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

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A nese on Riverside Drive. The Japanese colony has always excited my interest and it was with delight that I found myself actually within the doors of a Japanese home. It must be confessed that the Swedish maid, correctly capped and aproned, who admitted me, was not the ideal of the Oriental servant, nor had her iirst words the Oriental Havor that might have been expected. I tank the Baron is at house, said she. I ta-ak oi' your rubbers-yes? However the room in which I found myself was all that could have been asked of the Japanese aristocracy. There was color-color every- where, in the rugs beneath the feet, in the hangings on the wall, in the embossed leather and inlaid woods. A statue of Buddha sat cross-legged upon the hearth, the jewel in his forehead and the look of contemplative mystery upon his face. As I ascended the staircase a draught of air blown from some upper room brought with it the smell of burning san- dlewood. Within the drawing-room the luxe of Japan, ebony, teak- wood, ivory, cloisonne, lay about in a softly brilliant color scheme. I had only begun to look when the Baron entered. He was a little man with a pointed beard and spectacles and humorous, kindly eyes. His manner was formal, so formal that it was hard to get behind a conventional in- terchange of courteous admiration of one another's land and customs. So what he really thinks of American Women, and the suffrage and munici- pal clubs and all that, I shall never know. He did say he thought we had improved since he was here before in 1893, because our voices are softer, and he is filled with admiration for Columbia's new school of household arts. Then at last We came to Japanese women. The rule of ,the three obediences is the rule for women in Japan- obedience first to the father, then to the husband, then to the son. The heroic heroines of Japanese legend are high-born Women who have had the courage to die by their own hands when it chanced that their deaths might profit their husbands, their Mikado, or their house. This institution of the house or clan is the unit of Japanese society. The head of the house alone can hold office or private property, and if, in rare cases, this head be a woman, she is entitled to the obedience of all her subordinates, even her husband, and, under the new regime, to a vote in the municipal council. But this, said the Baron, as far as I know, has never happened yet. Education, in Japan, is compulsory, and free to boys and girls alike who attend the same school between the ages of six and twelve. After that, the girls take a four or five years' course in their high schools or 'private schools. There are normal schools for the training of teachers, and there is one college for women in Tokio. Women are not barred from any of the professions by law. The recently built factories in Japan give employment to hundreds of women, and there, as in America, they have created a servant problem. But the wages of women are bare- ly half the Wages of men employed in the same positions. Are your women happy? I asked the Baron. The question seemed to surprise him and like a Yankee, he answered with another: Are American women happy? he asked. Happiness lies within the heart. Doubtless our restlessness, our very independence seems to him more dreadful than the dependence and abnegation of the Japanese Woman seems to us. We could only both say, I wonder. That is all I learned from the Baron Kukuchig and here it is and my very best wishes to all of you. Fraternally yours in '99, , HELEN ASHLEY HUNT page lwcnty-nine

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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

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I have been asked to represent dear old '01 in the Annual this year- a great task, I feel, for who can adequately represent the flower of the family , and a flower with a decennial coming on, at that! Since I came to the Hub of the Universe to live, I have not seen many of the girls, but some have penetrated even to these fastnesses dur- ing their summer vacations or on their way home from Europe. That, however, was in early Pioneer days before I had finished learning that in Cambridge, you call people who work by the day Uaccommodatersf' buy your lettuce and beans at the butchers and pay more per pound for codfish in large quantities than in small. But in spite of all this, and even though the push-buttons for stopping the street-cars are merely for ornament, and that President Eliot thought Tom Johnson a great re- former until I enlightened him, I iind Cambridge the best possible sub- stitute for my native village-only I wish they were nearer together. I thought I was going to be able to get through without reminis- cencing, but I find my thoughts straying back in spite of me to the days when some of us perhaps, found as many larks as labors in college, and wore ourselves to thin white fringes over our own Annual, which I do solemnly assure you, was the best ever. There, I told you we were the flower of the family-a modest, shrink- ing violet! I have lots more to say Calways did havej , but must stop. HELEN THOMAS BLACKWELL '01 To the roll call of classes, 1903 answers Present Seven years have passed since we were college seniors anxiously trying to find a place for ourselves in the world. We have succeeded so well that more than half of our number are married and a large proportion ,of the remainder are engaged-in educational work. We can fairly say that the class of 1903 is a teaching force, some teach Household Economy, and some teach Algebra and Latin. Meanwhile we have learned a little of our lesson of life and have found that pleasure is the result of something accomplished. We believe in ourselves and in the ability of everyone to get what he is determined to gain, that no one can fail so long as he has faith in him- self. We believe in loyal friendship, in kindness and in good cheer. With thanks to the Annual Board for an opportunity 'to speak once more within college walls. We are, we are, Nineteen Three. CHARLOTTE PARKER '03 An occasion like this sets an old grad to thinking and rememberingg -recalling the scenes of a short four years at college with pleasure and amusement. My recollectest tho'ts are those Which I remember yet, as the poet says, And bearing on as you'd suppose, The things I don't forget. The day I came to college, oh What fear assailed my heart When I enrolled and felt myself Of learning's whole a part. In Soph'more year we broke a rule Or rather precedent. We gave a dancing party and page lhiriy