Tom shook his head. "I tell you there is a woman there, I see her. make her get off."

Come on, and

They walked ahead. Tom still saw the woman on the track, ever retreating as they advanced. She was in white. He crossed himself nervously. The conductor saw the move, and sneered openly.

"That business two nights ago has gone to your head. Get in and hurry. We've got to meet the Special at Alton.

Tom got into the cab and let her go. He closed his eyes. No shock came, and when he opened them again they were out of the gap.

Two nights later the train was again pulled up at the gap. The conductor again swore, but Tom had to go ahead before he was satisfied that no woman in white was on the track. For three times the Overland had been late on Tom's run. Again the Overland was behind time. Explanations were in order. The conductor gave them. The next day Tom Ryan, engineer, who had run the express for ten years, left engine 1099 and began to run 1211, the slow freight between Alton and Norton, where no gap broke the endless monotony of the trip.

FLORENCE LOUISE HARRISON.

EDITORIAL

Work versus drudgery has been so frequently discussed that now it is almost barred out of polite conversation, in company with the weather. It is therefore with trepidation and furtive sidelong glances that I am letting down the bars of the conversational goat pasture and letting this subject out into the open. If anyone is watching me with the eye of disfavor, I can only vindicate myself with an even more ancient adage, "There is nothing new under the sun."

I only want to look at this question on very limited ground, restricting it to Smith College, and excluding the attitude. toward required work. There remains the whole field vaguely classified as "outside things" to look at, which stand for a vast amount of activity and nerve energy. There are the societies, the musical and department clubs, the myriad branches of the Smith College Association for Christian Work, dramatics, literary interests, and athletics. All of these make up a very important part of college life, and I hardly think anyone could be found who would wish to exterminate them, and yet there is a continual cry that life is too complicated, and that there is no time left in which to plain be one's self. Of course it is not the fault of the work, but the manner in which the work is turned into drudgery by the people who wish to be active in more directions than any human being has strength for. The prevailing idea of a lifetime inside as well as outside of college is that of a bag which is to be packed before the expressman comes, and packed with the greatest possible variety and profusion. Occasionally the lock snaps, and doctors dignify the mishap by the name of nervous prostration. It is perfectly natural that we should bring this hurrying, bustling idea of life here with us. Some of us come from big cities, where it is in the air, and inoculate our friends who come from drowsy villages with the germ. With others the idea grows at the beginning of freshman year, when perhaps they hear a sermon on "opening their doors to the north, and to the south, and to the east, and to the west." They begin to realize their potentialities, to find new roads of thought unbarred, and find that

the things that seemed drudgery in preparatory school can become work. The spirit of adventure is in the air, and there is not a single road which may not have Spanish treasure at the end of it. Therefore, they rush down every road which opens, with the enthusiasm of the proverbial "fool". The spirit of youth and the spirit of the age is behind us. and for a start this is a good thing, but it is not simply a start after which the balance-wheels of our natures adjust themselves, and we are able tranquilly to pick out the particular road which is for us. We have gotten going and we can't stop, and-as the phrase is -we want to be all over the country at once. The college girl's ideal is a universal genius, whom she canonizes as "all round", and who is expected to play on twenty-seven instruments in rapid succession, striking as many notes as possible with her nose when both hands are in motion. A girl who can do only one thing and do that well is out of the running.

The exhilaration of responsibility strikes some of us for the first time in college, being the head of a committee, or managing a play, and the whole proceeding seems as real and as vitally interesting as being the head of some great movement in the outside world. Everybody has the capacity for throwing herself heart and soul into one branch of the "outside things", but no girl has the capacity for really identifying herself with eight or ten without making drudgery of some of them. Some girls have the mental and physical strength to do more than others, and it is the unwillingness to acknowledge ourselves beaten that keeps so many of us turning from one thing to the next in a dazed effort not to be left behind. There is a certain sort of cowardice as well as pluck in not being willing to acknowledge ourselves beaten. After all, what we are here for, as I take it, is to learn how to get the most joy out of living and working, and no joy comes from undertaking too much. There is no need of waiting for faculty restrictions on the number of plays, committees, basket ball, or golf teams one person can be on. It is hard to say no when interesting work is offered to you, but if more girls thought twice before accepting, and resigned from all the outside clubs or whatever else they belong to, from which they get no joy whatever, there would be far less drudgery and far fewer wails as to the complicatedness of existence.

EDITOR'S TABLE

BOOK REVIEWS

Pipes of Pan No. II, from the Green Book of the Bards, by Bliss Carman. (L. C. Page & Co., Boston.) The number of short poems that can be read in succession with equal satisfaction varies with the author. The poems in Mr. Carman's new collection would represent the minimum number. There, nature poems show a keen appreciation of the out-of-doors, the influence rather than the understanding of nature, and a rare sympathy with the inanimate and voiceless. The book is, however, monotonous. There is too slight a variation of verse form, in the single poems and in the collection. Practically every stanza contains four verses, of three feet each, the second and fourth lines in rhyme. Then also there is a great similarity in the themes. It is the same with the individual poems. The subject is in most cases too slender for the weight of words. of metre repeats itself and there is no headway. accomplished. For example, "First Croaks" (which makes one think of "Last look", or something more gruesome).

Northward, crow,

Croak and fly,
Tell her I

Long to go.

Only am
Satisfied

The round Nothing is

Where the wide
Maples flame.

Now, obviously, that should not be allowed to go on for twenty stanzas, but it does. Anyway, what is it to croak

northward?

So different that it hardly seems from the same pen is "Ephemeron". The spirit in it is so generous, the imagination so delicate, the sympathy so all-embracing that it might stand as the reason for the whole book if need be. The "Heretic " contains some good stanzas.

The word that lifts the purple shaft

Of crocus and of hyacinth

Is more to me than platitudes
Rethundering from groin and plinth.

A. S. M.

Pipes of Pan No. III, Songs of the Sea Children, by Bliss Carman. (L. C. Page & Company.) After what has been said of the second number of the Pipes of Pan, little remains to be added in praise of the Songs of the Sea Children. There is a certain amount of charm in the diction and phrasing, and an atmosphere is created. Nevertheless, it is difficult to see the excuse for being of most of it.

BOOKS RECEIVED

Woman's Work in Music, by Arthur Elson. (L. C. Page Co.) Guides to the Higher Life, by J. Walter Sylvester.

THEATRICAL NOTES

At the Academy of Music, November 14, "Othello". Although an uninteresting, not to say tiresome production in itself, the presentation of "Othello" by Mr. Leighton's company was dealt with gently by a Smith College audience, accustomed as it is to seeing large propositions undertaken with the greatest nonchalance by dauntless amateurs. One cannot help admiring the audacity which would prompt a collection of mediocre artists to attempt "Othello" and carry it through to the best of their ability, however feeble that might be, and however absurd the result. To borrow an expression from the non-committal, magnanimous critics of our house plays, the actors maintained an equal level of excellence in the interpretations of their various rôles.

At the Academy of Music, November 19, "Captain Dieppe ". On reading the story of "Captain Dieppe", by Anthony Hope, the dramatic value of many of the situations is striking, yet by reason of the rapid change of scene the great difficulties of staging are at once apparent. These difficulties, by a considerable change of plot, have been eliminated more successfully than one would think possible, and the result was an entertaining play. Moreover, the rôle of the hero seemed to be especially adapted to Mr. Drew's acting, a circumstance which is always most favorable. The subordinate characters were without exception good, and Miss Dale as the Countess Lucia was entirely charming.