Flora Stone Mather College - Polychronicon Yearbook (Cleveland, OH)

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features, the college is more in touch with social conditions of the sur- rounding city, and the city itself offers a breadth of view-point and op- portunities for cultune. Non-resident students are less at a disadvantage as to time for study than one might suppose, since at present the restless American spirit seems to be evolving a college life by no means tranquil and adapted to quiet study and assimilation of knowledge. The loss of our students seems therefore to be on the side of college spirit and sus- ceptibility to college innuences, cultural or otherwise. Our problem of making the college as effective as possible is consequently a hard one, and calls for special effort on the part of students and Alumnae to foster and develop a college spirit and loyalty, which is as necessary to us as to those colleges where it is breathed in the very air. E. F. '94 To the Editors of Vaxria, Historia for 1910: When one of you wrote to me to ask for an alumna letter for the class of 1897, it seemed to me that a busy person could be given no better ex- ample of the hard-hearted and calculating methods by which depart- mental editors find victims to fill their allotted space. Of course she re- membered that the class of '97 published the first volume of Varia His- toria and, of course, she calculated that no one who went through the struggles of editorship in those days could refuse a request to support it now. That she did not choose more wisely among those editors is prob- ably due to the dimming of reputations for literary achievements by the lapse of years, and casts no reiiection on her general method of reason- ing. I crave indulgence, therefore, from my fellow editors in this attempt to comply with her request. Fourteen years is a long time in college history, long enough to make comparative old-timers of us all, but not so long that we have for- gotten the merry days when the class of '97 was trying to start every- thing in the college that had not been already set going by its able and ambitious predecessors-the class of '96, Truly as President Thwing has recently written, they were good days, in the college history, days when college life grew ever richer and fuller and yet not too full for the pursuit of that yet more priceless part of college- college work. Since those pioneer days of Varia Historia, you younger classes have not only carried on our traditions, but have made many of your own, and it occurs to me now to ask what you have been doing with our traditions and with the standards of scholarship which we aimed to set up. Will the fifteenth volume of Varia Historia show fifteen years of progress? If so, I can write with certainty that none will be prouder of such achieve- ment than its first editors. But what is most important to all of us older alumnae who are try- ing to fill more or less important positions all over the country, is not so much what you are doing with the traditions, dear as they are, of our Alma Mater, as what you are doing to maintain and advance her stan- dard of scholarship. It is my hope that you, like the best of my younger college friends in the East, are striving to preserve the qualities of excellence, simplicity, and honesty in your college work, and that you are not going astray, as are many everywhere, after the false and pretentious gods of artincial appreciation and superficial cleverness. And as a representative of days comparatively Arcadian, let me urge you to set your faces away from the swelling tide of complexity so overwhelming in modern college life, and to steer your course back into the safe and quiet harbor of a real and absorbing interest in scholarly work. page twenty-seven

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After two months in Yokohama we undertook a trip to China, and were there at the outbreak of the Boxer troubles. Those were very ex- citing times, and my young wife who saw in every peaceful Chinese hotel- servant a savage Boxer, slept with a loaded revolver under her pillow. After our safe return to Yokohama we settled down there and en- joyed the pleaures and attractions of the far East. The fame of J apan's victories in the Japanese-Russo war, brought many interesting visitors to us, among them the President of your college and his wife. In 1906 we proceeded on a holiday trip to Europe and spent the spring in a small town in the Harz mountains which fascinated us so much that we decided to come out here to live. Shortly before I left Japan I was introduced, to the late Mr. Harri- man of New York. He asked me about my business and I told him that I exported Japanese products, but that my principal product was im- ported from America. I-Ie was anxious to know what that was, and laughed heartily when I said I meant my wife. After settling down in Heidleberg we soon- found that life and home cares here were very different from those in the far East, and my wife found out that one must take charge of things oneself if they are to be done properly, especially in the kitchen department. However cooking has to be learned, and as she had sadly neglected this science in her youth and as colleges for women dowft include it in their curricula, she has had hard times here, but-I just had an Easter dinner which could not be beaten by any good German housewife, and that she has been able to ac- complish all this in such a short time is in my opinion due a great deal to the education she received at your college. Yours faithfully, ALFRED UNGER, for MARY BABBITT UNGER '93 The request for a letter representing the class of '94 called to mind vividly days spent as one of the pioneer students of the College for Women, at Hrst, in the apple orchard on the corner of Adelbert street, then later on, in the new buildings which meant so much to us. When one considers the college equipment which has increased great- ly since our day, and the improvements in many less material ways, one might suppose that we had missed many of the things which go to make college life delightful. There were, however, many compensations and one large enough to outweigh all was the fact that while under many of the present faculty of whose scholarship we are proud, we were also the privileged students of some no longer there, whom we ever increas- ingly appreciate: Professor Morley, Professor Perrin, Professor F. M. Warren, Mr. C. H. Page, and the late Professor Edward Bourne. Previous Alumnae letters have probably preserved all the amusing details of the pleasant life of the early days, therefore instead of giving reminiscences, I prefer to comment on our college life which is, in a way, peculiar to us because of our location in a city, and because of the gen- eral system of co-ordinate education. Our college life differs decidedly from that of most of the Colleges for Women in that we are not a separate community set apart from the rest of the world. We lack, therefore, much of the spirit of such a com- munity, most of the tradition, and many of the potent influences which it exerts. On the other hand our college life is in itself interesting. The un- naturalness of the almost exclusively feminine community is avoided, the system of co-ordinate education adds to its many pleasant and distinctive page lwcnly-six

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If you are faithful to such simple standards you will be doing much for yourselves, your sister alumnae, and your college, and We of '97 shall arise and call you blessed not for the fifteenth volume of Varia His- toria, but for fifteen years of progress towards the consummation of our ideals. With grateful remembrances of college days, and kindest regards to all my classmates and college friends, Believe me, dear Editors, Very sincerely yours, FLORENCE WATERMAN '97 We don't care what you write -such your instructions, dear Edi- tor. Then what if I tell an audience hardly out of go-carts twelve years ago, what college was like in wartime?-those days when breakfast at Guilford must wait till morning head-lines were devoured, days when history lectures that began in ancient Phoenicia ended in modern Cubag days of thrills and arguments and extra editions! There is a memory of open chapel windows-I think Dr. Haydn was leading and of course it was the old chapel in Clark Hall-and of a May wind wafting through them the shrill-voiced Uxtry! Uxtry! of the paper-boy who had penetrated even our peaceful precincts with the news of the Victory of Manila Bay. It was hard for all of us to wait for the last Amen, but We were sorriest for Mr. Bourne. There is a memory of the Present Day Club's great Patriotic Party, to which students and faculty brought their contributions for a college flag. We made the old Clark Hall gymnasium a blaze of buntingg Dr. Fowler, lined off the patriotic songs, and Mr. Bourne led the cheers for Dewey and Hobson and the rest of our heroes. And then we bought a flag so huge it half covered the front of Clark Hallg that day we raised it in the rain, while Isabel Bentley's sweet soprano carried the Star Span- gled Banner to the finish, alone, because somebody had pitched it too high for the rest of us. And there is a memory-the most poignant of all-of the day when we deserted college in a body to join all Cleveland in speeding our Fifth Regiment on its way to the front. Yes, the Spanish war did prove rather a small affair, but remember, we didn't know then just what it was yet to be, nor how many would come home of those gallant young men we watched away with dim eyes. The last half of one's senior year in college is almost bound to be the fullest, the most significant of all. And to the class of 1898 the great glow of national excitement made doubly memorable those last months spent under the shadow of Alma Mater's beloved walls. MARIAN W. WILDMAN '98 'E My Dear College Girls: Some weeks ago a newspaper for which I write sent me to interview the Baron Kukuchi, the President of the University of Tokio and at one time the minister of education in Japan. The Baron has been in this country for the purpose of studying our systems of education with a spe- cial eye to the education of our women. It appears that there is a new woman movement in Japan. The Japanese New Woman is asking for higher education, and the progressive party in the government is strongly in sympathy with her. The Baron Kukuchi was stopping at the house of a wealthy Japa- page lmenfy-eight