THE “MEDIC”
Belle and I decided to go to a coeducational school to study medicine,
and settled upon Boston University. I was a happy girl that summer,
getting ready and picturing the future. Associating Boston with
Emerson, Holmes, Longfellow, and Whittier, I loved it before going
there. Belle, who had studied guide-books and maps, was glib in her
knowledge of the city; she knew just where the railway station was,
and the college, and how to get from one to the other. Her confidence
impressed me, for maps and topography were ever a vexation to my
spirit; her assurance impressed our parents also, and it was decided to
let us make the journey alone.
Our family physician, who had written to the Dean, had received an
assuring letter: we were to go directly to the College and matriculate,
and there obtain addresses for boarding-places. In later years I have
realized what misgivings our parents must have had in letting us start
out alone, mere schoolgirls who had never been more than thirty miles
from home, green village girls, unused to city ways--ignorant of the
world, of life, of themselves.
The last picture I have of my grandfather, is the one as he rode into
our door-yard the October afternoon of the evening I was to start for
Boston. Sitting his horse firmly and proudly (he was then eighty-five)
he brought me a fine full ear of yellow corn for a “keepsake.” I have
often wondered what made him bring that particular thing. Was it that
he knew the sight of it when far from home would be so dear, serving
to bring back Grandma’s kitchen and the overhanging ears suspended
by their turned-back husks? Or was it that he recollected what a
fascination the full golden ears had had for me when I had played
around the corn-house years before in the October weather? I never
knew. I think I did not then question why. But that long yellow ear of
corn which he brought to me on the eve of my first leaving home was
a precious gift, inexplicably precious as I try to explain it now.
I clung to him with unwonted tenderness as I bade him good-bye, and
through my tears watched him slowly ride away.
The night we left home, just before I started for the train, my
class-mate, Walter, came to the door and asked for me. I wondered why
he had not gone ahead to the station with the other young people.
Drawing me out on the “stoop”, in the darkness he quickly kissed
me, wrung my hand, and with a choked “good-bye” ran down the steps.
Astounded as I was, and with my strict ideas about such things, still
I did not resent that kiss. And as Father and I drove to the station
in the darkness, leaving Mother alone at home, to weep, I was sure
(though she had kept up till the good-byes were over) Walter’s kiss was
a welcome diversion, a partial relief to the pang of leaving home and
parting with Mother.
At the station the young people were gathered, chatting gaily, but
Sister was unusually quiet. They loaded us down with fruit and flowers
and absurd advice--a merry noisy party as the train came thundering
in; merry and noisy except for the few who were pale and silent with
something wretchedly painful tugging at our hearts and rising in our
throats.
Hurried kisses and hearty handclasps to the girls and boys, and
then--my sister! We had not thought it would be so hard. It was like
tearing one’s body apart. Never till that moment had we realized what
we were to each other. We had never been separated more than a week in
our lives, and here was this train ready to bear me away from home,
away from my precious sister, into a life in which she was to have no
part! The agony as they separated us (for we clung in desperation as
the men shouted “All aboard!”) was the most cruel thing that had then
come into my life.
When at Syracuse, after putting us on the sleeper, Father left us,
another pang was added; the last link was snapped. I can see him now
trying to look cheerful as he waved to us from the platform; and I
trying to keep the tears back till the train should bear us from his
sight. Never a word of all the anxiety and misgiving he and Mother
must have felt! The train moved off bearing the two girls with aching
throats and tear-stained faces--two girls who had never left the home
shelter, bearing them rapidly away in the darkness to the unknown city
to begin the study of medicine.
Soon reacting from the sadness of parting, after the lumps had left our
throats, we became excited, even gay. Everyone had advised us what to
do on a sleeper; had warned us about thieves; told us of queer amusing
things which happened to inexperienced travellers, and we were fairly
spoiling for an adventure of some sort. But as our fellow-passengers
seemed strangely indifferent to us, we began to feel it was going to
be quite uneventful. Still, though detecting no one who looked like a
thief or a cut-throat, we hid our purses and watches with care, and I
kept my hat-pin within easy reach, in case any one should molest us. We
found some difficulty in fastening the curtains of our bed; there were
great gaps between the fastenings; men passing down the narrow aisles
would drag the curtains aside. It was a novel and not at all reassuring
experience--we girls cooped up on that narrow bed, undressing in
the dark stuffy place, right in the sound of men’s voices, with men
continually passing. It seemed then, and to this day it seems, a kind
of indelicate thing to disrobe in the proximity of a carful of strange
men, with only insecure draperies to insure privacy.
In our apprehension and unsophistication, we thought this continued
brushing aside of our curtains must be done intentionally. Not then
realizing how narrow the aisles were, or that it was not the same
person going by repeatedly, we grew angry: “If I hear him coming again
I shall grab the curtains together and hold them, so he can’t brush
them aside,” I said resolutely to Belle. The steps soon came again, the
curtains began moving. I made a desperate grab to hold them together,
but, oh horrors! what happened!
“What’s wanted?” I heard in calm, clear, gentlemanly tones, and then
learned that I had also grabbed the coat of a passer-by!
Chagrined, I stammered, “I--I--thought----,” and suddenly realizing my
mistake, felt the impossibility of explaining my awkward blunder--the
man had doubtless inadvertently brushed past, as had the others, in the
narrow aisle. His innocent coat-tail released, he passed on. Wondering
in shame what he must have thought of us, we suddenly awakened to the
realization that no one was inclined to molest us; that our school
fellows had been telling us “yarns”; and we had better lie down and try
to sleep. So, using the hat-pin to fasten the refractory draperies, we
lay down to sleep, though fitfully, the long night through.
As we breakfasted from our lunch-boxes in the morning, we felt years
older; how long it seemed since we had left the little village amid
the drumlins! We were in a new world. It was raining when we reached
Boston, which did not add to our light-heartedness.
How queer to see so many strange faces; everyone so busy, so intent
upon his own concerns, oblivious to the forlorn girls transplanted to
the strange city--everyone but the horrid, importunate cab-drivers
who leaned out from their stalls, and beckoned and called to us,
bewildering us so that we were a long time in settling upon one who
looked less villainous than the rest. We drove directly to the College
to matriculate. The unwonted scenes, the poor sleep, the irregular
meals, and the rain, all contributed to our gloom; but the Dean’s
letters--we had a friend at court!
How forlorn we must have looked, and pitiably young and inexperienced
for such an undertaking! The janitor eyed us curiously, and to our
request to see the Dean said he was not there then, but that Dr.
Caroline Matson was the one to call for--“She sees the new students.”
She came into the room. Shall I ever forget the chill and depression
she brought with her? A short, stout, middle-aged woman with light
brown hair, a turned-up nose, a pink and white complexion, spectacles,
and penetrating steel-blue eyes. She looked us up and down and through
and through. I never felt so utterly small and insignificant. I think
she said “Humph!” when, in desperation at her scrutiny, I faltered,
“We’ve come to study medicine.” I tried to add that we wanted to see
the Dean; that he had written us; was expecting us; but she interrupted
me. The Dean was not to be seen then; we were to register, fill out
certain blanks, answer the questions, and then write an essay of a
given number of words setting forth our reasons for studying medicine,
_if we had any_; or write on any topic we chose. Then she left us.
Glancing furtively at each other, we each read the dismay that
neither dared express. I think we felt her ears were as sharp as her
eyes and that she would hear the lightest whisper. We almost feared
she could hear our thoughts. For an hour or more we wrote on the
questions and the essay. Then she came and told us we were to meet
others of the Faculty to be examined orally in Latin translation,
physics, and chemistry. What a blow! Coming from New York state where
the all-powerful Regents reigned, we had supposed that our Regents’
certificates and our academic diplomas would exempt us from all
examinations.
“We don’t have to be examined,” we ejaculated in unison.
“You don’t? Are you college graduates?” (Sarcastically)
“No, but we have our Regents’ Certificates and pass-cards.”
“Regents’ certificates?--what are they?”
Had the bottom fallen out of everything? The Regents, THE REGENTS--that
tyrant for which we had toiled so long, whose coveted seal we had on
our precious diplomas! _And she doesn’t even know what the Regents is!_
We learned several lessons that bitter hour. Our explanations, though
lame, must have been intelligible, for, moderating a little, she
explained that they had no such system in Massachusetts, and that it
would be necessary to qualify in certain studies since we were not
graduates of a college; but that as we were so recently out of school
(and this seemed reprehensible on our part), we would probably have
no difficulty. Then she examined our papers. Those cold eyes passed
rapidly up and down; once in a while she would look up, sometimes ask
a question, then read on. She could not have been conscious of the
torture she inflicted, or she would surely have been easier on those
sleepy, hungry, homesick girls, so completely at her mercy. Now as I
dimly recall what my essay was, I wonder that her sarcasm and harshness
were so moderate. I remember I quoted from “Lucile” about the mission
of woman being “to help and to heal the sick world that leans on her.”
She grunted when she put my paper down, and I breathed freer. Then,
taking up Belle’s, she gave an angry snort--something had acted like a
red rag to a bull:
“Minnie Isabel Washburn! Is that your name?”
“Ye-es, ma’am,” Belle timidly confessed.
“Were you christened that?” (Glaring at her)
“I wasn’t christened, I was baptized,” Belle corrected boldly, the
Baptist in her rampant--her religion was something for which she could
show courage even in this encounter.
“Well, it won’t be tolerated here. When _will_ mothers learn to give
their children sensible names? Doctor _Minnie_ Washburn! How will that
sound?” and she almost annihilated us in scorn. Belle was speechless,
Belle the assured one, to whom I had looked for leadership and help in
all these new experiences; Belle of the boasted self-confidence, of
the undaunted courage! It was a strange sight to see her cowed, but
that woman’s face and voice were enough to intimidate any one. Without
thinking, surprised and scared at my own voice, but goaded to it by the
pain she was inflicting, I ventured:
“I don’t suppose Belle’s mother knew she was going to be a doctor when
she gave her that name.”
My! how she turned and glared at me! Our eyes were about on a level.
I don’t know whether I flinched or not; I have a recollection of a
superhuman effort to glare back, but dare say I weakened. I remember
her look seemed to say:
“You little upstart! who asked you to speak?” Then she announced:
“Well, it can’t go down ‘Minnie’--that’s settled. You will have to drop
that and just keep the ‘Isabel.’”
“But I can’t drop it (Belle was almost crying)--it was my grandmother’s
name; I’ll have to write home and ask my father first.”
“No time for that--the way you register to-day, that way your diploma
has to read. We will have to see the Dean about this; but you may as
well understand we will have no ‘_i-e_’ names here; we graduate women,
not babies. I’ll see the Dean.”
Out she went. Belle and I looked at each other hopelessly. “If _that_
is what women doctors are like, I don’t want to be one,” each of us
thought, and knew the other’s thought.
Disheartened, disillusioned, tired, sleepy, hungry, far from home,
our Regents’ certificates counting for nothing, this great unfriendly
building, the dull sky, and we not knowing where we were going to stay
that night--all this and more we felt as we looked at each other and
tried to keep back the tears.
And then SHE came back and told us to go across the hall to the Dean.
We saw the sign “Faculty Room,” and went in. Rising to greet us, coming
with both hands extended, his ruddy face and smiling eyes beaming a
welcome, a short, stout, gray-haired man waddled toward us, enveloping
us in his benevolent presence. It was a wonder we did not throw
ourselves into his arms. Taking us by the hand he beamed and we basked
in the sunshine of his fatherly welcome. Many a time in the years that
have passed I have wished I could tell him what he was to us girls that
day. I think I did essay it once, three years later, when I came to
see much of him. I have always loved him for that welcome. He is gone
now. A remarkable man, overflowing with energy and tact, a champion
of Homœopathy in its early days in Boston--the University, in fact,
Homœopathy in general owes more to him, probably, than to any other
man in New England. We came in time to hear him criticized by certain
students; sometimes heard it said that he carried his politic measures
to the point of insincerity; but I never had the slightest reason for
changing the feelings toward him which were born that day. Though
subsequently seeing some of his limitations, I admired his exceptional
gifts--his indomitable energy, and his wonderful executive ability,
while his warmheartedness won my lasting regard. I did change my
opinion of Dr. Caroline Matson, but of that later.
How tactfully the Dean went to work to soothe Belle, and yet bring
about the proper registering of a name that would be dignified and in
good taste as a physician!
“‘Minnie’--let us see--that is your first name? I suppose you are fond
of it, but it doesn’t sound just right for a physician, does it?”
Under his kindly glance Belle explained that she had never used that
name, that she had always been called “Isabel” or “Belle,” but that as
the paper asked for her full name, she had given it.
“Quite right, quite right; well now, if that is not the name you are
accustomed to, why not drop it? Anyhow, your name is a long one,
‘Isabel Washburn,’ what a fine-sounding name! ‘Dr. Isabel Washburn’--I
like that.”
“So do I,” said Belle, getting confidential, “but I can’t drop
‘Minnie,’ because it is my grandmother’s name; my father, I’m sure,
would object.”
This gave him pause, but he was equal to the occasion:
“Of course, of course you can’t drop your grandmother’s name-ah,
but-ah--why, it is all as clear as can be now--‘Minnie’ is only the
nickname for ‘Mary’--your grandmother’s name was Mary, even if they
called her familiarly ‘Minnie’; and all you need to do is to use your
grandmother’s real name instead of her nickname.” And he beamed on her
benevolently.
Belle hesitated, but his charm of manner won the day. The alteration
was made, the obnoxious “Minnie” gave place to “Mary,” and we were
smilingly turned over to other members of the Faculty, who questioned
us on chemistry and botany, in which, I believe, we did fairly well.
We read the easy Latin at sight, conjugated a few verbs (I remember
how they tried to conceal their smiles at our faulty pronunciation--we
knew it was faulty, for we had shifted from the Roman to the English
method, and our hybrid pronunciation was enough to excite mirth). When
it came to physics, always a difficult study for me, we floundered and
failed ignominiously. I’m sure I did the worse, for Belle could reason
out such things pretty well, while I never could. We were “conditioned”
in physics, and in a month’s time were to be examined again. Although
they were very kind, we felt disgraced. Realizing that we had failed in
one study, and probably had been leniently passed in others, we felt
ourselves the ignorant, homeless creatures that we were. They told us
to come the next day at ten for the opening lecture.
Copying several addresses from the bulletin board, we trudged out of
the big building, with our satchels and lunch-boxes in our hands.
A fine rain was falling; it seemed later in the day than it was.
We were adrift in that great city. Deciding to look up none of the
addresses till the morrow, we started for the Young Women’s Christian
Association, of which we had heard before leaving home. Belle thought
that when we got out to Washington Street she could get her bearings
and easily find Warrenton Street, where the Association building was.
But on reaching there, she could not be sure whether to go up or down;
so we plodded on, not knowing whether we were going toward or away
from our hoped-for destination. Everyone we accosted was kind, but no
one knew where Warrenton Street was. Car after car would go by, but we
did not know what one to take. The only policemen we could discover
were on the cars. We laughed miserably as we thought of our parents’
injunctions to “ask a policeman.” The Boston policemen didn’t like
walking in the rain.
On and on we trudged, our arms aching from the satchels, and, much
of the way, harrowed by uncertainty. Finally someone told us we were
nearing the street in which the Y. W. C. A. was located. How good it
was to spy that sign, and how like a shelter the huge building was as
it loomed before us! The street was narrow and dismal (it was even on a
sunshiny day) and on that dark day looked especially unpromising, but
our goal was reached; our strength and courage were well-nigh spent.
Shelter, refuge--what meaning in those words, and how soon we had
learned the need of them in this big, strange, rainy Boston!
The girl who answered the door-bell, a slow-moving, stolid creature,
replying to our request to see the Superintendent, said that she was
at dinner; that we would have to wait. It was then after two in the
afternoon. Of course we would wait; we asked for nothing better. We
volunteered that we had come to engage room and board.
“I’m sorry, but the house is full,” she said.
Belle dropped into a chair. She had gone through so much! Her vaunted
courage was proving a broken reed. I stood there, desperate, not
knowing which way to turn. On the way thither it had gradually dawned
upon me that Belle’s courage was rapidly oozing. I had had to exchange
satchels with her and carry her heavier one (though she was taller and
larger than I), as she had declared she could carry it no farther. It
was a novel position for me--to be the leader; but we tacitly changed
places during that long rainy walk.
I looked at Belle, a forlorn heap in the chair. I saw that stolid girl,
waiting for us to go, since she had told us there was no room--to go
out in the rain, no shelter in view! I felt the humiliation of our
position before the girl who was showing impatience for us to start,
but summoned enough spunk to say, “Please tell the Superintendent we
would like to see her when she is at liberty.”
Leaving us with the parting shot that “Every room in the house is
taken,” she went away.
Bursting into tears, Belle declared she would go home on the morrow;
she didn’t want to study medicine--had never wanted to--only did
it to please her people--didn’t like Boston--hated Dr. Matson, and
didn’t want to be a woman doctor any way; she would go back and teach
school. Her outburst astonished me. Pitying her, and agreeing with
her in part, her giving way put me on my mettle. So, having sense
enough to know that we were both worn from the physical and emotional
strain, and that, dark as things were, they seemed darker because of
our exhaustion, I sat down and, opening our lunch-box, fairly forced
the food into Belle’s mouth, and devoured some myself. The messenger
girl passed the door several times, peering in curiously; she looked
as though she were going to tell us we must not eat in the waiting
room, but passed on. It must have been an unaccustomed sight to her. I
myself felt the unfitness of it all, but did not care; we were nearly
famished; it was the desperation of self-preservation.
As we ate and talked, Belle drooped less, and we soon got interested
in the coming and going past the door. Happy, laughing girls passed
and re-passed, running to catch the elevator, peeping in at us with
half-veiled curiosity, and moving on. How envious we felt at seeing
them greet one another--everybody knew everybody else in Boston, except
these two miserable girls who knew only each other.
We kept looking at the clock; we tried to jest, wondering what that
woman had for dinner that kept her so long. We must have sat there an
hour, expectant, anxious. The messenger girl seemed to have disappeared
for good. At last, desperate, I started out down the strange corridor,
and there met her:
“Hasn’t the Superintendent finished her dinner _yet_?” I queried.
“Oh, my, yes, an hour ago--I forgot to tell her you were waiting.”
I must have looked my wrath, for she went off in short order, returning
soon with a tall, stern, handsome woman, the Superintendent’s
assistant. This lady heard our tale calmly, looked at us critically,
and told us the house was full; she was sorry, but she would give us
addresses of boarding-places near by. Belle declared she could not stir
another step to look for a place. At this vehemence the calm lady
lifted her eyebrows, but said nothing. I must have said in my most
supplicating tones, “Can’t you make room for us some way, just for
to-night--we are _so_ tired,” for she deliberated, then said, “We will
go and see what Miss Dillingham has to suggest.” And she ushered us up
to the office of the Superintendent.
Dark and gloomy every corner of that building had seemed that rainy
afternoon, but as the door opened, a cheerful fire, and an atmosphere
of warmth and ease and home enveloped us. Sitting at a desk was
a stout, red-cheeked, red-nosed woman with bright gray eyes. She
looked up, nodding a greeting to us, and listened to her assistant’s
explanations.
“I’ve told them I don’t see how we can accommodate them,” the younger
woman said, not unkindly but dispassionately. I remember admiring her
stately grace as she moved about the room, but feeling from the way she
closed her lips that we had little to hope from her.
“Why have you come to Boston?” queried the Superintendent as she rose
and came toward us.
“We came to study medicine,” I said, and tried to explain further, when
my voice gave way, and I lost the self-control I had been maintaining
all day against such odds. I turned to Belle and she took up the tale,
but broke down, too. Then the good soul gathered us both in her arms,
held us close to her broad bosom and let us sob out the grief that
refused to be suppressed any longer.
Then, conferring with her assistant, after some directions about
changes, she rang for the bell-girl and told her to have room 60
prepared for us at once; they would manage to keep us that night, and
to-morrow would help us find a boarding-place. She then told us the
supper hour, and the time for evening prayers, and, advising us to get
a nap, said we would feel like new creatures by evening.
The clean little room with its two narrow beds and scanty
furniture--what a haven it was! Exploring our surroundings, and
removing the dust of travel, we lay ourselves down in our little
white beds and quickly fell into a sound if not untroubled sleep. We
must have slept several hours. The first thing I was aware of was the
singing of a hymn in a distant part of the building. It was dark. I
wondered where I was. Low sobs from the other side of the room brought
me to my senses. The singing made me homesick, my throat ached, my own
tears started, and creeping out of bed I went over to Belle, and there
we sobbed away in our misery, while those young voices on the floor
above sang:
“Jesus, Saviour, pilot me
Over Life’s tempestuous sea;
Unknown waves before me roll,
Hiding rock and treacherous shoal.
Wondrous Sovereign of the sea,
Jesus, Saviour, pilot me.”
Our cry out, we felt better. Belle experimented with the gas, finally
succeeding in lighting it. (It was a week or more before I felt safe in
doing it--I disliked that sudden noise just as it ignited, it made me
jump; and I always felt doubtful whether I had turned it off, too, and
had to call Belle to come and see if it was leaking.)
As the supper hour was long past, we ate the remnants of our lunch,
looked out on the strange street with the hurrying passers-by, explored
the bath-room, and, after much investigation about the fixtures, took
our first baths in a bath-tub, and went to bed for the night, in almost
a cheerful frame of mind. We talked long in the darkness, getting
better acquainted than we had in all the years of school together.
Never especially congenial, as children contending together for the
supremacy of the things we espoused--Republicanism and Methodism
_versus_ Democracy and the Baptist faith--over these in former years
we had waged war; but there in the darkness we discussed earnestly and
amicably our individual faiths (or doubts, now, in my case), our hopes,
our ideals, coming to a better understanding than ever before.
In the morning the sun shone gloriously. In the great dining room
a hundred or more girls were seated. No doubt we showed by our
awkwardness that it was our first venture into city life; but we had
a grip on ourselves, and felt equal to the day’s experiences; they
couldn’t possibly be worse than yesterday’s and, I felt exultantly, we
had lived through them. As she left the dining room the Superintendent
nodded kindly to us, later sending for us to come to the office. There
she told us they would manage to keep us a week, or until a room could
be secured for us at the branch Association on Berkeley Street, a newer
and better building, and much nearer the College. This was indeed
good news, and we started off for College with almost pleasurable
anticipations-so bright was the sun, so crisp the October air, and so
eager were we to see what was in store for us.
I remember well those first walks to and from the College; our
perceptions alert, everything so different from what we were accustomed
to; the ordinary street scenes, the ways of the people, the peculiar
pronunciation of the passers-by, even of the newsboys--everything was
food for wonder, amusement, or ridicule to the two village girls: Why
didn’t they build their side-walks on a level, instead of making the
pedestrian step down at every crossing, and then up again? Gradually
we learned that these marked the ends of blocks. We did not like the
houses built all together, they looked queer and dismal. We marvelled
at the huge dray-horses, and laughed at the queer herdics tumbling
along; we puzzled over the street cries; we looked with interest at
the “Tech” boys as we passed them on their way to the Institute of
Technology, and felt a community of interest with them, as well as
with the Conservatory students, as, crossing a little park, we saw
them file into the New England Conservatory of Music. On nearing the
College we saw the medical students coming briskly from all directions,
nearly all of them carrying what seemed to be part and parcel of their
equipment--the ubiquitous brown-leather Boston bag.
A thrill of expectancy went through me as, turning into Concord
Street, we felt ourselves a part of this life. The building looked
quite familiar on seeing it for the second time, and despite our
disheartening experiences of the previous day, I went up the steps
eagerly, in half-suppressed excitement.
It was some days before Belle ceased her threats of going home, and
she was always more or less of a malcontent. I am sorry to say we were
not very harmonious roommates, though we never openly quarrelled. If I
received higher marks than she did in our trial “exams,” she usually
made herself and me wretched; if I met with special cordiality and
friendliness, her ill-natured comments often took the savour out of
what would have been pleasant experiences for me. I frequently found
myself guiltily trying to conceal things of which I would ordinarily
have been frankly glad, just to save a scene. There’s no denying that
she was inordinately jealous, and it was a temperament I had never come
in contact with before. Though seldom airing our differences, there
was, with me, I know, a good deal of unexpressed irritation. Sometimes
I would go in the clothes-press and shake my fist at her wrapper, a
garment which seemed peculiarly to personify her. This relieved me a
little.
New as it all was, I felt at home in Boston at the start, and was
disposed to like everything. Happy and interested in my work, I also
revelled in the good general library at the Y. W. C. A., in the
churches, the lectures, the Art Museum, the symphony concerts, the
quaint old parts of Boston, the Common, the Public Gardens--it was all
life, and more abundant than I had dreamed would be mine. And people
liked me. One of my weaknesses in later years--this liking so to be
liked--then it was merely an innocent pleasure to feel, as I usually
instinctively felt, that I was generally liked.
As a class we were on friendly terms; the ages ranged from girls in
their ’teens to women of perhaps thirty-five; the men were mostly
in the twenties; a few were older. Two of the young men were always
talking to Belle, between lectures, against women studying medicine.
She would rehearse their arguments to me, especially toward the close
of the year, telling how they laboured with her to give up medicine;
that it unsexed women; that they didn’t care a rap about most of the
women in the class, but hated to see “nice girls” like her and me keep
on with the course, and at last turn out like Dr. Matson and some of
the masculine senior girls.
I thought then, and still think, that there is nothing in the study
or practice of medicine that need make a woman less womanly. It ought
rather to make her more so. By reason of being a woman she may lack
some qualities that go to make the ideal physician, but, if so, this
limits her as a physician; it need not detract from her qualities
as a woman. But few women, and by no means all men, physicians,
possess the mechanical skill and other qualities that make a good
surgeon; but the general practice of medicine, I think, is not beyond
the mastery of many a woman’s mind and strength. If a capable woman,
with a well-trained mind, and with self-mastery, engages in the study
and practice of medicine and fails, it is, I believe, rather because
stronger interests attract her than because she cannot master it. And
as for masculinity as seen in women physicians, those same women, as I
used to point out to Belle, were masculine before they began to study
medicine--would have been so in any walk in life. We occasionally saw
Dr. Anna Shaw around the College--she had graduated there some years
before--distinctly the masculine type. Many of the women of the faculty
were charmingly feminine; and, better still, some that were not so
charming were strong and womanly, and commanded the respect of their
_confrères_, both as women and as physicians.
It was months before either Belle or I ceased to shudder when we saw
those steely eyes of “Dr. Caroline” fastened upon us. As she was
professor in anatomy, we saw much of her the first year. Her lectures
were thorough, painstaking, and interesting. But, though excellent as
an instructor, she scared the life out of us at quizzes. She would
call each student by name, then pause--time for every eye to fasten
upon one--then a searching look into one’s eyes, and the question was
fired. I never answered satisfactorily, even when I knew well the
answer, she disconcerted me so, making me tremble to the very marrow
of my bones--those bones she knew so well! She had a system of marking
at quizzes, giving each student a plus mark for correct answers, ten
of which would count one on his final examination. The boys called her
“Our Caddie.” We even got so that we did ourselves. The incongruity
of the “_i-e_” name, applied to HER, particularly pleased Belle and
me. But we learned to respect her, as did all the students. It was
rumoured that she never treated any student with geniality till he
had passed her chair in anatomy; it was also rumoured that it was
one of the hardest things to pass that chair. Occasionally we caught
sight of her friendly manner to some of the upper-class students, and
fairly revelled in her rare smiles when we saw them bestowed on some
lucky senior. She was transformed when she smiled. And in spite of her
mannish stride, and her abrupt, brusque ways, she had certain womanly
traits which we rejoiced to see: she blushed exquisitely, and had
pretty dimpled hands with pink finger tips--I used to note them when
she passed the trays with the anatomical specimens, and her dainty way
of using the towel after handling them. I have said that she was a
middle-aged woman, but I wonder if she was not younger than that: in
those days I regarded every one past the twenties as middle-aged, or
old.
“Dr. Caroline” instructed us that first year, in microscopy, too, and
was very exacting. I had no special aptitude for it, and was afraid
of making blunders. She was so deft, and I so awkward in preparing
specimens, often breaking the fragile cover-glasses and spoiling my
bits of tissue which she doled out to us as precious morsels. How
the smell of the oil of cloves which we used in the work brings up
those sessions in microscopy--the students seated at the long tables
“teasing” their specimens with the fine needles, and mounting and
labelling the minute scraps of tissue!
We had private quizz-classes among ourselves: Four of us girls met
for study in the evening--I say girls, the two others were no longer
girls; one was probably twenty-five, the other perhaps near thirty.
The younger of these, Miss Thorndike, was also from the Empire State,
a bright, capable person, used to city life, a striking, winning
personality, and one who had herself well in hand. She had some
masculine ways which she tried rigorously to overcome. She seemed to
know the ropes of college life pretty well; she was sophisticated,
and we were not and, realizing our inexperience, she exercised a
chaperonage over us so tactful that we were not aware of it till years
after. Miss Wilkins was a typical strenuous New England woman, prim and
sensitive, who constituted herself our avowed chaperone, directing,
scolding, and mothering us; making peace between us, and dictating to
us when we much preferred to paddle our own canoes. Though fond of her,
we often teased her, sometimes deliberately doing things to shock her
(how easily she blushed!); yet we always ended penitently with, “but
Miss Wilkins is such a good woman!” And she was, and withal very human
and tolerant of our uncurbed, undisciplined ways. I realize now how
much we owe to hers and Miss Thorndike’s kind and wise supervision.
We rented bones to study the first year. I recall the amused feeling
I had the night I carried home my box of bones: Crossing the park, as
I met passers-by, I thought, “Wouldn’t they open their eyes if they
knew what is in this box!” Here, as always, the incongruity, the hidden
reality, appealed to me.
One day at the Y. W. C. A., when it was too cold to study in my room,
taking Gray’s Anatomy and my rented femur, I went out and sat by the
radiator at our end of the hall; there was but little passing to and
fro and I was soon absorbed in reading Gray and tracing the various
facets and foramina on the huge thigh-bone.
“Young woman, is that a human bone?” a voice called to me severely from
the other end of the long hall.
“Yes, would you like to see it?” I answered--how innocently, I cannot
say. I am under the impression that even at the start I recognized her
horror, and did it mischievously, but with an air of innocence as I
held it toward her.
“You horrid thing!” she gasped and disappeared in her room. This
disconcerted me: She was the head-laundress of the institution, and she
and the Superintendent were great friends. I well knew she was angry,
but I was a bit angry, too. I didn’t like being called names, and had
high ideas of the respectability of my pursuit; I knew it was neither
horrid nor disgraceful to study anatomy, whatever she in her prim,
prudish way might think. Getting more and more angry, I could study no
longer.
That night, dear, sensitive Miss Wilkins came to me in perturbation:
I had offended Miss Tyler; she might complain of me to the
Superintendent. I got on my highest heels of dignity: Miss Tyler had
offended me; I was sitting in my end of the hall attending to my own
affairs when she accosted me; and when I politely answered her, even
offering to show her what I was interested in, and about which she
seemed so curious, she had insulted me, rudely called me names, and
slammed her door, and the episode had spoiled my afternoon’s study; and
did not Miss Wilkins herself think that the cause for complaint was on
my side?
Then it was that Miss Wilkins laboured with me. At first I was
obdurate, and even in the end did not quite agree with her; but so
persuasive was she, that I promised not to study my bones in the hall
again, and not to offend Miss Tyler, or any one else, by what was to
them unquestionably an offensive sight. She reminded me that we must
not expect everyone to look upon these things from the scientific
standpoint; that we must respect the prejudices of others; that we
surely did not want to make ourselves conspicuous or obnoxious, and
bring reproach upon women medical students. She struck the right note
there, knowing how I recoiled from Dr. Matson’s mannish ways, and that
I had said I would rather not be a doctor at all, if I had to get
coarse and masculine. As she showed how timid and conservative Miss
Tyler was, she made me feel it my duty to refrain from further wounding
her sensibilities.
How we observed, and insensibly estimated, our various instructors!
Our professor in physiology was a diffident, scholarly man, stiff
as a poker; dry and ponderous as a lecturer. We liked the chemistry
professor, and liked the laboratory work, yet chemistry was for me
the hardest first-year study. Nowadays when I see certain chemicals
that we used in experiments, I get a sudden vision of my desk in the
laboratory, with the test-tubes, the gas-burners, the retorts, the
filter-papers, and all; and can even see the faces of the various
students as they stand at their desks heating solutions; holding
others up to the light--now one bends to record something on a chart,
now there’s a crash of broken glass, a rustle and a stir, perhaps a
giggle, as some unlucky student blunders in an experiment. How it all
comes back at the sight of a bottle marked Cupric Sulphate, or H_{2}
SO_{4}! What a witty lecturer we had in the History and Methodology of
Medicine--a short, fidgety man with big blue eyes and benevolent face.
He had a funny way of pulling at his collars and cuffs while lecturing,
as if they choked him and he wished he could take them off.
When early in the first year our courses in dissections began, I was
all eagerness--the untried always having its charm for me. My name
being at the beginning of the alphabet, it fell to me to be one of
the first six students to work on the first subject. I had bought my
dissecting-case from one of the “middlers”; my long-sleeved apron was
ready; and I awaited impatiently the day, little dreaming what I was so
eager about.
Assembled in the dissecting room that first day to see us begin were
many middlers and seniors, as well as the sixty or more in our own
class. Each “subject,” as the cadavers are called, is apportioned in
six “parts,” lots being cast for the “parts,” six students working
simultaneously on a body. Half the abdomen and the right lower
extremity fell to me. My partner on the other side was a young woman,
older than I, but very shy and reserved. Other students drew the head
and neck, the chest and upper extremities.
That first day as we entered the dissecting room there lay the body, a
man’s body, stiff and stark, on the slanting zinc-covered table. The
arteries had been injected with red wax, and much of this loose wax and
other extraneous matter was clinging to the skin of our subject. It was
horrible to see the naked body. I had not thought of that. I don’t know
what I had thought of, surely not that--and this room full of onlooking
students!
The Demonstrator in anatomy gave us a serious talk, inciting us to
earnestness, cautioning us against carelessness, levity, or other
unseemly behaviour, after which he told us to set to work. The first
thing, he said, was to sponge the part assigned to us, then make our
incisions, as we had been previously instructed, and proceed with the
dissections.
I shall never forget the repugnance as well as the embarrassment I
felt at beginning our task. The young men in our class, as new as were
we to it all, were awed as well as we, but those horrid middlers and
seniors looking on with amusement! I felt my face getting redder and
redder, and Miss Bigelow’s cheeks looked as though they would burst;
but with downcast eyes we kept at work, probably taking far more pains
than we needed to. I can see just how gingerly we held the sponges; the
wax stuck; we thought we had to get off every speck. Then Miss Bigelow,
without looking up, whispered, “What shall we do with the pail?”
“Empty it, I suppose,” I snapped out; and getting up courage enough
to glance round the room, spied a sink. Stooping, I picked up the
loathsome pail and, with blazing cheeks, started across the room,
feeling that a great indignity was being undergone--to have to do this
at all was bad enough (I still think it was janitor’s work), but it was
intolerable to do it before those idle middlers.
Before I had taken many steps a young man in our class came up, took
the pail from me, and in a soothing tone said, “Please let me--now the
worst is over, Miss Arnold.” The tears started at his kindness. The
other young men must have felt ashamed, for they soon rallied round
the table, showing us how to make the first incisions, how to hold our
scalpels and tissue forceps, in fact, giving us many useful hints. We
had had the theory, but to make the actual incisions, to lift the skin
and deftly dissect it from the tissues beneath--was different from what
we had imagined.
Going from student to student, the Demonstrator instructed and
encouraged each in turn. Soon the room, thinned of its spectators,
took on a different aspect: the novices bent over their work with
interest and absorption. The painful emotion I had felt at seeing
those bodies, stripped and at the mercy of our little knives and
forceps, soon gave place to genuine enthusiasm. I dreaded the feel of
the cold skin, but once that was removed, I was all interest; one then
lost sight of the human side, and saw only the beautiful mechanism.
How wonderful it seemed when I had the external abdominal muscle laid
bare, and its structure disclosed, and this and the other muscles and
their adaptations seen! Some days later when one of the girls, working
on an arm, had the deltoid exposed, I was surprised to hear one of the
assistant demonstrators (a woman) say to her, “It is a pretty muscle,
isn’t it?” “Pretty” seemed such an incongruous word to use, but I
soon learned to admire the well-dissected muscles, though rather than
“pretty” I should have called them “beautiful.”
The instructors demonstrated the viscera, which, with the muscles and
other “soft parts” were removed piecemeal, and disposed of daily.
Whitman’s tremendously realistic line, “What is removed drops horribly
into the pail,” always takes me back to the dissecting room with its
repulsive odours and its sorry sights. But our growing interest did
much to mitigate the repellent features.
The actual dissection was interesting and easy for me, but it was not
easy to demonstrate the muscles and groups of muscles, for it was
always difficult to comprehend their action. Never having been able
to understand levers and pulleys and mechanical things, I could not
reason out things which were so obvious to others. It was absurd, after
getting the muscles nicely dissected, with their points of origin
and insertion before my very eyes, to be unable to deduce what their
actions were. I had no “gumption.” This inability on my part puzzled
the Demonstrator and his assistants--the senior students, who moved
about from table to table, listening to our recitations whenever we
would get a group of muscles exposed for demonstration. One dignified
senior who was usually on hand to hear me recite, was painstaking in
trying to make me understand their action: “Why, can’t you see?” he
would ask; then, convinced that I could not, would try to drill it into
my head. His dignified air awed me considerably, and I was demure and
respectful to him, always calling him “Doctor” as, in the freshness of
our first-year’s awe of them, we supposed we had to call the seniors.
But one day, when in the reading room, I saw him try to kiss one of
the senior girls, my awe vanished; after that I was a trifle pert and
independent. It was funny how my whole attitude then changed toward
him. I suddenly saw through the mock dignity he carried while in the
dissecting room. In vain he tried to impress me with his gravity, I
only laughed in his face. So we soon got on fairly friendly terms, as
much as a humble junior and a “grave and reverend senior” could be.
Sometimes I surprised him looking at me with a quizzical, half-amused
look that changed to a frown and an attempt at dignity, when he saw
I was observing him. I imagine he quite enjoyed the deference of my
earlier manner, and was not a little annoyed at the discovery which had
disillusioned me.
Some weeks after I had seen him trying to steal that kiss, when I
was one day working on the head and face, he came up to hear me
demonstrate the facial muscles. The action of the muscles had got to
be a kind of joke between us, still he always laid particular stress
on that, persisting until I understood, and when practicable usually
requiring me to illustrate the action. That day I had been dissecting
out the _Orbicularis Oris_--the round muscle of the mouth. After I had
described it and its relations, he asked smilingly, “And the action?”
I replied that it was used to pucker the mouth, as in whistling,
and--and (mischievously) in kissing--_if you can_. He blushed
furiously, knowing then, positively, that I had, on that occasion, seen
the girl slip out of his grasp. Assuming a mock dignity he said, “I
have a mind to require you to illustrate the action--it is within my
province, you know.” Then _I_ felt cheap, and blushed furiously, too.
Later in the afternoon the Demonstrator himself came round and slyly
asked if I was ready to demonstrate the action of the _Orbicularis
Oris_ yet, so I knew the senior assistant had told him about it.
We had been told that no parts of our subjects might be taken from the
dissecting room--a necessary prohibition, as the College pledged itself
to bury the skeletons intact. (The boys used to say it was so there
would not be so much confusion on Resurrection Morn.) But each year
students were intent on purloining a hand or a foot, or some part, as a
souvenir. Because forbidden, of course I had this silly ambition, too.
(We were on our honour, else it would have been easy.) I bethought me
how I could get around the restriction: Our Anatomy said that sesamoid
bones were small unimportant bones sometimes found in the tendons,
not properly included as a part of the skeleton. The Demonstrator had
urged us all to hunt for sesamoid bones, meaning, of course, the small
adventitious ones that were a rarity. Herein I saw my chance: One day
while working around the knee, as the Demonstrator stood watching me, I
asked:
“Doctor S----, have any sesamoid bones been found this year?”
“No, I have heard of none.”
“They are not properly a part of the skeleton, are they?” (Innocently)
“Oh, no, no, they are very unimportant affairs--interesting only as
anomalies,” he said pompously.
“Then (demurely) I suppose I may keep all the sesamoid bones I find in
my subject, mayn’t I?”
He laughed and said, “Yes, you are welcome to all the sesamoid bones
you find,” and started to walk away.
“Thank you, Dr. S----,” I said, with ill-concealed triumph, “I’ll take
this patella when I go home to-night.”
He started, coloured, looked annoyed, then amused. He was fairly
caught, for the patella, though of course a legitimate part of the
skeleton, is formed in the tendon of the _Quadriceps Extensor_, and
is described by Gray, because of its mode of development, as a kind
of sesamoid bone--a fact which had somehow stuck in my memory, as
unimportant things will, while others of greater import sifted through.
The Demonstrator walked away looking a little chagrined, but later I
saw him laughing on the sly with the seniors, and before he left he
came back and said, “You may take your ‘sesamoid bone’, Miss Arnold;
you have earned it.”
I had not thought out how I could contrive to get a souvenir from my
next “part,” but this same Demonstrator unwittingly helped me out.
I was at work on the wrist, and as he stood looking on he asked,
“Have you found any more ‘sesamoid’ bones?” I said No, but just then
the little pisiform bone, not much bigger than a pea, stood out so
conspicuously that, seeing how easy it would be to sever it from the
other small bones, I purposely made a careless cut, and the little
thing rolled on the table.
“Oh, my!--well, you surely wouldn’t have me put that mite in the
pail--and it won’t stay on the wrist _now_.”
He knew, and I knew that he knew, and he knew that I knew that he knew,
that I did it purposely--his question, the prominence of the tiny bone
with its slender attachment, put it in my head--“Opportunity makes the
thief.” So he let me have the pisiform, but shook his head as though
he thought me incorrigible; and after that rallied me on what ruse I
would resort to with my next “part,” as I could hardly take the head,
or any of the vertebræ. I have these bones somewhere now. They gave me
a lot of bother to get clean, and of what earthly use are they? Yet
perhaps as much as many of the things we scheme and work for. It is the
endeavour that counts, and it was fun to outwit the Demonstrator. So we
managed to get some amusement out of the dry bones, but were glad when
the long weeks were at an end and we could go out in the sunshine after
lectures instead of working in that unsightly upper room.
One of the memorable experiences of that first year was an afternoon
spent with Laura Bridgman. Helen Keller’s achievements have since
familiarized us with what wonders can be done in teaching one who is
deaf, dumb, and blind, but when Dr. Samuel G. Howe attempted to teach
the child, Laura, it was pioneer work, and the difficulties were
well-nigh insuperable.
Miss Wilkins and I were invited to meet Miss Bridgman by Mrs. Lamson,
who, under Dr. Howe, had been one of the first to teach Laura to
communicate with others by means of the sign language. Mrs. Lamson told
us of those early struggles, how overjoyed child and teachers were
the day they succeeded in making her understand that certain signs
made upon her open hand represented the door-key which they had put
in her hand. When the import of this one thing, for which they had
toiled long, dawned upon the shut-in soul, she was a freed being; she
went about eagerly touching other objects, teasing in her mute way
to be shown their “sign,” too. Slow, infinitely wearisome were those
first steps in her education, but after a certain point, progress was
astonishingly rapid. She had not the distraction other learners have;
her thirst for knowledge was intense; her memory phenomenal--a thing
once learned became a part of her; she wore out all her teachers with
her insatiable desire to learn.
Among other things Dr. Howe earnestly wished to test whether the human
mind, without suggestions from outside, would, in its development,
evolve the idea of a Supreme Being. Here was an unprecedented
opportunity to test it, for, shut in as she was, Laura had no means of
learning anything except through her teachers. It would be a valuable
contribution to psychology to learn for a surety whether, unaided, her
mind would conceive the idea of a Deity. So for years they planned and
laboured with this experiment continually in view. Assistants were
rigorously instructed to exclude any hints or teachings which would
suggest worship or religion--anything which could in the remotest
way give her a glimmering of such ideas. Laura was showing wonderful
progress in development. Dr. Howe’s efforts seemed on the way to
success in this important test, when one of his teachers was called
away at a time when he himself was in Europe. The substitute, though
carefully enjoined to observe the precautions so jealously practised,
actuated by untimely zeal, and believing it to be her duty to thwart
Dr. Howe in his experiment, deliberately enlightened Laura about the
main orthodox teachings: she told her she had a soul to save from
eternal damnation; that a just God stood ready to pardon her manifold
sins, and so on. Laboriously she poured into Laura’s listening fingers
the intricate orthodox instruction concerning which she had hitherto
been kept in blissful ignorance.
One can imagine the difficulties encountered in expounding to this
deaf, dumb, blind, and bewildered girl (whose only religious training
had been daily examples of loving-kindness), the puzzling doctrines
that then passed for religious teaching. But in that, as in all else,
Laura was an apt pupil, and on Dr. Howe’s return from Europe he found
the careful forethought and labour of years destroyed by that fanatical
teacher. He was nearly frantic with rage and disappointment. I myself
can never think of that bigoted interference without my own breath
coming fast in anger.
When we saw her, Miss Bridgman was a tall, spare woman, perhaps not
more than fifty, though she seemed much older to me than fifty seems
now. Pale (she wore blue spectacles over the blind eyes); her dark
brown hair was parted over a refined face which had a non-fleshly
look, very mobile, very sensitive--a quivering, changing face with
the soul very near the surface; her lips were thin and very red. Her
long white hands were marvellous in their rapidity, receptivity, and
expressiveness.
Mrs. Lamson talked to her by swift touches on the palm, Laura’s
lightning fingers replying on her friend’s hand--a marvellous sight,
those two silently communicating, by touch alone, all the complicated
things which the instructor interpreted to us.
The one word which this mute woman could articulate was “doctor.” In
youth she had accidentally uttered the syllables and on being told what
it sounded like, had eagerly practised until she could articulate the
word. Though intelligible, it was distressing to hear it, and I was
glad when she resumed talk on her silent uncanny fingers.
“I don’t think it is nice for women to be doctors,” she said, on
learning that we were medical students. When her friend told her she
ought not to say this, she inquired, “Why not, if I think so?” They had
never been able to convince her that politeness sometimes constrains us
to conceal our thoughts. She even added, “Tell them I do not think that
women can be as skilful as men.” But she soon asked us to prescribe for
her eyes, explaining that the lids were sometimes sore. It struck us as
novel to be asked to prescribe for Laura Bridgman’s _eyes_. Her friend
told her we were only students, and had not yet learned to prescribe,
but added, “_I_ can tell you something that will relieve them--if you
will get some of the iron-water from a blacksmith and bathe them, it
will help the soreness.”
“What is a blacksmith?” asked Laura--“Is it one who colours things
black?”
There she had been all her life learning far more complicated things
than this, yet this familiar occupation was unknown to her! It was a
pleasure to see her teacher impart to her this information; to see the
eager, childlike delight as the knowledge became her own. We saw why
this aged face gave the impression of perennial youth; why we thought
her then, and still think of her, as a child; she had the freshness and
curiosity of a child; every contact with her fellow-beings opened new
vistas to her mind; every explanation begat other inquiries; she was
tireless in her endeavours to learn. Human strength was not equal to
the avidity she continually showed.
As we were leaving she said, “Please ask them if I may touch their
faces, then I shall know them _when I see them again_.”
Those white fingers twinkled over every part of my face--“the moving
finger” read, and seemed to read with uncanny skill. I was uneasy,
except that it was done so delicately, done eagerly, yet lingeringly.
It was as though she were probing my soul to find what manner of being
I was. She felt my hair, my shoulders, my hands. I cannot recall now
whether she made any comments. Then she did the same with Miss Wilkins,
whose ready blush mounted while restively submitting to those searching
fingers.
Laura paused and began talking to Mrs. Lamson. The latter laughed,
shook her head, replied on Laura’s fingers, seemingly arguing a point.
“What does she say?” insisted Miss Wilkins.
“She says that you are old and, when I told her no, she insisted. I
told her you were not old, but were older than your friend, and then
she cornered me by saying, ‘Ask her the year she was born.’ She always
was obstinate under evasion.”
Miss Wilkins blushed deeper than ever, but enjoyed Laura’s ready wit,
though forbearing to satisfy her curiosity as to the tell-tale year.
Though we attended strictly to business, it was not all work in those
days; yet we had little time or money for amusement. But in Boston
there is much to see and learn at little cost. The churches themselves
are an education, and I was an inveterate church-goer, hearing Phillips
Brooks the oftenest of any, but Minot Savage frequently, occasionally
little old Cyrus Bartol (whom someone called “the moth-eaten angel”),
Edward Everett Hale, James Freeman Clarke, Phillip Moxom, George
Gordon, and others.
When we had been only about two weeks in Boston a Harvard “medic,”
introduced by a Michigan cousin, called upon me. He was a bright,
dignified young man. The acquaintance proved pleasant and stimulating
throughout the college course. It seemed good to have a caller in the
strange city, and one who knew cousin Etta, and we were soon on the
best of terms. Suddenly I thought of Belle upstairs alone, and went
for her, and we three had a lively time, “Westerners” that we were,
comparing the Eastern ways with ours. We giggled and chatted and made
sport of the queer things we had encountered; mimicked the New England
pronunciation, and told him about “Our Caddie”; while, in turn, he told
us bits of his experience, of various places of interest, and how to
get to them. Belle was especially vivacious and entertaining that day.
But, after a little, she and he struck several points of variance, and
differences that began in a jest soon became heated arguments. They
were both Baptists, but he was liberal and she strait-laced; and while
at first it was fun to watch them spar, I grew uneasy as I saw Belle’s
right ear reddening--her danger signal. When she had asked him which
Baptist church he attended, instead of designating it decorously, he
had solemnly replied, “The church of the Holy Bean-Blowers,” referring
to the four figures on its steeple with long gilt trumpets held up to
their mouths. When Belle remonstrated, he declared with mock gravity
that they were assuredly blowing beans all over Boston, and everybody
would have them to-morrow morning for breakfast.
On leaving, Mr. Sergeant said that Canon Farrar was to preach the next
day at Trinity and that if he might he would like to call and accompany
me there. Had I been to Trinity yet? and heard Phillips Brooks? There
would probably be a big crowd, so, if I pleased, he would call early,
that we might be near the doors when they opened.
No, I--we--had not been to Trinity yet, I said, but that I--_we_--(with
an inquiring glance at Belle) would be pleased to go. (I had not the
slightest idea who Canon Farrar was, but did not ask.) Naming an early
hour, and not including Belle, though I had, he took his leave. Belle
was furious, declared she would not go, but did go when the hour came
the next day.
There was a big crowd waiting by the closed doors of Trinity. Belle,
being tall, was left to shift for herself in the crowd. I remember how
pleasant it was--an utterly new sensation--to be piloted and shielded
and gently pushed along in that well-bred crowd by my new acquaintance.
Towering above me he smiled down indulgently as we were jostled this
way and that. Soon I was swept off my feet and packed so closely that
the crowd bore me along, Mr. Sargeant near by assuring me that there
was no danger; that this was only the eagerness of the Bostonians to
attend church. Presently the big doors opened; the surging mass of
people carried me forward; in the vestibule I found my footing, and we
were soon seated in the great, dark, holy Trinity.
We heard the English divine whose “Life of Christ” I have since read.
His voice was not big enough to fill the church. I could not understand
him, and was not at all impressed, but for other reasons the day
was memorable. I was strangely moved by the church itself. When I
go back to Boston now, one of the things I care most to do is to go
down the little side street by which I approached, and come suddenly
upon Trinity as I saw it that first day. The vine on its gray walls,
the doves around its tower, the very stones in its huge pile, have
an inexplicable charm for me; and within--it calmed and satisfied
me; it seemed a worship in itself, that dim interior whose details
gradually became discernible to my unsophisticated eyes. I question
if any old-world cathedral could now have so profound an effect upon
me as Trinity had on that girl fresh from village life, who had seen
only the humble little churches of the home-town, or occasionally a
more pretentious but commonplace church in a small city. Those glorious
stained-glass windows! And the organ! Church and music stirred me, if
the English divine did not.
(A few years ago, one summer day, I went into Trinity and sat long in
the obscurity--the solitude, the silence, and the enveloping peace
were inexpressibly soothing. I seemed again to feel the uplift that
had always come on hearing Phillips Brooks. I thought of all that had
happened to me since, as a girl, I used to hear him pour out his rapid,
inspired utterances. How directly they always came to me! Tossed with
doubt as I was, I never heard him without receiving help. For years he
had been an uplifting influence in my life, and although I had never
spoken to him, his death (when I was practising in U----) was a real
loss to me--something precious then went out of my life.)
As we came out from Trinity that day, our new acquaintance proposed
going into the Art Museum. Acquiescing promptly, I was annoyed to find
that Belle was scandalized--“The Art Museum on _Sunday_! No, indeed!”
And she and Mr. Sargeant began sparring, he getting very sarcastic and
she very angry; but we ended by going in for a short stay, though the
mental atmosphere was not propitious.
It was always a welcome break in my evenings of study when the gong
would signal our room and “Theresa” the bell-girl, would announce
through the tube, “Miss Arnold has a gentleman caller.” It was almost
never any one but Mr. Sargeant. Down to the big reception room I would
rush, eager to meet him, and not having artifice enough to conceal it,
or not caring to. Other girls, receiving callers in the same room,
would keep them waiting; and when they did come would enter with
indifference and dignity, so unlike my prompt response to the signal.
But we were both “Westerners” and understood frankness, while most of
the young people there were from New England. Sometimes there would be
several young men ranged around the room waiting. As each girl would
appear, she would stand poised in the door-way till she discovered her
caller, then, making directly for him, would be more or less oblivious
to the others throughout the evening. We learned on entering the room
to nod to the other “steady” callers, but there was seldom further
interchange among us. As it neared ten o’clock, the young men would sit
with watches in hand, talking up to the last minute, when “Theresa”
would sound the gong; they would then start with a rush for the door,
and we would hurry to our rooms with a pleased sense of almost having
transgressed the rules; for there was but little time after that signal
before lights had to be out throughout the building.
We had had a funny initiation, after the first two or three weeks in
Boston, when we had moved from the Association building on Warrenton
Street to the one on Berkeley Street. It was then that we came
especially under the chaperonage of Miss Wilkins. That first night, at
the table assigned us, we found some bright girls whom we recognized
as students of some sort, as they evidently did us, but students of
what, all were unaware. One fascinating girl, in a light, bantering
manner, informed us of the rules and regulations of the place. We
liked her vivacity, her gestures, her imitative powers. On learning
that we had just come from the other building, she raised her eyes in
reminiscent horror--she too, had been there. In a serio-comic way she
expatiated on the disadvantages, with an exaggeration and dramatic
power that won the whole table; she declared the lights had to be out
at eight-thirty; that the tea-cups were hewn out of the solid rock;
(they were the thickest cups I ever saw); and that no man’s voice had
ever been heard in the sacred precincts. She then asked us how we had
liked there, for in Boston they never say “How do you like _it_?” We
told her we liked _it_ well enough, but it was too far from our work,
and too noisy to study much--that there had been several elocutionists
who had ranted and howled so much that we found studying almost
impossible. Her amusement at this egged Belle on; she grew vivacious
in elaborating and rehearsing our tribulations on this score, becoming
elated as they laughed gaily at her recital. And when we said that
if by any chance the elocutionists gave us any peace, the musicians
drummed and vocalized until the last state was worse than the first,
fresh gales of laughter arose. Significant glances passed among our new
acquaintances; and then the vivacious one solemnly warned us that she
feared our trials had but begun; for here, she said, in addition to
elocutionists and musicians who infested the place, there were night
prowlers--medical students whose midnight calls disturbed the whole
house. If we heard the door-bell ring vigorously at unseemly hours we
must not think it meant fire or other catastrophe--it would only be
the summons of the “medics” to their nocturnal sprees. All this was
mingled with frank and rather disparaging comments about women medical
students; and by unfeigned rejoicing when someone volunteered that a
bunch of the “medics” had left yesterday; and that the staid spinster
whom they pointed out to us at another table (our own Miss Wilkins)
was the only one of the obnoxious ilk remaining. Belle and I exchanged
glances but held our peace. But on stepping into the elevator, our
table-mates with us, Miss Wilkins came also, with the matron, and there
introduced us to that sober lady as her class-mates who had come over
to-day from the other building, so as to be with her, and nearer the
College. Our new acquaintances, astonished at this disclosure, and a
bit discomfited, soon rallied; the vivacious one declared that we were
now even, since she and her room-mate were elocutionist and musician
respectively, and that the others at our table belonged mostly to one
or the other of those reprehensible classes.
A delightful friendship grew out of all this; especially with the two
girls from Maine. Agnes, the vivacious one, was studying elocution;
Anna, the staid, music--the one all life and vigour; the other quiet,
sombre, phlegmatic. The sprightly Agnes would amuse us by stirring
up her chum--poking her in the ribs, she would say, “Anna, Anna,
animation!” and Anna would laugh and blush and rouse herself to please
her whimsical friend. They went with us on Saturday afternoons on our
sight-seeing expeditions, and to lectures, concerts, and church; and
in the evening, for the half-hour after supper, we usually allowed
ourselves a chat in their room, or in ours, before buckling down to
study. They were curious about our work, as were we about theirs. It
was fun to hear Agnes, who attended the Brown School of Oratory, exalt
it at the expense of the Emerson school; and to see her toss her head,
and watch her nostrils dilate, when she argued with the Emerson girls.
Sometimes we went to their recitals. Anna used to play for me by the
hour, when I had time to listen, shyly pleased that her music pleased
me; she was too susceptible to anything I said or did, and would have
formed one of those extravagant friendships of which we were seeing so
many in Boston, had I been so minded.
Our life at the Y. W. C. A. building had much in common with
boarding-school life--though less restricted in many ways--a community
of women, its walls seldom echoed to a man’s step or voice, except in
the evening when callers came. It sounded good to hear the deep tones
of “Dan,” the janitor, when he brought trunks to the rooms, or was
otherwise called up from the basement. Even the elevator-boy was a girl.
As our medical books accumulated, we had need of book-shelves, but to
buy a book-case, even the cheapest, was not to be thought of. There
were so many expenses to be met, so many fees at College for the
different courses, books to get, bones to rent, chemicals and breakages
to pay for, board and laundry bills and the like, that we cut down
on all else as rigorously as possible. I remember how my heart would
sink at some new item of expense coming up at the College, and how I
dreaded to write home about it, knowing well what a sacrifice it meant
there. But to occasional expressed misgivings of mine, that I had
undertaken anything requiring such an outlay, Father would always write
reassuringly: “We shall manage somehow; don’t worry. One of these days
you will be where you can earn money, and then we shall be glad you
undertook it.” How often these cheery messages came to me during those
years!
One evening we sallied forth to a shoe store and bought a long, narrow
pine box for ten or fifteen cents. “Where will you have it sent?” the
man asked.
“We will take it ourselves,” we replied, much to the man’s amazement
and amusement. And Belle and I merrily carried the long box two or
three blocks to our boarding-place. People turned and looked at us;
street urchins guyed us, asking if it was our coffin; but to their
jibes we answered good-humouredly--it was sport for us as well as for
them. Standing the thing up on end, and making shelves of the lid, we
covered it with blue paper-cambric, and when our medical books were
in it, we were as proud as any girls in Boston; and it cost us about
thirty cents!
We had the diversion of gymnasium practice one evening a week, after
which we would come down to our room for quizzes, sitting around in our
“gym” suits, which rather embarrassed Miss Wilkins, and correspondingly
tickled us. Miss Thorndike did it, too, so she couldn’t very well
criticize it openly.
Some evenings, sitting in our rooms studying, we would hear the street
cry, “Swee-et cidah, five cents a glahss!” We feared it would be
frowned upon by the staid matron if we succumbed to this enticing call,
but as the cries came nearer our mouths watered. One night, deciding
to risk it, seizing the hot-water pitcher and some change, down the
stairs I stole, and sliding out the side door, lurked in the shadow of
the building till the man and his cart came close to the curb, when,
guiltily making the purchase, I stole upstairs. Safe in the room, we
had our spree, becoming as exhilarated as though it had been champagne.
Such simple pleasures--how they come back as I recall those student
days!
One evening Belle and I closed our transom tight and lit a cigar which
one of the men students had given me at college, daring me to smoke
it. (And for a girl to smoke in those days was--well, most unusual.)
How it smarted the lips! I didn’t like it a bit, but smoked it to the
bitter end. And then we were scared, fearing the odour would penetrate
the hall. Quickly airing the room, we sat down with our books and our
bones; and none too soon; for down the hall came the matron, sniffing
and declaring she smelled cigar smoke. We heard her high-pitched voice,
heard her tapping on the doors and making the inquiry; but when she
came to ours we were bending over our big books, one with a skull in
her hand, the other with a long bone which was receiving close scrutiny
as, in answer to her knock, we said “Come,” and looked up with feigned
annoyance at the interruption. Startled at what she saw, she made a
hasty retreat, or would surely have noticed that the smell of smoke was
stronger there than elsewhere.
Another escapade promised to be more serious: One Sunday afternoon
while reading in our room a light flashed in our window; it came again
and again. We soon discovered, in a building about two blocks away,
a young man with a hand-mirror and another with opera glasses. We
dodged back whenever they tried to use the glasses, but as the flash
kept coming, we drew our shades for an instant, piled our skull and
cross-bones on the window-sill, then lifted the shade. Such antics as
they went through! They were certainly taken aback. Feeling that we had
checked them, we resumed our reading. Soon again came the flash and,
looking out, to our amazement we saw on their window-sill also a skull
and cross-bones! They were doubtless Harvard “medics.” But just as we
were elated over the discovery and the curious coincidence, we heard
the matron and housekeeper’s voice as they came down the hall on an
investigation tour.
“It must be in one of these rooms, right along here, either on this
floor or on the next,” we heard the matron say, and her fussy little
tap was heard on door after door. When she came to ours no bones
were in sight; one girl sat quietly writing a letter, the other was
apparently taking a nap. A low “Come” from the one writing, and a hand
held up in warning as the head peeped in, lest the sleeping room-mate
be disturbed, satisfied the guileless matron that we were innocent.
Explaining that some young ladies on that floor, or the floor above,
had evidently been answering signals of some young men across the
way, and that she was anxious to find out who it was, and put a stop
to it, else it would bring disrepute upon our building, she left us,
apologizing for the interruption. Thus ended the flirtation between the
Boston University skull and the skull from Harvard!
The first real sorrow of my life came to me that year: One forenoon,
as we all piled out from the lecture room and rushed to the mail-rack
for our home letters, a tall blond youth who was usually on hand to
lift down my microscope and sharpen my dissecting knives handed me the
home letter which was always too high on the rack for me to reach--the
letter which never failed to come on Tuesday noon. Running with it to
the cloak room, eager for the home news, I read:
Grandpa is very ill. The Doctor says he cannot get well. “Tell
Eugenie I shall never see her again,” he said last night. Perhaps
you can write him a letter we can read to him. You better not try
to come home. It is too far, would cost so much, and would break
into your studies so.
How the sunshine vanished as my thoughts flew to that little bedroom
where he lay--my dear, touchy, indulgent grandfather! I did not go to
the lecture that afternoon, but stayed in the library and wrote him a
farewell letter. I should like to see that letter now. I wonder what I
wrote; I know nothing more genuine and tender ever went from one soul
to another. Besides a loving farewell, which his approaching death made
possible for me to express, reticent as I was by nature and training,
it contained, I know, a passionate assurance that it would be well with
him where he was going. I knew that Mother was praying and thinking,
“Oh, if he were only prepared to go!” Something of this might be in
his own heart, too. I thought of his ungodly life, of his profanity;
but against these I weighed his uprightness and his big loving heart,
and _I knew_ that these would count--count with _what_ I was no wise
sure; but I knew that it was right thus to try to ease the terrors
of his last hours, if such were troubling him. It was the passionate
protest of my struggling mind, becoming tinctured with Unitarianism
and Universalism, against the suffering that I knew was Mother’s (if,
indeed, it was not Grandpa’s also), with her Methodist way of looking
at things. Somehow, I could see my grandfather, sturdy to the last,
scorning weakly to repent, even to escape the terrors of the Unknown
into which he must soon go.
He never saw that letter. Whether he became unconscious before it
reached there; or whether Mother in her zeal felt that it might prevent
his last chance of repentance; or whether, because of its passionate,
perhaps hysterical, character, it was deemed by my parents better
withheld, I never knew. I was unwilling to inquire when, months later,
I reached home. Mother said it seemed best only to tell him of my
good-bye. Perhaps it was; but I wonder if he didn’t know without
seeing it--I felt very near him that hour in the library framing my
farewell, and learning for the first time what it means when Death
comes to our own.
After some months, Belle and I took a larger room at the Y. W. C. A.,
and a girl in the class ahead of us joined us--a quiet, amiable girl
who acted as a kind of buffer between us, after which we got on much
more comfortably.
One evening she took me with her to a confinement case on which she and
a senior student were engaged. It was my first experience in dispensary
quarters, and the sordid surroundings, the mean tenements, the poverty
and misery were a revelation to me. Everything was untidy and unclean.
I could not bear even to sit on the chairs. The night was long; the
groans of the woman were painful to hear. Being only a junior, with
no knowledge of obstetrics, I had little intelligent interest in the
case. I gathered from the low conferences of the students, after their
frequent examinations, that all was not progressing satisfactorily;
and some time after midnight they told me they would need to call
in the professor in obstetrics, since it promised to be a case for
instrumental interference. Undergraduates were not allowed to assume
charge of such cases unaided.
The senior student and I went for the professor. I had never been on
the street at so late an hour, and felt a pleasurable excitement in the
adventure. I dreaded most those mean streets through which we had to
go before reaching the more respectable quarters. We had gone only a
short way when our progress was arrested by a night-prowler, though no
more formidable one than a goat. On nearing Boylston Street we met a
few men and saw an occasional policeman. Everyone we passed showed more
or less curiosity, and one policeman halted near us, but said nothing,
Miss Farnsworth’s obstetric bag perhaps indicating to him and others
that we were out on some legitimate errand.
Presently my heart almost stopped: A man stepping alongside Miss
Farnsworth had caught step and was walking by her side without a word.
Glancing up at her in apprehension, I saw her face was pale and stern,
but she looked straight ahead, apparently oblivious of his presence.
Soon I felt her crowding me, and saw he was pushing close to her side;
but she neither slackened her pace nor betrayed awareness of him. My
heart was going like a trip-hammer, but somehow I felt secure, she
seemed so unmoved. Soon the man ceased crowding, lifted his hat, and in
a deferential tone said, “I beg your pardon, ladies,” and walked on. We
walked on, too, not speaking till he had disappeared from sight; then
the imperturbable young woman, with trembling voice, told me she had
heard that that was the best way to treat such an encounter, but that
it was the first time she had had to test the advice.
Professor S---- went back with us and delivered the child.
I heard Lowell lecture two or three times that first
year--conversational talks and readings from the early English
dramatists. I liked his scholarly face and voice, and felt the charm
of his manner, but recall almost nothing of his talks. In reading he
pronounced ocean “o-ce-an.”
One day in walking down Tremont Street, as we halted at Miss
Thorndike’s boarding-house, we saw a stout, middle-aged woman in the
window, who nodded pleasantly to Miss Thorndike: “That is the poet,
Lucy Larcom,” she whispered, to our awed surprise.
We used to go to King’s Chapel just to see Dr. Holmes, who always
sat in the same place in the gallery--the little old man, looking
somewhat sleepy and very remote, but very fitting in that quaint old
meeting-house. I first read his books in Boston, and it was such a
delight in walking across the Common to realize that it was amid these
very scenes that he had written the “Autocrat” and the “Professor.”
It was a notable day when we went to Cambridge and visited Harvard
University, the Old Craigie House, the Washington Elm, and Mount
Auburn. Then there were the trips to Charlestown and Bunker Hill,
and the Navy Yard--these soon after our arrival there--it all seemed
like stepping out of real life into a novel. What a glamour there was
over everything! I remember my awed feeling on gaining admission to
Longfellow’s home, when, standing in the darkened study, we saw his
table, his books and papers, they said, just as he had left them. I had
then scarcely emerged from the spell of his poems, and, as we looked
on the River Charles that afternoon, and thought of the poet standing
in the very places where we stood; then, on returning to Boston across
the long bridge, saw the lights reflected in the dark waters, and the
stream of people hurrying to and fro, it all seemed a beautiful, sacred
experience, linked as it was, with the Sunday afternoons at home, when
I used to sing Father to sleep with “The Bridge” and “The Day Is Done.”
“The Bridge” may have meant London Bridge, but to me it will ever be
that long bridge spanning the Charles, over which we returned to Boston
after our pilgrimage to the poet’s home.
Mary A. Livermore’s lecture on Harriet Martineau was an event of that
_annus mirabilis_; I sent reports of it home to our village paper,
having previously written up several of our noteworthy excursions in
and around Boston. This had begun by Brother letting the editor of the
paper read one of my home letters, which he subsequently published, my
first intimation of it being its discovery in the paper.
I heard Joseph Cook lecture on the Indians, and heard Will Carlton read
some of his own poems, and tried to be impressed with each, but was
not. But I heard Beecher and was impressed without trying. He lectured
on the Conscience; he said some persons’ consciences were like livery
horses--they kept them all saddled and bridled and ready to let, but
never used them themselves.
My first play in Boston was Booth in “Hamlet,” and I was a bit
disappointed, having expected to be swept off my feet; instead, I
found myself coolly watching it all, interested, but calmly, almost
critically so, if a girl at her first real play _can be_ critically
interested. But when I saw J. Wilson Barrett in “The Poet Chatterton” I
_was_ moved, and forgot everything but the woes of that ill-fated youth
whose suffering and tragic death Barrett made so real. My throat ached
and the tears fell fast as the frenzied poet on his knees before an old
chest frantically destroyed his rejected manuscripts. I wonder if the
same thing would not seem melodramatic now.
Toward the close of our first year several of the students were invited
to Cambridge to visit the Agassiz Museum, and take supper with one of
our class-mates. It was the first time I had been in a home in all that
year, and I shall never forget the feeling that came over me after
those months spent in a large institution with its huge dining room,
and a hundred or more girls at table: to sit down in a real home
once more, and see a real mother pouring tea; to hear “Anna” called
by her given name, and see all the intimate home life, was a precious
experience. Until then I had not realized how homesick I had been. I
wondered if they knew how beautiful it all was--they seemed so calm
about it, so unconcerned, while in spite of all I could do my tears
were crowding fast. No one but Belle had called me by my given name
since I had left home, eight long months before; that “Anna” in the
mother’s voice made me hungry to hear my own name. I recall how odd it
sounded to hear them speak of “Mr.” Longfellow, and “Mr. Agassiz,” as
they recounted every-day things about them. From their talk one would
think they came and went around Cambridge like ordinary persons! It
seemed as if this casual manner of speaking of these great men must be
assumed.
Among the revelations of that first year were the vehement women
friendships we saw in Boston. Of course I had known of extravagant
girl friendships, schoolgirls, but these were women, and they acted
like lovers. There was something unpleasant in it to me, even before I
learned, as I did in later years, that such companionships sometimes
degenerate into perverted associations. Not that this was the case
in any of the women I knew, but I had no liking for the peculiar,
absorbing feminine intimacies I saw at the College, at the Association,
and wherever I had near views of the lives of New England women. Even
“Our Caddie” had a beautiful senior student who adored her--a tall,
dark dignified maiden. They were said to be inseparable outside of
college precincts; a strange contrast, this pair! There were several
“pairs” in the senior class, and among the “middlers,” and even with
the juniors they sprang up like mushrooms. They gazed at each other
soulfully; they lived and thought in unison, communicating by glances
rather than by the crudity of the spoken word. I felt inclined to
ridicule them, yet there were some who were restrained in conduct, and
who seemed so unmistakably congenial that their attention for each
other, singular as it was to me, commanded respect. Still I was wont to
say that if ever I did fall in love, it would be with a man.
It seemed to surprise the students of both sexes when it dawned upon
them that Belle and I were not that kind of friends. Miss Thorndike,
our Buffalo friend, attracted the prim Miss Wilkins in this same way.
It amused Belle and me to see Miss Wilkins actually blush at little
attentions from Miss Thorndike; but Belle herself soon succumbed to the
strange attraction: One night after a quiz held at Miss Thorndike’s
room, Belle having lingered behind a little, on joining me, grasped my
hand and fervently whispered, “Genie! Miss Thorndike kissed me good
night!” I could feel only pitying amusement at such extravagance. Miss
Thorndike evidently enjoyed such triumphs; she tried to get me under
her spell. The more I saw of her, I saw that certain girls and women
were always falling a victim to her. Years later a sickly, neurotic
girl became so absorbed in her as to become almost estranged from her
family; she lived merely to bask in the Doctor’s presence--distinctly
an unhealthy relation. My own instincts from the first led me to
avoid such associations. In the years that followed, coming upon
such attachments, I clearly saw how it hampered women in their work,
the “vinewoman” acting like a parasite to the more rugged, energetic
personality; the latter having a multiplicity of interests, while the
clinging vine would be wretched at any interests in which she did
not have the lion’s share; in fact, was always chary of sharing her
inamorata with others to any degree.
There was a lackadaisical girl in our class, several years older than
I, who had been thus inclined toward me. I did not understand it at
first. She followed me about, trying to absorb my time and attention,
eager to do all sorts of little services for me; but I quickly put a
stop to it, though having to seem unkind in doing it. And there was a
married woman in our class who attempted a like attachment. One night
when several of us were discussing this topic, I must have spoken
of myself as bullet proof, as I ridiculed such folly. Suddenly this
student seized and kissed me, not once or twice, but several times,
fiercely, almost brutally. Surprised and indignant, I was actually weak
and unresisting for a moment, the others looking and laughing while
this aggressive creature triumphed and sparkled as she said, “There!
that is the way I would make you love me!” There were but two ways to
treat her assault--as a jest, or an indignity--I chose the former,
and shunned her throughout the rest of the course. I had disliked her
glittering black eyes and her personality anyhow, and this incident
only strengthened my instinctive repugnance.
Still another student, one of the juniors when I was “middler,” showed
a romantic inclination toward me: I had befriended her in little ways
because she seemed forlorn, and because I remembered every little
kindness shown me during the first year. She was of the pronounced
masculine type and seemed to glory in it, was careless in dress;
unprepossessing, and with a heavy voice. She was docile as a lamb with
me, and I succeeded in getting her to abandon some of her mannish
ways, and to be more mindful of her appearance. She would have been
my willing slave; but her devotion was irksome and I nipped it in
the bud; I neither wanted to adore, nor to be adored. Even at their
best, these inordinate attachments seem like outlets into a false
channel--the natural one being impeded. They affect me much as does a
woman’s silly devotion to a pet dog when, failing to find its natural
outlet, her maternal love degenerates, descending to the dog-kennel,
instead of blessing the nursery.
The religious qualms and questions of my school days were still
actively disturbing during that first college year, and I did not
cease trying to get on comfortable footing concerning them, though
knowing it could never be on the old footing. Miss Wilkins, a good
orthodox Congregationalist, listening sympathetically to my doubts and
difficulties, attempted to help me, finally urging me to let the doubts
go and just pray. I tried hard to follow her advice. On my knees alone
I prayed earnestly, but could get no awareness of a listening Father;
still I prayed, but soon, to my shame and sorrow (and, yes, to my
amusement, too), my mind having wandered, I found myself repeating the
branches of the axillary artery which I had been studying that evening!
I arose with a helpless feeling, convinced that it was useless to try
further. The next day when I told Miss Wilkins, grieved, but a bit
amused, too, she shook her head--at a loss whether to scold or to pet
me.
As soon as our first-year “exams” were over I was wild to get home.
Shall I ever look forward to anything with the eagerness I looked to
that first home-going? Belle, who had gone at the Christmas holidays,
was less eager. I had set the date of arrival a day later than I
intended reaching there, just to surprise them. When, on nearing Utica
we saw the fertile Mohawk valley, in such contrast to the stony,
more picturesque scenery of New England, we grew wild with delight.
This was the home country; we were no longer on alien soil. And when
the drumlins came in sight, we jumped from side to side of the car,
hungrily regarding them. The conductor and the few passengers smiled
indulgently; they knew we were going home! That final twenty-five-mile
stretch was interminable, and when, at the last stop but one, three
miles from our station, we saw our own drumlins, and the familiar
houses and trees, my heart leaped for joy. My eyes were blinded with
happy tears when the train pulled in.
There was the very platform on which I had stood in the darkness months
ago and torn myself from my sister’s embrace! There was the dear old
rattly “stage” and the familiar driver to take us to the village! How
good everyone about the station looked! I felt like hugging everybody.
Our trunks were put on; the horses started; the bells jingled; the
windows rattled in the old coach as we jolted along all too slowly over
the mile that lay between me and Home!
It was a beautiful summer evening. I glanced hungrily from the
windows at every familiar sight--it all seemed so real, yet so
incredible--here were the old scenes just as I had known them,
unchanged, when so much had been happening to me! “Unchanged?” But
there was a change, a glamour over everything, a light that never had
been, and never could be again--the light in which one sees a dear,
familiar scene on returning to it after his first absence! When we got
to the “corner”--the top of the hill that leads down to our house--I
climbed out and ran ahead to surprise them before they should hear
the stage-bells. I can see myself now, flying down the hill in the
June twilight, and running up the steps into Mother’s arms, almost
before she knew who it was. Home again, among the four beings I loved
best in all the world! If one wants to know how much he loves home
and family, let him go away in his youth to a distant city for long
months, then let him come back to that shelter and learn to the full
the blessedness, the sacred joy of all that is comprised in that word
“Home”!
How late we talked that night! Neighbours and friends flocked in to
see the wanderer; how good they all looked! but how odd their voices
sounded--every _r_ in their words stood out with such distinctness,
after hearing the broad _a_’s and the softened _r_’s of the New
England pronunciation. I spoke of the peculiarities of the New England
speech; how funny it had seemed to hear the College professors speak
of idea_r_s; how the chemistry professor talked of soda_r_ ash,
and, unless she was very careful, the Maine elocutionist called her
room-mate “Anna_r_”; of how affected it seemed to omit their _r_’s in
words where they should be, and insert them where they did not belong.
I said I had noticed a decided difference in Belle’s speech, although
she had ridiculed it as much as I did when we went there. While I was
speaking of this, a smile went round the family circle, finally they
laughed outright.
“What are you all laughing at?” I asked, a bit nettled. They said
they guessed Belle was not the only one who had taken on the Boston
pronunciation.
“Do you mean me?” I asked incredulously.
“We certainly do.” They had been amused ever since I had arrived to
note the change in my speech.
After we had been home a few days my mark in anatomy came. Belle and I
had been so scared when we had gone into “Our Caddie’s” examination,
that we had cared little about what marks we would get, if we could
only squeeze through. On opening the envelope I thought there must be
some mistake, for there was my name and number and my standing (in “Our
Caddie’s” own handwriting)--“100 plus 1.” She had deigned to write on
the card: “This means that you stood ninety-nine on your paper, and,
with twenty perfect plus marks in quizzes, it makes your standing 100
plus 1. One other in the class stood the same.” Miss Thorndike was that
other. It was always a puzzle to us both that she and I received this
high rating from the exacting Dr. Matson, for others in the class were
unquestionably better students than we were. My rejoicing, however, was
keen--until I thought of what Belle would say; but she was off in the
country, and I did not see her for some weeks; still there _was_ that
fly in the ointment.
During that vacation I took the agency for a book called “Milestones,”
and went about the village canvassing--distasteful work, but I cleared
fifty dollars by the means. One day when storm-stayed in a poor little
house on the east side of the town, an unforgettable experience came
to me. I usually found my best customers in such houses, and rather
enjoyed their rapt attention as I expatiated on the treasures in the
book; for, discarding the printed tale which the publishers had advised
agents to use, I adapted myself to each audience in turn, selecting
for bait the pictures and articles that I thought they would best jump
at. Sometimes, under their interested attention, I would wax eloquent.
I always knew in advance when an order was forthcoming, but enjoyed
quite as much getting my victim on the hook as securing the order.
As I waited that day in the little house till the rain should cease,
a big, strapping neighbour, rushing in out of the storm, puffing and
red-faced, blurted out, “John Stevens’s girl’s dead--died at four
o’clock.” Little did she or the others know! To them it was just a
piece of village news, yet this girl was my dearest friend! I had known
her death was near, but to learn of it in that squalid home, and from
this loud-mouthed woman, seemed a desecration. I sat very still till
the rain ceased, hearing their talk as in a dream.
Our old cat’s time had come to go that summer, and I decided that
I might relieve it of its existence, at the same time that I could
add to my knowledge of comparative anatomy, and give the children
in our street some instruction as well. So, improvising a place in
our back-yard under the Baldwin apple tree, I started out bravely to
chloroform the cat. But its writhings were too much for me; and Sister
and our neighbour, Walter, had to take that part off my hands; the rest
I did without a qualm, instructing the big-eyed, eager children about
the muscles and viscera, and enjoying the amusing questions they asked.