ABOUT MATHEMATICS AND ME.
I was a very difficult pupil to place, having been overeducated in some
subjects and absolutely neglected in others. I might have gone with the
seniors in English and History; was normal in Latin, that is, sophomore,
where girls of my age were put; was just beginning French; and had to go
with the kids in Mathematics. I had never played a game of tennis in my
life nor even seen a game of basketball, but I was naturally athletic
from the free country life I had led, and it was soon realized in
athletic circles that I would be on the team with a little coaching.
I was glad to see that Miss Cox was to teach me Arithmetic. Miss Peyton
hoped I could get into Algebra by Christmas and then, with hard study
and earnest coaching, perhaps catch up with the class. I had a feeling
that Miss Cox and I were going to pull together if she could just let
herself go. Her manner in the class was rather wooden, but she was an
excellent teacher and the girls were quick to recognize that, so while
she was not popular, she was not disliked.
I was such a stupid in Mathematics that I was afraid she might put me
down as a dunce and lose all interest in me, but the fact that I read
"Alice in Wonderland" seemed to be in my favor.
"Page, I will not have you look upon yourself as hopeless in
Arithmetic," she said to me one day when I despaired of ever
understanding what seemed to me a very intricate problem. "Lewis Carroll
was a great mathematician and still he wrote the delicious classic that
you and I are so fond of. Now I think minds that appreciate the same
things must be similar. I believe there is a corner of your brain that
is absolutely unexplored and that corner corresponds to the great
fertile area in Lewis Carroll's. All it needs in you is working,
digging, cultivating to produce fruit."
"Oh, Miss Cox, how splendid of you to look at it that way! I am going to
try awfully hard to work my poor, little, neglected, unused plot of
brain with all my might. If I can't grow anything but green persimmons,
that would be better than nothing."
"Ambition, Distraction, Uglification and Derision are the hard things.
If you look at it right, one side of Mathematics is really romantic."
Father always said the way to control me was through my imagination and
Miss Cox had surely hit on my weakness. The result was that Mathematics
was no longer dry-as-dust to me. I found it had been a closed book
because I had never been interested enough to open it. I soon
outstripped the kids in my class and was put in a higher one. I had to
read frequent chapters of "Alice in Wonderland" to cheer me on, and Miss
Cox used to quote Lewis Carroll to me when she and I were alone. I found
the other girls in the classes looked upon her as nothing but a teacher
and she regarded them as mere pupils, to be taught conscientiously and
then dismissed.
One day I sailed safely through a problem that was noted as a regular
stumper. As soon as the class was dismissed, Miss Cox exclaimed:
"'Come to my arms, my beamish boy. You've slain the Jabberwock.' Page, I
really believe you are going to end by being a pretty good
mathematician."
I answered:
"'He thought he saw a Garden Door
That opened with a key:
He looked again, and found it was
A Double Rule of Three:
'And all its mystery,' he said,
'Is clear as day to me!'
If I ever understand it, it will be thanks to you and Lewis Carroll!"
The Tuckers had been to school pretty steadily all their lives, so they
were able to go into the sophomore class in everything. I bitterly
regretted that my education had been so erratic, but determined to make
the best of it. Dum helped me with my French and we tried to keep to our
rule of talking French at the table; but as we did what Mammy Susan
called our own "retching" and my vocabulary was somewhat limited, we
had to resort to English a great deal or go unfed.
I know Dum and Dee felt sorry for me for being in a kids' class in
Mathematics. I didn't really mind nearly so much as they thought I did.
The kids were nice to me and I made some mighty good friends among them.
There was one little bunchy girl named Mary Flannigan who turned out in
the end one of the best friends I ever had in my life. She was short and
stumpy, with scrambled red hair and a freckled face and the very keenest
sense of humor I had ever known. She was a year younger than I was but
very well up in her classes, and she had a genius for mimicry that was
irresistibly funny. She had some stunts that endeared her to all the
girls. She could do a dog fight or cats on the back fence; and could go
so like a mosquito that you were certain you would be bitten in a
moment. She was something of a ventriloquist, which made these
accomplishments especially delightful.
Mary and I were put into Algebra at the same time, and to our joy Miss
Cox was to teach us. Mary had found out Miss Cox, too. Tweedles and I
had religiously refrained from telling any of the girls about her mad
revel on the day of our arrival, but we had tried to make them
understand what a very good old girl she was if you could just find her
out; and our attitude toward her was having its effect on the whole
school. Miss Cox, realizing that she was really liked and understood,
had a change of expression as well as heart. Her sad, crooked face was
now a happy, crooked face and she no longer saved her jokes for Tweedles
and me, but got them off indiscriminately, and very good jokes they
were, too. The classes in voice culture became more popular, and more
and more girls wrote home begging to be allowed to "take singing."
I shall never forget Mary's and my first lesson in Algebra. Miss Cox
looked at us with her twisted smile.
"Algebra is rather a poetical-sounding name, don't you think?" she asked
us.
"Maybe it is," said Mary, "but I bet it takes it out in sounding so."
"Oh, I don't know about that," and Miss Cox opened the book at the first
page and read as follows: "'In Algebra, the operations of Arithmetic are
abridged and generalized by means of Symbols.' That appeals to the
imagination somewhat, I think. 'Symbols which represent numbers.' Just
that word 'Symbol' sets me to dreaming. Arithmetic is the prose of
Mathematics where everything is stated and nothing left to the
imagination, but Algebra is very different. 'Known Numbers are usually
represented by the first letters of the alphabet, as a, b, c. Unknown
Numbers, or those whose values are to be determined, are usually
represented by the last letters of the alphabet, as x, y, z.' The
unknown numbers,--the mysterious numbers,--for what is unknown is in a
measure mysterious and what is mysterious is romantic or poetic. That is
the way I think of it. In working your Algebra, don't just look at it as
hard, dry facts to be mastered, but let x, y, z be the Great Unknown
that you are to find. Let the problem be a plot that you are to unravel
as Poe did 'The Gold Bug.'"
You may well imagine that Mary and I set to with a will to get all we
could out of such a thrilling subject. There were times when we felt
that Miss Cox was drawing a little on her imagination to find poetry in
such an example as this, for instance:
4x^{-2/3}-3x^{-1/3}-27=0
On the whole, though, Algebra was much more interesting than Arithmetic,
and sometimes I had the realization that it did mean a lot to me; and
Mary said she felt the same way. Anyhow, in the early spring we were
able to take the sophomore tests and go on in that class. Miss Peyton
said she considered it really wonderful that I should have progressed so
rapidly, but I told her it was all due to Miss Cox's being so certain
that Lewis Carroll and I had similar brains.