THE BOOK OF THE CLASS OF NINETEEN-ELEVEN ay

 

No one on the committee can possibly appreciate the agony suffered by us lower mortals
when we sat around waiting for the committee meetings to be over, and then sallied forth
to greet the favoured ones, only to be met by a forbidding silence. We concluded sadly that,
even with the higher mortals, at times all does not go well. But finally everything was
settled, for the best or for the worst, and then came the arranging of costumes and the
beginning of rehearsals. As for me,* the former process interested me less than the latter.
My costume was simple, lamentably simple. In fact, the only reason apparent to me for
my being given a costume was that there were certain persons designated to dole out
costumes and there were certain hours that had to be occupied by the said doling. So I
sacrificed myself and joined the line that was being measured and weighed and fitted in
an elaborate manner. But all the time I was thinking that I had a perfectly good brown
bathrobe of my own. However, there were many who openly and shamelessly revelled
in their costumes, and justly too. Perhaps there were moments in which I longed to have
glorious red hair and wear a silky brown costume and be sublimely conscious of the
becomingness of the wreath of silken oranges crowning the aforesaid hair. Or I might
have yearned for a flowing white robe trimmed with silver and loosened yellow hair bound
back by a silver cord. Or, perhaps, my fancy might have been caught by a saucy, short,
gayly flowered dress, trimmed by a glossy brown cow. If so, I smothered my yearnings and
flew home to look for silver linings in the modest brown garment tucked away in my closet.

For me, then, the costuming was a secondary question: But I could wax eloquent on
the subject of rehearsals. My only consolation for what I suffered on Tuesday evenings
was in watching what others suffered on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. I felt
that I owed that much to my self-respect. I have forgotten what happened to my work
during this time; but someone must have been doing it, perhaps Esther. She got such
thorough enjoyment from the rehearsals that she never felt the need of watching others,
and the more other people watched her, the more she seemed to be enjoying herself. She
swept the gallery with her strong, fearless gaze and fairly revelled. As for me, I could
raise my eyes no higher than the clock. They preferred to remain on the clock anyway.
It was a lesson to any one, it was so hard-working and painstaking. I never saw it shirk
a minute, and every time I looked at it I was filled with a philanthropic yearning to help it
along. I had three speeches, I think, presented to me with the same elaborate ceremony
as my costume, and my whole aim was to avoid at least one of them, which I generally
could do as they were scattered through the play. The play lasted only about three-quarters
of an hour, but for some reason we never reached the end, and weekly ran the risk of a
cheerless night spent on the campus.

 

* See paragraph 1.