110 THE BOOK OF THE CLASS OF NINETEEN-ELEVEN

 

 

and bitter subject. There is something somewhere in Shakespeare about seeing ““me best
friend slain before me eyes”—well, imagine hearing all your friends slain before your eyes!
Was it pleasant? No. Nor is it pleasant to recall.

I, personally, was somewhat worried over an incident which occurred in early N ovember.
The white boot tops came twinkling after me one dark night, and pretty soon a voice in the
darkness—Mr. King’s—asked “How tall are you? About six feet?” Of course, I
indignantly shouted no, that I was only five nine (and then proceeded to add that I was
really awfully funny, only he mightn’t believe it); still there lurked in my heart the fear
that he might have cast me, together with Georgina, for a May Pole. At that first
memorable meeting I longed to dress in circular stripes (the L. H. J. says that’s the way
for the tall woman to look short) but was, unhappily, not able.

Mr. King looked us up, and he looked us down, as we sat in a row—we eight. Then
he said he was sure he didn’t see why we felt it necessary to appoint a committee for
choosing parts, because of course he had made up his mind about every part, years and years
before. ‘Now, for example, my Venus,” he murmured, ecstatically, “Why, I picked her
out—three years ago” (as Barb was at that time on the Pacific Coast, the statement is
interesting to say the least).

We, the Committee, were respectful, but curious. Later we were pugnacious, as well.
All the people he said were funny, we thought were dull; all the people he thought were
beautiful, we said were hideous. And so on, even to questions of tall and short. He was
sure, for example, that Constance Wilbur was a giantess; and that Keinath Stohr was just
cupid-size. “My twelve cupids must be twelve perfect, little rosebuds,” he explained
tenderly. And so it went.

He turned us loose, with vows of secrecy, to scour the campus for rosebuds, flowers,
comedians, merry men, etc. It was bad enough to have to scan every face; but later, when
Miss Daly taught us to scan every leg, then we really agonised. We used to go in pairs to
gym drills, and, standing on the running track, watch for likely people. But somehow, a
roomful of writhing blues, and reds, and greens, knotted in such contortions as only Miss
Applebee can devise, isn’t a hopeful spectacle from an aesthetic point of view. “Isn’t it
funny,” we would exclaim, “That people’s legs aren’t more like them?”

But you see all this isn’t funny. It is merely the sad, sad truth. It was a little funny
when Mr. King came dashing in one day and said “No, Miss Y. cannot be a Grace. I walked
up from the station behind her to day, and—she waddles!!”, We gasped at the hideous
revelation, and hoped he wouldn’t walk up from the station behind us. He went on to