Wellesley College - Legenda Yearbook (Wellesley, MA)

Page 15 text:

A Question of Science 3 How can you spend so much time over those ? she asked one day, as a friend boxed a new butterfly and swung her net over her shoulder. They are interesting, I suppose, but they are so small. Now I like the higher animals ; they are nearer to Man. Oh, I ove Man ! Four merry laughs broke the June still- ness and Nell looked from one of her friends to another, making a vain effort to understand. ' ' Pity they are so few here, sighed a coquettish maiden ; and Nell understood. Bah ! she said with scorn, ' ' I mean Ma7i, embracing Woman, of course ! The silence rang again, and a crew of ram-rod maidens on the lake nearly dislo- cated their eyes in the vain endeavor to gain a clew to so huge a joke. That same evening Ruth lay in the stern of a cedar boat and a girl with senti- mental eyes occupied the bow. Nell rested her oars and mentally considered the tem- perature of the incubator in the Zoology Office. She had forgotten to read the

Page 14 text:

At Wellesley the place of honor on the top of the book- case held a roughly mounted cat-skeleton ; and the desk and table were strewn with small, half-dissected limbs in all stages of decomposition. The slightest movement of these treasures meant annihilation to the unprivileged ; so the dust gathered upon them, and, during two years of the inconvenient but inevitable, the partner of Nell ' s joys and woes was reduced to a silent negation. Ruth had protested vigorously when her little marble Ariadne was used as a prop for drying frogs. She had objected feebly to the use of a newly-cut Bi ' oivn- ing for pressing ' ' weeds. But this was before she had been tempted into a course in zoology. After that she became long- suffering. She had not lost her head but she understood how easy a matter that would be unless one were well-fortified. At the present stage of her college career Nell was studying comparative anatomy. She was absorbed in the development of the species.

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4 At Wellesley thermometer after dinner and her con- science was tender even in the matter of ' ' domestic work. There was a great yellow moon in the sky ; trees hung up- side-down about the edges of the lake ; and lights were projected like long red rockets into the deeps below. The dark indefiniteness of trees and hills shut out the world beyond. Now and then the ghost of a boating-song came to them across the silence, or laughter that might have been Puck ' s own. The girls had been discussing a story in the Magazine. They were silent now. Nell ' s thoughts were with the tentative chicks in the incubator. Ruth was drink- ing in the night with eyes and ears and heart. But the girl in the bow was less fickle. ' Do you really mean that you would not have married him ? she persisted, referring to their recent conversation. Nell awoke from her troubled thoughts and replied with energy. My dear, I mean to say that I don ' t