Many students work their way, either wholly or in part. Thirty or forty of them serve in the dining room, for which work they are allowed sixty-five dollars a year. Others, who clean classrooms are allowed fifty dollars a year, and still others earn various sums by assisting in the library or reading room or by doing secretarial work.
Unlike the other departments of the college, the musical department is not a tax upon the State, but is entirely self-sustaining, each girl paying for her own lessons. This department is under the direction of Miss Weenonah Poindexter, to whose enthusiasm much if not all of its success is due. Miss Poindexter began her work in 1894, as the college's only piano teacher, giving lessons in the dormitories. Now she not only has a splendid music hall and a number of assistants, but has succeeded in making Columbus one of the recognized musical centers of the South, by bringing there a series of the most distinguished artists: Paderewski, Nordica, Schumann-Heinck, Gadski, Sembrich, Bispham, Albert Spaulding, Maud Powell, Damrosch's Orchestra, and Sousa's Band.
So much I had learned of the I. I. and C. when it came time for me to flee to the train. My companion and I had already packed our suitcases, and it had been arranged between us that, instead of consuming time by trying to meet and drive together to the station, we should work independently, joining each other at the train.
I left the college in an automobile, stopping at Mrs. Eichelberger's only long enough to get my suitcase. As I drove on past the next corner I chanced to look up the intersecting street. There, by a lilac bush, stood my companion. He was not alone. With him was a very pretty girl wearing a soft black dress and a corsage of narcissus. But the corsage was now smaller, by one flower, than it had been before, for, as I sighted them, she was in the act of placing one of the blooms from her bouquet in my companion's buttonhole. Her hands looked very white and small against his dark coat, and I recall that he was gazing down at them, and that his features were distorted by a sentimental smile.
Her hands looked very white and small against his dark coat. He was gazing down at them, his features distorted by a shockingly sentimental smile
"Come on!" I called to him.
He looked up. His expression was vague.