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Rh of joking and innuendo among certain of the visitors that showed they had knowledge of further hidden goodies which would, at fit and proper season, be divulged. Jennie Stone, gobbling almond cakes and chocolate, said to Ruth:

"If this is a fair sample of what is to be divulged upon the Night of Harpocrates, I shall fast on that day—now mind!"

When the girls had gone Ruth asked her chum, point-blank, if she proposed to have a midnight supper.

"A regular !" declared Helen, laughing. "Now, don't be prim and prudish about it, Ruthie. I won't have it in here if you don't want"

"Why not?" demanded Ruth, quickly. "Don't think of going to any other room."

"Well—I didn't know," stammered her chum. "You being such a stickler for the rules, Ruth. You know, if we should get into trouble"

"Do you think that I would complain?" asked Ruth, proudly. "Don't you trust me any more, Helen?"

"Oh, Ruthie! what nonsense!" cried her chum, throwing her arms about Ruth Fielding's neck. "I know you'd be as true as steel."

"I did not think the suggestion could have come from your own heart, Helen," declared Ruth.


text: Category:Shintoists

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Category:Shintoists


text:
Author:Hirohito

Works

 * Imperial Rescript on the Tripartite Pact (1940)
 * Imperial Rescript on Surrender (1945, translated by Hirakawa Tadaichi)

title: Author:Hirohito


text:
Page:Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall.djvu/142

134 So the second night thereafter was set for the "sub-rosa supper." Slily the chums borrowed such plates and cups as the other girls had hidden away. Not a few quartette rooms possessed tea-sets, they being the joint possession of the occupants of that particular study. At retiring bell on this eventful night all things were ready, including a spirit lamp on which to make chocolate, hidden away in Helen Cameron's shirt-waist box.

Ruth and Helen went to bed after removing their frocks and shoes only and waited to hear the "cheep, cheep" of Miss Scrimp's squeaky shoes as she passed up through the house, turning down the hall lights, and then went down again. The hour for the girls to gather was set for half-past ten. First of all, however, The Fox was to go down and listen at Miss Picolet's door to make sure that she had gone to bed. Then Miss Cox was to tap softly but distinctly at the door of each invited guest as she came back to their corridor.

Meanwhile Helen and Ruth popped out of bed (it had been hard to lie there for more than an hour, waiting) and began to lay out the things. The bedspreads were laid back over the foot of each bed and the feast was laid out upon the bedclothes. Mary Cox warned them to have the spreads ready to smooth up over the contraband


text: Copy of Franklin D. Roosevelt to Winston Churchill (September 30, 1941)


text:
Author:Tadaichi Hirakawa

Translations

 * Imperial Rescript on Surrender (1945) by Emperor Shōwa

title: Author:Tadaichi Hirakawa


text: Harry Hopkins to Grace Tully (October 1, 1941)


text: Franklin D. Roosevelt to Winston Churchill (September 25, 1941)


text:
Page:Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall.djvu/143

Rh goodies, should the French teacher get wind of the orgy.

"Forewarned is forearmed," urged Mary Cox. "We know what old Picolet is!"

"But 'four-armed' doesn't always mean 'fore-handed'," chuckled Jennie Stone.

"Nor !" snapped the Fox. "If you had four hands, Heavy, there would be little chance for any of the rest of us at Helen's party. My goodness me! how you would mow the good things away if you had four hands instead of two."

"It isn't that I'm really piggish," complained Miss Stone. "It's because I need more nourishment; there is so much of me, you know, Mary."

"And if you hadn't been stuffing yourself like a Strasburg goose all your life, there wouldn't be so much of you. Ha! it's the old story of the hen and the egg—which was here first? If you didn't eat so much you wouldn't be so big, and if you weren't so big you wouldn't eat so much."

All this, however, was said after the girls had begun to gather in Number 2 duet, and Belle Tingley, who had drawn the unlucky short toothpick, was banished to the corridor to keep watch—but with a great plateful of goodies and the "golden goblet" used in the hazing exercises, filled to the brim with hot chocolate.

"Though, if Miss Picolet is awake she'll smell


text: Franklin D. Roosevelt to Winston Churchill (September 17, 1941)


text: Harry Hopkins to Grace Tully (September 18, 1941)


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136 the brew and will be up here instanter," declared the Fox, crossly, as Belle insisted in having her share of the drinkables as well as eatables.

Miss Picolet was forgotten in the fun and the feasting, however. There were twenty girls in the room, and they had to sit on the floor in two rows while Ruth and Helen passed out the good things. And my! they were good! Lovely chicken salad mayonnaise, served on a fresh lettuce leaf (the lettuce being smuggled in that very day in the chums' wash basket)—a little dab to each girl. There were little pieces of gherkins and capers in the mayonnaise, and Heavy reveled in this dish. The most delicious slices of pink ham between soft crackers—and other sandwiches of anchovy paste and minced sardines. These were the "solids."

Cakes, sweet crackers, Babette's cookies and lady-fingers were heaped on other plates, ready to serve.

"My!" exclaimed Lluella Fairfax, "isn't that lay-out enough to punish our poor digestive organs for a month? The last time we were caught and brought up before Mrs. Tellingham she warned us that sweetcake and pickles were as immoral as yellow-covered novels!"

"And she proved it, too," laughed the Fox. "She declared that a girl, or woman without a good digestion could not really fill her rightful


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Rh place in the world and accomplish that which we are each supposed to do. Oh, the Madam always proves her point."

"And I was sick for a week afterward," sighed Lluella. "And had to take such a dose!"

At that moment, without the least forewarning, there came a smart rap on the door. The sound smote the company of whispering, laughing girls into a company of frightened, trembling culprits. They hardly dared breathe, and when the commanding rap came for a second time neither Ruth nor Helen had strength enough in their limbs to go to the door.


text: Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall/Chapter 15


text:
User:Red Rose 13

I believe in the importance of keeping Wikisource honest and trustworthy. I have a BA in Sociology and I received a Teaching Credential in the State of California.

I edit and create website pages for a living.

Special interest are ancestry research, floral design, flowers and supporting sources that support my research.

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title: User:Red Rose 13


text:
Page:Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall.djvu/146

and The Fox, more used to these orgies than some of the other girls, had retained some presence of mind. Their first thought—if this should prove to be the teacher or the matron—was to try and save such of the feast as could be hidden. Each girl flung up a spread to the pillows, and so hid the viands on the two beds. Then Mary Cox went quickly to the door.

The cowering girls clung to each other and waited breathlessly. Mary opened the door. There stood the abashed Belle Tingley, her plate in one hand, the gilded vase in the other, and beside her was the tiny figure of Mademoiselle Picolet, who looked very stern indeed at The Fox.

"I might have expected you to be a ringleader in such an escapade as this, Miss Cox," she said, sharply, but in a low voice. "I very well knew, Miss Cox, when the new girls came this fall that you were determined to


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Rh them if you could. Every girl here will remain in her seat after prayers in the chapel tomorrow morning. Remember!"

She whipped out a notebook and pencil and evidently wrote Mary Cox's name at the head of her list. The Fox was furiously red and furiously angry.

"I might have known you would be spying on us, Miss Picolet," she said, bitingly. "Suppose some of us should play the spy on you, Miss Picolet, and should run to Mrs. Tellingham with what we might discover?"

"Go to your room instantly!" exclaimed the French teacher, with indignation. "You shall have an extra demerit for that, Miss!"

Yet Ruth, who had been watching the teacher's face intently, saw that she became actually pallid, that her lips seemed to be suddenly blue, and the countless little wrinkles that covered her cheeks were more prominent than ever before.

Mary Cox flounced out and disappeared. The teacher pointed to the chums' waste-basket and said to BellBelle [sic], the unfaithful sentinel:

"Empty your plate in that receptacle, Miss Tingley. Spill the contents of that vase in the bowl. Now, Miss, to your room."

Belle obeyed. So she made each girl, as she called her name and wrote it in her book, throw


text:
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140 away the remains of her feast, and pour out the chocolate. One by one they were obliged to do this and then walk sedately to their rooms. Jennie Stone was caught on the way out with a most suggestive bulge in her loose blouse, and was made to disgorge a chocolate layer cake which she had sought to "save" when the unexpected attack of the enemy occurred.

"Fie, for shame, Miss Stone!" exclaimed the French teacher. "That a young lady of Briarwood Hall should be so piggish! Fie!"

But it was after all the other girls had gone and Ruth and Helen were left alone with her, that the little French teacher seemed to really show her disappointment over the infraction of the rules by the pupils under her immediate charge.

"I hoped for better things of you two young ladies," she said, sorrowfully. "I feared for the influence over you of certain minds among the other scholars; but I believed you, Ruth Fielding, and you, Helen Cameron, to be too independent in character to be so easily led by girls of really much weaker wills. For one may will to do evil, or to do good, if one chooses. One need not drift.

"Miss Fielding! take that basket of broken food and go down to the basement and empty it in the bin. Miss Cameron, you may go to bed


text:
Author talk:Tadaichi Hirakawa

Biographical sources
- AdamBMorgan (talk) 00:12, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The Allied Occupation of Japan (Google Books link) by Eiji Takemae.
 * The Cambridge History of Japan: The Twentieth century (Google Books link)

title: Author talk:Tadaichi Hirakawa


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Rh again. I will wait and see you so disposed. AlonsAllons [sic]!"

But before Ruth could get out of the room, and while Helen was hastily preparing for bed, Miss Picolet noticed something "bunchy" under Ruth's spread. She walked to the bedside and snatched back the coverlet. The still untasted viands were revealed.

"Ah-ha!" exclaimed the French teacher "At once! into the basket with these, if you will be so kind, Miss Fielding."

Had Heavy seen those heaps of goodies thus disposed of she must have groaned in actual misery of spirit! But Helen, being quick in her preparations for bed, hopped into her own couch before Miss Picolet turned around to view that corner of the room, and with Helen under the bedclothes the hidden dainties (though she did mash some of them) were not revealed to the eye of the teacher, who stood grimly by the door as Ruth marched gravely forth with the basket of broken food.

For a minute or two Helen was as silent as Miss Picolet; then she ventured in a very small voice:

"Miss Picolet—if you please?"

"Well, Mademoiselle?" snapped the little lady.

"May I tell you that my chum Ruth had


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142 to do with this infringement of the school rules? That the feast was all mine; that she merely partook of it because we roomed together? That she had nothing to do with the planning of the frolic?"

"Well?"

"I thought perhaps that you might believe otherwise," said Helen, softly, "as you made Ruth remove the—the provisions," said Helen. "And really, she isn't at all to blame."

"She cannot be without blame," declared Miss Picolet, yet less harshly than she had spoken before. "An objection from her would have stopped the feast before it began—is it not, Miss Cameron?"

"But she is not so much to blame, Miss Picolet," repeated Helen.

"Of that we shall see," returned the little lady, and waited by the door until Ruth returned from the basement. "Now to bed!" ejaculated Miss Picolet. "Wait in chapel after prayers. I really hoped the girls of my dormitory would not force me to call the attention of the Preceptress to them because of demerits this half—and I did not believe the trouble would start with two young ladies who had just arrived."

So saying, she departed. But Helen whispered Ruth, before she got in bed, to help remove the remaining goodies to the box in the closet.


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Rh "At least, we have saved this much from the wreck," chuckled Helen.

Ruth, however, was scarcely willing to admit that that the salvage would repay them for the black marks both surely had earned.


text: Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall/Chapter 16


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tell the truth the young ladies of the West Dormitory who attended Helen's sub-rosa supper looked pretty blue when the rest of the school filed out of chapel and left them sticking, like limpets, to their seats. Mrs. Tellingham looked just as stern as Helen imagined she could look, when she ended a whispered conference with Miss Picolet, and stood before the culprits.

"Being out of bed at all hours, and stuffing one's self with all manner of indigestible viands, is more than a crime against the school rules, young ladies," she began. "It is a crime against common sense. Besides, I take a pride in the fact that Briarwood Hall supplies a sufficient and a well-served table. Fruit at times between meals is all very well. But a sour pickle and a piece of at eleven or twelve o'clock at night would soon break down the digestive faculties of a second.

"However," she added grimly, "that will bring its own punishment. I need not trouble


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Rh myself about this phase of the matter. But that distinct rules of the school have been broken cannot be ignored. Each of you who were visitors at the study of Misses Fielding and Cameron last evening after hours will have one demerit to work off by extra exercises in Latin and French.

"Miss Cox!"

She spoke so sharply that The Fox hopped up quickly, knowing that she was especially addressed.

"It is reported to me by Miss Picolet that you spoke to her in a most unladylike manner. You have two demerits to work off, instead of one."

Mary Cox ruffled up instantly. She flounced into her seat and threw her book aside.

"Miss Cox," repeated the Preceptress, sharply, "I do not like your manner. Most of these girls are younger than you, and you are their leader. I believe you are all members of the Up and Doing Club. Have a care. Let your club stand for something besides infractions of the rules, I beg. And, when you deliberately insult the teacher who has charge of your dormitory, you insult me."

"I suppose I'm to be given no opportunity of answering Miss Picolet's report, or accusation?" cried Mary Fox. "I don't call it fair"

"Silence!" exclaimed the Preceptress. "You may come to me after session this afternoon.


text: Category:Radio presenters

title: Category:Radio presenters


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146 Miss Cameron may work off a full demerit, and before the Christmas Holidays, for being the prime mover in this orgy, I am told about," said Mrs. Tellingham, bitingly. "I understand there are some extenuating circumstances in the case of Ruth Fielding. She will have one-half mark against her record—to be worked off, of course. And, young ladies, I hope this will be the last time I shall see you before me for such a matter. You are relieved for classes."

Two unexpected things happened to Ruth Fielding that morning. As they came out from breakfast she came face to face with Mary Cox, and the older girl "cut" her plainly. She swept by Ruth with her head in the air and without returning the latter's nod, and although Ruth did not care much about Mary Cox, the unkindness troubled her. The Fox had such an influence over Helen!

The second surprising happening was the receipt of a letter from Mercy Curtis, the lame girl. Dr. Davison's protege wrote:

"Dear Ruth:

"Mrs. Kimmons, next door, is trundling her twin babies—awfully homely little mites—up and down her long piazza in my wheel-chair. To what base uses have the mighty fallen! Do you know what your Uncle Jabez—Dusty


text: Category:Authors by religion

title: Category:Authors by religion


text:
Page:Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall.djvu/155

Rh done? He had waiting for me when I got home from the sanitarium a pair of the loveliest ebony crutches you ever saw—with silver s! I use 'em when I go out for a walk. Fancy old miserable, withered, crippled me going out for a walk! Of course, it's really a hobble yet—I hobble-gobble like a rheumatic goblin; but I may do better some day. The doctors all say so.

"And now I'm going to surprise you, Ruth Fielding. I'm coming to see you—not for a mere 'how-de-do-good-bye' visit; but to stay at Briarwood Hall a while. Dr. Cranfew (he's the surgeon who helped me so much) is at Lumberton and he says I can try school again. Public school he doesn't approve of for me. I don't know how they are going to 'rig' it for me, Ruth—such wonderful things happen to me all the time! But Dr. Davison says I am coming, and when he says a thing is going to happen, it happens. Like my going to the Red Mill that time.

"And isn't old Dusty Miller good to me, too? He stops to see me every Saturday when he is in town. They miss you a lot at the Red Mill, Ruthie. I have been out once behind Dr. Davison's red and white mare, to see Aunt Alviry. We just gabbled about you all the time. Your pullets are laying. Tell Helen 'Hullo!' for me. I expect to see you soon, though—that is, if


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148 can be made to billet me with somebody who doesn't mind having a Goody Two-Sticks around.
 * "Now, good-bye, Ruthie,
 * "From your fidgetty friend,

This letter delighted Ruth, and she went in search of Helen to show it to her. The chums were due at their first recitation in a very few moments. Ruth found Helen talking with Mary Cox and Belle Tingley on the steps of the building in a recitation room in which Ruth and Helen were soon to recite. Ruth heard Belle say, earnestly:

"I believe it, too. Miss Picolet wasn't downstairs in her room at all. When she caught me she came from upstairs, and that's how I didn't give any warning. I didn't expect her from that direction and I was looking downstairs."

"She had been warned, all right," said the Fox, sharply. "It's plain enough who played the traitor. Nasty little cat!"

"I believe you," said Belle. "And she only got half a demerit. They favored her, of course."

"But why any demerit at all, if she was a spy for Miss Picolet?" demanded Helen, in a worried tone.


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Rh "Pshaw! that's all for a blind," declared the Fox.

And then all three saw Ruth at the bottom of the steps. The Fox and Belle Tingley turned away without giving Ruth a second glance, and went into the building. But Helen smiled frankly on Ruth as her chum approached, and slipped an arm within her own:

"What have you got there, Ruthie?" she demanded, seeing the open letter.

"It's from Mercy. Read it when you get a chance," Ruth whispered, thrusting it into her chum's hand as they went in. "It's just as you said—Dr. Davison is going to bring it about. Mercy Curtis is coming to Briarwood, too."

Helen said nothing at all about The Fox and her room-mate. But Ruth saw that the Upedes—especially those who had been caught in the French teacher's raid on Duet Number 2—whispered a good deal among themselves, and when they looked at Ruth they did not look kindly.

After recitation, and before dinner, several of the girls deliberately cut her as Mary Cox had. But Helen said nothing, nor would Ruth speak first. She saw plainly that The Fox had started the cabal against her. It made Ruth feel very unhappy, but there was nothing she could do to defend herself.


text: Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall/Chapter 17


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organization of the Sweetbriars had gone on apace. Two general meetings had been held. Every new-comer to the school, who had entered the Junior classes, saving Helen Cameron, had joined the new society. The committee on constitution and by-laws was now ready to report and this very afternoon Ruth and two other girls waited on Mrs. Tellingham to ask permission to hold social meetings in one of the assembly rooms on stated occasions, as the other school societies did.

The trio of Sweetbriars had to wait a little while in the hall outside the library door, for Mrs. Tellingham was engaged. Mary Cox came out first and as she passed Ruth she tossed her head and said:

"Well, are you here to about somebody else?"

Ruth was stricken speechless, and the girls with her asked wonderingly what the older girl had meant.


text:
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Rh "I—I do not know just what she means," gasped Ruth, "only that she means to hurt me if she can."

"She's mad with you," said one, "because you started the S. B.'s and wouldn't join her old Upede Club."

"That's it," said the other. "Don't you mind, Miss Fielding."

Then the maid told them they could go into the library. Mrs. Tellingham looked very grave, and sat at her desk tapping the lid thoughtfully with a pencil. This was one occasion when Dr. Tellingham was not present. The countenance of the Preceptress did not lighten at all when she saw Ruth come in.

"What is it, Miss Fielding?" she asked in her brusque way.

Ruth stated the desire of the new society briefly, and she was positive before Mrs. Tellingham replied at all that the mention of the Sweetbriars did not please the lady.

"You girls will fill your time so full, with societies and leagues, and what all, that there will be little space for studies. I am half sorry now that I ever allowed any secret, or social clubs, to be formed at Briarwood. But while we have the Forward Club, I cannot well deny the right of other girls to form similar societies.

"But I am not pleased with the Up and Doing


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152 Club. I understand that every girl but one reported out of her room after retiring bell last evening, in the West Domitory, was a member of the Up and Doings and the other girl was you, Miss Fielding!" she added sternly. "And you are a member of this new organization—What do you call it? The 'S. B.'s,' is it?"

"The Sweetbriars," said Ruth bravely. "And I am sorry I did anything to bring any cloud upon the name of the new club. I promise you, Mrs. Tellingham, that I will do nothing in the future to make you sorry that you sanctioned the formation of our society."

"Very well! Very well!" said the Preceptress, hastily. "You may have the same rights, and under the same conditions, that the older clubs have. And now, Miss Fielding, stop here a moment. I have another matter to speak to you about."

The other girls went away and Ruth, somewhat troubled by the manner of Mrs. Tellingham, waited her pleasure. The Preceptress took up a letter from her desk and read it through again.

"Dr. Davison you know, Ruth," she said, quietly. "He and your uncle, Mr. Jabez Potter, have arranged to send here to school a lame girl named Curtis"


text:
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Rh "My uncle!" gasped Ruth. "O, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Tellingham. But are you sure it is my uncle who is sending Mercy Curtis?"

"With Dr. Davison—yes," the Preceptress said, in some surprise. "They have equally charged themselves with her expenses at Briarwood—if she can remain here. You know her, of course?"

"Helen and I have talked of her almost every day, Mrs. Tellingham," said Ruth warmly. "She is very quick and sharp. And she is much improved in disposition from what she used to be."

"I hear you speak of her so kindly, with pleasure, Miss Fielding," said the head of the school. "For it opens the way to a suggestion that Dr. Davison makes. He wishes Mercy Curtis to room with you."

"With Helen and me!" cried Ruth, in delight. "Of course, I slept in Mercy's room all the time she was at the Red Mill last summer, and we got on nicely together."

"But you do not know how Miss Cameron will receive the suggestion of having a third girl in your small room?"

"Oh, Helen is so kind!" Ruth cried. "I do not believe she will object. And she is sorry for Mercy."


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154 "I know you have been Helen's constant companion. Do you think you have been as good friends as you were when you came to Briarwood, Ruth?" asked Mrs. Tellingham, with sharpness.

"Helen! Oh, I hope so, Mrs. Tellingham!" cried Ruth, in great distress. "I am sure I love her just the same—and always shall."

"But she evidently finds her friends among the Upedes. Why did she not join this new society that you have started?"

"I—I did not mean to start it without her," stammered Ruth. "It was really only my suggestion. The other Infants took it up"

"But you named it?"

"I did suggest the name," admitted Ruth.

"And you did not join the Up and Doing Club with your chum."

"No, Mrs. Tellingham. Nor did I join the F. C.'s. I did not like the manner in which both societies went about making converts. I didn't like it the very first day we came."

"Miss Picolet, your French teacher, told me something about Mary Cox meeting the stage and getting hold of you two girls before you had reached Briarwood at all."

"Yes, ma'am."

"By the way," said the Preceptress, her brow clouding again and the stern look coming back into her face that had rested on it when Ruth


text:
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Rh had first entered the room, "you had met Miss Picolet before you arrived at the school?"

"She spoke to us in the stage—yes, ma'am."

"But before that—you had seen her?'

"Ye-es, ma'am," said Ruth, slowly, beginning to suspect that Mrs. Tellingham's curiosity was no idle matter.

"Where?"

"On the Lanawaxa—the boat coming down the lake, Mrs. Tellingham."

"Miss Picolet was alone aboard the boat?"

Ruth signified that she was.

"Did you see her speaking with anybody?"

"We saw a man speak to her. He was one of the musicians. He frightened Miss Picolet. Afterward we saw that he had followed her out upon the wharf. He was a big man who played a harp."

"And you told this to your school-fellows after you became acquainted here?"

Mrs. Tellingham spoke very sternly indeed, and her gaze never left Ruth's face. The girl from the Red Mill hesitated but an instant. She had never spoken of the man and Miss Picolet to anybody save Helen; but she knew that her chum must have told all the particulars to Mary Cox.

"I—I believe we did mention it to some of the girls. It impressed us as peculiar—


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156 as we did not know who Miss Picolet was until after we were in the stage-coach with her."

"Then you are sure you have not been one who has circulated stories among the girls about Miss Picolet—derogatory to her, I mean?"

"Oh, Mrs. Tellingham! Never!" cried Ruth, earnestly.

"Do you know anything about this silly story I hear whispered that the marble harp out there on the fountain was heard to play the night you and Miss Cameron arrived here?"

"Oh!" ejaculated Ruth.

"I see you know about it. Did you hear the sound?"

"Ye-es, ma'am," admitted Ruth.

"I will not ask you under what circumstances you heard it; but I do ask if you have any knowledge of any fact that might explain the mystery?"

Ruth was silent for several moments. She was greatly worried; yet she could understand how this whole matter had come to Mrs. Tellingham's knowledge. Mary Cox, angry at Miss Picolet, had tried to defame her in the mind of the Preceptress.

Now, what Ruth knew was very little indeed. What she suspected regarding a meeting between the French teacher and the man with the harp, at the campus fountain, was an entirely different matter. But Mrs. Tellingham had put her


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Education, Catholic

EDUCATION, Catholic. See ,


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Rh so that Ruth did not have to tell her suspicions.

"I really know nothing about it, Mrs. Tellingham," she said, finally.

"That is all. I do not believe you—or Miss Cameron—would willingly malign an innocent person. I have known Miss Picolet some time, and I respect her. If she has a secret sorrow, I respect it. I do not think it is nice to make Miss Picolet's private affairs a subject for remark by the school.

"Now, we will leave that. Sound Miss Cameron about this Mercy Curtis. If you girls will take her in, she shall come on trial. It lies with you, and your roommate, Miss Fielding. Come to me after chapel to-morrow and tell me what you have decided."

And so Ruth was dismissed.


text: Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall/Chapter 18


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Education, Agricultural

EDUCATION, Agricultural. The methods of scientific instruction in all branches of farming.

Historical. — Most of the early attempts to establish systematic agricultural instruction were made through schools of secondary grade. This was the natural consequence of the fact that the early development of agriculture was largely dependent on the development and application of chemistry. The two earliest colleges of agriculture to be established were at Hofwyl in Switzerland and Krumau in Bohemia. They were started in 1797. The former exerted a marked influence upon the development of agricultural education, especially that of a secondary grade. Its influence was felt in this country through the pupils that were drawn from this country and by the work of

“Association of the Fellenberg System of Education.”

The first professorship of agriculture in a collegiate institution in this country was held by Samuel L. Mitchill of Columbia College. He also held chairs in natural history and chemistry at the same time. The position was established in 1792. Just when the first school devoted largely to the interest of agriculture was established in this country is difficult to determine. During the early part of the 18th century a large number of agricultural societies were active and many of these organizations were interested in promoting systematic instruction in agriculture. The writings of Washington, Franklin and Jefferson bear testimony to their interest in the subject.

In spite of the fact that it is difficult to determine the beginnings of schools of agricultural instruction, it is relatively easy to decide upon the first institution in this country that attained such a measure of success that it attracted general attention. This honor belongs to Gardiner Academy which was established at Gardiner, Me., in 1821. In the legislative act providing for its incorporation it is stated that it was “designed to prepare youth by scientific education to become skillful farmers and mechanics.” In 1823 the legislature made provision for some aid from the State treasury. This was undoubtedly the first State aid that was ever granted to an agricultural school in the United States. This institution had a fair measure of success for several years but was finally forced to close its doors in 1823, because of decline in student body and a lack of financial support. Many other attempts were made with varying degrees of success to found schools during the first half of the 19th century, but none met with a marked degree of success. All declined after, at most, a few years of existence. Among these institutions may be mentioned Agricultural Seminary, Derby, Conn., 1824; Cream Hill School, West Cornwall, Conn., 1845; Farmer's College, College Hill, Ohio, 1833; Fellenberg School, Whitesborough, N. Y., 1831; and Mount Airy Agricultural College, Mount Airy, Pa., 1847.

The movement for agricultural education began to assume more serious proportions when efforts were made to secure State and Federal aid for the support of agricultural colleges. To whom the credit belong for these suggestions is impossible to say with certainty. It is agreed, however, that through the influence of far-seeing men in several sections of the country pressure was exerted in behalf of State and Federal support of colleges of agriculture at about 1850.

In Pennsylvania the present State College is due to the activity of the State Agricultural Society that took definite steps in 1850-51 to secure an agricultural school. In New York State several attempts were made but all of the early ones were without great measure of success. To the State of Michigan belongs the honor of having the oldest college of agriculture in North America. This institution is also the first to be established entirely on the basis of State support. The State Constitution adopted in 1850 made provision that the State legislature should establish and maintain a college of agriculture. The law providing

for its establishment became effective 12 Feb. 1855. Immediately a bitter fight followed over the location of the institution. There was a decided effort made by those who were interested in the State University to have the College of Agriculture made a part of that institution. This movement was opposed by the State Agricultural Society and this organization was successful as the college was finally located at East Lansing. This location, apart from a literary institution, is of considerable interest because of the influence that it exerted upon the establishment of “separate” colleges of agriculture after the passage of the Land Grant Act. In the early years of the agricultural colleges the separate institutions had a more substantial development than did those that were made a part of existing colleges or parts of State universities. The colleges that were made a part of a university were very slow to find themselves, but their growth in recent years has been of such a nature as to justify the views of those who believed they should be a part of a university.

On 16 Feb. 1857, the State legislature of Michigan appropriated $40,000 for the erection of buildings, instruction and maintenance for the years of 1857 and 1858. The institution opened to receive students 13 May 1857. State supported colleges of agriculture were established in Pennsylvania and Maryland in 1859.

Land Grant Colleges. — Undoubtedly there would have been a gradual development of colleges of agriculture on the basis of State support, but even before the establishment of the Michigan College of Agriculture there had been proposed plans for Federal aid. To whom the credit for this suggestion belongs is in doubt. Probably it had independent origin in the minds of several men. The first bill introduced in Congress touching on this subject was offered by Justin P. Morrill in 1857. At that time Mr. Morrill was a member of the House of Representatives from the State of Vermont This bill made provision for granting to each State 20,000 acres of land for each senator and each representative in Congress. It was finally passed 7 Feb. 1859. It was, however, vetoed by President Buchanan. The matter then rested until after President Lincoln's election, when Mr. Morrill again introduced a bill, drawn on lines similar to the previous measure except that it made provision for granting 30,000 acres of land to each State for each senator and representative in Congress. This measure became a law on 2 July 1862, when President Lincoln's signature was affixed.

It provides that the income from these lands shall be used by each State which accepts the benefits of the act “to the endowment, support and maintenance of at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislature of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.” A supplementary act was passed in 1866 by which provision is made so that when any Territory becomes a State it is entitled to the benefits of

the Act of 1862, or the First Morrill Act as it is commonly called.

The Second Morrill Act became a law 30 Aug. 1890. This act provided for an initial allotment to the States of $15,000 per year with an automatic increase of $1,000 annually until the sum of $25,000 was reached in 1900. The purpose of this legislation was for the “more complete endowment and support of the colleges for the benefit of agriculture and mechanic arts established under the provisions of an act of Congress, approved July second, eighteen hundred and sixty-two.” Under the terms of this law, there is provision for the division of the funds between colleges for white and colored students in States where separate institutions are maintained.

The Nelson amendment was approved 14 March 1907. This provided for an increase of $25,000 a year to the allotments made under the Second Morrill Act. The initial grant was $5,000 and was subject to an annual increase of $5,000 until the maximum of $25,000 was attained. Under the two acts, the Second Morrill Law and the Nelson Amendment, the annual grant to each State is $50,000.

Through the provisions of the three acts there has been a marked development of State colleges of agriculture. As a result there are at the present time 67 of these institutions including those for colored students. There are 17 of these. In 1915 the total income of the land grant colleges was $31,961,765, of which amount only $3,552,077 came from Federal sources. According to a report from the United States Bureau of Education there were in 1915-16 private colleges to the number of 16, giving instruction in agriculture.

The debates that took place in Congress at the time of the passage of the First Morrill Act showed no clear conception as to what these colleges when established were to accomplish. It is also true that much diversity has been shown in the use of the funds by the States. In some of the eastern States the land grant was turned over to privately endowed colleges that were in need of funds and in the Middle West in some cases the grants were used as a basis for the establishment of State universities. In spite of these facts in the half century that has elapsed since the passage of the first act strong institutions have been developed that have come to have clearly defined aims and fairly definite means of attaining those ends. At present, in most of the institutions three lines of activity are clearly defined: viz., resident teaching, research and extension.

Teaching. — The courses offered by the institution are usually of two classes; long courses, four years of the usual length of a college year; and short courses which are commonly two years in length but of only 10 or 12 weeks duration each year. In addition most institutions make special provision for the adult student who cannot meet the entrance standards.

The admission requirements to the four-year courses are in general as high as those for admission to other college courses. The completion of the course leads to the degree of B.S. or B.S.A. The subjects taught include such basic sciences as chemistry, botany, zoology, mathematics, geology and meteorology. In addition English and political economy are

required subjects. The applied subjects are represented by farm crops, farm management, rural engineering, soils, breeding, agronomy, animal husbandry, rural or agricultural economics, poultry husbandry, rural education, entomology, fruit growing, vegetable gardening, floriculture, forestry, landscape art, dairy industry and agricultural chemistry. The relation between the basic and applied subjects varies in the different institutions but usually it comes between the limits of one-third and one-half.

During the year of 1915-16 there were 16,008 students in the four-year courses and in addition 10,332 students in one- and two-year courses. To these figures should be added 2,053 four-year students in agricultural colleges for negroes. This is quite in contrast with the early experience of the colleges when they had almost no student body. Statistics from bulletin number 10 of the Carnegie Foundation show the student body in these institutions grew rapidly from 1894-95, 2,712, to 1914 14,844.

Since the land grant colleges are supported by the State and National governments, they have felt the need from an early date of providing instruction through short or winter courses for students who did not have the time to attend during the regular academic year or who may have lacked entrance requirements. Many early attempts were made at courses of this character but the University of Wisconsin is generally credited with having established the short course on its present day basis. This course was opened in 1888 and has run each year since that lime. These courses vary in length at different institutions but usually they are from 4 to 12 weeks in length and continue for one or two years. The work that is offered is of an extremely practical nature. That it is meeting a demand is attested by the fact that there were 14,108 short-course students in the colleges of agriculture during the year of 1915-16. It is quite likely that with the development of agricultural instruction in the public high schools and special secondary schools that this phase of the work may decline at the colleges.

In recent years many of the colleges are offering summer courses of 6 1o 12 weeks' duration to teachers. The need for this work has been especially pronounced as a result of the development of agricultural instruction in the elementary and secondary public schools.

Research. — Almost from the beginning of instruction in the colleges of agriculture some of the instructors devoted a portion of their time to investigation. This was made necessary by the relatively small body of agricultural knowledge that was established on a scientific basis and organized for teaching purposes. As a result of provisions of the Federal acts encouraging agricultural research most of the experiment stations are organized at the State colleges of agriculture. Commonly, the investigator is a member of both college and experiment station staffs. The results of the experimental work are usually distributed by means of bulletins that are published both in technical and popular form. See .

Extension. This term is usually applied to the instructional work that is conducted with students who are not resident at the college.

It covers a wide range of activities such as correspondence courses, which have been especially developed in Pennsylvania and California, demonstration schools, farmers' institutes, demonstration plots, lectures, reading courses, county agents, home demonstration agents and boys' and girls' club work. Almost from the beginning colleges of agriculture have felt the pressure for such work, because they are State supported and also as they had to establish themselves with the farmers.

The first State law making specific appropriation for extension work was probably the Nixon Act which was passed by the New York State legislature in 1894. At the present time practically every college of agriculture has an extension department with a head who is usually designated extension director. There are approximately a thousand extension specialists on the faculties of the agricultural colleges. Much of the stimulus for this work and plans for its organization have come through the Smith-Lever Act which became effective 8 May 1914. This law differs from the previous acts in which Federal funds were granted to the States for the development of agriculture, in the fact that the National government retains a larger measure of control than in any previous legislation. This is done by making the funds available only for co-operative extension work that is carried on by the land grant colleges of agriculture and the United States Department of Agriculture. The nature of this co-operative work is set forth in section 2 of the law as follows:

“Cooperative agricultural extension work shall consist of the giving of instruction and practical demonstrations in agriculture and

home economics to persons not attending or resident in said colleges in the several communities, and imparting to such persons information on said subjects through field demonstrations, publications, and otherwise; and this work shall be carried on in such manner as may mutually be agreed upon by the Secretary of Agriculture and the State agricultural college or colleges receiving the benefits of this act.”

By the provisions of this act, $480,000 were appropriated for the first year, $10,000 of which went to each State accepting the provisions of the act. For the succeeding year there was an appropriation of $600,000 and this will increase annually at the rate of $500,000 until the of $4,580,000 is attained. These grants, except the $480,000, are “allotted annually to each State by the Secretary of Agriculture in the proportion which the rural population of each State bears to the rural population of all the States as determined by the next preceding Federal census.” In order to secure the benefits of the act an amount equal to that coming from the Federal government must be appropriated from sources within the State. The law is administered through the States Relations Service of the United States Department of Agriculture.

The most notable developments under this act have been the systems of county agents home demonstration agents, and boys' and girls' club leaders. March 1, 1918, there were co-operatively employed 2,645 county agents 1,514 home demonstration agents and 441 boys' and girls' club workers. Not all of these persons are employed on permanent funds as 2,950 are emergency agents put into the co-operative

work for the purpose of stimulating agricultural production and food conservation after our entrance into the war with Germany. This act was made possible by an emergency appropriation of $4,350,000. The table on the preceding page, furnished through the courtesy of the States Relations Service, shows the growth of the co-operative extension work since the passage of the Smith-Lever Act.

The various Federal acts relating to instruction, research and extension in agriculture have resulted in the development of a group of strong institutions that are making their influence felt throughout the entire country. In 1918 there were 67 state and federally supported institutions of college grade giving instruction in agriculture, 17 of which were for negroes. In 23 States and Porto Rico the college of agriculture is a part of the university. Tuition is free to residents of the State in which the college is located in most cases. There were 7,066 persons engaged as instructors or investigators in these institutions.

Foreign Countries. — The most widely known college of agriculture in Canada is the Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph. This institution was established in 1874. Several other colleges have been established since that time. In addition to its collegiate instruction in agriculture Canada has done much to encourage the introduction of agriculture into the rural high and elementary schools.

The first chair of agriculture in England was established in the University of Edinburgh in 1790. In 1838 the Albert Agricultural College was founded at Glasnevin, Ireland, as a state-supported institution. The Royal College of Agriculture was established at Cirencester, England, in 184S. There have been other colleges opened for the purpose of giving instruction in agriculture and in addition there are a considerable number of other colleges giving agricultural instruction. National aid is given to this work through the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries.

The Institut National Agronomique de Paris, which is supported by the national government, stands at the head of the French system of collegiate instruction in agriculture. In addition there are three national schools, one each at Grignon, Rennes and Montpelier. France has an excellent system of secondary schools of agriculture, some of which are specialized in their work and others give general instruction. There are also chairs of agriculture in many lyceums and colleges. Since 1879 instruction in elementary agriculture and horticulture has been obligatory in the normal and primary schools. Institutions for giving instruction in agriculture both of college and secondary grade are to be found in most of the civilized countries of the world.

Secondary Schools. — As has been noted most of the early efforts to give instruction in agriculture were made in schools of secondary grade. Numerous attempts were made to establish “farm schools” in the East and Middle West during the first half of the 19th century. While some of these met with a measure of success, sooner or later they were compelled for one reason or another to close. It was not until 1888 that a permanent secondary school of agriculture was established. This was the Minnesota State School of Agriculture, located at Saint Anthony's Park, in connection with

the State College of Agriculture. Following the opening of this school there came a period in which there was considerable development of special secondary agricultural schools. In 1915-16 there were 28 such schools maintained by State colleges of agriculture, 74 special agricultural schools receiving State aid, and 12 private agricultural schools of secondary grade. These special schools have in some cases been supported entirely by State aid and in other instances by a combination of State and local funds. The unit of territory that they attempt to serve varies greatly. In some cases, e.g. New York and Minnesota they have been supported entirely by the State, and no boundaries set from which students may come, within the State. In Wisconsin the county has been made the unit and the schools are supported by State and county. In Georgia and Alabama a school was established in each congressional district, in Oklahoma the judicial district was made the unit, while in Arkansas the State was arbitrarily divided into four districts.

The length of the courses varies from one to four years with the most common length two years except in the district schools of Alabama and Georgia where the four-year course is the rule. The admission requirements very properly are not high for most of these institutions. Completion of the elementary school is expected, except for students over 16 who are commonly admitted regardless of previous academic preparation. In most of these schools the instruction is designed to meet the needs of boys who have come from the farm and who expect to return to it without further opportunity for study. In addition to the instruction in such agricultural subjects as farm crops, soils, animal husbandry, farm management, fruit growing, poultry husbandry, and dairying, the students have work in English, civics, arithmetic, and some basic science work. In these institutions the tendency has been to follow too closely in the footsteps of the colleges of agriculture so far as organization and presentation of the work are concerned. Most of the schools are provided with a farm.

It was noted in connection with the “separate” colleges of agriculture that in the early stages they developed more rapidly than did those that were a part of a university. When the later class finally started they had a more substantial growth, A striking parallel occurs in the development of agriculture instruction of secondary grade. The first few years of its growth the special schools were prominent and there were few agricultural departments in high schools. These, however, are developing rapidly in recent years. In 1915-16 there were 421 State-aided vocational departments of agriculture in public high schools and 2,981 public high schools teaching agriculture. In the vocational departments the course of study is commonly four years in length although frequently short courses are also offered. In other high schools the courses commonly run from a half year to two years.

February 23, President Wilson signed the Smith-Hughes bill for vocational education. This measure which makes provision for Federal aid to the States for vocational education in agriculture, trade and industrial subjects, and home economics, is certain to exert a marked influence upon the development of secondary

agriculture. Like the Smith-Lever Act this law makes the development of vocational education in agriculture a co-operative enterprise between the various States and the Federal government. The law went into operation 1 July 1917 and provides Federal funds to the amount of $500,000 for the stimulus of vocational education in agriculture. This amount is increased by $250,000 annually until $2,000,000 is reached when it is increased to $3,000,000, which is the maximum, by annual increments of $500,000. This money is appropriated among the States in the proportion that the rural population of each State bears to the total rural population of all the States. In order to receive the benefits of this act there must be expended from sources within the State an amount equal to the amount received from the National government. The instruction must be designed for pupils over 14 years of age but it must be below college grade. The law further provides that the funds must be expended through State supported or supervised schools, and arrangements must be made so that pupils obtain at least six months of practical experience each year. The law makes provision for the preparation of teachers of vocational agriculture.

This act is administered by the Federal Board for Vocational Education which consists of a representative of labor, a representative of agriculture, a representative of trade and industry, and the following ex-officio members; secretary of agriculture, secretary of commerce, secretary of labor and the commissioner of education.

In all of the early attempts to develop agricultural instruction in secondary schools it was considered necessary to maintain a farm. In recent years the home project plan, which has been developed largely through the efforts of R. W. Stimson of Massachusetts, has proved more satisfactory as a means of affording vocational experience. The home project is ordinarily a productive enterprise that is an outgrowth of the school instruction but is carried on by the pupil at his home under the supervision of the agricultural instructor. The next 10 years are certain to witness a marked development and extension of the home project method in agricultural teaching in high schools.

Elementary Schools. — Agricultural instruction in the high schools raises many problems that are difficult of solution but the problem is even more serious in the rural elementary school. There are a number of States in which such instruction is required by law but in a large measure it has failed to function because it has been too bookish. This is chiefly due to the fact that in most States there is no adequate system for the preparation of rural teachers. They are unable to go into the school and utilize the experiences of the country child and the opportunities of the farming community for educational purposes. However, some very good results nave been attained in spite of the many difficulties. The consolidation of schools has greatly increased the possibilities of instruction in agriculture for pupils of the upper grades. This is also true of the intermediate schools of agriculture and mechanic arts of New York State; and the junior high schools to be found in the rural communities of Vermont. The latter have had a very marked development since 1915 when provision was made

for them by special legislation. (See ). Consult Bailey, L. H., ‘Cyclopedia of American Agriculture’ (New York 1910-11); Carney, M., ‘Country Life and the Country School’ (Chicago 1912); Bulletins of United States Department of Agriculture and of State Experiment Stations.


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 only Son of God, we are offered and sacrificed. This sacrifice is continued by life and completed at death, in which the soul truly quitting all vices, and the love of the world, with the contagion of which it is always infected throughout life, achieves its immolation and is received into the bosom of God.

Let us not grieve then like the heathen who have no hope. We did not lose our father at the moment of his death: we lost him, so to say, when he entered the Church through baptism. From that time, he belonged to God; his life was devoted to God; his actions regarded the world only for God. In his death, he became totally separated from sin, and it was at that moment that he was accepted by God, and that his sacrifice received its accomplishment and its consummation. He has performed therefore what he had vowed: he has finished the work that God had given him to do; he has accomplished the only thing for which he was created. The will of God is accomplished in him, and his will is absorbed in God. Let not our will then separate what God has joined together; and let us stifle or moderate, by the understanding of truth, the feelings of a corrupt and fallen nature which has only false images, and which troubles by its illusions the sanctity of the feelings which truth and the Gospel should give us.

Let us then no longer look upon death like the heathen, but like Christians, that is with hope, as St. Paul commands, since this is the especial privilege of Christians. Let us no longer regard a corpse as putrid carrion because deceitful nature figures it thus; but as the inviolable and eternal temple of the Holy Spirit, as faith teaches. For we know that sainted bodies are inhabited by the Holy Spirit until the resurrection, which will be caused by virtue of this spirit which dwells in them for this effect. It is for this reason that we honor the relics of the dead, and it was on this true principle that the Eucharist was formerly placed in the mouth of the dead, since, as it was known that they were the temple of the Holy Spirit, it was believed that they also merited to be united to this holy sacrament. But the Church has changed this custom, not in order that these bodies shall not be holy, but for the reason that the Eucharist being the

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 fourteen. He also states that the rate of interest had been successively reduced from 6 to 5%, and then to 4%. The principal object of his report is to prove that, taking interest at 4%, a life annuity was worth at least sixteen years’ purchase; and, in fact, that an annuitant purchasing an annuity for the life of a young and healthy nominee at sixteen years’ purchase, made an excellent bargain. It may be mentioned that he argues that it is more to the advantage, both of the country and of the private investor, that the public loans should be raised by way of grant of life annuities rather than perpetual annuities. It appears conclusively from De Witt’s correspondence with Hudde, that the rate of mortality assumed as the basis of his calculations was deduced from careful examination of the mortality that had actually prevailed among the nominees on whose lives annuities had been granted in former years. De Witt appears to have come to the conclusion that the probability of death is the same in any half-year from the age of 3 to 53 inclusive; that in the next ten years, from 53 to 63, the probability is greater in the ratio of 3 to 2; that in the next ten years, from 63 to 73, it is greater in the ratio of 2 to 1; and in the next seven years, from 73 to 80, it is greater in the ratio of 3 to 1; and he places the limit of human life at 80. If a mortality table of the usual form is deduced from these suppositions, out of 212 persons alive at the age of 3, 2 will die every year up to 53, 3 in each of the ten years from 53 to 63, 4 in each of the next ten years from 63 to 73, and 6 in each of the next seven years from 73 to 80, when all will be dead.

De Witt calculates the value of an annuity in the following way. Assume that annuities on 10,000 lives each ten years of age, which satisfy the Hm mortality table, have been purchased. Of these nominees 79 will die before attaining the age of 11, and no annuity payment will be made in respect of them; none will die between the ages of 11 and 12, so that annuities will be paid for one year on 9921 lives; 40 attain the age of 12 and die before 13, so that two payments will be made with respect to these lives. Reasoning in this way we see that the annuities on 35 of the nominees will be payable for three years; on 40 for four years, and so on. Proceeding thus to the end of the table, 15 nominees attain the age of 95, 5 of whom die before the age of 96, so that 85 payments will be paid in respect of these 5 lives. Of the survivors all die before attaining the age of 97, so that the annuities on these lives will be payable for 86 years. Having previously calculated a table of the values of annuities certain for every number of years up to 86, the value of all the annuities on the 10,000 nominees will be found by taking 40 times the value of an annuity for 2 years, 35 times the value of an annuity for 3 years, and so on—the last term being the value of 10 annuities for 86 years—and adding them together; and the value of an annuity on one of the nominees will then be found by dividing by 10,000. Before leaving the subject of De Witt, we may mention that we find in the correspondence a distinct suggestion of the law of mortality that bears the name of Demoivre. In De Witt’s letter, dated the 27th of October 1671 (Ass. Mag. vol. iii. p. 107), he speaks of a “provisional hypothesis” suggested by Hudde, that out of 80 young lives (who, from the context, may be taken as of the age 6) about 1 dies annually. In strictness, therefore, the law in question might be more correctly termed Hudde’s than Demoivre’s.

De Witt’s report being thus of the nature of an unpublished state paper, although it contributed to its author’s reputation, did not contribute to advance the exact knowledge of the subject; and the author to whom the credit must be given of first showing how to calculate the value of an annuity on correct principles is Edmund Halley. He gave the first approximately correct mortality table (deduced from the records of the numbers of deaths and baptisms in the city of Breslau), and showed how it might be employed to calculate the value of an annuity on the life of a nominee of any age (see Phil. Trans. 1693; Ass. Mag. vol. xviii.).

Previously to Halley’s time, and apparently for many years subsequently, all dealings with life annuities were based upon mere conjectural estimates. The earliest known reference to any estimate of the value of life annuities rose out of the requirements of the Falcidian law, which (40 ) was adopted in the Roman empire, and which declared that a testator should not give more than three-fourths of his property in legacies, so that at least one-fourth must go to his legal representatives. It is easy to see how it would occasionally become necessary, while this law was in force, to value life annuities charged upon a testator’s estate. Aemilius Macer ( 230) states that the method which had been in common use at that time was as follows:—From the earliest age until 30 take 30 years’ purchase, and for each age after 30 deduct 1 year. It is obvious that no consideration of compound interest can have entered into this estimate; and it is easy to see that it is equivalent to assuming that all persons who attain the age of 30 will certainly live to the age of 60, and then certainly die. Compared with this estimate, that which was propounded by the praetorian prefect Ulpian was a great improvement. His table is as follows:—

Here also we have no reason to suppose that the element of interest was taken into consideration; and the assumption, that between the ages of 40 and 50 each addition of a year to the nominee’s age diminishes the value of the annuity by one year’s purchase, is equivalent to assuming that there is no probability of the nominee dying between the ages of 40 and 50. Considered, however, simply as a table of the average duration of life, the values are fairly accurate. At all events, no more correct estimate appears to have been arrived at until the close of the 17th century.

Commutation tables, aptly so named in 1840 by Augustus De Morgan (see his paper “On the Calculation of Single Life Contingencies,” Assurance Magazine, xii. 328), show the proportion in which a benefit due at one age ought to be changed, so as to retain the same value and be due at another age. The earliest known specimen of a commutation table is contained in William Dale’s Introduction to the Study of the Doctrine of Annuities, published in 1772. A full account of this work is given by F. Hendriks in the second number of the Assurance Magazine, pp. 15-17. William Morgan’s Treatise on Assurances, 1779, also contains a commutation table. Morgan gives the table as furnishing a convenient means of checking the correctness of the values of annuities found by the ordinary process. It may be assumed that he was aware that the table might be used for the direct calculation of annuities; but he appears to have been ignorant of its other uses.

The first author who fully developed the powers of the table was John Nicholas Tetens, a native of Schleswig, who in 1785, while professor of philosophy and mathematics at Kiel, published in the German language an Introduction to the Calculation of Life Annuities and Assurances. This work appears to have been quite unknown in England until F. Hendriks gave, in the first number of the Assurance Magazine, pp. 1-20 (Sept. 1850), an account of it, with a translation of the passages describing the construction and use of the commutation table, and a sketch

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1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Charmes, Francis

CHARMES, FRANCIS (1848-1916), French journalist and politician, was born at Aurillac, Cantal, April 21 1848. He was educated at Aurillac, and afterwards at the lycées of Clermont-Ferrand and Poitiers, subsequently entering journalism. He rapidly made a mark as a brilliant writer, and in 1872 became editor of the Journal des Débats, where he remained until 1880, returning to it from 1889 to 1907. His political writings created much interest, and in 1880 the Government appointed him to the post of assistant director of the political department of the Foreign Office. In 1885 he became head of the department, and remained in the Foreign Office until 1889. From 1881 to 1885 and again from 1889 to 1898 he was deputy for Cantal, and in 1900 became a senator. Charmes is, however, best known for his connexion with the Revue des Deux Mondes. In 1893 he began his famous political writings in the Revue, and in 1907 became its editor. He takes a high place among the journalists of the third republic, and his articles and studies, both literary and political, in the Journal des Débats and Revue des Deux Mondes were one of the features of French literary history during the last years of the 19th century. He died in Paris Jan. 4 1916.


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 "When I reached her my hand from my horse"


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 Goethe at the Court of Charles Frederick of Baden


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 "Thus clad, I carelessly went on skating up and down"


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 "A little golden heart… still hung… about my neck"


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286 her, bewildered by it, like Edward, and more than he, retired into herself,—she had nothing further to say: hope she could not, and wish she dared not. A glimpse into what was passing in her we can gather from her diary, some passages of which we think to communicate.


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 "He sleeps! Well done, ye little airy sprites!"


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 "And now, I, too, in sin am lost"


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 "'Tis but a magic shape, a lifeless wraith"


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 "Thy lover here lies prostrate at thy feet"


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 Translated by Anna Swanwick


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Rh Remind him of that kiss, and 'twill to nothing dwindle.— And, O ye jealous ones, if maidens plague you e'er, Recall your own false tricks, and blame them, if ye dare.


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 for there is too much that is general, and there must always be too much that is private. I should have much to tell you that happens in complete secrecy, but I regard it as useless to send it to you; all that I pray you is, to mingle acts of grace with the prayers which you make for me, and which I entreat you to multiply at this time. I carried your letter myself with the aid of God, in order that it might be forwarded to Madame de Maubuisson. They gave me a little book, in which this sentence was written with the hand. I know not whether it is in the little book of sentences, but it is beautiful. I am so much hurried that I can say no more. Do not fail in your fasts. Adieu.

  1656.

order to answer all the points upon which you address me, and, indeed, to write, although my time is limited.

I am delighted that you like the book of M. de Laval, and the Meditations on Grace; I draw from this important conclusions for what I desire.

I send the details of this condemnation which had frightened you: it is nothing at all, thank God, and it is a miracle that nothing worse is done, since the enemies of truth have the power and the will to oppress him. Perhaps you are of those who merit not to be abandoned by God, and removed from an undeserving world, and he is assured that you will serve the Church by your prayers, if the Church has served you by hers. For it is the Church that merits with Jesus

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 the sorrow of having pursued other pleasures and the fear of losing it by the allurements of these same pleasures which tempt us without ceasing. And thus we should labor unceasingly to cherish this joy which moderates our fear, and to preserve this fear which preserves our joy, so that on feeling ourselves too much carried away by the one we may incline towards the other, and thus remain poised between the two. In the day of prosperity he joyful; but in the day of adversity consider, says the Scripture, and so it shall be till the promise of Jesus Christ shall be accomplished in us that our joy shall be full. Let us not then be cast down by sadness, nor believe that piety consists only in bitterness without consolation. The true piety, which is found perfect only in heaven, is so full of satisfactions that it overflows with them in its beginning, its progress, and its consummation. Its light is so shining that it is reflected on all about it; and if there is sadness mingled with it, especially at the outset, this comes from ourselves and not from virtue; for it is not the effect of the piety that is springing up in us, but of the impiety that still is there. Remove the impiety and the joy will be unalloyed. Let us not ascribe this then to devotion, but to ourselves and seek relief from it only through our correction.

very glad of the hope which you give me of the success of the affair which you fear may make you vain. There is something to fear in any case; for, were it successful, I should fear from it that evil sorrow of which St. Paul says that it leads to death, instead of that different one that leads to life.

It is certain that the matter was a thorny one, and that, if the person should be extricated from it, the result would give reason for some vanity, were it not that we had entreated it of God, and should therefore believe the good that comes of it his work. But if it should not succeed well, we ought not therefore to fall into despondency, for the same reason that having prayed to God in the affair, it is

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 bread of life and of the living, it ought not to be given to the dead.

Let us no longer regard a man as having ceased to live although nature suggests it; but as beginning to live, as truth assures. Let us no longer regard his soul as perished and reduced to nothingness, but as quickened and united to the sovereign life; and let us thus correct, by attention to these truths, the sentiments of error so deeply imprinted in ourselves and those emotions of honor so natural to mankind.

To subdue this dread more effectually, it is necessary fully to comprehend its origin; and to paint it to you in a few words, I am forced to tell you in general what is the source of all vice and all sin. This I have learned from two very great and holy personages. The truth covered by this mystery is that God has created man with two loves, the one for God, the other for himself; but with this law, that the love for God shall be infinite, that is without any other limits than God himself; and that the love for self shall be finite and relating to God.

Man in this state not only loves himself without sin, but could not do otherwise than love himself without sin.

Since, sin being come, man has lost the first of these loves; and the love for himself being left alone in this great soul capable of an infinite love, this self-love has extended and overflowed in the empty space which the love of God has quitted; and thus he loves himself alone, and all things for himself, that is, infinitely. This is the origin of self-love. It was natural to Adam and just in his innocence; but it became criminal and immoderate after his sin.

Here is the source of this love, and the cause of its defect and of its excess. It is the same with the passion of ruling, of indolence, and others. The application is easy. Let us come to our single subject. The dread of death was natural to innocent Adam, because, his life being pleasing to God, it must have been pleasing to man: and death was terrible when it ended a life conformed to the will of God. Since, man having sinned, his life has become corrupt, his body and soul enemies to each other, and both to God. This horrible change having infected so holy a life, the love of

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came in a week. For Helen of course was only too delighted to fall in with Mrs. Tellingham's suggestion. Duet Number 2, West Dormitory, was amply large enough for three, and Ruth gave up her bed to the cripple and slept on a couch. Helen herself could not do too much for the comfort of the newcomer.

Dr. Davidson and Dr. Cranfew came with her; but really the lame girl bore the journey remarkably well. And how different she looked from the thin, peaked girl that Ruth and Helen remembered!

"Oh, you didn't expect to see so much flesh on my bones; did you?" said Mercy, noting their surprise, and being just as sharp and choppy in her observations as ever. "But I'm getting wickedly and scandalously fat. And I don't often have to repeat Aunt Alviry's song of 'Oh, my back and oh, my bones!'"

Mercy went to bed on her arrival. But the


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Rh next day she got about in the room very nicely with the aid of two canes. The handsome ebony crutches she saved for "Sunday-Best."

Ruth arranged a meeting of the Sweetbriars to welcome the cripple, and Mercy seemed really ot [sic] enjoy having so many girls of her own age about her. Helen did not bring in many members of the Upedes; indeed, just then they all seemed to keep away from Duet Two, and none of them spoke to Ruth. That is, none save Jennie Stone. The fat girl was altogether too good-natured—and really too kind at heart—to treat Ruth Fielding as Jennie's roommates did.

"They say you went and told Picolet we were going to have the party in your room," Heavy said to Ruth, frankly, "and that's how you got out of it so easily. But I tell them that's all nonsense, you know. If you'd wanted to make us trouble, you would have let Helen have the party in our room, as she wanted to, and so you could have stayed home and not been in it at all."

"As she wanted to?" repeated Ruth, slowly. "Did Helen first plan to have the supper in your quartette?"

"Of course she did. It was strictly a Upede affair—or would have been if you hadn't been in it. But you're a good little thing, Ruth Fielding, and I tell them you never in this world told Picolet."


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160 "I did not indeed, Jennie," said Ruth, sadly.

"Well, you couldn't make The Fox believe that. She's sure about it, you see," the stout girl said. "When Mary Cox wants to be mean, she can be; now I tell you!"

Indeed, Heavy was not like the other three girls in the next room. Mary, Belle and Lluella never looked at Ruth if they could help it, and never spoke to her. Ruth was not so much hurt over losing such girls for friends, for she could not honestly say she had liked them at the start; but that they should so misjudge and injure her was another matter.

She said nothing to Helen about all this; and Helen was as firmly convinced that Mary Cox and the other Upedes were jolly girls, as ever. Indeed, they were jolly enough; most of their larks were innocent fun, too. But it was a fact that most of those girls who received extra tasks during those first few weeks of the half belonged to the Up and Doing Club.

That Helen escaped punishment was more by good fortune than anything else. In the study, however, she and Ruth and Mercy had many merry times. Mercy kept both the other girls up to their school tasks, for all lessons seemed to come easy to the lame girl and she helped her two friends not a little in the preparation of their own.


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Rh "The Triumvirate" the other girls in the dormitory building called the three girls from Cheslow. Before Thanksgiving, Ruth, Helen, and Mercy began to stand high in their several classes. And Ruth was booked for the Glee Club, too. She sang every Sunday in the chorus, while Helen played second violin in the orchestra, having taken some lessons on that instrument before coming to Briarwood.

Dr. Cranfew came often at first to see Mercy; but he declared at last that he only came socially—there was no need of medical attendance. The cripple could not go to recitations without her crutches, but sometimes in the room she walked with only Ruth's strong arm for support. She was getting rosy, too, and began to take exercise in the gymnasium.

"I'll develop my biceps, if my back is crooked and my legs queer," she declared. "Then, when any of those Miss Nancy Seniors make fun of me behind my back, I can punch 'em!" for there were times when Mercy's old, cross-grained moods came upon her, and she was not so easily borne with.

Perhaps this fact was one of the things that drove the wedge deeper between Ruth and Helen. Ruth would never neglect the crippled girl. She seldom left her in the room alone. Mercy had early joined the Sweetbriars, and Ruth and she


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162 went to the frequent meetings of that society together, while Helen retained her membership in the Up and Doing Club and spent a deal of her time in the quartette room next door.

Few of the girls went home for, and as Mercy was not to return to Cheslow then, the journey being considered too arduous for her, Ruth decided not to go either. There was quite a feast made by the school on Thanksgiving, and frost having set in a week before, skating on Triton Lake was in prospect. There was a small pond attached to the Briarwood property and Ruth tried Helen's skates there. She had been on the ice before, but not much; however, she found that the art came easily to her—as easily as tennis, in which, by this time, she was very proficient.

For the day following Thanksgiving there was a trip to Triton Lake planned, for that great sheet of water was ice-bound, too, and a small steamer had been caught 'way out in the middle of the lake, and was frozen in. The project to drive to the lake and skate out to the steamer (the ice was thick enough to hold up a team of horses, and plenty of provisions had been carried out to the crew) and to have a hot lunch on the boat originated in the fertile brain of Mary Cox; but as it was not a picnic patronized only by the Upedes, Mrs. Tellingham made no objection to


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Rh it. Besides, it was vacation week, and the Preceptress was much more lenient.

Of course, Helen was going; but Ruth had her doubts. Mercy could not go, and the girl of the Red Mill hated to leave her poor little crippled friend alone. But Mercy was as sharp of perception as she was of tongue. When Helen blurted out the story of the skating frolic, Ruth said "she would see" about going; she said she wasn't sure that she would care to go.

"I'm such a new skater, you know," she laughed. "Maybe I'd break down skating out to the steamboat, and wouldn't get there, and while all you folks were eating that nice hot lunch I'd be freezing to death—poor little me!—'way out there on the ice."

But Mercy, with her head on one side and her sharp blue eyes looking from Helen to Ruth, shot out:

"Now, don't you think you're smart, Ruth Fielding? Why, I can see right through you—just as though you were a rag of torn mosquito netting! You won't go because I'll be left alone."

"No," said Ruth, but flushing.

"Yes," shot back Mercy. "And I don't have to turn red about it, either. Oh, Ruthie, Ruthie! you can't even tell a white one without blushing about it."

"I—don't—know"


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164 "I do know!" declared Mercy. "You're going. I've got plenty to do. You girls can go on and freeze your noses and your toeses, if you like. Me for the steam-heated room and a box of bonbons. But I hope the girls who go will be nicer to you than some of those Upedes have been lately, Ruthie."

Helen blushed now; but Ruth hastened to say: "Oh, don't you fuss about me, Mercy. Some of the Sweetbriars mean to go. This isn't confined to one club in particular. Madge Steele is going, too, and Miss Polk. And Miss Reynolds, Mrs. Tellingham's first assistant, is going with the party. I heard all about it at supper. Poor Heavy was full of it; but she says she can't go because she never could skate so far. And then—the ice might break under her."

"Whisper!" added Helen, her eyes dancing. "I'll tell you something else—and this I know you don't know!"

"What is it?"

"Maybe Tom will be there. Good old Tom! Just think—I haven't seen him since we left home. Won't it be just scrumptious to see old Tom again?"

And Ruth Fielding really thought it would be.


text: Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall/Chapter 19


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on the morning following the feast-day there were two wagonettes waiting at the entrance to the Briarwood grounds to take the girls two miles by road to a certain on Triton Lake. When Ruth and Helen came out of their room, leaving Mercy cozily ensconced in the window-seat with her books and the box of bonbons, the door of the quartette was open and a faint groan sounded from within.

Helen's eyes twinkled, as she said: "The others have gone, but Jennie's up in dry-dock for repairs. No wonder she wouldn't promise to be one of the skating party. The pleasures of the table must be paid for How do you feel now, Heavy?" she added, putting her head in at the door.

"No better. Oh!" came back the complaining voice. "I do have such dreadful ill-fortune. I can't eat just a little bit without its distressing me abominably!"

The chums ran down to the wagonettes and


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166 found most of the girls who were going already there. Ruth, seeing that there was more room in the second carriage, whisked into it, and Helen was following her when Mary Cox came up.

"Going to get in here, Cameron?" she said. "Well, I'll get in with you—no, I won't!" she suddenly exclaimed, seeing Ruth peering out. "Come on to the other wagonette; Belle and Lluella are there."

For a moment Helen hesitated. Then Mary said, jerking at her sleeve:

"Come on! We want to start in a minute. I've heard from the boys and I want to tell you. They've sent a whole sleighload of things out to the Minnetonka—the boat that's frozen in, you know—and music, and we'll have great fun. Sh! Miss Reynolds don't know. She's such a fussbudget! If she knew the boys were coming—well!"

"Oh, Tom, too!" gasped Helen, delighted. Then she turned and said, in a whisper: "Ruth!"

"Come on and let that tattle-tale alone!" exclaimed Mary Cox. "Tell her, and she'll run to Miss Reynolds with it."

Helen went with her.

Had Ruth Fielding possessed the power of movement just then, she would have gotten out


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Rh of the wagon and run away to the dormitory. But she was stricken motionless as well as speechless by her chum's defection, and before she could recover her poise the wagons had begun to move, rattling over the frozen road toward Triton Lake.

Ah! how it hurt! For weeks Ruth had endured slights, and haughty looks, and innuendoes from Mary Cox and her Upedes—and the girl from the Red Mill had accepted all uncomplainingly. She had heretofore believed Helen only thoughtless. But this was more than Ruth Fielding could bear. She was the last girl to get into the wagonette, and she turned her head away, that her companions might not see her tears.

The other girls chattered, and laughed, and sang, and enjoyed themselves. Ruth Fielding passed the few minutes which elapsed during the drive to the boathouse in trying to stifle her sobs and remove the traces of her emotion. She was tempted to remain in the wagonette and go back to the school at once—for the carriages would return to town, coming out again for the party of Briarwood students late in the afternoon.

This thought was her first intention; but as her sobs subsided she felt more the hurt of the treatment she had received. And this hurt stirred within her a self-assertion that was becoming a


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168 more prominent characteristic in Ruth every day. Why should she relapse into tears because her chum had done a cruel thing? Hurt as she was, why should she give The Fox the satisfaction of knowing she felt the slight?

Ruth began to take herself to task for her "softness." Let Helen go with the Upedes if she wished. Here were nice girls all about her, and all the Sweetbriars particularly thought a great deal of her, Ruth knew. She need not mope and weep just because Helen Cameron, her oldest friend, had neglected her. The other girls stood ready to be her friends.

They had not noticed Ruth's silence and abstraction—much less her tears. She wiped her eyes hard, gulped down her sobs, and determined to have a good time in spite of either the Upedes or Helen's hardness of heart.

The first wagonette reached the shore of the lake some time ahead of the second. And perhaps this fact, as well as the placing of Miss Reynolds in the latter, had been arranged by the wily Miss Cox.

"Oh, Mary Cox!" cried Helen, looking out, "there's a whole lot of folks here—BOYS!"

But when one of the boys came running to help her down the steps, Helen shouted with delight. She came "flopping" down into Tom Cameron's arms.


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Rh "How scrumptious you look, Nell!" cried her brother, kissing her frankly. "Here is Bob Steele—I want you to know him. He's my bunkie at Seven Oaks. Isn't his sister with you—Madge Steele?"

"Yes. Miss Steele's here," gasped Helen.

"But where's Ruth?" demanded the excited Tom. "Come on and get her. We want to get our skates on and make for the steamer. The ice is like glass."

"Why—Ruth's in the other wagonette," said Helen.

"She's not with you?" exclaimed Tom, rather chagrined. "Why, how's that?"

"We—we happened to get into different ones," said his sister.

To tell the truth, she had not thought of Ruth since leaving the school.

"Is that the other one coming—'way back on the road there?"

"Yes," said Helen. "Here's Miss Cox, Tom. Mary, this is my brother."

Bob Steele, who was a tall, blond fellow, was at hand to be introduced, too. His sister jumped out of the wagon and said: "Hullo, Bobbie! How's your poor ?" Madge was a year and a half older than her brother and always treated him as though he were a very small boy in —if not actually in.


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170 The girls giggled over this, and Bob Steele blushed. But he took his sister's chaffing goodnaturedly. Tom Cameron, however, was very much disturbed over the absence of Ruth Fielding.

"We'd better hurry out on the ice. We've got an awful strict teacher with us," said Mary Cox, hastily.

"You take care of my sister, too; will you, Bob?" said Tom, bluntly. "I shall wait and bring Miss Fielding down."

"Oh, she'll look out for herself," said Mary Cox, slightingly. "We must hurry if we want any fun."

"Helen and I wouldn't have much fun if Ruth were left behind," declared Master Tom, firmly. "Go on, Bob; we'll catch up with you."

"Hadn't you better come, too, Tom?" whispered Helen, doubtfully.

"Why, we want Ruth with us; don't we?" demanded the puzzled Tom, looking at her in wonder. "Go on, Nell. We'll be with you shortly."

"Why, I want to introduce you to the other girls," said Helen, pouting. "And I haven't seen you myself for so long."

"It's too bad you got separated from your spoon, Nell," said her brother, calmly. "But I shall wait and bring her."


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Rh The others—even Madge Steele—were already trooping down to the landing, where there were settees for the girls to sit on while their skates were being adjusted. Helen had to run after them, and Tom waited alone the arrival of the second wagonette from Briarwood Hall.


text: Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall/Chapter 20


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Ruth Fielding's eyes were a bit red when the wagonette finally came to the landing, nobody would have suspected her of crying. Least of all Tom Cameron, for she jumped down with a glad cry when she saw him, and dropped her skates and shook both his hands in a most cordial greeting.

"Helen hinted that you might be here, Tom, but I could hardly believe it," she said.

"We want to hurry and catch up with them," he said. Some of the girls were already on the ice. "We'd better go."

But the other girls had alighted, and following them came Miss Reynolds. Now, Ruth liked Miss Reynolds very much, but the teacher came towards them, looking rather grave.

"This is Helen Cameron's brother Tom, Miss Reynolds," said Ruth. "He attends the Seven Oaks Military Academy."

"I see," said the teacher, quietly. "And where is Miss Cameron?"


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Rh "She has gone on with Bob Steele and his sister," explained Tom, seeing instantly that all was not right. "You see, some of us fellows got permission to come over here to Triton Lake today. Mr. Hargreaves, one of our tutors, is with us."

"InI [sic] know Mr. Hargreaves," said Miss Reynolds. "But I had no warning—nor had Mrs. Tellingham, I believe—that any of the young gentlemen from Major Parradel's school were to be here."

"Well, it will make it all the nicer, I am sure," Tom suggested, with his winning smile. "We'll all—all us fellows, I mean—try to behave our prettiest, Miss Reynolds."

"Undoubtedly you will be on your good behavior," said the teacher, drily.

But Tom and Ruth could not hurry on ahead now. Miss Reynolds walked sedately with them down to the landing. By that time Mary Cox and most of the Upedes were on the ice—and they were joined by all the boys but Tom. The Fox had laid her plans well.

Mr. Hargreaves skated back to shake hands with Miss Reynolds. "This is a surprise," he said. "I am sure I did not expect to find you and your young ladies here, Miss Reynolds."

"Are you sure that the meeting is quite


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174 by both parties?" she returned, with a grave smile. "If we are surprised, Mr. Hargreaves, I fancy that our young charges may have been rather better informed in advance than we were."

The gentleman shrugged his shoulders. "I give that up!" he said. "It may be. I see you have your hands full here. Shall I take my—er—my remaining young man away with me?" he asked, looking aside at Tom, who was already fastening Ruth's skates.

"Oh, no," said Miss Reynolds, grimly. "I'll make use of him!"

And she most certainly did. Tom was anxious to get Ruth away at once so that they could catch up with the foremost skaters; but he could not refuse to aid her teacher. And then there were others of the girls to help. They were all on the ice before Master Tom could get his own skates on.

Then there was a basket to carry, and of course Tom could not see the teacher or one of the girls carry it. He took it manfully. Then Miss Reynolds gave Ruth her hand and skated with her, and Master Tom was fain to skate upon Ruth's other hand. And so they went on slowly, while the lively crowd ahead drew farther and farther away. It was not an unpleasant journey out across the smooth lake, however, and perhaps the


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Rh party who had but one boy for escort had just as pleasant a time in many respects as those in advance.

Ruth made her friend acquainted with all the Sweetbriars who were present and whispered to him how he had really named the new Briarwood society. That vastly tickled Tom and he made himself just as agreeable to the girls as he knew how. Miss Reynolds was no on the fun, either, and she was as good a skater as Tom himself. Ruth had improved greatly, and before they reached the frost-bound Minnetonka the teacher relieved Tom of his basket and told him to give the girl from the Red Mill a lesson in skating with a partner—practice which she sorely needed.

It was spirited indeed to fly over the ice, guided by Tom's sure foot and hand. They described a great curve and came back to Miss Reynolds and the other girls, who progressed more sedately. Then Tom gave his hands to two of the older girls and with their arms stretched at full length the trio went careening over the ice on the "long roll" in a way that made Ruth, looking on with shining eyes, fairly hold her breath.

"It's wonderful!" she cried, when the three came back, glowing with the exercise. "Do you suppose I can ever learn that, Tom?"

"Why, Ruthie, you're so sure of yourself on


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176 the skates that I believe I could teach you to roll very easily. If Miss Reynolds will allow me?"

"Go on, Master Tom," the teacher said, laughing. "But don't go too far away. We are nearing the boat now."

The first party that had struck out from the shore had all arrived at the ice-bound Minnetonka now, and many of them were skating in couples thereabout. At the stern of the steamboat was an open place in the ice, for Ruth and Tom could see the water sparkling. There was little wind, but it was keen; the sun was quite warm and the exercise kept the skaters from feeling the cold.

"Hullo!" exclaimed Tom to Ruth, as they began to get into good stroke—for the girl was an apt pupil—"who is that old Bobbins has got under his wing?"

"Who is Bobbins?" asked Ruth, with a laugh.

"My bunkie—that's what we call our chums at Seven Oaks. Bob Steele."

"Madge Steele's brother?"

"Yes. And no end of a good fellow," declared Tom. "But, my aunt! don't his sister rig him, though? Asked old Bobbins if he had the croup?" and Tom went off into a burst of laughter.

"Do you mean the tall, light-haired boy?" Ruth queried.