were coming up
the stairs, and the girls were moving this way and that to open a path
for them. Lila crowded closer to me so as to make way. A junior on the
step below reached up her hand and stopped Miss Benton as she was
passing.

"Do wait for the next telegram, Mary," she said, "perhaps that will be
more encouraging. The country as a whole seems to be going right."

Miss Benton dropped down beside her with an awfully discouraged sort of a
sigh. "You don't live there, and I do," she said. "You do not know how
the reform party has worked with soul and strength to defeat that boss.
Something is terribly wrong with the citizens and their standards of
honesty. How could they? How could they?"

The junior bent nearer to speak in lower tones; but Lila and I could not
help hearing. "Mary, something is wrong with us too," she whispered. "Did
you know that to-day at our mock election some of the sophomores
pretended to be corrupt voters and wardheelers? They intimidated voters,
challenged registrations, played at buying votes, tried to stuff the
ballot-boxes. There was a most disgraceful scrimmage! To turn such crimes
into a joke! How could they? How could we?"

Miss Benton straightened herself with a movement that was sorrowful and
angry and discouraged all at once. She drew a deep breath.

"I will tell you what is wrong with us as well as with the entire
country. Our ideal of honesty is wrong. With us here at college the
trouble is in little things; with the world of business and politics the
evil is in great matters too. But the principle is the same. We are not
honest. We condemn graft in public office. Is it not also graft when a
student helps herself to examination foolscap and takes it for private
use? Is the girl who carries away sugar from the table any better than
the government employee who misappropriates funds or supplies in his
charge? We cry out in horror at revelations of bribery. Ah, but in our
class elections do we vote for the candidate who will best fill the
office, or for our friends? I have known a girl who desired to be
president of the Athletic Association to bargain away her influence to
another who was running for an editorship."

"And some of us travel on passes which are made out in other names."

Miss Benton did not hear. "We exclaim--we point our fingers--we groan
over the trickery of officials, scandals, bribery, treachery,
lawlessness. And yet we--is it honest to bluff in recitations--to