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.