College stories; Women college students -- Fiction
But if her mathematics and chemistry and Tacitus left much to be
desired, there was one field in which she shone resplendently. “No one
could touch her”--as one young woman slangly but enthusiastically
remarked--“when it came to the Bible.” There she was in her glory, and
her vast knowledge of the wars of Jeroboam and Rehoboam, and her
appalling familiarity with Shamgar and the prophets, and the meaning of
the Urim and Thummim, and other such things, was the envy and despair of
the younger and less biblically inclined. And if at times she was a
trifle too prolix and had to be stopped in her flow of information,
there was very genuine regret on the part of the less well informed.
And in time she came to make a great many friends. Her peculiar ways no
longer struck them as comical, and if anyone had dared make reference to
the plainness of her gowns or the strict economies she practised to get
through, that person would have very soon discovered her mistake; and
they pretended not to know that she would not join any of the societies
because of the dues, and that she did her own laundry on Monday
afternoons. Indeed, she was so kindly disposed and so cheerful and
helpful, and seemed so interested in all the class projects and even in
the sports, at which of course she could only look on, that little by
little she came to be a great favorite, and the one to whom the rest
naturally turned when there was any hitch or especial need for advice.
And then, of course, as she was not to be thought of in the light of a
possible candidate for president or vice-president or captain of the
crew, or any of the other desirable high-places, those misguided young
women who did have such literary, social, or athletic aspirations would
go to her and confide their hopes and fears, and in some strange way
they would all feel very much more comfortable and happy in their minds
after such confessions. And so she got to be a sort of class
institution in a very short while, and the captains of different stylish
but rather un-nautical freshman crews vied with each other in
invitations to “come over the lake” with them, and the president of the
Tennis Association sent her a special and entirely superfluous
invitation to the spring tournament on the club’s finest paper, and the
senior editor of the college magazine, whose sister was a freshman, was
made to ask her for a short article on the “Study of the Bible,” and at
the concerts and receptions many young women, kindly and socially
disposed, would introduce her to their brothers and other male relations
who had been enticed out, before taking them on to see the lake, or a
certain famous walk, or the Art Building, or the Gymnasium.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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