Wellesley College - Legenda Yearbook (Wellesley, MA)

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16 WET LESLEY COLLEGE LEGEND A. of the present disagreement — to tell Professor Karnes that she lacked a teacher ' s best faculty. It was not the place of an instructor to call attention to every fact within her range of observation, so she replied along another line, but with a touch of frigidity, ' I have the bimonthly pleasure of deciphering such a manuscript. The Professor saw that she had lost her temper, if ever so little, but she had never yet been known to retreat in confu- sion. She laughed very low, and pushed back the chair. Both women rose together. As the first of the series I am to look over, you must admit it was astonishing. A junior, with two months of special training. It is astonishing. Let me help you with your coat. You ' ve quite a storm to tramp through. The Professor bent a critical eye on the window. So I have. You are nearer home, are you not? I ' m sorry, though, to have kept you so late. Good night. ] Iiss Caldwell watched her leave -with a kind of testhetic pleasure. Then she turned on the electric light, and sat down at the desk to recover from the disagreeable feeling Miss Karnes had aroused. It was almost useless to urge Ethel to improve on those shapeless, ill-written reports. Miss Caldwell was not at all sure that she would not prefer them just as they were, to leaven the mass of correct mediocrity. But now that Profes- sor Karnes had taken them into her hands, there was no such desirability left. What was excellent in material and point of view, was lost in the carelessness and oddity of the work. Ethel was too original, but Miss Caldwell saw much promise in her peculiar attitudes, since training might well develop their real power. Professor Karnes would not succeed be- cause she could not. She was learned and effectively so — an excellent teacher in dealing with certain lands of students — yet the intuitive approach to the individual need was beyond her. Miss Caldwell was not a sentimentalist. She had made her

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AN APPROPRIATED OPINION. PEOFESSOK KAENES was leaning back in her chair, but even her leisure seemed nervously alert. One long arm stretched to the curve of the chair- rest. She was ready to pull forward any moment and bring to bear all the power of voice and pres- ence one could not deny her. The office was growing dark, for it was past five, and a ISTovember snow-storm was whirling outside. Altogether Miss Caldwell was not comfortable. She was tall herself and had not the present advantage of leaning back in an office chair. She was conscious through her weari- ness and irritation that Professor Karnes was using an unjust advantage in the case, and worse than that, the advantage was innocently taken. If she were posing at me, she thought, I should hate her. But she is magnificent and too slow to know it. Aloud she said, I have tried to do the girl justice. Profes- sor Karnes. There is not another report you could ask for that would offer such a difficulty. A flash crossed the Professor ' s face. She is brilliant. She is unresponsive. She is original. She is unintelligible. You must admit. Miss Caldwell, that I have reason to be puzzled at these accounts. I repeat that this paper is a disgraceful piece of work. I should scarcely call it work. Have you the bimonthly pleasure of deciphering such a manuscript? She tapped it with her second finger. Miss Caldwell was rigid with indignation at the tone the Professor had taken, but there was nothing to be said. Angu- lar and scholastic as she was, she was blessed with a far quicker academic sense than this woman. She knew it perfectly, and she knew the student whose name was being tossed to and fro. Such work as Ethel Ashley ' s could not be classified. It must be taken individually and understood. There was one way out 15

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WELLESLEY COLLEGE LEGEICDA. 17 best effort to put Miss Ashley ' s work in the right light and had failed. Twice a week she met the division to which Ethel belonged, and without consideration of what had passed she judged the girl ' s work with her. For the rest, she fell into the way of getting a mild amusement out of the situation as it developed. When it had been hei s to manage, she had cared about it. Now it affected Professor Karnes, and she could play spectator. She returned the reports to her divi- sions, looking them over for comments and recording marks. There was an ironic pleasure in detecting misgivings in Pro- fessor Karnes ' s mind now and then. But on the whole there was not much doubt where Ethel ' s marks were taking her, into the objectionable neighborhood of a junior flunk. The truth was that Professor Karnes grew more disgusted and more interested with each successive experience. She scarcely realized that she was being educated herself. She did not know she was interested. Her unconscious zeal she converted into a progress down the alphabet, ranged with painful sym- metry against Ethel ' s name. One after another those unlucky reports returned to the girl. The change from Miss Caldwell ' s methods was puzzling. Ethel professed to understand the comments. She usually left the recitation period with Ellen May, and what Professor Karnes could say next rapidly became matter for breathless interest. W hy, my dear, it ' s alarming, came always with much real dramatic enjoyment from Ethel. Ellen proposed a consultation, but both girls were keen enough to see that the difficulty lay beyond that simply remedy. She would look beautiful and helpless as she does in the lecture room, said Ellen. She would try to explain your difiiculties, and she doesn ' t know them. Well, do you? demanded Ethel. I ' m sure it would be a vast improvement if you ' d merely write a decent hand. I wouldn ' t accept such a paper as that, said Ellen severely. She realized her inability to cope with the situation, and took ] Iiss Caldwell ' s standpoint. If one couldn ' t push mat-