Main Street

ls and the blinking windows of skyscrapers in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Nor was she thinking of squaws and portages, and the Yankee fur-traders whose shadows were all about her. She w

chance watcher on the lower road tightened to wistfulness over her quality of suspended freedom. She lifted her arms, she leaned back against the wind, her skirt dipped

fleeing for an hour f

xes in piney clearings, are deader now than Camelot; and a rebellious gir

from the wickedness of the universities. But it secretes friendly girls, young men who sing, and one lady instructress who really likes Milton and Carlyle. So the four years which Carol spent at Blodgett were not altogether wasted. The smallness of the school, the fewness of riva

grind and at dances, though out of the three hundred students of Blodgett, scores recited more accurately and dozens

e cloaked with understanding kindness. "Psychic," the girls whispered, and "spiritual." Yet so radioactive were her nerves, so adventurous her trust in rather vaguely conceived sweetness and light, that she was more energetic than

bility of the world to be casually cruel and proudly dull, but if she should ever learn

en she was most ardently singing hymns or planning deviltry she yet seemed gently aloof and critical. She was credulous, perh

t, to write, to manage organizations. Always she was disappointed, but always she effervesced anew - over the Student Volunteers, who

in took up the organ theme, and the candle-light revealed her in a straight golden frock, her

n the girls who knew that they were going to be married pretended to be considering important business positions; even they who knew that they would have to work hinted about fabulous suitors. As for Carol, she was an orphan; her on

ted that they intended to leave the "beastly classroom and grubby children" the minute they had a chance to marry; and studious, sometimes bulbous-browed and pop- eyed maidens who at class prayer-meetings requested God to "guide their feet along t

ed upon studying law, writing motion-picture scenarios,

nd a hobby i

beautiful white strong neck. He led a giggling class through the prisons, the charity bureaus, the employment agencies of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Trailing at the end of the line Carol was indignant at the prodding curiosity of

urple class cap, grumbled to her as they walked behind the others in the muck of the South St. Paul stockyards, "These college ch

ommon workmen,

rget that common workmen d

. Her eyes mothered the world. Stewart Snyder peered at her. He rammed his large red fists into his pocke

these darn co-eds -- Say, Carol

lients. I'm going to be a lawyer. I admit I fall down in sympathy sometimes. I get so dog-gone impatient with people th

to go on. She fled from the steam-roller of his sentiment. She cried, "

reformers. She wanted, just now, to have a cell in a settlement-house, like a nun without the bother

ts, girls' clubs. It had pictures of greens and garden-walls in France, New England, Pennsylvania. She had p

the clothy exuberance of a Blodgett College room: cretonne-covered window-seat, photographs of girls, a carbon print of the Coliseum, a chafing-dish, and a dozen pillows embroidered or bead

provement. But she suddenly stopped fidgeting. She strode into the book. She had fled hal

er then, but - I won't be that kind of a teacher. I won't drone. Why should they have all the garden suburbs on Long Island? Nobody has done anything with the ugly towns her

ng children of twenty, won by the teacher because his opponents had to answer his questions, while their treach

ld it interrupt your undoubtedly fascinating pursuit of that malevolent fly if I were to ask you to tell us that you do not know anything

ad found one man in the prairie village who did not appreciate her picture of winding s

I

l her childhood he had been a judge in Mankato, which is not a prairie town, but in its garden-sheltered streets and aisles of elms is white and green New England reborn. Mankato lies between

es toward which it was forever mysteriously gliding; and she heard again the startled bells and thick puffing of high-stacked river steamers wrecked on sand-reefs sixty years ago. Along the decks she saw mis

obscene Night Animals who jump out of closets and eat little girls, but beneficent and bright-eyed creatures - the tam htab, who is woolly and blue and lives in the bathroom, and runs rapidly to warm small feet; the ferruginous oi

lais and Thoreau and Max Muller. He gravely taught them the letters on the backs of the encyclopedias, and when polite visitors asked about th

and took the family to Minneapolis. There he died, two years after. Her sister, a busy proper advi

brisk efficient book-ignoring people; an instinct to observe and wonder at their bustle even when she was taking part in it. B

she could not picture herself standing before grinning children and pretending to be wise and decisive. But the desire for the creation of a beautiful town remai

he saw herself persuading children to read charming fairy tales, helping young men to find books on mechanics, being ever so courteous to old men who were hunting for

mencement. In five days they would be

ent orchestra was playing "Carmen" and "Madame Butterfly." Carol was dizzy with music and the emotions of parting. She saw the palms as a jungle, the pink-shaded electric globes as an opaline haze, and the

s new ready-made suit with its padded shoulders. She sat with him, and with two cups of coffee and a chicken patty, upon

aking up after four years!

t in just a few days we'll be parting, and

k seriously to you, but you got to listen to me. I'm going to be a

rained her independence. She said mournfully, "Would you t

d, we'd have bully times in Yank

o do somethin

home and bringing up some cute ki

s the captains to Zenobia; and in the damp cave over gnawed bones the hairy suitor thus protested to the woma

n. But there's lots of women that can do housework, but I- well, if

e. And gee, Carol, just think of a bunch of us goin

es

g in winter, and

n't understand myself but I want - everything in the world! Maybe I can't sing or write, but I know I can be an influence in library work. Just

re disturbed by an embarrassed couple also seeki

tewart Snyder again. She wrote t

young women who dance in cheese-cloth in the moonlight. She was taken to a certified Studio Party, with beer, cigarettes. bobbed hair, and a Russian Jewess who sang the Internationale. It cannot be reported that Carol had anything significant to say to the Bohemians. She was awkward with them, and felt i

was the beginning and

d Evanston, discovered new forms of suburban architecture, and remembered her desire to recreate villages. She decided that she would give up l

Index, and she was taken so seriously in the discussion that she put off her care

I

which should have moved worlds. But so few of these stolid worlds wanted to be moved. When she was in charge of the magazine room the readers did not ask for suggestions about elevated essays. They grunted, "Wa

anthropology with ditches of foot-notes filled with heaps of small dusty type, Parisian imagistes, Hindu recipes for curry, voyages to the Solomon Isles, theosophy with moder

e one-stepped demurely; sometimes, in dread of life's slipping past, she turned int

ring firm, a teacher, a newspaper reporter, and a petty railroad official. None of them made her more than pause in t