Mathematics was always a bugbear to me. Passing the Regents early in the other elementary branches, and also in many of the Intermediate studies, I was long in passing in arithmetic. It was not only dry, it was incomprehensible. I detested it. Professor Durland was patient with me. I verily believe he would have let me drop the study if he could have. (To this day I often dream of being back in school and sneaking out of the arithmetic class, only to be discovered by “Prof.” and sent back to my hated recitations. What present-day duties am I longing to shirk, the Freudians will inquire?) I tried Regents in arithmetic three times before I passed. I well remember the last time: Professor Durland had coached me diligently for weeks, and I had felt desperately that I must succeed this time. The whole department was interested. It was unusual for one so advanced as I was in other studies to be so stupid in this.
It was Father’s day for being present during the Regents examination. (The different members of the Board of Education took turns in coming, to see that all was fair play.) How my heart thumped when the principal opened the sealed questions sent from Albany, handed a paper to Father, and glanced rapidly over the questions himself! I knew how much he wanted me to succeed, and I wanted to for his sake as well as for my own. Soon he nodded satisfactorily. Knowing I was watching him, it was as though he said to me, “It isn’t so hard—you can do it,” and as he put the slip of printed questions on my desk he said in a low voice, “You will pass this time, Eugenia.” That cheered me; it sounded so confident; and he knew my limitations. He had drilled me so well on the ground covered by the questions that I myself felt, on setting to work, that there was a fair chance of getting through.
“Prof.” came often to my desk, overlooking my paper. Once (it was not fair, I know, and he knew), he drew his pencil across an example I had worked. I did it over, somewhat conscience-stricken even at that hint, for at the close of each examination we had to listen to an oath read, stating that we had neither given nor received help from any source; then had to write these solemn words: “I do so declare,” and sign our names. Had I not been conscientious about this oath, I should long before that have cheated in arithmetic examinations.
When I handed in my paper, “Prof.” said, “Don’t go home till I look it over.” Returning to my desk, I waited. The suspense while Professor Durland and Father were bent over my paper was harrowing. It was a real vivisection for me. I saw by their faces when an answer was right, and when one was wrong, and saw them estimate the number of counts the Regents would probably allow on each answer. Other students, too, were eagerly watching the result—girls I had helped write compositions, who, in turn, had worked my examples for me, were anxious for me to be rid of the troublesome study.
Finally those two men lifted their heads. They had evidently marked me strictly, so as to be sure beyond a doubt that the more rigid Regents Board would not turn me down. Professor Durland now nodded his head vigorously, and Father beamed with joy. How gaily I walked out into the hall, my feet scarcely touching the floor! While I was putting on my wraps the door softly opened, “Prof.” stepped out and said, “You are through this time, Eugenia!” It was one of the happiest moments of my life; but though choking with emotion and gratitude to him, I don’t suppose I expressed it at all. Still I think he knew; knew also that I was fond of him. Along with several of the other girls, I had a schoolgirl’s infatuation for him. He was our hero—a silly, sentimental fondness of the adolescent period, but then, and always afterward, redeemed by genuine affection and gratitude. He was then, I suppose, a man in the thirties, and we were girls of sixteen and seventeen. I have since thought how wise and kind he was never to seem to notice or to take advantage of our romantic feelings, and never to make us appear ridiculous on that score, for he must have seen it all. (There was a time when we treasured everything he said or did. I even remember once that a certain girl and I kept count how many times he glanced at us in a forenoon; though his glances were doubtless of surveillance, we treasured them just the same.) He pursued just the right course with us, and our sentimental adoration did us no harm. It probably helped us in our studies. We blossomed under his approval, and withered under his biting sarcasm. Yet we often teased and annoyed him. He was surprisingly forbearing at times, and especially indulgent with me, giving me freer rein than some others to indulge certain whims and idiosyncrasies. I half consciously recognized this, girl that I was, and sometimes took advantage of it. I used to love to hear him pronounce my name; he said it a different way from any one else. What is it Whitman says—
Did you think there was but one pronunciation to your name?
I had nearly as hard a time with algebra as with arithmetic, and often became rebellious. Feeling that I could not go through the struggles and humiliations that I had with arithmetic, I tried repeatedly to get out of going to the class. I simply could not comprehend the study, and was always behind the others. Girls that were as stupid as stupid could be about tasks that were play to me would do things on the blackboard as impossible for me as the labours of Hercules. How glibly they explained what they had done! How painfully I toiled to perform the simplest tasks! Oh, those miserable days! Professor Durland tried all kinds of methods with me; he sometimes lost patience and would make cutting remarks, not, however, without having first tried to persuade me to work harder. I would not study if I could possibly help it, vainly hoping he would overlook me in class or give me something easy (which he often did), that my stupidity would not be so patent.
One day when sent to the blackboard, knowing that the task was beyond me, I refused to try. He insisted, saying he would help me. I hung back. That angered him. “You can go up to the blackboard, can’t you?” he tauntingly asked. I walked up to the board boiling with rage. He stood near giving me points and explanations which, had I not been so incensed and obstinate, would have enabled me to do the work. But I was angry to my fingertips. I fumbled with the crayon and it broke. I was powerless to do a thing but stand there and sulk. The tasks of the other students nearing completion, one by one they took their seats; one by one rose to explain their work; and still I stood, alone now, before the long blackboard, my work untouched, my eyes blinded with angry tears, my listless hand holding that useless piece of crayon, and those meaningless symbols staring me in the face.
What an awareness I had of my figure as I stood there, my back to the school! I could see just how the back of my drooping head looked, my long braids hanging below my waist. It was such an uncomfortable awareness of my disgraced self that I had as I stood there. The class-work ended, there was an ominous pause, I still standing helpless and hopeless. Then the storm fell. Before the whole school he launched forth a reprimand, every word of which cut me cruelly, the burden of it being that I was not so stupid as obstinate (I think he said “mulish”); that I thought I knew better than any one else what I ought to study; but that I would soon find that I was tremendously mistaken; that a “bird that can sing, and won’t sing, must be made to sing”; that algebra has its uses as well as rhetoric and physiology (oh, what scorn as he said these words—my pet studies!) and that hereafter I was to get my algebra lessons before being allowed to recite in anything else.