the tail end of the procession, which has already begun its slow march toward the library. And as the long fine of Freshmen, subdued for the moment, files slowly through the narrow door into the cloister, something of the real dignity of these grave arches and stately towers, cutting the starlit sky, steals ever so softly into our consciousness. We have seen them before, but now in the sympathetic solitude of the silent assembled class, with the dark, soft night about us, and in our ears the plash of the fountain, which melts into, rather than breaks, the silence, we feel them for the first time. The noise and hurry of the feverish weeks just past seem, on a sudden, very far away. So when we hear the first faint notes of the Pallas Athene, they do not seem to us new or strange, but rather our own thoughts, born of the place and the hour, singing themselves into music. Nearer and nearer the clear strains come, swelling in silvery cadences out of the darkness behind us, and beneath the dark stone arches at each side advance in slow procession two lines of black-robed figures, each bearing a lighted lantern, and swing- ing it to and fro in the rhythm of the song. The vaulted cloister overflows with soft blue radiance. The lines have turned now, have joined together on the opposite side of the 10

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3Jn tlje 20ap of SPailp Cjjemea AT about ten minutes after twelve of our first Thursday we were vouchsafed a vision of the English Department, in all its fullness. Yellow-brown hair, parted in the center, and soft like a baby ' s on her forehead, then drawn away to the all-comprehensive net; black-rimmed eye-glasses, that imparted just a touch of How do I look? rather than The better to see you with, my dear ; and a high, slightly mocking voice, which, along with her roving glance, suggested that her audience was located on the tips of the Senior row maples. Some of us don ' t know yet whether we liked her or not, but our hearts go out in pity for the classes that never had her. She took us in hand at once — some ninety-five back-woodsers. Happy for us that we didn ' t know what raw material we were. But a few helpful hints, just to break ground: We were never to call each other girls (because we undoubtedly were, and some of us were sensitive about it) ; we were never to call anyone broad (for nobody was) ; we were not to say come for come in (how timely! She didn ' t tell us not to say come in for stay out, which would have been advice more opportune in those days of embarrassed upper-class inquisition) ; and we were never to say suit case for dress suit case (not tactful; homesick tears welled in all eyes). I thought she was going to tell us next about our hair ribbons. What with the Sophomores and this course in English Comp., I began to feel the desert of my neglected manners blossom like the rose. I was much moved. Indeed I was reduced to so tense a degree of receptiveness that, had Miss Hoyt seen fit to entrust to us a method of making last winter ' s suit look like new, a recipe for cold cream for the beauty bag, or the secret of how one bright girl made a vinegar barrel into a parlour divan, I should have transferred her suggestion fervently without any surprise to the elegant new note-book on which I had foresightedly penned the supposed name of this unnameable course. But not so. Miss Hoyt at this point forsakes the field of morals and general culture, and proceeds to set forth in no uncertain language the inaccessibility of the English Depart- ment. Dear, dear, did I ever need to be told that! Well, I think she succeeded in intim- idating even the dauntless Class of 1910. To this day I have not been able to rid myself of the idea that the English Readers decidedly resent the forced intimacy of having to discern students afar off on the campus horizon. On no account, she urged, were we to feel free to address them concerning our work, or in any manner to remind them of the painful method by which they gained their daily bread, and anyone who chose cheerfully 18