Wellesley College - Legenda Yearbook (Wellesley, MA)

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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-

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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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18 WELLESLEY COLLEGE LEGENDA. . ters along, one had a right to be amused over a predicament. It would scarcely be too much to say the same thing of Ethel. Work did go into those papers — careful work — if the results did not indicate it. She did take herself too much as a joke. A painstaking attention to form usually ended in an impera- tive change of plan made at the last moment, at the expense of all neatness and comprehensibility. Parentheses were in- sistent. A rapid succession of pens of all kinds wrought no improvement in the quick, ugly, undifferentiated writing. The Professor .usually said something so serious that Ethel neglected possible suggestions in laughing over the huge ab- surdity of the disaster. She had the wholesome merit of never feeling injured. She merrily assumed all the guilt, of which she need have borne only a part. Yet the matter meant something to her, as was natural enough. The college world was approaching one of its semi-annual convulsions. Miss Caldwell was busy bringing the semester ' s work into final shape. She had almost forgotten her students in attention to her courses from an inside point of view. Some time before it had come to her that a timely warning might draw a brilliant examination paper from Ethel, a paper that would atone even in Professor Karnes ' s eyes for past offences. Her intention was recalled to her a few days before the mid- year examinations began. She was walking down the concrete path past the old chapel hill with the Professor as Ethel and Ellen came up the road. There was a lull in the conversation just long enough for the wind to catch a few words of Ellen ' s and drift them to the two women. They were a curt and thor- oughly adverse criticism of a lecture she had apparently just taken. The Professor laughed appreciatively and said, I suppose that ' s the way my girls talk about me. And Miss Caldwell said, I hope not. But both of those girls are yours. They take the three-twenty lecture on Thurs- day. Don ' t you know them? Professor Karnes looked back and shook her head. Their faces were familiar. That ' s as much as I can hope for in a lecture course.