Part 16

Theodora loved plays, and she had delighted in her very humble part in the House play. She was a little house-maid, and said only, "Yes, madam," and "No, madam," and, "Oh, sir, how can you--a poor girl like me!" but she had a great American Beauty and two bunches of violets, and she sent the programme home. Next to its basket-ball decorations she remembered the Gym arranged for a play, with the running-track turned into boxes and the girls prettier than ever against the screens and pillows. She had been chairman of the stage-setting committee, and the _Monthly_ had especially commended the boudoir scene.

Were they ready for the toasts so soon? Where had the time gone? she thought, as Virginia, with solemn pomp, called upon Miss Farwell to respond to "Our Team." Dear old Grace--she stammered a little when she was excited, and she was not the most fluent of speakers, but they cheered her to the echo. "Team! Team! Team!" they called, and the teams, freshman and sophomore, Regulars and Subs, had to stand on their chairs and be sung to. As Theo balanced on a tottering seat, she caught sight of a crowd of girls moving toward the Gym, and as they sat down a shout from below greeted them:

Oh, _here's_ to Ninety-_yellow_, And her _praise_ we'll ever _tell_--_oh_, Drink her _down_, drink her _down_, drink her _down_, down, _down_!

A cheerful, aimless creature at the bottom of one of the great tables, whose one faculty was for improvised doggerel, instructed her neighbors rapidly, and they sent back a tuneful courtesy:

Oh, _here's_ the Junior _Ushers_, And I _tell_ you they are _rushers_!

Theodora had "ushed," in classical phrase, in her day, and the bustle of last year, so much more exciting somehow than this one, came back to her. Her little, white-ribboned stick was packed now--in fact, everything was packed: she was going away for good! Some one else would lounge on the window-seat in her room in the Nicest House, and light the cunning fire....

Who was this? Oh, this was Sallie Wilkes Emory, responding to "The Faculty." Kitty Louisa, whose soul knew not reverence, had attached to this toast the pregnant motto, _That we may go forward with Faculties unimpaired_, an excerpt from one of the President's best-known chapel prayers, and Sallie was developing the theme in what she assured them was a very connotative manner. Theo saw them pass in review before her, those devoted educators, from her dazed freshman Livy to her despairing senior Philosophy--_that_ was over, at least! Theodora was not of a technically philosophical temperament. Sallie was quoting liberally from a recent famous essay of her own: _The Moral Law, or the End-Aim of Human Action According to Kant_, apropos of which she had remarked to the commendatory professor that she was glad if _somebody_ understood it! Sallie was a great girl--how grand she had been in the play! Theo had been in the mob herself, having first tried for every part, and had enjoyed every minute of it, from the first rehearsal to the last dab of make-up. She had been an attendant and hadn't an idea how pretty she looked, nor how many people spoke of her and called her graceful.

It may have been because Theo had so few ideas about herself that she had so many friends. And how many she had! She took great pride in them, those fine, strong, good-looking girls that hailed her from all directions, and always wanted a dance or a row or a skating afternoon with her. She wondered if anybody so ordinary--for Theo knew she wasn't clever--ever had so many jolly good friends. There was the Mandolin Club, now--all friends of hers. She got on late in junior year and played in the spring concert. Her father came up and said he'd never seen such a pretty house in his life--packed from orchestra circle to balcony with fluffy girls alternated with dapper, black-coated youths. He gave Theo such a darling white gown for it, all ruffled with white ribbon, and she had her picture taken in it, holding the mandolin, and sent it to him in a big white vellum frame covered with yellow chrysanthemums, with "Smith" scrawled in yellow across one corner. He kept it on his desk and was tremendously proud when his friends asked about it.

Here were the class histories. Theodora thought she listened, but though she laughed with the rest and applauded the grinds, it was her own history that she was reading as face after face recalled to her some joke or mistake or good luck. Not that it was sad--oh, dear, no! If any member of the class of Ninety-yellow dared to be sad that night there was a fine, and more than that, the studied coldness of the class directed toward her: it was an orgy, not an obsequy, as Virginia elegantly put it. Just as the junior history, which is always the best for some unexplained reason--perhaps because of the Prom--was finished, there was a loud knock, and a big bunch of yellow roses from the class that was having a decennial supper somewhere was brought in by a useful sophomore. They clapped it and sent some one back to thank them--a point of etiquette that some self-centred classes have been known to omit--and then they remembered that Ninety-green was supping at its first reunion in the Old Gym, and sent over some of the table flowers to them. Virginia motioned to Theo, and proud of the mission and blushing a little at the eyes that turned to her as she went, she took them over. They clapped and sang to her:

Oh, _here's_ to _Theodora_, And we're _very_ glad we _sor_ her!

Martha Sutton waved to her and the toast-mistress thanked her for the class, and she went back--alone, because, being an older class, Ninety-green didn't need a delegate. On the way, two juniors met her, and they condoled with her cheerfully: "How do you feel, Theo dear? Isn't it kind of dreadful? Do you keep thinking it's the last time? Goodness--I should!" One of them threw a sympathetic arm over her shoulder and looked at the moon, but Theo grinned a little and said that she was tired as a dog and that if there was one place in the world she wanted it was her room At Home. And as the juniors gaped at this matter-of-fact attitude, Theodora added, pausing at the Gym door, "Of course I've had a perfectly grand time here, and all that, but I've been here four years and that's about long enough, you know. And they want me, of course, and--I want to come! I think it gets a little--well, toward the end, you know--"

But Theo was tired, and so are seniors all, and until three or four generations of them have learned how to do it easily, so will they be.

They were doing stunts upstairs: Clara Sheldon had seen Cissie Loftus who had seen Maggie Cline who sang _Just tell them that you saw me_, and Clara, who was the most tailor-made and conventional creature imaginable to the outward eye, was forced by those from whose farther-reaching scrutiny she was never free, to imitate the imitator at all social functions that admitted song. She used stiff, absurd gestures and a breathy contralto that never palled upon her friends. Cynthia Lovering danced her graceful little Spanish dance for them, and Leslie Guerineau told them her best darkey story in her own delicious Southern drawl. And then there was a murmur that grew to a voice that swelled into a shout as they drummed on the table and called, "_We_ want _Dutton_! _We_ want _Dutton_! _We_ want _Dutton_, _Dutton_, _Dutton_!"

She said no; that she'd had a toast; that they knew all her stunts by heart--but they hammered on her name with the regularity of a machine till she got up at last with a sigh and, "Well, what do you want?" They wanted a temperance lecture, and she drooped her head to one side, and with an ineffably sickly smile and a flat nasal drawl she told them "haow she'd been a-driving 'raound your _graounds_, and they're _reel_ pleasantly situated, _too_, dears, and your _President_, such a nice, _gentlemanly_ man, accompanied me, and pointed aout to me your _beeyutiful_ homes and I said to him, 'Oh, what a _beeyutiful_ thought it is that all these _hundreds_ of young souls are a-drinking _water_, nothing but _water_, all the time and every day!'"

She was going to teach in a stuffy little school in the wilds of Maine, and Ethel Eaton, who had been taught in that school, was going to travel abroad for a year--it was a strange shuffle.

What, was it half-past eleven? Impossible! But somebody had started up their great song that had been their pet one since freshman year, and they were shouting it till the Gym rang:

_Hurrah!_ _hurrah!_ the _yellow_ is on _top_, _Hurrah!_ _hurrah!_ the _purple_ cannot _drop_; _We_ are Ninety-_yellow_ and our _fame_ shall never _stop_, _'Rah_, 'rah, _'rah_, for the _seniors!_

They sang all the verses, and then the watchman and the superintendent of buildings, waiting like sleuth-hounds to prevent any demonstration from without, gritted their teeth and dashed furiously down the wrong stairs as Ninety-green, who had softly assembled at the back of the Gym, having come from different directions, burst into the traditional tribute:

Oh, _here's_ to Ninety-_yellow_, And her _fame_ we'll ever _tell_--_oh_!

"'Ere, 'ere! stop that now! Miss Sutton, it ain't allowed--will you please to go 'ome quietly! No, they ain't a-comin' h'out till you go--'e says they ain't!"

"Oh, come now! We aren't students any more! We can do what we like--"

"Oh, come on, girls! Don't make a fuss; we don't want to stay, anyhow!"

They sang themselves away, and the class upstairs looked around the tables and thought things, for it was time to go. And here I am afraid I shall lose whatever friends I may have gained for Theodora, for it is necessary to state that none of those comprehensive, solemn moments of farewell, known to us all to be the property of departing seniors, came to her. She was conscious of a little vague excitement, but all the last days had been more or less exciting--generally less--and her mind was occupied with irrelevant details. Had Uncle Ed remembered to change at Hartford? Had Aunt Kate packed her black evening dress? Would the post-office forward that note to the little freshman? Could she get Virginia up in time for the 9.15? Had she lost the slip with the Nicest Woman's address on it? And had she given Marietta that senior picture yet?

There had been one moment when her throat had contracted and her eyelids had crinkled: it was that very evening, when Annie, the cook, had beckoned to her in the hall of the Nicest House, and said: "There's three o' them little cakes on a plate on your table, Miss The'dora. I shan't be bakin' 'em agin, an' I know you do be terrible fond of 'em!"

"Thank you, Annie," she had said, and shaken her hand warmly. Annie had cooked fifteen years in the Nicest House, and what she and her mistress didn't know about girls you could put in a salt-spoon. It wasn't every girl that Annie liked, either.

Grace was getting up, and they stood a moment irresolutely by the chairs.

"Let's make a ring, girls, and sing once 'round, and say good-by till next year," she said; and then there was a little quick shuffling, and the carefully divided sets got together and stood as they had stood for the last two or three years. Theo took tight hold of Virginia and Adelaide, and they moved slowly around the tables, a great circle of girls, so quiet for a moment that Ninety-green, singing one another home around the campus, sounded as loud and clear as their own voices a moment ago. They listened with a common impulse as the rollicking _Tommy Atkins_ song paused awhile under the Washburn windows; they had been very fond of Ninety-green.

Ninety-_green_ she is a _winner_, Ninety-_green_ she is a _star_, Is there _any_thing _agin_ her? No, we _do_ not think there _are_! There have _been_ some other _classes_, Other _seniors_ have been _seen_, But they _cannot_ match the _lasses_ That are _wearing_ of the _green_!

They smiled a little and remembered the great mass of green flags and ribbons that had waved to that song in last year's Rally. But they did not answer with one of their own; a little of the first faint conviction that the college owns all her classes, the feeling that grows with the years, came to them, and as the circle pressed closer and closer and their steps fell into an even tramp, Grace called out, "Now, girls, here's to old Smith College!" and they sent it out over the campus, so strong and loud that the decennial people and the groups of Ninety-green and the juniors and the belated sophomores lurking about heard them and joined in:

Oh, _here's_ to old Smith _College_, drink her _down_! Oh, _here's_ to old Smith _College_, drink her _down_! Oh, _here's_ to old Smith _College_, For it's _where_ we get our _knowledge_, Drink her _down_, drink her _down_, drink her _down_, down, _down_!

COLLEGE STORIES PUBLISHED BY MESSRS. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK

_Smith_

SMITH COLLEGE STORIES BY JOSEPHINE DODGE DASKAM 12_mo_, $1.50

An animated picture of a particularly active-minded and picturesque community is contained in Miss Daskam's volume. "Smith" may be taken as an epitome of the woman's college world; and these ten stories have a real value accordingly in showing what the undergraduate life of many thousands of American young women really is in its varied phases, illustrating their ambitions, manners, occupations, and traits.

The stories, however, show that a good deal of human nature exists within college walls, and they will certainly appeal as strongly to the fiction-lover as to the sociologist, being written with great cleverness and sparkle, and clearly the work of a born writer of stories.

TITLES OF THE STORIES

_The Emotions of a Sub-Guard_ _A Case of Interference_ _Miss Biddle of Bryn Mawr_ _Biscuits ex Machina_ _The Education of Elizabeth_ _A Family Affair_ _A Few Diversions_ _The Evolution of Evangeline_ _At Commencement_ _The End of It_

_Princeton_

PRINCETON STORIES BY JESSE LYNCH WILLIAMS _9th Thousand_ 12_mo_, $1.00

Here is the evanescent charm, the touch of poetry and sentiment, that pervades a thousand unpoetic and rather reserved young men. You will find here the good fellowship depicted without any rant about it. There isn't a prig in these stories, ... that are well written and well constructed, judged from the standard of good American short-story writers.--_Droch in Life_.

They breathe a spirit of commendable vigor and manliness. Princeton men are fortunate in having the life of their college so favorably presented to the outside world.--_Atlantic Monthly_.

THE ADVENTURES OF A FRESHMAN BY JESSE LYNCH WILLIAMS _Illustrated_, 12_mo_, $1.25

The new story of college life by the author of "Princeton Stories" is a stirring tale of experiences at college, and has already been pronounced (by the New York _Evening Sun_) "a better picture of college life than the same author's 'Princeton Stories'" (which is now in its ninth thousand). The _Independent_ says: "Hazing, the ups and downs of athletics, manliness and boyishness happily blended, escapades and adventures--all tending to the building up of a typical American character, brim the book with genuine life."

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, PUBLISHERS 153-157 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

End of Project Gutenberg's Smith College Stories, by Josephine Dodge Daskam