ABOUT COLLEGE

Every girl who comes to college here or elsewhere has, either consciously or unconsciously, an ideal of what college ought to be, and by this she judges the life about her. She expects to find things different from anything she has known before, and to be able to recognize the differences immediately. She has arrived at the conclusion that merely to live in the atmosphere of a college will beget in her scholarly attributes, and in some subtle way mark her out from among her less fortunate sisters who have never gone to college. She rarely realizes that this atmosphere, this inexplicable something which distinguishes a college from the world at large and from all other colleges is not due so much to the faculty or the curriculum awaiting her arrival, as to the attitude which she and her fellow-students assume toward the college.

It used to be supposed that college was the haunt of those only who were students in nature as well as in name, who came to the higher education having distinct designs upon it. A girl holding this view-not necessarily is she a blue-stocking, but an earnest student—is almost sure to be miserably disappointed during her first six months of college. She has probably been the brightest girl in her preparatory school, and she feels that she must keep up her reputation. To her surprise, she finds that while many of her classmates were evidently the brightest girls in their schools, yet others, and not a few of them, are merely ordinary students with no apparent desire to excel in anything. If she disregards thls uninspiring element and ranks herself with the hard workers, be they good students or unhappy "digs ", she finds it all she can do to keep her footing among them. This causes her to work at her lessons with infinite labor and microscopic attention to details. She is soon overwhelmed by the amount of work always still undone, and harrassed by the feeling that she is not improving her advantages if she does not do all the reference reading and outside work suggested by her teachers. Overworked and worried, she goes nervously to her classes, meeting by the way happy, laughing girls bound on the same errand. She looks at them with resentful astonishment and inwardly condemns them as frivolous and unworthy of consideration. She is fairly bewildered at seeing troops of girls start off, care-free, for a walk in the early afternoons, and then later drop into the library with an unconcerned air, lay down tennis racket or golf bag and "fall to" with a will. She finds it inconceivable that anyone can enjoy recreation until she has done all of her work. The thought of her work is always before her, and she goes about despondent, oppressed, morbid, making herself and those about her unhappy, without adding to the true scholarly atmosphere of the college.

A far different type of girl is the one who comes to college because her friends have acquired the habit of coming to college and so it is the thing to do. Visiting from morning till night, not studying herself and keeping others from studying, she goes on in her irresponsible career until a warning brings her up with a sharp turn. She finds out then that college obligations are not entirely one-sided after all. She either becomes panic-stricken and leaves college with a sense of injury and hatred, or sets to work as best she can, her only aim being, however, just to pass muster. Even if she reforms enough to become a fairly good student, she cannot undo the harm she has already worked; for she and those like her give a show of truth to the infamous slander that Smith is made up of butterflies and society girls.

There is another class of girls who never quite get over their sense of strangeness. Instead of assimilating the new life about thein, they go around with their ideas always unadjusted, always a trial to their professors and a hindrance to their fellow-students. They are not, however, as pernicious an influence as the girls who " don't care ", who take no interest in their work or in the college life. Rather they are passive and negative, giving out nothing and absorbing little. In another field of activity, they would undoubtedly develop into interesting and capable girls, but college is no place for them; they are out of their element.

Many girls come to college with preconceived erroneous ideas, but if they are receptive, if they are of the kind who "live and learn”, they come to see that they can accomplish most by following the old maxim "Work when you work, play when you play". They find by bitter experience that there is always more work to do than they can possibly do, and therefore when they have done a proper amount, it is better for them and for their work to stop and play a little. They also come to realize that the girl who is always worried and brooding over her troubles is not a pleasant companion, for every girl has enough of her own without being constantly reminded of those of her friends. To be always amiable and cheerful, always ready to enter into sympathy with those about her, to have always an air of leisure and enjoyment even while engrossed in studies, papers, clubs, social duties and the hundred calls on a busy girl's attention, above all to have a large working fund of common sense-this would seem to be the most useful ideal of a college girl, the expression of which, though it may mislead the ignorant, receives always the unqualified approbation of the initiated.

ELOISE MABURY 1902.

It may be of interest to the alumnæ, as well as to the undergraduates of the college, to learn of the origin and progress of the new exercise requirement. Women are becoming more and more aware Health and Fresh Air of the fact that regular exercise is necessary to preserve health. We have reached the stage when theoretically we believe that by taking rational exercise we shall become healthier, happier, more useful members of society. Yet in spite of this theoretical recognition, a large number of people have yet to acquire the habit of exercising, have yet to learn that it is as necessary a part of the daily life as eating, sleeping, or working.

The fact that a large number of the members of the two upper classes in Smith College took no regular exercise became so apparent that in the autumn of 1899 the juniors and seniors were urged to take daily exercise and to hand in a monthly report to the physical training department. The project was greeted by the students with enthusiasm. Appreciating the value of exercise, they felt that this scheme would serve as a reminder and help. The fact that it was a request and not a requirement appealed to all. It was launched under the most favorable auspices; nevertheless it proved an entire failure before the end of the college year. Only thirty per cent of the students handed in their records the first month, and the number decreased until no returns were made by the end of the winter term. Representative students were asked to explain this extraordinary collapse of a scheme that had seemed to appeal to them so strongly. They said that their enthusiasm was genuine, as they were convinced of the value and necessity of exercise and hence appreciated any scheme that would encourage them in taking a rational amount. However, as in academic work they often neglected one study for another in which more immediate pressure was brought to bear, so they neglected exercise which was voluntary for work that was required.

The matter was brought before the faculty in the spring of that year. After serious consideration it was voted to require of all juniors and seniors four one-hour exercise periods a week, from October first to June first; also that they should keep a record and should return their records each month to the physical training department. This requirement went into effect October 1, 1901. It was further voted by the faculty last spring that the same amount of exercise should be required of the first and second year students for the months when no gymnastic exercises are held; that is, for the month of October and the spring term.

Considering the difficulty of carrying through any new movement involving a comparatively large number of students, it would seem that the first year was a success. On an average, ninety per cent of the students returned their records each month. The others, almost without exception, presented some excuse. The college physician noticed a marked improvement in the health of the students and they themselves acknowledged the benefit they had received from this requirement. Indeed it is gratifying to find how fully the students as a body are in accord with the movement. The conscientious, hard working students, who are most in need of regular exercise, seem to gain the largest profit by this new scheme, for they feel that they are justified in taking exercise, now that it is a college duty. Some of us still have scruples against giving a little time each day to recreation and health!

Smith is not the only college for women that has a four-year exercise requirement. Bryn Mawr from its very beginning has had such a requirement, and Vassar has had it for a number of years. Even colleges for men are realizing the necessity of compulsory exercise. No truer statement of the need of physical training and its relation to the intellectual life can be found than these words of Professor William James, from an address delivered at Harvard two years ago, before the American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education :

"When it was proposed last year that this university should make physical

training obligatory in the freshman class, the motion was voted down by a large majority in the faculty, so the fight must still go on here as elsewhere, until it is recognized that physical training is the general basis which underlies every trait of character and the great harmonizer and equalizer and bringer up of the individual to the normal mixture of facilities which he is expected to possess. As a student of psychology, as a member of our philosophical department, I feel the greatest interest in the physical culture of all our students. I know that we shall thereby get sounder views, we shall get truer interests, we shall get less eccentric influences of philosophy upon life. Unwholesome broodings over mysteries, pessimistic tendencies, which are supposed to be the fruits of a spiritual life too ardently cultivated, would often disappear if the bodily equilibrium were made right."

SENDA BERENSON.

The Smith College Council was started in 1894. The circumstances connected with its origin are not on record, since no constitution was adopted

and no reports were kept until 1896. But judging from the The Council articles of the Constitution we may surmise that the primary object of the Council was to promote a sense of honor and of responsibility among the students by allowing them to have representatives who should share in governing the life of the college. These representatives were elected by the four classes, the senior class electing four members, the junior three, the sophomore two, and the freshman one. Of this number, four were the class presidents. In this way the classes were brought into a closer relationship which enabled them to act more directly for the college as a whole. Through the Conference Committee, the Council was brought in touch with the faculty, and so had the opportunity of seeing the college life more broadly and clearly than is possible from the student point of view alone.

The Council of to-day might be said to take the place of what is self-government in other women's colleges. It does not make rules, it simply respects them and helps to impress them upon the student body, not as rules, but as reminders of the confidence placed in college women. Its functions are of various kinds, such as regulating the social entertainments, keeping order in chapel, taking charge of the reading-room, and receiving any petitions which the students may desire to present to the faculty. In that the college Council possesses the records of the manners and customs of by-gone college years, it is enabled to advise and direct the uninitiated and dubious in all questions as to precedent arising in our own day.

ETHEL HALE FREEMAN 1902.

The Smith College Association for Christian Work is the organization in college whose object is "to promote in the name of Christ, the development of a broad and intelligent activity in the cause of huS. C. A. C. W. manity, and to unite in one central body the organizations already existing in the college, and those to be formed in the future, for the purpose of active Christian work."

The special organizations under the general association are the Christian Union, Missionary Society, Home Culture Clubs, Students' Exchange, College

Settlements Association, Needle Work Guild, and Consumers' League. It is taken for granted that every girl in college will be interested in one or all of the departments of the association work; so every girl in becoming a member of the college becomes also a member of the Smith College Association for Christian Work.

The Cabinet or executive board of the association consists of the officers of the general association, the chief officer of the special organizations, and two representatives from each class. This board meets every week to transact the business of the association, and its meetings aim to give unity and power to the association work.

This year we feel that the association has made a great advance in its power of usefulness through having as its General Secretary, Carrolle Barber '99. Miss Barber will be in Northampton two thirds of the college year and will devote herself to extending the branches of the association which have remained undeveloped because of lack of time on the part of the girls doing the college work.

The association stands ready and willing to help any girl in college in any way it can. As every girl is a member of the association, each one should feel free to ask aid, in any way it can be given.

JEAN GERTRUDE JOUETT 1902.

It is time that the query "What is the German Club?" should be satisfactorily met. The explanation is simple. It is a club consisting, at present, of twelve members whose interest in German is sufficiently practical to allow of their expressing it in that language in fairly intelligible phrases. It was founded in April of last year by seven charter members under the kind and helpful direction of Frau Kapp, head of the German Department. At the first meeting a constitution was drawn up, composed in German, submitted to Frau Kapp, approved and signed by the seven charter members, these being Mabel Coulter, Ida Heinemann, Ethel Chase, Helen Walbridge, Ethel Betts, Bertha Rosenfeld and Alta Zens. There was, as may be imagined, quite a struggle at first to turn "Parliamentary Rules" into German equivalents, and the first meeting was a strange mixture of futile attempts on the part of the members to express themselves, of suppressed laughter at a particularly strong Irish German bull, and of numerous corrections on the part of Frau Kapp. The final result was most comforting, however, and our formal aim stands thus in the Constitution of the Deutscher Verein: "Der Zweck dieses Vereins soll die Pflege des Deutschen sein in Kunst, Musik und Literature im College und unter den Mitgliedern dieses Vereins". Our formal meetings alternate with informal ones, during which we endeavor to enjoy ourselves,-in German,-to carry on the business of the Verein, and to read or discuss some of the current German literature.

"Refreshments?" Of course,-could anything be truly German without refreshments? And with all our stated aims we certainly desire, at least, to come a bit closer to the genial customs of Germany.

Whether our plan of combining German art, literature, and business will prove a success cannot as yet be stated. But from our very pleasant, if brief, past and from the enthusiasm of the present members, it is safe to assume