"'He thought he saw a Garden Door
That opened with a key:
He looked again, and found it was
A Double Rule of Three:
'And all its mystery,' he said,
'Is clear as day to me!'
If I ever understand it, it will be thanks to you and Lewis Carroll!"
The Tuckers had been to school pretty steadily all their lives, so they were able to go into the sophomore class in everything. I bitterly regretted that my education had been so erratic, but determined to make the best of it. Dum helped me with my French and we tried to keep to our rule of talking French at the table; but as we did what Mammy Susan called our own "retching" and my vocabulary was somewhat limited, we had to resort to English a great deal or go unfed.
I know Dum and Dee felt sorry for me for being in a kids' class in Mathematics. I didn't really mind nearly so much as they thought I did. The kids were nice to me and I made some mighty good friends among them.
There was one little bunchy girl named Mary Flannigan who turned out in the end one of the best friends I ever had in my life. She was short and stumpy, with scrambled red hair and a freckled face and the very keenest sense of humor I had ever known. She was a year younger than I was but very well up in her classes, and she had a genius for mimicry that was irresistibly funny. She had some stunts that endeared her to all the girls. She could do a dog fight or cats on the back fence; and could go so like a mosquito that you were certain you would be bitten in a moment. She was something of a ventriloquist, which made these accomplishments especially delightful.
Mary and I were put into Algebra at the same time, and to our joy Miss Cox was to teach us. Mary had found out Miss Cox, too. Tweedles and I had religiously refrained from telling any of the girls about her mad revel on the day of our arrival, but we had tried to make them understand what a very good old girl she was if you could just find her out; and our attitude toward her was having its effect on the whole school. Miss Cox, realizing that she was really liked and understood, had a change of expression as well as heart. Her sad, crooked face was now a happy, crooked face and she no longer saved her jokes for Tweedles and me, but got them off indiscriminately, and very good jokes they were, too. The classes in voice culture became more popular, and more and more girls wrote home begging to be allowed to "take singing."
I shall never forget Mary's and my first lesson in Algebra. Miss Cox looked at us with her twisted smile.
"Algebra is rather a poetical-sounding name, don't you think?" she asked us.
"Maybe it is," said Mary, "but I bet it takes it out in sounding so."
"Oh, I don't know about that," and Miss Cox opened the book at the first page and read as follows: "'In Algebra, the operations of Arithmetic are abridged and generalized by means of Symbols.' That appeals to the imagination somewhat, I think. 'Symbols which represent numbers.' Just that word 'Symbol' sets me to dreaming. Arithmetic is the prose of Mathematics where everything is stated and nothing left to the imagination, but Algebra is very different. 'Known Numbers are usually represented by the first letters of the alphabet, as a, b, c. Unknown Numbers, or those whose values are to be determined, are usually represented by the last letters of the alphabet, as x, y, z.' The unknown numbers,—the mysterious numbers,—for what is unknown is in a measure mysterious and what is mysterious is romantic or poetic. That is the way I think of it. In working your Algebra, don't just look at it as hard, dry facts to be mastered, but let x, y, z be the Great Unknown that you are to find. Let the problem be a plot that you are to unravel as Poe did 'The Gold Bug.'"