THE GATES OPEN WIDE
Of what avail the attempt to chronicle those days? They were all happy, and all busy, yet never alike. When the sun shone it was beautiful, and when the wind roared in the trees and the rain slashed like falling sails, it was equally glorious. On clear, crisp, bright winter days the air grew magical with bells, and the grating snarl of the ice-boat's rudder was thrilling as a lion's cry. It was apart from the world of care and politics and revolution.
There was fun, whirlwinds of it, at the chapter-house when studies were over, and there was fun at the professedly-formal girl-banquets where the chairman arose to say, "Gentlemen, the honor—" and everybody shrieked to see her pull an imaginary chin-whisker. There was more fun on winter nights, when loads of people packed into the bob-tail mule-cars (which tinkled up the snowy street with wonderful persistency), while the passengers trod on each other's toes and chaffed the driver. And the wonderful nights under the stars, walking home with arm fast anchored in a fellow's grip; or strolls in summer beside the Lake, or dreamy hours floating at sunset in a boat which lay like a lily's petal, where skies of orange and purple met water of russet-gold and steely-blue.
And there was the glory of mounting also. One by one the formidable mesas of calculations, conjugations, argumentations, fell below her feet, and Rose grew tall in intellectual grace. She had no mental timidities. Truth with her came first, or if not first, certainly she had little superstitious sentiment to stand in the way. She was still the same impatient soul as when she shook her little fist at the Almighty's lightning.
It was this calm, subconscious assumption of truth's ultimate harmony with nature's first cause which she delighted in as she entered physics and astronomy. Her enthusiasm for the hopeless study of the stars developed into a passion. They exalted her and saddened her.
She lifted her eyes to them, and the ultimate distances of their orbits swept upon her with overwhelming power.
She felt again the ache in the heart which came to her as a child on the bluff-top, when the world seemed spread out before her. When she turned her face upward now it was to think of the awful void spaces there, of the mysteries of each flaming planet, and of the helplessness and weakness of the strongest man.
For a year she plunged into astronomy. It had the allurement and the sombre aloofness of unrequited love. It harmonized well with her restless, limitless inner desire.
These sudden passions for this or that art were signs of her strength and not her weakness. They sprang out of her swift and ready imagination, which enabled her to take on the personality of the artist, and to feel his joy of power. It was quite normal that she should desire to be successively circus rider, poet and astronomer, and yet, now that her graduation was near, she was as far from a real decision as ever.
"What are you going to do after graduation?" Josie said.