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

Page 25 text:

to pass the time of day upon a chance encounter might get an answer in kind, but such wanton exposure was at one ' s own risk; furthermore, we were never to telephone. What on earth, I wondered, should I ever want to telephone her about; little did I foresee the exigencies that beset the path of Required English Composition. Dear class-mates, now that you are four years wiser, can you conceive of yourself in the impious act of asking Jennie please to tell Miss Fullerton to step to the telephone. I shrivel before the picture my wayward imagination has summoned. But Miss Hoyt reiterated, we were never to telephone to Low Buildings — unless, indeed, struck down on our way to an interview. Even then it was better etiquette to send a committee down in a carriage to wait upon the outraged interviewer — not with any hope of propitiating her, however. Then Miss Hoyt passed out a key to the abbreviations that would be used in correct- ing our themes, but neglected to elucidate the situation by another key for deciphering their penmanship. For my part, I basked cheerfully for half a semester in the assurance of an H. C. before I learned that the sprawling SS all over the vacant half of my themes wasn ' t an 88. Miss Hoyt went on to tell us the one and only way to get papers deferred : Write a note to Miss Crandall on your best paper, recopy until without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, deliver in person, standing on one foot to show you aren ' t presumptuous; Miss Crandall with then tell you coldly that she has nothing to do with it, and will send you to Miss Maddison ; you will seek out Miss Maddison, and, in front of one or two secretaries and stray members of the faculty, you will say how you haven ' t been very well, and that Miss Crandall sent you, etc. ; and Miss Maddison will look at you as if she thought you had come to throw a bomb into the inner office, and will tell you icily that the office has no power — no. After which you return home and write the said theme. This, as I too distinctly remember, is the one and only official course for the deferring of English papers. The rest of the morning and the next six general meetings, together with intervening division meetings, were taken up with the exposition of the proper manner of folding and endorsing an English theme. Very simple? Well, it takes a Bryn Mawr English Reader to make you feel that just about the most complicated and all-round tricky job you ever had to turn out was the time you wrote your own name across the top of a page of foolscap. I may say that, stimulated by Miss Hoyt ' s circumlocution, the Class of 1910 invented seven- teen different ways, and all were wrong except Katharine Liddell ' s, to whom, for her per- spicuity, Miss Hoyt promptly gave High Credit for the Course, which she certainly earned. Ruth George. 19

Page 24 text:

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

Page 26 text:

.. aitee at JSrpn ££ator IN reading my diary over. I set-. under March 15, 1907, the day of our Freshman Show, the words: Lots of people think it the cleverest thing given at college. That sounds truly like ll»10, and might be said to be somewhat prejudiced, hut even the Typ says it was one of the best plays ever given in oolkg We think so, of course; and of all the marvelous feats that we have performed in college, I think we will all agree that Alice at Hryn Mawr gave us most fun and means most to us. even now. in the dav when Susanne assembled her show committee to decide between the glaring Dctihcigh Melodrama and Mary Worthingtoifs upt application of Alice in Wonder- land to Hryn Mawr, we lived Freshman Show. In the true spirit of 1910, every member in the class tried for the part of Alice : and Jeanne and U tty still speak with tears in their eyes of the afternoon when their tiny corridor was overflowing with l ' .Mo. dressed in short white frocks, pink sashes and socks, and with hair down their hacks. The choice was diffi- cult, but Habhy proved to be all that was most ingenue and delightful. The rest of the caste was not so difficult, and soon every idle moment was spent learning parts. Such was our industry that P ' ames. our idlest, was found to be restraining her propensity for social tubs, and using those few daily moments repeating her lines to the four porcelain walls. Copies of the play had to be made, and for days Susanne ' s floor was covered with sprawling figures, scratching off parts. The costumes, of course, were most elaborate, and none but the ingenious heads of 1910 could have devised the ways and means necessary to manufacture them within the few hours allowed to each member of the class. Division of labour was carried to such a fine point that it wss Boggsie ' i one and only task to make tails for the snimals. so