The struggle for admission to college was ended, and I could er Radcliffe whenever I pleased. Before I entered college, however, it was thought best that I should study another year under Mr. Keith. It was not, therefore, until the fall of 1900 that my dream of going to college was realized.
I remember my first day at Radcliffe. It was a day full of i for me. I had looked forward to it for years.
A potent force withirohan the persuasion of my friends, stronger even than the pleadings of my heart, had impelled me to try my strength by the standards of those who see and hear. I khat there were obstacles in the way; but I was eager to overe them. I had taken to heart the words of the wise Roman who said, "To be banished from Rome is but to live outside of Rome." Debarred from the great highways of knowledge, I was pelled to make the journey across try by unfrequented roads--that was all; and I khat in college there were many bypaths where I could touch hands with girls who were thinking, loving and struggling like me.
I began my studies with eagerness. Before me I saw a new world opening iy and light, and I felt withihe capacity to know all things. In the wonderland of Mind I should be as free as another. Its people, sery, manners, joys, tragedies should be living, tangible interpreters of the real world. The lecture-halls seemed filled with the spirit of the great and the wise, and I thought the professors were the embodiment of wisdom. If I have since learned differently, I am not going to tell anybody.
But I soon discovered that college was not quite the romantic lyceum I had imagined. Many of the dreams that had delighted my young inexperience became beautifully less and "faded into the light of on day.」
Gradually I began to find that there were disadvantages in going to college.
The one I felt and still feel most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, whie hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to uh ohoughts. One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. Wheers the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures--solitude, books and imagination--outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some fort ihought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to h riches against a rainy day.
My studies the first year were French, German, history, English position and English literature. In the French course I read some of the works of eille, Moliere, Rae, Alfred de Musset and Sainte-Beuve, and in the German those of Goethe and Schiller. I reviewed rapidly the whole period of history from the fall of the Roman Empire to the eighteenth tury, and in English literature studied critically Miltons poems and "Areopagitica.」
I am frequently asked how I overe the peculiar ditions under which I work in college. In the classroom I am of course practically alohe professor is as remote as if he were speaking through a telephohe lectures are spelled into my hand as rapidly as possible, and much of the individuality of the lecturer is lost to me in the effort to keep in the race. The words rush through my hand like hounds in pursuit of a hare which they often miss. But in this