Sure, therefore, of a friendly audience, Annabel gave the Class History, and Polly the Class Prophecy. Ruth had written the words of a Class Song for which Julia had composed the music. There was a Class Poem by Estelle Ambler, a girl whose verses had lately appeared in several of the magazines, and it was rumored that Clarissa was to make an original contribution to the programme which no one was to know about until the last moment.
Annabel’s History was even cleverer than her classmates had expected. She reviewed brightly the various events of the undergraduate years, scholastic and athletic, with the usual gentle gibes at History I and English 22, and the trials offered by Junior forensics and daily themes; and she made all laugh by the originality of her class statistics.
“We are 1,378 years old,” she read from her manuscript, “2,942 feet high, and we weigh a little less than four tons. During our four college years we have studied 26,134,720 minutes, and at Mrs. Agassiz’ Wednesday afternoons we have drunk in all about 7,000 cups of tea. During our four years we have used about 260 pints or 32.5 gallons of ink, and 5,636,250 pages of theme paper, which would cover about 5,000,000 square inches. The actual time spent in writing examinations has been just 96 days, of 24 hours each. For this work 5,240 blue-books have been necessary, and 320 quarts of Mrs. Hogan’s beef tea. In listening to lectures we have spent 30,000 hours, or 1,800,000 minutes. The Secretary knows that we have been eager searchers for knowledge, for at the lowest estimate we have asked her 2,470 questions, to which she has returned 2,470 patient and obliging answers. Now that we are about to depart to the four corners of the earth, we shall never forget old Radcliffe, nor the blue-books, even though we forget what filled them. We shall always remember the honored President and the Dean and the Secretary, and all who have smoothed our path here for us, and we shall never forget that we shall always belong to the Class of 189— of Radcliffe College.”
A Class Poem can never be very original, but Estelle Ambler offered one that was extremely smooth and pleasing, and to the point. Polly followed it with a Prophecy, in which she imagined all kinds of things likely to happen to the rest of the class. “Prophecies contrary to fact,” many of them might have been called, for Polly foretold the early marriage of several of those girls who were the least devoted to society and the most devoted to study, while for Annabel and Ruth and Clarissa she prophesied many long years of toil as teachers or professors in school or college. Business careers were foretold for the unpractical, and those girls gifted with a sense of humor had a chance, in Polly’s gentle satire, to see themselves as others had seen them; and they all smiled at her concluding words, which she said embodied the sentiments of most of those inclined to give advice to college girls that the main advantage of a college education for a woman is that it fits her, or ought to fit her, “to take up the duties and responsibilities of a household, that by bringing her accurately trained mind to bear upon the practical details of life, and exercising the acquired acumen of her mind, she can make homes happier than they ever were before, and—” The final words were lost in the applause that greeted this familiar commonplace; and Polly, acknowledging a wreath of roses laid at her feet, bowed gracefully as she descended from the Auditorium stage.
There was a hum of expectation as Clarissa followed Polly on the stage, carrying a large, stiff-looking roll. Unfolding it, she announced that she had been made Class Attorney, and that to her had been intrusted the making of the Class Will, which she would now read.
The things that she bequeathed were chiefly the common property of the class, such as “the superior smile when some underclass girl asks a question that cannot be answered;” to the incoming Freshman class the “privilege of profiting by the advice which their Senior advisers will give upon every occasion;” and last, though not least, in the minds of some, “the privilege of collecting on the slightest provocation sums of money, great or small, in exchange for tickets to entertainments, or without such consideration, to support divers good causes in Boston and Cambridge, especially those connected with settlement and college work; and the less ready money any girl is supposed to have, the more urgent shall be the appeals.”
To the Sophomores among other things were given the right of assuming “the nonchalant title of Junior,” and “the faculty and right of saying to Seniors who are loath to depart this college life, ‘Oh, well, we have a whole year more,’ in a way that makes a year sound an eternity.”
The Senior rights in various college officials and in certain college properties were likewise bequeathed, and the mock solemnity of the whole thing brought the programme to a close with a chorus of laughter. Then after the class had sung Julia’s Class Song, there was an informal half-hour of choruses and solos, and then a great hurrying homeward, that each girl might have an hour of rest before the grand climax of the day.
For some of the class, however, there could be no rest, as many, besides those on the committees, were anxious to do their part in helping. But beautiful though the decorations of Fay House were, they paled into insignificance before the outdoor glories, for clever brains and skilful hands had made the most of the opportunities afforded by the limited area of the grounds. There were lines of lanterns between the trees, and a wonderful pagoda that seemed to be constructed of lanterns; there were tables on the lawns, laden with refreshments, and each Senior shook hands with dozens of persons and answered scores of questions, and had little opportunity to talk with the person she most wished to talk with, and walked ten miles more or less showing each of her special guests the points of interest in and around the college buildings. Each Senior, too, looked her very best in her simple white gown, and the crowds of Harvard students who were in attendance testified that socially at least Radcliffe was in no way unpopular with the older college. So weary were the Seniors as the evening advanced that they had little strength left to dance in the new Gymnasium. But the undergraduates and their other guests made up for their own lack in this respect.
Pamela had invited Miss Batson and all the young ladies who boarded with her, and probably no guests enjoyed the day more than they. Besides her own family and some of her younger Newton friends, Lois invited Miss Ambrose, and those who were in the secret of Miss Ambrose’s aspirations could see that through her interest in Lois her own youth had been renewed. There was a rumor that she and Lois were to go to Europe that summer, and whether that was true or not, any one seeing them together could perceive that the feeling between them was stronger than that of mere friendliness. Clarissa’s father and mother had come on from Kansas, and several of her friends and relatives from the West. Annabel’s father, a New York politician, was so pleased that his daughter had retained the Presidency of the class that he was anxious to do all kinds of pleasant things for her constituents, and had finally arranged a mammoth pop concert party for Saturday evening. Julia, like the other Boston girls, had many guests, but the Bostonians were better able to entertain themselves than those who came from a distance.