"Oh, yes. Latin and Greek. It's a great relief from plumbers and colds." She had a plump, white face, with gray bangs over her forehead, sharp blue eyes, and full pink lips held firmly together. She has humor, thought Catherine, and common sense, but she's intolerant. "So you're making an investigation of us, are you?" The Dean rubbed at a streak of chalk-dust on the sleeve of her tight dress. "What do you expect us to do after you point out our shortcomings?" She thinks I am dressy and interfering. Catherine held her hands motionless against her desire to fidget. She's just the kind of sensible woman I can't get on with. "The Bureau wants to make a constructive study," she said. "Not a criticism." "We need just one constructive thing." Miss Snow smiled. "Money. We're poor. Small endowment fund. The Baptists around here seem poorer each year. Now I haven't had a secretary for five years. The students help me out, and I deduct the hours from their tuition. If we had money we could do much more. We get fine young people. The godless younger generation doesn't come here. We wouldn't admit them if they wanted to come. Our girls and boys know how to work. They are in earnest. But you don't want to give us money, do you? No, you want to change things. Mrs. Hammond--" She leaned forward, her plump fist coming down whack on her knee. "I've been here almost forty years, as student, teacher, officer. Our President, Dr. Whitmore, has been here as long as that. Don't you think we know how to run a college?" Catherine hunted for phrases, gracious, illuminating, with which to justify her mission. So many of these little colleges through the state, such diversity of aim, changes in educational ideas---- "You see," she finished appealingly, "that's our idea. That there should be a clear, definite program in the training of young teachers, and that enough is known about educational needs now to make such a program feasible." "I've watched young people go out of here for many years now, and I know it doesn't make much difference what they've been taught. If they have the fear of God, if they are earnest and faithful, they succeed. If not--none of your modern folderols will save them. Give them the mental discipline of mathematics and the classics, and they can teach children reading and writing all right. I've seen too many fads in education to take them seriously. First it was natural science that was to make the world over, and we had to raise a fund for a laboratory. Then--oh, there's no use listing them. But I ask you, Mrs. Hammond, what's happened to Rousseau, or Froebel, or that woman a year or so ago, that foreigner, Monty somebody, who had a new scheme? Gone. You have to cling to the eternal verities. Fads pass."