FOLKLORE AND POLITICS That fall Mary and Cynthia went to college. The preparation for this event of events had been almost more overwhelming than the journey itself and those first over-crowded, uncomfortable days away from home. In extent and quality their new wardrobes were in themselves unbelievable. A half dozen times a day they experienced entirely unaccustomed thrills as they raised the lids of their new trunks and gazed upon outfits in which blue gingham and serge did not predominate. Their graduation frocks with Mary Christmas’ lace were, of course, their best dresses, to be reserved for the gayest of parties; but there was a sprigged muslin apiece for second best and--wonder of wonders!--silk gowns in brown and dark red for Sundays, with wide shoulder-collars of heavy white embroidery. Blue serge, indeed, was absent, except for their sailor suits for everyday and for the most startling innovation of all, their gymnasium suits. Now those gymnasium suits had caused more problematical musing than all the other effects of the wardrobes combined. The college catalogue had announced them as necessities, and some forceful woman in a high position had sent explicit directions for their manufacture. And yet Father Wescott, when Cynthia and Mary turned around slowly before him, was frankly puzzled, and would, I fear, have been remonstrant had not the realization of his faith in legitimate authority prevented him. As for Mrs. Wescott, it is not too much to say that her sense of rectitude had been outraged. Indeed, upon the first trying on, she remarked with no lack of decision that she almost preferred her daughters to remain uneducated than to appear in such clothing. She became somewhat reconciled, however, when she discovered that if Cynthia and Mary remained perfectly stationary the bloomers might easily be mistaken for short and full skirts; and the girls were wise enough not to raise the objection that in all probability they could not stand still indefinitely in a gymnasium. Mrs. Wescott worried also over the local seamstress; for in spite of the tax imposed upon her ingenuity by the modeling of these extraordinary garments, she had taken occasion to express her opinion of them in no uncertain terms, and Mrs. Wescott did not feel that she could so impair her own dignity as to make a plea for secrecy. But the passage of time had somewhat minimized even these forebodings, and the great day had come and gone, leaving Mrs. Wescott with ample time to study at close range the psychology of boyhood in the early teens, and plunging Mary and Cynthia into a sea of new events and places, new personalities and studies, which, after the first few days, allowed no room for homesickness.