"And at last we had to protest," continued Edith. "Had we done all that was expected of us, we should never have gone to bed. Our protests passed seemingly unheeded, till one day just before Thanksgiving, the Polyglot entered the room, one shoulder heaved on high with the great pile of books he held under his arm. Having as usual begun his lecture in the corridor, he was saying as he came inside the door, 'I have with me a most interesting find, a manuscript Latin poem, unexpectedly come into my possession. I shall write it on the board and then ask some one to volunteer with a translation.' Then standing on tiptoe, at times jumping so that he might write at the very top of the blackboard, he began to copy some verses, but long before he had finished, the class was convulsed with laughter. For it was a graceful little apology for overworking us."
"When I think of Bryn Mawr," said Marjorie, "few things have left so vivid an impression on my mind as his class-room. I was under the spell of literature from the moment I heard him give out his first parallel passage. There was in his classes a magical exhilaration never to be forgotten. And to think you poor things don't know anything about it!
"It must seem very different to you now," put in a senior, sympathetically.
"To be sure it does, and I think nothing strikes me more than the light-hearted way in which you do things that we didn't dare to do for fear of bringing down rules on our heads. Like our ancestors we were constantly 'snuffing tyranny.'"
"Hadn't you self-government then?" asked a freshman in amazement.
"We had no government of any sort, and no despotism could have been more compelling than the nameless fear that hung over us, that we might some day do something that would lead some one to take away our liberty."
"I have always regretted the establishment of self-government," said Elizabeth Gordon, a graduate who was to receive her Ph. D. the next day.
"Not at all, not at all," Marjorie hastened to declare. "You were always so immersed in work that you never bothered with other people; but those of us that thought it our duty to keep an eye on the freshmen found our hands full. Why the trips that I have made with my Memorabilia under my arm to administer sugar-coated pellets of college-spirit have cost me many a good mark."
The reminiscences had filled the afternoon, and now the college-bell rang out, warning the various groups that dinner-time was at hand. With an apologetic laugh Marjorie started up, saying as she walked along, "Six o'clock, and I've talked almost all afternoon! Well! Well! 'Tis but a sign of age."
"Age, you goose," laughed Edith, "weren't you always the 'garrulous particle'?"