?' I asked, and Bell explained
that girls sometimes hire a room, and bring their food from home, and
have the family with whom they lodge cook it for them, or cook it
themselves on the family stove. A kind of picnic to get an education,
you see, and just think of all we spent uselessly in college. Why, it
would keep a lot of basket-boarders. Well, we started for the chapel,
which was literally crammed, and the thermometer at ninety. You know,
Mr. Lovell is wealthy, and from New York, and that makes Bell a kind of
swell woman in the place, while I fancy your humble servant had
something to do with the attention we received. Instead of a seat by the
door, we were pushed to the front, within ten feet of the rostrum, and I
was wedged in with Bell on one side of me, afraid I'd jam her sleeves,
and on the other side was a woman, who weighed at least two hundred, and
was equally afraid of her sleeves. In front of me was a hat so big that
I couldn't begin to see all the stage, and but for Eloise I'd have got
out some way, I was so uncomfortable with Bell fanning on one side till
that rheumatic spot on my shoulder, which troubled me some at Harvard,
began to ache, and the fat woman the other side mopping her face with a
handkerchief saturated with cheap perfumery, and the big hat in front
flopping and nodding this way and that, and no place to stretch my long
legs.

"There was a prayer, a song circle, and _et ceteras_, and a great
flutter in a row of white dresses, and many colored ribbons to my left.
'The Graduates,' Bell whispered, and the business of the day began.
There were eight in all to read essays--nice looking girls, and much
like the Lasells and Wellesleys we used to know. As for the
essays--well, there was either a good deal of bosh in them, or a
profundity of learning and thought to which Jack Harcourt never
attained. But the people cheered like mad whenever one was ended, and
sent up flowers, while I grew hotter and hotter, and when the seventh
went up, and unfolded the 'Age of Progress and Reason,' which looked as
if it might last an age, I made up my mind to bolt, and said so to Bell.

"'Keep still; there's only one more after this one, and that is Eloise
Smith,' she said.

"I thought of you, and settled myself for another fifteen minutes, while
a red-haired girl in glasses went through the 'Age of Progress and
Reason' with great applause, and a basket of flowers, and bowed herself
off the stage. There was a l