Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly [1954-1959]

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alumnae -Quarterly

Fall 1954

THE

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

OF

AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE

OFFICER^.'/.:

MARY WARREN READ '29

GRACE FINCHER TRIMBLE '32 ' **..*;

Vice-President
FLORENCE BRINKLEY '14 * .'./ .;

Vice-President' ' ;
VELLA MARIE BEHM COWAN '35

Vice-President
MARJORIE NAAB BOLEN '46

Secretary
BETTY MEDLOCK LACKEY '42

Treasurer

TRUSTEES

JEAN BAILEY OWEN '39

FRANCES WINSHIP WALTERS INST.

CHAIRMEN

CATHERINE BAKER MATTHEWS '32

Nominations
FRANCES CRAIGHEAD DWYER '28

Special Events
EDWINA DAVIS CHRISTIAN '46

Vocational Guidance
MARY WALLACE KIRK '1 1

Education
LEONE BOWERS HAMILTON '26

Publications
BELLA WILSON LEWIS '34

Class Officers
NELLE CHAMLEE HOWARD '34

House
LOUISE BROWN HASTINGS '23

Grounds
MARIE SIMPSON RUTLAND '35

Entertainment

LOCAL
CLUB PRESIDENTS

MARY PRIM FOWLER '29

Atlanta
ERNELLE RUTH BLAIR FIFE '36

Decatur
REESE NEWTON SMITH '49

Atlanta Junior
SYLVIA McCONNEL CARTER '45

Southwest Atlanta

STAFF

ANN WORTHY JOHNSON '38

Director of Alumnae Affairs
ELOISE HARDEMAN KETCHIN

House Manager

MARY C. CHAPMAN

Office Manager

MEMBER

AMERICAN ALUMNI
COUNCIL

The AGNES SCOTT
Alumnae Quarterly

Agnes ***&ptt College, Decatur, Georgia

Vjrjlitme 33
Fall 1954

Number 1

ANTIGONE TODAY

TEN YEARS LATER

ASSOCIATION NEWS

CLASS NEWS

George P. Hayes 1

"Lena Harris Tetnkin '44 i

Mary Warren Read '29 's

K

The cover picture

of Dr. J. R. McCain, Miss Lucile Alexander, Mr. R. B. Cunningham, Mis;
Marion Bucher, was taken in the Alumnae House at a Decatur Alumnae Clut
meeting honoring retired faculty. Photograph by Reid Crow

The Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly is published four times a year
(November, February, April and July) by the Alumnae Association of
Agnes Scott at Decatur, Georgia. Contributors to the Alumnae Fund
receive the magazine. Yearly subscription, $2.00; Single copy, 50 cents.
Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office of Decatur, Georgia,
under Act of August 24, 1912.

Here is a yardstick of the essence of individ-
uality for the products of an Agnes Scott edu-
cation as well as for the students to whom
Dr. Hayes, Professor of English since 1927 ,
spoke at a fall, 1953, convocation.

MMTIGONE TODAY

GEORGE P. HAYES

VHEN MY ENGLISH professor at Swathmore
College was a little boy, his father would read to
he children from the Bible. Once he was reading
bout the new Heaven and the new Earth. When he
ad finished, Harold asked:
And will there be a new Hell, too?
His father said no.

Harold turned to his sister and said : "Florence,
lothing but the same old Hell."

This is the second day of the second quarter of the
.' ollege year, and it's nothing but the same old Hell!
I quote from the American poet E. E. Cummings:
"Rather recently in New York City an old col-
lege chum, whom I hadn't beheld for decades, appeared
mt of nowhere to tell me he was through with civili-
ation. It seems that ever since Harvard he'd been
naking (despite all sorts of panics and panaceas) big
money as an advertising writer : And this remarkable
eat utterably depressed him. After profound medita-
ion, he concluded that America, and the world which
he increasingly dominated, couldn't really be as bad
its she and it looked through an advertising writer's
yes: and he promptly determined to seek another view
i a larger view; in fact, the largest view obtainable.
:3ent on obtaining this largest obtainable view of
\merica and America's world, my logical expal wan-
gled an appointment with a subeditor of a magazine
assessing the largest circulation on earth : A periodical
vhose each emanation appears simultaneously in al-
nost every existing human language. Our intrepid ex-
plorer then straightened his tie, took six deep breaths,
beared his throat, swam right up, presented his cre-
lentials and was politely requested to sit down. He
i at down. "Now listen," the subeditor suggested, "if
'ou're thinking of working with us, you'd better know
, hree rules." "And what," my friend inquired, "are
he three rules?"

'The three rules" explained his mentor "are, first,
ight to eighty; second, anybody can do it; and third,

makes you feel better."

"I don't quite understand," my friend confessed.

"Perfectly simple . . . our first rule means that
every article we publish must appeal to anybody, man
woman or child, between the ages of eight and eighty
years is that clear?" My friend said it was indeed
clear. "Second," his enlightener continued, "every arti-
cle we publish must convince any reader of the article
that he or she could do whatever was done by the
person about whom the article was written. Suppose
(for instance) you were writing about Lindbergh, who
had just flown the Atlantic Ocean for the first time
in history with nothing but unlimited nerve and a
couple of sandwiches do you follow me ?"

"I'm ahead of you," my friend murmured.

"Remembering rule number two," the subsub went
on, "you'd impress upon your readers' minds, over and
over again, the fact that (after all) there wouldn't
have been anything extraordinary about Lindbergh if
he hadn't been just a human being like every single

of th

em, see

?"

"I see," said my friend grimly.

"Third," the subsub intoned, "we'll imagine you're
describing a record-breaking Chinese flood millions
of poor unfortunate men and women and little children
and helpless babies drowning and drowned; millions
more perishing of slow starvation ; suffering incon-
ceivable, untold agonies, and so forth well, any
reader of this article must feel definitely and distinctly
better, when she or he finishes the article, than when
he or she began it."

"Sounds a trifle difficult," my friend hazarded.

"Don't be silly. All you've got to do, when you're
through with your horrors, is to close by saying: but
(thanks to an all-merciful providence) we Americans,
with our high standard of living and our Christian
ideals, will never be subjected to such inhuman condi-
tions ; as long as the stars and stripes triumphantly float
over one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice

82608

for all get me .

"I get you," said my disillusioned friend. "Good
bye." 1

What have we here? stereotypes; no individuality;
no honesty of outlook; no trace of human excellence;
not a shred of distinction ; middle class vulgarity at
its worst. In a word, all that college is not.

In a whimsical image Socrates compares his func-
tion, in teaching young men, to that of a midwife,
barren herself, who yet assists in the birth of others.
The midwife plays a necessary, but after all second-
ary role. She did not conceive the baby; she has no
claim upon him ; she has no power to determine the
sex or the color of his eyes.

Even the parents can do but little for the child be-
fore his birth. No more than the midwife can they
determine what he shall be like. When the baby comes,
they accept him gratefully as he is.

Each one of you is the mother whose task and joy
it is to nourish an inner self, the essential you, and
to bring it to birth. Just what that self is like even
you will not know till it gets born. Yet the discovery
and development of that self is your high privilege
and interesting adventure.

The midwife in the homely image is the teacher,
the preacher, the parent. These people sometimes find
it hard to realize that their role, while necessary, is
only secondary. They do not determine the nature or
characteristics of the baby, your inner self; only God
does that. They should not try to foist some one else's
baby on you and make you believe it is yours. They
should not grieve if the newborn child does not re-
semble any of them. Let God take care of that, too:
he fulfills himself in many ways in as many different
ways as there are people.

About all the midwife can do yet it is very impor-
tant is, first, to have genuine confidence in mother
nature, who knows most about these things, and, sec-
ond, help strengthen the confidence of the poor agoniz-
ing parent, who is trying to bring forth the very es-
sence of herself.

College helps you here. It offers you free and honest
discussion of life's problems, including the "examina-
tion of unpopular ideas, of ideas considered abhorrent
and even dangerous." I have just been quoting from a
statement isued on March 31, 1953, by the Association
of American Universities. The statement continues:
"The university student should be exposed to compet-
ing opinions and beliefs in every field, so that he may

1 E. E. Cummings, i, six nonlectures, Harvard University Pres:

2

learn to weigh them and gain maturity of judgmen
. . . (h)onest men hold differing opinions. (T)h
word 'university' implies endorsement not of its merr
bers' views but of their capability and integrity
above all, a scholar must have integrity and indeper
dence." And I may add, so also must the student.

Three centuries ago Milton said the same thing a
did the Association, only more imaginatively and then
fore more movingly:

Though all the winds of doctrine were
let loose to play upon the earth, so
truth be in the field, we do injuriously
by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt
her strength. Let her and falsehood
grapple ; who ever knew truth put to the
worse in a free and open encounter?
Liberty is the nurse of all great wits.
And so, when confronting somebody's opinion, ycj
will ask yourselves, with Goethe, "Is this so ? Is
really so? Is it so to me? Or did someone just tell rr
it was so?

Education is not a process of moulding the studei
from without, whether by teacher, preacher or pa
ent. It is unforced growth from within. It is, as Arnol
says, a driving of one's feet into the solid ground (
one's self as a spiritual, poetic, profound person. It
self-discovery, a "coming to oneself." It is listenir
when nature speaks within you, and it is knowing th
no one else can tell you what she says. It is findir
as Howard Lowry says, that the intellectual consciem
is almost as sacred as the moral conscience. It is di
covering and using "that one talent which is deal
to hide." It is claiming and exercising the right
make your own mistakes, for life without the liber
to test yourself after your own fashion is not word
living.

How are you to discover what that true self i;j
Here are two suggestions. First, read great literaturi
which like philosophy, psychology and other subjeci
can help you know yourself as you find your inni
life revealed there.

Second, find some one sympathetic and understand
ing person, one whose mind and spirit touches yoi
own -"the one person in the world from whom nothiri
is held back" and be completely honest with hir
By talking with another honestly you uncover yoi|
own undiscovered self, layer by layer, as you remo\|
the top articles from a trunk to get to something at tl
bottom. As you come to know yourself, you find r
lease and self-confidence. And honesty with one perse
makes you more honest, more at ease, with everyon
If you accept as your portion what your deepest se
claims for itself, then you will be different from ever]

,

me else. We have heard too much about the Agnes
Scott type: "She's the Agnes Scott type"; "she isn't
:he Agnes Scott type" the sheep and the goats. How
does that sort of thinking end ? Peter Marshall spoke
ibout the slightly superior air by which you can tell
in Agnes Scott girl. Conformity to a pattern can be
:arried too far. Our most precious human quality is
individuality.

We all admire and take delight in Miss Agnes Scott
with her poise, her charm, her grace in adjusting her-
self to others. Yet this is not the true Miss Agnes Scott,
attractive though this young lady be. The true Miss
Agnes Scott was a Greek maiden of the fifth century
B.C., a fiery-hearted girl named Antigone. She did
not adjust herself well to her environment, to the
Thebes of the tyrant Creon. She was a misfit, a heretic.
She did not follow the advice of the older and "wiser"
and conform to the laws of the state. Rather, she fol-
lowed, to the death, the dictates of her own conscience
in the name of what she believed to be "the unwritten
laws of heaven." That girl had intellectual and spirit-
ual integrity. She had found her real, her best, self,
and she was faithful to its leading. There is nothing
so momentous as establishing, "against the hazard and
the turmoil of the world, one's own integrity."

You are Miss Agnes Scott when you stick your neck
out in class. You are Miss Agnes Scott when you write
frankly in a term paper or an informal essay. You are
Miss Agnes Scott when you speak forth freely on
the issues of the day.

Before I close, one word of qualification. College

has many purposes ; I have discussed only one. I have
been one-sided on purpose, for you needed to hear that
side.

This, then, has been my theme: "The mystery,"
Joyce Cary calls it, "which lies beneath all history, all
politics the mighty and everlasting pressure of the
soul seeking, by ways unseen and often unsuspected,
its own good, freedom and enlightenment."

Some of you, perhaps many, are actually following
this quest now. With you, going the same journey,
are we teachers. We are like the quarterback who
throws passes at the tips of the fingers of the end
running full speed toward his goal. Yet basically we
and you are not pedagogues and pupils : we are fellow
beings whose spirits interlock with yours as together
we search, without us and within, for beauty, holiness
and truth.

What we find comes to us like new found land. In
fact it is more: it is a new Heaven and a new Earth,
not the same old Hell. It is also a glorious secret in
the breast that makes the heart dance, the step light,
and it keeps one youthful beyond the days of youth.

All of this is actually happening to some of you right
now. One of you, one of you before me, has written :

Salvation can be more than acceptance into
God's kingdom: it can be release through
self-discovery and the acceptance of the
essence of individuality ... if the test
is indeed joy, then my salvation has begun.
As I write I feel that quiet joy which
follows struggle, and it radiates from the
heart into a smile.

OBLIGATION : Sincere thanks to Martha Rhodes Bennett who haunted the Yale Uni-
versity Alumni Office seeking all sorts of aid and comfort and got it!

DEDICATION: This article is dedicated
to the members of the class of 1954 in the
belief that it can be used as a mirror to reflect
their image of ten years hence.

TEN YEARS LATER

STATISTICIANS, POLL-TAKERS and psy-
chologists notwithstanding, it seems impossible to find
the "norm" or the "average" where human beings
are concerned. One can search exhaustively for that
phantom known as "the average man" or, as in this
case, "the average woman," but neither of them exists.
Always, as the search narrows to a promising few,
a detail is missing, a fact awry, a thought askew. If
this particular "average" female (for whom my search
has been conducted) did exist, you would probably
enjoy knowing her.

Her name could be Kathryn or Ann or Mary-Some-
thing. She has been married for almost eight years
and has two children, one of each sex. She is past
thirty and has gained ten pounds in the last ten years!
Her husband, an ex-Navy man with over three years'
service behind him, is a college graduate and a pro-
fessional man of some kind, possibly a minister or an
engineer. This phantom has been a teacher to young-
sters from kindergarten to college, but that was be-
fore marriage. She no longer has any job other than
the endless one of wife and mother. She remembers
Agnes Scott College with joy for it gave her some of
her happiest years and a wonderful backlog of culture
to enrich her everyday living. She may never have at-
tended a class reunion but she does belong to the
Alumnae Association, and she has definite ideas about
how the money which she contributes to the college
should be spent. She insisted on a ten-year reunion
and said she would try to be present. (I wonder if
she showed up?)

Her home reflects traditional taste; whether she
budgets or not, she has little difficulty reconciling
her wants to her pocketbook. In her spare time, she
gardens, sews, and listens to music. Her travels have
taken her from one end of the country to the other
and to Canada. Besides reading twenty-three books a
year, she goes to ten movies in the same time but
watches television about four hours each week. She

takes lots of pictures; she belongs to the PTA ; sh<
canvasses during Red Cross and Infantile Paralysi
drives ; and she supports her local Community Con
cert series. She works hard for her church auxilian
and attends services regularly. She lives somewhere it
Georgia in a single home and owns (with her husband]
an automobile, two radios, a victrola, and a washing
machine. She has domestic help, probably a full-tim
maid, and she spends $6.70 per person per week fo
food.

Are you still with me in the search ? Now the mail
differences begin to appear. This phantom female i
a thinking person and it is unreasonable to expec
even two women to think completely alike about si
or seven varied subjects. She believes in and support
the United Nations, but she knows it is a more effectiv
organization in theory than it has been in practice!
She can't make up her mind about a third world war
she hates to think of it, but almost believes it will com
eventually. Her feeling about the world today i
difficult to pinpoint: the impression is that she sees i
as tumultuous but not hopeless. Race problems troubl
her ; she hopes for a gradual and peaceful resolutioi
of differences. The most important thing she does
she feels, toward helping solve problems outside hei
home is vote; she voted, definitely, in the last nationa
election.

Much more obvious and lucid is her feeling abou
her own life : she is a very happy woman. She say
that the past ten years have given her maturity
emotional stability, and an understanding of herseli
all of which help her create what she feels to be th
ideal life for her and her family. She is, this phantorr
the "average" Agnes Scott College graduate of 1944

This assignment, to conduct a survey to find ou
what has happened to the class of '44 and to compil
a profile of the "average" graduate, seemed a logica
undertaking to celebrate our tenth anniversary. W
sent a questionnaire in February to each of the ninet\

four graduates of the class. By April we had received
fifty-nine replies on which all the following figures
are based. (Fifty-nine out of a possible 94 or 62% is
considered an extraordinarily high percentage in the best
polling circles). The resultant activity has been hectic
but very interesting. I have tried in this report not
to inject any of my own feelings into the text except
where so stated ; objectivity has been the aim and dis-
passion the mood. Judge as you will.

Out of the 59 who returned the questionnaire, 48
have married. Of these, none has been divorced and
one is a widow. Mary Frances Walker Blount holds
the class marital record with her twelfth anniversary
to be celebrated this year; Anne Ward Amacher is
the latest bride of the class and will mark her first
anniversary in August. We average about seven and
one-half years of marriage.

It is difficult to state definitely how many children
we have; arrivals are due continually. It is plain to see,
though, that our trend follows the national trend
toward larger families. Kathy Hill Whitfield and
Robin Taylor Horneffer have four children each. By
now 14 of us boast three children apiece. At last count
we had among us 56 boys and 41 girls, proving we
are prolific if nothing else!

All these offspring, welcomed however joyfully,
have caused the mammas no little expansion. "Average
'44" has gained 10 pounds since leaving the "shelter-
ing arms." A few of us have managed to maintain
the same weight ; some have lost from 5 to 20 pounds ;
some have gained from 5 to 30 pounds! Do not shud-
der at that last figure. I feel sure that our entire class
will rejoice to know that the beneficiary of those 30
pounds is Mary Carr Townsend whose wraith-like
form was in grave danger of vanishing completely
during our senior year. Hail avoirdupois!

The second World War was entering its final
ohases when we graduated, which accounts, possibly,
for the fact that only two of us served in the armed
forces. Jean Clarkson Rogers was a WAC for 22
nonths and Virginia Tuggle was a Navy doctor for
5 years. The men we married, though, served long
ind well. Seventy-seven percent of them were in the
N T avy (the majority in this branch), the Army, the
^ir Force or the Marines. One is a "Regular" (Army)
'md has now been "in" for over seven years. Before
hey entered service or following their release, they
.11 graduated from college (with only one exception
[o prove the rule). Sixty-two per cent are professional
^en: there are among them 8 ministers, 8 engineers,

nd 7 physicians. The other 38 yc are, with only one
I r two exceptions, executives in their chosen busi-

nesses. Although amount of income was not one of
the answers in the questionnaire, the impression given
is strong that we are, monev-wise, solid middle-class
folk.

As for the work we do, 12 of the married grads
have jobs outside the home, 7 of them in part-time
positions. The single graduates all work full time and
do everything from teaching to auditing, manufacturing
children's clothes, or raising church funds. Their jobs
are all interesting, and the girls themselves seem se-
cure and happy with their own independence. Two
of these independent misses, Squee Woolford and Ruth
Wolson, gallivanted around Europe for the summer.
It is truly impressive that four of our class wrote
"physician" as their own occupation. Virginia Tuggle,
Billy Walker Schellack, Miriam Walker Chambless,
and Jo Young Sullivan are our medical doctors. We
almost have two other doctors among our graduates.
If all goes well with theses this year, Pat Evans and
Anne Ward Amacher will be entitled to the "Ph.D."
following their names. Almost one-third of us went
on after leaving Agnes Scott to work for advanced
degrees. Besides the 4 physicians and the 2 almost-Ph.
D.'s mentioned above, there are 6 Masters among us
and 5 more of us have done post-graduate work in
varied fields.

Getting back to Agnes Scott, we know just how
we feel about our Alma Mater and don't mind put-
ting it into words. Almost unanimously we enjoyed
college ; we made invaluable friendships ; we got a
solid classical background ; and we learned a set of
standards good for the rest of our lives. All is not
roses and light, though. Many of us wish we had taken
more advantage of what we were offered. Some of
us say Agnes Scott was good, but only a beginning.
One or two feel that the atmosphere at school blurred
reality; it was too sheltering and didn't prepare us
for what was ahead. One of us resents to this day the
attitude of her professors, which she felt was one of
discouragement rather than encouragement. Four vol-
unteered the fervent wish that home economics courses
were respectable enough to be offered. We do not
want to lower the college's scholastic standing, but
why not offer seniors a semester or two of home
ec without credit? The arts of cooking, shopping,
home management, etc. were as arts from another
planet and contributed no little to our general befuddle-
ment during the first few years away from college and
home.

We are just as unreserved with suggestions for
spending the money we donate to the Alumnae Asso-
ciation. Although only 25 r 7 of us have ever attended

5

I

a reunion (up to the current one, which a majority
wanted), 61% of those who answered the question-
naire belong to the Association (but only 41% of the
whole class). The money should be spent first, we
say, on scholarships and aid to foreign students. The
cry that faculty salaries be raised is loud and pro-
longed. Several feel that it would be of great benefit
to emotionally troubled students if a psychiatric coun-
selor were on campus and available for conferences.
Others want more new buildings, particularly dormi-
tories. There are other suggestions ranging from ad-
vertising the college nationally to setting up an Alum-
nae Loan Fund. We're full of good ideas and pos-
sibly some of them can be acted upon, for they have
been made not in jest but in good faith and seriousness.

The way we live and the pleasures of life were the
next subjects taken up in the questionnaire. Our im-
mediate surroundings are traditional with mixed tra-
ditional and contemporary far behind. Modern is not
popular! Many of us are now living with a "hodge-
podge," and in view of the number of small children
on the loose in our homes, it seems wise to keep that
hodgepodge until the jumping, bouncing, and kicking
stages are passed.

When asked if we find it easy to buy clothes and
house furnishings to suit both our tastes and our poc-
ketbooks, 57% said, "Yes." Apparently we are fairly-
wise shoppers who either do not desire material things
beyond our means or who do not buy until we find
what we want at a price we can afford.

How we find time to shop extensively, however, is
hard to tell when one considers the hobbies we list
among our pleasures. Church work, gardening, music
and sewing run close in popularity. But we don't stop
there. Most of us still play bridge ; we collect porcelain ;
we dance (Pat Patterson Graybeal mentioned English
country dancing specifically) ; we play chess (Tommie
Huie Lenihan does) ; we cook, make furniture, collect
coins and antiques ; we paint, hook rugs, arrange flow-
ers and marriages (our president has one match to
her credit so far). There were some who were mildly
annoyed with this query. Mary Louise Duffee Philips
(mother of three young children and wife of an ex-
tremely active man) indignantly wrote, "Now, really!"
as the answer to this question about hobbies.

Our travels have been, for the most part, confined
within the United States. Only six of us can say we
have been to Europe. A few have been to Cuba and/or
Mexico. Canada has been the most popular (or most
accessible) country so far. Ann Sale made a trip out
to Hawaii. Ruth Farrior travelled to China in the

course of her work. And there are those whose mini
ster husbands took them along to England and Scot
land and the Middle East and Japan (Clare Bedinge
Baldwin is there now) and Africa (Aurie Mont
gomery Miller is in the Belgian Congo). We ge

around, but not as far, nor as often as one wouli

imagine.

On to the other pleasures: we do read a great deal)
We average 23 books per person per year an averagl
worked out from zero books to 250 books read eacl
year. We go to the movies 10 times a year; to th
theater 2.8 times (including summer stock); to ar
exhibits and lectures 1.4 times a year. We never get t
the opera but we do manage about 4 concerts a seasons
Television has wormed its insidious way into ou
midst ; but it is a delight to report that a few cjj
us, living in areas of good reception, have resistei
TV and do not own sets. The average watching tim[!
is about four hours a week on the 24 sets we havB
among the 59 of us. To counter-balance the effec
of the frivolities listed above, 73% of us attend
house of worship regularly; 22% attend occasionally
and only 5% say they never attend. Agnes Scott
chapel training has apparently stood us in good steai

It was a natural step from participation in extr
curricular college activities to participation in con
munity enterprises. The list of civic projects to whic
we give time is long and diversified. Parent-Teachi
Associations hold our interest ; Service Guilds ar
Women's Clubs and Junior Leagues keep us bus
Julia Harvard Warnock is an advisor for the "Y
Ruth Kolthoff Kirkman assists in conducting dlscu
sion groups for college people; Marjorie Tippins Joh
son is an official hostess for the Tuesday Music
Club, Pennsylvania's largest music club; Mary Ca
Townsend is a member of her city's Board of Educ
tion ; Martha Marie Trimble Wapensky is an admir
strator of a nursery school. We belong to the Leagil
of Women Voters, the D.A.R., the A.A.U.W., and t
Girl Scouts. Twenty-five per cent of us have bed
volunteer workers during Red Cross and Infanti
Paralysis drives. All of this should prove a source
great satisfaction to the members of a class whii
included more than a normal share of stormy petn
ten years ago. Apparently even the stormiest amoi
us settled down to become respectable, sensible, ai
conscious of our civic duties!

Considering that we have assumed so many respo
sibilities in our communities, besides those in our hom
and businesses, we have done quite well in initiatii
and encouraging local fine arts. We definitely pati

nize all the events: the concerts and exhibits and per-
formances. Since this is one area where more blanks
than deeds were expected as answers in the question-
naire, it is remarkable to note that we have found time
to organize an educational television program, start
a museum, sponsor concerts for young people, and init-
iate a Children's Theater. If ever another survey is
:onducted, it seems certain that most of us will be
ible to write that we have stimulated the development
)f fine arts.

And where do we do all these things? We do them
lcross the nation from Massachusetts to Michigan

Texas. We could visit each other in 20 states and

1 other continents. If you want to find the thickest
:oncentration, go to Georgia where 45% of us make
iur homes.

We live in a single house, at least, 49 of us do.
)ut of the 49, 57% own that house (either with their
usbands or with the mortgage company). We drive
round in 79 vehicles, and I write "vehicles" advisedly,
ince that total includes Quincy Mills Jones' husband
ick-up truck and Barbara Connally Rogers' hus-
and's Model T. All of us have at least 1 radio, but
/e average over 2 each. We have 64 victrolas among
s, including the children's machines. Our lone hi-fi

t is possessed by Sylvia Mogul Brown. Appliances
'e have in abundance: 45 washing machines, 17 dry-
rs, 14 freezers and 14 dish-washers. Patty Barber Liip-
:rt, Robin Taylor Horneffer and Virginia Tuggle
ivn one of each! Twenty-seven of us have full-time
laids; 20 have no help at all; the remaining 12 have
leaning women who come anywhere from half a day
i three days per week. If lots of domestic help is
)ur heart's desire, go out to the Belgian Congo where
jurie Montgomery Miller will introduce you to her
liree servants: a cook, a gardener and a "wash-jack"
ho is her washing machine.

I We are evenly divided on the budget question :

j ree did not answer ; 28 say they live "by the budget" ;

say they do not. For food we spend from under $4

over $10 per person per week in each family. The
1 erage of $6.70 per person per week is an indication
I at we eat well despite food costs.
( The final section of the questionnaire was entitled

The World You Live In" and because of the nature

some of the questions, the answers cannot all be

hen in statistics. The first one, dealing with the

mted Nations in theory and in practice, revealed

decisive verdict. We are 81% in favor of the U.N.

ur enthusiasm ranges from the knowledgeable, "it

s done much in not so obvious fields" to the ominous,

"it's our only hope for survival." Somewhere between
the two the most oft-stated views can be found: we
feel it excellent in theory; we feel time and support
will strengthen it; we feel it to be the only means
by which compromises among nations can be reasonably
evolved; we feel name-calling (on both sides of the
conference tables) hampers its success; we fervently
hope and pray that it will keep us from Armageddon.
Fifteen per cent did not answer this question and the
remaining 4% are against the United Nations. One
person feels it is a Godless organization and too idealis-
tic to work ; another says it is parasitic, a drain on
America's strength and resources. This 4% goes along
with 43% more to write "Yes, there will be a third
world war." The (total) 47% who believe war will
come, temper their opinion only with the hope that
it will not be soon, but "eventually." One of us says
war will come only if Russia believes she can win it.
Ten did not answer the question ; five do not know.
Sixteen say there will not be a third world war. Let
us hope they prove to be the true prophets !

We went out and voted in the last national elec-
tion, 81% of us did. Of the remainingl9% , 10% were
ineligible. Many have nothing to say about the world
or national scene, but over 40% of us didn't hesitate
to comment on everything from chaos to cocktail par-
ties. Chaos is what a few of us feel we are living
amidst, but we do not feel the situation is without
hope. Cocktail parties are what one of us wishes our
lawmakers would stay away from, so that thev cou'd
spend more time performing their duties and fulfilling
their responsibilities! Many of us "like Ike"; the same
number say they "hate Communism and McCarthy."
One of us says cut taxes ; another says she would like
to see Stevenson elected in 1956; one of us asks for
federal grants to the states for education. We wish
more voters would keep themselves informed and
actively interested in national affairs; and oh, how
we wish it were not so expensive to "just live!"

Our views on the race question are very enlighten-
ing. Only 14 of us (or 24%) did not answer this
query. The other 76% have myriad views and solu-
tions. The general consensus is that this problem can
be solved peacefully and gradually through education
since the solution is within ourselves as well as within
legislative reform. Many of us feel that if the church
took a more active part and practiced "applied Chris-
tianity," tensions could be eased considerably. Twenty
per cent of us believe segregation should end in school
and communitv life as well as within church life. One

of us says exchanging students would help ; another,
that Agnes Scott should accept a Negro student. Some
feel that the end of segregation will not come in our
time. One believes that segregation should never end:
that it was not meant for the Negro and white races to
mix socially or otherwise. Only one of us feels that
there is no such thing as a race problem ; she says
that a few people keep stirring up trouble and trying
to create such a problem.

The question, "What contributions have you made
. . toward solving social, economic, or political prob-
lems in your own community . . . . " drew answers from
41 (or 70'; ) of us with 24 different types of contri-
butions listed. Most of us consider voting the only
thing we can do at present to right public wrongs. One
helped her Republican husband win an election in the
deep South, believing that two active parties are neces-
sary for political health. Some say that we help when
we express our own convictions to as many others as
possible. We are trying to rid our own minds of preju-
dices ; to keep informed about the world in which we
live; to bring up our children to be unbiased, honest,
and understanding. Some among us have joined the
Southern Regional Council or are active in interracial
fellowship groups, or help individuals whenever pos-
sible, or use our own foreign experiences to help
Americans better understand people of other nations
and cultures.

Being such a happy group it is hard to imagine
that all those around us are not infected with our
sense of fulfillment and feeling of well-being! For
we are (73% of us) happier women today than we
were in college. The most oft-stated reason is that

we feel settled in homes of our own with familie

of our own, living lives we hope are sane and intell;

gent. We have achieved emotional stability and no\

we "know our limitations and have learned to g(

along with them." Some 15% say they were happj

in college and are so now ; they do not believe the twj

ages and stages can be compared. One wistfully recal

"the wonderful magic of college days" that can neve

be recaptured in later life. Only one admits to beinl

less happy now than she was ten years ago (althoug

five did not answer the question). She is, she write!

too aware of all the injustices, fears, loss of freedon

lack of brotherhood, and general wretchedness of mucj

of humanity, conditions for which each and every orj

of us must feel a certain amount of responsibility. |

There were only a few other things left on our mind

although enough additional questions were suggests

to conduct an entirely new survey! The two most on

requested were, "Would you send a daughter of youl

to Agnes Scott?" and "Do you have any pets?" Po.

sibly the next chronicler can manage to fit them

somewhere.

It was not part of this assignment to make ail
analyses of the facts and opinions expressed. The fad
speak for themselves and are incontrovertible. T
opinions are not incontrovertible, by any means, b
are just as much a part of us as those facts. And the
two together are the result not only of our early yea)
and the last ten, but also of the very formative aa
impressionable time we spent at Agnes Scott. We hoj
the college can feel some satisfaction as it looks on|
again at the class of 1944.

ZENA HARRIS TEMKIN '44

ASSOCIATION NEWS

The inauguration of our Alumnae Association
page in the Quarterly sounds like a very awesome
assignment and being asked to set my pen first upon
this page should compel me, doubtless, to write a
formal "report to the membership." There is so much
personal excitement in my feeling for the work of the
Association that I simply can't be formal but will at-
tempt, with your indulgence, to share with you some
Df the plans and accomplishments of these few months.
I only wish that I could make each of you feel close
to Agnes Scott again, a privilege you have given to me.
It was an inspiring experience to be a part of the
first Convocation of the college year, that weekly as-
sembly when the whole college campus comes together.
[ was impressed anew with the exceptional students
we attract at Agnes Scott, eager, alert, personally at-
ractive girls. This year I think it is agreed we have
he finest and largest student body ever.

The Alumnae Tea in October, given for freshmen
:nd other new students, was a great success w T ith the
nformality and good food that made a party fun. There
vere over 200 students and alumnae present.
1 The first meeting of your Executive Board was a
; ery festive and enthusiastic affair. We were guests
f the College in the special, and especially attractive,
rivate dining room and were privileged to have an
iformal discussion with Dr. Alston about some of his
lans for the College. The quality of his leadership is
lagnificent and the future of the College is assured
' 'ith your interest and his vision. Each member of the
loard was unbelievably enthusiastic about her job
nd brought fine reports. As I think back on the meet-
ig, many things were discussed which should be head-
ned for your attention.

Hew Orleans Club attains scholarship goal.
he Alumnae Club of New Orleans has been working

for three years on a scholarship gift to be presented
to the College. This fall they have reached and ex-
ceeded their goal of $1,000 through individual gifts
and a rummage sale project.

Alumnae garden adopts college colors. Plans
for improving the Alumnae Garden have been accept-
ed by the College to coo-dinate the present garden with
the four bui'dings surrounding it. The flowering bor-
ders and arbor will feature purple and white.

Founders Day to feature radio programs. Out-
standing alumnae, successful in various careers, will
speak to alumnae all over the country by the record-
ings to be used for Founders Day Celebration; on the
subject of the Liberal Arts College and Careers.

Wedgwood plates soon ready. Notification of a
shipping date has been received at the Alumnae House
and we are assured that the Wedgewood plates featur-
ing Buttrick's facade as seen from Inman porch will
soon be available to Alumnae. Details and prices
will be sent to all Clubs.

Hollywood pictures Agnes Scott. Hollywood and
Agnes Scott joined forces to make something really
inspiring of the forthcoming release of "A Man
Called Peter."

"Mademoiselle" comes to Agnes Scott. The
popular monthly magazine magazine "Mademoiselle"
has reported to the nation on the aims and activities
of Agnes Scott College in its October issue.

Alumnae fund merits support. Remarkable in-
terest has been shown in the annual fund appeal, but
percentage of alumnae sending a gift is low. Let's
keep the Fund high on our Contribution List! So far
this year we have $7,442 from Alumnae.

Mary Warren Read '29, President

Edited by Eloise Hardeman Ketchin

Deadline for news in this issue was Sept. 10, '5b. News
received between that date and December in. '6
appear in the Winter Quarterly.

DEATHS

CLASS NEWS

Mary E. Markley

Members of the faculty and
alumnae who were students at
the college between 1911 and
1918 will remember with keen
pleasure Mary E. Markley, a
good friend and an inspiring
teacher of English who, during
her stay at Agnes Scott, won
the respect and love of those
whose lives she touched.

Interested in many phases of
college life, she played an active
part in directing the production
of an impressive pageant en-
acted in 1914 in celebration of
the 25th anniversary of the
founding of the college.

A devoted member of the
Lutheran Church, Miss Mark-
ley left Agnes Scott in 1918 to
act as secretary of the Lutheran
Board of Education. Traveling
and lecturing a n d counseling
students on many campuses, her
influence was widely felt. She
gave herself untiringly to this
work until a few years ago
when she became an invalid.

Her Agnes Scott friends will
learn with deep regret of her
death on May 24, 1954, at the
National Lutheran Home in
Washington, D.C.

Margaret Phythian '16

INSTITUTE

Lessie Green Coyne died June 10.

Kate Reagan and Lucy Reagan
Redwine '10, lost their brother in June.

Jule Armstrong McCroskey died in
June. She was the sister-in-law of
Jean Powel McCroskey '09.

Alice Cummings Greene has lost her
two brothers, Joseph D. Greene, Jr.,
Nov. 24, 1952, and Harry G. Greene
Oct. 6, 1953.

Orie Rebecca Jenkins died Aug. 1.

Laura Candler Wilds died Sept. 8.
She was the mother of Mary Scott

Aimee Glover Little d i e c

Emily Peck Mallory died ir

Wilds '41, and Annie Wilds McLeod
'42.

Samuel G. Webb, father of Juliet
Webb Hutton, died Aug. 15 at the
age of 98.

1912 Eff ie Yeager McGaughey's
mother died in June.

1916 Dr. C. W. Henderson, hus-
band of Vivien Hart Henderson, died
Aug. 9.

1917 India Hunt Balch died Jul>
31.

1921
Oct. 5.

1924

March.

Ann Hertzler Jervis lost her onlj
child, a son, in an automobile accident
in the spring.

1 925 Lillian Middlebrooks Smears
husband was killed at a railroad cross
ing near Soperton, Ga., June 27. Hei
brother, W. T. Middlebrooks, d i e c
April 29.

1928 Elizabeth Hudson McCul
loch's mother died in the spring.
1 929 Kitty Hunter Branch lest hei
father during the year.

Frances Wimbish Seaborn's aun'
died in July.

1 93 1 M y r a Jervey Hoyle's hus
band, Kevin, died July 17.
1932 Sara Will Berry Paul die<
Oct. 24, 1953.

1 935 Virginia Nelson Hime, Gai
Nelson Blain '33, and Emily Nelsoi
Bradley '27 lost their father May 3.

1938 Julia Telford's father died ii
June.

1 939 Mrs. Emily Anderson Sewell
grandmother of Julia Sewell Carte:
and Edith Sewell Bergmanis '53, am
mother-in-law of Margaret B 1 a n <
Sewell '20, died July 21.

1 946 Dr. J. C. Register, father o:
Anne Register Jones, died July 19.

1 948 Anna Clark Rogers lost he:
mother in July.

1953 Martin A. McRae, father o
Margaret McRae Edwards died ver;
suddenly in September.

10

AGNES SCOTT

lumnae
uarterly

winter
1955

THE

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

OF

AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE

OFFICERS

MARY WARREN READ '29

President
GRACE FINCHER TRIMBLE '32

Vice-President
FLORENCE BRINKLEY '14

Vice-President
VELLA MARIE BEHM COWAN '35

Vice-President
MARJORIE NAAB BOLEN '46

Secretary
BETTY MEDLOCK LACKEY '42

Treasurer

TRUSTEES

JEAN BAILEY OWEN '39

FRANCES WINSHIP WALTERS INST.

CHAIRMEN

CATHERINE BAKER MATTHEWS '32

Nominations
FRANCES CRAIGHEAD DWYER '28

Special Events
EDWINA DAVIS CHRISTIAN '46

Vocational Guidance
MARY WALLACE KIRK '11

Education
LEONE BOWERS HAMILTON '26

Publications
BELLA WILSON LEWIS '34

Class Officers
NELLE CHAMLEE HOWARD '34

House
LOUISE BROWN HASTINGS '23

Grounds
MARIE SIMPSON RUTLAND '35

Entertainment

LOCAL
CLUB PRESIDENTS

MARY PRIM FOWLER '29

Atlanta
ERNELLE RUTH BLAIR FIFE '36

Decatur
REESE NEWTON SMITH '49

Atlanta Junior
SYLVIA McCONNEL CARTER '45

Southwest Atlanta

STAFF The Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly is published four times a yet

ANN WORTHY JOHNSON '38 (November, February, April and July) by the Alumnae Association i

Director of Alumnae Affairs Agnes Scott College at Decatur, Georgia. Contributors to the Alumni

ELOISE HARDEMAN KETCHIN p und rece [ ve t he magazine. Yearly subscription, $2.00. Single copy 50 cent

House Manager ' " *

MARY P CHAPMAN Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office of Decatur, Georgi

Office Manager under Act of August 24, 1912.

MEMBER

AMERICAN ALUMNI
COUNCIL

the AGNES SCOTT

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY

Uolume 33
Winte

'inter

i lumber 2

1955

Contents

Hollywood at Agnes Scott

Mary Frances Sweet, M.D.

Janef Preston

Frances Winship Walters

James Ross McCain

When Far From the Reach

Marion Merritt Wall

Alumnae Club News

Class News

Club Directory

Vella Belun Cowan

Eloise Hardeman Ketchin

8

10

28

COVER The cover photograph is of Miss Jean Peters, who plays Catherine
Marshall in the film "A Man Called Peter," and several professional extras
shown in a scene taken on the quadrangle. Photograph by Gabriel Benzur.

THE FILMING OF /\ MAN

CALLED PETER

f\

20th-century Fox is producing Catherine Marshall'
"A Man Called Peter." A team from the studio, in
eluding Jean Peters who plays Catherine and Richar
Todd who plays Peter, came to Atlanta in the earl
fall to film scenes in Atlanta, Covington, and at Agne
Scott. Scenes at the college included the quadranglt
hockey field, and entrance gate. The picture will b
released nationally during Easter week. These photc
graphs were made by the studio cameramen.

LIGHTS

Classes went on not quite as usual during the filming
Ion the campus. Sets of the Dean's Office and a college
dormitory room were built at the studios and other
Agnes Scott scenes filmed there. Almost 200 students
I were in the campus scenes and "strollers" has become
a campus by-word. A Freshman sighed as the team left
and asked: "What else is there to live for?"

Miss McKinney says that an alumna ivrote her, when the Infirmary was
being built, "students today may have a new Infirmary but we had Dr.
Sweet " Dr. Siveet willed her estate, $150,000, to Agnes Scott. As Dr.
Alston says, "No gift we have ever received represents more devoted and
careful stewardship." The Alumnae Office is acting as Treasurer for a fund
to have her portrait painted and hung in the Infirmary. If you'd like to
contribute, ?nake your check to the Alumnae Association.

MARY FRANCES SWEET, M. D.

Janef Preston '21

Dr. Sweet was a rare human being. Her influ-
ence abides in the life of this college, which for
over forty years she served with vision, loyalty, and
devotion, and in the lives of those who knew personally
the quality of her mind and spirit. This quality of her
being is perfectly suggested in words used by a former
president of Harvard to describe the truly cultivated
person: a person of "quick perceptions, broad sym-
pathies and wide affinities; responsive but independent;
self-reliant but deferential ; loving truth and candor but
also moderation and proportion ; courageous but gentle ;
not finished but perfecting."

Nothing was more characteristic of Dr. Sweet than
the breadth of her sympathies and interests. She was
well trained and able in the field of medicine. Taking
degrees from Syracuse University in 1892, she did resi-
dence work at the New Eng'and Hospital for Women
and Children in Boston. Then after several years of
private practice, she came to Agnes Scott as College
Physician and Professor of Physical Education.
Throughout the years of her active service 1908 to
1937 she did far more than care for the health of
students. Immediately she took her place as the head
of a recently formed department; gifted with imag-
inative insight, she devoted herself to far-reaching plans
for the department and to the well-being of the whole
college community. Fellow-workers speak appreciatively
of her trust in those who worked with her. Early asso-
ciates tell of her heroic labors and of her resourceful-
ness during the harrowing days when thirty members of
the student body were stricken with typhoid fever,
and of her courageous insistence in opposition to the
opinion of the consulting doctor that the campus
well was contaminated. Alumnae remember how she
caught the imagination of students and persuaded
them to substitute the friendly rivalry of the Black

Cat stunts for the crude hazing of freshmen then inl
practice. Her colleagues in administration and faculty!
recall the part she had in shaping sound academic pro-l
grams and policies. Co-operative but independent, cou-l
rageous but gentle, seeing the near problem and the
far goal, she was always a positive and unifying influ-1
ence in the college.

Her remarkably fine mind was engaged by manyB
interests other than medicine. She was well informed
in the field of history and current affairs; she wasl
an astute business woman ; already a linguist, she wasl
an eager learner of a new language not many yearsB
before her retirement; she was a voracious reader alii
her life. Especially she took delight in literature and!
was keenly perceptive of its values. She loved the beautyB
of the natural world and the deepening experiences ofl
travel. In later years of invalidism, memories of manyH
a summer in Europe or New England evoked her de-i
lightful, quiet talk. Above all, the scientist and theB
contemplative met in the woman who had an unflagging!
interest in the frontiers of re'igious thinking, whoseB
reticent speech about the spiritual life was freshlyH
minted, whose faith was rooted in devotion.

Her loyalties were as deep as her interests wereB
wide. She was a devoted daughter and sister. Fori
many years in her home on the campus she cared fori
her mother and her invalid brother. She was a loyal!
member of the Methodist Church she was loyal tol
her friends. She was loyal to this college which she!
loved with singular devotion, supporting its standards!
and ideals, expressing her life in its life, and giving!
to it her entire personal fortune.

She was a quiet, reserved person, but her warm,!
sincere interest drew students and colleagues to her andl
invited confidence. She was a generous sharer in thelj
lives of others. One counted oneself rarely fortunate!

to have her for a friend. One delighted in her wit
and humor, her wealth of interest, her pleasure in
life. One turned to her for help and advice, sure of
unfailing strength and wisdom. One liked merely to
be quietly in her presence, aware that her serenity
came from inner peace.

Not long ago, in conversation with a friend, she
pointed out in the Saturday Review of Literature a
poem that she liked very much, "The Sommersville
Scene," by M. A. DeWolfe Howe. Perhaps to those
of us who knew her, and to those who did not, it may
quoted only in part suggest her own spirit:
"This beauty past compare
I cannot prove but it is there !
Nor can I prove that one I loved,

Too humble to let others see

In what a sphere she moved,

Bore with her to another sphere such wit

And tenderness as now no longer be.

This too, unproved, is utter truth to me.

So here by Heron Cove still pondering,

Musing on mysteries,

With bird-songs, silvered clouds, dark trees,

With peace and beauty steeping all of it,

'Tis but a step from pondering to wondering

If God, himself so near, may one day spread

His rule of love, and arm the spirit-led

To overthrow the brawling crew

Of thing-slaved men who doubt his word.

No proof that this can be has yet been heard,

But in my heart of hearts remains unmoved

A faith not yet by reason proved."

MRS. FRANCES WINSHIP WALTERS

James Ross McCain

Mrs. Walters' legacy of over four million dollars is the greatest single gift Agnes Scott has ever re-
ceived. This memorial to her was read into the minutes of the December, 1954, Board of Trustees
meeting at which time the Board voted to carry out Mrs. Walters' wishes in the erection this year of
the Frances Winship Walters Dormitory. Part of the income from the estate will build the dormi-
tory, and these funds will also make possible adequate faculty salaries and the strengthening of aca-
demic departments. Mrs. Walters' gift puts the college well on the way to becoming, in Col. George
Washington Scott's words, "As great an institution of this kind as there is in the land."

Mrs. Frances Winship Walters was born in At-
lanta, Ga., September 25, 1878, and passed
away November 14, 1954. She was the youngest daugh-
ter of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Winship, pioneer leaders
in the growth of the city.

Her principal education was at Agnes Scott Institute,
as it was then known, where she made a good record
and completed her course in 1894. The Institute was
only two years old when she entered it. She never
forgot its goal (first announced when she was a stu-
dent in it), to become eventually "fully abreast of
the best institutions in this country." She was in
thorough accord with the ideals of the young Institute,
and kept up her interest in it during the entire period
of sixty years after she left it as a student.

On October 2, 1900, she married Mr. George C.
Walters, a very fine young man from Richmond, Va.
It was an ideal match with every promise of happiness
and success, but in 1914 the husband was stricken with

sudden illnes in the prime of life and did not recover.
The perfection of that union was proved by the years
of widowhood in which she ever remained loval to
his memory, insisting on keeping his name in her
permanent address, Mrs. George C. Walters.

After losing her life-mate, she gave herself to
thoughtfulness of others and to aiding worthy causes.
Most of her benefactions were made anonymously and
were hardly known even to her clorest relatives. She
was a devoted member of St. Mark's Methodist
Church in Atlanta, and she constantly helped in its
development. Her best known contributions were a
beautiful chapel which she p'anned in detail herself
and the air conditioning of the sanctuary.

In 1920 she contributed $1,000 to begin the "George
C. Walters Scholarship" at Agnes Scott, and con-
tinuously from that time she aided in all of the many
campaigns and forward movements of the College.
She never waited to be asked for support, but always

volunteered her generous donations. These included two
gifts toward the erection of Hopkins Hall, the main
Gateway, the Foundation that bears her name, the
Frances Win; hip Infirmary, and many other smaller
gifts.

In 1937 she was elected to the Board of Trustees
of Agnes Scott as an Alumna representative. For
seventeen years, she rendered valuable service until
her death, taking part in the work of almost all com-
mittees, and being Vice-Chairman of the Board for
the last few years.

She did not often take part in discussions and never
entered debates, but she read with utmost care all
letters, reports, bulletins, or other information about
the College, and was perhaps better informed as to
its real progress and problems than most members of
the administration. Her diligence in this was truly
remarkable.

Many years ago, during the post-depression days
which were so difficult for all colleges, she cheered
the administration of Agnes Scott by confiding that she
had put the College into her will for a very helpful sum.

Her decision to make Agnes Scott her residuary
legatee, with her history-making gift, came after she

had studied attentively our Development Program for
raising ten million dollars by 1964, our 75th anniver-
sary. She was a member of the committee which formu-
lated the details of the effort, but she could not come
to the first meeting. She read the report with enthu-
siasm, for it had been her hope that Agnes Scott might
reach a point of real equality with the best colleges
for women in this country.

Her thoughtfulness in providing that one-half of |
her own magnificent gift should be matched before I
coming into the College portfolio shows not only her '
own devotion, but her practical concern that her gift
might stimulate others in joining this forward move-
ment. She wanted her Alma Mater to enjoy the oppor-
tunity for real greatness.

The Board of Trustees of Agnes Scott College!
record our gratitude for her wonderful gift, quite the
largest in the history of our institution, and rejoice I
in our privilege of association with her during these
seventeen fruitful years. Her appreciation of the finest
things in life, her generous sense of stewardship, her
faith in God's direction of her own life and of the
College, her loyal support of our best ideals, lead
us to say very humbly and yet sincerely, "Thank God
for Frances Winship Walters!"

1

Marion's first article for the Quarterly, written
when she was a senior, concerned the changes in social
regulations at Agnes Scott. This is her report of a far
different social life. The drawing of a house in Curacao
is by her husband, J. N. Wall, Jr., Naval Liaison
Officer at Curacao.

WHEN FAR FROM THE REACH

Marion Merritt Wall '53

When I did a daily stint with the Alumnae Office
files to help pay my way through Agnes Scott,
the names with unlikely, foreign addresses were always
strangely romantic and fascinating to me. I assumed
that any Agnes Scott alumnae who was out of the
continental limits of the United States was a mission-
ary, gone forth bravely to exemplify Agnes Scott ideals
to the unwashed, and doubtless cannabalistic, heathen.
These foreign addressees I always pictured, as I dream-
ily fingered the file card, as crosses between Katherine
Hepburn, in the first scenes of The African Queen,
swathed in Victorian laces, righteousness and perspira-
tion, playing a wheezy organ for the spiritual edifica-
tion of a tribe of savages, and Miss Scandrett, forever
and unswervingly sensible, blasting apart the seemingly
impossible situation by applying The Rules to it. I
always put the card back, generally in the wrong
place, always with a sigh, thinking of that little band
of daughters, wandering far from the sheltering arms,
who had made their choice and departed civilization.

I hope that some student now holds my card, which
reads :

Wall, Mrs. John Newton, Jr.
Reigerweg, Willemstad
Curacao, Netherlands Antilles
I hope that she pictures me in floating voile and a
pith helmet, holding back a ferocious head-hunter
band with a thin treble rendition of Gaines, or perhaps
as a tireless social worker, singlehandedly and simul-
taneously battling a malaria epidemic, a smuggling ring,

land a villianous dictatorship.

However, it was not selflessness, or even zeal, that

bent us to Curacao, but something more unflinching
than either, orders from the United States Navy. When

Iwe had looked up Curacao on the map, and decided
that it was even more remote than we had thought,
I considered sprucing up the place morally, socially,

and so on. But we found out when we got here that
John Wesley and a few others got into the act first,

"^l_

=>g^p03

in fact some time ago, and as far as education and
social reform are concerned, Peter Stuyvesant founded
the first college here before he was sent off to be
governor of the little outpost of Nieuw Amsterdam.
The island is so reformed it's hardly any fun any
more. Out in the cunuku (or countryside to a non-
Curazoleno), the people still live in thatched clay huts,
and paint hex marks on the doors, but they also have
an adjacent car-port-hut for the shiny new Cadillac.
Mama carries a jug of water on her head, but when
she gets home, she puts it in the automatic washing
machine. We even ran into a smuggler on the beach
one night, but we scared him to death. These things
can be depressing to a would-be evangelist and exposer
of vice, just off the airplane.

But I just had to make the best of things, and Jack
and I settled down in a "little bit of Holland in the
Caribbean."

The island is shaped, figuratively speaking, like
a doughnut, with a small bite taken out of the
side. The harbor, one of the busiest in the world,
is the hole in the doughnut. Around the hole is the
second largest oil refinery in the world. (When the
oil refinery at Abadan closed down, we had the world's
largest operating oil refinery, but it was reopened be-
fore our new status could make the encyclopedias and
almanacs). To the windward side of the refinery the
smell is terrific. One assumes an expression which
seems sophisticated but is only a result of holding one's
breath for long periods while driving past. There is
Willenstad, the most quaint (word I picked up from
the tourists) little town, with very old Dutch colonial

houses that look like birthday cakes with white plaster
icing.

There is a bridge on pontoons floating across the
harbor mouth, which is part of the main road. When
the bridge swings aside to admit ships, the ensuing
traffic jam makes the tourists on the ships think that
the whole town has turned out to see them. The entire
populace, on foot and in cars, is at the water's edge,
and indeed, from the deck of a ship, all the yelling
and blowing of horns must sound very festive.

Curacao has its share of exiled South Americans
who skipped with the funds during one regime or
another, of bruja, or primitive witchcraft, poison vege-
tation and ghosts, but our most notable experiences in
living in the tropics came with matters of climate.
Curacao has two kinds of weather : hot sun and strong
wind, and hard rain and strong wind. It's one or the
other of these stages all year, no thunder, no lightning,
no fall, no spring, no anything else. The wind is the
outstanding factor. Once it rolled up our dinner in
the tablecloth like a jelly roll, with food and dishes
instead of jelly. Once it lifted a large rug and dropped
it on an unwary Dutchman who was struggling with
an American-style buffet lap dinner. That kind of
thing can be very rattling for hostess and guest alike.
No Puckish thing, this wind, it just blows.

So we took a house that was scientifically designed,
with holes to catch only certain amounts of wind
which would cool the house. Since most of these holes
were along a sort of patio wall, they served as entrance
and exit ports for most of the wild life of the region.
We got a cat to combat this situation, but unfortunate-
ly, the cat much preferred tinned cat food to wild life.

The Navy wife who was my predecessor in Curacao
had written me that we would have a British West

Indian servant who lived in the house, worked seven
days a week, and cost the equivalent of about thirty
dollars a month. This sounded absolutely the greatest
to me, and before we left the States, I begged a pink
chiffon tea gown with a train from Jack's aunt, and
an enormous breakfast-in-bed tray from my mother,
both articles remnants of more glorious days befo' de
wa' and the minimum wage law. I felt that I was then
prepared for the role of lady of leisure. Sara, our
much anticipated gem whom we hired with the house,
turned out to be about four feet high, of indeterminate
age, and possessed of arms which hung well below herl
knees, six pigtails at assorted angles, and the most
raucously pink and white false teeth, size enormous.!
It turned out that Sara could not cook, and efforts!
to teach her produced fantastic results. She did learn J
to make pudding in all flavors currently produced by I
the Royal people, but anything more complicated than
two cups of milk and stir was too much. My tea gown
and tray gathered dust while I manned the kitchen,
battling a refrigerator which completely defrosted it-
self every time it got a whiff of tropic air, and a
Dutch stove, sans broiler, which regularly made a most
terrifying explosive noise.

You see, there are a few hazards here, but if you
came to see us, you would find a busy, scrubbed little
Dutch island, administered by perhaps the most boringly
efficient government in the world, and there are more
church steeples than trees. The inhabitants grow rich
by frugality and industry, play soccer, and order clothes
from the Sears Roebuck catalogue instead of wearing
native dress. Rather than dine on toasted missionary,
they go on board a tourist ship for a European dinner.
It can be fairly depressing to us zealous reformers.

ALUMNAE CLUB NEWS

The Alumnae Association salutes tzvo new Alumnae
Clubs, one in Orlando, Florida and one in Waynes-
boro, Virginia to be known as the "Valley Club."
Salutes go also to the many groups who met to mark
our 66th Founder's Day.

The Atlanta Club has run true to form this year
with a splendid corps of officers and excellent pro-
grams and plans. In the fall a printed program of
the year's plans was sent to each member of the club,

listing speakers, hostesses, places of meeting. Dr. Alston
and Miss Ann Worthy Johnson '38, spoke to the
group in September about "News from Agnes Scott
College." This was followed in October by Miss Kitty

8

Johnson '24, discussing "Outstanding Fall Books"
and in November by Dr. William L. Pressly, Presi-
dent of the Westminster Schools and husband of Alice
McCallie Pressly '36, speaking on "High School Prep-
aration versus College Requirements." Plans for the
spring include a special Founder's Day Program on
February 19 on the campus in collaboration with
other local clubs. The officers for the Atlanta Club
this year are: Mary Prim Fowler '29, President;
Caroline Hodges Roberts '48, First Vice-President ;
Lois Mclntyre Beall '20, Second Vice-President ;
Ruth Ryner Lay '46, Recording Secretary; Jo Culp
Williams '49, Corresponding Secretary; and Gloria
Melchor Lyon '46, Treasurer.

The Atlanta Junior Club has regular monthly
meetings and is led by the following group of
officers: Reese Newton Smith '49, President; Frances
Clark '51, Vice-President; Margaret Ann Kaufman
'52, Secretary-Treasurer. At the October meeting, held
at the Alumnae House, Dr. Posey talked about his
trip to Europe. In November Senora Maria deLeon
Ortega, on campus as a University Center lecturer,
gave a musical program, and the club had a delightful
Christmas party on December 8 at Reese's home.
On January 12, at the alumnae house, Miss Sara
Colp who teaches Spanish in the Atlanta Schools dis-
cussed "Foreign Languages in Elementary Schools."
The Junior Club is in charge of plans for the joint
meeting on the campus on February 19.
The Chapel Hill Club is planning a Founder's
Day dinner under the supervision of Frances Brown
'28, of the Duke University Chemistry Department.
She will be assisted in these plans by Sterley Lebey
Wilder '43, and Betty Sullivan Wrenn '44. Alumnae
in Chapel Hill, Durham and vicinity have been in-
vited to join this group in February. Last year at
the Founder's Day meeting the club presented a highly
successful skit about life at Agnes Scott in 1900, 1920,
1930 and 1950.

The Charlotte Club began its fall work with a
dinner meeting on October 26, presided over by the
following new officers: Anne Flowers Price '43, Presi-
dent; Shirley Gately Ibach '43, Vice-President; Betsy
Deal Smith '49, Secretary; Rita Adams Simpson '49,
Treasurer. A former Agnes Scott faculty member, Miss
Thelma Albright, now Dean of Students at Queens
College, was the speaker at the October meeting. The
Charlotte Club is looking forward to its Founder's
Day program when Dr. Alston will be their guest.
Plans for the spring work include a tea for prospective
college students, and judging from the large number
of girls that come to the college from Charlotte and

vicinity, this club is doing a splendid job of contacting
prospects for Agnes Scott.

The Lexington, Ky., Club is planning a luncheon
at the Phoenix Hotel for Founder's Day this year,
with Dr. McCain as speaker. The officers for this club
are Lillian Clement Adams '27, President, and Louise
Jett '52, Vice-President.

The Long Island Club has sent the alumnae office
some very fine reports of its monthly meetings. Fall
plans included a tour of the United Nations buildings,
luncheon and ta'k by the Public Relations Officers of
the Pakistan Delegation on November 9. The group
was conducted through the LTnited Nations head-
quarters by Catherine Crowe '52, one of our own
alumnae. New officers elected at the December meet-
ing are: President, Anne Kincaid Reid '51; Vice-
President, Katherine Benefield Bartlett '41 ; Secretary-
Treasurer, Catherine Lott Marbut '29, and Program
Chairman, Ceevah Rosenthal Blatman '45. Because
of the proximity of this group to New York, they are
planning a yearly subject of study (this year is Art),
with bi-monthly luncheon meetings at members' homes
and alternate months for special field trips to various
places of interest in the city. Plans for February are
to have a speaker from the Metropolitan Mu c eum
of Art discuss the meaning of an art masterpiece, with
each member having read a book of art criticism as
preparation for the meeting. It all makes you wish
you could be in that club, doesn't it?

The Louisville, Ky. Club, with Elizabeth Allen
Young, '47, as President, met October 15 at the
home of the president for a social gathering. Guests
at this meeting were Dr. and Mrs. Philip Davidson.
He was formerly on the Agnes Scottt faculty and is
now President of the University of Louisville.

The Manhattan Club enjoyed a social hour when
the group met in August at Martha Baker '46's
apartment. New officers elected at this meeting are:
President, Norah Little Green '50; Program and Pub-
licity, Cissie Spiro '51; Secretary-Treasurer, Martha
Arnold Shames '45, assisted by Bernice Beaty Cole '33.
They planned a November meeting with other Agnes
Scott clubs in the area, and to attend the Barnard
Forum in February.

The New Orleans Club deserves orchids for their
splendid achievement of founding a Scholarship
Fund at the college, reported in the Fall Quarterly.
They continue to add to their fund. This spring one
of the New Orleans alumnae will come to the campus
to present the fund to the college at a formal cere-
mony. This money raising project by New Orleans

surely spurs on the rest of us to do much more for
the college!

The Shreveport Club has made plans for a Found-
er's Day Luncheon at the home of the club president,
Marguerite Morris Saunders '35, and also for a tea
in April for projective Agnes Scott students.
The Southwest Atlanta Club is a fine, new en-
thusiastic group of alumnae headed by Sylvia Mc-
Connell Carter '45, Julia Goode '50, Miriam Carroll
Specht '50, and Faye Ball Rhodes '49. One unusual
thing about this club is the fact that they hold meet-
ings even through the summer months! They en-
joyed a picnic with their members and families in
July. Although this group is comparatively new in
alumnae work, they voted to send $25.00 to the
Alumne Fund many thanks!

The Westchester-Fairfield Club enjoyed a
luncheon meeting in October at the home of the
Secretarv: Louise Brown Smith '37. At this time the

club planned a tour of Yale University on November
10 and a Founder's Day program. We heard later
that the toui of Yale conducted by Polly Stone Buck
'24, was just perfect. The guests were unanimous in
praise of their guide and the tour itself. In the future
the group hopes to take similar tours. The West-
chester-Fairfield club is making regular contributions
for the expenses of an Agnes Scott student and this
should be a challenge to any club.

The Alumnae Office appreciates so much the fine
reports that are being mailed to the office about your
club activities. The above news items were gleaned from
these reports. If you are a club officer, please check
with your secretary to be sure she has an ample supply
of report blanks on hand. If not, let the alumnae office
know.

Vella Marie Behm Cowan '35
Alumnae Association Executive Board
Vice President for Clubs

CLASS NEWS

Edited by Eloise Hardeman Ketchin

Deadline for yiews in this issue was December 10, '5t.
News received between that date and February 10, '54,
will appear in the Spring Quarterly.

DEATHS

INSTITUTE

Edith Hooper Mangum died Sept. 16.
Her sister is Ada Hooper Keith.

Frances Winship Walters died Nov.
14.

Dr. Julia Jordan Emery, sister of
Annie Emery Plinn, died Nov. 24.

The Rev. S. Dwight Winn, brother
of Emily Winn, died Dec. 9.

Margaret Booth died Aug. 14, 1953,
in London while conducting a Euro-
pean tour.

1919 Margaret Brown Davis died
April 20. She was the mother of June
Brown Davis '49.

1 926 Emily Capers Jones Murphy
died in November.

1927 D. C. Fowler, husband of
Thyrza Ellis Fowler and brother-in-
law of Mary Ellis Shelton '29, died
Nov. 3.

Lillian Clement Adams lost her
mother Nov. 9.

John Van Cleve Morris, husband of
Elsa Jacobsen Morris, was killed in
November.

1929 Sally Southerland lost her
mother Nov. 9.

Mrs. Harry J. Spencer, mother of
Olive Spencer Jones, died Dec. 9.

1 932 Carter Tate, husband of Nell
Starr Tate, and brother of Sarah Tate
Tumlin '25, died in September.

1 933 The Rev. J. R. Hooten, father
of Mildred Hooten Keen, died April 8.

1945 Mrs. Wynton R. Melson,
mother of Montene Melson Mason and
Wynelle Melson Patton '52, died July
1.

1 948 Dr. R. K. Andrews, father of
Virginia Andrews, died in November.

SPECIALS
Mary Buttrick Starnes died Sept. 22.

10

sm

AGNES SCOTT

alumnae quarterly

THE

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

OF

AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE

OFFICERS

MARY WARREN READ '29

President
GRACE FINCHER TRIMBLE '32

Vice-President
FLORENCE BRINKLEY '14

Vice-Presiden t
VELLA MARIE BEHM COWAN '35

Vice-President
MARJORIE NAAB BOLEN '46

Secretary
BETTY MEDLOCK LACKEY '42

Treasurer

TRUSTEES

JEAN BAILEY OWEN '39

FRANCES WINSHIP WALTERS, INST.

CHAIRMEN

CATHERINE BAKER MATTHEWS '32

Nominations
FRANCES CRAIGHEAD DWYER '28

Special Events
EDWINA DAVIS CHRISTIAN '46

Vocational Guidance
MARY WALLACE KIRK '11

Education
LEONE BOWERS HAMILTON '26

Publications
BELLA WILSON LEWIS '34

Class Officers
NELLE CHAMLEE HOWARD '34

House
LOUISE BROWN HASTINGS '23

Grounds
MARIE SIMPSON RUTLAND '35

Entertainment

LOCAL
CLUB PRESIDENTS

MARY PRIM FOWLER '29

Atlanta
ERNELLE RUTH BLAIR FIFE '36

Decatur
REESE NEWTON SMITH '49

Atlanta Junior
SYLVIA McCONNELL CARTER '45

Southwest Atlanta

STAFF

ANN WORTHY JOHNSON '38

Director of Alumnae Affairs
ELOISE HARDEMAN KETCHIN

House Manager
MARY P. CHAPMAN

Office Manager

MEMBER

AMERICAN ALUMNI
COUNCIL

The Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly is published four times a year
(November, February, April and July) by the Alumnae Association of
Agnes Scott College at Decatur, Georgia. Contributors to the Alumnae
Fund receive the magazine. Yearly subscription, $2.00. Single copy 50 cents.
Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office of Decatur, Georgia,
under Act of August 24, 1912.

the AGNES SCOTT

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY

Volume 33 Number 3

Spring 1955

Contents

Acknowledgments 2

Friendship, Morality, and Literature 3

Ellen Douglass Leyburn

Productive Graduate Study 8

Jeanne Addison Masengill

Coleridge on the Value of Studying the Past 12

R. Florence Brinkley

Class News 15

Eloise Hardeman Ketchin

Commencement Program 26

Club Directory 27

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For many alumnae, Agnes Scott's liberal arts education has been the impetus for
graduate study and for devoting a lifetime to things of the mind. The roster of
graduate degrees would make a book half as thick as the Alumnae Register. For this
issue of the Quarterly, the Education Committee of the Alumnae Association,
Mary Wallace Kirk, Chairman, Lucile Alexander, Leone Bowers Hamilton, Mary
King Critchell, and Ruth Slack Smith, present the graduate mind at work.

So, our thanks go first to the contributors: R. Florence Brinkley, Dean of
Woman's College, Duke University ; Ellen Douglass Leyburn, Associate Professor |
of English at Agnes Scott; and Jeanne Addison Masengill, Director of Courses,
Language Center, Bangkok, Thailand.

We are indebted to Harriet Stovall '55 for the cover design and illustrations
made especially for this issue as part of an assignment towards the completion of her
art major. Ann Worthy Johnson, Editor

FRIENDSHIP, MORALITY and LITERATURE

Ellen Douglass Leyburn

IT IS ALWAYS a delight to honor achievement, and we shall all share in the
pleasure of congratulating the seniors whom you are shortly to hear announced
as having been elected members in course of Phi Beta Kappa. But I do not need
to speak to you of them and their attainments, which you have witnessed for four years.
I should like rather to consider this morning the purposes which motivated the group
of young men who came together in the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg a hundred
and seventy-nine years ago to found this society. They gathered to promote friendship,
morality, and literature which was their term for all liberal studies. The date of
their meeting was 1776, so long ago as things are reckoned in this new country
that Phi Beta Kappa is sometimes spoken of as a venerable organization ; and indeed
the historical flavor of their surroundings and the heroic parts they were to play in
the Revolution invest them in our imaginations with a sort of legendary antiquity. But
the conceptions which brought them together in the ardor of affirmation were cen-
turies old when they formed Phi Beta Kappa as old in fact as man's sense of the
dignity of his own humanity.

So in thinking about these attributes of man, I invite you to consider the em-
bodiment of them in a man who lived long before those youths in colonial Virginia
agreed to emulate each other in the cultivation of friendship, morality, and literature.
I should not go quite so far as Dr. Johnson did in saying "The biographical part of
literature is what I love most" ; but with his reason for loving it I am in hearty
accord: It gives "us what comes near to ourselves, what we can turn to use." And so
I ask you to summon the pictures you have in your minds of Thomas More,
whose death four hundred and twenty years ago still stirs the imagination of men
in a way comparable to the death of Socrates.

But it is his life which gives meaning to his death. And as we think of his
life, we are likely to think first of his friendships. Erasmus, the greatest scholar of the
century, was his lifelong friend and dedicated to More the wisest and gayest and most
ironic of his books, The Praise of Folly. In a letter describing More, Erasmus writes:
"He seems born and framed for friendship, and is a most faithful and enduring friend.
He is easy of access to all ; but if he chances to get familiar with one whose vices admit
no correction, he manages to loosen and let go the intimacy rather than to break it off
suddenly. When he finds any sincere and according to his heart, he so delights in
their society and conversation as to place in it the principal charm of life ... In a word,
if you want a perfect model of friendship, you will find it in no one better than in
More." After More's death Erasmus writes: "In More's death I seem to have died
myself ; we had but one soul between us."

Not only the Dutch Erasmus, but the whole circle of English humanists, Colet
and Grocyn and Linacre, with whom he studied Greek, and Bishop Fisher, who died
with him, were all his devoted friends. When he had to go on the difficult mission
to Flanders, which gave him the setting for the opening of Utopia, he spoke of the
friendship of Tunstall, his companion, and of Busleiden and Peter Giles, humanists of
Brussels and Antwerp, as the great joy of the embassy. He sponsored the long sojourn
of Holbein in England, to which we owe our wonderful array of Tudor faces, j
including More's own, which Holbein painted as serenely grave, though one can see J
in the eyes that look steadfastly out upon the world the possibility of the gaiety to
which all his friends bear witness. As I have been reading about him during these
past few months, it seems to me that the word I have most often encountered is
merry. More even hoped to be merry in heaven with Audeley, who had the horrid task
of condemning him to death at Henry's behest. The first story we have of him from \
Roper, his earliest biographer, tells how he would step in among the players at
Christmas time when he was a page, "young of years," in the household of Cardinal |
Morton, "and never studying for the matter, make a part of his own there presently
among them which made the lookers-on more sport than all the players beside. In
whose wit and towardness, the Cardinal much delighting would often say of him
unto the nobles that dined with him, 'This child here awaiting at the table, whosoever
shall live to see it will prove a marvellous man.' " And on the last page Roper tells
that when More was going up the scaffold, "which was so weak that it was ready to
fall, he said merrily to Master Lieutenant, 'I pray you Master Lieutenant, see me
safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.' " His wit and charm drew
all sorts of men to him ; even the king in his happy early years would come home to
Chelsea to be merry with him, and used to send for him so constantly as an after
dinner companion that he had to abate his "accustomed mirth" in order to diminish
the number of invitations and thus have some time for his family.

And it is in his family that he preeminently shows his power of friendship.
It is striking that when anyone speaks of More's home, it is always of his household.
It is not of the house that we think, though the mansion in Chelsea was stately and
beautiful, nor of the estate, though the gardens and grounds were spacious and well
cared for and More loved to walk along the paths overspread with rosemary which
he had planted himself "not onlie because his bees loved it, but because 'tis the herb
sacred to 'Remembrance'." But it is the people gathered around him there who
come to mind. In his last years his family included his three daughters and their
husbands, his son John and John's very young wife, his adopted daughter Margaret
Giggs, and eleven grandchildren ; but besides these there were constant visitors, often
distinguished scholars from abroad, and a whole company of "merry young scholars," as
Chambers calls them, who belonged to the household in one capacity or another,
including "merrie John" Hey wood, the dramatist, one of More's closest young friends.
More had taught his children himself, besides having other distinguished tutors for
them, giving his daughters the same training as his son, so that it was a household of
real intellectual companionship and delight, where at meals after a passage of scripture
was read and discussed, Master Henry Patenson, the domestic fool, was allowed to
bring the conversation down to a lower level. And then there was rich table talk, witty
dialogues, such perhaps as those in Heywood's plays. The atmosphere was full of music.
It is indicative both of More's love of it and of his tact that he prevailed on Dame
Alice, his rather unbending second wife, to learn music so as to participate in this

family pleasure. Harpsfield, one of the early biographers, says of her, although she was
"aged, blunt and rude," More "full entirely loved her," and "he so framed and
fashioned her by his dexterity that he lived a sweet and pleasant life with her, and
brought her to that case, that she learned to play and sing at the lute and virginals,
and every day at his returning home he took a reckoning and account of the task
he enjoined her touching the said exercise."

The person dearest to More was his daughter Margaret Roper, who had become
a very fine scholar under his tutelage and who seems of them all most perfectly attuned
to his spirit. Her devotion is complete, and the story of her breaking through the press
of guards with halberds to embrace her father after his condemnation is one of the
most touching that Roper tells. But Roper's own devotion seems to me still more
remarkable a tribute to More's power of friendship. Roper was a grave, literal minded
man, who often missed the point of More's ironical wit until he had pondered it.
Furthermore, he was the husband of More's favorite daughter and might well have
been jealous of the intimate bond between father and daughter. Instead, he worshipped
More hardly this side idolatry ; and in the conversations he records we see exactly why.
Roper's innocent artlessness gives them the very stamp of authenticity, and we hear the
sound of More's voice as he says "Son Roper." After one of the sessions with the
king's comimssioners, for instance, Roper says: "Then took Sir Thomas More his
boat towards his house at Chelsea, wherein by the way he was very merry. And for
that was I nothing sorry, hoping that he had got himself discharged out of the
Parliament bill. When he was landed and come home, then walked we twain alone
into his garden together; where I, desirous to know how he had sped, said, I trust
Sir, that all is well, because you be so merry.'

'It is so, indeed, Son Roper, I thank God,' quoth he.

'Are you then put out of the Parliament bill?' said I.

'By my troth, Son Roper,' quoth he, 'I never remembered it.'

'Never remembered it, Sir?' said I, 'a case that toucheth
yourself so near, and us all for your sake! I am sorry to hear it; for I verily trusted
when I saw you so merry, that all had been well.'

Then said he, 'Wilt thou know, Son Roper, why I was so merry?'

'That would I gladly, Sir,' quoth I.

'In good faith, I rejoiced, Son,' quoth he, 'that I had given the devil a foul
fall; and that with those Lords I had gone so far as, without great shame, I could
never go back again.'

At which words waxed I very sad ; for though himself liked it well, yet like it
me but a little."

On less solemn occasions Roper sometimes remonstrates with him for what to his
sobriety seemed reckless daring of judgment: " 'By my troth, Sir, it is very desperately
spoken!' That vile term, I cry God mercy, did I give him. Who, by these words
perceiving me in a fume, said merrily unto me: 'Well, well, Son Roper, it shall not
be so; it shall not be so!' Whom, in sixteen years and more being in house conversant
with him, I could never perceive as much as once in a fume."

In More's friendships, his whole beautifully rounded self was involved. So if I
have conveyed at all the quality of his friendship, I have already suggested something
of his literature and morality. His learning was part of the whole man, and it was
constantly related to the conduct of his life with other men. Studies are his joy, as he

makes them the recreation of the citizens of his Utopia ; but they are a means of life,
not a distraction from it. The qualities of More's mind are admirably balanced. His
prodigious memory was partly trained by the almost bookless methods of teaching Latin
at St. Anthony's school. From his schooldays, the rapidity of his brain was remarked.
One of his fellows says: "Every body who has ever existed has had to put his
sentences together from words, except our Thomas More alone. He, on the contrary,
possesses this super-grammatical art, and particularly in reading Greek." To the great
disgust of Erasmus, More's father stopped his devoting himself to Greek by cutting
off his supplies at Oxford and tried to turn him into a sensible lawyer like himself by
putting him into the inns of court. More mastered English law as he had mastered
Greek, and went on to become the greatest lawyer in England. His gifts seemed
exactly suited to his task whether he was skillfully managing a debate or delivering
impartial judgments, always refusing the least advantage to anyone connected with him.
His knowledge of the intricacies of English law was controlled by a fine wisdom.
One of his early biographers tells the story of a homely, scrupulous judgment that shows
he also had common sense and a knowledge of people and dogs. Indeed he loved all
sorts of animals.

Sir Thomas his last wife loved little doss to play withal. It happened that she was
presented with one, which had been stolen from a poor beggar woman. The poor
beggar challenged her dog, having spied it in the arms of one of the serving men that
gave attendance upon my lady. The dog was denied her; so there was great hold and
keep about it. At length Sir Thomas had notice of it; so caused both his wife and
the beggar to come before him in his hall; and said, 'Wife, stand you here, at the
upper end of the hall, because you are a gentlewoman; and goodwife, stand there
beneath for you shall have no wrong.' He placed himself in the midst, and held the
dog in his hands, saying to them, 'Are you content, that I shall decide this controversy
that is between you concerning this dog?' 'Yes,* auoth they. Then said he each of
you call the dog by his name, and to whom the dog cometh, she shall have it. I he dog
came to the poor woman; so he cause the dog to be given her, and gave her besides a
French crown, and desired her that she would bestow the dog upon his lady. The
poor woman was well paid with his fair speeches, and his alms, and so delivered
the dog to my lady.

In matters of more moment, it is his power to see distinctions clearly as much as his
impregnable integrity which marked his career. It is this combination of qualities
which led him to the Lord Chancellorship and thence to his death. He could see the
clear legal and moral difference between the Act of Succession, which he could accept
as law, however much he disapproved, and the Act of Supremacy, which his legal
mind and his conscience rejected.

His morality as much as his learning is the mark of the whole man. It is his sheer
goodness which suffuses Roper's portrait of him. Erasmus's letter describing him
concentrates more on his charm, his genius for friendship and the grace with which
he ordered his household, cheering the low spirited with merry talk and loving to jest,
especially with women, even the rather dour Dame Alice; but through all Erasmus s
account runs the feeling of his sense of proportion, his reluctance to shine at court,
the sparseness of his diet, the modesty of his dress. Erasmus did not know that under
even this plain garb he wore a harsh hair shirt. His austerities were for private
discipline, not for public note. He meant that no one should know of his hair shirt
except his daughter Margaret to whom he entrusted the washing of it; but one summer

night as he sat at supper without a ruff, the young wife of his son saw it and laughed.

The hair shirt explains much about More. In his youth he had written a set of
very bad verses which include the line "None falleth far but he that climbeth high."
More never climbed high in his own conceit. Thus he could quietly resign the chancel-
lorship when he could no longer in conscience serve the king. Thus he could calmly re-
organize his household calling them together to explain the reduction in their mode of
life. Thus he could gently bid them farewell when he was committed to the Tower
of London. Thus he could spend the months of his close imprisonment in devotions,
preparing for his death much as he had thought he would like to spend his whole life
in following the rule of the Carthusian monks, soberly but not solemnly, cheering his
poor Dame Alice, who never could really understand why he would not swear the oath
and come home to Chelsea, and having the wonderful conversations with Margaret
Roper which are recorded in their dialogue letter, and writing the Dialogue of Comfort
against Tribulation, which is not about his own woes but about those of the kingdom.
Thus he could go to the scaffold where he declared himself the "King's good servant,
but God's first."

Twenty years ago on the four hundredth anniversary of his death More was
canonized. He is a saint, not just in Roman Catholic hagiology, but in truth and
one whose sainthood has a special meaning for a community of students like ourselves.

PRODUCTIVE GRADUATE STUDY

Jeanne Addison Masengill

FOR A FEW people who look back over their educational careers in the light of i
the known present and the supposed future, a clear progressive pattern may
emerge, of steps carefully planned and accomplished, all leading toward a predeter-
mined goal. But for most of us, I suppose, the pattern would be considerably more
complex a few carefully planned steps, a number of sudden new directions, and
often even a new goal. Indeed, the difficult thing is likely to be finding a pattern
at all.

To know whether or not you got where you were going, you have to remember
where you wanted to go. As I try to recollect now, tranquilly, my state of mind as I
approached the end of my senior year at Agnes Scott, I remember very vividly the
sense of the oppressive nearness of the future, the awful, absolute necessity of making
up my mind, and the apparent infinitude of possible choices. I felt that I must
choose my goal immediately and finally. To make matters worse, I genuinely
thought that I could choose at that stage to be a doctor, a journalist, a dramatic
actress, a scholar, or, with a few minor additions, a perfectly domesticated wife and
mother.

My very list of possibilities points up another problem which worried me greatly
and seemed to compound thrice over the confusion of the prospective future. A man,
I reasoned, might plan on being a doctor with at least a reasonable hope that his
course would be unchanged. But a woman must plan conditionally to be a doctor. She
may plan to be a doctor if she doesn't marry, if her husband doesn't object, if her
children don't interfere, and so on. I suppose few would disagree that, for better or
worse, when a modern woman finishes college, her expectations of the future are much
more subject to alteration than those of a man. Indeed, it is this very fact, which
leads me more and more to feel that a liberal education is not only the best possible
education for a woman, but perhaps also the only feasible one.

In my own case, a little more realism and common sense would have made me see
immediately that the possibilities for the future were not really so limitless as I
pretended. I had majored in English and minored in history, and always in the back
of my mind had been the thought that I would like to be a teacher. Obviously I

would need more education, and in the unremote and foreseeable future I would need
a job.

Directly, then, my decision to do graduate work was based on practical experience.
But it was more than that, too. I had not studied enough. I was in the post chry-
salid stage, eager not to settle down to write a thesis but to make a bigger and
better survey of English literature. For this purpose the University of Pennsyl-
vania was a perfect choice. There, for a master's degree, no thesis was required,
but the staggering sum of twelve one-term courses instead. If one could afford only
two terms, this meant six courses a term. I went to Pennsylvania, and I enjoyed my
year there, skimming over many different things and dipping fairly deeply into a few.
I emerged in due course with a master's degree and a surfeit of survey.

At this point, the pattern called for teaching. Really creative teaching would
have been a very healthy antidote. I was lucky enough to find a job teaching
freshman and sophomore English in college. But my teaching at best was a poor at-
tempt at recapitulation of the matter and manner of my own learning experiences.
Sophomore literature seemed easy. I could follow the plan of my courses at Agnes
Scott even down to the same pages of the same book. Freshman composition presented,
I admit, something of a problem. But looking back, it seems that what worried me most
was finding time to grade a hundred composition papers a week.

My first year of graduate school had taught me many new facts. I had gained
perhaps some new perspectives about literature. But I had not really assimilated
them. I had not learned to shape and recreate them for communication. Perhaps this
is hardly surprising. Such ability is certainly the result of time and trial and error,
and sometimes never comes at all.

From that first year on, my graduate career was directed more by chance
than by careful and methodical planning. In some ways the new direction was
amazingly rich ; in other ways it was extremely frustrating.

My choice of a new graduate school was determined by the fact that I had
married the philosophy instructor at my college. He was committed to return to the
University of Virginia to receive his master's degree and continue work on his Ph.D.
Fortunately, he was glad that I wanted to continue studying too. We even managed
to share a job in the library so that we both might study and at the same time we both
might eat.

I knew very little about the graduate school of the University of Virginia. I
wandered somewhat aimlessly into courses that I knew were required or into courses
that sounded interesting. Now it seems to me that my worst mistake was that I had
already finished two years of graduate school before I had any concrete idea of what
my dissertation field would be.

If I were starting graduate shcool again, I think I would pay a great deal more
attention to choosing professors than I did in the past choosing them not so much for
their personalities or their teaching techniques, but for their work as an index to
their respective fields. I would read their articles and try to find out exactly
what was going on in each field. If a man had no articles, I would not begin by
studying in his courses. And I would pay a great deal of attention to the comments
of other graduate students.

This seems to me a realistic approach to the problem of the dissertation. In
one year the student cannot hope to cover the range of interesting and possible sub-
jects. If he finds a professor who can help direct him to a new field or a stimu-
lating problem, he has made a great step toward productive graduate study. This does
not limit his initiative or cut off his other interests. It simply saves him time.

At the University of Virginia, I found eventually the most productive fields were
two newly shaping sciences of English descriptive bibliography and descriptive
linguistics. Descriptive bibliography is devoted to determining as scientifically
as possible the author's exact intention as to the text of every work of literature.
In its present form the study is relatively new and there are many jobs to be done.
The work has all the fascination of crime detection, and its concreteness and the
certainty of its results make it very satisfying. Obviously the field is severely
limited. There is no room for poetic eloquence; and, in theory at least, once each
text has been well done, it will never need to be done again. I stumbled on this
field largely by accident and did a little work in it as part of my still-unfinished
dissertation.

The second field, descriptive linguistics, I met briefly in a Chaucer seminar.
I learned enough to have respect for the subject and to know that I might find it
interesting. But maddeningly, and as it now seems, ironically, I never had time in
the university to pursue it. I say "ironically" because for the past three years
my husband and I have devoted ourselves daily to the practical application of descrip-
tive linguistics.

We left the university four years ago during the severe academic depression which
preceded the coming of age of the present crop of war babies. We were delighted to
find a chance to teach English and to teach together in Thailand. Once in Bankok,
we found the opportunities for constructive work even broader and even more available
than we had supposed.

We found ourselves in one of the few schools in the world which actually tries
to use a descriptive analysis of English as a basis for teaching English as a foreign
language. This means that our school had discarded the traditional grammar and
translation approach in favor of an emphasis on spoken English. The technique de-
pends largely on an analysis of the tones, stresses, sounds, and word patterns of the
language. The materials at hand were stimulating to work with, though theoretical
and not yet adapted for specific classroom use in Thailand. Our students were
endless in number and desperately eager to learn.

To be able to see an immediate and practical need and to do something about it
was enough at first. We used our background of liberal education daily in teaching
our students. And we daily found embarrassing gaps in it, which needed to be filled in.
The whole realm of Eastern history, geography, and culture began to mean something.
We travelled and explored and read and talked, and, I suppose, absorbed and fitted
together some of what we had been learning during our years at school.

Last year we went home and came back with a new impatience to do more than
simply meet daily problems. All over the country there is a need for English and the
grave handicap of years of self-perpetuating bad English teaching. By hard work, and
by studying the particular problems of Thai speakers, the inadequate materials can be

10

and are being improved. In the last two months, my husband and I have been ex-
tremely fortunate in being placed in a most advantageous position for carrying out
some of our ideas. At the moment, he is acting as Director of the Language Center,
and I am acting as Director of Courses.

The world seems literally in our hands. We have never worked so hard or with
such a constant sense of satisfaction. We now have twelve hundred students and
are planning next term for sixteen hundred. We have certainly not proceeded with
scholarly caution, and we have doubtless made many mistakes. But there are many
blessings. We can try out in class tomorrow what we are writing today. We are
working with people who make us feel that what we are doing is very much worth
while. And we are daily fascinated with our work.

Now, with three years of experience behind us, we are beginning to feel ready to
go back to school. There are many things about linguistics that we still need to
know. And yet, looking back, I cannot honestly say that I see clearly now that I
should have studied linguistics instead of the Romantic poets. At the time I had an
immediate need and desire for Romantic poetry and no interest whatever in launching
into linguistics. Perhaps I might have kept a more open mind and have worried less
about fitting into the pattern I thought I was following. But even then, it is
unthinkable that I should have been specifically prepared for the exact turn of events
which came.

So, all roads lead back to the liberal education. For me, there is no doubt of
that. And after college, the great thing seems to be to have a plan but recognize
that it is a provisional one ; to follow it sensitively and critically, looking around as
you go; to be willing to modify it, even to trade it for a new one if the need comes.
The ultimate reconciliation of the actuality and the dream is much too delicate
and special a problem for me to generalize about. But the average Agnes Scott
student, by her studying, and her reading, and her conversation, is actually preparing
to deal with her own case.

11

COLERIDGE ON THE VALUE OF STUDYING THE PAST

R. Florence Brinkley

IT WAS NEITHER aesthetic pleasure nor intellectual curiosity alone which led
Coleridge to devote himself to a study of the past. It was the belief in certain funda-
mental principles which have come very largely to be a part of our own thinking
today. They bear especial weight since they come from a poet and are colored by a
poet's vision.

The first of these principles is that all knowledge is interrelated. Writing in 1827
to the young son of his physician, then studying at Eton College, Coleridge spoke of the
fact that there was a time "when all the different departments of literature and
science were regarded as so many different plants," each with its separate root. A truer
conception of knowledge, however, was that of a wide-spreading tree. All phases of
knowledge are embodied in a common trunk ; at the summit the trunk diverges into
different branches and finally into twigs and sprays of practical application without
losing its essential unity, for "one vital sap infuses all." No matter what the specialty
may be, it first demands the whole:

The clergyman must have the whole, the lawyer the whole, the physician the whole,
yea even the naval and military officers must possess the whole, if either of these
is to be more than a mere tradesman or routinier, a hack parson, a hack lawyer, etc.
in short, a sapless stick. 1

The second principle is that of the continuity of life. Coleridge saw that life was j
made more continuous when the present was understood in relation to the past, and
he stated, according to the reporter of Philosophical Lecture IX, that "we can only
consider that knowledge as truly mighty which is wedding the present to the past and
future." 2 The study of history revealed that the law of cause and effect had worked |
the same way in various periods, as is shown, for example, in the attempts to destroy
fanaticism by persecution in the Peasant's War in Germany and the Civil War in
England, and by the persecution of the Covenanters in Scotland. 3 A later example
of the operation of this law was made in an extended comparison between the Restora-
tion and the return of the Bourbons to power. 4 He concluded that if one would '
ascertain what effects certain causes will produce, he need only look back at history
and "discover what effects they did produce." 5

An additional value to be derived from studying the past lies in finding that one's i
own age is not unique and that similar problems in other ages eventually have been j
worked out. Such knowledge affords hope and encouragement in contemporary situa- I
tions. The Elizabethan age, for example, was considered the most brilliant period in

1 Quoted by Lucy Watson, Coleridge at Highgate, p. 128.

2 British Museum Manuscript Egerton, 3057, p. 6.
ZBiographia Literaria (1818), I, 191-92.

4 Essays on His Own Times, II, 532-42.
t>The Plot Discovered (1795), p. 29.

12

literature, and yet it was beset by many of the conditions which had arisen again
in the nineteenth century:

Then, as now, existed objects to which the wisest attached undue importance; then,

as now, minds were venerated or idolized which owed their influence to the weakness

of their contemporaries rather than to their own power. Then though great actions

were wrought and great works in literature and science were produced, yet the general

taste was capricious, fantastical or grovelling. 6

Coleridge further cited the fact that all Revolutions have been followed by a period of

the "depravation of the national Morals: The Roman character during the Triumvirate,

and under Tiberius ; and the reign of Charles the Second ; and Paris at the present

moment." 7 The cause in each case was the same, "the sense of Insecurity" ; and when

the cause was removed, the situation was relieved. Today he might add World War I

and World War II to his list and hold out the same hope for alleviating the moral

lag which has followed the upheavals.

In studying the lives of the great men of the past, one is challenged to consider
what such men would do under present conditions. Coleridge noted on the end
page of Sir Thomas Browne's works that this idea had occurred to him "at midnight,
Tuesday, the 16th of March, 1824," when just as he was stepping into bed, he
happened to glance at Luther's Table Talk. He phrased the idea thus:

The difference between a great mind's and a little mind's use of history is this,

the latter would consider, for instance, what Luther did, taught, or sanctioned: the

former, what Luther a Luther would now do, teach, and sanction. 8

An examination of the past not only reveals the continuity of life; it also develops

a spirit of tolerance. One could see how able and honest thinkers had held opposite

views on matters of great importance. Milton, for example, considered that the death

of Charles I was an inevitable judgment resulting from his violation of the law;

Jeremy Taylor, an ardent Royalist, that it was the martyrdom of a saint.

A tendency to over-estimate one's own day is also checked by a survey of
preceding times, for often those things which are hailed as new have been anticipated
in preceding centuries. Political economy as a separate branch of knowledge was a
relatively new subject in the early 19th century, but Coleridge pointed out that
"the clearest teachers of political economy" belong to Old Testament Times and are
"the inspired poets, historians, and sententiaries of the Jews." Their right to this claim
lay not only in principles and grounds of state policy "whether in prosperous times
or in those of danger and distress" but also in application of "precedent and facts in
proof." 9 Coleridge's favorite period, the 17th century, was the source of many re-
current ideas: "It would be difficult to conceive a notion or a fancy, in politics, ethics,
theology, or even in physics or physiology, which had not been anticipated by men
of that age." 10

He especially deplored the loss of time and effort in rediscovering some idea which
had been previously discovered and overlooked. Locke was a prime offender in claiming
as his own discoveries ideas which had been presented by Descartes. As evidence
Coleridge interleaved the Essay on the Human Understanding, writing "opposite to

The Friend (1818), III, 28-29.

7 "Blessed Are Ye" (Lay Sermon, 1817), pp. 1034.

8 Derwent Coleridge, Notes Theological, Political and Miscellaneous, p. 288.
9 "Blessed Are Ye," (Lay Sermon, 1817), Introduction, xiv-xv.
10 The Friend (1818), III, 69.

13

each paragraph the precise same thing written before [by Descartes] not by accident,
not a sort of hint that had been given, but directly and connectedly the same." ll He
further demonstrated that two of the great innovations attributed to Immanuel Kant
really belonged to two famous Englishmen of the seventeenth century. To Kant had
been attributed the distinction between the nature and functions of the reason and
the understanding; yet he had "only completed and systematized what Lord Bacon
had boldly designed and loosely sketched out in the Miscellany of Aphorisms, his
Novum Organum." 12 The distinctions were recognized throughout the century
by many other writers but were not always consistently maintained. To Kant was
also attributed the discovery of the method of trichotomy that is of establishing a
synthesis of which the two opposing concepts are diverse manifestations but this
method was one of the great contributions of the distinguished divine, Richard Baxter.
It was especially necessary, then, for anyone who attempted to make a contribution
in any field to know what had been thought and said in the past. A man must know
where to set out from.

Coleridge realized that assimilating the past was the long method in gaining
knowledge and that it required concentrated activity of mind. He distinguished mere
informational knowledge from knowing and said, "The shortest way gives me the
knowledge best, but the longest makes me more knowing." 13
It was through knowing that one gained the greatest values from studying the past.

11 Kathleen Coburn, The Philosophical Lectures ol S. T. Coleridge, pp. 378-79.

1 2 Letter to John Taylor Coleridge, April 8, 1825, E. H. Coleridge, Letters, II, 735.

13 Anima Poetae (American Edition, 1895), p. 147.

14

._L

DEATHS

INSTITUTE

Dan W. Shadburn, husband of Es
telle Webb Shadburn and father o:
Sue Shadburn Watkins '26 and Sar
Shadburn Heath '33, died Dee. 25.

John Shorter Cowles, father o
Sallie Chase Cowles, died Feb. 5.

ACADEMY

Judge Robert Lee Russell, brothei
of Mary Russell Green, Carolyn Rus
sell Nelson '34, and uncle of Nanc;
Green '43, died Jan. 18.

Jim A. Minter, father of Marguerite
Minter Privett and Lidie Minter '14
died in January.

1912 Baker W. Farrar, husband o
Janet Little Farrar, died Feb. 10.

1915 Kate Lumpkin Richardsoi
Wicker died Jan. 23.

1 920 Frank Anderson Sewell, hus
band of Margaret Bland Sewell am
father of Julia Sewell Carter '39 ant
Edith Sewell Bergmanis '53, die(
Jan. 28.

1 926 Mary Louise Bennett lost he
mother in Sept., 1954.

1938 Richard A. Hills, Sr., hus
band of Doris Dunn Hills, died Jan. 26

1940 Mrs. W. W. Newman, grand
mother of Eleanor Newman Hutchen:
and Sue Hutchens Henson '47, diet
Feb. 20, in Huntsville, Ala.

1950 Charlotte Anne Bartlett died
Feb. 11.

REUNION FOR CLASSES OF '93
'94 AND '95 JUNE 4

J 6 I

7

AGNES SCOTT

alumnae quarterly

summer 1955

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THE

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

OF

AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE

OFFICERS

MARY WARREN READ '29

President
BETTY ELLISON CANDLER '49

Vice-President
FLORENCE BRINKLEY '14

Vice-President
MARY PRIM FOWLER '29

Vice-President
MARJORIE NAAB BOLEN '46

Secretary
BETTY MEDLOCK LACKEY '42

Treasurer

TRUSTEES

JEAN BAILEY OWEN '39
CATHERINE WOOD MARSHALL '36

CHAIRMEN

SARA CARTER MASSEE '29

Nominations
FRANCES CRAIGHEAD DWYER '28

Special Events
LORTON LEE '49

Vocational Guidance
MARY WALLACE KIRK '1 1

Education
LEONE BOWERS HAMILTON '26

Publications
BELLA WILSON LEWIS '34

Class Officers
RUBY ROSSER DAVIS '43

House
LOUISE BROWN HASTINGS '23

Grounds
MARIE SIMPSON RUTLAND '35

Entertainment

LOCAL
CLUB PRESIDENTS

ALICE GLENN LOWRY '29

Atlanta
SARA FULTON '21

Decatur
MARGARET ANN KAUFMANN '52

Atlanta Junior
MARY PHILLIPS HEARN '49

Southwest Atlanta

STAFF

ANN WORTHY JOHNSON '38

Director of Alumnae Affairs
ELOISE HARDEMAN KETCHIN

House Manager
MARY P. CHAPMAN

Office Manager

MEMBER

AMERICAN ALUMNI
COUNCIL

The AGNES SCOTT
Alumnae Quarterly

Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Ga.

Volume 33
Summer 1955

CONTENTS

ASSOCIATION REPORTS
ALUMNAE FUND REPORT

Number 4

WORKING WITH
PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS

Mi/zi Kiser L(,

Board Members

Ann Worthy Johnson 5

SOME MARKS OF A FREE MIND E. Harris Harbison 10

COLLEGE NEWS

TO CHARLOTTE BARTLETT Ann Williamson Campbell 12

CLASS NEWS

Eloise Hardeman Ketchin 1 3

Cover:

The 66th Commencement procession entering Presser Hall. This and the
other photographs in this issue are by John Carras.

The Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly is published four times a year
(November, February, April and July) by the Alumnae Association oj
Agnes Scott College at Decatur, Georgia. Contributors to the Alumnat
Fund receive the magazine. Yearly subscription, $2.00. Single copy 50 cents.
Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office of Decatur, Georgia
under Act of August 24, 1912.

I

THE ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION REPORTS

I DIRECTOR

OFFICE

"1
S

T

COLLEGE

U.

ALUMNAE TRUSTEE-

E

X

E B

c - SECRETARY

.PRESIDENT U A
A T R

MANAGER f I D- TREASURER

HOUSE I

MANAGER- 1

I" PROPERTY
VICE PRESIDENT CLUBS

L-CONSTITUTION

V
E

^COMMITTEE CHAIRMEN

Nominations

Special
Events

M

E

M

B

E

R

S

Vocational Guidance Education Class

Officers

House and
Grounds

Entertainment

ORGANIZATIONAL CHART OF THE AGNES SCOTT ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

PRESIDENT'S REPORT: We have endeavored
this year through the Alumnae Board to do all we
could in the matter of relationships relationships be-
tween alumnae and students, alumnae and faculty and
alumnae and their college. We have tried to show,
as well as tell, the students of the interest alumnae
have in them. The use of the Alumnae House for
their families and friends has been made available
and as pleasant as possible. The tea for freshmen was
delightfully informal and well attended. The Career
Coffees were continued, creating an atmosphere in
which students could talk of their futures and interests
m specific fields and have their questions answered by

experienced professional women. We have talked to
the Senior Class, at one of its meetings, welcoming
them into a new relationship with the college as alum-
nae and explaining the need for their support and in-
terest.

We have tried, in a visit to a faculty meeting, to in-
form our faculty of what the Alumnae Association is
and is trying to do. We want to enlist their interest
and continued support and advice in doing a better
job.

Within the Association, we have attempted to in-
form our members of the accomplishments and plans
of the college. The committee working with the Class

1

Council has worked hard to interpret the Alumnae
Fund and to make each alumna feel important to the
college by urging her to express her own ideas for the
growth and effectiveness of our Association as well as
our college. Much work has gone into the encourage-
ment of alumnae club groups in all parts of the coun-
try. We have had 3 new alumnae clubs organized this
year, bringing the total to 34 clubs with an approxi-
mate membership of 1,000. We have reports of meet-
ings, good and varied programs, and a growing interest
in the seeking out of outstanding high school girls in
each community to be prospective Agnes Scott stu-
dents. One heart-warming gift this year came to the
college from a comparatively small alumnae club in
New Orleans, a scholarship fund of $1,450. From
eight clubs came requests, which were fulfilled, for a
representative from the College to attend Founder's
Day meetings. We have made every effort to bring
alumnae back to the campus through careful reunion
plans and campus programs for local Clubs.

We were very interested this year in a count made
of living alumnae of Agnes Scott. We found that
there are at present 8,984 Alumnae, 3,392 of whom
are graduates. We can now proudly add 98 graduates
of the Class of 1955 to this number. We are amazed
to find how relatively few we are certainly compared
to the larger college and universities rosters. We are
also proud and justly so I think to find among that
number so many outstanding career women, home-
makers and volunteers in civic, cultural, and religious
endeavors.

As for the finances of the Association, here is a
brief outline of the budgets under which we work. The
Executive Board of the Association prepares an annual
budget and presents it for payment to the College. In
turn, all gifts to the annual Alumnae Fund go to the
College. This was our third year of operating on this
fiscal plan, and it is proving to be wise for both Asso-
ciation and College. This budget covers salaries for
the Director of Alumnae Affairs (her salary is a part
time one as she has a dual capacity, being also Director
of Publicity for the College) ; one full time clerical
staff person, our office manager; and the resident
house manager. The budget also includes the publi-
cation and mailing of the Alumnae Quarterly, the
printing and mailing of Alumnae Fund appeals and
other letters and information to alumnae, and office
supplies and equipment. Our budget this year was
$10,800, and we finished the year within this amount.
As you notice, it does not include items concerning
the Alumnae House which is a separate operation and
works on an independent budget. The income from
room rents, rentals of the parlors for parties, rental

of academic regalia, and designated gifts from the
Alumnae Fund is used to defray the expenses of run-
ning the House: the laundry, the maid, cleaning and
minor repairs; insurance and gas service. Although
the books show a balanced operation, we are well
aware that except for the generosity of the College
we could not claim a balanced budget in this area as
we show no charge for office rent, lights, water, heat,
or upkeep on the grounds in our overhead expenses.
We are indeed grateful for such generosity.

Please do read the Alumnae Fund report, as it is an
achievement of which we can all feel justly proud.
Except for the peak reached last year, this year's con-
tributions show a steady growth of the Fund over
previous years. We feel that we can do a much better
job with the Fund next year by better timing of ap-
peals and by more interpretation of the real need for
annual giving by a greater number of alumnae. Many
of you have expressed the feeling that with the large
bequests received this year, the need for small gifts
was no longer so urgent. Each of us needs to realize
that endowment is only one factor in evaluating the
standing of a college. The percentage of alumnae
giving annually is concrete evidence of their belief in
*he work of the College and is thus of greatest im-
portance to foundations and corporations as they make
gifts to support higher education. Our percentage is
less than 30 per cent which is low nationally as many
colleges show 40 to 60 per cent.

We have had a wonderfully active and enthusiastic
board of directors this year, each doing a splendid job,
and we pledge to the alumnae, the trustees, and to our
college, an even greater effort to be of more service
to Agnes Scott in the coming year. Mary Warren
Read '29.

Vice President: Constitutional Changes: The
Constitution Committee has not had occasion to make
any further suggestions about constitution revisions
during this year; therefore, we have no report tc
make. If you have found in carrying out the work
of the year any places where you think constitution
changes would be helpful for the Association, m\
committee would be grateful for your suggestions. I
am not sure how many of the changes which we recom-
mended have been passed. R. Florence Brinkley '14

House Chairman : The House Committee has com-
pleted its major project for the year, the painting oi
the downstairs rooms of the Alumnae House, and the
upstairs bathroom. A contract was made after secur
ing three bids on the job, and the work was completec|
as specified. Since the House has mellowed with thci
years, the enamel used on the hall woodwork was cu'
with a gloss modifier to keep it from being too obi

viously newly painted, and was a blend of Princess
Ivory and Sandalwood, instead of original ivory. The
living rooms were done with the exact shade used
when the House was redecorated in 1947.

The Chairman has also served as acting chairman
for the Alumnae Property Committee since Christmas,
and has done the necessary banking and check writing
for the House. In addition she has purchased linens
needed for the House, and supplied such flower ar-
rangements as could be created out of dried materials
for permanent decorations.

At the suggestion of the Nominating Committee,
the House Committee has asked Catherine Ivie Brown
(Mrs. Paul) to be the new member of the self-perpet-
uating committee. Ruby (Rosser) Davis is automati-
cally chairman for next year.
Financial report :

Specified gifts for House Committee in

1954-1955 $ 80.00

Withdrawn from House Income for

painting 120.00

$200.00

Total cost of labor for

downstairs painting . . . $200.00
Gift of paint from the College

(estimated) 60.00

Gift of labor for bathroom from

chairman 10.00

Committee actually used $120.00 from House in-
come on the redecoration job.
Nelle Chamblee Howard. '34.

TREASURER'S REPORT:

Notes From Class Council: At the annual meet-
ing on June 6 attended by class presidents and secre-
taries, there was hearty discussion of our timetable for
reunions. Sentiment expressed at the meeting and in
letters from absent members appears to favor continu-
ing with the Dix plan and also holding reunions at
Commencement. Comments and suggestions from re-
union presidents will be passed on to the reunion presi-
dents for the coming year. When a class is faced with
a Dix reunion and a "milestone" reunion (such as
the 10th, 25th) in consecutive years, the president can
poll the class to determine when to hold reunion. Sev-
eral representatives expressed the wish that something
be done to make it easier for alumnae and faculty to
see each other at some time during the flurry of Com-
mencement activities.

The council agreed it might be a good idea to have
one issue of the quarterly especially devoted to class
news. Class news would continue to appear in the
other issues, but a special effort would be made in the
spring. It was suggested that this issue be sent to all
members of reunion classes whether active or not, and
that inactive members of reunion classes receive invita-
tions to the Alumnae Luncheon.

As the college needs the continuing annual financial
support of its alumnae, despite the recent Walters gift,
the suggestion was made that class presidents be pro-
vided with more detailed information each year on
what the needs are and the status of each class's giving.
With the secretaries handling the gathering of news,
the presidents would be free in their annual letter to
concentrate on urging classmates to show an active
interest in the college through the Alumnae Fund.
Bella Wilson Lewis '34.

FINANCIAL STATEMENT, June 30, 1955

SALARIES and SOCIAL SECURITY

PRINTING

OFFICE
Telephone

Supplies
Postage
Dues

SUNDRY

BUDGETED

DISBURSED

AMOUNT

$6,130.98

$6,137.79

$2,489.83

$2,975.76

150.91

210.97

466.30

468.10

462.64

550.00

77.58

55.00

787.57

1,013.51

BALANCE

DEFICIT

$ 6.81

$485.93

60.06

1.80
87.37

22.58

225.87

Balance $867.84

This includes funds borrowed to pay for Wedgwood plates and funds received and transferred for Korean
student. Please see also the Alumnae Fund Report. Betty Medlock Lackey '42.

CLUBS: Summary of work done in 1954-55

1. Files completely reviewed once and news compiled
for an issue of Alumnae Quarterly.

2. Letters written to newer alumnae clubs, and to
New Orleans Club for scholarship fund.

3. Mimeo copies of the March 15th article in At-
lanta Journal about Agnes Scott as a liberal arts
college, written by Dorothy Cremin Read '42, was
sent to all Alumnae Clubs. Mimeo work now in
progress to send to all alumnae clubs a copy of the
1955 Founder's Day radio program. We feel both
of these mailings can be helpful to local clubs in
regard to program material.

4. All four local clubs contacted about sale and hand-
ling of Wedgwood plates.

5. A new alumnae club was organized in Orlando,
Florida. Mary Read made a trip there , for this
event.

6. Served on finance committee in drawing up budget
for next year. . Fella Marie Cowan '35.

Grounds Chairman : The garden has been com-
pletely reworked to the plans submitted by Edith Hen-
derson, L.A. The pergola has been rebuilt. An open-
ing between center posts has been made into each
garden ; two posts have been moved to make center
walkways.

Shrubs have been pruned and trees and hedges
moved. Magnolias have been planted in background
for screening. Loquats are espaliered against the Din-
ing Hall wall. Eventually a statue will be placed
against this wall.

The small boxwood bordering the beds have been
removed because of their bad condition and another
kind which are hardier placed there. The true dwarf
or suffruticosa will not take the sun in these small
beds placed so close to the brick.

Jackmani Clematis (purple) and Clematis pami-
culata have been placed on each post. Also we have
planted Gypsophila (white), Nemophila (blue) and
Sweet Alyssum in all the beds. Two hundred blue
Iris (Dutch) were planted against the box hedge.
These were my gift.

At Christmas I had sent around 10,000 Narcissus
bulbs to be planted on the campus, and they bloomed
in profusion. This is a repeat gift of last year, so soon
as these multiply the campus will be greatly enhanced
in Spring with these blooms. Louise B. Hastings '23.
Special Events Chairman: On Friday, March
18th, ten teachers attending the G.E.A. meeting, Mary
Read, and your Special Events Chairman had luncheon
together at the Capital City Club. It was decided to
make this luncheon an annual event during the G.E.A.

meeting and to invite to it not only teachers but an\
other Agnes Scott alumnae who would be interestec
in attending. Those who came were: Mary Read
Louise Cook, Frances Dwyer, Clara Dunn, Robert;
Winter, Dorothy Adams Knight, Carolyn Galbreath
Jean Danielson, Jo Barron, Mrs. Betty Harrison, San
Fulton and Sara Mae Rickard.

During luncheon there was much interest evidencei
in the growth and development at the college. Severa
expressed the hope that more scholarships could bi
offered to prospective students since many highly in
telligent students in the under-privileged areas ar<
unable to attend Agnes Scott College because of finan
cial reasons.

Evelyn Hanna Sommerville was the alumnae speake \
at the annual meeting June 4th. Mary Mann Booi
was in charge of the details of the alumnae luncheoi
and Sally Brodnax Hansell introduced the speaker, i

The Founder's Day Broadcast, "Living Is Our Busi
ness," a stimulating discussion of liberal arts educatioi
as background for professional careers, was played ove
17 stations over the country. Consideration is bein]
given to making records of annual broadcasts and send
ing the records to local clubs for their use at a clu
meeting if they find the material timely. France
Craighead Dwyer '28.

Vocational Guidance Chairman : The Vocationa
Guidance Committee sponsored three career confer
ences for students. Dates, subjects and speakers were

Feb. 2, Job Interviews and Opportunities for 195i
Participants were personnel executives, B. W. Card
well, vice-president in charge of personnel, Citizen
and Southern National Bank, and Mrs. Christin
Felts, of Consulting Psychologists Inc. Mary Mad
son Wisdom was in charge.

Feb. 3, Radio, Television and Drama. Participant
were Miss Dean Dickins, director of women's pre
grams, WGST; Mrs. Fenton (Pat) Riley, membe
of the Atlanta Theater Guild and former model, an
Miss Callie Huger, production and promotion assi
tant, WSB-TV. I was in charge.

Feb. 8, Interesting Work for English and Histor
Majors. Participants were Miss Kitty Johnson, hen
of the order department at Atlanta Municipal L
brary; Mrs. Jim Boyd, until recently a member (
Regenstein's advertising department, and Mrs. Joh
Pfeiffer, free-lance writer.

Our chapel speaker on Feb. 2 was Dr. Eddie Neel
Anderson, psychologist and counselor in family rel;
tions.

We were very pleased with the attendance at tl
coffees. Between 20 and 30 students came to eai

one. Marie Simpson Rutland did a splendid job of
providing refreshments.

The committee is also proud of the file of working
graduates in the Atlanta area. The file, made up of
replies to questionnaires sent out through the alumnae
office, is available in the office. We hope this file will
prove useful to future committees in securing speakers
and to students who may wish to talk with graduates
in some particular field. The cards are filed according
to occupation.

We received 128 replies. Twenty-eight of these came
from graduates who are not employed outside the
home. We sent out about 400 cards and believe that
many of the homemakers didn't return theirs think-
ing they weren't meant to do so. At any rate, we have

names of 98 graduates now working in Atlanta two
graduate students in the Atlanta area, and two home-
makers who have part-time jobs.

It is with regret that I feel because of other activ-
ities to which I am committed I must resign from
the board. As I said in my letter to our president, I
considered it both an honor and a pleasure to serve.

In addition to those already mentioned, the com-
mittee is composed of Bella Wilson Lewis, Eleanor
Reynolds Verdery, Deezy Scott and Peggy Bridges.
My thanks go to each member and to Ann Worthy
Johnson. Edwina Davis Christian '46.
Note: Lorton Lee '49 has accepted the invitation of
the Nominating Committee to serve as Vocational
Guidance Chairman.

1954-55 ALUMNAE FUND REPORT

$27,817

The 1443 Alumnae who contributed to this, the
eleventh annual Alumnae Fund, can take unto them-
selves a goodly measure of self-respect for the financial
support they gave Agnes Scott this year, on two scores.
Tirst, we are beginning to grow up in our understand-
ing that annual giving by alumnae, without the impetus
jof a special campaign, is a fundamental factor in the
College's fiscal operation. Second, the amount of money
(given to this year's fund, from July 1, 1954 to June
30, 1955, $27,817, is equal to the income on $900,000
linvested at 3 per cent. The temptation to pat ourselves
jcollectively on the back and rest on these lovely laurels
fan be overwhelming. A sobering thought is this: only
yl% of alumnae contacted contributed this year. And
(be assured that the Alumnae Office contacted every-
one who has a current address on file!

The Alumnae Fund is made up of all contributions
(to the college given by alumnae. This is the way you
designated that the Fund be spent this year:

.UNRESTRICTED $10,137.00

SCHOLARSHIPS . . . .
FACULTY SALARIES . .
FOREIGN STUDENTS .
KLUMNAE HOUSE . . .
(SPEECH DEPARTMENT

796.00
311.00
515.00
413.00
100.00

SPECIAL FUNDS:

Alexander Fund 25.00

Beach Fund 100.00

Cooper Fund 650.00

Cunningham Fund 25.00

Hale Fund 417.00

HollisFund 30.00

Holt Fund 5,000.00

McCain Library Fund 59.00

Pauline McCain Fund 25.00

MacDougall Museum 24.00

Newton Fund 100.00

Tanner Fund 38.00

Thatcher Fund . . 7,000.00

New Orleans Club Fund 1,074.37

Pilley Kim Choi Fund 283.00

Walters Hall 10.00

Dr. Sweet's Portrait Fund ....... 185.00

Statistics on the Alumnae Fund can be twisted, for
better or worse. But here are a few more, for your
thinking pleasure. The average contribution this year
was $19.00. This can be misleading, because several
large gifts pull the average to this high point. The
percentage of alumnae contributing to the Fund this
year, 21%, is a tally of total alumnae solicited. If we
take the percentage of contributors who are graduates
(3508), we take a nice, high jump to 41%.

5

I

Institute

Academy

1906-07

1908

1909

1910

1911

1912

1913

1914

1915

1916

1917

1918

1919

1920

1921

1922

1923

1924

1925

1926

1927

1928

1929

1930

1931

1932

1933

1934

1935

1936

1937

1938

1939

1940

1942

1943

1944

1945

1946

1947

1948

1949

1950

1951

1952

1953

1954

Living

Number of

Percent-

Graduates

Contributors

ages

169

41

25

104

27

26

8

7

88

4

3

75

9

7

78

12

12

100

12

13

100

12

10

83

14

10

71

22

12

55

20

11

55

28

12

43

35

16

46

30

13

43

35

22

63

32

15

47

49

21

43

52

15

47

53

21

40

54

16

30

70

12

17

73

29

40

99

35

35

94

30

32

89

38

43

86

45

52

73

24

33

81

25

31

93

26

28

78

25

32

84

24

29

. 95

22

23

80

21

26

81

18

22

91

35

38

95

41

43

88

27

31

79

29

37

94

43

46

97

53

55

124

44

36

114

45

39

115

40

35

116

61

53

104

63

61

100

56

56

100

62

62

86

42

49

82

82

100

How do we compare with each other, in giving by -
classes ? These are the most telling statistics for us.
Hearty thanks go to each of us who are included in
the decimal points above. Special thanks go to the i
class officers who added their efforts to the Alumnae
Fund solicitation. In almost every class showing ai
high percentage of contributors, class members had
either a written or personal word about the Fund
from their officers.

How do we compare with other private women's
colleges in alumnae giving? The best figures avail-
able are those compiled by the American Alumni Coun-
cil ; the following are reprinted from American Alumni
Council News, April, 1955, and are reports of last
year's Alumnae Funds.

Agnes Scott stands second in the South, Sweetbriar
first, in the percentage of alumnae contributors. Vassar
led the nation in total amount given, and Mt. Holy-
oke led in number of contributors.

Number Per-

Living

Alumnae

of cent-

College

Alumnae

Solicited

Donors age

Amount

Agnes Scott

8,984

6,312

1,728 27.4 $ 28,733

Barnard

14,500

9,619

3,097 32.2

100,448

Bessie Tift

4,960

2,500

290 11.6

8,065

Connecticut

7,271

4,650

2,516 54.1

39,105

Bryn Mawr

8,696

6,533

2,452 37.5

60,404

Goucher

8,742

6,624

3,251 49.1

42,775

Hollins

5,500

5,500

631 11.5

6,157

Mary Baldwin

5,838

5,200

772 14.8

14,129

Mount

Holyoke

13,725

10,765

6,936 64.4

121,763

Randolph-

Macon

10,886

10,287

2,363 23.0

33,014

Shorter

2,006

2,006

273 13.6

6,221

Smith

28,285

26,116

12,666 48.5

283,762

Sweet Briar

6,775

5,344

1,685 31.5

18,775

Vassar

17,139

17,139

8,889 51.9

520,386

Wellesley

22,636

22,200

10,365 46.7

504,410

Wesleyan (Ga,

) 7,500

7,500

914 12.2

19,015

COLLEGE NEWS

Walters Hall is now a great and gaping hole
where the old science building once was. The few of
us who remain on campus during the summer are
learning to be excellent sidewalk superintendents. We
started to print a picture of the hole for you in color
it would be nice, since the Georgia red clay striations
look something like the tones of the Grand Canyon,
but it is hard to visualize the new dormitory at this
beginning building stage. Better look at the drawing
done by the architects, Ivy and Crook. The red brick
and limestone finish will blend easily with other cam-
pus buildings. Walters Hall will accommodate 145
students, will have a guest room, an apartment for
the member of the Dean of Student's staff who serves
as Senior Resident, and the long, wide basement area
will be a student recreation center. "The quiet and
still air of delightful studies" will have undertones
of hammers and saws during this academic year, but
the building is scheduled for completion toward the
end of the term and will be ready for occupancy in
September, 1956. It is heartening to see this new
dormitory, listed as the first and most pressing need
in Agnes Scott's long-range Development Program,
well on the way to becoming reality.
Mary Sweet Cottage, remembered as living quar-
ters by some of us and as the Infirmary by more of
us, had to disappear from the face of the land in order
to make room for Walters Hall. For the last five
years, the enrollment trend at Agnes Scott has been
toward more boarding students, and all indications are
that this will continue. During the 1954-55 session,
there were 535 students enrolled, of which 80 were
residents of Atlanta and vicinity ; of these 80, 30 lived
on campus. This year, while Walters Hall is under
construction, one of Miss Scandrett's problems will
be to find, literally, the necessary number of beds for

students. Some will live upstairs in Dr. McCain's
home he says he is indeed looking forward to being
a Senior Resident. The house next to Dr. McCain's,
on the corner of S. Candler and Dougherty Sts.,
formerly occupied by the Business Manager, Mr.
Rogers, and his family, will be a student cottage next
year and has been named Alexander Cottage, honoring
Miss Lucile Alexander, Professor Emeritus of French.
Seven other cottages will again house students : Ans-
ley, Boyd, Cunningham, Gaines, Hardeman, Lupton,
Sturgis.

These are, of course, in addition to the four dormi-
tories, Main, Rebekah, Inman and Hopkins. Main
has been subjected through the years to many trans-
formations and transfusions. This summer, major
surgery is being performed there, in order to replace
the entire wiring system, to meet state fire protection
specifications.

Dr. Emily S. Dexter, Associate Professor of Phil-
osophy and Education, has just made the difficult
choice of retiring now instead of teaching actively an-
other year or so. Her decision was announced at the
Alumnae Luncheon, so many alumnae had the oppor-
tunity to try to get her to change her mind to no
avail, as any one of her former students might have
prognosticated. The entire college community is grate-
ful that we will not actually lose her since she plans
to take an apartment in Decatur. Her summer plans
include teaching and a trip to California where, as
Vice-President, she will conduct a meeting of the In-
ternational Association of Women Psychologists. Ru-
mor, at present unconfirmed, says that Miss Dexter's
direct and forceful mind may be cutting some clear
paths across the Emory campus next year.
The Alumnae Luncheon proved an occasion for
news-gathering of other retired faculty members. Dr.

McCain greeted us all by name. His wise, steady,
and always available counsel remains a bulwark for
the college administration. And he probably sees more
alumnae than anyone ever has, in his wide travels.
He delighted students this year with his account of
Frances Winship Walters' life and by appearing at
the Freshman Picnic attired in expertly tailored Ber-
muda shorts. Miss Gooch, Miss McKinney, Miss
Alexander, Mr. Holt and Mr. Dieckman came out
to the luncheon, and Mr. Johnson blew in on a Florida
breeze although he had to leave Mrs. Johnson at home
in Delray Beach. Mrs. Sydenstricker and Miss Tor-
rance both wrote that only doctors' orders kept them
at home. Miss MacDougall was tied down by the
business of detailed revising of her biology textbook.
At the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trus-
tees on June 3, Catherine Wood Marshall '36 who
was elected to the Board last year as a Corporate Trus-
tee was named an Alumna Trustee, replacing Frances
Winship Walters. This change will be confirmed by
the Alumnae Association at the first meeting of its
Executive Board in September.

During the Year, a new department was created
at Agnes Scott, the Department of Education. Estab-
lishing a separate department for education will ex-
pand Agnes Scott's facilities for training in this field.
It is not contemplated that a Major in education will
be offered. The department is headed by Dr. Richard
Henderson, and its courses are a part of the Agnes
Scott-Emory Teacher Training Program, directed by
Dr. John Goodlad.

Educational Recognition came again to Agnes
Scott this year in scholarships and grants awarded to
students and faculty for graduate study. Three mem-
bers of the Class of 1955 received Fulbright grants
for study abroad, Georgia Belle Christopher, Con-
stance Curry and Margaret Williamson. (Georgia
Belle and Margaret are both Granddaughters, and
Georgia Belle had her alumna mother and aunt at
her Phi Beta Kappa initiation this Spring.) Georgia
Belle also was the recipient of one of the coveted |
Woodrow Fellowships for graduate study, but chose
the Fulbright grant for study in England.
Faculty Members who will be away on leave to
do further graduate study next year are Frances B.
Clark '50, Instructor in French, who will pursue studies |
towards the Ph.D. degree at Yale on a grant awarded
her by the General Electric Corporation one of only |
six such grants made by the company for graduate study
in the humanities: Marie Huper, Assistant Professor
of Art who will work toward the Ph.D at the State
University of Iowa; Dr. Margaret B. DesChamps,
Assistant Professor of History, who has been granted
one of two scholarships awarded by the Presbyterian
Church, U.S., and will be in Scotland doing research
on the Scottish background of the Presbyterian Church
in America; Dr. Elizabeth G. Zenn, Assistant Profes-
sor of Classical Languages and Literatures, who will
do archeological research at the American Academy in
Rome, on a grant from the Fund for the Advance-
ment of Education.

WORKING WITH PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS

Mitzi Kiser Law '54

Between September and May I have joined the
ranks of those called seasoned travellers. Perhaps the
title alumnae-admissions representative would not at
first seem to carry this distinction. I have, however,
driven approximately 25,000 miles in the college car;
climbed in and out of 10 planes, 25 taxis, and innum-
erable cars of alumnae ; and, within the space of four
months, have four times covered the distance between
Florida and New York with side trips to Arkansas
and Texas.

The college has had field representatives at various
times; but the position as it now is began developing
in the fall of 1949 when Doris Sullivan Tippens was
named alumnae representative. She was followed by
Su Boney Milner, Sybil Corbett Riddle, and Ann
Cooper Whitesel.

We have all found that we are not representing
Agnes Scott to "sell" the college but rather to assist
in the selection of students and also in the important
task of interpreting the college to school personnel and
to candidates for admission and their parents. My own
program this past year has included visiting applicants
in their homes and at their schools, representing Agnes
; Scott at the high school college-day programs, and
attending alumnae meetings and parties which alumnae
have given for prospective students.

Most of the seniors who apply have been on the
mailing list (a list this year made up of girls from
41 states) because of a request for information from
them ) their parents, an alumna, or a friend or be-
cause they have talked with the Agnes Scott represen-
tative at a college-day program or have attended a
party for prospective students (often a tea or coke
party given by alumnae). When I visit these appli-
cants, I try to answer any questions they might have
or discuss any problems ; we usually cover everything
from roommates and location of the bathrooms to
course of study and social life in Atlanta. I have seen
approximately 115 of the incoming freshman class,
and this partially accounts for my mileage.

The college day programs to which I have already
'eferred have been planned by high schools in an at-
:empt to help their students as they choose a college.
*Vt these programs the students have an opportunity to
isk questions and to receive information from official
epresentatives of the colleges in which they have some
nterest. Dates for the programs in different states

often conflict, but I have been able to attend 50 this
year and have visited an additional 50 high schools by
appointment.

Contact with Agnes Scott alumnae has been one
of the most rewarding and refreshing parts of my
work. I find it quite easy to see why many a fresh-
man indicates that an alumna has been a decisive fac-
tor in making her college choice. Agnes Scott alumnae
have continued to be interested in and to support the
college ; alumnae and alumnae groups have entertained
a number of prospective students during the past year
(high school sophomores and juniors as well as seniors)
at functions apart from regular alumnae meetings;
some have planned to do this when our college stu-
dents have been home at vacation times.

Presenting Agnes Scott to school administrators in
the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia areas and in parts of
Texas and Arkansas has been my contribution to the
widening scope of alumnae-admissions work. Seasoned
traveller becoming Long Island commuter, I feel con-
fident that Florrie Fleming will continue in the de-
velopment of alumnae-admissions work.

SOME MARKS OF A FREE MIND

Although addressed to the Clnss of 1955 at their Commencement , Dr. Harbison's words go directly to
all of us who rejoice or rebel with the "free minds" with which Agnes Scott's liberal education endowed
us. Dr. Harbison is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at Princeton University, and his special
field of interest is the Renaissance and Reformation. He is the author of Rival Ambassadors at the Court
of Queen Mary, which in 1942 won the Adams Prize of the American Historical Association.

E. Harris Harbison

For Four Years you of the graduating class have
been happily absorbing a "liberal" education that
is, an education designed to "free the mind." Years
ago a Renaissance school teacher said, "We call those
studies liberal which are worthy of a free man." And
we might say today that ideally the liberal studies are
those best able to inspire and nourish free minds.

Now in all the flood of commencement oratory that
is going to wash over college campuses this week and
keep restless people from their luncheons, I think there
should be someone who gets up and says that this busi-
ness of freeing minds if it is done successfully is a
very dangerous and subversive enterprise. Take a young
person and free him or her from the narrow bounds of
time and place, of here and now ; emancipate her
from personal and parochial prejudices by showing
her glimpses of a wider world as seen by the great
philosophers poets, artists, and scientists; break down
those invisible guide-lines that keep her field of vision
narrowed to her own family or vocation, her own class,
her own nation, or her own race do all this, and
almost anything may happen. A truly free mind is a
very disturbing thing to most people, because it cannot
comfortably be dismissed as just another representative
of a party or pressure-group, another example of a fa-
miliar fad or ism. Intelligence is always disturbing.
And when it is mated with integrity, it can be posi-
tively terrifying.

What I am saying is that if Agnes Scott has really
accomplished what it has meant to do with those of
you who are graduating today, then I really ought to
warn the world about the hundred-odd emancipated
minds that are being loosed upon it this morning. And
at the same time I ought to warn you that free minds
don't necessarily mean happy minds. If your minds
have acquired the marks of real freedom in your four
years here, don't expect to find the world ready to
welcome you with open arms, and don't expect that
life will be a bed of roses for you from now on.

I had a student this year from the Mid-West
Chicago Tribune territory who did a paper for me
on "Munich 1938." He came out of it with some dis-

turbing ideas. The most unsettling was that there
are no simple parallels in history -that "appeasement"
in 1938 was futile, but that to call every suggestion
of compromise in 1955 "appeasement," and so to rouse
political passion by false historical association, might
be stupid or wrong, if not actually suicidal. He tells
me his idea will not be especially popular back home.

I had another student this spring from South Caro-
lina who did some research on education in his native
state. He too ran into a very disturbing idea. Can
one say, as many of his sources maintained, that the
Negro is naturally incapable of the same kind of edu-
cation as the white when the Negro has been excluded
from such education for so many generations, thus
preventing the production or any evidence which might
answer the question? He told me his question might
not be very popular in some circles at home.

Now this sort of thing has been going on in hun-
dreds of liberal arts colleges throughout the country
during the past year. It is what has always happened
for over five hundred years whenever a student really
rises to the bait of "an education worthy of a free man."

The first mark of a free mind, then, is a sense of
perspective, a hunch about how it looks from "over
there," a feeling for alternatives that comes from study
and reflection. This means that a free mind is impa-
tient with simple answers to complex questions, with
intellectual short-cuts and quack-remedies. My mother
had this sort of mind, but she had one very loveable
weakness. She liked to send her three sons, when they
were away at school, the names of the latest remedies
she had found for the simple ills of mankind like the
common cold. My youngest brother used to accuse
her of running a "Medicine of the Month Club." One
time he thought he'd humor her and get a bottle of
the latest remedy. "What's it for?" he asked the
druggist. "What've you got?" said the druggist.

It is all too easy to turn this into a parable of the
way we approach our national ills today. Whatever
it is we've got chiefly national insecurity, with all its
associated symptoms somebody has a nice, simple rem-
edy for it that we can buy at any political soda-fountain.

10

Are we in danger from spies and saboteurs? Closing
our doors to immigrants, purging high-school history-
books, and televising congressional hearings will fix
it. At least all this will make us feel better. Are un-
stable free governments in Asia in danger? The threat
of "massive retaliation" will fix it. Or at least it will
soothe our pride. A free mind is suspicious when such
simple, easy nostrums are offered to it. It cannot bring
itself to believe, for instance, that 500,000,000 Chinese
turned Communist simply because a few men in our
State Department did the wrong thing ten years ago ;
and that to turn these men out now will somehow fix
everything. I cannot see any remedy for our present
insecurity in a two-power world but patience, emo-
tional maturity, courage, and intelligence.

This brings me to the heart of what I want to say
today. You of the graduating class may well agree
with me. You may say, we see all this but what can
we do about it? What's the use of what you call a
"free mind" if it can see perfectly clear what's wrong
with the world, but is condemned to frustration by its
helplessness? The idealist of graduation week is too
often the cynic of ten years later. Particularly in the
case of women graduates of liberal arts colleges, the
exaltation of glimpsing horizons beyond one's own
time and place, one's own nation, class, and race, may
become a source of mere torment during the long dis-
cipline of dishpans and diapers.

Now the last words of a colleague of mine bfore I
came down here were, "Don't say anything to disturb
them. Remember it's a commencement and they're all
nice girls. Above all, don't mention dishpans and
diapers." My wife was more honest. She said to tell
you the truth namely that you may thoughtlessly curse
your liberal education in the next few years ahead be-
fore you come in the end to a full appreciation of it.
With more right than a man, a woman may feel im-
pelled to say to her Alma Mater, "You freed my mind,
but did nothing to free my body from its ancient slav-
ery to the home." This suggests then, that to free the
mind without also somehow freeing the spirit the
spirit that determines our inner attitude toward our-
selves, our fellow human beings, and the universe may
be futile and even destructive.

The Greeks used one word, psyche, to describe both
what we call the mind and what we call the spirit.
The association suggests something very important :
namely that mind and spirit are ultimately inseparable.
The second mark of a free mind, in other words, is
that it is grounded in a free spirit. The truly free mind
is so because it is unafraid, because it is committed to
something ultimate, because it has a point to which it
can always return, as a man to his home.

The ultimate test of a free mind is moral and spir-
itual, not intellectual. The brilliant, frustrated intel-
lectual is not a "free mind." But neither is the happy,
well-adjusted member of what Mencken called the
"booboisie," the woman college graduate whose con-
versation never gets beyond bridge and babies. Too
many of our college graduates end up one or the other.

As for the particular problem of the liberally-edu-
cated woman, no mere male can pretend to offer a
solution. But two friends of mine one from the twen-
tieth century and one from the fourteenth have sug-
gested solutions which I am going to pass on to you
for what they are worth. And I think each is worth
a good deal of reflection.

The first is from Lynn White, who is President of
Mills College, and who has wrestled long and hard
with the irony of preparing young women for a dozen
years of cooking and washing by four years of Shake-
speare and French. He gives not an inch on the long-
run value of a traditional liberal education, particu-
larly during those later years of a woman's life after
the children are old enough to be out of the house most
of the day. But he insists that if we can only rid our-
selves of our prejudices about the slavery of the home,
home-making can itself become one of the "liberal arts."
He looks forward to the time when women's colleges
will not only "offer a firm nuclear course in the
Family, but from it will radiate curricular series deal-
ing with food and nutrition, textiles and clothing,
health and nursing, house planning and interior decor-
ation, garden design, applied botany, and child develop-
ment."

"Would it be impossible," he asks, "to present a be-
ginning course in foods as exciting, and as difficult to
work up after college, as a course in post-Kantian phil-
osophy would be ? . . . Why not study the theory and
preparation of ... a well-marinated shish kebab, lamb
kidneys sauteed in sherry and authoritative curry, . . .
or even such simple sophistications as serving cold arti-
chokes with fresh milk?" [Lynn White, Jr., Educat-
ing Our Daughters, (Harper 1950), pp. 77-78]

Well, this may go a bit too far. Let me simply say
that one way women with free minds have got through
those first dozen years with a fair degree of content
has been to make a "liberal study," so to speak, of some
aspect of their daily round of home-making like an
engineer who can't resist reading about the history or
social significance of the narrow technique which oc-
cupies him eight hours a day.

But there is another and more profound way and
it is suggested by a great Christian mystic of the later
Middle Ages, Meister Eckhart. Eckhart once preached
a sermon on Mary and Martha and I urge you to

11

read it. He came up with the astounding idea that
Martha's was really the better part, and that this was
the lesson of the story. Why? Because Alary was still
unsure of herself, still searching, still dependent on
the spiritual guidance of others. Like you during the
past four years, she was still at school. But Martha,
Eckhart thought, had been through all this and had
come out into serenity. Thus she was able to go about
the menial tasks of the house, and to prove again that
spiritual exaltation is always validated by the practi-
cal service which overflows from it. Martha's calling
was not really a hindrance to her, Eckhart says. "Work
and calling, both, she turned to her eternal profit."
But she was worried that Mary might sit forever at
the feet of Christ. That was why she urged, " 'Lord,
bid her get up,' meaning to say, 'Lord, I do not like
her sitting there just for the pleasure of it. I want
her to learn life and really possess it. Tell her to rise
and really be Mary.' She was not really Mary," Eck-
hart adds, "while she was sitting at Christ's feet . . .
While she sat at the feet of our Lord and listened to
his words, she was learning . . . But later on, when
she had learnt her lesson and received the Holy Ghost,
she began to serve . . . Only when the saints are saints,

and not till then, do they do meritorious works." [The
Works of Meister Eckhart, ed. C. deB. Evans, (Lon-
don 1931), Vol. II, pp. 90-98.]

What does all this mean ? I think it means that the
freeing of the mind is never completed until it cul-
minates in freely-accepted responsibility and service.
Men are more in danger of losing sight of this fact
than women, because women are thrust sooner and
more completely into responsibility and service in their
families. It may be, then, that a woman's curse is also
her blessing. Her slavery to kiddies and cookery can
serve as a bulwark of responsible intellectual freedom,
as a man's career often cannot. If truly great minds
are to be found ten years after graduation unpreju-
diced and wide-ranging, but also unclouded by cynicism
or despair there is a better chance of finding them
among your sex than among mine provided you pre-
serve the balance between Mary and Martha.

Mary and Martha are really one person. They are
you each of you rising from learning and going out
to serve, not drowning your visions in drudgery, but
keeping your mind alive and free in the discipline of
responsibility. "Freedom," says Robert Frost, "is feel-
ing easy in your harness." And it's not a bad definition.

TO CHARLOTTE BARTLETT

How very much we miss Charlotte, here at our
fifth year class reunion. I was happy when Tuck
asked me to write a tribute to her, for she meant so
much to me, and I know there are so many others
who loved her as I did. Yet I know that whatever
words I may say about Charlotte will only be as /
knew her any one of you might choose other words,
for you knew her in other ways. So if when I'm
through, you feel I've not spoken of the Charlotte you
knew, forgive me. These things are spoken only to
remind us of her, for, after all, no words can recapture
the real Charlotte who lived and played and worked
with us those four years.

I shall not attempt a biographical sketch I know
very little of her life before college, and you all know
of her many and varied activities while at Agnes
Scott. While all these activities indicate her wide
interests, unbounded energy, and zest for life, they
don't seem to me so important as the way in which
Charlotte did all these things her approach to life,
or rather her reception of life as it came to her.
Indeed, there was always a path beaten to her room,
and that is the thing that one remembers first the

countless scores of friends. It was often amazing,
and always interesting, the group of girls one could
find in her room. Girls from every class and clique
on campus would claim Charlotte as their friend and
she was. Often the least loved girl in school would
find love and understanding from Charlotte. Not
only the less popular, but the most attractive social
butterflies were among her closest friends, as well as
the active leaders on campus. Charlotte loved across
all social or intellectual barriers, because for her these
barriers simply did not exist. It was not only on our
own campus that Charlotte was a friend, but on the
campuses of Emory and Tech as well. She loved the
world, and so the world loved back.

But she was not so engrossed in activities that she
missed the education for which she came to college.
Charlotte found her friends in books as well as people.
Though she set no scholastic records, she had the
genuine intellectual cursiosity that marks the real stu-
dent. No field of study was beyond her interest, and
many delightful hours could be spent in discussion with
her the joys of a newly discovered author, a political
movement, a new idea. As one who passed a re-exam

12

in Chemistry through her coaching efforts, I knew
her desire for knowledge. Delving into some new
subject could excite her to the point of exasperation at
not being able to grasp it all immediately.

Charlotte loved "the good, the true, and the beauti-
ful" in the natural world much as did St. Francis,
who also found his friends among the birds and flowers.
A clear warm morning in the spring would send
Charlotte bounding across the campus to classes with
an irresistible gaity that even before breakfast made
one smile. A sunset, a moonlight night, a playful
squirrel would set her heart and imagination running,
so that she seemed almost as one with the creation.
And who will ever forget that first snowfall our
freshman year, when with the other Florida girls,
she helped wake us to see it cover the ground ? With
an elflike spirit, she entered into every phase of life

with her whole self. She kept back no part for her-
self what was hers was held in an open hand
herself, her possessions, her time and she never
tired of the many claims upon her.

Then Charlotte loved God. He was indeed her
Friend of Friends, a daily companion to whom she
could and did turn for guidance, strength, and com-
fort. Hers was a joyful faith, and she was never
ashamed to confess Him in the lowliest or most sophisti-
cated company. Her whole life was a joyous dedica-
tion to God so much so that there was the common
saying on campus, "she's too good for this world."
Perhaps that is why God, in His unsearchable Provi-
dence, called her back. For us it is a comfort to know
that her life is now perfected in pure communion with
Him. What a blessing it was to have had her with
us! What a joy to remember throughout all our lives.

Ann Williamson Campbell '50

CLASS NEWS

DEATHS

INSTITUTE

Anna Peek Robertson died July 16,
1954.

Marie Goetchius On- died Feb. 15,
1954.

Eleanor Cloud Bryan died March
18, 1953.

Annie Morton Dodd died March 5.

1910 Eloise Oliver Ellis died Feb.
10.

Edith Louise Brown Combs died
July 25, 1954.

1914 Zelma Allen Tabor died Feb.
28, 1954.

Mary Brown Florence lost hei
mother in November 1954.

1917 Hooper Alexander, Jr., broth-
er of Amelia Alexander Greenawalt
died March 6.

1921 Lucile Smith Bishop lost her
husband Dec. 1, 1953.

1 924 Sarah Aline Kinman died
April 18.

1925 Robert Albert McKay, hus-
band of Ruth Harrison McKay an<
brother of Anne McKay and Ethe
McKay Holmes '15, died April 26.

1 930 Elizabeth Eaton Leinbach diec
in March.

O. L. Adams, Jr., husband of Kath
erine Crawford Adams, died May 7

Lillian Dale Thomas lost her moth-
er Oct. 26, 1954.

Edited by Eloise Hardeman Ketchin

1 93 1 Mrs. W. A. Bellingrath, moth-
er of Elmore Bellingrath Bartlett and
Suzanne Bellingrath Von Gal '41, died
Feb. 28.

1 934 Adam H. Unsworth, husband
of Kathryn Maness Unsworth, died in
January.

Ruth Shippey Austin lost her Fath-
er in April.

1 940 Eugene B. Cass, father of Er-
nestine Cass McGee, died May 6.
1941 Margaret Murchison's father
died in March.

1 949 R. H. Johnson, father of Hen-
rietta Johnson, died Feb. 15.

Return Postage Guaranteed by Alumnae Quarterly, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia

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AGNES SCOTT

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY

THE

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

OF

AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE

OFFICERS

MARY WARREN READ '29

President
BETTY ELLISON CANDLER '49

Vice-President
FLORENCE BRINKLEY '14

V ice-President
MARY PRIM FOWLER '29

Vice-President
MARJORIE NAAB BOLEN '46

Secretary
BETTY MEDLOCK LACKEY '42

Treasurer

TRUSTEES

JEAN BAILEY OWEN '39
CATHERINE WOOD MARSHALL '36

CHAIRMEN

SARA CARTER MASSEE '29

Nominations
FRANCES CRAIGHEAD DWYER '28

Special Events
LORTON LEE '49

Vocational Guidance
MARY WALLACE KIRK '1 1

Education
LEONE BOWERS HAMILTON '26

Publications
BELLA WILSON LEWIS '34

Class Officers
RUBY ROSSER DAVIS '43

House
LOUISE BROWN HASTINGS '23

Grounds
MARIE SIMPSON RUTLAND '35

Entertainment

LOCAL
CLUB PRESIDENTS

ALICE GLENN LOWRY '29

Atlanta
SARA FULTON '21

Decatur
MARGARET ANN KAUFMANN '52

Atlanta Junior
MARY PHILLIPS HEARN '49

Southwest Atlanta

STAFF

ANN WORTHY JOHNSON '38

Director of Alumnae Affairs
ELOISE HARDEMAN KETCHIN

House Manager
MARY P. CHAPMAN

Office Manager

MEMBER

AMERICAN ALUMNI
COUNCIL

The AGNES SCOTT
Alumnae Quarterly

Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Ga.

Volume 34
Fall 1955

Number 1

CONTENTS

HOMER TEACHER OF THE LIBERAL ARTS

M.Kathryn Glick

ALUMNI RESPONSIBILITY FOR QUALITY

IN EDUCATION Theodore A . Distler

AGNES SCOTT HEWS TO INDIVIDUAL LINE

Dorothy Cremin Rind

CLASS NEWS

Eloise Hardeman Ketchin 1 3

Cover:

Academic tools on the steps of Presser Hall await their owners' return from
Chapel. Photo by Bill Wilson Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly is published four times a year
(November, February, April and July) by the Alumnae Association of
Agnes Scott College at Decatur, Georgia. Contributors to the Alumnae
Fund receive the magazine. Y early subscription, $2.00. Single copy 50 cents.
Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office of Decatur, Georgia,
under Act of August 24, 1912.

Annually, a member- of the faculty speaks at a chapel program on some aspect
of the liberal arts. Miss Glick, professor of classical languages and literature,
chose to talk about Homer. Here she gives us, as she says Aeschylus has been
credited with describing his own work, "slices from Homer's banquet."

M. Kathryn Glick

HOMER teacher of the liberal arts

I WANT TO TALK to you this morning about
a phase of the Liberal Arts which I find exciting.

We used to use the term Humanities rather than
Liberal Arts. I like Humanities better because it seems
to me to focus the attention more nearly where it
belongs, that is, on Homo, Alan. But the teachers of
established disciplines, or subjects, were selfish and, as
new fields of knowledge were added to college curricula,
the entrenched groups refused to admit that such sub-
jects as science and social science were humane subjects.
For many years a battle raged, the humanists behaving
most unhumanely and forgetting entirely the famous
phrase of Terence: homo sum: humani nil a me alienum
puto (HT.77). The result was the general adoption
of the term Liberal Arts comprising "three broad areas:
the world of nature, the world of human society, and
the world of human ideals, aspirations and values"
with the term Humanities designating the last division
of knowledge.

My own feeling is that what makes an art a liberal
one is the manner in which it is presented and the pur-
pose for which it is taught. I know that both Latin and
Greek have been sinned against in this respect and both
subjects have paid a heavy penalty for the sins of some
teachers. And while we do not spend all of our time
in Latin and Greek classes on Latin syntax and Greek
verbs, as many of you think, I maintain that both Latin
syntax and Greek verbs can be liberally taught. I also
know, from personal experience, that History and
English literature can be illiberally taught. The subject
matter in itself, though it may help, does not guaran-
tee that any body of material is always a Liberal Art.
In brief, I should say that any subject which is taught
for the enlargement of the human spirit rather than
the enrichment of the human pocket book is a liberal
subject.

Liberal Arts, however, is not a new term. Cicero
says that arts, i. e., liberal arts and practise of the
virtues are the most fitting arms against old age

(aptissima omnino . . . arma senectutis artes exerci-
tationes virtutum. de Sen. 9). And again in his de-
fense of the poet Archias, speaking especially about the
study of poetry which was the principal Liberal Art of
his time, he says:

Quod si non hoc tantus fructus ostenderetur, et si
exhis studiis delectatio sola peteretur, tamen, ut opinor,
hanc animi remissionem humanissimam ac liberalis-
sirna/n iudicaretis. Nam ceterae neque temporum sunt
neque aetatum omnium neque locorum; at haec studia
adulescentian alunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res
ornant, adversis perfugium ac solacium praebent, delec-
tant domi, non impediunt foris, pernoctant nobiscum,
peregrinantur, rusticantur. (Pro Archia VII).

Now, as 1 have said, the Liberal Arts for Cicero and
Vergil and the other Romans were Greek and Latin
poetry, primarily Greek poetry. They were steeped in
Greek poetry and particularly in Homeric poetry. The
first Roman textbook was the XII tables of the Roman
Law; the second, available in the latter half of the
third century B. C. was a Latin translation of Homer's
Odyssey. Horace speaks of using this translation of the
Odyssey in the middle of the first century B.C. Horace
also speaks of the moral value of Homer. In writing to
a friend, he says:

I have been reading afresh at Praeneste the writer
of the Trojan War: who tells us what is fair, what is
foul, what is helpful, what not, more plainly and better
than the Philosophers. (Epist. 1.2).

The Iliad and the Odyssey have been called the
Greek Bible. Certainly for centuries they were the
chief ingredient in Greek formal education, and in
Greek culture. Homer was the final authority on all
sorts of questions from morals to diplomacy and
Achilles was the model of Greek manhood certainly
until the time of Alexander the Great. Sophocles is
called 'the most Homeric of poets' and Aeschylus was
said to have described his own work, modestly, as
'slices from Homer's banquet.'

The Greeks, beginning with Homer, wrote man

1

with a capital M. Certain qualities were innerent in
manhood. The Greeks, I think, would not have under-
stood our tendency to explain shoddy behavior and
man's general shortcomings with "O, he is only hu-
man." It is not that the Greeks did not know that
there are two sides to man's nature, but they chose to
emphasize the noble side. This seems to me good. If
you shoot at a star, you certainly have to aim higher
than if you shoot at a worm.

Let us consider for a while some of the qualities in-
herent in the Iliad which, I believe, had very great
influence on the Greeks and Romans. The Iliad is not
the story of the Trojan war, but of the events of a few
days during the tenth year of the war. However, by
skillful use of episode and digression, Homer tells us
much about the war, but does not include the fall of
Troy. This very limitation of subject matter is evi-
dence of an instinctive control of form which is typical
not only of Homer but of the Greek mind generally.
But listen to the Iliad for a moment:

Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles Peleus' son, the
ruinous wrath that brought on the Achaeans woes in-
numerable, and hurled down into Hades many strong
souls of heroes, and gave their bodies to be a prey to
dogs and all winged birds; and so the counsel of Zeus
wrought out its accomplishment from the day when
first strife parted Atrides King of men and noble
Achilles.
The theme of the poem is noteworthy. I want to
quote Kitto here :

What shapes the poem is nothing external, like the
war, but the tragic conception that a quarrel between
two men should bring suffering, death and dishonour
to so many others. So 'the plan of Zeus was fulfilled.'
And what does this mean? That all this was specially
designed by Zeus for inscrutable reasons of his own?
Rather the opposite, that it is part of a universal Plan:
not an isolated event something which, as it happened,
so fell out on this occasion but something that came
from very nature of things: not a particular, but a
universal. It is not for us to say whether it was from
pondering on this episode of the war that Homer was
led to this conception, which he then saw could be ex-
pressed through the Achilles-story: the important thing
is that this is his subject, that such a cause had such an
effect: and that it is out of this clearly conceived subject,
and not merely from literary contrivance, that the Iliad
derives the essential unity which informs it, in spite of
its epic expansiveness. (The Greeks, p. 47.)

Homer, after this brief introduction, describes this
quarrel in the most vivid manner. I should like to read
it to you but time forbids. Briefly it is this: the Greek
army is dying of a plague. Achilles is concerned for the
army and calls council meeting to find out the cause.
The priest says it is because Agamemnon has dishon-
ored the priest of Apollo and refused to return the
priest's daughter, a captive of war who has fallen to
Agamemnon's lot. Agamemnon is unwilling to give

her up and, when forced to for the sake of his army,
he angrily takes Achilles' prize, another woman captive.
Homer reports it brilliantly, not by any description of
abstract qualities, but by showing us the two men quar-
reling violently. Thus are we introduced to the charac-
ters and the action. Of this Homeric trait, Aristotle
says:

Homer, admirable in all other respects, has the
special merit of being the only poet who rightly ap-
preciates the part he should take himself . . . After
a few prefatory words, (he) at once brings in a man,
or woman, or other personage; none of them wanting
in characteristic qualities, but each with a character of
his own. (Poetics, 1460a).

It may seem that so violent a quarrel over a girl was
a petty thing. There is, however, something more in-
volved. The girl is only the symbol of something much
more serious. One of the key words in Greek thought
is Arete, sometimes translated as virtue, more correctly
perhaps, as excellence or essence. It means actually
Manliness, that quality which makes a man a man and
sets him oft" from all other beings. The arete of a Hom-
eric hero is prowess as a fighter ; Achilles was recog-
nized by both Greeks and Trojans as the foremost
Greek fighter. The girl, his prize of honor awarded by
the army, was concrete evidence of his prowess. So,
when Agamemnon using his position as commander-in-
chief highhandedly took Achilles prize of honor, he was
injuring him in the most vital part of his being.

This arete is emphasized by Homer. He mentions it
specifically as part of the training of three of his char-
acters: Achilles (II. XI. 783ff.), Glaukus (II. VI.
208ff.), and Hector. When Hector's wife, Andro-
mache, begs him not to return to the battlefield, he re-
plies:

Surely I take thought for all these things, my wife:
but I would be ashamed before the Trojans and Trojan
women with trailing robes, if like a coward I shrink
away from battle. Moreover, my own soul forbids me,
for I have learned to be ever valiant and fight in the
forefront of the Trojans, winning my father's great
glory and my own. (II. VI. 441 f f . )

As civilization progressed, the conception of arete
changed, its importance did not. Oedipus' arete in
Sophocles' Oedipus Rex is, perhaps, his prowess in the
pursuit of truth, in defiance of the warning of Teiresias
the prophet, the concern of his wife, and finally, I
think, in defiance of his own knowledge that that truth
would bring him ruin. In Plato, arete is a man's prow-
ess in the development of his reason, or his soul if you
please that part of him which is divine, which is his
means of communication with the divine, which his
failure to use is sin, and without which he is not a
man.

This appreciation of excellence also shows itself in

various phases of Greek life: in the quality of the liter-
ature, the lines of the temples, and the grace of the
vases. Most of our Greek vases are not signed ; they
were made by ordinary potters. The great Ionic frieze
on the Parthenon was executed by ordinary stone-
cutters. The Athenian population as a whole attended
the productions of Greek tragedies. All of these things
indicate the general high degree of excellence both in
workmanship and appreciation.

Homer portrays Achilles magnificently : a man who
chose a short but glorious life in preference to a long,
undistinguished one; trained to be a "speaker of words"
as well as a "doer of deeds" ; a man loved and respected
by his friends and equals, and loved by his captive slave
woman, courteous to his friends, and considerate of
their feelings; lenient towards his enemies before the
death of Patroklus ; willing to give up his life for his
friend he knew that his own death was to follow his
killing of Hector ; quick to obey the gods. He was also
a man devoted to the truth whether in himself or in
another man, he says: "For hateful to me as the gates
of Hades is the man who hides one thing in his mind
and speaks another." (II. IX. 312-313).

Yet with all these admirable qualities, Achilles was
lacking in one important essential, namely an ability
to control his emotions. It is this lack of self control
which brings grief unbearable upon himself and misfor-
tune to his friends and companions.

The importance of self-control is embodied in an-
other key Greek word Sophrosyne, not mentioned but
implied by Homer in the Iliad. It is impossible to trans-
late this word by a single English word. It means bas-
ically sound-mindedness. It is sometimes temperance,
sometimes self-control, sometimes more nearly a recog-
nition of the fact that man is only a mortal. It may at
times have any one of these meanings or a combination
of them. This word and all that it signifies was as im-
portant in the Greek character, in literature and art,
as arete.

The lack of self-control in Achilles brought about
the death of his friend, Patroklus, and led to the ter-
rible vengeance which he took on Hector's body after
killing him. Achilles is the first great tragic hero. It
is only when Achilles recognizes the common human-
ity of Priam and pities him that he rises to his full
stature as a man. Listen to Homer again:

And as they both bethought them of their dead, so
Priam for man-slaying Hector wept sore as he was
fallen before Achilles' feet, and Achilles wept for his
own father, and now again for Patroklus, and their
moan went up throughout the house. But when noble
Achilles had satisfied him with lament, and the desire
thereof departed from his heart and limbs, straightway
he sprang from his seat and raised the old man by his
hand, pitying his hoary head and hoary beard, and

spoke to him winged words and said: "Ah, hapless,
many ill things truly have you endured in your heart.
How dared you come alone to the ships of the Achaeans
and to meet the eyes of the man who has slain full
many of your sons? Of iron truly is your heart. But
come sit upon a seat, and we will let our sorrows lie
quiet in our hearts, for all our pain, for no avail comes
of chill lament. This is the lot the gods have spun for
miserable men, that they should live in pain; yet them-
selves are sorrowless. (II. XXIV. 508ff.)

Achilles is an individual and unique, yet he is also
universal humanity in its greatness and in its sorrow
and weakness.

The pessimism, or rather the tragic sense of life, so
prominent in this passage, but existing throughout the
poem is another typically Greek characteristic. The re-
markable thing is that this feeling does not paralyze.
They still go on and do their best. As Sarpedon says
to his friend Glaukus:

Ah, friend, if once escaped from this battle we were
to be forever ageless and immortal, neither would I
fight myself in the foremost ranks, nor would I send
you into the war that gives men renown. But now
for assuredly ten thousand fates of death do every way
beset us, and these no mortal may escape nor avoid
now let us go forward, whether we shall give glory to
other men, or others to us. (II. XII. 321ff.)
Actually this feeling is coupled in the Greek char-
acter with a tremendous zest for life. It is really further
evidence of their sophrosyne.

But as Matthew Arnold said of Sophocles, Homer

truly "saw life steadily and saw it whole." The whole

panorama is there in the Iliad. Hector noble, dutiful

son, loving husband, and devoted father, devout, says:

Moreover I have awe to make libation of gleaming

wine to Zeus with unwashed hands; nor can it be in

any wise that one should pray to the son of Kronos,

god of the storm cloud, all defiled with blood and

filth. (II. VI. 266-268.)

He is the mainstay of his city though that city is

upholding a cause for which he has no sympathy and

which he knows means the destruction of all which he

holds dear. He is always courteous to Helen though

she is the cause of all his trouble.

And Andromache, a lovely lady, whose sufferings
are those of every woman in every war, is portrayed
with an unequalled beauty of sympathy and under-
standing.

There is Paris attractive, handsome, a coward, and
completely lacking in any sense of responsibility.

There is also Sarpedon with his unforgettable state-
ment of the relation of privilege and responsibility:

Glaukus, wherefore have we twain the chiefest hon-
or, seats of honor, and messes, and full cups in Lykia,
and all men look on us as gods? And wherefore hold we
a great domain by the banks of Xanthos, a fair domain
of orchard-land, and wheat-bearing land? Therefore
now it behooves us to take our stand in the first rank

of the Lykians, and encounter fiery battle, that cer-
tain of the well-corsleted Lykians may say, 'Verily
our kings that rule Lykia are no inglorious men, they
that eat fat sheep, and drink the choice wine honey-
sweet: nay, but they are also of excellent might, for
they fight in the foremost ranks of the Lykians.' (II.
XII. 31 1. )

An appreciation of Beauty also appears on practi-
cally every page of the Iliad: physical beauty repre-
sented by Helen so unusual that old men understand
why young men fight for such a woman ; and also by
young men ; the beauty of nature trees, clouds, flow-
ers, the snow, the rainbow are all effectively set forth
in the many similes. There is the beauty of various kinds
of works of art, and pervading the whole, the beauty of
the poem itself.

While the Iliad is full of war, I think it is fair to
say that Homer does not approve of its tragic waste.
That is obvious from the very theme of the poem which
I mentioned at the beginning of this paper. There is
also a recurrent note of regret running through the
poem over the destruction of youth and beauty. Con-
sider this simile used to describe the death of a rather
conceited young man engaged in his first combat.

As a man grows a healthy young olive tree in a
special place, where there is plenty of water a fair
thing, full of life, tossed by the breath of every wind,
and covered with white blossom ; suddenly a wind
comes with a mighty blast and wrenches it from its
place and stretches it upon the earth. (II. XVII. 55-
58.)

Let me summarize briefly just some of the humane
qualities which are impressed upon a student of the
Iliad: an instinctive control of form; adherence to the
highest quality within one; the importance of self-con-
trol and temperance at all times; a realization of the
seriousness of life and at the same time a zest for life ;
the relation of responsibility to privilege; an appreci-
ation of beauty in all of its forms ; a healthy regard for
the truth ; and a deep realization of the position of man
and his proper relation to God.

It is not always possible to judge the effect of any
one teacher of the Liberal Arts. I think we do have
some indication of the effectiveness of Homer as a
teacher. Consider this partial list of names from the
fifth century all of them men who certainly owed
much to Homer: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Phidias, Herod-
otus, Pericles, Socrates, Euripides, and even Plato who
admits that he loves him even though he criticizes him..
But we have another judgment of a people brought
upon Homer set forth in the pages of Thucydides. In

this first quotation a Corinthian, an enemy of Athens
is speaking:

The Athenians are addicted to innovation, and their
designs are characterized by swiftness alike in con-
ception and execution . . . they are adventurous be-
yond their power, and daring beyond their judgment,
and in danger they are sanguine . . . Further there is
promptitude on their side . . . They are swift to follow
up a success, and slow to recoil from a reverse. Their
bodies they spend ungrudgingly in their country's cause;
their intellect they jealously husband to be employed in
her service. A scheme unexecuted is with them a posi-
tive loss, a successful enterprise a comparative failure.
The deficiency created by the miscarriage of an under-
taking is soon filled up by fresh hopes; for they alone
are enabled to call a thing hoped for a thing got, by
the speed with which they act upon their resolutions
. . . To describe their character in a word, one might
truly say that they were born into the world to take no
rest themselves and to give none to others. (Bk. I, 70f.)
This next quotation is part of the funeral oration
which Pericles is represented as delivering in honor of
the Athenians who fell in the first year of the Pelopon-
nesian war. I cannot quote it all.

Further, we provide plenty of means for the mind to
refresh itself from business . . . We throw open our
city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude for-
eigners from any opportunity of learning or observing,
although the eye of an enemy may occasionally profit
by our liberality; trusting less in system and policy than
to the native spirit of our citizens.

The freedom which we enjoy in our government ex-
tends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exer-
cising a jealous watchfulness over each other, we do
not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbor for
doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injur-
ious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although
they inflict no positive penalty.

Again, in our enterprises we present the singular
spectacle of daring and deliberation, each carried to its
highest point, and both united in the same persons;
although decision usually is the fruit of ignorance,
hesitation of reflection. But the palm of courage will
surely be adjudged most justly to those, who best know
the difference between the hardship and pleasure and
yet are never tempted to shrink from danger.

In short, I say that as a city we are the school of
Hellas; while I doubt if the world can produce a man,
who where he has only himself to depend upon, is equal
to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy a
versatility as the Athenian. (Bk. II, chs. 39ff.).
To have had a part in such an achievement is some-
thing which any teacher might well envy. If there
were time, we might go on to list other Greeks, Rom-
ans, Englishmen, even Americans, and men of other
nationalities whom Homer has had a hand in molding.
It would be a truly remarkable tribute to a great
teacher.

Mr. Distler, former president of Franklin cs" Marshall College, has been for
the last ten years Executiz>e Director of the Association of American Colleges.
He will be Commencement Speaker for Agnes Scott June 4, 1956. In this
article, first delivered as a talk to the 1955 conference of the American Alumni
Council, he points out a few paths leading to the two-way street of alumnae-
college responsibilities.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF ALUMNI FOR QUALITY

IN EDUCATION Theodore A. Distler

AS A FORMER COLLEGE president and now the
executive director of an association that represents our
colleges of liberal arts and sciences on the national
level, I welcome the opportunity of talking to the
American Alumni Council about an issue which is of
vital importance for the future of higher education in
the United States.

1 take it for granted you all agree that quality is
a vital issue for higher education. This is not the kind
of operation in which we can get by with a rough and
ready job. Unless we are prepared to set ourselves high
standards of performance and strive with might and
main to live up to them, we might as well give up
pretending.

At the present time this is very much of a practical
problem. There is no blinking the fact that quantity is
often inimical to quality. In setting up the goal of pro-
viding higher education for a far larger proportion of
our youth than has ever been attempted anywhere, we
are faced with unexampled difficulties in preserving
an adequate standard of quality in the education we
offer them.

Broadly speaking, the difficulties grow with the stu-
dent population. We are now feeling the first surge of
what has come to be called the tidal wave of enroll-
ments. In ten or fifteen years it may double the already
prodigious volume of college entrants. We are at our
wit's end to find means of merely accommodating this
vast inrush of students of providing enough living
space, teaching equipment and above all teachers to
cope with it. In this situation the danger of losing sight
of quality is greater than ever. We shall all have to
strain every nerve to keep quality in its rightful place
in our educational planning and practice.

And in this responsibility I deliberately include
alumni. That is the theme of the ideas I want to put
before you today.

Alumni responsibility is a relatively new idea. In the
past everybody else had his place in the scheme of educa-
tional responsibility for general policy and financial

management. The several administrators had their
specific responsibilities for detailed planning and day-
to-day operation. The faculty were primarily respon-
sible for the maintenance of academic standards. Even
the student had at least a theoretical responsibility for
contributing to the attainment of the institution's aims.
Only the alumnus was left out in the cold.

Robert Hutchins once remarked that "alumni are in-
terested in all the things that do not matter." If this is
taken at its face value as a statement about the attitude
of alumni, I am sure you disagree with it as strongly
as I do. As a reflection of the opportunities alumni were
usually given for interesting themselves in the things
that do not matter, it is not far from the mark.

Fortunately the picture is changing fast. "In the
centuries ahead," notes President Robert G. Sproul of
the University of California, "the record of history
may well show that the greatest contribution that the
United States has made to the advancement of educa-
tion is in the creation and cultivation in alumni of a
sense of continuing membership in and responsibility
toward their colleges and universities . . . The alumni
of American colleges and universities never cease to
think of themselves as members of the family. By their
loyal affection for alma mater, by their active labor in
its support, and by the contributions they make to it,
they bear witness to a relationship as vital as that ac-
cepted by any student, professor or administrative
officer."

The characteristic relationship between educational
institutions and their alumni associations is now one of
interdependence. The institutions recognize a respon-
sibility for promoting alumni activities, not only
through financial subvention but equally through ad-
ministrative organization. In many colleges the alumni
secretary has the status of a regular member of the
administrative staff. Personally I regard this as a de-
sirable arrangement. At the same time alumni are
expected and encouraged to take an increasingly active
part in the administrative and academic business of
their alma mater, as well as furnish financial support.

In the words of President Arthur S. Adams, of the
American Council of Education, "They should be
asked to assume responsibility; they should have
full information, and their opinions on vital matters
of university policy should be seriously sought and
seriously considered."

If I were giving advice to my former colleagues and
their development officers, I should emphasize those
words, "asked to assujne responsibility." There is a
temptation to think that alumni have an automatic
obligation to devote their time and energy and money
to their alma mater just because they are alumni. If
they show any hesitation, one can always remind them
how much the college has done for them. After
all, their education, which played a vital role in what-
ever success they may have achieved, cost far more than
they ever had to pay for it, and it follows that they are
now under a corresponding obligation to repay the debt.

For my part I do not think this argument is either
tactically sound or logically justifiable. In the first
place, if you believe that a fellow is under an obligation
to you, it is not smart to keep on reminding him of it.
Even if he is disposed to admit the obligation, he may
well resent your harping on it. Beyond that, it does
not square with my idea of the aims of a liberal edu-
cation. We pride ourselves on equipping our students
to live a full life and to play the part of good citi-
zens. Then are we entitled to assume that alma mater
holds a first mortgage on their social energies? Must
we not show some trust in the judgment we claim to
have developed in them and allow them to make their
own decisions in allotting their available resources of
time and money among the many demands made on a
responsible citizen?

I like to think of alumni as being in an analogous
position to that of stockholders in a modern corpora-
tion though of course they may have drawn substan-
tial dividends in advance of their main investment.
They are not obliged to go on investing or to take
an interest in the business. They can sit on their capital
and leave policy to the management. Or they can insist
on knowing what is going on and why, and, by taking
a lively interest in the affairs of the institution, establish
their right to a voice in its directon. This is how I
think it should be. Alumni cannot be compelled to
admit an obligation ; they can and should be encouraged
to assume a voluntary responsibility.

What then are the particular responsibilities that
alumni may be expected to assume in the effort to main-
tain quality in higher education? To arrive at them
we must analyze the main factors that govern educa-
tional quality.

The First Responsibility

First of all I would place educational opportunity.
No form of education can do an effective job unless
it is suited to the needs and capabilities of the student.
In particular, higher education in the United States of
America cannot do the job the nation expects of it un-
less it enables every young man and woman of ability
to develop his or her talents to the highest possible
degree, regardless of accidents of birth or economic
status.

The historic response of alumni in this field has been
through financial aid. There is scarcely a college in
America that has not at least one alumni scholarship.
In many institutions a major share of the burden of
providing scholarship funds is borne by alumni. It is
not an accident that scholarship aid is woven into the
fabric of American education. If higher education
were to be limited to those who could pay tuition with-
out the help of scholarships, a disastrous dilution of
quality would result. No college has all the scholarship
resources it needs to make sure that its educational
facilities will be used to the greatest advantage. Many
private colleges are forced to supplement gifts and en-
dowment income earmarked for scholarships by divert-
ing badly needed operating funds to student mainte-
nance. So by accepting the responsibility for raising
increased scholarship funds, alumni can help both to
improve the quality of the student body and indirectly
to improve the facilities which the college offers.

You will have noticed that I take it for granted that
alumni will devote their attention to meeting the needs
of students of scholarly capacity. I am well aware that
in a few colleges highly organized groups of alumni
seem to feel that their main responsibilty is to furnish
so-called scholarship for athletes. I suppose that in any
alumni body there will always be perennial sophomores
who will contribute cheerfully to capture a promising
tackle no matter what his academic record or prospect
of serious attainment. But I am happy to see many
other alumni responding with equal enthusiasm to the
call for support of a promising and deserving student
regardless of his athletic ability. And I have sufficient
faith in the liberal education to which our students
are exposed to believe that future generations of alumni
will choose the better part.

The Student Aid Plan

A different form of financial assistance, even more
widespread in its potential benefits, to which alumni
are giving and will, I hope, continue to give their sup-
port, is the so-called Student Aid Plan. I refer to the
proposal, sponsored by the American Council on Edu-
cation and embodied in several bills introduced into the

current session of Congress from both sires of the
House, for a tax credit to be granted to those who are
responsible for meeting the fees and tuition costs of
college or university student. I have been pleased to
see articles in support of the plan appearing in many-
alumni magazines. I hope you will carry on the good
work.

Although the bills before Congress command a good
deal of bipartisan sympathy', they have not yet been
taken up by the appropriate committees, partly perhaps
because tax relief in general is a somewhat sensitive
issue at present. If you agree that the plan would make
a substantial contribution to the welfare of higher edu-
cation, I am sure you will urge your members to make
their views known to their congressional representatives.
You will no doubt find it a pleasant change to make
an appeal that calls for no money but the cost of a
stamp and very little time.

The part that alumni can play in keeping the ave-
nues open to talent is not limited to financial assistance.
I was interested to find that you are devoting a session
of your conference to discussion of "How to Use Alum-
ni in Student Recruiting." At a time which now
seems as unreal as a dream when enrollments were at
a low ebb and the problem was to find "bodies" that
could pay the price of admission, a few colleges turned
in desperation to their alumni as barkers. Just a few
years later, we had the other extreme or thought we
had and colleges were deluged with applications from
qualified students far beyond the numbers they could
accommodate. In pursuit of some means of screening
the applicants, especially in areas remote from the cam-
pus, they turned again to the alumni. Some relied on
informal reports; others developed elaborate procedures
of interviewing and reporting that raised alumni vol-
unteers almost to the status of assistant admission
officers.

As the tide of enrollment rises, the calls made upon
alumni for this kind of service will surely increase.
Alumni will have the task of carrying the college's
message to promising students in their local high
schools, representing their particular institution on
College Night, standing ready to furnish answers to
the inevitable questions, keeping in touch with pros-
pective students and their parents in order to smooth
the path to admission and subsequent adjustment to
college life. To make a job of this they will have to be
more than loyal alumni ; they must be well-informed
alumni. To be quite frank, this means that they will
have to know far more about the college of today,
not of their own day than the average alumnus knows
at present.

Through this kind of service, whether on the part

of individuals or of alumni schools committees, your
alumni will be making a more far-reaching contribution
to educational quality than may be evident at first
sight. Their primary concern, like mine at this moment,
will be with quality in the colleges and universities.
But quality begins at a lower level. It is a truism that
higher education is dependent for the quality of its
student material on the performance of the high schools.
In doing a job for their colleges the missionary alum-
ni will be making a contribution to progress in the
schools. Simply by seeking to make sure that prospec-
tive college entrants have the necessary preparation,
they will stimulate thinking and may ultimately pro-
voke action to improve curricula and methods. At least
they can hardly avoid taking a more active and in-
telligent interest in the school system of their com-
munities. In fact enthusiastic college alumni are often
candidates for local school boards and amongst the
most vigorous promoters of school bond issues and
other measures aimed at raising the standards of pri-
mary and secondary education.

My last word on the subject of alumni responsi-
bility for educational opportunity is perhaps a harsh
one. We have looked at fields of service that involve
financial sacrifices and sacrifices of time and energy, but
the toughest service of all is one that entails a sacrifice
of personal pride and affection. Most colleges give some
degree of priority in admission to the sons and daugh-
ters, or other close relatives, of alumni. It is natural
and proper that they should. But, as the demand for
college education swells, the day may come when the
number of applications from the families of alumni
equals the quota of admissions. In that situation should
a college be expected to let family connections outweigh
all other considerations in the selection of its student
body ? Alumni may take some convincing to accept the
fact that their responsibility for quality in education
may entail the exclusion of one of their own children
from following in father's footsteps. Yet if need be, we
must strive to convince them. Our success or failure
may well depend in turn on the quality of the liberal
education we are purveying.

The Second Responsibility

The second factor in educational quality is good
physical conditions for teaching and learning. I need
hardly elaborate it for this audience beyond saying that
I include the whole of the plant and equipment needed
by an institution of higher education dormitories,
dining-rooms and student unions no less than class-
rooms, libraries and laboratories.

In this field alumni responsibility is primarily finan-
cial. As you know, the total building needs of colleges

and universities over the next decade and a half have
been estimated at upwards of twelve billion dollars.
This is a pretty tall order. Publicly supported institu-
tions may be reasonably confident that their essential
needs will be met by the responsible legislatures. Private
institutions must rely on private generosity. The educa-
tional organizations, including my own, have been
urging the Congress to make more funds available on
more favorable terms for loans under the College Hous-
ing Program, but at best the program can meet only
a fraction of housing deficiences, and housing repre-
sents no more than half of all the buildings needed.

This formidable bill calls for all the funds we can
raise from trustees, parents, friends and corporations
as well as from alumni. Industry has already set a
splendid example of generosity, and its contributions
are growing from year to year. But wealthy alumni
constitute our best single hope for large individual
gifts and bequests. The alumni body as a whole is the
only source we can rely on for the steady support on
which to build a development program. Above all, the
faith and devotion that alumni manifest by their own
gifts is the best starting point a college can have for
appealing to the generosity of others.

The Third Responsibility

The third factor that I wish to emphasize is even
more important than the other two. Good education
means good teaching. The backbone of the college is
the faculty.

Let me quote from the statement issued by Henry
Ford II in announcing the Ford Foundation plan for
contributing $50,000,000 toward the improvement of
faculty salaries :

All the objectives of higher education ultimately
depend upon the quality of teaching. In the opinion of
the Foundation Trustees, private and corporate phi-
lanthropy can make no better investment of its re-
sources than in helping to strengthen American educa-
tion at its base the quality of its teaching. . . .
Nowhere are the needs of the private colleges more
apparent than in the matter of faculty salaries. Merely
to restore professors' salaries to their 1939 purchasing
power would require an average increase of at least
20 per cent. Even this would not bring teachers in our
private colleges to their economic position before
World War II in relation to that of other professions
and occupations. They have not yet begun to share the
benefits of the expanded productvie system of this
nation, and the whole educational system suffers from
this fact.

In more than its purpose and its dimensions, the
Ford grant is the most significant contribution made
in recent years to the welfare of higher education in
America. Personally I am glad to see one of the major
foundations coming back to the practice of making

capital gifts, which I believe to be an essential func-
tion of foundations. But a still more valuable feature
of the plan is that it is deliberately designed as a stim-
ulus to further giving. As the whole program is based
on matching gifts, it is a direct challenge to the col-
leges and their well-wishers to put out their own best
efforts.

In finding the matching dollars the colleges are go-
ing to rely mainly on their alumni, both for personal
contributions and for carrying the appeal to a larger
audience. In this connection, I was impressed by the
words of Thomas A. Gonser in the annual Fund Issue
of the American Alumni Council News: "We
won't be able to do what we should for the teacher,
or for any aspect of the life of our college, until we
can show that the alumni are strongly behind the pro-
gram. No other leadership group has one tenth their
power." He added that, according to a public opinion
survey, a majority of those who make gifts to uni-
versities prefer to see the money used for faculty sal-
aries.

The ceonomic position of our faculties, however,
need not be simply a function of the basic salary scale.
In an article entitle "The Salary with the Fringe on
Top," in the May issue of the Association of Ameri-
can Colleges Bulletin, Dean Brooks of Williams Col-
lege urges the desirability of extending the use of spec-
ial, non-recurring grants, compulsory saving devices,
central purchasing and other forms of group action. He
argues that such fringe benfits may be a far more effec-
tive means of meeting real need than any general salary
increase that could be achieved at a similar cost. I hope
you will throw the weight of alumni opinion behind ac-
tive exploration of the potentialities of these measures,
which may sometimes make the difference between los-
ing and holding a first-class teacher.

"And Gladly Teach"

Even this is not the whole story. Over and above
financial aid, there is another, relatively unexplored
field in which alumni can give effect to their sense of
responsibility for good teaching. While it is intolerable
that society should presume on the devotion of men
and women who, in the classic expression of scholarly
dedication "gladly teach," it is a fact they do not seek
their main satisfaction in material rewards. Other-
wise they would not resist the attraction of greatly
superior remuneration offered by other careers, or in
some cases would not have deliberately turned from
better-paid jobs to teaching. The professor's greatest
thrill arises from kindling the spark of intellectual
curiosity in the growing mind, in seeing the torch
handed on and his own dreams of discovery realized in

8

succeeding generations of students. People who are re-
mote from academic life may lose sight of, or never
grasp this fact.

Is it not then a prime duty of alumni to show their
appreciation of the fact and interpret it to others? I
do not mean that they should paint idealized portraits
of the professor, inspired by dim but roseate recol-
lections of the giants of their youth. I mean that they
should get to know the present faculty, show interest
in their work, and perhaps help to create opportunities
for them to demonstrate its social value outside the
campus. I see no reason why we should not "take the
professor on the road" to explain the program of his
department. I believe that by conveying in such ways
their recognition of what the teacher has done to en-

rich their own lives and the life of society in general,
alumni can have an incalculable effect on faculty mo-
rale and thus on the quality of higher education.

You alumi executives as interpreters of alma mater
to her former students must take the lead in bringing
home to them the importance of adequate educational
opportunities, satisfactory teaching conditions and,
above all, a good faculty. Your goal may be set by the
dictum of John Stuart Mill that "one person with a
belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine with only
an interest." If you can shift a fair proportion of the
ninety-nine among your alumni into the class of those
with a belief, they will clearly recognize and cheerfully
accept their full responsibilty for quality in education.

NEW RECORDS

The Department of Speech has made four new recordings this
year to add to their series of "Agnes Scott voices." Why don't
you order them from the Alumnae Office and gather together
the alumnae in your town on Founder's Day to listen to:

MISS GOOCH and MISS WINTER

MR. STUKES

MR. TART

JOHN FLYNT, WESLEY STARKE, HENRY SIMMONS and
MR. ROGERS.

AGNES SCOTT HEWS TO

HHBBEI

TOP: Susan Col-
trane '55 visits a
student art exhibit
in Buttrick gallery.

CENTER: Dr. Rob-
inson and Louise
Robinson '55 (no
kin) solve a math
problem after
chapel.

BOTTO.M: Miss
Anne Salyerds, in-
structor in Biology,
initiates a lab class
in the intricacies of
dissection.

A Liberai Arts College like Agnes Scott is an
island in an academic sea of mass education.

The problems facing the 66-year-old college for
women in Decatur are typical of those confronting
similar schools all over the nation.

Here are a few of them:

Developing a well-rounded individual student in a
time of specialization and "assemblyline" instruction.

Retaining good teachers when other fields beckon
with more tempting salaries.

Planning for the future in the face of rising costs.

Dealing with the expected upsurge in the number
of applicants for entry the result of the much-dis-
cussed "war baby" crop.

In addition, a woman's college must compete for
the best students with co-ed schools.

Agnes Scott believes it has a ready answer on this
point. In co-ed schools, college officials state, the top
campus posts go most frequently to the males, leaving
the bright girls in the roles of little helpers. In an
all-girl college feminine qualities of leadership have
fuller play. And a girl can do her best to shine in
the classroom without making her boy friend look
like a dud in comparison.

Limited Enrollment

Whether to expand is the question looming largest
in the minds of many college presidents nowadays. The
peak of college enrollment is expected in the 1960's.
Dr. Wallace M. Alston, president of Agnes Scott for
the last four years, has made his decision to keep the
college small. Enrollment will not be allowed to go
above 550. In his opinion, that is the size student body
which can best profit from the Agnes Scott program
of individual attention and close association between
professor and student.

There are 537 young women attending classes dur-
ing the present 1954-55 season. Of these, 465 board
at the college. While the total number of students
has remained fairly constant in recent years, the ratio
of boarding students to day students has changed. Ap-
proximately 100 more girls are living on campus now
than during the 1952-53 session. Thirty of them are

Photos by
Bill Wilson.

)UAL LINE

Dorothy Cremin Read '42

Atlanta residents. College officials credit this trend
in part to the fact that students' parents have more
money to spend. Tuition, room, meals and fees cost
a boarding student $1,275 per year. Costs for a day
student total $525.

The phrase "hand-picked group" is mentioned often
at Agnes Scott, and while it may bring a shudder to
students, the statement is literally true. Prospective
students are weeded out through examinations, inter-
views and investigation. With increasing competition
among students for entry, a college spokesman sug-
gested that "admissions policies may become more se-
lective."

Weeding Program

The weeding program makes for a diversified stu-
dent body. At present, Agnes Scotters are graduates
of 144 secondary schools in 26 states and half a dozen
foreign countries. Georgia still contributes the great-
est number of students, with Alabama in the number
two position.

Dr. Alston describes the plan of education at
Agnes Scott as one "predicated upon the conviction
that a mind trained to think is essential if life is to
be unfettered, rich and full ... we are concerned
with the enrichment of the whole personality . . . The
Agnes Scott ideal includes high intellectual attainment,
simple religious faith, physical well-being and the de-
velopment of attractive, poised, mature personality."
Selecting students who will most profit from such a
regimen is a serious matter. Some scholars flourish
in the atmosphere of a small campus, others accom-
plish more in the bustle of huge institutions with
thousands of students.

Each student, "hand polished" as at Agnes Scott,
represents a greater investment on the part of the
college than the student pays in fees and tuition. That
is generally accepted by educators as one of the greatest
dangers to the independent liberal arts college in our
time. The state-supported schools look to greater tax
appropriations to meet their deficits. The private
school has to depend upon its endowments. These are
built up through the gifts of alumni (in the case of
Agnes Scott, "alumnae"), corporations, estates and

well-wishers. The income from endowments provides
the war chest for upkeep funds for buildings, scholar-
ships for deserving students and better salaries for pro-
fessors.

Winship Bequest

Agnes Scott received a magnificent bequest last No-
vember from the will of the late Mrs. Frances Win-
ship Walters of Atlanta, amounting to some $4,050,-
000 and more than doubling the endowment fund.
Her gift has provided a tremendous boost to the col-
lege's $10,000,000 long-range development program,
scheduled to culminate in 1964 on the 75th anniver-
sary of Agnes Scott's founding. Ground will be broken
on a half-million-dollar dormitory to bear Mrs. Wal-
ters' name as soon as classes are dismissed in June.

Of the new long-term plan, which includes new
buildings, scholarships, lectureships and departmental
improvements, one unit has been completed. That is
Hopkins Hall, named for the first dean of students,
Miss Nannette Hopkins. Previous recent building pro-
grams produced the new science building and the ob-
servatory building which houses the largest telescope
in the Southeast.

Agnes Scott has had only two deans of students
Miss Hopkins and the incumbent, Miss Carrie Scan-
drett. Also symbolizing the loyalty of the school's
leaders, Agnes Scott has had only three presidents. The
first was Francis Gaines, then Dr. James Ross McCain
and now, Dr. Alston.

What keeps a professor at his classes despite the siren
song of industry and of larger institutions? It isn't
the superior pay. Inequities in salaries still exist at
Agnes Scott and in other small colleges. And retire-
ment programs are inadequate.

Love of Teaching

Part of the picture takes in the pleasures of the
academic life, the freedom to think and teach without
interference, the sheer love of teaching and the feeling
of discovery when an occasional good mind comes to
light. Many of the professors at Agnes Scott are
frankly idealists who do not want to see the humanities
lost in a flood of over-specialization.

"Youth," said an English professor of formidable
intellect. "Youth holds us here."

There are numerous extracurricular activities. And
Georgia Tech and Emory are not far away, for social
activity.

A student put the matter of brains and Agnes Scott
very succinctly, however.

"Studying here is like playing tennis you enjoy
it more if you are good at it."

11

DEATHS

INSTITUTE

Cora Strong died June 5.

Harriett Eliza Guess Goddard died
May 11.

Dr. William Leon Champion, hus-
band of Sue Harwell Champion and
father of Jennie Champion Nardin
'35, died July 2.

Edward Henry Mitchell, husband of
Leuelle O'Neal Mitchell, died in May,
and her sister, Mrs. Verna O'Neal
Watkins died in August.
1921 Elva Keeton Kelly died
Feb. 28.

1923 Mary Elizabeth Harris Yon-
gue died April 26.

1 926 T. L. Johnson, brother of Ster-
ling Johnson, died June 12.

1927 Mildred Cowan Wright lost
her father in May, 1954.

1928 Easai Gershcow, father of
Hattie Gershcow Hirsch, died July 6.

1930 Clarene Dorsey lost her
father in March.

1931 Clarence R. Ware, father of
Louise Ware Venable, died July 16.

1 932 Julia Grimmet Fortson lost
her mother Feb. 26 and her father
April 27.

Dr. William H. Trimble, husband
of Grace Fincher Trimble, died July
26.

1 933 John Francis Ridley, father
of Margaret Ridley Beggs, died Aug 1.

Rosalind Ware Reynolds lost her
father this summer.
1 939 Lucius Tyler, father of Elinor
Tyler Richardson, died March 17.
1 940 Charles R. Bixler, husband of
Sally Matthews Bixler, died Feb. 8.
1 94 1 Ruth Allgood Camp and her
husband, Dr. Raymond S. Camp, died
August 30.

1 947 John Hume Hyrne, husband
of Susan Jordan Oliver Hyrne, was
killed in a plane accident this summer,
shortly after they were married.

REUNION JUNE 2 for '96, '97, '98

and '99.

12

Return Postage Guaranteed by Alumnae Quarterly, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia

**V Ga.

AGNES SCOTT PLATES

A view of Buttrick Hall as seen from
Inman Porch is pictured in blue on
W edgivood's white ''Patrician" pat-
tern plate.

Order yours from the Alumnae
Office

Prices, postpaid :
$3.50 each 6 for $20.00

Proceeds from plate sales go to the
Alumnae House.

AGNES

SCOTT

alumnae
quarterly

In this issue

TEACHING

WRITING

SCHOLARSHIP

spr
19

ing
56

THE

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

OF

AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE

OFFICERS

MARY WARREN READ '29

President
BETTY ELLISON CANDLER '49

Vice-President
FLORENCE BRINKLEY '14

Vice-President
MARY PRIM FOWLER '29

Vice-President
MARJORIE NAAB BOLEN '46

Secretary
BETTY MEDLOCK LACKEY '42

Treasurer

TRUSTEES

JEAN BAILEY OWEN '39
CATHERINE WOOD MARSHALL '36

CHAIRMEN

SARA CARTER MASSEE '29

Nominations
FRANCES CRAIGHEAD DWYER '28

Special Events
LORTON LEE '49

Vocational Guidance
MARY WALLACE KIRK '11

Education
LEONE BOWERS HAMILTON '26

Publications
BELLA WILSON LEWIS '34

Class Officers
RUBY ROSSER DAVIS '43

House
LOUISE BROWN HASTINGS '23

Grounds
MARIE SIMPSON RUTLAND '35

Entertainment

LOCAL
CLUB PRESIDENTS

ALICE GLENN LOWRY '29

Atlanta
SARA FULTON '21

Decatur
MARGARET ANN KAUFMANN '52

Atlanta Junior
MARY PHILLIPS HEARN '49

Southwest Atlanta

STAFF

ANN WORTHY JOHNSON '38

Director of Alumnae Affairs
ELOISE HARDEMAN KETCH1N

House Manager
MARY P. CHAPMAN

Office Manager

MEMBER

AMERICAN ALUMNI
COUNCIL

The AGNES SCOTT
Alumnae Quarterly

Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Ga.
Volume 34 Number 2-3

Winter-Spring, 1956

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

PROFESSOR GOES BACK TO FIRST GRADE

AN AUTHOR AND HER BOOK

Olive Ann Burns

Florence E. Smith

THE COMMUNITY OF SCHOLARSHIP 7

Brown, Rearick, Kline

CLASS NEWS

10

Eloise Hardeman Ketchin

The Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly is published four times a year
(November, February, April and July) by the Alumnae Association of
Agnes Scott College at Decatur, Georgia. Contributors to the Alumnae
Fund receive the magazine. Yearly subscription, $2.00. Single copy 50 cents.
Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office of Decatur, Georgia,
under Act of August 24, 1912.

Editorial

QUALITY, TOO, IN TEACHER

EDUCATION

AGNES SCOTT'S DECISION last year to establish
a Department of Education has raised some healthy
questions among alumnae. Is the College not hewing
adamantly to a liberal arts program? Is there now
a major in Education? If the teacher-training courses
at Agnes Scott are part of Emory University's pro-
gram, does that mean that Agnes Scott will become
a part of Emory?

The Agnes Scott-Emory Teacher Education pro-
gram, a great experiment and recent development in
teacher training, is based upon the simple but funda-
mental belief that it is possible to retain the recognized
benefits of a liberal education while providing selected
college students with the professional competence neces-
sary for teaching in an elementary or secondary school.
In no area of our nation's manpower, as we enter the
second half of the twentieth century, is the need so
stark as in the teaching field. We are convinced at
Agnes Scott that we must graduate teachers who are
both educated and trained in the broadest sense of
each term.

Since 1899, Agnes Scott has been unashamedly dedi-
cated to quality in higher education. Today, the resist-
ance to quantity rather than quality is difficult and will
become increasingly so in the 1960's when the hordes
of students now bursting the walls of secondary schools
begin knocking on college entrance doors. Agnes Scott
does not seek, now or then, to train all the teachers,
only a comparative few, but these it wishes to endow
especially well, with a solid grounding in the arts and
sciences plus proficiency in the skills of teaching.

When the Curriculum Committee of the College
approved the separation of the work in Education from

that in Psychology and created the Department of
Education, President Alston explained: "The establish-
ment of this separate department emphasizes the sig-
nificance of teacher education in the liberal arts and
provides a more adequate medium for Agnes Scott's
effective participation in the p^og-am. // is not antici-
pated that a major will be offered in Education."

The opportunities for doing quality training of
teachers are limitless in the joint Agnes Scott-Emory
program; limitations, particularly in the area of prac-
tice teaching, would be grave if each institution at-
tempted an independent, unrelated program. Since 1952
Agnes Scott and Emory have combined their resources
at the undergraduate level for the preparation of teach-
ers. Dr. John I. Goodlad is director of the overall
program, and its happy results are a reflection of his
insistence on the dual goals of broad knowledge and
efficient teaching techniques for his students. Dr.
Richard L. Henderson is head of Agnes Scott's Depart-
ment of Education, on joint appointment with Emory.
(See the article on Dr. Henderson in this issue.) Other
members of the Education faculty divide their respon-
sibilities between Agnes Scott and Emory.

Thus primarily through faculty is the Agnes Scott-
Emory program coordinated. Each institution, of course,
preserves its own rights in faculty appointments, cur-
riculum and administration. The use of resources of
both institutions makes a powerful force for accom-
plishing the kind of teacher training which can be
respected for its quality. We who are Agnes Scott
alumnae salute the Agnes Scott-Emory program and
wish it well is it begins to grow.

AWJ

This article first appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Magazine,
January 13, 1955.

PROFESSOR GOES BACK

TO FIRST GRADE

Olive Ann Burns

A COLLEGE PROFESSOR in Atlanta has gone
back to the first grade.

For the last two months, Dr. Richard L. Henderson
has spent three hours a day as an assistant in Mrs.
Florence Freeman's first grade at Morningside School.

Dr. Henderson's regular job is teaching teachers to
teach. He's professor in the Agnes Scott-Emory Teacher
Education Program, and is supposed to know all the
answers. You wouldn't think he could learn anything
in the first grade.

What he learned wasn't ABC's.

What he learned was the difference between theory
and real life.

Educators theorize, for example, that an adult should
never raise his voice at a child. They insist that it's
not necessary to be loud to be firm. "But I found out
it's hard to remember that when you're tired and a
child starts throwing grapes," said Dr. Henderson.
"A teacher MUST control her voice, or she'll be
screaming all day. But the habit of calmness is not
easily acquired."

Another textbook theory is that one should ignore
misbehavior whenever possible. Of course you have to
stop a child if he's pouring paint out the window or
knocking over another child's version of the Empire

State Building. But you shouldn't make a big issue
of it. The theorists say that pressure brought against
an uncooperative child by the other children is far more
effective than any disciplinary measure the teacher
invents.

"I believe all this," said Dr. Henderson. "But after
one day in the first grade it really hit me that when
a teacher has 33 pupils, she's GOT to control the
troublemakers, either by isolation or some other means
of punishment. Otherwise she'd never get anything
taught. It's not fair to the group to let one child keep
the whole class disrupted. Yet it isn't fair to that
child not to try to find out why he does the things
he does.

"It was brought home to me that we still don't really
know how to help teachers help kids with emotional
difficulties. We can give the teachers an intellectual
understanding of human behavior through courses on
child growth and development. I don't mean these
courses are a waste of time. But a teacher can't look
on page 40 of a text book and find out why Jane is
so shy she never opens her mouth. Page 121 doesn't
tell why Tommy is- always punching the other kids.
The tragic thing about emotionally upset children is
that today the average teacher doesn't really have

TIME to find out why. She just hopes they will
respond to the group lessons on cooperation and good
behavior."

Another theory of modern education is that children
should be taught as individuals.

"The importance of the individual is the basis of
our democratic society," said Dr. Henderson. "We feel
definitely that each child should be guided according
to his own particular needs, interests and talents.
However, in a crowded classroom there's no choice but
to teach everybody alike. The program has to be geared
to what the 'average' child is interested in.

"It wouldn't help to put all the bright pupils in
one class and the not-so-bright ones in another. They
still wouldn't have the same interests. Anyway we
don't want to do that. We don't want to build an
aristocracy of intellectual snobs. Many kids who're
not A' students can be leaders in other ways."

The theorists think children should feel free to
express themselves. A system of rigid classroom rules
is not considered desirable. "But with 30, 40 or 50
kids," said Dr. Henderson, "the class has to be regi-
mented. The alternative is bedlam.

"I hate to bring psychology into this, but there's
something that makes a small group of children behave
difHerently from a large group. The bigger the class,
the more they're affected by a certain mass stimulation.
They stay excited and are easily distracted. A first
grade teacher with a large class spends most of her
time just keeping the kids quiet. At the end of the
year they will be 'socialized,' and they will know
something, but they won't know what they ought to
for second grade work."

At this point Dr. Henderson and I were joined by
Dr. John Goodlad, director of the Agnes Scott-Emory
Teacher Education Program.

"In the 19th Century," said Dr. Goodlad, "a head-
master might have a couple of hundred kids in a room.
He'd have several assistants, called monitors, to help
teach and keep order. Even 50 years ago in Atlanta,
teachers averaged 45 pupils. Some had 60 or 80. But
in those days teaching wasn't scientific. In the last
30 years a lot of research has been done. We have
proved that you can keep order by keeping children
interested. We don't believe in shaming or Hogging.
And we know that children learn more in small dis-
cussion groups than in the lecture system with arbitrary
subject matter and no student participation. Yet at
the same time we're learning more and more about
children and the value of small groups, we're getting
more and more crowded classrooms. It's terribly up-
setting to conscientious teachers having to do what

they don't believe in. Many leave the profession. Part
of our job is to help teachers do the best they can
and quit worrying."

Of course Dr. Henderson didn't really learn any-
thing in the first grade that he didn't know before.
But thinking about a problem isn't like being face-to-
face with it. You can understand the difficulties of
working with a mob of children, yet never really feel
what a teacher feels when she knows her pupils aren't
learning what they ought to.

"Still we have to face the fact," said Dr. Henderson,
"that ours is a system of mass education. And it's
going to get masser and masser. Statisticians figure that
at least until 1965, public schools in the United States
will enroll a million more first graders every year than
they had the year before. (Atlanta has 7,000 more
children now than last year.) The country needed
165,000 new elementary teachers in the fall yet last
spring all of the colleges and universities qualified only
32,000. Last year a nationwide survey in medium-
sized cities showed that 70 per cent of elementary chil-
dren were in classes of more than 30 pupils.

"In Atlanta the average in grade school is 34 pupils
per teacher, but some of the classes have as many as
45. In DeKalb County, most of the classes have be-
tween 40 and 50 children. At the present rate of
growth, DeKalb needs a new school for 500 children
every five weeks. Many DeKalb youngsters are already
going to school in apartments and churches. More than
3,000 children in the Atlanta system go to school in
churches."

Dr. Henderson and Dr. Goodlad think the situation
is serious almost to the point of complete disorganiza-
tion of the American school system.

"I am appalled at the apathy of the public," said
Dr. Goodlad. "This is a national crisis. It's all hap-
pened since the war something nobody ever antici-
pated and in a few years these children will be in
high school. The plain truth is that the American
people are going to have to do on one car and fewer
clothes and dig down to pay more taxes."

"Until that happens there is really no chance for
children to get the kind of education they ought to
have," said Dr. Henderson. "Teaching in the first
grade, I realize more than ever that the below-average
children and those with emotional problems are defi-
nitely not getting the extra help they need. Even the
average boys and girls aren't getting an adequate edu-
cation. Miss Ira Jarrell, superintendent of Atlanta
schools, put it this way: 'The basis of a good school
is the teacher's ability to teach, and you just can't
teach 40 children.' "

Dr. Henderson thinks crowded classrooms are the
chief reason so many children are having reading dif-
ficulties these days. "The problem can be explained
by simple arithmetic," he said. "If you had only 10
pupils, each one could read aloud for six minutes in
an hour. With 30 pupils, each can read aloud only
two minutes. They just don't get enough practice.

"One solution is to divide the class into three read-
ing groups according to learning ability. The chil-
dren will accept as a natural thing the fact that some
learn faster than others, but many parents are furious
when their child is put in the slow group. Another
difficult) with this system is that the teacher must
keep the other boys and girls busy while one group
reads. It's hard for first graders to work 20 or 30
minutes at a time on their own. After they finish
drawing a picture or doing a workbook assignment,
thev usually start talking or playing or throwing
spitwads."

It is encouraging that teachers are finding ways to
overcome some of the problems of crowded classrooms.
Dr. Henderson pointed otu that many student teachers
from the colleges serve as nonpaic assistants while get-
ting practice. Some high school girls help in the lower
grades during their free periods. Mothers often volun-
teer to spend one or more hours a week reading stories
or doing odd jobs that leave the teacher free to work
with pupils who need extra help. The Ford Founda-
tion is doing research on the apprentice system. It has
in mind giving an experienced teacher 60 or 80 pupils,
with the assistance of one or more less qualified teachers
and a secretary.

"The only trouble," said Dr. Henderson, "is that
few schoolrooms are big enough to accommodate 80
children."

In Atlanta, many grade schools have special arl
French and music instructors who work an hour o
two a week in each class. For the so-called "problem'!
children, more and more elementary schools here ar4
getting special counselors. They talk with the childrei)
and their parents and try to find out what's wrong]
Another source of help for the worried teacher is thq
Atlanta Area Teacher Education Service, a cooperative!
group that meets regularly to discuss specific problerr
cases.

"Atlanta has a better school system than most cities!
and has little trouble getting qualified teachers," com-
mented Dr. Henderson. "Hut just the same we've got
too many children per class. Mrs. Freeman and I do
very well teaching together, but I can't imagine trying
to handle this group alone."

It's not that the professor doesn't enjoy children.
He's a big jolly man who likes to tell stories and
juggle lemons and teach reading and writing. He gets!
a kick out of the snaggle-tooth age so proud of the'
space where a tooth was and now isn't. And he
enjoys the challenge of trying to explain thinks like
Ph.D. to a 6-year-old.

This little boy wanted him to "fix" his stomach-
ache. He said he couldn't.

"Aren't you a doctor, Dr. Henderson?"

"I'm not that kind of doctor."

"What kind of a doctor are you?"

Dr. Henderson thought a minute. "I don't know
how to explain it so you can understand," he said
helplessly. "You might say my work has to do with
the head. Does that satisfy you ?"

"No," said the boy.

AN AUTHOR AND HER BOOK

Florence E. Smith

"A POISED, CALM FIGURE in simple black with
three white orchids on her shoulder, Miss Stevenson
sat in the Agnes Scott Library on Saturday, December
3, surrounded by her former English teachers, Miss
Laney and Miss Leyburn and other faculty members
and students." So Eleanor Swain, editor of The Agnes
Scott News, December 7, 1955, described Elizabeth
Stevenson '41 at the autographing party given by Mrs.
Edna Hanley Byers soon after the publication of her
biography of Henry Adams (Macmillan, 1955, $6.00).
President Alston came in to have his copy autographed
and to tell her how proud the college was of her and
other friends came to rejoice with her that the work
of six years had been so successfullv concluded and
to wish for her book a good reception.

On January 9, 1956, an article in The Atlanta
Journal by Edwina Davis '46 announced the choice
of Elizabeth Stevenson as Atlanta's "Woman of the
Year" in Arts. The chairman of the selection com-
mittee, the Rev. Wilson W. Sneed, said: "Her book
brought forth from the most significant group of critics
a national recognition of Southern scholarship."

In examining the acceptance and national recognition
of a book one turns first to the publisher who must be
convinced of its worth or it would not be published.
The enthusiasm of the Macmillan Company is evident

in its Fall 1955 Catalog in which the Henry Adams
is described as a "magnificent biographv" and "dis-
tinguished by delightful qualities of scholarship, style
and critical appraisal. In any publishing season, Henry
Adams would by a major achievement." This opinion
is backed by excellent advertisements in the major book
review magazines, such as The New York Times Book
Review for November 27 and December 11, 1955.
The entire page advertisement for the Macmillan
Company in the Winter, 1956, American Scholar, is
given to this one book. Also, the Henry Adams is
one of the nine non-fiction books of 1955 nominated
for the National Book Award (Saturday Review,
February 4, 1956).

Then attention turns to the question of how wide-
spread may be the interest of the country's newspapers.
On the day of publication, November 29, 1955, Orville
Prescott, reviewer for The New York Times, gave
his entire "Book of the Times" to a consideration of
the Henry Adams. Among his comments we find:
"This is a highly readable story of a peculiar and
greatly gifted man, a persuasive interpretation of his
cryptic character and an excellent critical analysis of
his works. Miss Stevenson is sympathetic but judicious,
respectifully admiring her hero but by no means blinded
by worship. Aware of his faults, fascinated by his

mind, she has made Henry Adams live in her pages
as he never made himself live in his diffident and self-
concealing autobiographical masterpiece The Education
of Henry Adams. . . . Miss Stevenson's book about
him is the most interesting biography of an American
I have read this year. ... It is very good indeed."

Interesting reviews are also found in The Atlanta
Constitution and Journal, December 4, 1955; The
New York Herald Tribune, November 28, 1955; The
Christian Science Monitor, December 29, 1955; The
Washington Post, December 11, 1955; The Boston
Sunday Globe, December 11, 1955; and The Los
Angeles Mirror News, December 5, 1955, in which
James Bassett says: "In this superlative, perceptive
study of an inquiring man's life, Miss Stevenson brings
to breathing reality the puzzling character that was
Henry Adams . . . her account ... is colorful, fascinat-
ing reading. And it should capture some of the most
impressive literary prizes for 1955."

Reviews may also be found in Newsweek, December
5, 1955; The Saturday Review, December 10, 1955;
Time, December 12, 1955; The Nation, December 24,
1955; The Atlantic Monthly, February, 1956; and
The Manchester Guardian Weekly, February 2, 1956.

In the year-end lists of good books Miss Stevenson's
was suggested by Time, December 26, 1955; The
World Alliance News Letter, December, 1955; Holi-
day, December, 1955; and The Library Journal,
October, 1955. On the "In and Out of Books" page
in The Nezv York r Times Book Review the Henry
Adams was listed for several weeks in the "And Bear
in Mind" column. In the Book of the Month Club
News, January, 1956, Clifton Fadiman says: "Her
book has value not merely as an intelligent, well-
researched statement of Adams' career, but as a portrait
in depth of his group." In the Semi-Monthly Book
Review of the University of Scranton, Pa., Thomas
Rowan says: "Written in a style that shows control,
high-precision . . this biography is a model of objec-
tively (the bibliography, exhaustive notes, and minutely
itemized indices at the end of the book, also recom-
mend it as a case-study for aspiring biographers)."

While this wide-spread interest of newspapers and
periodicals is impressive we still wish to know the
response of men who as professors and writers think
of Henry Adams not merely as a book to be reviewed
but as a challenging person to be analyzed. Henry
Steele Commanger in The New York Times Book

Review, December 11, 1955, reminds us that "it is'
not only a career but a fate to be an Adams," for, in
this case, it meant having a father who was ambassador
to Britain, and a grandfather and a great-grandfather
who were presidents of the United States. Professor 1
Commanger recognized the problems of a biographer
who has to compete with the brilliance of Adams' The I
Education of Henry Adams in which he "quite de-
liberately wrapped himself in layers of obscurity" and
discusses at length Miss Stevenson's analyses of the]
Education and of Adams' other writings such as Mont-\
Saint-Michel and Chartres, the History of the United |
States, and John Randolph.

Letters to the publisher from Professors Henry
Pochmann of the University of Wisconsin, Stow Par-
sons of the State University of Iowa, and Eric F.
Goldman of Princeton, comment on her book as "per-
ceptive," "discriminating and well-written," and "one
of the genuinely distinguished biographies of the last
decade."

Professor H. C. Nixon in the Virginia Quarterly
Review, Winter, 1956, writes: "We have here a full
and intimate picture of America's greatest philosopher-
historian." He also speaks of the "deftness and sim-
plicity" with which the author explores her subject.

In The Nation, December 24, 1955, Howard Mum-
ford Jones says: "She writes with wonderful acumen,
full knowledge, and excellent sensibility. Her style
takes on more and more the flavor of her subject, her
mastery increases with the progress of the book. . . .
When she is completely involved with this intricate
mind and more intricate personality, she could not
write better or be more perspicuous. I think her Henry
Adams is at the moment the richest and fullest portrait
of the great American Enigma that we have."

Allan Nevins in the American Heritage, December,
1955, speaks of the biography of Henry Adams as
"penetrating and absorbing" and believes that "Those
interested in history, letters, and art will find Miss
Stevenson's study not only full in its presentation of
biographical fact, but rewarding in its critical judg-
ments and psychological insights. America has had
greater spirits than Henry Adams, but none more
intensely searching. It has had finer minds but no
intellect freer, lonelier, more devoted to a group of
realities. Reading this book, we are carried to the
austere vantage point where he brooded, ever questing,
ever dissatisfied, over the destinies of man."

Here is a joint statement on the meaning of scholarship at Agnes Scott. A
senior, a junior and a member of the Philosophy faculty presented these inter-
pretations in a recent chapel program.

THE COMMUNITY OF SCHOLARSHIP

NONETTE BROWN '56

WHEN GEOFFREY CHAUCER lived, books were
a great luxury, and he had small means and a large
library. He knew the philosophy of his day and as
much of classical thought as was available then. He
had a wide and accurate understanding of the budding
sciences of his age. He probably spoke at least three
languages well enough to be used on political missions
to France and Italy. All these things are obvious in
his writings. But what is also obvious is his tre-
mendous, vital interest in every phase of life. His was
an attitude of scholarship and his field was the whole
world. His mind was as open to the wonders of a
soft new spring morning as it was to Boethius' ideas.
He sought to understand all he could and to relate
what he knew to what he did. There weren't enough
hours in the day to learn what he wanted to know,
so he gladly stayed up half the night.

This eager interest in the world and people con-
stitutes the kind of scholarship which frees people in
college from a dreadful kind of materialism called
"grade-consciousness." Grades can so easily cease to
be a gauge of progress and can become an end in
themselves, when we lose sight of the point of studying
and need an artificial stimulus. A professor I had last
summer used to say, "Seek ye first the kingdom of
Truth, and the grades shall be added unto you."

The consciousness comes late for some of us, that
the long afternoons spent in the library are preparing
minds to he ready to receive the excitement of ideas.
We either expect the excitement to come without being
sought or simply drudge to get through. But excite-
ment does come when another mind speaks directly

to our mind, and we share with a man who lived a
hundred years ago the warmth and renewal of spirit
found in the discovery of an idea that will remain to
thrill other minds perhaps another hundred vears from
now.

Practically, this kind of scholarship and interest leads
us to study not just the parts we think will appear
on the test. It is being conscious that learning one
thing necessarily leads us to need to know something
else. It's understanding our friends the better because
we understood people in a book. It's when we're
honestly pleased to understand at last how to work
a math problem, after the exam, even. It's when we
share the kind of integrity that made a great actress,
on the eve of the last performance of a successful play,
say to her director with a radiance worthy of first-
night confidence: "At last, today, I understood how
to do the scene that before now has eluded me." It's
being willing to study something so hard or intangible
that we know there's a good chance we won't ever
grasp it fully, willing to because we thus discover first
hand the awe-inspiring fact of mystery in life and
in human personality, and perhaps this awe in the face
of mystery is the beginning of wisdom.

When we become so interested in a subject that we
look forward to a chance to study, and when it is
important to us to understand without worrying about
being given credit for understanding, then I think
we are on the way to becoming scholars who share in
the artist's efforts to create the lucid moment Joseph
Conrad speaks of thus: "And when it is accomplished
behold! All the truth of life is here: a moment of
vision, a sigh, a smile. . . ."

And these, too, are "moments to remember."

DOROTHY REARICK '57

A consideration of scholarship need not limit itself
exclusively to books, homework, and burning of the
midnight oil. Neither does it have to concern merely
the struggle to get a text read and a paper completed,
or to out-study the other fellow and set the curve on
the math exam.

No, true scholarship is more than that.

A rhyme with which I became familiar early in life
was one found on a small clay plaque, picturing a
quaint old gentleman walking through the woods. The
rhyme went something like this :

"While some delve deep in musty books in quest of
learning rare,
Ye wise folk walk by trees and brooks and gain of
wisdom there."

That jingle made quite an impression on me. Here
was an old gentleman who apparently thought more
of nature than he did of school. Maybe he had never
gone to school. If he hadn't, he was still a wise man
the caption said so. Thus, reasoning in a childlike
fashion, I asked : why did anybody go to school ? Why
not just turn to nature, play hookey, and be smart?

The passing of a few years sometimes has a marked
effect on the logical reasoning of a child. Anyone at
Agnes Scott College would have to admit that books
and schools do play their part in the education of an
individual. One cannot, in our present society, be con-
sidered an educated man until he has spent some time
within the halls of an institution of learning and has
developed an acquaintanceship with a number of books
treating a variety of subjects.

The real question for us to consider, therefore, lies
not in the worth of books to one who would aspire to
be a scholar. Rather, we should shift the emphasis and
try to discover what it is in scholarship that is vital
to one's being and essential to the very "living" of life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson would declare three influ-
ences to be all-important in the education of "The
American Scholar." These are: the study of nature,
an understanding of the past as found in books, and
the dynamic application of one's knowledge to life
about him through action. He is quick to note a short-
coming of the student of his day, which is even more
apparent in the so-called "mass production" scholar
being turned out of many of our colleges today. Due
to an over-emphasis on books, he declares, we find the
scholar, "instead of Man-Thinking," the "bookworm."
Books themselves become, "the best of things, well-
used ; abused among the worst."

To Emerson, "Know thyself" and "Study nature"
became one and the same maxim. So today, we may
reflect, the earnest student and scholar should hunger
after the truth that exists about him in order to under-
stand himself. Enough of bare memorization of facts
and half-comprehension of the basic principles of science
or psychology the scholar should go farther, with a
spark of imagination and a creative interest in seeking
for something new and exciting to the mind.

James Russell Lowell, in his Harvard Anniversary
address in 1886, warned against the "pursuit of facts
which are to truth as a plaster cast to the marble
statue." Continuing this analog)-, we may well deplore
the confused and muddled mind of the plasterer, which,
pointed the right direction, and given time and insight,
could rearrange itself to become the mind of a master
sculptor.

The mind, then, is ever important. Numbering
among the scholar's tools are books, paper, and pencil ;
his motivation, perhaps, is furnished in part by a
particular course of study or a certain professor. By
far the greatest of his assets, though, is his mind,
which distinguishes him from all the other orders of
animal life. This mind is by nature an inquiring one
ever questioning ever seeking to find.

To the inquiring mind, all of life is like a jigsaw
puzzle. The pieces, at first appearance irregular and
unrelated, gradually take on sense and symmetry and
can be joined together. The final picture, while still
not complete to our human eyes, at least takes on a
semblance of the truth undergirding all of life.

In another sense, life may be considered the labora-
tory of the scholar. Here is found an immeasurable
store of nature's wealth that may be taken for analysis.
Here, too, is raw material sufficient for innumerable
syntheses to be carried out. Given an active mind, the
right spirit, and the will to perserve, the extent of the
laboratory work that may be undertaken is without
limit. To the eye of the scholar, a drop of water may
become an ocean ; a grain of sand, a mountain, and
a speck of moss, a forest.

If one is to realize the true spirit of scholarship,
however, he must not be content to live forever within
the realm of books, nature and lofty thoughts. Scholar-
ship extends beyond the school, beyond the study of
the materials of nature, beyond the field of logic.
Scholarship, in a word, is dynamic. It is a way of life.

There is a great deal of difference between a true
scholar and merely an instructed student. The one has
learned to make his scholarship dynamic and living;
the other has, through a course of study, only become
more exposed to bare facts and stagnant principles.

8

Scholarship demands action. It calls for the best that
lies within the scholar to interpret life as he has come
to see it.

Thus, we see that the spark of scholarship must not
be allowed to die after schooling days are over. The
first ideal of Agnes Scott College is high intellectual
attainment ; if we are to realize this ideal, we must
strive for something deeper than the memorization of
facts to pass a history test.

Ever inquiring, ever questioning, ever seeking to find
an answer, we must never cease to be a scholar. By
studying what lies close at hand, we may better under-
stand that which is not so readily apparent.

When far from the "sheltering arms," far from
books and library stacks, far from classroom desk and
science laboratory, the scholar still possesses a valuable
resource, that of life itself.

C. BENTON KLINE, JR.

Scholarship in the sense in which it has been dis-
cussed in these excellent presentations is only possible
so long as there are centers which serve to keep it alive.
I should like to have you consider briefly the role of
colleges and universities as communities of scholarship.

Society has long supported colleges for this function.
Here in the colleges of our land and of other lands,
time and resources are provided for research and
thought and for the communication of the fruits of
this research and thought. Men and women are freed
by society to pursue the truth in a way that private
citizens are not often able to do. Scholarship does not
reside peculiarly in the college and university. But in
these institutions there is the opportunity for sustained
and intensive work of the mind.

Colleges and universities are thus first of all com-
munities of research and thought. Here it is possible
to carry on the investigations in the natural sciences
and in the social sciences which serve to enrich the
life of man. Here historical scholarship seeks to under-
stand the richness of the past. Here literary and artistic
study and criticism may be pursued. And here we
find great endeavors of creative thought and specula-
tion that may broaden our understanding of all of life
about us.

This opportunity and function of the university or
college is perhaps more evident in Europe than in this
land. In Germany it is often the case that the pro-
fessor's lectures represent the latest results of his own
research and thought, so that each year there is a new
course. But even here, where our educational system
makes it mandatory that the same course be given year
after year, new insights, new views, new understand-
ings, are made a part of the work of the teacher.

I have been reading recently a good deal by and
about a British scholar, A. E. Taylor, who was a
professor of philosophy. It is interesting to follow
the development of his mind as the years passed. He
made himself an expert in the philosophy of Plato.
He wrote on Aristotle. Then he became interested
in the medieval period and the thought of Thomas
Aquinas. One day I was surprised to run across a
review by him of a translation of the works of
Descartes, in which his criticisms extended to the
felicity of the translation as well as to its philosophical
accuracy. Later I found a review of his on three books
on the problems of relativity in physics. Here was
a mind freed to study widely in the work of the
university.

But colleges and universities are also communities
which exist to communicate the insights gained by
study and research. This communication takes place
on many levels. There is the communication between
scholars, found in the professional and scholarly jour-
nals. Here the results of research are published for
criticism and acceptance or rejection by the larger
community of scholarship.

But many a teacher who never publishes a book
or article is daily communicating his insights to his
students. Teaching is the essential part of the college.
And teaching is scholarly communication just as surely
as published work.

Communication of scholarship seems necessary. There
is really no such thing as an isolated scholar, or scholar-
ship for its own sake. In Princeton there is a unique
institution. The Institute of Advanced Study, which
was founded as a place where scholars might be given
even more opportunity for their pursuits than teaching
affords. And while there are no classes in the usual
sense in this Institute, still from the very beginning
there have been seminars where the fruits of study and
experiment and creative thought have been shared.

You are members of a community of scholarship.
You enjoy the privilege of fellowship with others like
yourself here. But that fellowship centers about the
primary interest of this as of any college, the scholarly
endeavor. You must share this interest if you are to
enter fully into this community.

You do not remain here forever. But wherever you
are, you can continue the habits learned here and
sustain the interests developed here, though perhaps
in a less intensive way. More than this you can work
to insure the continuance of this college and others
like it against the pressures in our society which would
water down the function of educational institutions.
You can help to maintain the college in its highest
function a community of scholarship.

CLASS NEWS

Edited by Eloise Hardeman Ketchin

DEATHS

FACULTY AND STAFF

Mrs. Minnie May Davis Tenner,
secretary to Dr. Gaines, died in
August.

Harriet Daugheity, a member of
the nursing staff at Agnes Scott for
a number of years, died in January.
INSTITUTE

Julia Stokes and Florence Stokes
Mellinger lost their sister, Minnie
Stokes, Sept. 5.

Virginia George died March 1, 1955.

Margaret Jewett Cheshire, sister of
Mabel Jewett Miles and Martha Jew-
ett Academy, died Nov. 11.

Sue Lou Harwell Champion died
Nov. 20. Her daughter is Jennie
Champion Nardin, '35.

Nannie Lou Jossey Blackstock died
Jan. 22.

Selden Bryan Jones, husband of
Anais Cay Jones, died Dec. 27.
<\CADEMY

Mary Lou McLarty Johnston d
April 27, 1955.

Patti Hubbard Stacy died Oct.

Janie Louise Hunter WestmoreU
died Sept. 30.

1 908 Queenie Jones Sheperd d
Jan. 5.

1910 Dr. Samuel J. Crowe, brotl
of Flora Crowe Whitmire, died N
13.

1911 Sarah Gober Temple died J
21. Her sister is Eilleen Gober In:
tute.

1912 Hortense Boyle Bell died F
16, 1955.

1919 Robert Cotter Mizell, husbs
of Louise Felker Mizell, died Dec.
1921 James Houston Johnston,
ther of Eugenia Johnston Grift
died Feb. 7.

1925 LeRoy E. Rogers, Sr., fatl
of Margaret Rogers Law, died Oct.

Elliott M. Stewart, husband of 1
bekah Harman Stewart, died Jan.
1 929 J. H. Maddox, husband of 1
sie McNair Maddox, died Sept. 3, 19
1930 Henry W. Pittman, III, s
of Sara Townsend Pittman a
Henry, died Oct. 23.
1932 Susan Glenn lost her fat?
in the spring of 1955.

Mrs. Howard Stakely, mother
Louise Stakely, died Nov. 26.
1 933 W. D. Wise, husband of Luc
Stein Wise, died last fall.
1 934 Mrs. Charles W. Tway, moi
er of Liza Tway Autrey, died Dec.
1 935 Jennie Champion Nardin 1<
her father in the summer of 19;
her aunt in October, and her motr
in November.

10

Alsine Shutze Brown lost her mo
er this year.

1936 Helen Ford Lake died Ma
23, 1954.

1 947 Marjorie Harris Melvil
four-month-old daughter died 1
summer while undergoing he
surgery.

Barbara Wilson Montague lost
mother in April, 1955, and her fat
died in November.

1950 A. S. Wilkinson, father
Nancy Wilkinson and Sara Cather
Wilkinson, '48, died Sept. 8.

1951 Elaine Schubert's father t
killed in an automobile accident
the spring of 1955.

1953 William Francis Thorn;
father of Anne Thomson Sheppa
died Sept. 19.

1 955 Renee G a 1 a n t i Feldnu
mother died last fall.

\\ :; ^

Return Postage Guaranteed by Alumnae Quarterly, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia

AGNES SCOTT

alumnae quarterly

In this issue

Laney

Hayes

Grafton

Summer

1957

THE

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

OF

AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE

OFFICERS

MARY PRIM FOWLER '29

President
BETTY ELLISON CANDLER '49

Vice-President
PATRICIA COLLINS ANDRETTA '28

Vice-President
BELLA WILSON LEWIS '34

Vice-President
ANNETTE CARTER COLWELL '27

Secretary
BETTY MEDLOCK LACKEY '42

Treasurer

TRUSTEES

CATHERINE WOOD MARSHALL '36
MARY WARREN READ '29

CHAIRMEN

SARA CARTER MASSEE '29

Nominations
RUTH RYNER LAY '46

Special Events
LORTON LEE '49

Vocational Guidance
MARY WALLACE KIRK '1 1

Education
LEONE BOWERS HAMILTON '26

Publications
MARTHA ESKRIDGE LOVE '33

Class Officers
MARYELLEN HARVEY NEWTON '46

House
DOROTHY CHEEK CALLOWAY '29

Entertainment

LOCAL
CLUB PRESIDENTS

ALICE GLENN LOWRY '29

Atlanta

SARA FULTON '21

Decatur

MARGARET ANN KAUFMANN '52

Atlanta Junior
MARY PHILLIPS HEARN '49

Southwest Atlanta

STAFF

ANN WORTHY JOHNSON '38

Director of Alumnae Affairs
ELOISE HARDEMAN KETCHIN

House Manager
DOROTHY WEAKLEY '56

Office Manager

MEMBER

AMERICAN ALUMNI
COUNCIL

The AGNES SCOTT
Alumnae Quarterly

Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Ga.
Volume 35 Number 1

Summer, 1957

CONTENTS

EMMA MAY LANEY

"REALMS OF GOLD"

SUE MITCHELL '45 EXHIBITS

George P. Hayes

Emma May Lane),

ON BEING ABOVE AVERAGE

Martha Stackhouse Grafton '30

THE WHAT, WHY, AND HOW
OF AGNES SCOTT

CLASS NEWS

Nancy Edwards '5S

Sue Lile '58

Martha Meyer '58

Eloise Hardeman Ketchin

Cover. Miss Laney and Robert Frost admire a prize-winning photograph
of Mr. Frost. Photo by Charles Pugh. Other photos in this issue are by
Gaspar-Ware, except those on p. 6 by Oliver Baker.

The Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly is published four times a year
(November, February, April and July) by the Alumnae Association of
Agnes Scott College at Decatur, Georgia. Contributors to the Alumnae
Fund receive the magazine. Yearly subscription, $2.00. Single copy 50 cents.
Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office of Decatur, Georgia,
under Act of August 24, 1912.

EMMA MAY LANEY

George P. Hayes

Dr. Hayes

OF A BOYHOOD teacher Thomas Wolfe
wrote, "More than anyone else I have ever
known she succeeded in getting under my skull
with an appreciation of what is fine and altogether
worth while in literature." Seldom does a teacher
get under our skulls. And when one does, language
fails to explain why. Qualities of personality can be
listed, but in the friend and teacher we honor today
the active force of this intense "liver of life" defies
formulation. To adapt Dr. Johnson's words on Fal-
staff, "Unimitated, unimitable friend and teacher, how
shall I describe thee?"

Students going into her class for the first time became
aware that they were entering on a new dimension of
living, that they were thrillingly alive because the
teacher was, that they were swept up and carried along
by her boundless intellectual energy and enthusiasm,
and that they were left breathless by her ability to
express so many ideas so quickly. She was constantly
fighting the clock.

She gave everything she had to her students and
demanded something comparable in return. In each
day's assignment for more than thirty years she
found a fierce delight as if she were discovering the
poem or the novel for the first time; she had a touch
of genius in her skill in sharing her experience with
others; but she was even more eager for the students
to engage the problem independently for themselves.
Her mind "the quick forge and workinghouse of
thought" was often active, outside of class, in search-
for fresh sources of appeal to students in an ancient
text, in working out new connections with other liter-
ature and with present-day life, and in contriving new

devices for stabbing youthful spirits broad awake. The
violinist Milstein says, "Up to the very minute when
I raise my bow, I keep trying to devise fresh ap-
proaches to concertos I have played dozens of times."
In these ways our friend made works of art a warm
reality; she brought them "into the intimate home of
the mind and heart." Mere books no longer, they were
"heightened moments of life" which she carried across
to the imaginations of others by the fire of her spirit.
Whatever she says has the knack of fastening itself in
some cranny of the mind and of remaining permanently
alive there.

Nor is this all. Have you never heard her sum-
marize, in strict outline form, a sermon or lecture in
language clearer and more graphic than the original?
Writes one of her former students:

She is the first person who ever gave me an inkling
of what intellectual rigor is . . . She was quick to
reject inaccuracy or sloppiness of any sort . . . The
apprehension of her quality was a good thing for a
lazy freshman like me to be stirred by.
To enter her class was a searching confrontation.
For fifty minutes one's mind was totally alert and con-
centrated on the material of the moment. One had to be
prepared in body, mind and spirit. On the other hand,
from the teacher herself one could expect absolute hon-
esty, directness and frankness. One knew that she was
ever extending her own intellectual frontiers and that
she was really interested in each individual student.

In departmental council our friend expressed her
views with fluency, conciseness, trenchancy, and shrewd
common sense. It was her glory that she never let us
rest content in the present state of affairs ; with a
passionate earnestness that swept all before it she would

1

stir us to fresh efforts to maintain standards. She was
usually the initiator and by common agreement ever
the efficient organizer and planner in departmental
projects.

In the larger community of the college was ever
teacher immediately and intimately aware when prob-
lems and misfortunes confronted individuals, or swifter
to help, or more practical or resourceful in counsel ?
Has any teacher fought so many battles for others and
for causes always beyond self? Did any teacher ever
care more for this goodly fellowship of Agnes Scott,
for its ideals, or for expanding the horizons of the
students so that they could find in literature "the model
and the revelation of their humanity"?

Last year I was reading from a work by a teacher
a school-master of four centuries ago. Roger Ascham
has this to say :

Surely I perceive that sentence of Plato to be true,
which saith that there is nothing better in a common-

wealth than that there should always be one or other
excellent man whose life and virtue should pluck
forward the will, diligence, labor and hope of all
others, that following in his footsteps they might
come to the same end whereunto labor, learning and
and virtue had conveyed him before.
When I first read that sentence, I wrote in the margin
the initials E. M. L.

Emma May Laney, your teaching is not over, for
you are, and will continue to be, alive in the minds
and hearts of thousands in their "study of imagina-
tion" and your leaven is actively working there. Nor
can you really leave this college. For Agnes Scott is
what it is partly because of you ; and your students and
other friends with whom you have shared the riches of
your spirit will always find you here.

Then let our Schoolmaster Roger Ascham phrase
our wishes for you: May you have "life, with health,
free leisure and liberty, with good liking and a merry
heart."

IIOM ER NOISLE FARM

KIPTON, VEItMONT

lU*^L^cc4?l+l<yiH *****

tTSWf frvo

This letter from poet Robert Frost to President Alston is
now in the Frost Collection in the McCain Library. One
purpose of the Laney Fund is to preserve and enlarge the
collection.

It is over Miss Laney' s protests that we publish her article on books and reading.
(She gave this as a talk to an alumnae club last year.) As a former student,
Belle Miller McM aster '53 said, in presenting the Laney Fund to the College:
"Miss Laney demanded the best we could give and then a little more that we
didn't knoiv we had"

44

REALMS OF GOLD"

Emma May Laney

THE MOST HEATED discussion of the past
summer concerned "Why Johnny Can't Read."
I have no solution to that problem, and am
at least equally disturbed by another: Why Johnny
(and his sister Jane) don't read after adolescence. For
in spite of the increase in paper-backs and of statistics
that purport to show that people bought more books
than baseball tickets in 1954, it seems to me that the
gentle art of reading books is no longer the indoor
sport of many people.

True, there are exceptions like Miss McKinney
whose life is in reading and who in her late eighties
seizes the latest novel or biography or Greek play as
avidly as a child does a comic. And there is my hair-
dresser who fills the minutes as he sets my hair with
enthusiastic talk of his reading since last he saw me;
he buys for his eight-year-old son's future reading
such novels as To Hell and Back because he wants the
boy to know more accurately than the movie based on
the book shows what his father suffered in the war. I
am sure that some of you are among these.

Nevertheless, there keeps echoing in my mind the
story that President Eisenhower said months after his
election to the Presidency that he had not read a book
since assuming office. And year after year as college
students pass through my classes, I find them more
and more unread although more widely informed about
public affairs, modern art, and music than were Soph-
omores in my day. I know, moreover, that the increas-
ing pressures of life make finding time for reading in-
creasingly difficult for me. So I was astonished and
skeptical when a recent speaker at the college said that
a group of men on the train with him agreed that the
average business man reads one book a week.

My conviction that reading books is fast becoming
obsolete leads me to consider what difference it makes
. . . why does life seem the poorer for the loss? The
answer, in my opinion, lies in the nature of books
and the durable saticfactions the}' bring to life. I mean
by hooks in this connection what De Quincy calls the
literature of power: those novels, plavs, and poems in
which have been expressed in words of beauty the
dreams and fancies, the hopes and fears of mankind.
It is reading in such literature that Keats calls travel-
ling in realms of gold. It is of such books that Carlyle
said, "The true University in these days is a collection
of books," and Carl Sandburg said years ago in our
own chapel, "Education consists largely in finding
one's own masterpieces." Such books have the power
to seize the permanent and universal in human experi-
ence and to present it so as to stir the emotions and
imaginations of the reader. This power may even be
found in some measure in books that fall clearly below
the masterpiece category, and so as I speak this after-
noon of three of the durable satisfactions to be found
in reading, I shall illustrate at times by contemporary-
novels.

First of the sheer joy of reading. I experienced it
very vividly last week. A week's teaching had ended
at noon on Saturday and had been followed by mar-
keting, hanging curtains, getting out winter clothes,
cooking ahead for the next week. By eight o'clock
I was worn out, and in spite of the fact that every-
where my eye turned I saw something in the apart-
ment that needed doing, I got into bed and picked
up dutifullv but wearily a novel by the writer who
was scheduled to lecture at the college on Monday
night. Soon I found myself chuckling with delight

and even laughing aloud (a rare experience for me) as
I followed Randall Jarrell's witty satire on a Progres-
sive College in his novel, Pictures from an Institution.
Reluctantly at midnight I turned off my light, all
fatigue gone. You have had similar experiences of
pleasure in being carried by the imagination away
from the routine and problems of the day. Such is
the charm of the fairy tale for the child and the mystery
and detective story for the adult.

Escape is often necessary, but the value of books
is such that even while taking us away from our present
problems, they can often satisfy another need . . .
the need to know more of the world we live in. They
can tear away the walls of the prison house made by
time and space, widen our horizons, and lift us out
of our prejudices and provincialism. When we read
the Iliad and the Odyssey, the ringing plains of Troy
and Greece of Hector's day become more real than
the domestic problems of our next door neighbor.
Anya Seton's Katherine, published last year, made the
fourteenth century with its French and peasant wars,
its recurrent Black Plague, its human problems of love
in a world of arranged marriages, more vivid than our
own political campaigns.

Not only do books triumph over time, but also as
we read, the barriers of space disappear. Pearl Buck's
Good Earth and My Many Worlds transport the
reader into China as surely as a Pan American plane
could. Nectar in the Sieve makes peasant life in India
a pleasant reality. As Edward R. Murrow says in his
TV program, We Are There.

Barriers of prejudice vanish or are weakened under
the power of books. I learned more of labor problems
from Hunky, whose author I can't even remember,
than I learned from six weeks of teaching immigrant
working girls one summer at the Bryn Mawr Summer
School for Industrial Workers. Those of us who have
grown up with the negro tragedy can get a better
understanding of race-relations from Faulkner's
Intruder in the Dust and Alan Paton's Cry the Be-
loved Country than through our actual experience.

Such enlargement is good, but books can answer a
higher need. They often have a strengthening and
tonic power. Latent in their beauty are ideas that arm
and fortify the spirit. They do this by making us
understand better our own experience. In the first
place, since the material of literature is the permanent
in human experience, it reassures us with the knowledge
that our joys and sorrows are not individual but the
common lot of man. As Housman says,

We are for a certainty not the first . . .
The troubles of our proud and angry

dust
Are from eternity and shall not fail.

Or in the familiar words of John Donne, "No man is
an island . . . Every man is a part of a continent."
So rejoicing in the glittering silk of a girl's dress, we
can say with Herrick,

Whenas in silk my Julia goes
Then, then, me thinks how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes.
Struggling with doubt, we can recall Carlyle's passing
from "The Everlasting No" to "The Everlasting Yea."
Examples of this identity of our experience with that
in books are innumerable, but an impressive instance
of the one-ness of human experience came to me at
the time of the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby.
As we all were realizing that the tragedy was the
result of Lindbergh's fame, I was reminded by a
friend of the parallel in Euripide's play The Trojan
Women, written six hundred years before Christ. The
seige of Troy had failed, and the Trojan women,
pawns in the game of war, were waiting to be divided
among the Greek victors. Hector's mother and wife
were discussing the future of Hector's child when a
messenger arrived. His face bore evil news and pre-
pared them for his words that the Greeks, not daring
to let the son of so brave a father live, had ordered
the child's death. Andromache, the mother, turned
to her child and said, "Go, my best beloved . . . Thy
father was too valiant ; that is why they slay thee."
Words spoken the day of the twentieth century tragedy
could not better have expressed the situation than these
written six centuries before Christ.

Again books may help us see our own lives in
perspective. Each of us lives in a welter of impressions.
Life comes to us in fragments of each day's happenings
which push us from one detail to another so that the
pattern of the whole is lost. Literature by its nature
makes a selection of these elements, brings form out of
chaos, and presents experience so that we can see it as
a whole. Although we may not understand our own
tragedies and disappointments, we can see why King
Lear had to suffer for a moment of passionate impetu-
osity at his daughter's refusal to express in words her
love for him. The causes that led to the disaster of
the man across the street may not be clear, but we do
see why Becky Sharp's unscrupulous selfishness re-
sulted in misfortune to her. The pattern of cause
and effect in the relations of parent to child is clearly
seen in literature from the time of the Biblical Jacob
to Meredith's Richard Feverel to Clemence Dane's
The Flower Girls. Even such a farce as Betty Mc-
Donald's Onions in the Stew throws into perspective
the relations of a mother and her adolescent daughters.
A third aspect of this fortifying power of books
lies in their renewal of the reader's faith in man's
nobility. This power lies not only in the great Greek

and Shakespearean tragedies but also in such contempo-
rary novels as Hemingway's Old Man of the Sea and
Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country. Hemingway's
taut, tense, graphic story of an old Gulf fisherman
who after teriffic struggle finally hooks his monster
marlin only to have his boat towed out to by sharks
who gradually eat all the meat, is a superb fish story.
It might command the attention of any fisherman, but
more than that it is a symbol of man's struggle to
victory and his steadfast courage in the loss of what
he has with pain and work so hardly won . . . almost
a miracle play of man's tenacity and courage.

Cry the Beloved Country is a story of comfort in
desolation. A humble Zulu minister from the country
goes to Johannesburg to seek his sick sister, finds that
his brother has left the church, his sister has become
a prostitute, and his son is under trial for murder.
Pastor Kumulo, thus superhumanly tried, returns
home with such quiet acceptance of his tragedy, such

compassionate understanding of his people's need, and
such determination to help them that he gives new
meaning to the Christian conception of love.

Such books make the reader exclaim with Hamlet,
"What a piece of work is man ! How noble in reason !
how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god !" We may not be able
to rise to an equal mobility, but we are lifted out of
ourselves by it.

Books, then, can satisfy our need to escape from life,
can increase our knowledge of life, and can fortify
our spirits for life. These are only three of the endur-
ing qualities that I have found in them, but they have
been sufficient to make me give my years to the teach-
ing of literature, to make me sad that Johnny and
Jane so often stop reading after college, and to make
me determined in the welter of ever increasingly com-
plex life to sanctify "little sabbaths" for reading.

Miss Laney is living with her sister at 1684
Harrison St., Apt. 4, Denver, Colo. She visited
the College in January when Robert Frost
returned.

SUE MITCHELL EXHIBITS

SUE MITCHELL '45 has been in New York for
several years studying art and painting. She had
her first one-man show hung in the Peridot Gal-
lery in New York during December and January. At
home now, in Copper Hill, Tennessee, Sue is con-
tinuing her painting of nature.

The New York Times, December 21, 1956, said of
her work: "Sue Mitchell, whose latest semi-abstract,
impressionistic paintings are at the Peridot Gallery,
820 Madison Ave., approaches nature with all the
stealthy caution and concentration of a duck-shooter.
She peers through swirls of underbrush to catch birds
strutting and plants growing every which way. It is a
form of naturalist intimism, and the paint, as well as
the warm local color, communicates the excitement of
her communings with the outdoors."

Hilton Kramer reviewed Sue's show in the Decem-
ber, 1956, Arts magazine, discussing especially her four
paintings done within the year, Morgan Hens, Flower
Bed, Landscape and Bouquet. He defines the particular
quality of her work as "a lyricism which is powerful
and exciting." He says that "the lyrical mode is a
good deal more serious than the emotional athleticism
which is made to pass for it would lead one to be-
lieve; and if it means anything in the visual arts, it
means that, like its counterpart in verse, it embodies
an experience of short duration which is both pro-
foundly affective in its immediacy and rich in impli-
cations for the whole life of feeling of which it is an
exceptional moment."

Mr. Kramer thinks Morgan Hens is the best of
Sue's new paintings, and he sums up his critique of
her show with : "What she does have is a point of view
specifically, a lyrical insight into natural phenomena
and into the painterly means currently available for
representing that insight to her contemporaries with-
out nostalgia or bombast. She thus stakes out no new
ground, but her work does give us an admirable ex-
ample of what is possible at the present moment for
painters who have something to say."

Although addressed to the campus community on Honors Day, October, 1956,
Mrs. Grafton's words go directly to all Agnes Scott alumnae. Mrs. Grafton
is Dean of Mary Baldwin College, Staunton, Virginia, and her twin daughters,
Letitia and Elizabeth, are also Agnes Scott alumnae, Class of 1955.

ON BEING ABOVE AVERAGE

Martha Stackhouse Grafton '30

AS AN ALUMNA OF Agnes Scott, I have
always felt it a duty and a privilege to try to
interest good students in applying for admission
here. In talking with one prospect who did not know
I was an Agnes Scott graduate, I asked her to con-
sider this college as her future alma mater. She im-
mediately told me she would not for two reasons: one,
all Agnes Scott alumnae wear their stockings with the
seams crooked and two, it is so "hard" at Agnes Scott
that only girls who are "brains" go there. I quickly re-
adjusted my hose and assumed my three-syllable man-
ner, but at the same time assured her that most of the
Agnes Scott girls I had known a generation ago and
most of those I know 7 now care about their appearance
as much as most American women. As for the charge
that the courses are difficult and that this college appeals
only to intellectuals, 1 told her that we are proud of
our academic standards which seem reasonable enough
in view of the purposes of higher education and that I
did admit the general average at Agnes Scott was high.
I placed all of you not just those whose names are
on the honor roll in the above average category.

It is a strange thing, but a good many people I
know would rather be thought untruthful than intel-
lectual. It is respectable to tell a mother that her
daughter is beautiful but dumb, but you cannot safely
say that a girl is plain but brilliant. Franklin Henry
Giddings, one of America's famous sociologists and
successor to Woodrow Wilson as a teacher at Bryn
Mawr, tells somewhere about a visit he once made to
a fashionable club. There he saw the dowager of the
group sitting in one corner, reading what he presumed
to be a sophisticated magazine. He sidled up to her
and jokingly inquired: "Madame, I don't suppose in-
tellectual conversation would be tolerated in this club?"
"Oh, no," she said, "nothing like that."

In a recent issue of McCall's magazine, I noticed
on Eleanor Roosevelt's page, If You Ask Me, this

question: "As a visitor to the United States, I would
like to ask why your people are so afraid of 'intellec-
tuals.' In Europe we welcome this quality in our
leaders." Her answer was as follows: "I do not think
we are really, any of us, afraid of intellectuals in this
country. This idea, it seems to me, has been more or
less manufactured by certain politicians. We do not like
pretentiousness, and when people try to show off their
superior wisdom, I think the average American is
likely to be amused rather than admiring. Real knowl-
edge and education are admired in this country as
much as in any other country."

My comment on this is that in no country is pre-
tentiousness admired, but sometimes we Americans do
tend to be suspicious of those with good education and
those who speak the English language with correctness
and precision. A recent candidate for governor in the
Commonwealth of Virginia had the charge made
against him by his opponent that he had been a Rhodes
scholar. That seemed to be a derogatory thing to say
about him.

Since I am not a metaphysician, I cannot spend too
much time defining the this and that, and I am not
sure that I can tell exactly what an intellectual is. If
you want a definition, see the October 8th copy of
Newsweek. Certainly all of us who graduate from
Agnes Scott are not really intellectuals, but I assume
that we are above the general average and that some
hope to be intellectuals. I also assume that those who
do aspire to be termed intellectuals are not despised on
this campus. I have noticed on this campus and on others
that the students who excel in academic fields are fre-
quently elected to major student offices and, upon oc-
casion, to the beauty section.

One of the few quotations I remember from my one
philosophy course at Agnes Scott was from Spinoza and
it was something like this: All excellent things are as
difficult as they are rare. We must admit that being

above average is not easy and that if you are consider-
ably above the average you are, statistically and other-
wise, a rare individual. I take it that in this group we
assume it is a good thing to be above the average. I
take it that we assume our country and our world need
intellectuals. If those things can be taken as givens,
then we can develop two theses: one is that it costs
something to be above average, and two, that there
are rewards to those in the above the average group.
Now, what are the costs of being above average in
the realm of the mind ? One must pay a price to be
above average in any field, but we are speaking here
of superior knowledge and wisdom rather than beauty
or athletics or dancing.

Use of Time

The first cost is in terms of time. If you want to be
above average intellectually, then you must pay the
price in choice of activity. You can't play bridge every
night, you can't belong to every club under heaven,
you probably can't even be thought of as a good scout,
always lounging around the club house. You have to
engage in those activities that mark you as an intel-
lectual sort of person and you honestly have to like
those things. People quickly mark you as a phony if
you only pretend to be an intellectual. One of the
most unusual men of our day who died several years ago
was Dr. Douglass Southall Freeman of Richmond,
editor of the Richmond News Leader for over thirty
years. He wrote the four-volume biography of Robert
E. Lee which won the Pulitzer prize in 1935. He had
completed five volumes of the biography of George
Washington at the time of his death. But his activities
as historian were only part of his life. He served as
chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University
of Richmond, taught a course in journalism at Colum-
bia University, and was on many church and civic
committees. He was way above average and of course
he gave up many ordinary things to accomplish all he
did. It is said that he had two days within every 24-
hour period. He would get up around 4 o'clock in the
morning, go to his office, write his editorials, give his
early morning broadcast over the radio, then go home
for a period of sleep in the middle of the day. When
be got up, he was ready for his research and writing.
The guiding rule of his life, displayed in a placard
over his desk, was: "Time along is irreplacable ; waste
it not." While few of us here will follow in the
footsteps of one so completely disciplined about the use
of time as Dr. Freeman, we must mark it down that
we will accomplish nothing unless we have the dis-
crimination to use our time well. One must choose her
goals and use her time to accomplish those things in

life which seem most worthwhile to her. A system of
priorities must be established.

Another cost in being above average is in reading.
It has been said that those who do not read are no
better off than those who cannot read. Now we happen
to live in an age in which reading is not too popular.
Lord Northcliffe, proprietor of the sensational type of
newspaper in England, was the inventor of the modern
tabloid. Of him it has been said that "he got out a
paper for people who couldn't think, and it was a great
success; then he got out a paper for people who couldn't
read, and it was an even greater success." One won-
ders how we will have any abstract thinkers in the
future with the emphasis now put on picture magazines,
TV, radio, etc. Not long ago, I read about the low
estate of the book business in our country. The presi-
dent of one of the big publishing companies asserted
that the annual farm value of the peanut crop in the
U. S. was 147 million dollars, while publishers realized
only 100 million for their crop. More humiliating
perhaps is another comparison. We Americans spend
approximately twice as much on dog food as on
books. To accomplish anything we must be thinkers.
I noticed in a description of Sal Maglie, the remark-
able pitcher for the Dodgers, that he frequently seems
distant and untalkative. His explanation is "I'm always
thinking." He is thinking how he can pitch to the next
batter to get him out at the plate. I do not belittle
that kind of thinking, but I do say that in the realm
of abstract thought we must read and read and read
in order to attain the level of thinking necessary to
deal with the problems of our day. If you want to be
among those above average, consider your reading. Do
you read anything beyond the daily assignments ? What
do you read when you are on your own time ? Perhaps
you have to ration your reading for fun as I do be-
cause otherwise I would read entirely too many mys-
teries !

Assumption of Responsibility

But there is another cost of being above average
which should be mentioned at this point. It is the as-
sumption of responsibility. The intellectual diletant is
not an admirable figure. The person who goes to school
all his life but never finds time to become a part of his
community is not the kind of person to be of service
to home, or church, or nation. Learning is to be shared.
It must be put to work. No one would deny that there
may be for the initiated great enjoyment in learning
for its own sake, but we cannot afford to live in ivory
towers. The man or woman who has had unusual op-
portunities must have a feeling of noblesse oblige. The
body politic needs intellectuals. An interesting book

by Robert Lynd entitled Knowledge for What brings
out the importance of putting our learning to work.
The practical man of affairs works by a small time-
dial over which the second hand of immediacy hurries
incessantly. "Never mind the long past and the indefi-
nite future, insists the clattering little monitor, but do
this, fix this now, before tomorrow morning." Im-
mediate relevance has not been regarded as so impor-
tant as ultimate relevance. The scholar is likely to feel
that he is caught, in the words of one of Auden's
poems, "Lecturing on navigation while the ship is
going down." Ideally, the above-average woman pos-
sesses through her liberal education the great wisdom
of the past and has the judgment and ability to meet
the varied problems of life. She will always be ready
to respond to community needs.

Subservience to Majorities

There is one other cost of being above average and
that is the danger of being misunderstood and ridi-
culed. We all know of the many jokes about the brain-
truster of a generation ago and the egghead of today.
There is a popular caricature of the above-average per-
son which is usually unfair, but pretty well entrenched
in the public mind. The one who lives above the aver-
age frequently has to suffer the consequences of being
a non-conformist. For this reason, the prisons of his-
tory have been filled with two kinds of people, the
worst and the best. "The death cell in Athens had in
it the scum of Attica, but also Socrates, the wisest
soul in Greece. The jail in Phillippi had in it the
scoundrels of the countryside, but Paul as well, the
Apostle of Christ. Bedford jail was filled with de-
bauchees, but there, too, John Bunyan dreamed The
Pilgrim's Progress. And Worcester jail contained the
riff-raff of the country, but George Fox, too, father
of the Quakers and a man of peace." (Fosdick, Twelve
Tests of Character.) If you are going to be above
average, you will frequently not go along with the
majority. You will perform a service to the democratic
ideal if you learn how to deal with controversial ideas.
One of our leaders has said: "There is nothing more
democratic than intelligent and devoted non-conform-
ity because it means that the individual is giving his
freedom and courage to the service of the whole. Sub-
servience to majorities, as to any other authority, tends
to make a vigorous democracy impossible. So, if some-
times you have to pay the price of being thought pe-
culiar because you are above average, that is exactly
what being above average means. You can't be like
everybody else and be anything but average."

Somehow the idea that the salvation of the individual
and of society depends upon conformity and adjustment

must be attacked. This is the diagnosis David Riesman
made in his book, The Lonely Crowd, when he charged
that we are now in an "other directed society." We
have lost the power of making up our own minds.
Someone has said that this change may be indicated in
the revision of the old nursery rhyme which used to
state :

This little pig went to market

This little pig stayed home

This little pig had roast beef

This little pig had none

This little pig said wee, wee, wee
all the way home.
Today none stay home, all have roast beef if any do,
and all say wee, wee, wee all the way home.

This desire to be like everyone else and do what
everyone else does seems to be firmly implanted at an
early date in the lives of most of us. Recently some
children were interviewed about their favorite TV
show. One of them indicated her horror of being above
average with this comment : I like Superman better
than the others because they can't do everything Super-
man can do. Batman can't fly and that is very impor-
tant. The interviewer asked this child : Would you
like to be able to fly? I would like to fly if everybody
else did, but otherwise it would be kind of conspicuous.
A politician put it this way: "Every public action
which isn't customary, either is wrong or, if it is right,
is a dangerous precedent. It follows that nothing should
ever be done for the first time!"

The total cost of being above average is high in the
use of time, in selection of reading, in participation in
affairs, and maybe highest of all in being different
from the masses.

Rewards

But if there is a high price, there is a big reward.

Some want to be above average in order to have
greater earning power. It is axiomatic today that a
college education, which less than a fifth of our people
have a chance to enjoy even for a year or two, is worth
a good bit in dollars and cents. Lifetime earnings show
that a college education is worth about $100,000 more
than a high school education and about $150,000 more
than grade school training. But I doubt if many here
have thought of college education directly in these
terms.

Another advantage is the sense of participating in the
more important outreaches of the human spirit. There
is a certain excitement and self consciousness in being
different from your fellows if your actions are approved
by your conscience and you know in your heart you
are doing the right thing. The martyrs undoubtedly

had that feeling and were buoyed up by it. There is a
great loss of self respect if we do not follow where
conscience leads. A century or so past, Henry David
Thoreau wrote: "If a man does not keep pace with
his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a differ-
ent drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, how-
ever measured or far away." Much of society marches
to the loud drums of fashion and custom and desire
for material satisfactions. Sometimes these things seem
so important that those who heed these drums have
little sympathy with those who are out of step. Yet it
is well to remember that if a man does not follow the
general trend perhaps it is because he hears a different
drummer. One of the rewards of the intellectual is
keeping step to the music he hears.

Most important of rewards is that which comes to
the follower of Jesus when he feels that he has lived
worthily according to the talents entrusted to him.
Luke 12:46 states this important and sometime rather
terrifying truth: For unto whomsoever much is given,
of him shall be much required. If you have it in you
to be above the average and refuse to live up to your
capacity, then you are failing yourself, your fellowman,
and even God himself.

Warning

I cannot close these remarks on being above average
without a postscript or two of warning. Pride, you
remember, was regarded by the theologians of the
middle ages as the first of the seven deadly sins, and
I am sure it comes at the head of the list today too.
Sometimes we feel so superior to our fellow men whom
we regard as common and philistine that we become
insufferable. I believe that is one of the major reasons
for the distrust some have of the intellectual. He brings
on himself at least part of the misunderstanding. I
don't mean that we should adopt a Uriah Heep atti-
tude toward what we stand for, but I doubt, too, if
we can honestly feel superior. Jesus, the only sinless
man who ever lived, never boasted of his moral super-
iority. Sometimes the reason our moral and mental
superiority is not followed by others is the unattractive
way we have of acting puffed up over our virtues. We
actually repel those around us.

Sometimes too the person with superior educational
advantages assumes that he is much smarter than the
so-called man of the street. It may not be so at all.
A young Polish girl in a New York school, asked to
write an essay on the difference between an educated
and an intelligent man, summed up the matter: "An
educated man gets his thinks from someone else, but
an intelligent man works his own thinks." All of us,

regardless of educational background, need to work
our own thinks.

And how will you be recognized as being above
average? It won't be by your diploma, your Phi Beta
Kappa key, or any other outward symbol. My husband
was the son of a missionary and had little money in
college for extras. When time came in his junior year
for the class rings to be bought, he did not place an
order with the secretary. One of the boys came to him
in amazement and said, "Well, if you don't buy a ring,
how will anyone know you have been to college?"
Surely there must be a number of ways by which the
above average person will be known. I believe I know
at least some of them he will be recognized by his
thought, his speech, his acts and finally by his
humility.

Humility must inevitably result from even super-
ficial communion with the wisdom of the ages. In col-
lege you are in contact with the best minds of the past
and with the best thought of the present. Standing be-
fore this vast accumulation of knowledge one must
naturally be humble in her approach to it.

Herbert Hoover's comments on The Uncommon
Man summarize what I have been trying to say:

"In my opinion, we are in danger of developing a
cult of the Common Man, which means a cult of medi-
ocrity. But there is at least one hopeful sign : I have
never been able to find out just who this Common
Man is. In fact, most Americans especially women
will get mad and fight if you try calling them com-
mon. This is hopeful because it shows that most peo-
ule are holding fast to an essential fact in American
life. We believe in equal opportunity for all, but we
know that this includes the opportunity to rise to lead-
ership. In other words to be uncommon!

"Let us remember that the great human advances
have not been brought about by mediocre men and
women. They were brought about by distinctly un-
common people with vital sparks of leadership. Many
great leaders were of humble origin, but that alone
was not their greatness.

"It is a curious fact that whehn you get sick you
want an uncommon doctor; if your car breaks down
you want an uncommonly good mechanic ; when we
get into war we want dreadfully an uncommon admiral
and an uncommon general.

"I have never met a father and mother who did not
want their children to grow up to be uncommon men
and women. May it always be so. For the future of
America rests not in mediocrity, but in the constant
renewal of leadership in every phase of our national
life."

10

These statements on what Agnes Scott means to current students were pre-
sented in a chapel program this spring by the newly-elected, presidents of the
three main campus organizations.

THE WHAT, WHY, AND HOW OF AGNES SCOTT

Nancy Edwards, Sue Lile, Martha Meyer 1958

Top: Nancy
Edwards;
Bottom: Sue
Lile, Martha
Meyer

THE "WHAT" OF AGNES SCOTT

Nancy Edwards '58
President, Student Government 1957-58

SUE AND MARTHA AND I met to organize
our talks for today. For awhile we thought of
our three groups and our plans for the coming
year. Then we came to an impasse : at the bottom of
each of our thoughts was the same idea, the same de-
sire to communicate in, to convey to you a consuming
enthusiasm, a dedication, a life-giving love for Agnes
Scott. We discovered that it is simply from different
interest centers that we are about to approach the
same purpose to hold to what we have here, to ex-
pand enough to fit it into ourselves, the community,
while we build, perhaps microscopically, upon it,
through worship, fellowship, recreation, order and
government.

Perhaps if we had heard positive expressions of feel-
ing for this place to off-set normal growls and mut-
terings, we would not have stumbled so long before we

1

discovered what there really is to gain and to give.
So we shall attempt to present the "what," the "why,"
the "how" of Agnes Scott.

So what do we have here? To what do we belong?
Define purpose. This community is established be-
cause we can do together what none of us can do
alone.

From my own experience and from contact with
those who have experienced more, I find that we do
live in a different environment.

We are extremely fortunate that we are able to
dive for education, learning, in a purer form. Careful
selection of applicants to Agnes Scott eliminates those
who would necessarily pull the level of the lectures
and assignments to a less demanding level. And this
is good. Intellectual endeavor is made naturally a
vital part of our lives. It is not queer; it is not an
escape. We start here, as it were, together from the
second step.

And those who teach us ... I am staggered over
and over again as I continue to discover the quality of
our faculty, administration, and staff. One good look
in the catalogue affords overwhelming proof of ex-
tended qualification to instruct. And beyond this they
teach with heart. They care. And we are few enough
in number so that this may be recognized.

The religious atmosphere here is of similar charac-
ter. Agnes Scott is admittedly and proudly a Christian
college, and all types of endeavor are to be synthesized
in seeking and striving for ultimate truth. This reality
is kept constantly before us as an overall tone which
is derived from such specific exercises as chapels, ves-
pers, hall prayers, C. A. projects, faculty prayers,
campus charities. Rather than being an element apart,
our religious life is the river from which flow two-
way tributaries of all activities, and to which are di-
rected again all our efforts. It it both enveloping and
interwoven. It is not gaped at, but is rather, assimi-
lated into ourselves and our purposes.

And neither of these emphases is warping. There
is a freshness here that w'ould seem remarkable in
view of these possibly smothering elements. We are
in a large city, a cultural nucleus. Personality can
bloom and can relax. We have men's colleges near,
and that is not just an added attraction to be smiled
about! It is a very rounding factor in development.
Equally important, if not more so, is our association
with the women students on this campus who have
similar values and goals. I am convinced that never
again will I be a part of a group of so many such out-
standing people. And w r e live together honorably, tak-
ing for granted the integrity of our fellows. An evasive
apology at being found out to be "an Agnes Scott

girl" has become an emphatic acknowledgment yea,
an exalting pride that is at the same time a leveling
humility. Identification with a composite of individu-
ality such as we are can be soul nourishing.

Granted, Agnes Scott, is different. I believe that
we are stimulated for these four years as we shall never
be again. There are more paths here identified as leading
to ideals. But does that make our life less real do we
stand on cloud 78 in detached contrast to the world ?
No, we do not. May I lift from Dr. Alston the re-
minder that "this is not preparation for life this is
life."

THE "WHY" OF AGNES SCOTT

Sue Lile '58
President, Christian Association, 1957-58

Nancy has pointed out what the life at Agnes Scott
is, and I would ask along with some of you : Why
become a part of Agnes Scott? Why bother? Why
want this utter devotion which grows necessarily from
giving yourself to the school ?

Primarily because, as Bernard Shaw says, "This
is the true joy of life, the being used for a purpose
recognized by yourself as a mighty one."

In case you haven't gathered, the three of us think I
Agnes Scott is such a purpose because of what it
stands for and because of the kind of well-rounded,
mature, Christian woman it thereby develops.

Hear the statement in our hand book as to the high
purpose behind Agnes Scott: "The Agnes Scott ideal
was conceived by the founders of the institution. The j
spiritual element was dominant in the minds of those
leaders. They earnestly desired to advance the king-
dom of God, believing that nothing else would be so
effective as a strong institution for women."

You may have read the recent series in Life maga-
zine on the Lowell family which has consistently, for
several generations, produced great men. After read-
ing the articles, a boy asked his mother how one fam-
ily could produce such men, and she, without batting
an eye, said: "It depends upon the women they marry."

I would say that the development of the kind of
men that will run the world depends on the women
who teach them, who raise them, who marry them.

Because spiritual ideals have here an unusually fine
environment in which to flourish, lots of us have the

12

tendency to say, "Oh, yes, this is a good thing to
live by honor, etc., but this is unrealistic and not at
all like the world outside our protective hothouse."

But this attitude is not valid. It is true that the
Agnes Scott environment is special, and for that very
reason we should do everything in our power to make
these ideals an integral part of ourselves while we
are here. For aren't these the very standards of strength
by which the world can know what real abundant life
is?

We leave the concentrated study of life both to
become dispersed among and join those who are busy
with practicalities and we, through our training here,
can busy ourselves, too, in walking but will have all
the while insight into where we are going.

We have been told in various ways of the obligation
that rests on us to use what is available here for growth.
We know that because of this opportunity we have
incurred a debt which we can never fully repay, to
use what God has abundantly given us in order to be
those "cells of sanity," that "part of the solution, not
the problem," which Dr. Alston has encouraged us
to be.

We would urge you today to give yourself to Agnes
Scott in order to be used of God to accomplish His
purpose. He has given you great capacity, and He has
put you in a place where this capacity can be realized
and used.

THE "HOW" OF AGNES SCOTT

Martha Meyer '58
President, Athletic Association 1957-58

During the past couple of weeks, the three of us
have been more or less forced to face the fact that
this next year will be last in which we will be able
to serve this college actively. It is extremely hard to
express this sort of realization, and in trying to do so,
we discovered at the base of all of our thinking a
common element which we have chosen to call an
utter devotion for this school. We believe that this
utter devotion is not a predetermined possession, but
rather that it is a quality which has developed and

grown within each of us. How then does this sort of
a feeling grow and develop within a person?

In attempting to answer this question for myself,
I began to look back at the first week I spent on this
campus. I felt as though I had literally been picked
up and thrown into a place that I had never seen
before, a place that would be my life for four years.
I was extremely impressed with both the students and
the members of the faculty whom I met, but two
questions entered my mind and stayed with me for a
great part of my first year, "Will I ever feel as if
I belong here?" and "Is there a place for me on this
campus?" It is a thrill to realize the answers to these
two questions. There is not only a place on this cam-
pus for me but there is also a place on this campus for
everyone here. Because of this, there naturally follows
a true sense of belonging.

We each enter a new situation as individuals, and
what we gain from the situation itself depends largely
on what we give to it out of our own individual
capacity to serve, respond, support, identify, and love.
We each possess these capacities in a different degree,
but regardless of their depth or quantity there are here
numberless opportunities for their expression. To pass
up these opportunities is to lose the chance for indi-
vidual growth and maturity. By overlooking these op-
portunities, we fail to develop our potential qualities
which are God given and universal among all peoples.
If we do not hesitate to give what we have, in love
of our school and love of our fellow students, then the
end result cannot help but be an utter devotion for
all that exists here. Unfortunately we find, all too
often, a tendency within ourselves which inhibits the
development of an utter devotion, on our part, to
anything. Why, when we each possess this capacity
and when opportunities to express it is all around us,
do we shy away from the development of a selfless
utter devotion? Why are we lax at our own expense?
Perhaps it is because we are of a generation which
identifies such a quality with a childish denial of
reality. Or perhaps this quality is a level of develop-
ment which requires the giving of all that we possess
and this is more than any one of us is willing to give.
I am convinced that the latter reason is primarily the
cause of our tendency to overlook the development of
this capacity of utter devotion. In view of this, it still
remains true that only in giving do we receive, and
only by giving of our capacity to serve, respond, sup-
port, identify, and love can we develop an utter devo-
tion for anything in this life. And in turn, by giving
of our individual capacities, we not only retain our
identity, but we also become a part of the whole. This
insures a bigger you and a bigger whole!

13

CLASS NEWS

Edited by Eloise Hardeman Ketchin

DEATHS

Mr. George Winship, chairman of
the Board of Trustees of Agnes Scott
College since 1938, died June 20, 1956.

FACULTY AND STAFF

Mrs. Clair Bidwell Cunningham,
former head of the primary depart-
ment at Agnes Scott, died May 1.

INSTITUTE

Irene Ingram Sage lost her daugh-
ter, Charlotte Sage MeKnight, March
13, 1956.

Lucile Shuford Bagby died in Feb-
ruary, 1954.

Ella Emery Moser died April 27,
1956.

Birdie Lee Stewart Laird died June
13, 1956.

Jessie Parkins died Aug. 30, 1956.

Livingston Pope Noell, husband of
Carolyn Graham Smith Noell and
father of Anne Noell Fowler '46, died
Aug. 30, 1956.

Sallie Chase Cowles died Sept. 10,
1956.

Mary Pearl Powell Everhart died
Oct. 3, 1956.

Ora Wing West died Sept. 16, 1956.

C. M. Hutton, husband of Juliet
Webb Hutton, died Aug. 29, 1956.

Claude Dabney Fussell died Dec. 2,
1956.

Bess Smith Sutton died Dec. 3, 1956.

Addie Boyd Pattillo died March 25.

Mildred Watkins Byers died March
29, 1956.

Minnie Mclntyre Bramlett died
May 7.

Frank Harrington Baker, Sr., hus-
band of Catherine Spinks Baker and
father of Catherine Baker Matthews
'32, died Jan. 15.

Annie Newton died Jan. 13.

ACADEMY

Llewrine Gregory Scott died April
25, 1956.

Martha Jewett died March 3. She
was a sister of Mabel Jewett Miles
Institute.

1914 J. Harold Saxon, husband of
Zollie McArthur Saxon, father of Zol-
lie Saxon Johnson '48, and brother
of Lizzabel Saxon '08, died Dec. 7,
1956.

Mrs. W. T. Roberts, Sr., mother of
Essie Roberts DuPre, died Feb. 25.

1915 Otis L. Brenner, brother of
Martha Brenner Shryock and Math-
ilde Brenner Gercke '13, died Nov.
18, 1956.

1916 The Reverend A. W. Barwick,
husband of Charis Hood Barwick,
died in August, 1956.

1917 Charles Newton, father of
Janet Newton, Virginia Newton '19
and Charlotte Newton '21, died Jan.
13, 1956.

1918 Adrian Voorhees Cortelyou,
husband of Sarah Patton Cortelyou
and father of Patricia Cortelyou Win-
ship '52, died Dec. 1, 1956.

1920 Rosa Lee Monroe Winfree died
April 30.

1921 Benjamin G. Battle, husband
of Isabel Carr Battle, died Nov. 14,
1955.

1 922 Marion Hull Morris died April
6, 1956.

1923 H. Rutherford Brown, father
of Louise Brown Hastings, died
March 20, 1956.

Dr. Robert Edward Latta, husband
of Mary Hewlett Latta, died April

8, 1956.

George William Little, father of
Lucile Little Morgan and Georgia
May Little Owens '25, died Sept. 7,
1956.

Charles Lucien Elyea, father of
Dorothy Elyea Minchener and broth-
er of Grace Elyea, Institute, died Jan.

9. His mother was the first house-
keeper at Agnes Scott.

1 924 John Cunningham, father of
Margaret Cunningham Bennett, died
Dec. 3, 1956.

1 926 Dr. Walter L. Lingle, presi-
dent emeritus of Davidson College,
father of Nan Russell Lingle and
Caroline Lingle Lester '33, died Sept.
19, 1956.

1927 Mrs. Graham P. Dozier, moth-
er of Eugenie Dozier, died Nov. 7,
1956.

Dr. William Albert Maner, father
of Kenneth Maner Powell, died March
4.

John A. Shields, father of Sarah
Shields Pfeiffer and grandfather of
Peggy Pfeiffer Bass '55, died May 3.

1928 Mrs. Mary Demetry Papa-
george, mother of Evangeline Papa-
george, died Dec. 2, 1956.

Lillian White Nash lost her mother
in February.

1 929 Mrs. R. J. Knight, Sr., mother
of Evelyn Knight Richards; Gene-
vieve Knight Beauclerk; Adah Knight
Toombs; Nancy Knight Narmore '27,
and Eloise Knight Jones '23, died in
the fall of 1956.

Dan Lott, father of Katherine Lott
Marbut and Mary Dean Lott Lee '42,
died March 21.

1 930 Emerson Greer Wilson, father

News in this issue includes that of
the Winter and Spring Quarterlies,
which were not published. Deadline
for news for the Fall issue is Sept. 10.

of Raemond Wilson Craig, died March
12, 1956.

1931 Kitty Purdie's mother was
killed in an accident on Mother's Day,
1956.

1932 The Rev. R. R. Gray, D.D.,
father of Virginia Gray Pruitt, died
Jan. 20, 1956.

Robert J. Hudson, father of Imo-
gene Hudson Cullinan, died May 17,
1956.

William Henry Bowen, father of
Kathleen Bowen Stark, died July 17,
1956.

Anthony Brown Barnett, son of
Penny Brown Barnett and Crawford,
died Oct. 21, 1956.

1 933 Barbara Hart Campbell lost
her mother Nov. 30, 1955.

Julia Hooten, sister of Mildred
Hooten Keen, died Oct. 23, 1956.

1935 Susan Nell Tarpley Miller
died in March, 1956.

1936 Lavinia Scott St. Clair died
Feb. 2, 1955.

Brig. Gen. Troup Miller, U.S.A.
(Retired), father of Rosa' Miller
Barnes, died Jan. 26.

Carrie Phinney Latimer Duvall's
mother died in April.

1937 Nellie Margaret Gilroy Gus-
tafson's mother, Mrs. Nellie W. Deatz,
was killed in an automobile accident
June 27, 1956.

William Harry Steele, father of
Laura Steele, died June 16, 1956.

Mary Willis Smith died Feb. 11,
1956.

Laurence S. Critchell, husband of
Mary Jane King Critchell, died April
26.

1938 Elizabeth Warden Marshall's
father died May 19, 1956.

Mrs. H. L. Watson, mother of Vir-
ginia Watson Logan and Margaret
Watson '37, died July 2, 1956. Mr.
Watson died four months later, Nov.
6.

Charles Thames Molton, husband of
Nell Scott Earthman Molton, died
April 26.

1 939 Elinor Tyler Richardson's eld-
est son died in May, 1956.
1940 Isabella Robertson White's
mother died May 2, 1956.

Mrs. W. P. Robertson, mother of
Isabella Robertson White, died in the
Spring of 1956.

Mrs. Andrew Sledd, mother of An-
toinette Sledd, Florence Sledd Green-
baum, Frances Sledd Blake '19, moth-
er-in-law of Mary McDonald Sledd

14

'34, and grandmother of Julia Blaki
Jones '49, died April 26.
1 942 Margery Gray Wheeler los
her father Jan. 20, 1956.

James Kimbrough Owen, husbani
of Frances Tucker Owen, was killed
in an airplane accident April 28, 1956

James A. Huff, husband of Jam
Coughlan Huff, died in November
1956.

Gordon Hill Robertson Sr., fathe:
of Elizabeth Robertson Schear, die(
March 3.

1944 Charles B. Tuggle, father o
Dr. Virginia Tuggle, died June 22
1956.

Hugh Franklin Dickson, father o:
Betty Dickson Druary, died Nov. 29.

1945 N. A. Azar, father of Marj
Azar Maloof, died Sept. 6, 1956.

Margaret Mace Hannah's fathe]
died in October, 1956.

1946 Mrs. B. W. Bradford, mothei
of Emily Bradford Batts, died Marcl
31.

1 947 L. M. Zeigler, father of Bett>
Ann Zeigler DeLaMater, was killec
in a hunting accident in December
1955.

Anna George Dobbin's father diec
Dec. 7, 1955.

Sarah Smith Austin's father die(
in April.

1 948 Mrs. C. J. da Silva, mother oi
Jane da Silva Montague and Jean
da Silva Ricketts, died Jan. 19.

Southworth F. Bryan, husband oi
Rebekah Scott Bryan, was killed in
a plane crash Jan. 4.

James David Hughes, Jr., son of
Ann McCurdy Hughes and Jimmy,
died from severe burns Jan. 4.
1 949 Dr. S. M. Carroll, husband of
Marguerite "Peggy" Pittard Carroll,
was killed in an automobile accident
in January.

1950 Dr. Charles William Bartlett
father of the late Charlotte Bartlett,
died March 1, 1956.
1 952 Mrs. J. Wright Brown, mothei
of Barbara Brown and Judy Brown
'56, was killed in an automobile ac-
cident March 2, 1956.
1 953 George B. Sheppard, father of
Priscilla Sheppard, died July 18 ;
1956.

Rosalyn Kennedy Cothran's father
died in February.

1954 Harriet Durham Maloof's
mother died in the summer of 1956.

J. B. Hutchinson, father of Eleanor
Hutchinson Smith, died Sept. 4, 1956.
1 957 Dorothea Anne Harlee died
Oct. 8, 1956.

SPECIALS Lois Patillo Bannister died
March 16, 1956.

Emma Belle Dubose Johnson died
April 13.

Return Postage Guaranteed by Alumnae Quarterly, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia

AGNES SCOTT PLATES

A view of Bit ft rick Hall as seen from
In man Porch is pictured in blue on
W edgewood' s white "Patrician" pat-
tern plate.

Order yours from the Alumnae
Office

Prices, postpaid :
$3.50 each 6 for $20.00

Proceeds from plate sales go to the
Alumnae House.

agnes scott

alumnae
quarterly

THE

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

OF

AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE

OFFICERS

MARY PRIM FOWLER '29

President

MITZI KISER LAW '54

Vice-President

SYBIL CORBETT RIDDLE '52

Vice-President

alice Mcdonald richardson '29

Secretary

MARY MADISON WISDOM '41

Treasurer

TRUSTEES

CATHERINE WOOD MARSHALL '36
MARY WARREN READ '29

CHAIRMEN

ELIZABETH BLACKSHEAR FLINN '38
Class Officers

BELLA WILSON LEWIS '34

Club

PATRICIA COLLINS ANDRETTA '28

Constitution

MARY WALLACE KIRK '1 1

Education

DOROTHY CHEEK CALLOWAY '29

Entertainment

CATHERINE IVIE BROWN '39

House

LOUISE GIRARDEAU COOK '28

Nominations

MARY CAROLINE LEE MACKAY '40

Property

LEONE BOWERS HAMILTON '26

Publications

RUTH RYNER LAY '46

Special Events

LORTON LEE '49

J o cation al Guidance

STAFF

ANN WORTHY JOHNSON '38

Director of Alumnae Affairs
ELOISE HARDEMAN KETCHIN

House Manager
DOROTHY WEAKLEY '56

Office Manager

MEMBER

AMERICAN ALUMNI
COUNCIL

The AGNES SCOTT
Alumnae Quarterly

Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Ga.
Volume 36 Number 1

Fall, 1957

CONTENTS

COLLEGE NEWS

"SKIT DAY" FOR MR. STUKES
DEAN S. GUERRY STUKES

"A TEMPERATURE OF THINE OWN"

THE GEORGIA FOUNDATION
FOR INDEPENDENT COLLEGES

Mildred Mell

Lynn IVhite, Jr.

Luther Smith

CLASS NEWS

Eloise Hardeman Ketchin

Cover. We tried to catch for you in pictures Mr. Stukes' famous grin and
laugh. Cover photographs by Gaspar-Ware; other photographs in this issue,
p. 1-5, ASC News Service; p. 6, Timothy Galfas; p. 7, Kerr Studio; p. 11
John Carras; p. 13, Gaspar-Ware.

The Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly is published four times a year
(November, February, April and July) by the Alumnae Association of
Agnes Scott College at Decatur, Georgia. Contributors to the Alumnae
bund receive the magazine. Yearly subscription, $2.00. Single copy 50 cents.
Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office of Decatur, Georgia,
under Act of August 24, 1912.

College News

THE 69TH ACADEMIC SESSION opened with a
full house 601 students. There are 211 new students,
from 22 states and 1 foreign country. The Freshman
class has 197 members, all brilliant and beautiful. Only
57 day students are commuting to the College this
year, and 20 of these are married so must live in town
(we do not yet offer co-ed dormitories!) Thus, the
trend toward an almost total boarding student popula-
tion, noticed six years ago, is now a pattern at Agnes
Scott.

C. BENTON KLINE, JR., new Dean of the Faculty
and Head of the Philosophy Department, spoke at the
Honors Day Convocation, on October 3, which occa-
sion served as Dean Kline's inauguration. You will
receive a copy of his address, an excellent interpreta-
tion of Agnes Scott as a liberal arts institution and an
indication of Mr. Kline's foresighted thinking about the
College's future.

THERE IS ONLY ONE MR. STUKES, and that
one served Agnes Scott for many years in three capaci-
ties, as Dean of the Faculty, Registrar, and Head of
the Department of Psychology. Laura Steele '37 has
been promoted to the position of Registrar; she will
also continue to carry the responsibilities of the Ad-
missions Office. Dr. George E. Rice joined the faculty
this year as Professor of Psychology and head of that
department.

TWO NEW EVENTS ARE SCHEDULED in the

college calendar this year, Sophomore Parents Weekend
and the Spring Arts Festival. Fathers and mothers
will "go to Agnes Scott" with their daughters at
Founder's Day time, February 22. Student inspired and
planned, the Arts Festival will combine the efforts of
Blackfriars, Dance Group and May Day Committee
in one major production. Other sections of the festival
will include a lecture by May Sarton, who writes for
The New Yorker magazine ; a creative writing panel
discussion ; and an art panel discussion plus an exhibit.
Alumnae Day, Saturday, April 19, will be a part of the
Festival. This will give alumnae the best opportunity
imaginable to see Agnes Scott in action today.

Class of 1961

Bottom Row
Beth Magoffin
Betsy Paterson
Nancy Moore
Carol Fields
Second Roiv
Pam Sylvester
Pete Brown
Judy Maddox
Alva Gregg
Rosa Barnes
Ann Frazer
Third Row
Marv Ware
Dinah McMillan
Letitia Move
Nancy Hughes
Betsy Boyd
Mike Booth
Marion North
Fourth Row
Betsy Dalton
Caroline Simmons
Harriet Higgins
Margaret Roberts
Betty Mitchell

Not pictured: Florence Ga
'Grandmother; deceased.

Granddaughters

Dorothy Seay '32
Elizabeth Howard x-'33
Ann Pennington x-'34
Sarah Campbell x-34

Annie Johnson '25
Valeria Posey '23
Mary Smith '24
Crystal Wellborn '30
Rosa Miller '36
*Mary Danner Inst.

Mary McCallie '30
Leonore Gardner '29
Elizabeth Woolfolk '31
Douglass Rankin '27
Elizabeth Cobb '33
Alice Chamlee '36
Julia Napier '28

Mary Keesler '25
Emily Spivey '25
Katharine Gilliland '27
Margaret Kump '35
Ann Moss '29

ines Kathleen Belcher x-'22.

"SKIT DAY" FC

"F

ELLOW STUDENTS, faculty, administra-
tors, staff, alumnae, trustees, friends never
let it be said that a woman can't keep a
secret. For we, 600-strong . . . have kept [one] for over
three months, a secret extending well beyond the limits
of the college community." The secret "Skit Day,"
the day when students, faculty, administrators, alum-
nae, trustees, and friends expressed their love and
gratitude to Dean S. Guerry Stukes for his forty-four
years of service to Agnes Scott.

In November, 1956, a committee appointed by
President Wallace M. Alston met to discuss how to
honor Mr. Stukes on his retirement from the college.
The members of the committee were unanimous in
feeling that whatever way was chosen must be in the
spirit of smiles and laughter, rather than farewell and
tears. Finally, it was decided that March 29, 1957,
would be "Stukes Day." The entire plans for this
day were kept a secret from Mr. Stukes, and included
a "This is Your Life" skit by the students, a luncheon
for the entire campus community, and the gift of a new
Oldsmobile to Mr. and Mrs. Stukes.

In the months that followed there was considerable

conspiring, exploration, research, and planning. Miss
Leslie Gaylord, assistant professor of mathematics, and
Penny Smith '57, president of Student Government,
were appointed co-chairmen of activities for Stukes
Day. Correspondence with trustees and members of Mr.
Stukes' family was Miss Gaylord's main assignment,
but she also attended to last minute details such as hav-
ing students make appointments with Mr. Stukes for
March 29 to assure his presence on campus. Mrs. Roff
Sims, professor of history, was chairman of the com-
mittee charged with raising funds for the purchase of
the car.

As the time approached for the occasion, there was
one major problem how to be sure that Mr. Stukes
would be in chapel. The problem was solved by having
the president of Student Government write a letter to
the faculty requesting that the students be allowed to
have a "Skit Day," since the faculty had found it
impossible to present their famous production of past
years, "Shellbound." The Skit Day, as the letter read,
was to be a program by the students consisting of take-
offs on the faculty. After reading the letter at the
March faculty meeting Mr. Stukes commented: "As

"The shadowed, studied, recorded, and deluded-by-a care-
fully-contrived-misconception" Mr. Stukes goes to "Skit
Day."

Peggy Fanson '59 portrays the Air Force days of Mr
Stukes in the "This is Y our Life" skit.

Photographs for this
article were made
by Dorothy Weakley
'56 for ASC News
Service.

t MR. STUKES

one who is close to the student body and aware of cur-
rents and undercurrents, I feel that this is a very valid
proposal which deserves our support. The students just
need this." The "informed" faculty voted affirmative
for the proposal and all, including Mr. Stukes, agreed
to be there.

The long-awaited day arrived and at noon, the
shadowed, studied, recorded, and deluded-by-a-care-
fullv-contrived-misconception Mr. Stukes went to "Skit
Day."

A student group, headed by Carolyn Barker '57, had
written "This is Your Life, Mr. Stukes" which
began with the birth of Little Guerry, who laughed and
giggled instead of crying. The skit included his days
at Davidson College, early days at Agnes Scott, Air
Force days, courtship with his wife, Frances Gilliland
'24, and his duties as teacher and administrator at the
College. Many of his family were present for the day
and appeared in the skit: his wife, his sister, Mrs.
John A. Burgess; his brother. Judge Taylor Hudnell
Stukes, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of South
Carolina; his daughter, Marjorie Stukes Strickland '51 ;
and grandson, Peter Strickland.

There was no speech-making, or program, at the
luncheon served in the Letitia Pate Evans Dining Hall.
This was a time of informal good fellowship for the
campus community, the Stukes family, trustees and the
Alumnae Association's board. The napkins for the
occasion were inscribed with "We Love You, Mr.
Stukes" in large red letters.

As groups left the dining hall, they gathered on the
steps and lawn to await the climax of the day. On the
steps of the building, Mr. Stukes was presented with
the keys to a metallic-rose Oldsmobile by President
Alston on behalf of all who had contributed toward
the gift. During the luncheon, the car had been driven
to the front of the dining hall, where it was wrapped
with a clear plastic cover and wide blue ribbons.

Even greater than the tangible gift perhaps was the
spirit which pervaded the whole campus throughout
the day. It was one of smiles, laughter and a great deal
of love for one who was characterized in the skit as a
"counselor of students, backpatter, sounding-board, and
giver of loving advice."

The Stukes family
Dining Hall.

gathers at the luncheon in Evans

Mr. Stakes' daughter, Marjorie, and grandson, Peter,
came from Pennsylvania for a visit, and unknown to Mr.
Stukes, were in Decatur a day before the occasion.

%s

4

j#

On the steps of the dining hall Mr. Stukes is
presented with the keys to a metallic-rose Olds-
mobile by President Alston.

Mrs. Stukes, who was, of course,
informed of all plans, chose the
color of the car, and escorts her
stunned husband to the car.

The gift from alumnae, students,
faculty, and friends awaits Mr.
Stukes.

Mr. T. M. Callaway, Decatur Oldsmobile
dealer, zvho assisted in the purchase of the car,
is ready to take Mr. Stakes for his first ride
as President Alston speeds him on his way.

Mrs. T. M. Callaway (Dorothy Cheek '29),
member of the Alumnae Association Board,
congratulates Mr. Stukes on his "merry Olds-
mobile."

After his first ride, Mr. Stukes
laughs with conspirators Miss
Leslie Gay lord, Mrs. Wallace
M. Alston (Madelaine Dmi-
seith x-28) and President Emer-
itus J. R. McCain.

Mr. Stukes said he was fearful that the Alumnae Association would "do" to him
what ice "did" to Aliss Laney upon the occasion of her retirement formal
speeches at the Alumnae Luncheon by a former student and a colleague. We
gave him our word that this would not happen, but we did ask Miss Mell to
write this article for the Quarterly, on Mr. Stukes as a faculty member knew
him.

Dean S. G. Stukes

Mildred Mell

TO TELL THE STORY of years of exper-
ience at Agnes Scott, with Mr. Stukes as Dean
of the Faculty and as a fellow faculty member,
requires deliberate use of the "boiling down" process,
because of the great mass of impressions which come
vividly to mind when looking back over those years.
And vet the mass when mulled over and enjoyed seems
to make a pattern which is clear and certain. The
pattern when described with mere words falls far short
of the reality but perhaps it may have the power to
evoke pleased recognition of a familiar personality from

Dr. Mildred Mell

those who have known him as guide, as counsellor, as
ready-listener, as fellow teacher and as friend.

First, there has been over the years Mr. Stukes as
Dean of the Faculty. Holding fast to his determination
that academic standards at Agnes Scott must be kept
high and therefore must be subject constantly to critical
evaluation and revision, he has led the way by pointing
out problem points and suggesting needed changes.
But always he has refused to dictate; he has made the
faculty feel that the shaping of the academic program
waswas equally its job. When teaching in the class-
room is part of a situation in which the teacher must
assume some responsibility for the total program, the
experience becomes a freer and more satisfying one.
At Agnes Scott we who teach know that to a great
extent because of Mr. Stukes we have "our fingers in
the pia" and therefore both the "pie" and our teaching
take on more meaning for us.

As Dean, Mr. Stukes has had to listen to faculty
members, particularly to heads of departments, talk
over new courses to be introduced or old courses to be
repeated. The voice of the faculty member might have
been sure and full of conviction. Or it might have been
uncertain and troubled. No matter. Mr. Stukes listened
patiently, interestedly and constructively. Just to talk
things over with him often clarified one's thinking or
gave perspective, or brought new ideas to the surface
which had been vague and unformulated. Mr. Stukes
would say what he thought with directness and convic-
tion, but he never failed to send the faculty member out
feeling that even if all course problems had not been
solved, the way had been opened for the finding of a
good solution and that the good solution would be
found by the faculty member.

Again as Dean, but half-way as friend, general prob-
lems in one's teaching or special problems involving the

work of an individual student could always be talked
over with him and thereby usually be made to appear
the kind of thing which most people encounter from
time to time, just a part of the "normal" experience.
Most of us can take the "normal" in our stride and get
ready for the next thing which may loom up ahead of
us. So, having the chance to take troubles to Mr. Stukes
was just the thing we needed sometimes, a sort of life-
saving prophylaxis. His ready willingness to listen and
to talk has made many of us of the faculty want to talk
things over with him even when those things were only
remotely connected with the college. And many a
tense nerve has become relaxed and quiet because of his
wise analysis, sympathetic understanding, and friendly
interest and concern.

Busy as Mr. Stukes' official duties always kept him,
he did his full share, if not more than his full share, of
committee work. There was, of course, the Curriculum
Committee. Even when he was not a member of a
sub-committee, many hours and half-hours of his time
were given to discussing ideas and recommendations
while they were in process of formulation for a report
to the whole committee. And there was never a sign
of impatience or unwillingness to help even if he needed
the time desperately for something else. The story of
his work on committees could be endless. That on the
Lecture Committee continued through many, many
years of doing a job really "beyond the call of duty."
During those years he was a familiar figure in the lobby
of Presser seeing that people felt welcome and that
details of handling the events planned by Lecture Com-
mittee went smoothly. How many times emergencies

arose over the years is unknown, but Mr. Stukes always
managed to cope with them !

Association in work and conferences has been only
a part of the way by which the faculty has known Mr.
Stukes. The association has been a many-sided one in-
volving chats in the hallways, chats at coffee hours
before faculty meetings, perhaps longer conversations
in his own homes or in the homes of faculty members.
Seeing him in this kind of friendly, informal way has
strengthened and enriched the bonds established in
working with him. What a "pick-up" it has always
been to see him in the hall of Buttrick and laugh over
some amusing incident with him! Indeed, what a "pick-
up" it has always been to just hear his laugh in Buttrick
even while he talked with someone else!

These are a few of the impressions which a faculty
member likes to think about when looking back over
the years during which Mr. Stukes was well, he was
Mr. Stukes on our campus. There he was always "glad
to see you," and he meant it. Always he was approach-
able, ready to talk things over from the gravely im-
portant to even the trivial, and through the days and
years he had in all his relations to the faculty and to all
others wonderful "human-ness" which marked him as
a very rare person.

This fall his retirement has taken him out of the
routine activity of the college, but we hear his laugh in
the halls and we can stop and talk without feeling con-
science stricken about taking up his time unnecessarily!
Having him around as friend to all of us has given a
good start to this year.

Mr. Stukes and Mr. J. A. McCurdy, president of
the Decatur Federal Savings and Loan Associa-
tion, discuss Mr. Stukes' new position, Educa-
tional Consultant to the corporation. In an-
nouncing Mr. Stukes' appointment, Mr. Mc-
Curdy said: "Mr. Stukes is one of the South's
best known educators. In making available his
services to provide educational counselling for
those who may wish it, Decatur Federal takes
the lead in seeking to help its members and
others solve problems which are constantly in-
creasing. If you have children below college age,
we believe a conference with Mr. Stukes will be
enlightening and helpful."

Mr. and Mrs. Stukes are living in Decatur at
639 E. Ponce de Leon Ave.

Here is Agnes Scott's 68th Commencement address, delivered June 3, 1957.
Dr. Lynn White. Jr. is president of Mills College, Oakland, California, a
liberal arts college for women very similar to Agnes Scott. After you have read
this article, we think you will want to read Dr. White's book, Educating Our
Daughters.

"A TEMPERATUR

THE COMMENCEMENT exercises of a col-
lege are always a moment of jubilation: the
harvest is in, and those who have sowed in tears
come again rejoicing, bringing their sheaves with them.
You of the graduating class are to be congratulated.
And what's more, you know it!

But let's be candid. Isn't it a fact that if you had
been receiving this degree two years ago, when you
were sophomores, you would have assumed it with far
more confidence than you have today? In a liberal arts
college like Agnes Scott, at the end of four years you
rather suddenly become much more aware of the vast
extent of what you don't know than of what you do
know. No matter how brave a front you put on, you
feel your inadequacy a bit more vividly than you do
your competence. This is nothing to be discouraged
about. In fact it is the sign that your education has
begun to "take" ; for in intellectual humility is the
beginning of wisdom. But one's first experience of
learned ignorance can be very disturbing.

To graduating seniors like you it is the more disturb-
ing because Commencement breaks the orderly pattern
of academic life and unless you are going on to
graduate work catapults you into uncertainties and
irregularities of daily existence where you will be
much more on your own than ever before. This greater
freedom of choice as to what you will do and when you
will do it is in itself an achievement, something very
good. But like learned ignorance, and particularly in
conjunction with learned ignorance, this new freedom
which is coming to you has its dangers.

Indeed, an influential school of social psychologists
led by Eric Fromm insists that the maladies of our
modern age can largely be traced to the double fact,
first that we now know so much, and so much that
seems mutually contradictory, that we have lost our
confidence in truth, and second that we have achieved

so much freedom of action and choice, that we have lost
the ability to choose. So we seek an authority which
will both choose for us and tell us what the truth is.
Such a theory does much to explain the world-wide
growth not only of communism and the various fas-
cisms, but of a wide spectrum of milder authoritar-
ianisms which tell people what to think and do.

The escape from freedom and responsibility takes
curious forms here in America. For your summer read-
ing, let me commend to you Wallace Stegner's mar-
vellously written Big Rock Candy Mountain. When it
was published a few years ago it achieved far greater
critical acclaim than popular sales because, I believe,
it probes so deeply into the mythology of American life
that it makes most of us terribly uncomfortable. For
nearly three centuries, whenever an American found
life getting too dense, he picked up and moved West.
If things didn't work out where he settled, he picked up
again and moved on, always confident that just over
the Western horizon lay that Land of Cocayne what
the frontier ballad calls "the big rock candy mountain
with the lemonade springs" where all his problems
would automatically be solved. So long as there was
good free land to be taken up the myth had enough
substance so that many good lives could be built on it.
But when about 1890 the land suited to homesteading
gave out, the myth remained. Stegner's novel is the
tragedy of a life built upon escape from immediate
problems in terms of a once valid solution which has
ceased to be available. His hero's wife and son do their
best to get him to face up to things as they are, but in
vain. The mirage of a vanished frontier leads him to
destruction.

These things are not fiction, even though their most
powerful analysis, in this case, is a work of fiction.
While as a native son of California, I should be the
last to say that the West does not have its charms,

8

OF THINE OWN"

Lynn White, Jr.

nevertheless the continued westering migration of mil-
lions of Americans is something which cannot be ex-
plained entirely in rational terms. In some measure they
are escaping, but in terms of an outmoded myth ; and
if things don't work out in California, there is no place
further west to go. This is certainly one reason why
California has by far the highest suicide rate in the
United States. When the frontier myth fails these
men and women, and they find that they have not
escaped by moving, but remain trapped, they go to the
Golden Gate Bridge and throw themselves lemming-
like into the Pacific waters gilded by the setting sun.

Penetration into Reality

We have not really grown up until we consciously
determine to face up to our problems and how to solve
them in the light of the inescapable facts, and in the
darkness of the inescapable uncertainties. Anything else
is escapism. But it should be noted that such words as
"escapism," "evasion," "flight" must be used cautiously;
for some things which may look like flight from reality
may be in fact penetration into reality. Those of us who
are Protestants, for example, generally look at monas-
ticism as an "escape." But we should remember the
decision of Ishmael, the narrator of another great
American novel, Moby Dick, to seek the silence of the
night watches of the infinite ocean. Puritanism in New
England provided no monasticism, so Ishmael found
his cloister in a whaler, and plumbed the depths of
reality.

Conversely many actions which, on the surface are
socially accepted as "facing the facts" may be actually
a means of escape from freedom and responsibility. If
I were speaking to a graduating class of young men I
would talk chiefly about escape into "success." You all
know perfectly well what the word "success" means

in the American language ; it is success as an economic
producer. This image is the most powerful single in-
fluence in the lives of American men. It is almost uni-
versally believed that if a man is a "success" he is like-
wise a good husband and father, a stout citizen and a
child of God. Although it stems largely from women,
few American women really understand the fearful
pressure to which ever)' American boy is subject, from
earliest infancy, to become a "success." It has built
the world's most magnificent economic structure, and
it has destroyed scores of millions of souls. There is, of
course, nothing at all inherently evil in the normal pat-
tern of an American man's life and ambitions; we need
and must have business and professional men dedicated
to doing well what they start out to do. What is spirit-
ually wrong with our pattern of "success" is that the
definition and scope of masculine "success" has become
so rigid and universally accepted that it relieves the male
of the species, as a rule, of the necessity of asking
"Who am I, and what is my destiny?"

You who are women, and especially college women,
are more fortunate. Our society is much more doubtful
about you than it is about your brothers. We don't
quite know what we mean by "success" for a woman.
Thanks to the older feminism and the newer technology,
vou can now do practically anything a man can do, if
you want to, and if you are four times brighter than
most men. You can even be ordained into the clergy
of some of our most respectable churches! On the other-
hand it is still socially permissible for you to do all the
fine old female things which the feminists disliked so
thoroughly. In other words, you face a range of options
which really compels you, as few men are ever com-
pelled to ask "Who am I, and what is my destiny?"
America offers you no automatic escape from the reality
of your soul by a sterotype of womanly "success." \ ou

must think and choose as few men ever have to think
and choose.

This is magnificent, hut it is also tough. In a sense,
men have it easier! Here you are at your Commence-
ment, equipped with that superbly detailed ignorance
which is the finest flower of a college education, and
likewise with the necessity of finding a new pattern of
daily living to replace the collegiate routine. The temp-
tation to escape is going to be greater than you may
realize. Neurosis, dope, alcoholism these are the
cruder forms of escape, and you doubtless have enough
sense to avoid them. The three commonest forms of
escape which I see in girls in the years immediately
after college are all things excellent in themselves which
may be nntered into for the wrong reasons. All three
of them boil down to trying to get somebody to solve
your problems for you..

Escape Matrimony

First of all, there is the flight to matrimony. I be-
lieve firmly in the value of marriage for most people,
myself included. But I am very much afraid that many
girls get married because they want someone to be strong
for them, to make adult decisions for them. They con-
fuse the greater physical strength of men with intellec-
tual and moral strength, not knowing that we men in
general are, on the inside, just as weak, pulpy, groping
altogether like little white maggots as are most
human beings. A girl who marries a husband as a
substitute father is likely to discover between the fine
biceps a boy who married her as a substitute mother
for men too, sometimes use matrimony as an escape.

I hope that most of you will decide to marry; but
I hope that you will marry as adults, and not to pro-
long your childhood. Moreover I hope that you will
stand for the right of some people to remain unmarried
if they want to. The bachelor and spinster were once
common, perhaps, usually, by reason of economic or
other misfortune. But marriage in our time is getting
to be a social necessity; just a habit, not a sacrament.
And in so far as it becomes a fixed pattern, it runs
the risk of becoming an escape.

Escape Rel igion

In addition to the flight to matrimony, there is the
flight to religion. Religion can serve either as a way of
facing the ultimate mysteries, joys and agonies, or as
an opiate, a way of evading adult responsibility for
thinking rigorously and making choices in terms of all
the ambiguities. When Jesus said that only those who
become like little children can enter the Kingdom of
Heaven, I think he did not mean that perpetual in-
fantilism is essential to salvation. I think rather that
he wanted us to have the little child's sense of perpetual
wonder and confidence in the incomprehensible.

Nothing depresses me more than the escapism of the
peace-of-mind books which have flooded this country:
they have no relation to high religion. I do not detect
that Christ enjoyed perpetual peace of mind : he wept
over Jerusalem, scoured the money-changers from the
Temple, sweat blood in Gethsemane, and felt a moment
of abandonment bv God on the Cross. As for so-called

"positive thinking": 1 find Scripture thunderously re-
plete with negative thinking when negation is needed.

Melville's Moby Dick is a curious but intensely
religious book, and it is high religion which speaks when
Ishmael says: "Doubts of all things earthly, and intui-
tions of some things heavenly ; this combination makes
neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who re-
gards them both with equal eye."

I hope that each of you may discover for yourself
a living faith which will not be destroyed by the re-
curring phenomenon which St. John of the Cross used
to call "the dark night of the soul," but which will
enable you to say, with his fellow Carmelite St. Teresa
of Avila, "All the road to heaven is heaven." But this
is not a road to be found by those who use religion as
an escape from the necessity of their own thinking and
choices.

Escape Counselling

The third mode of escape which tempts young
college women in our time, in addition to the flight
to marriage and the flight to religion is what (for lack
of a better word) I shall call the flight to counselling.
The temptation is the greater because the campuses of
our better colleges today are so thoroughly equipped
with experts professionally set up to give every manner
of good advice: deans, assistant deans, residents, assist-
ant residents, vocational advisers, chaplains, physicians,
consulting psychiatrists, and so on. Everyone of these
officers, and their equivalents in the larger society be-
yond the campus, has a legitimate function, and we
would not be without them. Yet they themselves, in
their franker moods are generally the first to admit that
many who seek them are really trying to pass on to
them responsibilities which should not be passed on.
The symbol of this whole situation is a classic Neiv
Yorker cartoon of not long ago : a lunching debutante
says to her girl friend, "It's going to be a very happy
marriage. You see, our psychiatrists know each other."

Very often each of us need advice, and when we
need it we should seek the best available. All I am
suggesting is that when we ask for it we should first
look at ourselves with very clear eyes and make certain
that we are not asking it simply as a means of prolong-
ing the dependency and irresponsibility of childhood.

How can we find the strength, the stability, to make
unnecessary the sort of escapes from maturity which I
have been describing?

Traditionally people have thought of inner fortitude
in terms of such metaphors as the rock, the pyramid.
But for our new age such images are misleading: we
can find no security in institutions, in inherited but
unexamined ways of life, or in beliefs validated by an
outside authority. Not the pyramid but the gyroscope,
must be the model for the strong individual today.
Margaret Mead expressed the issue perfectly when she
said that we must help children to achieve the stability
of a trout in a mountain torrent. And this is perhaps
the central ideal of Melville's Moby Dick : the sea is
"the image of the ungraspable phantom of life"; and as
the novel draws toward its climax, Captain Ahab cries,
"Then hail, forever hail, O sea, in whose eternal
tossings the wild fowl find this only rest!"

10

A commencement like this is like the dropping of
a garland of flowers on the waves as one sails out of
the harbor of Honolulu. As you sail on, you will find,
if you wish to find, that the ancient Ionian philosophers
were right when they said "All is Flux" ; but you
may also discover that this is not a counsel of despair.
You may find stability in yourself, as you learn the
way of the gyroscope, the trout, the sea fowl. It is in
each of you to become not a person who spends her life
passively adapting to uncontrollable circumstance, but
rather a free agent acting in terms of uncontrollable
circumstance, riding out the waves by good helmsman-
ship, intiger vitae "Unscathed by life" invulnerable
to change.

This kind of strength, and its sources, cannot really
be described in words, but only pointed to by the great
symbols of religion. It was said in Greece that "Apollo
who speaks at Delphi neither denies nor affirms, but
points." Yet in our time my friend Alan Watts has rue-
fully noted how many people suck such pointing fingers
for consolation.

It is the central paradox of high religion that the
clear recognition and acceptance of our limitations frees
us from those limitations. In college, during registra-
tion for a new term, how often have you moaned "Oh,
what course shall 1 take? when obviously the only real
answer is "Do well, whatever you take." In coming
years you will occasionally hear a young wife whining,
"Did I marry the right man?" Only by such accep-
tance of the defects and inadequacies inherent in the
human condition can we learn spiritual equilibrium,
the art of the trout.

On this June morning I seem to have been larding
my thinking liberally with strips of blubber from the
Great White Whale. And Ishmael has said all this
better than I ; so I leave you with his words.

"Oh Man ! admire, and model thyself after the
whale ! Do thou too remain warm among ice. Do thou
too live in this world without being of it. Be cool at
the equator ; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the
great dome of St. Peter's and like the great whale, re-
tain, O man ! in all seasons a temperature of thine own."

The Commencement Academic Procession forms on the Colonade and marches to
Presser Hall.

11

Luther Smith

This fall, President Alston and the presidents of eight other Georgia colleges
have been devoting a great deal of concentrated time to the work of the Georgia
Foundation For Independent Colleges. Travelling in teams of two, they have
visited businessmen throughout Georgia interpreting the role of the independent
college. In this interpretation, an important factor is the percentage of alumnae
who contribute to the college. Alumnae may strengthen and undergird with
pleasant fact Dr. Alston's ivords by giving to the Alumnae Fund and thus
increasing our percentage. As of October 1st, 12% of the 6900 Agnes Scott
alumnae sent fund appeals in September have contributed to our 1957-58
Alumnae Fund.

TWO SIMILAR problems face Agnes Scott
and eight other accredited, four year liberal arts
colleges in Georgia. These problems are 1 ) re-
taining good teachers when other fields beckon with
more tempting salaries, and 2) planning for a future
which promises rising costs.

During the past fifteen years, colleges have received
diminishing income from sources of endowment, gifts
and grants. Institutions of higher learning, frontiers of
our free enterprise system, need more assistance today.

Their income has remained relatively fixed during
an inflationary period. Economic conditions limit new
endowment funds, and income from existing endow-
ment buys less than formerly. Notwithstanding a few
large gifts from devoted friends of higher education,
huge gifts from individuals have been largely curtailed
by tax policies of recent years.

To meet their economic problem with foresight,
Agnes Scott and eight other accredited, four year liberal
arts colleges of Georgia formed The Georgia Founda-
tion for Independent Colleges in October, 1956. The
colleges associated in response to the need of business
and industry for a joint or "United Fund" channel for
aid to higher education in the state. Member colleges
of the Foundation are Agnes Scott, Brenau, Emory,
LaGrange, Mercer, Oglethorpe, Shorter, Tift, and
Wesleyan. Only the undergraduate College of Arts and

Author of this article, Luther Smith, ii executive secretary
of the Foundation. Copies of the Constitution and Bylaws
of the Georgia Foundation for Independent Colleges will be
sent upon request. Please write to Mr. Smith at 306 Persons
Building, Macon, Georgia.

Sciences of both Emory and Mercer are members, not
the whole of the universities.

In the brief time since the Foundation's office was es-
tablished at Macon during February, 1957, contribu-
tions have been made by, to name a few, Plantation Pipe
Line Co., Union Carbide and Carbon Corp., U. S.
Steel, National Dairy Products Corp., Addressograph-
Multigraph Corp., Time Inc., Babcock and Wilcox
Co., 20th Century Fox Film Corp., Graybar Electric
Co., Inc., Massachusetts Mutual Life Ins. Co., and
New England Mutual Life Ins. Co.

The association of liberal arts colleges in Georgia is
similar to a pattern followed in 38 other states. Such
associations are formed to provide businesses, industries,
and foundations a single channel of investment in
higher education. The following amounts show how
business is investing in the South's colleges through
independent college associations:

Foundation Amount Given

Through 1956
Virginia Foundation ( formed 1 952 ) _._ ___.$8 1 7,039

Kentucky Foundation (formed 1952)... ..... 490,498

Arkansas Foundation (formed 1954). 355,983

North Carolina Foundation (formed 1953).... 289,197

Louisiana Foundation (formed 1952) 211,200

South Carolina Foundation (formed 1953)... 174,377

Like these foundations, the Georgia Foundation for
Independent Colleges was formed to interpret the
basic philosophies in which its member colleges believe
and on which America was founded, and through

12

greater understanding, to encourage continuing finan-
cial support of higher education from business and
industry.

The question may well be raised, "Why does cor-
porate business and industry so strongly support higher
education?" First, such support is given because colleges
represent the frontiers of free enterprise. They con-
tribute to the creation of a climate of public opinion
necessary to maintain our American system unencum-
bered by false ideologies and philosophies.

Another reason for this strong support is that colleges
help develop the human resource : prospective employees
capable and willing to be trained for executive respon-
sibility, and young people better able to adjust them-
selves and their homes to our rapid state and national
expansion.

A third reason for such support is that gifts are used
where there is real need. One of the pressing needs is
the improvement of faculty salaries.

A fourth reason business, industry, and foundations
invest so wholehartedly in colleges is the very fact of
alumni support. A frequent question asked by a cor-
poration which plans to contribute is, "How much do

your alumni give?" Another is "How many of your
alumni give?"

When a large or small corporation or foundation
gives to the Georgia Foundation for Independent
Colleges, all nine accredited, non-tax-supported, four-
year liberal arts colleges in Georgia share in the gift,
unless it is designated. If assignment of gifts is not
stipulated by the donor, they are divided 60 per cent
equally and 40 per cent in proportion to enrollment.
Gifts to the Foundation are deductible for tax purposes.
Trustees of the Georgia Foundation for Independent
Colleges include President Wallace M. Alston and
W. E. McNair from Agnes Scott, President Josiah
Crudup and Worth Sharp from Brenau, President
S. Walter Martin and Bradford Ansley from Emory;
President Waights G. Henry Jr. and G. M. Simpson
from LaGrange, President G. B. Connell and Rabun
L. Brantley from Mercer, President Donald Agnew
and George Seward from Oglethorpe, President George
A. Christenberry and Cecil Lea from Shorter, President
Carey T. Vinzant and Starr Miller from Tift, and
President B. Joseph Martin and Miss Carolyn
Churchill from Weslevan.

President Wallace M. Alston Prepares His Talks for Georgia Businessmer

13

mother of

DEATHS

FACULTY

Jane Brookfield Brown, former
member of the faculty, July 5.

INSTITUTE

Jane Strickler Denny, May 24.

Mrs. Milton A. (Nellie Scott) Cand-
ler, daughter of founder, George W.
Scott, July 4. She was the mother of
Nell Scott Candler and Eliza Candler
Earthman, and the grandmother of
Nell Scott Earthman Molton '38.

Bessie Harris Clayton, Jan. 22.
1910

George E. Wilson, Jr., husband of
Lida Caldwell Wilson, in August.
1917

Mrs. L. P. Skeen
Augusta Skeen Cooper; Rebekah
Skeen Candler '26; Virginia Skeen
Norton '28; Elizabeth Skeen Dawsey
'32, and Martha Skeen] Gould '34,
June 1.

1919

Henry Losson Smith, father of
Lulu Smith Westcott, Aug. 15.
1920

David Ira Shires, husband of Ann
Houston Shires and father of Ann
Shires '57, in June.

1923

Mrs. Daniel Gilchrist, mother of
Philippa Gilchrist '24, and Edith Gil-
christ Berry '26, April 20.
1926

James Toole Fain, SrL, father
Ellen Fain Bowen, May 15.
1927

Eugene A. Stead, Sr., father
Emily Stead, May 14.

1931

Ruth Hall Christensen's mother, in
February.

Ruth Pringle Pippen's mother, Aug.
12.

1932

Frances Crosswell Symons, May 3.

Mimi O'Beirne Tarplee's mother, in
August.

1933

Charlton Keen, Sr., husband of Mil-
dred Hooten Keen, July 11.

1938

Mrs. Robert Rounsaville, mother of
Capt. Frances E. Castleberry, May 10.
1942

Mr. Fred P. Brooks, Sr., father of
Dr. Betty Ann Brooks, May 24.
1944

Walter Frederick Kuentzel, husband
of Agnes Douglas Kuentzel, in August.
1955

Benjamin Franklin Stovall, father
of Harriett Stovall. June 12.

of

of

14

Return Postage Guaranteed by Alumnae Quarterly, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia

AGNES SCOTT PLATES

A view of Butlnck Hall as seen from
Inman Porch is pictured in blue on
W edgetvood's white "Patrician" pat-
tern plate.

Order yours from the Alumnae
Office

Prices, postpaid:
$3.50 each 6 for $20.00

Proceeds from plate sales go to the
Alumnae House.

alumnae q

uarterti

ass

aiktfwi

THE

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

OF

AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE

OFFICERS

MARY PRIM FOWLER '29

President

MITZI KISER LAW '54

Vice-President

SYBIL CORBETT RIDDLE '52

Vice-President

ALICE McDONALD RICHARDSON '29

Secretary

MARY MADISON WISDOM '41

Treasurer

TRUSTEES

CATHERINE WOOD MARSHALL '36
MARY WARREN READ '29

CHAIRMEN

ELIZABETH BLACKSHEAR FLINN '38
Class Officers

BELLA WILSON LEWIS '34

Club

PATRICIA COLLINS ANDRETTA '28

Constitution

MARY WALLACE KIRK '1 1

Education

DOROTHY CHEEK CALLOWAY '29

Entertainment

CATHERINE IVIE BROWN '39

House

LOUISE GIRARDEAU COOK '28

Nominations

MARY CAROLINE LEE MACKAY '40

Property

LEONE BOWERS HAMILTON '26

Publications

RUTH RYNER LAY '46

Special Events

LORTON LEE '49

Vocational Guidance

STAFF

ANN WORTHY JOHNSON '38

Director of Alumnae Affairs
ELOISE HARDEMAN KETCHIN

House Manager
DOROTHY WEAKLEY '56

Office Manager

MEMBER

AMERICAN ALUMNI
COUNCIL

The AGNES SCOTT
Alumnae Quarterly-
Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia

Volume 36
Winter, 1958

Contents

Number 2

Impressions of Agnes Scott
A Colder Kaleidoscope
Our Age of Loneliness
Wisdom and Knowledge
The March
Class News

Margaret W . Pepperdene

Kathryn Johnson '47

Miriam Koontz Drucker

Kivai Sing Chang

11

Choon Hi Choi

12

Eloise Hardeman Ret chin

Cover. Dr. W. A. Calder, professor of physics and astronomy, secured this
picture of the rocket of Sputnik I passing the constellation Lyra on Novem-
ber 24, 1957. (See p. 3.) Other photographs in this issue: p. 1, Gasper-
Ware; p. 3, Associated Press; W. A. Calder; p. 4, Kerr Studio; p. 5,
Gabriel Benzur; p. 7, Gaspar-Ware; p. 10, Kerr Studio; p. 11, Bill Young.

The Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly is published four times a year
(November, February, April and July) by the Alumnae Association of
Agnes Scott College at Decatur, Georgia. Contributors to the Alumnae
Fund receive the magazine. Y early subscription, $2.00. Single copy 50 cents.
Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office of Decatur, Georgia,
under Act of August 24, 1912.

Dr. Margaret II'. Pepperdene, during the three quarters she has been at Agnes
Scott since her appointment to the faculty of the English Department in 1956
(she was on leave one quarter) has made a special place for herself as a teacher
on this campus. We contemplated asking someone to ivrtte a profile of Jane
Pepperdene, to explain how this came about, but determined that it would be
much better to ask her to put in writing some of the things she has said about
Agnes Scott's effect on her. We believe that alumnae will rejoice in her words.

Impressions of Agnes Scott

Margaret W. Pepperdene

Dr. Pepperdene

IT IS PERHAPS presumptuous of me, after
only a few terms on this campus, to present my
impressions of Agues Scott to you who are so fa-
miliar with the College. But a newcomer can sometimes
see with a fresh vision and perspective what may have
become dulled by familiarity to the eyes of others. There
were several features of Agnes Scott which impressed
me as unique when I first came here; and I continue
to feel that these features are seldom found in our
institutions of higher learning today.

Having been more or less accustomed as an instructor
in English to overcoming ?. general apathy, even resis-
tance, among students to the study of anything so im-
practical as literature, I was surprised at the intellectual
curiosity and breadth of intellectual interest I found
among Agnes Scott students. In my own experience, in
both state and private colleges, I had seldom found
students who cared more for the subject matter of a
course offering than for the hour of day it was taught,
the ease with which a high grade could be secured,
or the theatrical prowess of the instructor. Yet, at
Agnes Scott enrollment in the difficult courses is well
over that of comparable courses in larger colleges. In
one university that I know of, for instance, no courses
are offered in medieval literature, not even Chaucer, on
the undergraduate level, because the English department
faculty has discovered that students will not risk lower-
ing their grade-point average to accept the discipline of
learning to read Middle or Old English. At Agnes
Scott, on the other hand, where courses are offered
both in Chaucer and Old English, English majors as
well as students from other departments are willing to
make the extra effort to master the language and are
willing, too, to risk making a poor grade to satisfy their
desire for the actual achievement of knowledge. Nor
is it unusual for a student group here to petition the
faculty for new course offerings ; whereas, at most
colleges and universities new courses are more often
introduced to placate the specialized interests of
faculty members than to satisfy the intellectual curiosity
of the students.

I am not speaking in terms of the breadth of the
curriculum offered Agnes Scott students, nor am I
implying that the average student I.Q. is necessarily

higher at Agnes Scott than elsewhere. The curriculum
is broad in its scope, and the students are excellent ;
but the impressive fact is that the students possess an
intellectual energy, an eagerness to learn, and a delight
in the learning process that are not necessarily con-
comitants to carefully planned programs of study or
high scholastic entrance requirements. Each new Fresh-
man ultimately invigorates the intellectual atmosphere
of the campus with new energy, but only because there
is already present a forceful and distinctive intellectual
climate which gives form and direction to her own
energies. Freshmen here, as elsewhere, go through the
difficult process of shedding their high school aura,
adjusting to new situations, and discovering to their
dismay how little they know. But after only a few
months, they are caught up at Agnes Scott into the
vital intellectual climate surrounding them, and are
stimulated to extend their reach toward knowledge
which had seemed beyond their grasp and to relish
toughness and soundness rather than the superficiality
or even practicality of knowledge.

If knowledge is to evoke such eagerness and curiosity
in its pursuit, there has to be some animating force
which gives vitality to knowledge, some force which
makes all knowledge meaningful to the whole life of
man. One of the great problems facing educators today
is that knowledge is commonly considered neither
attractive nor respectable unless it is economically or
technologically useful. Many college students, especially
those in the fields of business administration, profes-
sional education or pre-professional training, resent
even brief exposure to knowledge outside their special-
ized fields of interest as a waste of their time and
energy.

The elective system, originally intended to broaden
the scope of a student's interests, has deteriorated in
in our schools and colleges to a means by which a stu-
dent may avoid difficult subjects. The recent television
program, "Where We Stand," designed to compare
the strength of the United States with Soviet Russia,
pointed up this deterioration of the elective system. In
the Alhambra High School in California a large number
of boys, including some who intended to go on to a uni-
versity, were taking "co-ed cooking." When questioned

1

as to why they were taking this course, they groped
hopelessly for a reasonable answer, but finally admitted
that it was an easy way "to pick up credits." Almost
every college has its "crip" courses filled with students
merely to complete their hour requirements for gradu-
ation. With the deterioration of the elective system and
the growing emphasis on the practical results of educa-
tion, the horizons of knowledge have become constricted
in most American colleges so that the learning process
is limited to an apprenticeship.

It is therefore a striking phenomenon that at Agnes
Scott one finds students eager to explore fields of knowl-
edge outside their own special interest, with little
regard for the difficulty of securing good grades. Stu-
dents of history enjoy literature and language courses ;
English majors may even be found in advanced science
courses; and some science majors are taking as much as
thirty quarter-hours in philosophy, literature and the
classics. The whole student body displays an interest
in the varied topics presented by visiting historians,
literary critics, theologians and scientists. This wide
interest is fostered but not imposed by the elective
system at Agnes Scott and by the Lecture Association
and the University Center's visiting scholars program ;
but the initiative and the response are peculiarly the
property of the students. The opportunities which
Agnes Scott gives for the expression of this intellectual
energy are results rather than causes of the unique
intellectual atmosphere pervading the College.

The complete absence of apathy, and in fact, the per-
vading presence of intellectual vitality at Agnes Scott
I can only attribute to another feature characteristic of
this college and too seldom found now in American
institutions of higher learning. This is the conscious
acceptance of a framework of spiritual values against
which knowledge is projected and within which it can
become animated and meaningful. The spiritual force
of Christianity has permeated our western civilization
and historically has been the one great integrating theme
of all our intellectual achievement. Whether as individ-
uals we acknowledge Christianity as our belief or not,
we must accept the historical fact that we live in a
society leavened with Christian values: our concepts of
right conduct, of the individual worth of man, of man's
purpose on earth have moulded our social mores, our
laws, our political theories and our philosophy. The
universal nature of Christianity, the infinite scope of
its concepts, can contain all knowledge and imbue it
with significance for the whole life of a man or man-
kind. Literature, history and philosophy become as
meaningful to the student as physics, chemistry, bacter-
iology or psychology, for they all enrich the knowledge
man needs of himself, of his world, and of his God.
The horizon of learning becomes infinite, and the at-
tainment of learning is limited only by the capacity
of the individual.

Many educators are alert to the need of spiritual
values in education, but few have succeeded in effect-
ing the subtle fusion between spiritual values and the
great body of knowledge, so that knowledge can become
meaningful to all phases of man's life. In the "Second
Report to the President" (July, 1957) the Josephs'

Committee, after exploring the many practical prob-
lems facing higher education today, emphasizes that the
paramount goal of education "is to develop human
beings of high character, of courageous heart and in-
dependent mind, who can transmit and enrich our
society's intellectual, cultural and spiritual heritage, who
can advance mankind's eternal quest for truth and
beauty and who can leave the world a better place
than they found it." Many institutions pay lip service
to this paramount goal of education, but other than the
fostering of "Religious Emphasis Week" or Student
Christian Associations, nothing is done to identify the
intellectual life of the student with his spiritual life.
Other institutions, operating at the opposite extreme,
impose in the name of Christianity a rigid and narrow
sectarianism upon their students which stifles the mind,
shrivels the horizons of learning and effectively divorces
the spiritual from the intellectual life.

I feel that Agnes Scott maintains the perilous balance i
between these two extremes. Here, the spiritual values j
are implicitly accepted and fostered by the entire college
community. Traditional Christianity, rather than spe-
cific sectarian beliefs, gives a breadth and depth of
meaning to knowledge and serves as the fusing element
between knowledge and the application of knowledge
to life. The concept of honesty, for example, operates
not only to govern one individual's relations with
another but to inspire a desire for straight-thinking,
fair self-evaluation, and satisfaction with nothing short
of the truth in knowledge. Dissimulation, superficiallv,
glibness and intellectual snobbery have no more place
in this context than intolerance, bigotry or dilettantism.
Integrity of intellect and of character develop simul-
taneously, and each nourishes the other.

Within the discipline inspired by the infusion of
knowledge with the spiritual values of our religious
heritage, when it is successfully effected as it is at Agnes
Scott, there is a freedom of spirit as well as of intellect
which engenders an atmosphere of unself-conscious
good humor and friendly ease. Students have a sense of
shared experiences, both intellectual and spiritual, which
begets a genuine interest in the happiness and well-being
of fellow students that transcends the relationship of
personal friendship. One of the first things I heard
about Agnes Scott before I came to the campus was
a comment from a friend of mine on another university
faculty, who had recently visited the College. "There
is an air about that place," he said, "unlike any place
I've ever been. It's both absorbing and exciting."
Donald Davidson has said that knowledge that possesses
the heart as well as the head pervades the entire being
as the grace of God pervades the heart and soul and
that this knowledge "relieves the individual from the
domination of the mob, the insolence of rulers, the
strife of jealous factions, the horrible commotion of
foreign wars and domestic politics, the vice of envy, the
fear of poverty. Positively, it establishes the blessed man
in a position where economic use, enjoyment, under-
standing, and religious reverence are not separated but
fused in one." This "knowledge carried to the heart"
seems to me to be the dominant characteristic of Agnes
Scott.

In this day of sputniks and rockets, Agnes Scott's Bradley Observatory
and its director, Dr. William A. Calder, have frequently found their
way into the headlines. Kathryn Johnson '47 , a staff writer for the
Associated Press, gives us the opportunity in a realistic profile to
meet this man behind the news.

* X .. '

P

Jfi. balder Jxaletdoscopi

Miss Johnson

.

Kathryn Johnson, '47

Dr. Calder

IF YOU GRADUATED from Agnes Scott
before Dr. William A. Calder, Chairman of the
Department of Physics and Astronomy, came to
teach, and before the Bradley Observatory was built,
you know you were born a few years too soon.

Why would a study, compounded of starry nights
and cold mathematical calculation, fill a classroom to
overflowing with students eager to learn a subject
usually considered a little abstruse for the tastes of
most women ?

First, as Dr. Calder explains, there is the eternal
human fascination with the stars. Second, there is the
intellectual pleasure of working in a pure science, a
form of enjoyment which college women share with
the rest of intelligent humanity.

Dr. Calder will give you as the third reason, the
prospect of having the best telescope south of Wash-
ington and east of Arizona to use in observation.

But if you have visited the fourth floor of Campbell
Science Hall and talked with Dr. Calder, with classical
hi-fi music playing softly in the background, and sur-
rounded by his dog, Stormy, his physics apparatus,
cameras and various inventions of his creative mind, you

A recent display in the library shows one of the new "eyes."

understand the biggest magnet of all is Dr. Calder
himself.

Here is a man of vast ingenuity, with an informal,
vibrant personality, and an unbounded humor.

Dr. Calder is of medium height, with short-cropped
sandy hair, a mobile alive face with blue eyes that reflect
a kind of perpetual excitement as though the thing
about to happen to him never happened before tc
anyone.

When Dr. Calder came to Agnes Scott in Septem-
ber, 1947, there was no observatory, and few students
took physics or astronomy. Largely due to his efforts,
the Bradley Observatory was built and equipped to
become one of the finest collegiate observatories
anywhere.

Sights never seen before in Georgia have filtered
through the powerful 30-inch lens telescope to the
knowledgeable eyes of Dr. Calder and his students
as they watch from the wooded hilltop on the campus
celestial spectacles which no instrument previously in
this part of the country had been strong enough to
provide.

As Director of the Bradley Observatory, Dr. Calder
has a continual stream of visitors from various groups,
both adults and children, to the observatory.

The large membership of the Atlanta Astronomers,
an amateur group formed by Dr. Calder in 1948, meets
monthly at the observatory. There is also a monthly
open house for the general public, in addition to certain
weekday nights, when the observatory must be open for
students.

Since coming to the college, Dr. Calder has developed
an effective astronomy program in the area centered
around the observatory, and has made Agnes Scott a
regional center for the study of the universe. As Dr.
Wallace Alston, President of Agnes Scott, pointed out,
Dr. Calder has been more instrumental in adult
education in astronomy than anyone in this section.

In addition to his making astronomy as a course one
of the most popular, Agnes Scott is one of the leading
undergraduate schools in astronomy in the country,
in proportion to its size.

Even Dr. Calder, in his infinite reluctance to take
credit due him, will admit that there is much good
chance that bv the time the average student graduates
from Agnes Scott, she will have taken astronomy.

"My students work like beavers," he went on. "The
level of their work is unsurpassed anywhere and I
have examination files from other leading colleges and
universities to prove it."

Dr. Calder is of constant value in public relations
as a link between the college and the public community.
He is the person consistently called by wire services,
the Atlanta newspapers, TV and radio stations as the
authoritative word in the many scientific news interests
of these days. Since the advent of sputnik, he is possibly
the most-quoted scientist in the area on the subject.

When this writer tried to reach him by telephone
one evening last fall when sputnik was due to pass
over Atlanta, Mrs. Calder reported he had been so
deluged with telephone calls, night and day, that he
had fled to the science hall for escape.

Public Speaker

Dr. Calder is also much in demand as a speaker. He
plans to make a talk soon at the Federal Penitentiary,
his text being, "Ad Astra Per Aspera" "To the
Stars Through Bolts and Bars!" He will speak on, he
says with a twinkle, interplanetary space travel.

Dr. Calder said he will be just as enthusiastic as he

wants to be in talking to the prisoners, because he
knows "there won't be a lot of calls afterward!"

He will speak soon to a group of Emory graduate
students, on the topic, "The Influence of Astronomy on
Other Subjects."

Dr. Calder has in mind not the obvious subjects such
as the physical sciences, or thought and philosophy, but
the influence of astronomy on psychology.

As he explains it in layman's language, experimental
psychology started by the experience of an assistant
in an observatory who noted star crossings too late.
The assistant was fired for his slow reaction time, and
an important part of experimental psychology was be-
gun. Man as an observer had certain reactions; this
led to the first studies of human beings as observers.

Even the beginning of sampling of star counts in
different areas of the heavens such as the counting
of the myriad stars in the Milky Way led to the basis
of the use of statistics in psychology.

Gadgeteer

Not long after coming to Agnes Scott, Dr. Calder
found a used metal terrestial globe about 12 inches in
diameter. He removed the paint from it and with the
use of a mirror and star map, he poked holes through
tape through the globe, using several sizes of needles,
the heavier needles for the brighter stars.

Thus was contrived the planetarium globe which turns
the ceiling and walls of the special room of Dr. Calder's
own design, in the observatory, into an authentic starry
sky, with all the planets and constellations in their
places for any time of year he chooses. He has even had
his students paint in black the skyline of Agnes Scott on
the wall background.

Dr. Calder adds zip not often found in laboratories
in astronomy in the use of his own inventions and
creations in teaching.

Educational gadgetry takes, in Dr. Calder's own
words, appreciable time and thought. But when it pro-
duces a wide-awake class, it is worth the effort.

He invented an apparatus called a "domesticated"
Eclipsing Binary System.

Astronomers usually have to sit fcr many months
at a telescope to observe double stars, which seem
so close together when one star moves behind the other.
Dr. Calder rigged up two bulbs that revolve around
each other and produce the effects of an eclipsing
binary system when viewed from the distance of the
long attic of the science hall.

On each side of the gadget is located a rheostat for
controlling "star" brightnesses. The relative sizes of the
stars can be varied by changing the bulbs. Variations
of inclination, showing total and partial eclipses, can be
produced.

The apparatus by which the double star system at the
other end of the attic is observed consists principally of
a small telescope, equipped with a photoelectric cell, an
amplifier and a microammeter.

It is a unique experience watching the eclipses from
the stars. Thus an experiment which would take per-

haps months of effort can be conducted through his
invention in a half-hour.

Dr. Calder has also taken a completely round white
globe (an old globe formerly used on porches and
rarely found today), placed it on a black velvet cloth
in the attic of the science hall, and projected a photo-
graph of the moon on to it. Thus, with the lights off,
a simulated moon is perfectly reproduced for use in
studying the actual features of the moon.

These are but a few of his many instruments for
demonstration and teaching purposes. Many of these
he has written up for "Sky and Telescope" magazine.

Another interest of Dr. Calder's is photography,
which he teaches Spring quarter. He has a fascinating
collection of stereoscopic slides which he made of various

Dr. Colder and students explore the heavens through the
30-inch Beck telescope in the Bradley Observatory.

scenes around Stone Mountain and Decatur. He is also
much interested in tape recording.

Invariably, something of his humor creeps into his
teaching methods.

He once taped off the sinister music played on the
TV $64,000 Question program when the contestant
is placed in the box for questioning, and relaxed his
students by playing the tape before an exam.

In a true-false exam, his students will tell you that it
is not unusual to find one of the questions "This exam
is a stinker," to be marked true or false.

Dr. Calder gads about the campus on his Italian
motor scooter, to and from the science hall to his home
and the observatory. He has been known to give the
girls a ride on rare occasions.

Musician

"I'm an infamous harpist but I enjoy it" is the way
he describes his chief musical interest. His friends will
tell you he is a distinguished harpist and ardent music
lover.

He also plays the violin and viola and participated in
the Christmas music program at the college with his
harp.

A scientist in every sense of the word, Dr. Calder
is yet no worshipper of scientific research. He believes
that science and the genius of scientific thought are
overrated.

He feels that scientists are like the "thirteenth man
to fly across the Atlantic" ; plenty of other men, given
time and opportunity, could do it as well.

Dr. Calder, for example, doesn't begin to have as
much admiration for scientists as for Debussy. Debussy,
he explains, might not have been born and so his
particular music might never have been created, where-
as a research worker nowadays, with the abundant help
of equipment and fellowship grants, will produce what
another worker might also easily produce.

Dr. Calder thinks scientists as teachers now have
more respect than ever before, and that a scientist need
not be humiliated because he is not turning out research.

Dr. Calder, however, has been doing valuable re-
search for years on the relative brightness of the sun
and moon. He believes and is conducting experiments
to prove that the reflectivity of the moon is much
brighter than present science textbooks say.

When he was resident astronomer at Harvard, he
had already gained international recognition for his
work in this field.

When several Soviet fliers were lost in the Arctic,
the Russian government wrote him asking how much
brightness of the moon they could rely on while search-
ing for the fliers. This was during the period of eternal
night in the Arctic.

A teacher, someone once said, affects eternity ; you
can never tell where his influence stops.

It is as a teacher that Dr. Calder is at his best,
largely because he enjoys it so and because of his great
love for astronomy. The purest science there is, he says.

To say that Dr. Calder is that rare individual, a
really happy person, is not, perhaps, to best describe him.
His wife said it well when she said, "the word 'happy'
has a connotation not exactly right for a sensitive
person. I would say, rather, he has known depths of
contentment, happiness and satisfaction."

Dr. Calder's wife, Dorothy, is a talented artist; she
teaches art at Decatur High and is art consultant for
Decatur elementary schools.

The Calders have two children, Bill Calder, a Lt.
j.g. in the Coast Guard, who lives with his wife and
small son at Corpus Christi, Texas, and a daughter,
Frances, also married, now a junior at Agnes Scott.

Dr. Calder received his schooling at the University
of Wisconsin and Harvard University and was as-
sociated for some time with the Harvard Observatory.

When quoted by the Atlanta Journal in late Decem-
ber, 1957, as to what is ahead in '58, Dr. Calder said,
among other things:

"The very best thing that could happen in science
would be the realization of international peace which
would free us from the waste and abuse in pursuing
science for defense purposes. As to technical advances,
nothing could rival the achievement of a controllable
fusion process which would put unlimited energy at
man's disposal.

"Think of the transformation that could be accom-
plished in barren and desert regions where human
beings are now barely surviving. This is one of the
most difficult and ambitious projects ever conceived.
But some new lead, if not a clear breakthrough, is to be
expected in 1958."

ttftftttrt

We wanted to share with alumnae the ideas Dr.
Miriam Koontz Drucker, assistant professor of psy-
chology since 1955-56, expressed to the college com-
munity in a chapel talk this year.

OUR AGE OF LONELINESS

Miriam Koontz Drucker

Dr. Drucker

IF IT WERE possible to project oneself far
into the centuries of the future, and then look
back with understanding upon our present time,
it would be exceedingly interesting to know by what
name, by what descriptive phrase or title our present age
will be designated to separate it from the different ages
surrounding it. Many ideas for such a title have already
been suggested: the scientific age, the atomic age, the
age of anxiety, the age of loneliness. As a social scientist
whose specialty of training and experience deals most
with the relatively unexplored frontiers of human
relationships, my own inclination, without benefit of
prophetic insight, is to see our era as the age of mental
hygiene, or the age of the search for mental health, or
perhaps more specifically as the Era of the Discovery
and Exploration of the Self.

For while the important few beyond the guarded
laboratory door probe the structure of the atom, within
the equally guarded secret recesses of human minds
there seems to be a kind of frantic jabbing of the human
structure. We have come to appreciate and count on the
automobile, the supermarket, the telephone, and tele-
vision, the sanctuary and the flu shot, but if the accumu-
lated experience of those who work most intimately with
people, not things, can be trusted, we are on the crest
of an era where each man's most typical relationship
with himself is one of doubt, question, distrust, and
ill ease.

There is no evidence which I can find, either spiritual
or scientific, which demonstrates that self appraisal in
itself is the cause of our perplexing tussle with ourselves.
There is evidence, however, of both sorts to suggest
that our self appraisal is most often done without
honesty as we know it, and without truth as we each
experience it.

Apparently our self exploration is in the direction
of finding ourselves not as we are but as we think the
world around us demands us to be; apparently we look
inward with our minds made up as to what we must
find. The discrepancy between expectation and reali-
zation cries out for an answer. In that agonizing mo-
ment when the pattern for self and the outline of self
jeer at each other, it is not to honesty and truth that
we of this present age find it easy to turn. I am not

so much concerned at the moment with why we turn
from truth, as I am concerned that at no other time and
in no other way is truth more essential to us. It may
be that here as elsewhere truth is sometimes disappoint-
ing, but the lack of it cripples, punishes and incapacitates
the very self with which each of us is concerned. Truth,
like charity, or integrity or love or any other human
quality toward which we aim, must begin at home if
it is to exist anywhere in our human relationships.
There is no such thing as being truthful with one's
roommate, or one's teacher, or one's students, if within
one's searching of one's self hidden self truth is not
there. And there is no such thing as love or honor for
one's roommate, or teacher or student, if within one's
searching of one's hidden self love or honor is not there
for self.

The struggle of our age away from anxiety and lone-
liness toward mental health is, in its essence, the strug-
gle to find the self as it is within us. That this period
of history has already been called by these names
indicates the length and breadth and pain of our
struggle. To make matters worse, apparently each of
us must, in the final analysis, make this struggle alone.
With the best of scientific or spiritual knowledge to
help him, another person can only understand that we
are struggling; he cannot make the struggle for us;
he can go with us as far as we will take him into self,
but when we no longer share our self with him, we
are again alone.

Alone, and yet not quite alone, for in the innermost
recesses of self, between honesty and deception, there
is present the One who "when I sit in darkness ... is
... a great light unto me."

Even though at times we try to escape, God is with
us. Whether we accept Him or whether we do not, He
is still closer than life and breath. In the midd'e of
loneliness, God is there and self is not alone. There
is no promise in the New or Old Testament that
God's followers will not have to struggle with th-
honest understanding of self. But there are many
promises that where we are, there He is too, during
our Age of Loneliness.

What is truth f Jesus said, "1 am the truth." It is
the truth in our self appraisals that will make the self
free from this anxious age.

WISDO

and

KWAI SING CHANG

MAY I FIRST express my thanks and my appre-
ciation, and fright for your choice and for my
privilege and honor. And may I also make an-
other prefatory remark to the audience in general, and
that is that my words are addressed to the Senior Class
and so everybody else, parents, friends, colleagues, may
either relax or eavesdrop.

The realm of knowledge and wisdom, I think it is
true to say, is the main concern of a college. And a
college has four classes, but only two kinds of people
Sophomores and Seniors. For our purpose we shall say
that Juniors and Freshmen are non-existent. We shall
define them into non-existence. Juniors, I think we can
say, are really transitional paragraphs. Freshmen are
merely dangling participles looking for a connection.
That leaves us Sophomores and Seniors. What are
Sophomores ? I think we ought to be orthodox, there-
fore, we shall look into the Oxford English Dictionary
to find out what Sophomores are. This dictionary
states that a sophomore is a second year student. That
tells us nothing because we still want to know, what's
a Sophomore? And in order to find out we have to
look under another word sophomoric. There we find
this definition (and the Sophomores will please keep in
mind that I am reading this definition.) : "All or per-
taining to, befitting or resembling, characteristic of a
sophomore." But that's not the end, it goes on to say
"hence" that's the most important part "hence,
pretentious, bombastic, inflated in style or manner,
immature, crude, superficial."

I think I ought to stop here and talk to the Sopho-
mores. I will make two remarks. First, you will re-
member I read this from the dictionary. And second,

8

this definition was coined one hundred years before
Agnes Scott was founded.

So now we can continue, but still we have to ask
the question, why such nasty names? That's because
sophomore is made up of two words, placed side by
side, wise and fool. The original culprits are the
Greek Sophists of the 5th century B.C. They were
the ones who gave rise to this name. The Sophists, at
least some of them, used to think and argue in this
fashion: nothing exists; if anything existed no one
would know it ; if someone should come to know- it, he
could never describe it. That's knowledge that they
used to sell for good money that's sophomore.

What about Seniors? Turning to the dictionary
again, we find that a Senior means, first, you're aging.
I think yesterday's hockey game proved that !* But, then,
that's not the only meaning; there's another meaning
of senior. It also means superior in standing. The dic-
tionary doesn't elaborate on this, so let's work out the
meaning ourselves. Investiture symbolizes your move-
ment from the rank of Sophomores to that of Seniors,
This is a symbol that goes back to the feudal contract
of the Middle Ages. Then the vassal or the tenant
would kneel and pledge allegiance before his lord. The
lord, in turn, would perform what was known as
investiture, by handing to that vassal, that tenant, a
banner or charter or some piece of clothing to signify
his receiving or getting a new rank, a new office. So,
following this custom, you in your turn are going to
be invested, or clothed, from sophomore knowledge to
a superior kind, which we will call wisdom.

The freshman team beat the Seniors 3-1.

Dr. Chang joined the faculty of Agnes Scott in September, 1956, as
Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Bible. Although his parents
are Chinese, he is a native of Hawaii and came to Agnes Scott from
kohala. Ffaicaii. He received his A.B. degree from the University of
Hawaii, his B.D. and Th.M. from Princeton Theological Seminary,
and. Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh. The Class of 195S
chose Dr. Chang to deliver their Investiture address which we
have edited from a tape recording.

KNOWLEDGE

Some time ago on TV, there was on the "$64,000
Question" program, a grandmother named, I believe,
Mrs. Catherine Critzer, and she chose the Bible for
her field. Her answers took her up to $32,000, then she
quit (showing she knew just as much about income tax
rates as about Bible facts!). There followed news-
paper reports saying that thousands and thousands of
Americans were consequently buying more and more
Bibles and reading more from their Bibles. This makes
one ask the question, were those thousands and thous-
ands looking for knowledge or wisdom ? The kind of
question that Mrs. Critzer had to answer, such as:
Name eight of the twelve disciples ; might be a good
question for a quiz program, but it surely doesn't rep-
resent what the Bible calls wisdom.

The Bible itself makes a distinction between wisdom
and knowledge, as in the twenty-eighth chapter of the
Book of Job, which is a poem written in the same age
in which the Greek Sophists worked. Let's read the
first part of this poem :

Surely there is a mine for silver,

and a place for gold which they refine.
Iron is taken out of the earth,

and copper is smelted from the ore.
Men put an end to darkness,

and search out to the farthest bound

the ore in gloom and deep darkness.
They open shafts in a valley away from where men live;

they are forgotten by travelers,

they hang afar from men, they swing to and fro.
Vs for the earth, out of it comes bread:

but underneath it is turned up as b\ fire.
Its stones are the place of sapphires,

and it has dust of gold.
That path no bird of prey knows,

and the falcon's eye has not seen it.

The proud beasts have not trodden it;

the lion has not passed over it.
Man puts his hand to the flinty rock,

and overturns mountains by the roots.
He cuts out channels in the rocks,

and his eye sees every precious thing.
He binds up the streams so that they do not trickle.

and the thing that is hid he brings forth to light.
But where shall wisdom be found?

And where is the place of understanding?
Man does not know the way to it,

and it is not found in the land of the living.

If you translate this fifth-century B.C. Hebrew poem
in modern terms, or more prosaic terms, I think you
might give the essence this way : we know how to make
moons and almost to travel to the moon, but we still
don't know how to get along with each other whether
in terms of the neighborhood level, the national level,
or the international level. Thus the question asked 2400
years ago is still our question : where shall wisdom be
found and where is a place of understanding?

One negative answer from the Bible is that wisdom
is not mere knowledge or the accumulation of facts
and skills, because the fifth-century poet says that man
is able to refine gold, smelt copper, move mountains,
cut channels in rocks and bind up streams, but he
cannot find wisdom. We like to assume that just be-
cause we know so much more than our grandfathers
and our grandmothers we must be wiser. Now, that
doesn't follow. Our grandfathers and our grandmothers
could travel no faster than Abraham, Isaac or Jacob.
But just because we can travel at the rate of 600 miles
per hour instead of 6 doesn't mean that we are brainier
or better, or our trips anymore worthwhile. It's what

we are, not what we can do, not how fast we can do it
or how fabulously we can do it, that makes us civilized.

San Quentin prison, in California, is today fortu-
nate enough to have a Columbia University man run-
ning its library. The library has 25,000 volumes fov
4,500 men, and, to show you what a Columbia man can
do, in two years time after this man took over, readers
in the library jumped from 480 to 3,200. The average
reader borrows 100 books a year, and the circulation
facts, classified, go like this: first in popularity his-
tory, travel, biography, 12,000 readers; second, prac-
tical arts and sciences, 10,000 readers; third, literature,
language drama, 7,000 readers; and last philosophy,
psychology, religion and ethics, 5,000 readers. I'm quite
sure some of these readers can go all the way to the top
in a quiz program. That doesn't mean that they are
any brainier or better. And so, where shall wisdom be
found and where is a place of understanding?

The poet in Job gives first a negative answer. Man
does not know the way to it, and it is not found in the
land of the living. But if you read to the end of the
poem you will find another answer, a two-fold one.
He says at the end :

God understands the way to it,
and lie knows its place.

And the second part of this answer, which is repeated
in Proverbs, Psalms and other books goes like this, as
expressed in Psalm III :

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

In essence, that's the poet's answer. "The fear of
the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Can we interpret
these words to mean religion is the beginning of wis-
dom? Not if we mean by religion a formal acceptance

and reciting of creeds, or a ceremonious practice of
rituals, or even a stylized look of piety. Rather, taking
an old meaning of the word fear, we should say that
reverence is the beginning of wisdom. That can be
instilled by the church,, the school, or the home or all
together, because true reverence combines the searching
wonder of the scientist, the awe of the artist, and the
devotion of the saint. That's what true wisdom, true
reverence involves. So it is the attitude that frees us
from all dogmatism concerning the truth of things or
events, or the worth and dignity of people as people.

This is the beginning of wisdom. This is the insight
that tells us what to do with our knowledge. How do
we find it? The New Testament and the Christian
church point to Jesus of Nazareth and say He is the
Way, the Truth, and the Light, follow Him. This is
harder than it sounds at first, because it means not
merely acquiescing to the teaching of Jesus; it involves
living according to that teaching. And that is a stumb-
ling block for most people. But there is no getting
around this point, whether one turns to the West or to
the East in the search for wisdom. This is in the end the
answer.

Eastern thought and Eastern philosophy point to the
same direction in this search for wisdom. One basic
principle, for instance, running all through Confucious'

1

thought is the idea of

-t-

; it's made up of two

words, one word placed on top of the other, translated
"sincerity." The top word means "little," the bottom
word means "part." And Confucious summarizes his
idea of sincerity this way: under heaven it is only those

who are possessed of the absolute Z\ % \ who can

develop fully their nature; able to develop fully their
nature, they can develop fully the nature of men; able
to develop fully the nature of other men, they can
develop fully the nature of things; able to develop fully
the nature of things, they can help heaven and earth in
transforming and nourishing life; able to help heaven
and earth in transforming and nourishing life, they can
be one with heaven and earth. And we find the same
emphasis in Hindu thought. According to the Hindu
scriptures, "To know is to become." Mere theoretical
knowledge is useless in Hindu thought. Therefore, in

order to arrive at

the self must first be

Dr. and Mrs. Chang, Jasmine, 1, and Forsythia, 4.

purified through detachment, through meditation,
through self-discipline. In short, what all these amount
to is this : what we see depends on what we are. You
can draw the implications for yourself from that.

Now we come back to you. Today you are being
invested or clothed ; as Seniors you are formally moving
from the knowledge of the fifth-century Greek Sophists
to the beginning of the wisdom of the fifth-century
Hebrew poet. But whether this investiture represents
formality or reality depends on you, on what you do
from now till June. God bless your efforts.

10

Choon Hi Choi is a student at Agnes Scott from Seoul, Korea. In
order for you to know something of her and her experiences before
she came to Agnes Scott, we are reprinting her story, "The March,"
which appeared in the fall edition of the Aurora.

THE MARCH

Choon Hi Choi

Choon Hi, daughter of Pilley Kim Choi, '26,

IT WAS ONLY day before yesterday that the
refugees from the north began to appear in the
city. And the road certainly hasn't been as
crowded as it is now. This evening the rows and rows
of refugees are endlessly pouring into the city, and most
of them are farmers. I can tell from their belongings.

Everybody is carrying loads. There is no exception,
whether they are aged or young. All the possible facul-
ties of the body are called out and put at work. Look at
that woman! She is carrying on her head, on her back,
and still her both hands are not free. I don't see how
she can walk miles and miles that way, even if Korean
women are expert carriers.

Some lucky families have carts ; they must have been
well-to-do families in their villages, perhaps owned
some land. The carts are loaded to the top; in each on
top of everything else is a big basket full of children
excitedly clapping their hands and staring at this city
called Seoul. The fathers are pulling in front and the
mothers push from behind. It is good that they didn't
bring their mules with them. Surely there would be no
room for animals.

I try to read the expression on their faces but I can't,
and I don't know what it is. They seem expressionless.
They want to walk faster and faster, yet they are held
back by the crowd in this dreary, solemn march at
twilight.

My brother stops a man in the crowd. They speak
to each other across the trolley track.

"Where are you coming from?"

The man says, "From Miyari."

Miyari . . . Miyari . . . my heart is beating and
Miyari is clanging in my ears. The Communists are
only four miles away, then.

Mv brother questions him again, "Are we winning
or . . .?"

The man is impatient at stopping. He gestures as if
he doesn't want to speak and shakes his head hastily,
"I really don't know. But I tell vou this. Until this

morning, you know, they were fighting at Uijongbu,
but this noon I heard them not very far from us. So
I guess . . ."

He stops there as if afraid of putting defeat into
words and quickly goes on his way. My brother and I
silently watch him until he becomes a tinv speck in the
crowd. The people continue to stream by on the other
side of the tracks.

Army trucks going north turn the corner, forcing
the crowd aside. The open trucks are full of so.diers
standing together in new, greenish khaki uniforms.
Some have helmets on, but some only have service caps,
and I wonder whether they will get any helmets when
they reach the front line. I am glad they are singing.
We are the banner of . . .

March on. march on . . . until the day of victo ry

I love this song. It has so much power in it. We used
to sing this, waving our flags and marching through
the street on the 1 5th of August, the day of liberation.
And then, if you were at any second-story building
along the street, you would be able to see how beautiful
our flags looked, waving, flapping softly in the students'
hands.

As each truck passes by tonight, the people standing
on this side of the street clap their hands, and shout
"Long live Korea!" But it is strange that the song
does not echo through the air. It seems to fall heavily
upon the crowd. I don't know why I am not able to
hum it to myself as I used to like to do.

My brother taps my shoulder.

"We better go home ; it's getting dark and I felt some
rain drops."

"Yes, we should be getting ready, too. Look, look
at the sky!"

The dark grey cloud is spreading with speed from
the northern sky, and from time to time faint popping
sounds are heard. It will be raining tonight.

Mv brother and I run all the way back heme.

11

DEATHS

INSTITUTE

Frances Fisher Warren, Sep!;. 9.

Alberta Bun-ess Trotter, April 22.

Bessie Harris Clayton, Jan. 22.

Lottie Anderson Pruden, Oct. 22,
1956.

Louise Hansell Whittle, in Novem-
ber.

1921

Mrs. J. A. Hall, mother of Helen
Hall Hopkins, in September.

1923

Martha Mcintosh Nail's mother,
Sept. 19.

1925
Alicia Young, April 9.

1926

William Quinn Slaughter, father of
Sarah Slaughter, Oct. 29.

1933

Mary Torrance Fleming, Oct. 22.

1934

Fred Kyle, husband of Buford Tin-
der Kyle, in September.

1935

Margaret Coins Wagner, Sept. 27.

Edith Kendrick Osmanski's three-
year-old daughter, Spring of 1957.

1944

Fred Maxwell, father of Mary
Maxwell Hutchinson, March 19, 1957.

1945
Mary Anne Snyder Lee, Aug. 13.

1947

L. Hall Mason, husband of Dr.
Sarah Cooley Mason, Nov. 3.

1951

Mrs. Nicholas G. Gounaris, mother
of Anna Gounaris, Aug. 19.

Special

Julia Pearl McCrory Weatherford,
Oct. 4.

AGNES SCOTT PLATES

A view of Buttrick Hall as seen from
Inman Porch is pictured in blue on
Wedgwood's white "Patrician" pat-
tern plate.

Order yours from the Alumnae
Office

Prices, postpaid:
$3.50 each 6 for $20.00

Proceeds from plate sales go to the
Alumnae House.

TEST YOURSELF

1. What happened to the Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly on Jan-
uary 18, 1958?

2. What happened to 6,864 alumnae in February, 1958?

3. What should happen, do you think, to 9,300 alumnae as soon
as possible?

1. The Quarterly was named the "most improved" alumni maga-
zine at the Southeastern District conference of the American
Alumni Council in Williamsburg, Virginia, January 15-18, 1958.

2. This, the Winter, 1958, issue of the Quarterly is being mailed
to all alumnae whose current addresses are on record at the
Alumnae Office, as of Feb. 10, 1958.

3. We (the editor, the Alumnae Association Board, and the Col-
lege Administration) want to send all issues of the Quarterly
to all alumnae, because it is the one publication which can bring
to you continuous interpretation of Agnes Scott today. Would
you like to receive the magazine regularly? Are you willing to
accept the responsibility of annual giving to Agnes Scott with-
out the string of a subscription to the Quarterly being tied to
your contribution to the Alumnae Fund?

Return Postage Guaranteed by Alumnae Quarterly, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia

FINE ARTS FESTIVAL
APRIL 17-19, 1958

Calendar of Events

April 17 Mae Sarton, poet and novelist, lecture, "The Holy
Game," the creation of a poem.

April 18 Michael McDowell and Irene Leftwich Harris,
duo-pianists, Music Department Faculty.

Creative writing panel discussion of student work
from Agnes Scott and other colleges, led by Mae
Sarton and Flannery O'Connor, Georgia author.

Blackfriars and Dance Group present a festival
version of Shakespeare's "The Tempest."

April 19 Art panel discussion, moderated by Marie Huper,
Agnes Scott Art Faculty, panel members: Carolyn
Becknell, Becknell Associates, Atlanta; Lamar Dodd,
University of Georgia; Paul M. Hefferman, Georgia
Tech; Joseph S. Perrin, Georgia State College.

"The Tempest," second performance.

SATURDAY, APRIL 19, IS ALUMNAE DAY
Alumnae Luncheon 12:30 P.M.

rnnae q

uarterlf

spring 1958

mm^Bmm^^mm

THE

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

OF

AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE

OFFICERS

MARY PRIM FOWLER '29

MITZI KISER LAW '54

President

Vice-President
SYBIL CORBETT RIDDLE '52

Vice-President

ALICE McDONALD RICHARDSON '29

Secretary

MARY MADISON WISDOM '41

Treasurer

TRUSTEES

CATHERINE WOOD MARSHALL '36
MARY WARREN READ '29

CHAIRMEN

ELIZABETH BLACKSHEAR FL1NN '38
Class Officers
BELLA WILSON LEWIS '34

Club
PATRICIA COLLINS ANDRETTA '28

Constitution
MARY WALLACE KIRK '1 1

Education
DOROTHY CHEEK CALLOWAY '29

Entertainment
CATHERINE IVIE BROWN '39

Hot

LOUISE GIRARDEAU COOK '28

Nominations
MARY CAROLINE LEE MACKAY '40

Property
LEONE BOWERS HAMILTON '26

Publications
RUTH RYNER LAY '46

Special Events

LORTON LEE '49

Vocational Guidance

STAFF

ANN WORTHY JOHNSON '38

Director of Alumnae Affairs
ELOISE HARDEMAN KETCHIN

House Manager
DOROTHY WEAKLEY '56

Office Manager

MEMBER

AMERICAN ALUMNI
COUNCIL

No. 3;

The AGNES SCOTT
Alumnae Quarterly

Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia
Volume 36
Spring, 1958

Contents

The Struggle for Communication 1

Jeanne Addison Masengill '46

The Struggle with God

Edmund A . Steimle

Are You Prepared for Leadership 7

Jean Bailey Oiven '39

Let's Keep the Liberal in Our Education 10

Paige Violette Harmon '48

'A Sound Frame, A Solid Intellect" 12

Harriette Haynes Lapp

Class News

15

Eloise Hardeman Ketchin

Lover. Spring's blossoms brought a particular beauty to the campus this
year, after a long, cold winter. This magnoja blossom should stir memories
in alumnae hearts. Photo by Kerr. Other photographs in this issue: p. 13,
Gospar-Ware; pp. 13-14, Charles Pugh.

The Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly is published four times a year
(November, Eebruary, April and July) by the Alumnae Association of
Agnes Scott College at Decatur, Georgia. Contributors to the Alumnae
J und receive the magazine. Yearly subscription, $2.00. Single copy 50 cents.
Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office of Decatur, Georgia,
under Act of August 24, 1912.

Eighty days is not required for ideas to go spontaneously around
the world. Without seeing Dr. Drucker's article in the Winter,
1958 Quarterly, Jeanne Addison Massengill '46 has expressed
some of the same beliefs in this chapel talk given at the Woman's
College of Beirut, Lebanon, where she teaches English.

the struggle for communication

jeanne addison masengill '46

IT HAS BEEN SAID that the human spirit en-
closed in a body can be compared to a person
enclosed in a small dark room, without light,
sound, ventilation, or communication with the outside
world'. And yet, perhaps the most basic of all human
needs, the most poignant of all human yearnings, is the
need and yearning for communication. We all want to
understand, and, above all to be understood but
we are perpetually turned back within the confines of
our small dark rooms.

Tennessee Williams in the Preface of his Cat On a
Hot Tin Roof has summed up very vividly his idea of
the human dilemma:

It is a lonely idea, a lonely condition, so terrifying
to think of that we usually don't. And so we talk to
each other, and write and' wire each other, call each
other short and long distance across land and sea,
clasp hands with each other at meeting and parting,
fight each other and even destroy each other because
of this always somewhat thwarted effort to break
through walls to each other. As a character in a
play once said, "We're all of us sentenced to solitary
confinement inside our own skins."

A society without some degree of communication is
absolutely beyond the powers of imagination. In fact,
anthropologists often date the beginning of human
beings from the invention of language. And yet, as
most of us know, more language is frighteningly in-
adequate for any real communication. Even in a society
where everyone speaks the same language, there are
endless limitations, some inherent in the nature_ of
our imperfect languages, and some imposed by society
itself. Williams says,

The discretion of social conversation, even among
friends, is exceeded only by the discretion of . . .
the grave wherein nothing is mentioned at all.

Unless we do escape from the "solitary confinement"

of our skins, we can obviously have no true conception
of the greatness of either man or God. To enable us
to escape, even if only momentarily, is the function of
all serious conversation, all education, all friendship, love,
art, and even religion. It is in direct proportion to our
ability to escape that we are able to share the great
insights, visions, and enlightenments of the world. And
it is directly in proportion to their ability to free us
that we measure the greatness of education, friendship,
love, art, and religion.

To share in the thoughts and emotions of another
is incredibly difficult. It may be impossible. The wise
Homer tells us that even in moments of great common
sorrow, each mourner weeps secretly for his own woe.
We know that all of us have been conditioned and
shaped by different environments and experiences. To
communicate between worlds takes a tremendous effort :
the effort first of all to know oneself ; second, the effort
to imagine a world that one has not felt; and third, the
effort to remove all the disguises deliberate and in-
voluntary which distort the impressions of both
sender and receiver. It is the constant effort of the
artist, for example, to become more and more fully
aware and to communicate to as many levels of con-
scious and subconscious perception in his audience as
possible. Henry David Thoreau has described the state
of mind of the ideal artist:

The millions are awake enough for physical labor;
but onlv one in a million is awake enough for effec-
tive intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred
millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to
be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite
awake. How could I have looked him in the face.-

Communication between men forces increasing won-
der at the complexities of the human soul its little-
ness and its bigness. Andre Malraux, one of the most
profound and stirring of modern novelists, has des-
cribed Art as "an attempt to give men a consciousness

1

of their own hidden greatness." It is communication,
he says, "which makes man human, which enables him
to surpass himself, to create, invent, or realize himself."

The possibilities of human communication are tre-
mendously exciting. All of us work constantly, whether
in freshman English or in the artist's studio, to make
our expressions and insights deeper, more subtle, more
precise. We can already imagine a future where com-
munication may be possible without language.

Such communication may be magnificent ; it may
provide salvation at the blackest moments of solitude
and despair; it may be stimulating and inspiring
but ultimately it is tragic tragic because it is never
complete, never entirely satisfying.

Malraux has dramatized the human condition very
vividly in his novel Le Temps du Mepris or Days of
Wrath. It is a novel set in Nazi Germany, and the
hero is literally in solitary confinement :

He must wait. That was all. Hold out. Live in a
state of suspended animation, like the paralyzed, like
the dying, with the same submerged tenacity like
a face in the very heart of darkness. Otherwise
madness."

The hero is saved at the absolute verge of madness
by three notes of music which represent for him the
whole world of art, order, and beauty.

A guard came back into the corridor, humming.

Music!

There was nothing around him, nothing but a geo-
metric hollow in the enormous rock, and in this hole
a bit of flesh awaiting torture; but in this hole there
would be Russian songs, and Bach and Beethoven.
His memory was full of them. Slowly, compellingly,
music was banishing insanity from his breast, his
arms, his fingers, and from the cell.

. . . the music now issued forth a call that was
echoed and reechoed to infinity. In this insurgent
valley of the Last Judgment, it seemed to bind in a
common bond all the voices of that subterranean
region in which music takes a man's head between
its hands and slowly lifts it towards human fellow-
ship.

But the salvation is only momentary; the vision cannot
endure:

With his eyelids tightly shut, a slight fever in his
hands that were now clutching his chest, he waited.
There was nothing nothing but the enormous rock
on every side and that other night, the dead night.
He was pressed against the wall. "Like a centipede,"

he reflected, listening to all this music born of his
mind which now gradually was withdrawing, ebbing
away with the very sound of human happiness, leav-
ing him stranded on the shores . . .

Once more he began to pace the floor. The hand
which was to be his- death hung beside him like a
satchel . . . The hour that was approaching would
be the same as this; the thousand smothered sounds
that teem like lice beneath the silence of the prison
wotdd repeat to infinity the pattern of their crushed
life; and suffering, like dust, would cover the immu-
table domain of nothingness.

He leaned back against the wall, and surrendered
himself to stagnant hours."

It is the ultimate tragedy of even the greatest of
human relationships, which makes the idea of God so
compelling, so absolutely irresistible to human beings.
Here at last is an end to the struggle to be understood.
True, the struggle to understand continues; but in this,
one may be assisted by an infinite grace unquestion-
ing and unquestionable. I know of no greater expression
of the simple certainty of God's complete knowledge
and power than Psalm 139. I use this psalm as a
closing prayer:

Lord, thou hast searched me out, and known

me: thou knowest my down-sitting, and mine

up-rising; thou understandest my thoughts long

before.
Thou art about my path, and about my bed: and

spiest out all my ways.
For lo, there is not a word in my tongue; but

thou, O Lord, knowest it altogether.
Thou hast fashioned me behind and before: and laid

thine hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful and excellent for

me: I cannot attain unto it.
Whither shall I go then from thy Spirit: or whither

shall I go then from thy presence?
If I climb up into heaven, thou art there: if I go

down to hell, thou art there also.
If I take the wings of the morning: and remain

in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there also shall thy hand lead me: and thy

right hand shall hold me.
If I say, Preadventure the darkness shall cover me:

then shall my night be turned to day.
Yea, the darkness is no darkness with thee, but the

night is as clear as the day: the darkness and

light to thee are both alike.

1 will give thanks unto thee, for I am fearfully and

wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works, and

that my soul knoweth right well.
Try me. O God, and seek thy ground of my heart:

prove me, and examine my thoughts.
Look well if there be any way of wickedness in me:

and lead me in the way everlasting.

the

STRUGGLE
with

EDMUND A. STEIMLE

GOD

Dr. Steimle, Professor of Practical Theology at the Lutheran
Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, led Agnes Scott's annual
Religious Emphasis Week, February 10-14. His directness and
honesty, the clarity of his thinking, and the strength of his
commitment to God had an especial impact on members of the
college community. This article has been edited from one of
his chapel talks.

I SET BEFORE YOU the subject of religion as
a struggle with God, first because I believe that
true religion is never completely free from strug-
gle, no matter what level of religious experience a man
attains, from the questioning, skeptical undergraduate
sniffing suspiciously at the edges of it to the completely
dedicated saint. But there is a second, more immediate,
reason for viewing religion as struggle, and that is
because the notion of struggle is apt to be pushed aside
these days when religion in its popular, best-selling form
is being hawked for just the opposite reason: that re-
ligion will give you freedom from struggle; that it
will release tensions, eradicate worry, do away with
problems and perplexities. Take your troubles to church,
the familiar ad reads and leave them there. In short
religion is supposed to make life simple, easy, and
effortless. I have no quarrel with most of this as a
possible by-product of a deep and abiding faith. But
this is the by-product of a faith a life perspective
which involves constant struggle on every level.

I have no idea whether this approach which sees
struggle at the heart of religion will appeal to you or
not. On the basis of some profiles of the contemporary
undergraduate, I suspect it won't. You are aware, I
presume, of what people are saying about you ? Even
your best friends ? The typical undergraduate today
lacks a critical and probing mind ; that his chief interest,
like that of his elders, is security, his besetting sin :
apathy. "Struggle" then may have little appeal. And
yet, for the life of me, I cannot understand why even

the people who go in big for comfort and security ex-
pect to engage in some sort of effort and struggle for
everything else in life except religion. They'll sweat
and strain to get through college; they will struggle
to understand the mysteries of chemistry, history or
psychology, even if the ultimate objective is security.
And beyond academic matters even the starry-eyed
young couple recognizes that living happily ever after
involves struggle, too ; they know that there must be
compromise and adjustment to make a go of it. But
religion, which has to do with the meaning of the
totality of life is supposed to come to full bloom and
mature without the slightest bit of effort or struggle.
If doubts and questions come, some students actually
push them down, guiltily, as if these were alien to the
nature of religious faith.

The result of all this is that we have the most
appalling biblical illiteracy the Christian world has
probably ever known. Adults walk around reciting
prayers they learned as adequate for their needs when
they were five-year olds. College students attempt to
make sixth-grade Sunday school lessons fit the intellec-
tual dimensions of college physics or philosophy, and
some have been known to resent even a scant year's
course in religion when it is required. It's hardly sur-
prising, then, that when these grade-school level
religious horizons do not fit college-level intellectual
horizons, religion is put in a separate compartment in-
sulated from other areas of growth and inquiry, or
you "have faith" or you don't.

The first level of the struggle with God, then, is at
the intellectual level. Theologians call this area of
struggle "apologetics," which does not mean apologizing
for the faith you hold. It means, I suppose, simply the
clearing away of intellectual underbrush and establish-
ing an area or arena in which communication can take
place between the man of faith and the skeptic.

Symbols

This intellectual struggle begins with the elementary
but fundamental truth that we communicate with each
other by means of symbols. Much as your professors
might think it greatly to your advantage could they
simply inject their thought into your heads willy-nilly,
the best they can do is to stand at the threshold of your
domain and signal their meaning to you by means of
symbols words, analogies, picture language. Com-
munication, then, takes place when the symbol used
means the same thing for them as it does for you.

Much of our intellectual difficulty with biblical
religion (not all of it, of course, as we shall see, but
much of it) rests right here. I'm not at all sure I am not
being too elementary for Agnes Scott if so, forgive me,
put me down as a fuddy-duddy teacher who always
insists on review of the fundamentals. The biblical
writers use symbols which represent a meaning for
them, but apparently a lot of college products never
get around to finding out what meanings those symbols
represent. This involves catching their world-view, the
kind of literature they used, the historical situation to
which they addressed themselves. Failing in this
struggle to get behind the biblical symbols and imagery,
the usual course is to take it all literally, and the result
is utter confusion. So we read of Christ "sitting at
the right hand of God," of Jonah spending three days
in the belly of a whale, of the creation of the world
where green vegetation precedes the creation of the
sun, of Christ ascending up into heaven on a cloud, of
heaven's streets paved with gold and precious jewels
and angels playing harps, of the command to pluck out
your right eye if it offends you. Taken literally, these
symbols are meaningless.

And yet if we were to take your ordinary conversa-
tional symbols literally, you would think us hopelessly
stupid and square. For example, a friend of yours got
"smashed at a terrific blast Saturday night." How
dreadful! Is he in the hospital? "They had a jam
session after the dance" and it wasn't spread on
toast or muffins!

Ridiculous. In my own experience much misunder-
standing of biblical religion among college under-
graduates and graduates lies at this point. At least we
ought not chuck the whole business before engaging the
intellectual struggle to get at the meaning behind
the symbols and imagery.

Take, just as an example, the admittedly difficult
story of Christ's ascending into heaven on a cloud. In
the world-view of the first century this may have
provided little difficulty, even if taken literally, and yet
even then the story was an attempt to portray vividly a
meaning that went far beyond the literal sense of the
story. Today, with our knowledge of the universe, its

literal meaning approaches the ridiculous. Were it to |
happen today, Christ would have to watch his take-off |
time so as to avoid cruising airliners and jet planes, to
say nothing of avoiding a collision with a bevy of sput- I
niks. However, the meaning behind the story remains I
unchanged. For the writers, Christ was divine; his
appearances after the resurrection stopped, and he I
returned to God to rule over all the created world. And |
where would he go except "up?" You and I still use
the symbolic "up" when we want to indicate a reality
beyond the material, tangible world about, even though
literally "up" is meaningless with respect to a planet
whirling in space. This illustration indicates not only
the problem of getting behind the imagery of the
meaning but also that an attempt to get behind the
symbols and imagery to the meaning in back of them
certainly does not solve all the problems. This does
not necessarily make all the stories "easier" to accept
or believe. This is not an attempt to explain away
difficult parts of the biblical record, like the attempt
to explain away the feeding of the 5000 on the basis
that it was a glorified Sunday School picnic when
everyone brought his own lunch. This illustrates simply
that there ought to be an attempt to understand the
meaning behind the symbols and imagery of biblical re-
ligion in order that communication can take place.

Once that attempt is made, however, we encounter
an intellectual struggle of a different kind. For the
meaning behind the often strange and baffling biblical
symbols and imagery seems to be quite clear on this ;
it is the record of a God who makes himself known on
his terms, not ours. The Bible, according to its own
view of itself, is not the record of man's growth in
religious knowledge and awareness, the story of man's
gradual discovery of God. On the contrary, it is the
story of God's invasion of our world in ways surprising
to us.

Crucial Absurdities

The absurdity of crucial events in the story under-
lines this. For example, the story begins with God
choosing an insignificant nomadic tribe to be the agent
of his revelation. No reason is given why this particular
people should be chosen. It is understandable that a God
whose innermost character is love should choose a com-
munity of people to reveal that character, for love is
meaningless apart from persons in relationship to a
community. But why this community? Looking back
on their later history we can say that the chosen people,
the Jews, developed a high degree of religious sensitivity.
But to say that this was the reason for God's choice is
to misread the record and obscure the absurdity of it.

Even more absurd is the Christian affirmation that
God presented himself to man incarnate in a peasant
carpenter's son, Jesus of Nazareth. Equally absurd is
the notion that such a God would die a criminal's death
or, if he was only a man, that he should rise from the
dead. For let's get this straight; the Bible knows noth-
ing of an immortal soul which automatically goes on
living after the body is destroyed. It knows only death
and a resurrection at God's hands. And this, to our
minds, is absurd. Either there is an indestructible spark

1 of immortality in us which death cannot destroy, or

[ else, when you're dead, you're dead. So we figure!

The point of all this is that these crucial absurdities

underline the fact that what we have here is a record

' which purports to be God's action on his terms, not

I something a man would dream up out of his head as to

what God ought to be like.

We are forever trying to doctor up the story to make
it fit what we think God ought to be like and how he
ought to act. Men are forever trying to make Christ
out to be a very good man a great moral teacher. But
as C. S. Lewis has pointed out, this is the one option
not open to us. "A man who was merely a man and
said the sort of things Jesus said," Lewis writes,
"wouldn't be a great moral teacher. He'd either be a
lunatic on a level with the man who says he's a
poached egg or else he'd be the devil of hell . .
You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him
and kill him as a demon ; or you can fall at his feet and
call him Lord and God. But don't let us come with any
patronizing nonsense about his being a great human
teacher. He hasn't left that open to us. He didn't intend
to."

At least, biblical religion is coherent in this: if God
were to invade our world he would do it on his terms,
not ours; it would be unexpected, surprising, even
absurd otherwise he'd not be God but simply an
extension of what we think God ought to be like.

Let us then be honest enough to struggle with biblical
religion on its own terms. Agree, disagree ; accept, re-
ject; but struggle with it on the best of what it
purports to be, the record of God's invasion of our
world rather than a human attempt to "discover" God
or create one in his own image.

But if the struggle with God remains at the intellec-
tual level, as if religion were merely something "out
there" somewhere, to be tossed back and forth in a
bull session as a kind of test of our wits, we are simply
deceiving ourselves. For if this is God's disclosure of
himself, then this involves the meaning and purpose of
life in very personal terms. It involves me. And that
takes the struggle to a far deeper level, to the level of
my will, my whole being, the way I live my life.

Demands

For God makes demands ; calls for commitment and
for trust that issues in obedience. The demand is to
think of others first; that love is the divine law of life.
And most of us, I suspect, acknowledge the validity
of this claim. This is how life ought to be lived, isn't it
so? But as soon as I have in my inmost being acknowl-
edged the claim of love upon my life as a divine claim,
as the way all life, including my own, ought to be lived,
there I am, in fisherman's language, hooked, and I
thrash about desperately trying to get off the hook.

Consider what a radical demand this is. Here I am
with those words "I am" standing up front and
center in most of my thought symbolic of the ob-
vious fact that I am at the center not only of my own
life but of everything that goes on around me. I like or
don't like; I want or don't want; I take, give, love,
or resent. And so with the other concentric circles

around me the university, the neighborhood even
world events. All of it in a sense revolves around me.

But with the acknowledgment of the claim of love,
another "I am" invades my tidy little world and tries'
to elbow me out of the center of it. "I am the Lord
thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before me . . .
thou shalt love the Lord thy God and thy neighbor as
thyself." It's not at all strange that I thrash around
trying to get off the hook, to repudiate the claim by all
kinds of evasive actions.

Evasive Actions

One kind of evasive action we have already referred
to. If we can keep the struggle with God on the in-
tellectual level, we can keep him at a distance. The
technique calls for raising an infinite number of ques-
tions without ever committing yourself, like that theo-
logian who had a chance to go to heaven but preferred
to stay in hell because in heaven all the questions were
answered. One of the commonest evasions of God's
claim upon us in the intellectual climate of the uni-
versity or college is to keep it at the level of intellectual
debate.

But evasive action is not limited to those who refuse
to commit themselves. There are any number, within
the Christian church, for example, who profess a com-
mitment but who are actually engaged in evasive action.

There are those who deftly shove God out of the
center of the picture by making religion a means to their
ends. God is no longer in the center, for all their pious
professions. The purpose of the religion is primarily its
usefulness to them. It takes care of their neuroses and
insomnia ; helps America keep ahead of the Russians ;
gives them a sense of security in an insecure world ;
even helps them through exams, perhaps. It's a good
trick if you can manage it, for instead of God making
his uncomfortable claim upon you, you make your
claim upon him and end up with God at the end of a
string.

Another evasive action among the religious is to senti-
mentalize religion until its stark claim and radical
absurdities are smothered under whipped cream and
chocolate icing. The radical idea of God coming to
earth incarnate in a child is buried under a vague
Christmas spirit with its exchange of gifts, office parties,
and pretty pageantry plus a faint aroma of "good will
to men" and a sentimental longing for "peace on earth."
Or the radical notion of death and resurrection is
smothered under the sweet odor of Easter lilies, a fash-
ion parade and the pagan concept of a spring festival
with the "death" of winter giving way to the "resurrec-
tion" of springtime. It's pretty but it's not what the
New Testament means by death and resurrection.
The evasive action of the sentimentalists denies such
unpleasantnesses as sin and hell, makes heaven about as
sickening as an eternity of frozen custard and ends with
a God about as awe-inspiring as a friendly pal who
lives upstairs.

Yet, for all our evasive actions, there is no escape.
The evasions fool only ourselves. For there is always
this "other" call him what vou will who is

I

inescapable, who is God, as Paul Tillich points out,
just because he is inescapable, who sees us for what
we really are, sees us in a way we are unwilling to see
even ourselves, and lays his claim upon us. We can try
to get off the hook, try to escape, to run way. We can
dream of space travel to the moon, or we can try
running away here at home, running from TV to
Hollywood to Reno to Florida to the corner bar and
back to TV again, but there is no escape. "If I ascend
up into the heavens thou art there." Once you have
acknowledged his claim of love, there is left only a
struggle, like Jacob at the Jabbok struggling in the
darkness with that mysterious spirit until the dawn.

The New Testament story is the story of Every-
man : either you reject God and try to kill him because
you cannot stand to have him around, in which case
you end up with a God of your own making; or you
surrender and submit to him, "Not my will, but Thine
be done."

But this submission or surrender is not passive. Sub-
mission is itself a struggle, and here we come to the
ultimate struggle with God on the deepest or, if you
prefer, the highest level. This is not the struggle with
self, though it includes that of course, but the struggle
with God, the kind of struggle pictured in the book of
Job. Job was impatient (contrary to the popular phrase,
the patience of Job). Job was mighty impatient; he
questioned God, summoned him to debate, "I will fill

my mouth with arguments," demanded answers. This
was not because he doubted God but rather because he
was so sure God must have an answer to the dilemma of
life. And God answered him, though not in the way
Job expected.

It is this kind of struggle that goes on in the life
of the committed man, the religious man, the man the
New Testament calls humble and "meek." For meek-
ness in the New Testament does not mean a cringing
doormat. In New Testament times, they used to call
chariot horses "meek" because they were full of life
and fire and energy but were sensitive to bit and
bridle. This is an accurate picture of the religious man:
not the namby-pamby caricature which has been foisted
upon a gullible public by cartoonists and some
church men, too, God pity us but men of fire and
spirit and energy whose deep and undergirding trust
and commitment to God does not put a damper on
their probings and questionings but rather results in
a continuing struggle with God. Such men probe the
mystery of His being, wrestle with the mysteries and
tragedies of life, seek answers for social injustice or the
place of religion on a university campus. They struggle
with God knowing that His will is good and they are
forever trying to discover what that will may mean for
our world, for our communities and for us.

This is the struggle with God as one man sees it
from the standpoint of the Bible.

Are

You

Prepared For Leadership?

No matter what her marital status or career demands,
the educated woman faces the responsibility of com-
munity leadership. Jean Bailey Owen '39, a former
president of the Alumnae Association, gave some guide-
posts in this area to the student body in a speech made
at the request of the 1957-58 Mortar Board Chapter.

Jean Bailey Owen '39

ANOTHER FRESHMAN and I once told
Miss Preston that we didn't see how we could
write a paper on "The Education of Richard
Feverel" because we thought the subject had been pretty
well exhausted in the novel by George Meredith. She in-
formed us that in reaching this conclusion we were
showing how very young we were. We did not take
this to be a compliment as we would if the same
words were spoken to us now for even then we
realized that she was referring to our mental maturity,
not to our chronological age. At about the same time,
after being sent to appear on a program for a Decatur
women's organization, another Freshman and I agreed
that we hoped we would never become club women.
Again, we were showing how very young we were !

A member of Mortar Board has asked me to talk on
leadership in the community after college. Mortar
Board honors leadership during college as the first of
its three ideals. It is the purpose of the organization
to call attention to, reward, and develop further those
who have been leaders on the campus for their first
three years, but it desires, as one of the services of its
current chapter, to stimulate all of the student body
to enter into activities in this community, thus to
develop new generations of leaders here at Agnes
Scott.

First, I predict that all of you will be leaders in
your community after college whether you assume
business careers or become housewives, any vows you
may make to the contrary notwithstanding. Second, I
advise you not to fight too hard against the opportunity
to lead, for there are many rewards in capitulation.
And third, I urge you most strongly to use every
occasion provided at Agnes Scott to practice and achieve
some skill at leading. If you were born with a good mind
you don't have the right to let it vegetate, and if you
can lead you don't have the right to withhold leader-
ship. On the other hand, there is an obligation, which
those who founded Mortar Board very well understood,
to develop leadership in others in the officers of
organizations you serve, in your children as they reach
an age to exercise leadership themselves.

The other Freshman and I were repelled by the
thought of becoming club women because all we saw
were the mamma hats, the comfortably-padded figures
and the lady who had forgotten her glasses and couldn't
see to read the treasurer's report. We didn't spare a
thought for the money that had been raised, the scholar-
ships started, the crippled children cared for, the cloth-
ing contributed for disaster areas, the libraries launched.
Even a greater lack of insight was that it did not occur
to us to inquire into the background of the club officers.

We would have noticed had they made hash of the
English language or been utterly ignorant of parliamen-
tary procedure, but no such lapses occurred so we must
have assumed that all women were born knowing these
things. They aren't. Had we inquired here in Decatur
and Atlanta, we would have found an astonishing num-
ber of Agnes Scott alumnae among these people, and in
another city perhaps some other college would have
been well represented.

For whether you like it or not, our American society
today is keyed to the use of volunteer organizations.
When I was a child, the PTA was a group of ladies,
not top large a group, who offered to help the school
in various relatively minor ways (although the founder
had had a much larger vision). If some luxury in the
way of equipment was desired by the faculty or students,
the PTA might or might not attempt to raise the
money to provide it. Today, PTA contributions to the
purchase of record players and tape recorders, audi-
torium curtains and basketball courts, musical instru-
ments and driveways, library books and cafeteria dish-
washers are budgeted for by the public school adminis-
trations. Administrators have come to expect this load
to be carried, at least partially and sometimes entirely,
by the volunteer parents' organizations.

If the police want a safety campaign publicized, if
Civil Defense wants First Aid courses; if hospitals
want flowers or additional linens; if the Mayor's office
wants a clean-up campaign, or a charity wants a door-
to-door drive, they send out a plea to the Garden Clubs,
the PTA's, the women's clubs, for money, material and
personnel. And they get it.

So whether the forecast appeals to you or not, after
an interim of career and/or marriage and children, you
are going to find yourselves beseeched and besieged
to take offices in women's organizations, because you
will be the people who can preside over a meeting,
organize a committee and balance a treasurer's report.
Since it is as inevitable as gray in the hair and as a
decision to tint or not to tint and as inexorable as
the need for a calorie chart, you might as well shoulder
this noblesse oblige, enjoy it and be proud of it. Such
are the rewards of capitulation.

Atlanta Alumnae Statistics

It has often been pointed out to you that a liberal
arts education prepares you for a business career or
housekeeping. Now we may as well look at another
side of some statistics collected in a survey done last
year. From a questionnaire answered by 286 Atlanta
alumnae of Agnes Scott, here are the statistics of
surrender to the inevitable: 92%- were active volunteers
in church work and 8 1 % in civic work. The church
work included teaching Sunday School, working on
various women of the church projects such as Circles,
Alter Guilds, church music, Bible study. PTA work
ranked second only to church work out of these 286
who have among them 428 children. Fund-raising and
executive board positions for such organizations as
Community Chest, Red Cross, Tallulah Falls and
Rabun Gap Nacoochee Guilds, Junior League Speech
School and others followed. Boy Scout and Girl Scout

group leadership was high on the list, with Garden
Clubs also occupying a prominent spot. Interest groups
such as study clubs, Atlanta Art Association, civic
clubs, music clubs were numerous. As to the achieve-
ment of Agnes Scott alumnae in these fields, there is
the fact that for eleven of the fifteen years the Woman-
of-the-Year program has been in operation in Atlanta,
an alumna has been honored in one or more of the
program's categories. And even those whose pro-
fessional achievements have been so recognized also
give community service and leadership. For example,
Sarah Frances MacDonald, of the class of 1937, who
was woman of the year from the legal profession last
year, this year is president of the Atlanta Legal Aid
Society a financially uncompensated use of her legal
knowledge to benefit the community.

Women of the Years

But what about those of us and here I am think-
ing of you as already part of the group covered on the
survey who are not Women of the Year, but just
women of the years and years, in Sunday School and
PTA and youth groups! If you teach Sunday School
after graduation, will you need this liberal arts train-
ing? Well, you will be expected by the parents of those
in your class to be more experienced, trained, and
long-suffering than the children's public or private
school teachers. You will have problem children who
can be neither expelled, suspended nor even given a
hint that they might stay home. If, when your children
are old enough, you take a Cub Scout Den or a troop
of Brownies (your child won't get in, if you don't)
you will have need of every bit of normal and abnormal
psychology you ever took at Agnes Scott. You will find
an outlet for playwriting, dramatic coaching, ceramic
art, choral work and American history. If you become
concerned about the operation of the school cafeteria,
or about why new schools are not built large enough
even for the first year of operation, you will need
to familiarize yourself with the amazing labyrinths of
your state government. Your college training will have
given you the knowledge of how to go about finding
your way through these mazes. And the main thing is
that you will not swallow the priestly pronouncements
from bureau heads and legislators that "nothing can
be done about it." You will know that the very walls
of Jericho sometimes fall before reasoned arguments
backed up by accurate information. And, if you express
your concern over a community problem, whether it
be political, social, medical or economic, I guarantee you
will be Chairman of a committee to do something
about it. Leaders don't look for a community the
community looks for leaders. If you do no more than
raise the standard of the quality of the poetry quoted
at Garden Club inspirationals you will have served and
lead full worthily !

I further urge you to plunge at least to the limit of
the point system in those extracurricular activities here
which will give you practice in this leadership for
which you are destined. Let me illustrate. There are
alumnae of Agnes Scott and other colleges who, as
students, did not participate in extra curricular activi-

8

ties. They felt that they were in college for an academic
education and nothing else (and besides, they were
often engaged.) For many years they eluded the respon-
sibilities of community leadership by insisting that they
could not preside at a meeting. But, inevitably, they
became interested in one or two organizations, wanted
them to prosper, and finally accepted a presidency,
because even though they did not recognize it, other
members of the organization knew they had the back-
ground for the job.

The common experience of these alumnae is that
conducting their first meeting allays their fears. They
have no difficulty in appointing chairman and getting
the work done they even enjoy it. And they admit
that their college would mean more to them today,
that they could have taken pleasure in the knowledge
of their ability many years ago if they had tried their
navigational skill at community leadership in the
protected waters of college experience. There is a
better chance for you to try your leadership skills at
Agnes Scott than in many other institutions because
a far greater percentage of the student body has the
opportunity to hold office than in larger schools.

Rewards

So you see, there are rewards in succumbing to the
lure of community leadership. There is the satisfaction,
of course, of seeing things you feel are important being
done. There are honors, like the Woman of the Year
awards in various fields, the rise from local to state
to national organizations in positions and responsibility.
There are even silver pitchers, tea services and plaques.
But there are also hazards. Temperance wasn't meant
only for the alcoholics : in community service, you can
go too far, take on too much ; moreover, there is no
point system to provide the cautionary light. A recent
Saturday Evening Post article entitled "My Husband
Ought to Fire Me" says: "See that efficient mother
of four wielding the PTA gavel and wearing the
crisp fresh blouse ? There's a safety-pin somewhere
underneath, and goodness only knows what the baby

is pinned with. Furthermore her husband is really
going to catch it when she gets home tonight and finds
he opened the canned ham for dinner instead of warm-
ing up that perfectly good leftover shepherd's pie."
Let's face it, you have to draw the line somewhere
short of the 40 hour week in community leadership.
The humanists' ideal of the universal man is not achiev-
able today by either atomic scientists or housewives.
You must choose your majors and minors even in com-
munity service.

Finally, there is the need to feel in later years that
there has been some real traction between your college
career and your mature life, that you were not spinning
your wheels in however intellectual a setting but that in
college you were moving forward with a purpose and
toward a satisfying and worthy destination.

Dr. Alston said in his last report to the Board
Trustees : "The importance of Agnes Scott as a college
cannot be estimated by numbering our alumnae. The
number, of course, will always be relatively small. Nor
can the contribution of this institution be measured
accurately merely by determining the wealth or re-
nown of our graduates. The ultimate test is the
intrinsic worth of Agnes Scott students here and after
college days are over, in the homes that they establish
the professional and business careers upon which they
enter the church, civic, educational, and social
relationships that they maintain. I am quite willing for
Agnes Scott's contribution to be measured in such
terms ; that it should be so measured is, at any rate,
inevitable." There is that word "inevitable" again,
and you will in your own particular community find
his scale of measurement a valid one. Among the
women of your era and in your living area, in however
small a scale, because of your background, you'll find a
place not unlike the one Theodore Roosevelt pictured
for this nation in the world he foresaw, when he said :
"The world of democracy has set its face hopefully to-
ward our democracy, and, oh, my fellow citizens, each
of you carries on your shoulders the burdens of doing
well for the sake of your own country and of seeing that
his nation does well for the sake of mankind."

It is heartening to the college administration to knoiu
that alumnae support them in the desire to make A gnes
Scott the finest liberal arts college in the land. Paige
Violette Harmon '48 collected some material on the
subject and prepared, this talk for the Founder's Day
meeting of the Hampton-Newport-News-Warwick
Alumnae Club.

Let's Keep The LIBERA1

WITH NEWSPAPERS, radio and television
blasting away on travel in outer space, trips to
the moon, and our entire country clamoring for
more top-flight scientists, it may seem presumptuous for
me to attempt to dro'wn their cries with a plea to keep
the liberal in our education. We may take a liberal edu-
cation as a matter of course, but our present state of
national hysteria emphatically underlines the need for
a liberal education system as an integral part of our
American way of life.

In a world- that becomes more complex each day,
we need free men with free minds who have an under-
standing of man, his physical world, and his religious
and philosophical heritage. A liberal education is dedi-
cated to the development of the individual as a whole
being: his mind, his heart, and his spiritual self.

There are almost as many definitions of liberal
education as there are definers, but at this Founder's
Day meeting I think it particularly fitting that we ex-
amine the Agnes Scott Ideal formulated by Dr. Gaines,
the first president of Agnes Scott.

1. A liberal curriculum, fully abreast of the best
institutions of this country

2. The Bible as a textbook

3. Thoroughly qualified and consecrated teachers

4. A high standard of scholarship

5. All the influences of the college conducive to the
formation and development of Christian character

6. The glory of God the chief end of all

It is significant, I think, that of the six components
of the Ideal, three are concerned primarily with
scholarship and three emphasize the importance of
Christian religion. If a liberal education could be placed
before our eyes as a richly woven fabric we would
see the intellectual achievements as the woof the
threads of knowledge carried back and forth across
the warp of strong fixed spiritual values.

Agnes Scott's new Dean C. Benton Kline in his
Honors Day address last year said a liberal education
must mirror three characteristics of man : it must have
breadth to match the wide range of the human mind ;
it must have depth to match the capacity of the human
mind to penetrate into reality; and it must foster
judgment to match the critical function of the human
mind.

The liberal arts college in its curriculum of history,
languages, literature, arts, philosophy, sciences offers

a breadth of knowledge at once overwhelming and
tantalizing. A major in one department and, to a
greater degree, a student doing independent work in
a specific area practice study in depth. But the truly
educated student continues to seek the adventure of
learning long after graduation. He has mastered the
tools of study, he may apply himself at will : he is
limited only by his own capacity.

A liberal education by its breadth and depth en-
deavors to increase the resourcefulness of the individual.
His background of knowledge gives him the confidence
and courage to evaluate ; the Christian framework of
that knowledge should help him to judge wisely.

The goals of a liberal education are those of a life-
time and the productive value of the liberal arts college
must be determined by the value of the lives of its
students in their homes, churches, communities and
governments.

The College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium provides
a dramatic example of the powerful influence a liberal
arts institution may be expected to wield. The College
of Europe has 38 students, each an honors graduate
with at least four years of liberal arts training in a
national university. The teachers and students rep-
resent fourteen nations, including the United States,
and they live and learn in a practicing international com-
munity. The College of Europe is regarded by many
as the key force in the drive for a United States of
Europe. The students are intended to develop a Pan-
European as opposed to a strictly national viewpoint.
By focusing attention on the common heritage of
Europe's history, culture, and economy, the founders,
a Spanish historian and a Belgian monk, have dedicated
the college to the search for "A common remedy, a
common hope for the future."

The professors emphasize that few conclusions are
drawn in the daily seminars facts are presented
in hopes that the student's mind will climb above the
subject and see it as a European whole. Surely this
College of Europe fosters judgment on a high, and
practical, level. The worth of the college's efforts
cannot be specifically assessed, but the force which
has gained direction at the College of Europe is now
working to achieve a United Europe; the majority of
students who have attended are now back where the
college hoped they would be : following public service
careers in their own national governments or teaching

10

In Our Education

Paige Violette Harmon '48

in local universities. They are spreading the influence
of their liberal education to develop a freer, richer, more
enlightened world.

In the United States the liberal arts college has
been beset by many problems: the trend toward special-
ism in American life, the trend toward specialization
of the elective system, the prevailing attitude that pos-
session of knowledge or education is just a little em-
barrassing.

Originally, and until the latter part of the 19th
Century, liberal education was the only form of higher
education in this country. Graduate schools developed
to fill the demand for specialists until the 20th Century
brought the rise of technical schools. Their growth
has often been at the expense of the liberal arts colleges.
By pointing to their practical value they have found it
much easier to raise money than have the liberal
institutions.

For this reason, in many large universities the
liberal arts colleges, surrounded by special schools, have
lost departments to the special schools. The Department
of Economics, for example, may have gone to the School
of Business Administration of the Department of
Psychology to the School of Education. Fighting this
loss of students and departments, many departments in
the liberal arts colleges have sought to involve students
early in specialization in their own fields. This has
drawn the departments away from each other and
clouded the liberal goal of a broad scope of learning.

"Specialist education is essential to our national life,"
but higher education will suffer if we place the occupa-
tion before the man. John Stuart Mill said, "Men are
men before they are lawyers or physicians or manu-
facturers; and if you make them capable and sensible
men, they will make themselves capable and sensible
lawyers or physicians."

Many institutions are making a distinct move in the
direction of liberal education as a base for specialism.
Many technical schools have added courses in English,
history, or economics, and in the majority of colleges
an attempt is being made to keep the emphasis on liberal
education during the first two years.

In the next few years our colleges will be faced with
the problem of a largely increased college age popula-
tion. President Anderson of Chatham College has said,
"there is too much talk about how to provide a college

education for all who want it, too little on what colleges
should provide and what students should seek." We
have an alarming number of students who are admitted
to colleges but who are not capable of doing college
level work. In 1955 this group numbered a dismaying
150,000. I hope that our liberal arts colleges will
maintain high standards of scholarship by adhering to
a strictly selective admissions policy.

With the Explorer and the Sputnik orbiting about
our world we are all caught up in the excitement of
scientific discovery. There is a great need for a knowl-
edge and comprehension of the scientific viewpoint even
for the non-scientific student. Loud cries are heard for
a speedup of the science and mathematics programs:
"Russia outproduces us in scientists; we need more
technologists." I contend that our liberal education
produces and will produce more true scientists men
devoted to science for the enrichment of life than
Russia will ever produce.

Science provides knowledge but it does not tell us
what to do with it. Our educational system must pre-
pare men for the responsibility of using what science
has produced.

In an age of mechanical brains and weapons of al-
most unimaginable power we do not need more push-
button experts. We need resourceful, imaginative and
articulate planners who will insure that the products
of scientific discovery and technological invention are
the tools, not the masters, of man.

This is the challenge the liberal arts colleges face.
They cannot be replaced in our educational system by
technical schools and they should not attempt to replace
the technical schools. Liberal education should be the
sound base on which special training is built.

In its Report to the President, the Josephs' Com-
mittee defined this primary goal of education: "to
develop human beings of high character, or courageous
heart and independent mind, who can transmit and
enrich our society's intellectual, cultural and spiritual
heritage, who can advance mankind's eternal quest
for truth and beauty and who can leave the world a
better place than they found it."

Our need to attain this goal is self-evident and
urgent. I believe the liberal arts college is dedicated
to this goal and I hope the liberal arts colleges will
be the foundation for the future growth of our higher
educational svstem.

11

//

Mrs. Lapp

A SOUND FRAM

GATHERING THE MATERIAL for this
article has been sheer enjoyment, and I trust
that I pass some of this pleasure on to you.

The Library and the Alumnae Office yielded a large
part of the information, and while their files of old
annuals are not quite complete, these sources are in-
valuable and the pictures in them are beyond a price.

It may seem surprising that a small school for girls
in the South had "Physical Culture" as early as 1889,
its opening year, but the Decatur Female Seminary,
precursor of Agnes Scott Institute and Agnes Scott
College, did, and furthermore, then and ever since
there has been a trained person responsible for the
program.

Before I take you back through the years, there are
three quotations which I want to set before you to keep
in mind, because they seem to me to sum up much of
what has been and is being striven for in the world
of physical education.

First, said the Romans: "Mens sano in corpore sano."
Second, Goethe tells us: "There are eight prerequisites
for contented living: health enough to make work a
pleasure, wealth enough to support your needs, strength
to battle with difficulties and overcome them, patience
enough to toil until some good is accomplished, charity
enough to see some good in your neighbor, love enough
to move you to be useful and helpful to others, and
faith enough to make real the things of God and hope
enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the
future." And, third, Robert Browning says to us:

Body and mind in balance, a sound frame

A solid intellect, the wit to seek,

Wisdom to choose and courage wherewithal

To deal with whatever circumstance

Should minister to man

Make life succeed.

The ends may ever have been the same, but the
means of reaching them have surely varied. So, let us
follow the path at Agnes Scott from Physical Culture
to Physical Training, to Physical Education, from the

days of the Decatur Female Seminary (with 65 pupils)
to the Agnes Scott College of today (with 600 stu-
dents).

An old history of the Institute, written in 1897 for
the Aurora, as the college annual was then called,
reports: "The first term of the new school began
September 25,- 1889. Miss Nanette Hopkins had been
elected principal with Miss Cook as assistant. Miss
Pratt was teacher of piano, Miss Fraser, teacher of
art and physical culture." Proving the existence of
physical culture is a series of photographs, enchanting
pictures of "A Bicycle Club" with the girls dressed in
suits standing beside their tall bicycles. The suits had
long skirts leg o'mutton sleeves, high-necked blouses.
Dainty hats, with wings, were perched upon their pretty
heads at a precarious angle for bicycling.

There was also a picture of a tennis club; the
members were dressed in long, white skirts and white
blouses, and their racquets were held coyly behind their
shoulders. Pictured, too, are a group of Seniors who
composed the "Walking Club," wearing the hand-
somest suits imaginable.

The next club pictured has no bearing on physical
culture but is so beguiling I think it should be men-
tioned, "The Sewing Club." The well house, which
was right in front of Main Building, formed the
background for the picture of the "sewers" who are
seated in rocking chairs "on the Lawn." The girls had
on light, airy dresses and dainty, lace-trimmed aprons.

On the opening page of the 1898 Aurora is written:

Agnes Scott Institute, 6 miles East of Atlanta on the
Ga. R. R. Connected with the city by 2 electric lines.

The athletic groups pictured that year were a
bicycle club, a tennis club (each member having added
a perky cap to her costume), and, for the first time, a
basketball team whose members wore long, dark volumi-
nous skirts and blouses with huge initials, A. S. I. em-
blazoned in white across the front.

In the 1899 Aurora there are photographs of the

12

A program planned this year for one of the Atlanta
Alumnae Club's meetings was a brief history of physical
education at Agnes Scott with a fashion show of "gym"
costumes then and now. This is the commentary that
accompanied the show, given by Mrs. Lapp, assistant
professor of physical education.

SOLID INTELLECT"

Harriette Haynes Lapp

ever-present tennis club and an "Antiwalking Club."
To my own delight, the editor of this volume says, in
regard to physical training (no longer physical culture,
please note) : "Pupils are taught to assume a dignified
but easy and graceful carriage, and careful physical
examinations are stressed."

The annual assumes the name of the Silhouette in
1902, and that volume shows members of the tennis
club holding their racquets like mandolins. Golf appears
for the first time in 1902, apparently well organized
and taught.

At this point in my research, I turned to Dr. McCain
for help, and he directed me to the bound catalogues of
the college, which should really be on exhibition. A
banner year, according to these, for physical education
was 1904, when a red-brick building was erected just
to the right of and a bit behind Rebekah Scott Hall.
In it there were classrooms above, a very nice gym-
nasuim below, and a "natatorium" where "Instruction
in swimming is given with splendid facilities ; the pool
is 20' by 40'."

I taught there when I first came to Agnes Scott,
and it is hard for me to believe the pool was that size.
One side-stroke took you across, and three strokes
lengthwise would have carried you straight out the
small, dark window at the other end. The pool was
three feet deep, at the most, which did have its decided
teaching advantages. One could and did learn herein,
and one could and did get mighty wet. The catalogue
states: "Students not wishing to take lessons may have
the use of the pool by paying an extra fee."

The 1904 catalogue informs us that the aims in
physical education were "to develop moral training,
skill, endurance and alertness," and that much of the
work was done out-of-doors. The catalogue also an-
nounces: "Those engaging in basketball will receive
very careful attention, as there are the proper facilities
for guarding against injurious results. Only those
physically sound will be allowed to engage in this
delightful game."

The 1905 Silhouette delineates tennis, golf, baseball,
basketball and track. In one picture, a group of sprint-
ers are crouched for the "take off" of a 50-yard dash,
garbed in the usual full and lengthy skirts of the period,
and high-necked, long-sleeved shirtwaists. Their beau-
tiful hairdos, pompadours, have each hair in place,
making me wonder how far they ran.

Old and new in swimming attire: left, Jane Law '60, and,
right, Caroline Hodges Roberts '48, president of the Atlanta
Alumnae Club.

13

The next few years jog along with no major changes
in sports activities or clothes. Then, in 1908 hockey
reared its energetic head for the first time, and black
serge bloomers came onto the campus on the same
wave, worn with long black stockings. By 1910, the
middie blouse and turtle-neck sweater were almost a
stock uniform. The Silhouette for that year portrays
the skating clubs and hockey teams in this outfit. The
tennis players had donned long white dresses again,
after a long absence from this garb.

The records indicate that for several years after
this came the days of physical education classes for each
student "3 times a week" and a four-year requirement
of courses for graduation.

These were the days of "exercise cards" for each
student: "gym is a necessary nuisance and it takes a
sense of humor to endure it." These were also the days
of May Days in front of Inman or White House. The
majority of the audience for May Day consisted of
Decatur's very young and their dogs. This meant
that the rest of the audience stood. The piano was
always hidden, often from the dancers, too, and more
often not heard. Costumes for the dancers had to be
ample ; no vestige of the female leg or foot could be
showing, so there were stockings dyed to match all
costumes. With Miss Hopkins' unerring eye for pro-
priety overseeing the dancers, the lower extremeties
remained under cover. Nonetheless, the productions
were quite good.

Old and new in tennis attire: left, Virginia Brown McKen-
zie'47, program chairman of the Atlanta Alumnae Club,
and right, Rosa Barnes '61, daughter of Rosa Miller Barnes
'36.

When the little red schoolhouse was torn down, the
gym went with it, but the natatorium has stayed on
to do noble duty housing a huge transformer. One can
see it today, just by looking through an iron grill in the
sidewalk. Our present Bucher Scott Gymnasium dates
from 1927, and we have come from a one-member
department of physical education to a five-member one
with several student aids, too.

We can see that the physical education program has
progressed with the times and the College. Today,
under the leadership of Llewellyn Wilburn '19, it is
organized along the educational lines that are in keep-
ing with present educational trends. Its philosophy and
goals attempt always to enhance the development of the
individual as a whole, both physically and mentally.
Briefly, the aims of the department are to help a girl
gain skills, establish balance and self confidence, be
able to meet and adjust to social situations, and be able
to choose and discriminate among the myriad responsi-
bilities thrust upon her, thereby freeing herself from
the tensions of everyday living.

To catch you up on dress, students today wear navy
blue shorts, well-tailored ones, and white shirts for
most sports; white shorts are appropriate for the tennis
courts. Bathing suits are, of course, vintage 1958, not
1898.

The program in the department today is a far cry
from its beginning, although in no way is it more
serious, I am sure. We offer classes in dancing (modern,
folk, square), swimming (beginners, intermediate,
advanced, and Red Cross senior life-saving and instruc-
tors courses) synchronized swimming, archery, tennis,
golf, fencing, tumbling, badminton, riding, basketball,
hockey, Softball, volleyball, and body mechanics (known
to many of you from former years as "I. G.") All of
these are seasonal classes.

Then there is a course in recreational leadership,
planned primarily for those who expect to teach in the
elementary grades, but it has proved to be popular with
students who are leaders in church youth programs, who
conduct play-ground programs or who are camp coun-
selors. Miss Wilburn teaches the courses and has an
arrangement with the Decatur and Kirkwood schools
whereby our students are assigned to a particular
grade for organized play, at least once a week, during
the spring quarter.

The department now has a two-year requirement for
graduation, within which each student must pass a
swimming test, have one quarter each of a team sport,
dancing, and an individual sport. The department
works with other departments in the College on special
events such as May Day, or, this year, the Fine Arts
Festival. It also has its own "extra-curricular" activities,
Dance Group, Dolphin Club, and Tennis Club. Ad-
mission to these is by tryouts, as is participation in all
team sports.

With the teaching condition well nigh perfect and
with the cooperation of the students, Agnes Scott's
physical education program is still going strong. Do
come back to see us and to play with us once again.

14

DEATHS

INSTITUTE

Grace Elyea, Dec. 29, 1957.

1917

Mrs. C. H. Newton, step-mother of
Janet Newton, Virginia Newton '19
and Charlotte Newton '21, Dec. 30,
1957.

1923

William Henry Lumpkin, husband
of Margaretta Womelsdorf Lumpkin
and father of Margaretta Lumpkin
Shaw '52, Dec. 16.

1924

Frances Amis' mother, in Sept. 1957.
Edna McMurry Shadburn's hus-
band, the summer of 1957.

1930

Dr. Robert Herring Wright, Jr.,
husband of Ruth McLean Wright and
father of Carolyn Wright McGarity
'59, Dec. 1957.

1936

Louise Maclntyre Hughes, Jan. 6.

1953

The Rev. H. C. Holland, father of
Mary Holland Archibald, in 1957.

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THE

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

OF

AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE

OFFICERS

ISABELLA WILSON LEWIS '34

President

MITZI KISER LAW '54

Vice-President

SYBIL CORBETT RIDDLE '52

Vice-President

EVELYN BATY LANDIS '40

Vice-President

CAROLINE HODGES ROBERTS '48

Vice-President

ALICE McDONALD RICHARDSON '29

Secretary

BETTY JEAN ELLISON CANDLER '49

Treasurer

TRUSTEES

CATHERINE WOOD MARSHALL '36
MARY PRIM FOWLER '29

CHAIRMEN

ELIZABETH BLACKSHEAR FLINN '38
Class Officers

PATRICIA COLLINS ANDRETTA '28

Constitution

MARY WALLACE KIRK '1 1

Education

ALICE GLENN LOWRY '29

Entertainment

CATHERINE IVIE BROWN '39

House
LOUISE GIRARDEAU COOK '28

Nominations
MARY CAROLINE LEE MACKAY '40

Property
JEAN GREY MORGAN '31

Publications
DOROTHY CHEEK CALLAWAY '29

Special Events
BARBARA SMITH HULL '47

Vocational Guidance

STAFF

ANN WORTHY JOHNSON '38

Director of Alumnae Affairs
ELOISE HARDEMAN KETCHIN

House Manager
DOROTHY WEAKLEY '56

Office Manager

MEMBER

AMERICAN ALUMNI
COUNCIL

The AGNES SCOTT
Alumnae Quarterly-
Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia

Volume 36
Summer, 1958

Contents

1957-1958 Alumnae Fund Report
Fine Arts Festival
Kudos to Clubs

Number 4

The Independent College

Alumnae Inaugurate Presidents

Louisa Jane Allen '56

Lynn II kite, Jr.

Class News

Eloise Hardeman Ketchi

Cover. Photographs of some of the events in the Fine Arts Festival are
pictured with the abstract design that was a "trade mark" of the Festival.
Photos by Kerr Studios (see p. 2-3). Other photos in this issue are by Kerr
Studios, except on p. 8 by Red Bright, Millsaps College.

The Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly is published four times a year
(November, February, April and July) by the Alumnae Association of
Agnes Scott College at Decatur, Georgia. Contributors to the Alumnae
Eund receive the magazine. Y early subscription, $2.00. Single copy 50 cents.
Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office of Decatur, Georgia,
under Act of August 24, 1912.

1957-1958 ALUMNAE FUND REPORT

IN AN ANNUAL report to the Board of Trus-
tees, President Wallace M. Alston stated, "We
at Agnes Scott . . . have recommitted ourselves to
the educational purpose of this College since its incep-
tion," and this year 1,760 alumnae around the world
recommitted ourselves to the purpose of the College
through their contributions to the annual Alumnae
Fund.

The amount of money given to this year's fund, from
July 1, 1957-June 30, 1958 totalled $20,462, of which
$13,725 was unrestricted. The Alumnae Fund is mad;
up of all contributions to the college given by alumnae.

It is encouraging that this year the unrestricted
portion of the fund increased. This is the money the
College can use where it is most needed. The Alumnae
Association is, also, most aware of the unrestricted
figure; the College supports the operation of the Asso-
ciation, as it does other administrative departments,
but if the unrestricted portion of the Fund covers this
cost (this year, $12,000), then, in effect, the Alumnae

Association is paying its own way.

Statistics on the Alumnae Fund are both rewarding
and challenging. The 1,760 who gave are only 25.5% of
all the alumnae who were contacted. (This is the high-
est percent in the past three years.) The percentage of
contributors who are graduates jumps to 43%. (Last
year this figure was 359c.)

We must compare our alumnae giving not only with
what we did the year before, but also with that of other
private women's colleges. In a report for 1957, just
published, I oluntary Support of America's Colleges
and Universities, compiled by the American Alumni
Council, the American College Public Relations As-
sociation, and the Council for Financial Aid to Educa-
tion, Agnes Scott ranks 8th among 129 private women's
colleges in endowment (book value), while in alumnae
giving we rank 52nd.

Here then, spelled out for us, is our responsibility
for the years ahead. Can we get to 8th place in alumnae
giving next year?

DISTRIBUTION OF GIFTS

Unrestricted
Alexander Fund
Alumnae Association
Alumnae House
Art Department
Bartlett Fund
Caldwell Fund
Choon Hi Choi Fund

725

Development Fund

1,500

Pauline McCain Fund

3

73

Dyer Fund

500

MacDougall Museum

31

80

English Department

60

New Orleans Fund

245

160

Foreign Students

488

Scholarships

990

100

Hale Fund

362

Tanner Fund

21

47

Holt Fund

98

Thatcher Fund

1,000

400

Laney Fund

95

Anna 1. Young Fund

300

153

McCain Library Fund

32

GIVING BY CLASSES

Class

Percent

Class Percent

Class Percent

Class Percent

Inst.

26

Acad.

34

1906-07

100

1908

100

1909

66

1910

80

1911

75

1912

73

1913

86

1914

54

1915

50

1916

50

1917

66

1918

50

1919

51

1920

59

1921

58

1922

27

1923

62

1924

72

1925

27

1926

45

1927

39

1928

35

1929

54

1930

49

1931

49

1932

28

1933

46

1934

44

1935

32

1936

27

1937

36

1938

41

1939

45

1940

45

1941

41

1942

34

1943

42

1944

38

1945

43

1946

40

1947

37

1948

40

1949

47

1950

47

1951

47

1952

36

1953

51

1954

61

1955

39

1956

71

1957

100

F

N
E

F

E
S
T

A
R
T
S

V
A
L

^{~} N APRIL 17th > 18th and 19th ' with br 'g htl y|

\^S colored banners and balloons fluttering in the
breeze, Agnes Scott presented its first Fine Arts Fes
tival. The Festival was a culmination of the efforts
of the following departments: Art, English, Music, and
Physical Education, and of Aurora, Blackfriars, Dance
Group, May Day Committee, and Music Club. In
order to enable these organizations to devote their
time, efforts, and money during the entire year to the
preparation and presentation of a larger program than
is usually possible this Festival incorporated the tradi
tional productions of Blackfriars, Dance Group, and
May Day.

Blackfriars, the dramatic club on campus, and Dance
Group had long wished to combine their talents and
present a joint production. In giving Shakespeare's
The Tempest this ambition was realized through special
choreography which was added to the original play,
The English Department and the Aurora, the campus I
arts magazine, brought outstanding literary critics to
the campus for this occasion. Art students wanted to
share Agnes Scott art work with that from other
colleges and universities, and this was done through a
joint art exhibition held in Rebekah Recreation Room.
Music students hoped to perform programs that could
not be fitted into the normal schedule and were there-
fore pleased to present the comic opera La Serva
Padrona and a chapel program of concert music.

The college had looked forward to a time when the
various arts could be seen in proximity to one another,
and this was accomplished in the Festival. This fete was
the result of many months of planning, practicing, per-
servering, co-operation, and co-ordination on the part
of students and faculty alike. Nancy Kimmel '58, Fes-
tival Chairman, a Steering Committee, and Co-ordi-
nating Committee put the plans into action. Almost
everyone at Agnes Scott contributed thought, time, and
talent to the execution of the Fine Arts Festival."

(from 1958 SILHOUETTE)

A scene from The Tempest shows Miranda (Nora Ann Simpson '59) and Prospero

(Nancy Kimmel '58)

April 17-19, 1958

Right: Dance Group added
its expressionistic dances
to The Tempest. Below:
The Art Panel, Marie
Huper, moderator, Lamar
Dodd, Joseph Perrin, Paul
Heffernan, and Carolyn
Becknell, discussed aspects
of the artistic trend in
modern times.

Literary panelists, Eliz-
abeth Bartlett, James
Dickey, Morgret Trot-
ter, moderator, Hollis
Summers, and May Sar-
ton discuss the writing
in Aurora. Miss Sarton,
novelist, poetess and
critic, opened the Fes-
tival with a lecture.

Above: Students, faculty,
and guests watch a movie
on French art on the din-
ing hall steps. Right: The
cast of La Serva Padrona
was composed of James
Kane, Atlanta baritone,
Rose Marie Regero '61,
and Pierre Thomas, assis-
tant professor of French.

A major change in the Alumnae Association's Executive Board, organization has
established the office of Regional Vice-President and abolished the office of Club
Chairman. A goodly portion of the four vice-presidents' responsibility has to do
with serving alumnae clubs which are already established and fostering the
development of new clubs. (See inside front cover for names of vice-presidents.)
These notes on clubs were prepared by Bella Wilson Lewis '34, new president
of the Alumnae Association and the last Club Chairman.

KUDOS TO CLUBS...

STUDENTS . . . Decatur Club hears students report on their programs
of Independent Study . . . Foreign student from Israel speaks to Southwest
Atlanta Club . . . Sara M. Heard '58 helps Shreveport Club entertain prospective
students . . . Marietta Club brings prospective students for planned visit to
campus . . . Mothers of Agnes Scott students attend alumnae gatherings in

Charlotte, Lynchburg, Washington, and Wilson, N. C Students discuss

current campus life for Atlanta Club.

FOUNDER'S DAY from GEORGIA to CALIFORNIA . . . Birming-
ham hears Ann Worthy Johnson . . . Charlotte has Dr. McCain and sends a
contribution to the McCain Library Fund in his honor . . . Anderson, S. C,
Baltimore, Charleston, W ' . Va., Chattanooga, Columbia, S. C* Columbus, Ga.,
Los Angeles, Nashville, New Orleans and. Tampa hold meetings "on their own"
. . . Washington turns out in snowstorm to hear Dr. Hayes . . . Greenville, S. C.
has Lorton Lee '49, Vocational Guidance Chairman of Alumnae Association . . .
Hampton-Newport-News-Warwick hears paper on the liberal arts education
given by Paige Violette Harmon '48 (see Spring, 1958, Quarterly).

FACULTY MEMBERS VISIT CLUBS ... As are most of our personal
ones, the travel budget of the College is limited, but faculty and staff members
do speak to alumnae groups when travelling for other purposes . . . Dr. Alston
in New York with the four clubs in the area at a combined meeting . . .
Dean Kline with the Greenville-Spartanburg groups . . . Dr. Posey draws
together the Louisville-Lexington Clubs on one of his jaunts as president of the
Southern Historical Association . . . Dr. McCain spreads himself from Miami to
Jackson, Miss, to Wilson, N. C. . . . Dr. Alston, Dr. McNair and Dr. Garber
attend Charlotte's spring meeting while in town for the General Assembly's
meeting.

PROJECTS . . . Washington pulls out all the fund-raising stops working
toward a $1 ,000 scholarship fund they're almost there . . . New Orleans sells
old clothes to add to its already-established scholarship fund . . . Southwest
Atlanta, with only a round dozen members, sells cards and candy to ?nake a
$40 gift to the Alumnae House . . . Northside Atlanta makes a contribution to
the Louisa Allen Scholarship Fund.

SPECIAL KUDOS TO . . . Washington for its excellent Newsletter . . .
Marietta for local publicity and current information on alumnae . . . Charlotte
for sponsoring an autographing tea for Catherine Marshall '36 . . . Atlanta for
a breakfast at the College for alumnae attending annual meeting of Georgia
Education Association . . . Columbia, S. C* for organizing its own club this
year . . . Jacksonville, Fla. for doing the same.

The Barnard Forum, since 1949 an annual winter event in New York City,
has offered for open discussion the critical educational issues of the times. Alumnae
groups of 50 colleges, including Agnes Scott, have sponsored the Forum. This
year. What's Ahead for Higher Education? was the question. Dr. Lewis W.
Jones, President of Rutgers, spoke for the publicly-supported university, Senator
Margaret Chase Smith spoke for the federal government, and Dr. Lynn White,
Jr., then President of Mills College, noiv professor of history at U.C.L.A. (and
Agnes Scott's Commencement speaker in 1957) spoke for the independent
college. We have edited his address from Proceedings of the Tenth Annual
Barnard Forum.

The Independent College

Dr. Lynn White, Jr.

Lynn White, Jr.

PUBLIC EXCITEMENT over the prospects
for higher education in this country has risen to
such a point that in recent months a number of
"tranquilizer" addresses have been proffered us, designed
to calm the fears of parents that their offspring may not
get into Alma Mater, or the fears that, in the mad rush
to the colleges, rigorous academic education or is it
just the ivy? is going to be trampled to a pulp. We
have been told in these speeches that since American
higher education has in fact expanded about tenfold in
the last five decades, there is no great cause for alarm
in the certainty that it is going to double or perhaps
even treble during the next dozen or fifteen years. The
chief difference now, it is said, is that our statistical
services are so much better than ever before that whereas
the past blundered blindly into unexpected expansion, we
can see, to some extent, what is coming and can plan
intelligently for it.

I agree the statistics do give us great advantage. But
they do not console me as I contemplate the problems
of the independent college or university during the next
couple of decades.

Our thinking must start, I believe, from the fact that
we are going to be faced with a horrifying dearth of
competent professors. In the first decade of this century,
many professors were reasonably well paid in relation to
the general economic level. But the great inflation which
was a by-product of the first World War saw little
compensatory increase in faculty pay checks. The boom
of the 1920s will go down in academic history as a
disgraceful era when trustees and regents filled our
campuses with lavish pseudo-Gothic and pseudo-
Colonial buildings, but forgot their professors. Then
came the inflations of the second World War, and of
the Korean War. By this time the effect of four decades
of academic starvation could scarcely be disregarded ; it
became clear not only that Ph.D's had long been leav-
ing our faculties in a steady stream, but that economic
conditions of life in the academic world were so abysmal
that bright young people, even when they got the
doctorate, were often going immediately into other
kinds of employment.

Now at last the professor is getting into a seller's
market. And believe me, he is going to make all of it

that he can. Graduate study is a fearfully lengthy pro-
cess, and there is no possibility that it can be speeded
up sufficiently, or expanded quickly enough, to meet
the need which is already painful in the sciences and
which will shortly be equally so in all fields of learning.
We shall, of course, be forced to systematic recruitment
of professors from Europe, Latin America and Asia,
where there are considerable reservoirs of impoverished
scholars. The recent record of academic exiles in this
country gives us great hope for enrichment from these
sources. But academic immigration will not fill more
than a small fraction of the need. Every kind of insti-
tution is going to start bidding for the scarce available
talent.

Some colleges and universities will get left. Their
faculties are going to be down-graded to the high
school level. A shocking report published two months
ago by the Research Division of the National Educa-
tion Association shows how rapidly this is already
happening. I strongly suspect that we shall soon see r
quite sharp polarization among our colleges and uni-
versities ; the mediocre will become worse, while the
good will become better. Competent scholars will
gravitate not only to the campuses which are able to
offer the best salaries, but to the campuses which for
that very reason can provide companionship with othe;
first-rate scholars, the prestige of being in such a com-
munity, reasonable teaching schedules, and (an intan-
gible too often forgotten by those who inhabit univer-
sity offices) administrative courtesy towards pro-
fessors. Needless to say, the public relations men of
the colleges-which-get-left will frantically erect Potem-
kin villages; but the public will not long be fooled.

Let me offer another proposition which I personally
regard as a fact. Save perhaps on the northeast sea-
board where ideas about public higher education are
curiously atavistic, state legislatures, with much moan-
ing and groaning, are going to make whatever appro-
priations may be necessary to keep the state universi-
ties, and perhaps the state colleges, too, in respectable
shape. They are going to do it, at least west of the
Appalachians, because the voters are going to insist
that they do it. This means that many tax-supported
institutions will be paying attractive professorial sal-
aries. Not merely for replacements, but to provide for

the inevitable expansion, these state campuses are al-
ready raiding independent colleges and universities as
never before. And this is only the beginning.

Where are the independent institutions going to find
the cash as ammunition to fight off such raids and thus
hold their own academically ? One assumes constantly
growing programs of fund-raising from alumni, parents,
corporations, from anyone who can be persuaded or
blackmailed. One assumes likewise a continuation of
the present gradual change in the handling of endow-
ment funds ; a change from trusteeship of dollar values
to trusteeship of purchasing power, in recognition of the
long-term inflation which destroys the purchasing
power of dollars. But it is clear that these measures
alone will not be sufficient.

Recently, here in the northeast, there have been
several suggestions that a larger part of the cost of
college education perhaps even the full cost
should be passed on to the consumer and his family.
To the objection that not many families could afford
so much, and that such a move would de-democratize
student bodies, the reply is made that a college educa-
tion is demonstrably the world's best investment, and
that students should not hesitate to borrow amply for
it, confident that their increased earning power in later
years will make repayment simple.

Let me say that I find myself shocked by this confirma-
tion and consecration, from high sources, of the view
that the prime purpose of a college education is to make
more money than otherwise would be possible. I myself
have mentioned earlier that our technological revolu-
tion has made necessary a constantly rising level of
popular education. But surely it is selling the academic
birthright for a very maggotty mess of pottage to
put the economic motive first in the quest for sound
learning.

Moreover, this proposal is strictly masculine in its
mode of thought. I know of no wide survey of loan
funds, but I suspect that college girls are much more
reluctant to borrow for their education than are college
boys. Every college girl whom I know expects to work
at some periods in her life. But she is also quite resolved
to marry and have children. I might say to have them
in droves. She knows that her husband may well have
accumulated debts, particularly for graduate and pro-
fessional work ; and since she does not expect to be a
full-time worker while the children are young she is
determined not to present her husband-to-be with the
inverse dowry of her own college debts. To put great
emphasis on loan funds, and on college as a financial
investment, would create a cultural atmosphere which
would lead to disaster. If the private institutions adopt
this tactic, the spiritual elements in American education
will quickly be drained off into the low-tuition state
institutions and the former will degenerate into trade
schools pure and simple.

However, undoubtedly, independent institutions are
going to find themselves forced to raise their fees to
levels which make us shudder to contemplate. Whereas
today the total fees of a resident undergraduate in a
good independent college run in the neighborhood of
$2,000, it is my bet that within a decade such fees will
amount to at least $3,000, in terms of the present value

of the dollar. In no other way can independent colleges
hold or secure adequate faculties. I believe that even at
such levels there will be a considerable constituency for
the independent institutions.

All of our independent institutions are going to raise
their fees drastically, and will still find students. But
won't they also be pricing themselves out of so large a
segment of the market that any attempt at quantitative
expansion would be folly?

Parents, you see, are not merely having more babies,
they are having them in terms of a new demographic
pattern, and not enough attention has been paid to it.
Young people are marrying earlier than ever before
and having children quickly. One result is that these
children are arriving at college age before the father's
earning power has reached its maximum. Moreover,
thanks to overmuch reading of child psychology, babies
are now being deliberately bunched, like asparagus. In
the 1890s one of Mrs. White's proper Bostonian rela-
tives wrote a cousin: "Is it not a fearful thing that
she has two living under the age of eighteen months?"

The chronological result of all this is inevitable;
these bunched children three, four or five of them
will be in college, and in graduate and professional
study, simultaneously. Not only will papa normally be
unable to foot the bills in an independent institution:
little aid can be expected from grandparents. In earlier
and less pasteurized generations, grandparents were
often dead when grandchildren reached college age,
and some inheritance was available for education.
Today grandfather and grandmother have a far greater
life expectancy and are, moreover, relatively younger
because of the tendency to early marriage. Moreover,
grandparents are decreasingly able to subsidize the edu-
cation of grandchildren. Whereas once one saved money
for old age, now one accumulates pension rights and
annuities the capital basis of which cannot be touched.
We must conclude that while in so vast and complex
a land as ours there will be a large and perhaps sufficient
clientele for independent colleges, every demographic-
change now taking place tends to reduce the size of
the market available to such institutions.

And perhaps this is the fundamental question: why
should one pay fabulous fees to go to an independent
college or university? It has been taken for granted,
particularly in the Northeastern states, that these harbor
the academic aristocracy, that they make available a
considerably superior brand of education as compared
with low-tuition, tax-supported campuses.

Being professionally an historian, and having watched
the tendencies within my own discipline for nearly
thirty years, I have become increasingly nervous about
this assumption. But how does one measure academic
quality? It occurred to me that I might get some
pointer-reading by examining the American Historical
Review at different dates. This Review has by far
the widest circulation of any historical journal in the
nation; it is the organ of the American Historical
Association and its articles are carefully selected. The
focus, however, is less on articles than on the review
of publications in the entire range of history. When a
scholar is invited to review a book in the American
Historical Revieiv, this means that in the editor's

opinion, he is the leading American authority on that
particular subject. The academic location of the con-
tributors to the American Historical Review should,
therefore, be a fairly accurate index to the location of
academic quality in the field of history. And the study
of history is so intertwined with other kinds of scholar-
ship that the academic quality of an institution's history
department is probably not a bad indication of the
general intellectual level of the campus.

It was not until April, 1930, that the American
Historical Review began to attach academic affiliations
to the names of its contributors. Prior to that time the
historical profession in this country had been so largely
concentrated in the institutions of the Eastern sea-
board that, as in the case of a British weekend party,
there were no introductions; you simply knew who
people were. Volume 36, spanning September, 1930,
through July, 1931, is therefore the first complete
volume to give identifications. This I compared with
Volume 62, spanning, September, 1956, through July,
1957. It became clear that great changes had taken place
during those twenty-seven years.

In Volume 36, 64 per cent of the contributors were
attached to independent institutions, and 36 per cent to
tax-supported institutions. (In tabulation I omitted a
scattering of lone-wolf scholars, European professors,
government officials and the like.) In other words, in
1930-31, nearly two-thirds of the top historical scholars
were in independent colleges and universities. In
1956-57, this category of campus still held the lead, but
by a far slimmer margin ; 54 per cent as compared to
46 per cent in the tax-supported institutions.

The real significance of the figures may perhaps
better be seen by arranging them in another way. The
1956-57 volume is much plumper than the one 27
years earlier, and contains nearly twice as many aca-
demic contributions 490 as compared to 256. But
whereas historians in independent institutions had in-
creased their participation by 62 per cent (from 163 to
264), historians in tax-supported institutions had run
up their contributions by 144 per cent (from 93 to
226).

The conclusion is inescapable. While the entire
historical profession in this country has been heightening
its activity in a remarkable way during the past 27
years, the historians in state and city colleges and
universities have been improving their quality and
their participation in historical activity more than
twice as fast as the historians in the privately supported
institutions. A year ago the latter still seemed to have
an eight per cent margin of qualitative superiority, but it
is rapidly vanishing. I strongly suspect that a check of any
comparable learned journal would yield similar results
for other academic disciplines. Whether we like it or
not, the dynamic center of American scholarship, the
weight of academic authority, is shifting rapidly from
independent to state institutions.

Where does this leave the independent colleges and
universities? To put it in the vulgar term, what have
they got to sell, and is the market going to be adequate?

The greatest virtue of our independent institutions
is their astonishing diversity. Because of their almost
infinite variation, I believe that it would be very

dangerous to lay down guide lines for all of them; for
some might be deceived about their special situations.
I am certain that each campus must survive and prosper
in terms of a lucid understanding of its own distinctive
qualities and of the support which may be found in its
own distinctive constituency. Many of our greatest in-
dependent colleges and universities have been carried
through the decades not only by a certain excellence but
by a momentum of unexamined public acceptance. We
are now in a new demographic, economic and academic
context in which this momentum cannot be counted
on indefinitely. Each institution must ask itself, in its
own terms, where it stands, what it has to sell, and to
whom.

While scarcely a campus does not have committees
now debating the matter, it is my personal belief that
very few independent institutions will decide to attempt
to grow quantitatively to any great extent; for, since
students will continue to cost more than they can
possibly pay in fees, quantitative expansion will only
rarely help to maintain quality. The exceptions will
chiefly be found in those Roman Catholic establish-
ments where a very high proportion of the faculty
consists of unpaid clergy. It may be also that the large,
independent, urban, non-resident universities which
make no pretense of maintaining a low student-faculty
ratio, and which are not burdened with the overhead
costs of residence facilities, can grow considerably. But
most of the typical American residential liberal arts
institutions are going to find that, if they are to main-
tain their academic quality, they must increase fees to
the point where their part of the market is so small that
expansion is impossible.

This same crisis hit the private elementary and secon-
dary schools of America in the nineteenth century when
the public schools became a major national enterprise.
Such independent schools serving the earlier years of
education continue to be a lively and significant part of
the total educational structure of the country; but they
touch only a small fraction of children. So, I believe
independent colleges and universities will continue to
prosper among us, but that their proportionate contribu-
tion to American life and thought will be much reduced
as the decades pass.

In conclusion, however, let's recognize that the in-
dependent institutions will be kept healthy not only
by the sort of objective appraisal which I have tried
to provide for you, but also by loyalty and even by
passion. As one who graduated from an independent
university, did all his post-graduate work and teaching
in similar institutions, and who not for fifteen years
has presided over a small college replete with adven-
turousness and excitement, I myself believe passionately
in the importance of maintaining such campuses at the
highest intellectual level. America needs them as an
essential element in its pluralistic society. The city and
state colleges and universities need them as foils, need
them as surety against standardization, need them as
barriers against the overgrowth of educational bureau-
cracy. But academic loyalties have too often been
clothed in cliches and outmoded assumptions. Unless
these are quickly abandoned, they will become the wind-
ing-sheets of independent higher education.

ALUMNAE

INAUGURATE

PRESIDENTS

Dr. and Mrs. Ellis Finger

THE TURNOVER in the position of college
president in our country seems sometimes alarm-
ingly rapid. The position is, of course, one of
the hardest to fill in our society, because we set im-
possible qualifications for it : The Man must be all
things to all men, educator, administrator, scholar,
mentor, fund-raiser, arbiter, minister, public relations
expert, financier, psychologist, sociologist.

One of Agnes Scott's great strengths is the continuity
of leadership the College has had. In seventy years there
have been only three presidents, and the institution has
been blessed in each instance by having The Man accept
the responsibility.

This year there has been a veritable rash of inaugura-
tions of new college and university presidents, across
the nation, and Agnes Scott has usually been invited
to send a representative to these functions. The College
has often asked an alumna who is near the institution
concerned to represent Agnes Scott.

For each of these alumnae, it proved to be, from
their reports, a pleasant and rewarding experience. Jane
McLaughlin Titus '31 wrote Dr. Alston about march-

ing in the academic procession at the Skidmore inaugu-
ration with the President of Barnard College, Dr.
Millicent C. Mcintosh. College representatives are
usually placed in inaugural processions according to the
date of the institution's founding, and both Barnard
and Agnes Scott began in 1889.

Jane proved to be one of the members of the three
husband and wife teams at inaugurations this year.
Her husband, Albert Titus, was asked to represent the
American Chemical Society at the Skidmore ceremony.
Mamie Lee Ratliff Finger '39 represented Agnes Scott
at President Richard A. McElmore's inauguration at
Mississippi College, and her husband, Ellis, who is
president of Millsaps College, was there for his insti-
tution. At the University of Alabama, to help launch
President Frank A. Rose's new career, was Grace
Walker Winn '41 ; her husband, Albert, went to
represent Davidson College.

When Helen Faw Mull '23 went to represent Agnes
Scott at a different type of ceremony, the dedication
of McMurray College for Men, her husband, James,
accompanied her. Helen says: "Both of us were made
to feel like V.I.P.s ... In the academic procession I
was among Deans and Professors ... at dinner with
the Dean of MacMurray for Women ... It was a
holiday that cheered the heart of a Georgia girl now
far from the reach of the sheltering arms."

Phillipa G. Gilchrist '23, who is on the faculty at
Wellesley, went to Mt. Holyoke for President Glenn's
inauguration. Carrie Scandrett '24 went to the festivi-
ties for Dr. O. C. Carmichael, Jr., new president of
Converse College. Ruth Slack Roach '40 was at the
Transylvania College ceremonies, Olive Graves Bowen
'28 donned academic regalia at Fisk University, and
Mary Monroe McLaughlin '45, immediate past presi-
dent of the Birmingham Alumnae Club was at Bir-
mingham-Southern for Dr. Henry King Stanford's
inauguration. Dr. Stanford's wife is Ruth King, x-36.

The Louisa Allen Scholarship Fund has been established by Louisa s
parents and friends. If you would like to add to the fund, please
make your check payable to Agnes Scott College.

Louisa Jane Allen '56

The sudden death of Louisa Allen in an automobile accident on April 9, 1958, has shocked and
saddened alumnae and members of the college community.

A present member of the campus community would probably remember Louisa as the chief figure
behind the rostrum at a Thursday Student Government chapel, as the high scorer for her class basket-
ball team, as one of the leads in a Dance Group production, or as the student who was studying three
foreign languages concurrently.

We, to whom she meant so much, can only try to recapture in words the real Louisa. We will
remember not only her activities which proved her wide interests, but also the spirit in which they
were performed. Her zest for life was indicated by her unbounded energy and the generous giving
of herself. Her genuine and enthusiastic desire for knowledge was exemplified by her concentrated
study of languages, although the problems that a conscientious student leader encounters never seemed
to daunt her good nature. The true quality of friendliness was reflected in her kind word and cheerful
smile for all. Her amiability was a result of her deep interest in people.

Our lives are enriched bv having known her, for "to live in the hearts we leave behind is not to
die."

Guerry Graham Fain '56
Dorothy Weakley '56

DEATHS

Institute

Fleetwood R. Kirk, husband of

Mamie Cook Hardage Kirk, April 13.

Mabel Lucille Jewett Miles, April 12.

1918

Virginia Lancaster McGowan, Feb.
8.

Carolina Ramsey Randolph, sister

of Sarah Randolph Truscott '19 and

Agnes Randolph Hill '20, March 1.

1920

Clara Boynton Cole Heath, sister of

Elizabeth Cole Shaw '28, May 4.

1921

Margaret McMillan, April 9.

1924

Vic Howie Kerr's mother, in Sep-

tember, 1957.

Edna McMurry Shadburn's hus-

band, Benjamin F. Shadburn, the sum-

mer of 1957.

Elizabeth Perry Talley's husband,

Andrew Pickens Talley, in February,

1957.

1927

Dr. Edward R. Leyburn, father of

Margaret Leyburn Foster '18 and El-

len Douglass Leyburn, March 27.

0. T. (Lew) Clarke, husband of

Caroline McKinney Clarke, stepfather

of Louise Hill Reaves '54, and son-in-

law of Claude Candler McKinney In-

stitute, on May 10.

1932

Frances Arnold's mother. Jan. 6

1933

Howard Kimbrough Moss, father of

Marie Moss McDavid, Elizabeth Moss

Mitchell '29 and Nell Moss Roberts

'40, March 17.

Dr. Benjamin Joseph Bond, husband

of Amelia Wolf Bond, Feb. 28.

1935

Mary Green Wohlford's mother,

Mrs. J. Howell Green, March 2.

1940

Eloise Weeks Gibson's father, April,

1958.

1943

Bizzell Roberts Shanks' husband,

Dr. Edgar G. Shanks, this spring.

Pat Perry Braun's son, Terry, Dec.

1957.

Ruby Rosser Davis' mother, in

March.

1948

Clarkie Rogers Sawyer's father,

March, 1958.

1956

Louisa Jane Allen, April 9.

1957

Molly Adams' mother, Oct. 21, 1957.

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY

FALL 1958

WHAT'S IT LIKE

TO BE A FRESHMAN

TODAY? SEE PAGE 2

THE EDUCATION
OF CONSCIENCE

SEE PAGE 6

BIG SISTER SEES DOUBLE

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY

FALL 1958

AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE / DECATUR, GEORGi/

Volume 37, Number 1

CONTENTS

Freshmen . . . It's Frantic, It's Fun and
There's a New Freedom

The Education of Conscience
Middle East, Past and Present
Class News

C. Ellis Nelson

2
6

Mary L. Boney 10
Eloise H. Ketchin 12

COVER Jane Kraemer '59, Orientation Chairman, pins a name tag on
Sue Chipley '62, while twin sister Nan Chipley watches. (See story, page 2).

Photograph by Carolyn Wells, '55.

The Alumnae Association of Agnes Scott College

Officers

Bella Wilson Lewis '34, President
Evelyn Baty Landis '40, Vice-President
Sybil Corbett Riddle '52, Vice-President
Caroline Hodges Roberts '48,

Vice-President
Mitzi Kiser Law '54, Vice-President
Alice McDonald Richardson '29,

Secretary
Betty Jean Ellison Candler, '49,

Treasurer

Staff

Ann Worthy Johnson, '38,

Director of Alumnae Affairs

Eloise Hardeman Ketchin,
House Manager

Dorothy Weakley '56, Office Manager

Alumnae Trustees

Mary Prim Fowler '29

Sarah Catherine Wood Marshall '36

Chairmen

Elizabeth Blackshear Flinn '38,

Class Council
Patricia Collins Andretta '28,

Constitution
Mary Wallace Kirk '11, Education
Alice Glenn Lowry '29, Entertainment
Doris Dunn St. Clair x-'38, House
Louise Girardeau Cook, '28,

Nominations
Mary Caroline Lee Mackay, '40,

Property
Jean Grey Morgan, '31, Publications
Dorothy Cheek Callaway, '29,

Special Events
Barbara Smith Hull, '47,

Vocational Guidance

MEMBER OF AMERICAN ALUMNI COUNCIL

The Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly is published four times a year (November,
February, April and July) by the Alumnae Association of Agnes Scott College at
Decatur, Georgia. Contributors to the Alumnae Fund receive the magazine. Yearly
subscription, $2.00. Single copy 50 cents. Entered on second-class matter at the
Post Office of Decatur, Georgia, under Act of August 24, 1912.

An atmosphere of intense delight hovering over

serious purpose is the one into which new students walk and

which they immediately take into themselves.

FRESHMEN...

it's rrantic, it's run
ana there's a

NEW FREEDOM

Sue and Nan Chipley arrive at Rebekah
Scott Hall from San Antonio, Texas.

The very atmosphere at Agnes Scott
becomes supercharged at the begin-
ning of the fall quarter not on the
day of Opening Convocation, but a
full week before this.

Upperclassmen return a week early,
to set about the intensive orientation
program for new students and to
spend a brief weekend in retreats
where the major student organiza-
tions meet for planning the year's
emphases.

The shouts, squeals, sometimes un-
inhibited yells with which the "old
girls" greet each other, breathe sud-
den forceful life into the campus.
The noise emanating from Evans Din-
ing Hall during the first meal where
old friends meet is like that made
by thousands of bees working as-
siduously in an enormous beehive.
This time of reunion and fresh feel-
ing is like a rebirth for those of us
who man the offices on the campus
during the lonely summer months.

And this atmosphere of intense de-
light hovering over serious purpose
is the one into which new students
walk and which they immediately
take into themselves, thus increasing
and sustaining it.

The "New Students' Calendar of
Activities for Opening Days," pub-
lished each year by the student Chair-
man of Orientation (this year, Jane
Kraemer from Richmond, Va.,) floors
most Freshmen with its multiplicity

of events and plethora of places to
be at certain times. We'll try to de-
lineate, for alumnae, freshman re-
action to these first days at Agnes
Scott, as lived by Freshmen them-
selves in this instance, two Fresh-
men, twins, Nan and Sue Chiplev,
from San Antonio, Texas.

Why did the Chipleys choose Agnes
Scott for their College in the first
place? Both agree that people,
alumnae and students, influenced
them most. They have alumnae rela-
tives in Athens, Tenn.. their aunt,
Reba Bayless Boyer '27 and her
daughter, Sara Ann Boyer Wilker-
son '52 whom they have long ad-
mired and loved for being the kind
of women they are. Then, the Mc-
Curdy family in San Antonio is well
represented in the Agnes Scott stu-
dent body with Anne '58, Runita '59
and Sue '61 (note to Dr. and Mrs.
McCurdy: we understand that you
have two more daughters headed to-
ward Agnes Scott and we regret that
your youngest child is a boy ! ) Nan
and Sue Chipley talked to Runita and
Sue McCurdy about Agnes Scott hst
year; Nan says, "They made us sure
we wanted to go."

Sue Chipley says that the twins'
first reaction to Agnes Scott was
gratitude for getting their applica-
tions for admission in 1958 accepted
last February. This was the first year
that the College's Committee on Ad-

THE AGNES SCOTT

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CAROLYN WELLS 00

The twins, like all new students, are

amazed at "how much" Miss Scandrett

knows about them.

l^.

\J

Lucy Scales '61, a sophomore helper, sees
that Nan and Sue sign up for library
classes.

Lissions had been able to accept
Lome students so early in the year.
(The twins took their College Entrance
Board exams in December and are
bure that early acceptance by Agnes
Scott made their senior year at Alamo
High School in San Antonio much
pleasanter. They tell of several friends
who had difficult days of awaiting
word from colleges of their choice.
During the summer, a veritable
barrage of mail went to the twins,
including letters from officers of Stu-
dent Government, Christian Associa-
tion. Athletic Association and Social
Council (an organization new to most
alumnae), a clever brochure from
Social Council suggesting kinds of
clothes needed for life at Agnes
Scott, a bulletin of information in-
cluding highlights of the College's
calendar of events for the entire year.
What the twins appreciated most in
their mail were notes from the stu-
dents who would be their shepherds
for the mysterious first days of col-
lege, their Junior Sponsors and
Sophomore Helpers. One twin's
Junior Sponsor is a twin herself.
Jody Webb, daughter of Jo Smith
Webb '30.

Other Freshmen may have looked
forward to hearing from the girls
who were to be their roommates.
The twins wanted to room together
and Miss Scandrett so placed them, in
a room in a wing of Rebekah Scott

Hall where some Seniors, as well as
other Freshmen, live.

They left San Antonio on a plane
at midnight Wednesday, Sept. 10,
and didn't sleep until Friday, Sept.
12. Pure exhaustion put them to
sleep Friday, although they wanted
to stay awake to celebrate their 18th
birthdays that day. (Nan was born
a few minutes before Sue. but Sue
reports that she's never felt younger
or that she had an older sister. I

The Chipleys were first-in-line for
the registration procedures Thurs-
day morning at 9 a.m. Laura Steele
'37, Registrar and Director of Ad-
missions, had arranged these pro-
cedures to be carried out with both
dispatch and careful individual con-
sideration. With the faculty's Com-
mittee on Courses for Freshmen the
twins chose for their first quarter's
studies chemistry, English, European
history, mathematics and Spanish.
Although they do have some classes
together, they were not placed in the
same section of all their courses. For
example, Dr. Robinson is leading
Sue into the intricacies of college
algebra, and Miss Gaylord teaches
Nan. Both of these members of the
faculty have indicated approval of
the twins as students.

For the twins, the most startling
academic experience was being
placed in an advanced Spanish class.
They had studied Spanish for three

Nan questions Miss Gaylord about a
principle of college algebra.

Dr. Rob leads Sue into the intricacies of
mathematics.

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY / FALL 1958

FRESHMEN Continued

years in high school, and their rec-
ord there plus placement tests put
them in a higher-level course. Neither
realized this when the Course Com-
mittee assigned them, but both are
now enjoying and responding to the
challenge of advanced placement. One
reason for this may be that Dr.
Florence J. Dunstan is teaching their
Spanish course; Dr. Dunstan holds
degrees from two Texas institutions.
Southern Methodist University and
the University of Texas. As Sue says,
"She speaks our kind of Spanish
we can actually understand her!"
I The twins most often use "we" and
"our" rather than "I" and "my.")

They agree that their course in
European history is hardest for them
and that what they were most afraid
of at first was what kind of physical-
education course they would be re-
quired to take. They'd never seen a
hockey stick, so signed up for folk
dancing. They are both good swim-
mers and are already anticipating
spring quarter's sports activities
when they can take riding they've
been brought up on horseback, Sue
says.

After two weeks, they were begin-
ning to settle down in academic
routines; at this point they uttered
their first typically freshman cry of

amazement at the quantities of time
they spend in academic pursuits.
Their attitude toward their own re-
sponsibility in learning is signifi-
cant. Nan said: "We will never go to
class unprepared."

But long before they attended their
first class at 8:30 on Wednesday
morning, Sept. 17. they felt, as they
expressed it, that they "belonged" at
Agnes Scott. After they completed
registration on Sept. 11, they went
over to "The Hub," the student activi-
ties building, for open house held by
Social Council during the two days
of freshman registration. After lunch
they snatched a brief moment to do
just necessary unpacking, then were
off with their sponsors to tour the
campus and meet people. They went
to vespers, led by Dr. Alston, held
just after supper on the steps of the
dining hall, then to "Dek-It," model
rooms showing the current best in
decoration of dormitory rooms. Their
room will be judged in the "Dek-It"
contest for the best freshman room.

The twins' reaction to Miss Scand-
rett was that of hundreds of other
former and present students; she put
them at ease, at once, and they came
from the interview full of wonder-
ment at "how she knows so much
about us." Miss Scandrett and mem-
bers of her staff had studied records
on Freshmen since August 19, but

Nan and Sue chat with Joe Hutchinsol

Sigma Chi at Georgia Tech, before leaviri

for a hillbilly rush party.

her store of information about eac
individual is amazing and it make
for an immediate and good undei
standing which the student carrie
normally not only through her co
lege years but for the rest of her lifi
During one talk with Miss Scan
drett, she told the twins that sh
was so glad she wouldn't have to b
concerned about their getting ad(
quate sleep because they wouldn
feel it absolutely vital to talk a
night in order to get to know eac
other, as some new r roommates d<
The twins said they appreicated pai

Miss Laura Steele '37, Registrar, helps the twins register.

Sue and Nan check the bulletin board for coming events. I

THE AGNES SCOT

cularly being under no feeling of
bligation to talk to each other early
i the morning!

After President Alston's talk to
ew students, the twins had a "hand-
ook class." the first of many in
hich a member of Student Govern-
ient"s Executive Board leads dis-
ussion of student government regu-
1 tions. Dinner that Friday night was

seated meal for new students, served
iy members of Christian Association
vho also sponsored vespers and a
ing. On the calendar for Friday eve-

out to Agnes Scott for supper and a
dance. Wearing their yellow "rat
caps," they seemingly poured out of
busses onto the hockey field for sup-
per. Buttrick Drive was roped off
for dancing, and two bands played,
one in front of the gym and one by
Buttrick Hall. Some people wondered
if the students were enjoying these
festivities as much as Dr. and Mrs.
Alston and Dr. and Mrs. Edwin D.
Harrison. Tech's new president and
his wife.

Nan and Sue Chipley were back

Nan and Sue prepare their room for the Dek-lt contest.

ning was a party given by Social
Council, and this is the only event
of the orientation program which
the Chipleys missed; this was the
moment when no-sleep-since-Texas
caught up with them.

The first weekend away from home
is usually a difficult time for Fresh-
men, and the student Orientation
Committee at Agnes Scott crams these
days with activities to ward off lone-
liness and incipient homesickness.
This year, on Saturday, hordes of
Freshmen from Georgia Tech came

from their first shopping trip to At-
lanta that Saturday in time to change
from their "downtown" clothes into
campus ones, to join the Freshmen
from Tech. They were on this day-
experiencing their first realization of
being very far from home, family
and friends. Sue said: "We didn't
know a soul in Atlanta we'd never
even been in Georgia."

Saturday night fixed that. Each
of them has a certain charm com-
pounded of beauty and poise, and
neither w ill ever have to be concerned

again about "not knowing a soul."
In fact, the rumor came from the
Tech campus the next week that there
were two Elizabeth Taylors at Agnes
Scott. They have been besieged by
fraternities at both Tech and Emory
to help with rush parties, and the
Saturday after the dance at Agnes
Scott, the editor of "The Rambler,"
Tech's student magazine, came out
to interview them for a picture story
in his publication.

On campus, too. the twins have
met people. The night of their first
day of classes they went to hear
Michael McDowell's piano recital and
then to President Alston's reception
for new students and faculty, where
they had the opportunity to be greeted
by faculty and staff members. They
also went to the "Meet-the-Minister's
Tea." a part of Agnes Scott's orienta-
tion program when ministers from
many Atlanta and Decatur churches
come out to the College. The Chip-
ley's are Methodists and have not
yet decided which church will be
theirs while in college; on their first
three Sundays they attended two
Methodist and one Presbyterian
church.

They are indeed fortunate to have
each other, and some of the rough
spots other Freshmen encounter are
smoothed over for them because of
this. They left at home their mother
and a younger sister; their father,
C. A. Chipley, a prominent San An-
tonio businessman, died recently.
They confess to having telephoned
their mother, but only once. They
w ere, at first, a little envious of many
other Freshmen who could go home
easily because of short distances.
They will not be at home until the
Christmas holidays, but with Black
Cat day coming (marking the end
of orientation), six-weeks-grades re-
ports and first exams to be hurdled,
plans for Thanksgiving with the Ten-
nessee relatives, and a full academic
and social calendar, home-going time
will suddenly burst upon them.

And Nan and Sue Chipley are two
1958 Freshmen who will go home to
their family as an integral part of the
Agnes Scott family.

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY / FALL 1958

Is there a way to increase the rational control of the

irrational forces that war within us? Reconciliation with external authority,
growth in personal responsibility, an expanded social loyalty . . . this is a
positive conscience.

The Education or Conscience

C. ELLIS NELSON

A YOUNG GIRL emerged from a movie
one Sunday afternoon a few years
ago and felt her right arm become
stiff. In a short time it was paralyzed
and she was hospitalized for diag-
nostic procedures. After several days
of tests, the doctor came to the con-
clusion that there was nothing physi-
cally wrong with the girl, so he began
to talk quietly to her about events
leading up to the paralysis. Her story,
in a few sentences, is this. She was
with a group of friends that Sunday
when they proposed going to the
show. She did not have the power to
resist the plan, yet she belonged to a
church which made Sunday attend-
ance at movies a major sin.

This case is not too unusual; it
would be classified by a psychologist
as conversion hysteria. The girl's con-
science was violated by seeing the
show; it threw a vast amount of guilt
into her psychic system which was
projected into her arm, probably the
arm used to handle the ticket, and
there was felt as paralysis. Thus,
punishment fit for the crime could be

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Nelson is professor of religious edu-
cation at Union Theological Seminary in
New York. This article is edited from
his Honors Day address at Agnes Scott,
given Sept. 24. His wife is an alumna,
Nancy Gribble Nelson ex-'41. When asked
why he didn't bring Nancy with him
when he came to be Honors Day speaker,
he said: "Because she has three chil-
dren!"

endured because guilt must come out
in some form.

Morality runs deep in our lives
deeper than we suspect; for much of
our conscience is unconscious. In fact,
our conscience is extremely moral
especially that part which lies so deep
we cannot recall its course. We feel
the effect of conscience every day,
sometimes in moments when we have
done what we know to be right and
joy permeates our whole being,
making the day glorious. At other
times, we feel the sting of the accuser
and melancholia spreads through our
soul. In Kafka's play "The Trial,"'
the victim is persecuted, arrested,
tried, and finally punished without
ever knowing the cause of the arrest
or the purpose of the trial. The
dramatic effect is achieved by the
principle character's struggling man-
fully against an unknown accuser,
never able to be free and never able
to know the cause of his bondage.

The Unity of Selfhood

We cannot avoid conscience and
we cannot violate conscience, as the
girl with the paralyzed arm dis-
covered. Conscience will win even at
the cost of physical or emotional
sickness. Our question is can con-
science be educated? Is there a way
to increase the rational control of
the irrational forces that war within
us?

Plato visualized the rational ele-
ment in man as a charioteer holding
the reins on two unruly steeds. The
two wild horses charged with energy,

pranced about, rushing into action
without deliberation or reflection!
The two steeds were irrational, ruled
by desire and passion. Reason was re
latively weak, clutching the reins anc
shouting, using its modest energy t(
guide and direct the power of th
animals.

Plato's illustration comes very neat
Freud's conception of man which is
presented pictorially on the cover oi
a medical journal. The page is al
most covered by a lush green tropical
growth out of which rises a brilliant,
muscular, sinister devil of such size
that he towers over the man standing
in the lower left corner of the page.
Visually these symbols represent the
id. The man, small in stature com-
pared to the beast of passion, is
standing at attention and is a golden
color, symbolic of how we see our-
selves our ego. To the foreground,!
and larger in size than the figure o
the man, is a blue shield on which a
large, pink hand is held in the posi-
tion a traffic cop uses to mean "stop."
This is the super-ego. The cover de-
sign is called "Forces of Personality."

The rational element, the golden-
colored man standing at attention,
like Plato's charioteers with two wild
horses, looks pathetically ineffective.
Indeed, the tragedy of our personal
and corporate liveis today is the in-
effectiveness of our rational control
of our lives. This does not refer to
the rational understanding of nature.
Since the modern scientific method
of investigation developed, man has
pyramided his knowledge of life so

THE AGNES SCOTT

'resident Alston and Dr. Nelson march into
Jaines Chapel on Honors Day.

[hat today death itself is postponed at
least ten years for the average per-
son, and the fantastic force of the
atom has been domesticated. The
Rational control of our lives means
|the ability to see man everywhere as
(possessing the inalienable rights as-
sociated with individual dignity,
:equal protection under law, equal op-
portunity for education according to
lability and interest and the develop-
ment of world-wide rather than
j parochial loyalties, the ability of an
individual to enlarge the area of rea-
son over his passions, the formula-
I tion of sentiments that include faith,
hope, and love directed toward the
welfare of others. In short, the educa-
tion of a Christian conscience.

The Problem of Conscience

It is necessary to say a Christian
conscience, because conscience alone
is not enough. There is a real sense
in which Durkheim is profoundly
right when he says, "Everything that
is found in conscience comes from
society."

A striking statement of why so
much comes to the baby from society
is given by Adolph Portmann. Man's
birth is physiologically a pre-mature
birth, Portmann says, meaning that
not until the end of one full year of
life is a baby as mature as like
mammals are when they are born.
More than any other living thing,
man is shaped by his environment
is shaped from the outside. Although
the content of conscience is from so-

ciety, the capacity to develop a con-
science is innate. Conscience in this
sense is like language; the capacity
to speak is innate but the language to
be learned is supplied by society.

Society is represented to the baby
by his parents, especially the mother.
He soon learns that there is an order
of things that must be followed in
order to get love and approval; there
are also things he must not do in
order to avoid disapproval and
punishment. The baby's morality is
based on authority. It is respect for
law. and it is negative like the police-
man's hand held up in the command,
"Stop!" This is the negative con-
science, consisting of what we have
been told we must not do. Its power
within us is based on fear of disap-
proval and punishment. Authority
operates in the negative. Most civil
laws state what we cannot do, or they
limit our activity by drawing a
boundary line, such as setting the
speed limit at 60 miles per hour.

The earliest memory that we have
recorded in the Bible reflects this
memory of what is prohibited. The
Adam and Eve story is told within
the context of what they could not
do eat the forbidden fruit. The
regulatory articles of religion, the
Ten Commandments, are stated nega-
tively. Unfortunately, just when the
baby is beginning to establish some
independence of his own, he is too
often introduced to the church and
religion in the negative sense, so that
he developes a firm conviction of
religion as a universalized negative
conscience.

By this process of training, the
moral law becomes the authority,
taking the place of parents. The in-
dividual then has his moral and
religious life arrested in its growth.
Under these conditions, the individ-
ual's problem is simply how to have
as few qualms of conscience as possi-
ble as he faces the demands of the
moral law. Usually this leads to all
kinds of evasive action to keep the
letter of the law so conscience won't
hurt but all the while doing violence
to the intention of the law. For ex-
ample, a girl raised by a very strict
mother was told never to kiss a boy

until she was engaged. Furthermore,
the mother was very careful to quiz
the daughter each time she came
home from a date to be sure that
she had obeyed. Naturally, the girl
was somewhat restricted in her so-
cial life until she hit on a happy
solution. She discovered that she
could let boys kiss her and still pass
her mother's test!

That story is an illustration of how
negative conscience handles religion.
Judaism has its Talmud, Roman
Catholicism has its Codes of Penance,
and Protestantism has its Puritan
Ethics. In all three, the same psy-
chological process is at work. Con-
science has become primarily moral
law. Religious faith, rather than
being the means of relating a person
to God, has become a matter of right
conduct and attention to the form of
worship.

Our problem would be simple if we
could eliminate restraint, restriction,
punishment, and direction from the
raising of our children. However,
this is not possible, so we inevitably
develop a negative conscience in the
child by the very process of his grow-
ing up. But to allow our conscience
to remain a "law" conscience is to
allow the regulatory mechanism of
our lives to remain immature. An
immature conscience means one that
is dependent upon external authority,
authority such as law, or an authori-
tarian figure such as a dictator or
big brother, and it puts responsibility
on this external authority rather than
assuming responsibility itself.

Conscience and Guilt

The main problem of an immature
conscience is that it keeps us in bond-
age to authority, either law or a law-
giver. The self is arrested in develop-
ment, unable to evaluate new and
different problems, restricted in its
ability to choose proper goals and
move ahead in an ever widening and
deepening participation in all of life's
opportunities.

Conscience, as a term, has this
negative connotation, for it comes
out of the common Greek life and al-
ways means a guilty conscience. You

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY / FALL 1958

CONSCIENCE Continued

may be surprised to learn that con-
science is not a Biblical term; it is
used only once in the Old Testament
(Leviticus 5:1 1 and its main usage in
the New Testament is by the Apostle
Paul. In fact, the term is forced on
Paul by the Greeks in the Corinthian
church. The Greeks were accustomed
to testing their actions by their con-
science; so when the issue of eating
meat that had been offered to idols
came up, the Greeks naturally wor-
ried about their guilty conscience.
Paul told the Greeks at Corinth that
they could not really solve an ethical
problem in the light of the Christian
faith by the use of conscience. A
Christian could eat meat offered to
idols even though Greek conscience
was violated, because to the Christian
an idol was nothing. In short, con-
science was an unreliable guide for
ethical conduct because it was a crea-
ture of culture.

I remember when a young Brazilian
visiting in this country for the first
time went to a men's club supper in
one of our large Presbyterian
churches in North Carolina. He was
scandalized to find a small compli-
mentary package of cigarettes at each
place setting. In fact, when he talked
to me about his experience, he was
still in a mild state of shock. Of
course, the North Carolinians were
just being patriotic in using their
principle agricultural commodity. For
conscience's sake, some people will
not drink Coca-Cola, although that
is hardly a problem in Atlanta!

If it were only a matter of cigar-
ettes or Coca-Cola, then the identifica-
tion of conscience with right would
be reasonably harmless. But, unfor-
tunately, conscience under the domi-
nation of authority also seeks to gain
goodness by force. This is goodness
that arises not out of love or concern,
but out of hate. It is fierce goodness.
The Apostle Paul demonstrated this
fierce goodness when he persecuted
the Christians, for he was compelled
by his conscience to stamp out the
group that failed to follow the strict
letter of the moral Jewish law.

Fierce goodness can become im-
perialistic, because it is really driven

by hatred of external authority.
Arthur Miller's play, "The Crucible,"
deals with the witchcraft persecution
in New England. In the first act we
learn that a number of ills have be-
fallen members of the community,
and it is suspected that a witch has
come to inhabit and control one of
the people in the community. In the
second act we see the full power of
the legal apparatus of the community
brought to bear on this suspected
witch. One can easily see, as the play
progresses, the compulsive quality of
this puritanical goodness. Finally the
community kills the man suspected
of witchcraft, convinced in its own
mind that the voice of conscience was
the voice of God.

The Education of Conscience

Many people live with an immature
conscience, plagued with guilt and
dispensing fierce goodness, but this
does not mean that we are left in
this miserable state. Here we come
back to the question raised in the
introduction: "Can we educate con-
science?" The answer is yes, but the
word "educate" must be carefully
defined when we associate it with
conscience. The development of a
positive conscience will not take
place with added information. You
are no better off morally at the end
of your college career than you are
at its beginning if college to you is
just the acquiring of knowledge.
Through college, you will become a
better informed person, but you will
not be a better person. "Educate,"
when associated with the cultivation
of an "ought" that is, a positive
conscience -- means reconciliation
with external authority, growth in
personal responsibility, and an ex-
panded social loyalty.

Reconciliation with external au-
thority is necessarily a first step, for
we must grow beyond the confines of

a negative conscience.

A negative

conscience has only one strategy
repression. A positive conscience
utilizes reason to work through emo-
tional problems. Fortunately, through
college experiences, we already have
progressed a long way toward the
development of an "ought." We also

learn from our parents and othe:
adults who are our loved ones wha
we ought to do. Because we lov<
these adults we incorporate theii
ethical standards into our lives.

Love is the key word here. Onh
love can break the power of law. Re
member the pathetic story of the gir
with the arm paralyzed by her nega
tive conscience? I must tell you now
how her story ended. The doctor
finding nothing wrong w ith her phvsi
cally, listened to her story. The gir
sobbed with grief over the act that
she had considered sin. yet the doctor
talked kindly to her. Without taking
sides on the ethical issue of Sunday
movies, the doctor looked straight
into her eyes with kind, fatherly con-
cern and accepted her as she was, a
frightened, confused, young girl. The
girl, surprised at receiving no punish
ment or condemnation, began to re-
gain the use of her arm. Thus she
learned that she could be loved even
when wrong.

Love is an effort to actualize the
good in another. Love is always found
in a life situation trying to reconcile
the person to a higher level of living
than law. So the figure of the Christ
continues to come to us with trans-
forming power, even two thousand
years after he was nailed to a cross,
because he actualized the love of God.
In the words of Paul, "God showed
his love for us in that while we were
yet sinners, Christ died for us."
(Romans 5:8) In relation to God,
Christ creates a new situation for us
whereby we are not related to God
in fear or law but more as sinners
in the hands of a loving God.

Under these conditions a person
brings his rational faculties into play,
for he is no longer held within the
fence of a culturally-conditioned
moral law. The. Christian must apply
his mind to evaluate new and differ-
ent problems, because he knows he
cannot automatically trust the old
ways of behavior. Reconciliation
with external authority means also a
growth in understanding the use of
authority which we have within our
power. That is, when reason unites
with authority in this sense, then rea-
son must also be sensitive to the

8

THE AGNES SCOTT

will of God as that will may ex-
press itself in new forms. This con-
cept of authority is the foundation
of democracy. To put it the other
way around, democracy is based on
the Judaic-Protestant conception of
conscience wherein we conceive of
ourselves as being under authority,
but that authority is a loving God
who wants us to realize our highest
potentialities. Out of this spirit came
the words, "All men are endowed by
their Creator with certain inalienable
rights and among these rights are life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Growth in Personal Responsibility

Growth in personal responsibility
is a second requirement for edu-
cating a positive conscience. We
must have a continuous creative rela-
tionship between ourselves and our
environment. Here is an enormous
opportunity for learning. Now that
you have made your first major,
sustained physical break with your
home, you are observing that many
people act and think differently. Per-
haps you have now eaten with a
Negro or discovered someone who
seems perfectly wholesome and yet
entertains friendly ideas toward so-
cialized medicine. Let me alert you
to the fact that these encounters are
the stuff out of which you develop a
positive conscience the opportunity
to grow in your own personal re-
sponsibility and understanding.

Consider now again the question,
"Shall we eat meat offered to idols?"
with which Paul was confronted in
Corinth by Greeks who were afraid
of their conscience. Since an idol is
not anything, Paul said, a person can
eat meat even if it has first been a
sacrificial offering to an idol. "How-
ever" (and here the highly-ethical,
positive Christian conscience is at
work), Paul continues, "if you sit
down at a meal and someone says the
meat has been offered to an idol, then
for conscience's sake, not your con-
science but the sensitive Greek con-
science, you should refrain."

An expanded social responsibility
is the third dimension of an educated
conscence. Here a person sees in the
wider social issues of the day values

that are as important to him as his
personal concerns. At this point we
must confess that the development of
social loyalties beyond a parochial
interest remains the vast undeveloped
area of an educated conscience.

Social loyalty is genuine only at
the local level, and there only in the
few who have a sensitive conscience.
Loyalty to the nation is genuine in
times of peril, but only a few souls
have developed a concern beyond the
nation. Our national leaders appeal
for political support of foreign aid
or the development of backward areas
of the world on the basis of en-
lightened self-interest, knowing that at
the present the citizens of the United
States will not respond to a higher
motive. Indeed, social loyalty is so
restricted in America at the present
time that it does not include people
of other races or classes. As a result,
vast amounts of time and energy are
being expended by community leaders
and governors to restrict the privilege
of American life to those who hold
social power. Note the downward
spiral of negative social morality. We
will close public schools and stunt
the growth of the whole population
before we will embrace a social
loyalty that shares opportunity equal-
ly. Note also in our present situation
how personal attitudes coalesce into
a social attitude and, at the sudden
calling of the legislature, can be
solidified into a law.

The fact that conditions in the
Northeast, though different in expres-
sion, are little improved over condi-
tions in the South does not alter our
problem. This tragic social situation
substantiates my point that wider so-
cial loyalties are created from the in-
clinations of individuals. The lesson
will not be learned until it becomes a
part of our homework.

The Apostle Peter had a tough time
with his homework; he just didn't
seem to be the type who could ex-
pand his loyalty to include everyone.
Perhaps we shouldn't be too hard in
our judgment of Peter. After all, he
had been carefully taught from birth
that Gentiles were inferior to Jews.
I do not know the content of that
teaching, but I assume it took the

characteristic form of much preju-
diced thinking: that Gentiles were
slow mentally, that they were natural-
ly lazy, that they were happiest when
they were ruled by Jews, and that
God himself was most favorable to the
Jews as illustrated by their long, suc-
cessful history.

With all of Peter's weaknesses, he
had one towering strength he was
mentally honest. He allowed the
rational element in his life to speak
f o and relate with his conscience. His
negative conscience was repulsed at
the idea of the Christian faith being
available to Gentiles on the same
basis as Jews. The persistent pressure
on him was the vision of the Christ
hanging on a cross, praying for Gen-
tile and Jew as they crucified him,
"Father, forgive them for they know
not what the do." (Luke 23:34 1 That
clash ruined his sleep as his awakened
and growing positive conscience bat-
tled with his deep-seated hatred of
Gentiles. The book of Acts records
three special revelations to Peter be-
fore he could say to Gentiles, "Truly
I perceive that God shows no par-
tiality, but in every nation anyone
who fears him and does what is right
is acceptable to him." (Acts 10:35)

Concern for all Mankind

Peter w r as not in college, but his
conscience was being educated in the
only way possible in a real life
situation wherein he allowed his mind
to wrestle with his restrictive con-
science. The result was the develop-
ment of his concern for all mankind
regardless of the condition of birth.
With the Apostle Paul, who likewise
had to learn that God does not show
partiality to any one race, Peter
created the concern for all people that
caused the early Christians to push
out from Jerusalem in all directions
and create a new world morality.

The extent to which Christianity
can be a vital force in the present
world situation is likewise dependent
upon our ability to crash through
the walls of irrational prejudice and
articulate in clear terms the world-
wide human concerns that motivate
God's love.

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY / FALL 1958

MIDDLE
EAST

Past ana
Present

Miss Boney plans her itinerary

By MARY L. BONEY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Boney, associate profes-
sor of Bible at Agnes Scott,
holds degrees from the
Woman's College of the Uni-
versity of North Carolina,
Emory University and Co-
lumbia University. On her
trip to the Middle East, she
visited the Salfiti family in
Ramallah, just north of Je-
rusalem. Helen Salfiti, a 1958
graduate, was one of Agnes
Scott's foreign students for
four years.

"A Travel Seminar to the Holy Lands
and Middle East," the brochure read.
Five weeks of moving about in that
troubled area brought tremendous en-
richment to twenty-five Americans
who shared an interest in ancient and
current history. After a week-end in
Rome, the itinerary included stops in
Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and
Greece. The tour was conducted by
Professor Boone M. Bowen of the
Candler School of Theology at Emory
University, who had arranged for the
group to hear experts, at every point,
speak on both phases of our two-
fold concern.

It was at Cairo that we had our
first introduction to the intriguing,
troubled Arab world. After a night
flight from Rome, the Nile delta ap-
peared below us just at dawn, and
the lush vegetation of the river valleys
was in stark contrast to the desert
which pushed in from the dry regions.
It was evident, as we were to be re-
minded many times, that "Egypt is
the gift of the Nile."

While we did not neglect the usual
tourists' agenda which included rid-
ing camels to the pyramids and
sphinx at Gizeh, sailing by moon-
light on the Nile, visiting the Tombs
of the Sacred Bulls at Saqqara, and
shopping in the famous bazaars, the
most rewarding part of our stay in
Egypt came through our contacts
with people who shared our interests.
We had the privilege of spending
two mornings in the national museum
with Dr. Ahmed Fakhry, chairman
of the archaeology department of
the University of Cairo and former
head of antiquities for the Egyptian
government; he and Mrs. Fakhry
also had us in their home overlook-
ing the Nile for an Arabic meal and
an evening of stimulating conversa-
tion. A man of dynamic personality,
Dr. Fakhry 's scholarly integrity and
his intense devotion to things Egyp-
tian aroused our admiration and re-
spect. He has published the results
of his archaeological investigations
in English, French, German, Arabic,
and Chinese. Being strongly influ-
enced by Toynbee's interpretation of
history as a dialectic between chal-
lenge and response, Dr. Fakhry

I
wanted us to share one basis of thil
influence, so walked untiringly wit
us through the museum, pointing oil
the amazing achievements of tbj
Old, Middle and New Kingdoms.

Another personal contact whic
meant a great deal to us was tha
with Dr. and Mrs. Raymond Mdj
Lain of the American University a

Cairo. After visiting the university

. 'I

we spent an evening in the McLain'l

apartment in the embassy section ofi
Cairo. As president and dean ot
women, this charming couple from
Kentucky have been serving th<
school for five years. The 38-yearj.
old school had an enrollment lasl
year of 780 men and women fronj
28 countries but is having an in!
fluence far beyond its numbers
While these students could attencj
one of the four Egyptian universil
ties (where 80,000 are enrolled) foil
much less money, this private liberal
arts institution never has a student-
recruitment problem, and its grad-
uates are in constant demand. It ful-
fills its primary function of teaching
through a curriculum which is based
on the humanities and which starts
always from the Middle East.

Colonel Nasser

Contemporary Cairo just cannot be
discussed without some mention of
the central figure of Egypt today.
Even if his smiling face were not to
be found on nearly every public
street and public building, the firm
grip which he has on the people is
evident in their conversation. This
was my first experience at witness-
ing such hero worship. Colonel Nas-
ser has captivated not only the polit-
ical loyalty but also the enthusiastic
devotion of Egyptians, and they seem
never to tire of talking about him
at least to Americans! They point
out with pride the relatively simple
house he lives in, near the army bar-
racks, in sharp contrast to the opul-
ence of ex-King Farouk's palace.
They tell of his insistence that his
wife return a dress she had bought
because the Nassers could not afford
its cost, fifty dollars. They cite his
attendance at mosque on Friday,
when he visited Russia, as evidence

10

THE AGNES SCOTT

)f his holding to religious faith while
n an atheistic country. While he is
i loyal Moslem, eager to identify his
Arab Republic with the Islamic
ivorld, Nasser seems to have more
liberal views than the orthodox fol-
lowers of Mohammed, who balk at
any attempt to change the social
status quo with the expression, "It
is the will of Allah."

The same enthusiasm for this hero,
though on a less obvious scale, was
to be evident in Syria and Jordan
also. Nasser has not solved the cru-
cial problems of the Arab people,
but many of his devotees whom we
saw, both high and low, believe that
he is headed in that direction.

Jordan Today

The major part of our pilgrimage
was spent in the territory west of the
Jordan River. We used Jerusalem,
Jordan, as headquarters, visiting
there the famous landmarks that are
sacred to Jews, Christians, and Mos-
lems. We took trips northward to
such places as Anathoth, the home
of Jeremiah; Gibeon, located defin-
itely only in 1956, where Solomon
asked God for wisdom; and Bethel,
the site of Jacob's dream. Heading
south, we visited the "little town of
Bethlehem," and stopped at the Oaks
of Mamre. where Abraham had the
theophany mentioned in Genesis 18.
On the Israeli side we saw Nazareth,
the town of Jesus' boyhood, and
spent an evening and a morning be-
side the Sea of Tiberias (Galilee).

Each day was crowded with op-
portunities for remembering biblical
events and stories, with the effect
being, as one member of the party
put it, a combination of inspiration
and disillusion. It was inspiring to
worship one Sunday morning at the
Garden Tomb in Jerusalem, and to
have the story of the resurrection
become more meaningful there; it
was disillusioning to see on that
same evening a priest in the Church
of the Nativity in Bethlehem dash
across the sanctuary to turn out the
lights on us because we had not made
as much of a financial contribution
as he thought we should! It was
moving to kneel before the rock on

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY / FALL 1958

which, tradition holds, Jesus prayed
in the Garden of Gethsemane; it was
disappointing to be told that we could
not enter the garden itself because
so many visitors had cut souvenirs
from the old, gnarled olive trees.

But the words from the New Tes-
tament that kept coming back to us
were those from Luke in which Jesus
wept over Jerusalem, saying,
" 'Would that even today you knew
the things that make for peace!''
The contemporary situation in that
tragically divided city brought to a
focus the tension of the Middle East,
for both sides consider that a state
of war still exists between them.

We were especially conscious of
what the division meant to scholar-
ship. Archaeologists from one side
have no chance to communicate with
those on the other, except through
outside contacts. Wadi Qumran,
where the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls
were discovered, is in Jordan; the
documents themselves (those dis-
covered earliest I are in the custody
of the Hebrew University in Israel.
Another example is that the almost
pathological bitterness of the Jor-
danians has led them to cover, with
long strips of white paper, the
Hebrew titles in the Rockefeller
museum, leaving only the Arabic
and English. Guides in Arab terri-
tory pointed out from ten-year-old
memory places in Jerusalem, Israel:
their Hebrew counterparts relied on
second-hand information in designat-
ing spots in Jordan.

No Solutions

The special visitors who talked with
our group on both sides of the
Mandlebaum Gate, the only place of
access from Jordan to Israel, both
enlightened and disturbed us. Refugee
workers, the mayor of Jerusalem,
a judge, and a lawyer who had
worked with the Point Four Program
spoke to us in Jordan; a former
United Nations representative, the
public relations director at Hebrew
University, the head of the 10th an-
niversary exhibition, and a leader in
the Israel information office spoke to
us on the other side. Each of these,
along with other friends, was helpful

in letting us know of the issues in-
volved; but neilher they nor we could
see a satisfactory solution to this
problem in which injustice, prejudice,
and misunderstanding are inextri-
cably mixed.

As we boarded the plane at Tel
Aviv for Athens, we looked forward
to the relative peace of Europe, the
Cyprus situation notwithstanding,
but at the same time we knew we
could not forget those who had be-

. . which included Greece.

come our friends in the Middle East.
Reflecting on these people, living in
actual places, makes one realize that
our religious forbears who occupied
the same territory were not vague,
ethereal beings, but real persons,
enduring sun, stones and sand, and
facing domestic as well as interna-
tional crises. What to us is now past
history was once current. The re-
membrance that difficulties seemingly
insurmountable were once overcome
through faith which led to hard work
underscores our confidence that God
who has revealed Himself in history
may be found in the present as well
as in the past.

11

Miss Chloe Steel, assistant professor of French,
returned to Agnes Scott this fall after a year's
leave of absence to study in France.

4S'

To Enlarge and Enrich

Agnes Scott has received, from a donor
who prefers anonymity, a grant of $24,000
to be used this year for the enlargement
and enrichment of the department of his-
tory and political science.

A new faculty member has been added
the department, Dr. William G.
Cornelius (B.A., M.A. Vanderbilt Univer-
sity, Ph.D. Columbia University), who is
associate professor of political science.

Three lectures of national stature in his-
tory and political science will be brought to
the campus this year. They are Senator J.
William Fulbright, who will be at the Col-
lege for three days in December as special
lecturer in political science; Dr. Frank B.
Freidel, professor of American history.
Harvard University, who will come in
January as a special lecturer in history;
and Dr. Louis R. Gottschalk, professor of
modern history, University of Chicago, who
will come in April as special lecturer in
history.

Dean Kline Reports on . . .

Doctoral Degrees and Women's Colleges:
1936-1956

A study 1 of the colleges of origin of per-
sons receiving doctoral degrees in the 21-
year period of 1936-1956 shows the follow-
ing women's colleges to be oustanding:

Number
oj Graduates
Awarded
College Doctoral Degrees

1. Hunter 328

2. Wellesley 190

3. Vassar 180

4. Mount Holyoke .164

5. Smith 161

6. Radcliffe 126

7. Bryn Mawr 123

8. Goueher 71

9. Barnard 51

10. Woman's College, N. C. . . 37

11. Agnes Scott 31

11. Wilson 31

13. Randolph-Macon .... 30

13. Texas Womans' U 30

15. Connecticut College ... 27

15. Simmons 27

Since these colleges differ so much in
size, a study was made of the proportion
of doctoral degrees won to the number of
students in the colleges. The average en-
rollment for the period covered by the pub-
lished study was worked out for each of
the schools. The total number of doctoral
degrees was divided by the number of
years to give an annual average. The final
index figure was reached by dividing the
annual average of doctoral degrees by the
annual average enrollment and converting
the figure to number per thousand of stud-
ents. The rank of colleges was as follows:

Annual

Doctoral (Rank in

Degrees Knapp &

per 1000 Greenbauni

College Students Study) 2

1. Bryn Mawr . . . 2.45 (1)

2. Mount Holyoke . 2.40 (6)

3. Vassar .... 2.14 (4)

4. Radcliffe . . . 2.12 (3)

5. Wellesley . . . 2.01 (17)

6. Goueher .... 3.63 (15)

7. Wilson .... 3.61

8. Smith .... 2.94 (7)

9. Agnes Scott . . 2.69 (9)

10. Rockford . . . 5.83

11. Barnard .... 5.70 (2)

12. Wells 4.58

13. Randolph-Macon . 10.32 (16)

14. Elmira .... 7.46

15. Hunter .... 6.81 (10)

1. Doctorate Production in United States
Universities 1936-1956, with Baccalaureate Ori-
gins of Doctorates in the Sciences, A rts, and
Humanities. Compiled by the Office of Scientific
Personnel: M. H. Trytten, Director; L. R.
Harmon, Director of Research. Washington:
National Academy of Sciences National Re-
search Council, 1958.

2. Robert H. Knapp and Joseph J. Green-
baum, The Younger American Scholar: His
Collegiate Origins. University of Chicago Press,
1953. This study was for the period 1946-1951.

13

Llewellyn Wilburn '19, Josephine Brid 9 mon '27, and Janef Preston '21 were some of the faculty members who toured Europe last summei

\

t)

g
ip

lid

n

! '**$l^\

Mr. Stukes and Miss Leyburn lead an academic procession. Mr. Stukes spoke at Investiture on

November 1.

h
ft

ti
h

R

This view of the Walters Infirmary and the gymnasium was taken in the front of Fran

Winship Walters dormitory.

Graduate Awards

Four recent graduates of Agnes Scott
are beginning graduate work this year as
Woodrow Wilson fellows. They are among
the thousand prospective college teachers
in the U.S. and Canada who have been
awarded Woodrow Wilson National Fellow-
lowships. The Ford Foundation recently
gave the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship
Foundation $25,000,000 to aid outstanding
graduate students. The student receiving
the awards must be nominated by a
faculty member, and the Foundation pays
full cost of tuition and fees, and a living
allowance, at the institution of the stud-
ent's choice.

Jeanette Clark '58 is at Yale University
doing graduate work in philosophy of
religion.

Carolyn Magruder '58 has entered the
University of Pennsylvania to persue
studies in modern European history.

Dorothy Rearick, '57 after a year study-
ing chemistry in Germany on a Fulbright
scholarship, is doing graduate work in
chemistry at the University of Virginia.

Lue Robert, '58 is at Columbia Univer-
sity where she is beginning her graduate
work in zoology.

I

Julia Gary, assistant professor of chemis
received the Ph.D. degree from Emory Unr
sity in August.

DEATHS

INSTITUTE

larion C. Bucher, July 20.
'Jary Crenshaw l'almour, mother of Al-
perta Palmour Macmillan and Mary Louise
'almoiir Barber '42, May 11.

1911

idith Waddill Smith, May 3.

1913

l"he Rev. Luther D. B. Williams, husband
if Lily Joiner Williams, July 31 .

1917

'allie Young While Hamilton, June 16.

1929

J. Bonner Spearman, husband of Isabelle
-eonard Spearman, June 25.

1930

\Ibert Solomon, father of Anne Ehrlich
iolomon and Emilie Ehrlich Strassburger
27, in November, 1957.

Carolyn Nash Hathaway and Ann Brown
\ash Reece '33's mother, in the early sura-
ner.

1936

William G. Weeks, father of Lilly Weeks
McLean, Olive Weeks Collins '32, Marga-
ret Weeks '31. and Violet Weeks Miller
'29, July 7.

1938

Mrs. Edgar B. Kernan, mother of Mary
Anne Kernan, Aug. 26.

1939

Mrs. W. H. Ratliff, mother of Mamie Lee
Ratliff Finger, in an automobile accident
March 29.

1946

Ruth Simpson Blanton, May 13, 1958.

1952

Nancy Dianne Dennison, sister of Lucile
Dennison Keenan '37 and Jean Dennison
Brooks '41, July 18.

Specials

Mrs. Henry C. Bedinger, mother of Mary
Bedinger Echols, July 22.

UUMNAE QUARTERLY / FALL 1958

-

I Lotsj^

Now I Belond To You!

IS a most pleasant experience for me to be no longer
o-headed. Since coming back to Agnes Scott, in 1954.
Ire held two positions, Director of Alumnae Affairs and
irector of Publicity. The latter title, with a change in
ording, now rests upon Nancy C. Edwards '58 who is
ssistant Director of Public Relations and Development,
he College couldn't have made a wiser choice, it seems
li me; Nancy was president of Student Government last
sar and has a particular understanding of Agnes Scott
>day. She works with Dr. W. Edward McNair, Director
f Public Relations and Development.

Rejoice though I do at having just one head, and that
le alumnae one, 1 still must have many arms. There is
le Quarterly to publish, the Alumnae Fund to build, the
rograms of the Alumnae Association to develop, alumnae
lubs and reunions to foster and scads of addresses to
hange.

And, daily, I do say a prayer of thanks for the good
eople who give of themselves to supply me with these
lany arms members of the Association's Executive
ioard, alumnae who contribute, gladly, to the Alumnae
1 und, club presidents, class officers, alumnae who write
or the magazine, and the great majority, alumnae who,
ust by being the people thev are. make Agnes Scott live
n their communities.

My strongest right arm goes by the name of Dorothy
Veakley '56 and goes by the title of Office Manager. The
itle belies both her capacities and achievements, and we
onstantly search for a more correct name for her posi-
ion; our latest, gleaned from some letters promoting a
adio show, is "Creator, Moderator and Producer." She
3 all these things in the Alumrae Office.

Titles tickle, sometimes. Another arm. or group of
rms for me this year is a faculty committee appointed
ecently by Dr. Alston, to work with the Alumnae Asso-
iation, and I have titled it the Committee On Alumnae
delations. 1 recall my amazement and delight, during one
f my first faculty meetings, at hearing Dr. Alston appoint

the Committee on Committees. The faculty committee
on alumnae relations will become one of the standing
committees of the faculty, when this Committee on Com-
mittees meets next spring. This year its members are C.
Benton Kline, Dean of the Faculty; Carrie Scandrett,
Dean of Students; Dr. W. E. McNair, Director of Public-
Relations and Development; Dr. Mary Virginia Allen '35.
associate professor French; Dr. George Rice, professor of
psychology, and Dr. Catherine S. Sims, professor of his-
tory and political science.

Another strong arm is a national organization which
bears the title of The American Alumni Council. Here, in
its district and national meetings, and through its central
office, I have access to all the other folk in the country
who are engaged in this often nebulous business of di-
recting alumnae affairs. Through the Council I can know
whether our alumnae programs and activities are com-
parable in quality and scope with those of similiar insti-
tutions of higher education ( 1 think we rate a good B-f-) .

But with all my many and excellent arms, one more I
need your comments, criticisms, commands. I have,
from time to time, the feeling that I'm working in a
vacuum. From an office on a campus in Decatur, Ga.,
which, by the way, was once the Silhouette Tea Room in
the Alumnae House, how can I better reach you with an
understanding of the Agnes Scott of 1958? What kinds
of articles do you want to read in the Quarterly? Do you
read, and react, to President Alston's annual reports
which we mail you? What kinds of programs do you de-
sire for alumnae club meetings, for Alumnae Weekend?
How can we help you become what I term the most
treasured, because the best informed, group of alumnae
in the country? Give me my final arm!

P.S. : Dorothy Weakley said that after reading this she
felt like an octopus. Daily, I feel like octopi.

-

Sott Coll

I -.la

AGNES SCOTT PLATES

A view of Buttrick Hall as seen from
Inman Porch is pictured in blue on
Wedgwood's white "Patrician" pat-
tern plate.

Order yours from the Alumnae
Office

Prices, postpaid:
$3.50 each 6 for $20.00

Proceeds from plate sales go to the Alumnae

House. Make check payable to Alumnae

Property Committee.

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY

WINTER 1959

THE FACULTY SPEAKS
ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS

SEE PAGE 2

ALASKA HOMESTEADING
VS. PHILLIPINE'S HEAT

SEE PAGE 4

Ferdinand Warren Creates Mural
(See back page for the story)

T- ' fc

3&

6^

% X

1 *

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY

^^^ WINTER 1959

AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE / DECATUR, GEORGIA

Volume 37, Number 2

CONTENTS

The Faculty Manifesto

After Five Years On Ice

A Modern Saint

Ruth Simpson Blanton '46

These Four Years At
Agnes Scott

Class News

Sarah Cook Thompson '35
Ellen Douglass Leyburn '27

Lila McGeachy '59
Wardie Abernethy '59

Eloise H. Ketchin

2

4

8

11

12
14

COVER Ferdinand Warrens mural (see explanation on back cover) is
hanging in the new offices of Foote and Davies. Atlanta printing firm which
commissioned it. Photograph on front cover by Kerr Studios; that on back
by Lane Bros.

The Alumnae Association of Agnes Scott College

Officers

Bella Wilson Lewis '34, President
Evelyn Baty Landis '40, Vice-President
Sybil Corbett Riddle '52, Vice-President
Caroline Hodges Roberts '48,

Vice-President
Mitzi Kiser Law '54, Vice-President
Alice McDonald Richardson '29.

Secretary
Betty Jean Ellison Candler, '49,

Treasurer

Staff

Ann Worthy Johnson, '38,

Director of Alumnae Affairs

Eloise Hardeman Ketchin,
House Manager

Dorothy Weakley '56, Office Manager

Alumnae Trustees

Mary Prim Fowler '29

Sarah Catherine Wood Marshall '36

Chairmen

Elizabeth Blackshear Flinn '38,

Class Council
Patricia Collins Andretta '28,

Constitution
Mary Wallace Kirk '11, Education
Alice Glenn Lowry '29, Entertainment
Doris Dunn St. Clair x-'38, House
Louise Girardeau Cook, '28,

Nominations
Mary Caroline Lee Mackay, '40,

Property
Jean Grey Morgan, '31, Publications
Dorothy Cheek Callaway, '29,

Special Events
Barbara Smith Hull, '47,

Vocational Guidance

MEMBER OF AMERICAN ALUMNI COUNCIL

The Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly is published four times a year (November,
February, April and July) by the Alumnae Association of Agnes Scott College at
Decatur, Georgia. Contributors to the Alumnae Fund receive the magazine. Yearly
subscription, $2.00. Single copy 50 cents. Entered on second-class matter at the
Post Office of Decatur, Georgia, under Act of August 24, 1912.

The threats in the possible closing of Georgia's public schools

are clearly stated in

THE FACULTY MANIFESTO

"As members of the faculty of Agnes Scott College
and citizens deeply concerned for the welfare of
the South, we wish to express our earnest hope
that the public schools will be preserved. We feel
that closing them would be a major disaster to
the region.

"We assent entirely to the warning published
by the Emory faculty of the loss in people qual-
ified for every sort of work demanding special
training, which the suspension of public education
would cause.

"Another even more far-reaching evil would be

the spread of actual illiteracy. For the past fifl
years we have struggled to build up the publ
schools in order to combat exactly this handica
and to give every person the educational equi]
ment to function as a citizen in a democracy,
seems the height of folly to jeopardize now tl
fruits of the struggle. The substitution of privat
for public schools, haphazard at best, would woi
a peculiar hardship on the children of paren
with small incomes, who would be left largely witl
out any schooling at all. Since numerically th:
group is far the largest in our population, a gret

\A

J^t

Part of the faculty section of an academic procession moves from the colonnade to Presser Hall at Commencement.

THE AGNES SCOT 1

roportion of our people would have little or no
ducation.

"Furthermore, illiteracy is now a much more
erious economic handicap than it was fifty years
.go, when the society of the region was largely
.grarian and much of the work was hand labor,
n this day of mechanization, there are very few
obs which can be performed by illiterates. The
leterioration of the working group because of lack
)f education would make a still further gap be-
: ween the per capita income of the region and that
~>{ die rest of the nation.

"We feel also that closing the schools and thus
naking idle a great number of active boys and
^irls would be inviting them to turn their energies
to mischief or more serious trouble making. This
Is said in no disparagement of our young people.
There is real danger to the community in depriving
lany large group of its normal fruitful occupation.
"Any dislocation in our educational system

would accelerate the migration from our region
of its most gifted young people. We are just be-
ginning to be able to hold them because of the
influx of industry, which would itself be endan-
gered by uncertainty about education and a supply
of trained workers.

"It is sometimes said that if the schools close,
they can be re-opened. But it is wishful thinking
to suppose that the re-opening would be the simple
performance of opening the doors. A closing of
the schools for however brief a period would bring
about the loss of the best teachers and of many
students who would never return. Re-opening would
mean starting again the whole arduous and costly
process of building up the organization and estab-
lishing standards.

"We urge, therefore, that our public schools be
kept functioning without any break in the continuity
of their service, so essential to the very life of the
community."

COMMENTS ON THE MANIFESTO

President Wallace M. Alston has
expressed the following reaction to
the statement signed by members of
the Agnes Scott family:

"This statement, issued by mem-
bers of the Agnes Scott faculty, has
my complete approval. It comes vol-
untarily from honest and concerned
members of the teaching profession
who have evidenced their interest in
the welfare of young people by their
sacrificial and devoted service, ft is
a measured, realistic warning that
closing our schools will prove to be
an ill-considered action, destructive
of the economic, intellectual, moral,
^nd spiritual life of our state."

Mr. Hal L. Smith, Chairman of the
Agnes Scott Board of Trustees, com-
mented on the statement as follows:

"The statement that came from the
members of the Agnes Scott faculty
is a fine one. They have a perfect
right to express their beliefs in this
manner since Agnes Scott stands for
academic freedom.

"It was not inspired by the admin-
istration of the college, but is an
expression of the deep concern of the
faculty members who have signed it.
Speaking solely as an individual I
concur with their position."

Dr. J. R. McCain, President Emeri-
tus of Agnes Scott and Chairman of

the Executive Committee of the Board
of Trustees, has authorized the fol-
lowing comment about the statement
from Agnes Scott faculty members:

"I quite approve of it. The empha-
sis is on a single point the import-
ance to education at all levels of the
public schools of the State.

"There is no group of my acquaint-
ance better qualified to testify on
educational matters than the Agnes
Scott Facultv. In academic training,
in experience, in all tests of good
citizenship, in unselfish and devoted
service through teaching, and in
other ways, they have proved to be
wise and helpful counselors."

FACULTY MEMBERS WHO SIGNED THE MANIFESTO

John Louis Adams
Mary Virginia Allen
Ruth M. Banks
Judith Berson
Mary L. Boney
Josephine Bridgman
Edna Hanley Byers
William A. Calder
Kwai Sing Chang
Anne M. Christie
Melissa A. Cilley
Frances Clark

W. G. Cornelius
Elizabeth A. Crigler
S. L. Doerpinghaus
Mrs. Miriam K. Drucker
Florence J. Dunstan
Mrs. William C. Fox
Jay C. Fuller
Paul Leslie Garber
Julia T. Gary
Leslie J. Gavlord
Lillian R. Gilbreath
M. Kathryn Click

Mrs. Netta E. Gray
Nancy Groseclose
Roxie Hagopian
Muriel Harn
Irene L. Harris
George P. Hayes
Richard L. Henderson
Marie Huper
C. Benton Kline, Jr.
Edward T. Ladd
Ellen Douglass Leyburn
Kay Manuel

Raymond J. Martin
Kate McKemie
W. Edward McNair
Mildred R. Mell
Michael McDowell
Timothy Miller
lone Murphy
Lillian Newman
Katharine T. Omwake
Rosemonde S. Peltz
Margaret W. Pepperdene
Margaret T. Phythian

W. B. Posey
Janef Newman Preston
George E. Rice, Jr.
Mary L. Rion
Sara Ripy
Henry A. Robinson
Anne Martha Salyerds
Carrie Scandrett
Catherine S. Sims
Anna Greene Smith
Florence E. Smith
Chloe Steel

Laura Steele
Koenraad W. Swart
Pierre Thomas
Margret G. Trotter
Sarah Tucker
Merle G. Walker
Ferdinand Warren
Robert F. Westervelt
Llewellyn Wilburn
Roberta Winter
Mrs. J. Harvey Young
Elizabeth G. Zenn

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY / WINTER 1959

*J+4&&*

a^ g^i i lK^ w; .

"".,.ii

Mt. Mayon in the Philippines is said to be the world's most perfect volcanic cone.

Arter Five Years On I

ce

The Contrasts or Lire in the 49th State and the Philippine Island;,

Saran Cook Thompson 35

Our family has been particularly
fortunate in that we have been lo-
cated in Alaska and the Philippine
Islands for the past six years. It is
wonderful to be living in this age
to see the change, growth and de-
velopment of places and people who
live in them, to know and under-
stand the people, their customs, their
ideals, their dreams; and to feel
that one has in some wav made a
contribution, however small, and has
had a personal part in the progress
made by them.

Both of these places have worked
tirelessly to achieve recognition in
the world. Alaska, the last frontier

of America, has, after many years
of striving, finally become the 49th
state of the United States of Amer-
ica. There is a continuing struggle
in the Philippine Islands to establish
this twelve-year-old Republic on a
secure foundation and to have an
honest, efficient government organ-
ization which works for the develop-
ment of the country and the good of
its people.

On April 2. 1952, at 2:00 p.m..
the Thompson family which includes
my husband, whom I call Tommy
(to others he is Herb), our daugh-
ters. Sally and Joy. and myself
reached Fairbanks. Alaska. Tommy

had been assigned to Alaska by th|
Civil Aeronautics Authority. W
had driven our 1949 Dodge sedajj
for approximately 5,200 miles ove
the fine roads of the United Statej
from Flushing, N. Y. to Canadf!
through the mud to Dawson Creell
and over 1,500 miles of snow an'h
ice on the Alcan Highway. It ha>l
taken fourteen days to make the trif|
Even now some details of th
drive are very vivid, like my sui!
prise when six-year-old Joy's attack,
of car sickness (so I thought) actual]
ly proved to be chicken pox. No ]
shall we ever forget the mud we erj
countered between Calvary an]

PHOTOGRAPHS BY HERBERT H. TH0MPS0

Ithabasca in the Province of Al-
ierta, Canada; we drove for ten
lours that day, and we progressed
xactly 50 miles!

When we reached Fairbanks, there
rere no houses, no apartments, not
ven a hotel room available for us.
lach of the three hotels in town
/as full. The one modern apartment
touse had 285 families on the wait-
rig list. In the entire town there were
wo houses for sale, and the mort-
;ages on them, at 8 r/f , had to be paid
n full within three years. The pay-
ments on one, a tiny, two-room shack,
cithout water, plumbing, or central
leating were $130 per month, and
he house was five miles from Fair-
>anks. The second house was little
tetter but more expensive.

These facts we learned between
!:00 and 4:00 p.m. that first day.
V very kind lady who wished to help
is called a friend who worked in
he old Pioneer Hotel (a three-story
rame building which burned a few
nonths later with the loss of many
ives) , and he arranged for one
room for the four of us.

After three days, with our living
expenses averaging $50.00 to $60.00
per day, we bought the shack which
was located just at the foot of Col-
lege Hill in an area called College
Flats. Before we could move in, we
had to rent a bulldozer to move the
drifted snow which blocked the en-
trance. We lived for three years in
this house, to which we added a very
large concrete-block basement and
four additional rooms. Tommy and I
believe that we were the original
"do-it-yourself" couple: we did all
the work ourselves, after we each
had put in eight hours at our office
jobs.

After four months we sent Sally
to College Park, Ga., where she lived
with my mother and went to school
until November. 1953, when she
joined us again in Fairbanks. The
unexpected happens in every family.
The following spring Sallv met Jo-
seph P. McCarthy, who was a mem-
ber of the Armed Forces at Ladd
Air Force Base. They were married
in November. 1954. and remained in
Alaska until April, 1956. Joe is now
working with a radio station in De-

troit, and they live in St. Clair
Shores, Michigan. They are parents
of a two-year old son, Johnny, and
a brand-new daughter, Susan; I
cannot decide who are prouder, par-
ents or grandparents.

In November. 1955, we moved to
an eighty-acre homestead, five miles
from the center of Fairbanks. We
were living there in December, 1956,
trying to complete the requirements
of the Homestead Law for owner-
ship of the acreage, when my hus-
band was notified by the CAA thai
he was being transferred temporarily
to Anchorage. Alaska, five hundred
miles from Fairbanks. So, Joy and
I lived alone in our Quonset Hut
home for a year and a half, until
April 9. 1957. We had no running
water, or telephone, and our near-
est neighbor was a mile away.

However, to us those were minor
details compared to keeping the car
running at 50 below zero tempera-
ture and keeping the fuel flowing for
the heater in the house. Joy and I
always slept with our boots, slacks,
heavy coats, mittens and woolen
scarves at the foot of our beds, so
that in event of any emergency we
could be dressed quickly for out-
side temperatures. We were most
fortunate, for we missed only one
day from her school and my work.

On March 8, 1957, Tommy re-
ceived a cable from the United
Nations offering him employment
with the International Civil Aviation
Organization in Manila. The posi-
tion offered him was to be Chief of
the ICAO Technical Assistance Mis-
sion. As an expert in air traffic con-
trol, he would instruct Filipino na-

Chess is the most popular form of game; people from all walks of life play.
Cowboy pants and hat have reached the Philippines-and music is an international language

Sarah and Joy travel by dugout boat to reach Pagsanjan Fall

tionals in air traffic control proce-
dures and would act in an advisory
capacity to the Philippine Govern-
ment on aviation matters. He accept-
ed this offer, obtained a leave of ab-
sence from the United States CAA,
and arrived in Manila on March 23.

Joy and I left Fairbanks on April
10, and visited in Chicago, Detroit,
New York City, and Atlanta. On
the evening of May 24, she and I
boarded a plane in Atlanta and be-
gan the long flight to our new home.
We particularly enjoyed the several
hours we spent in Honolulu; this
was my first visit to the place where
Tommy had spent the four years,
1931-1935, which I spent at Agnes
Scott.

It was a sparkling, clear, bright
morning on May 27, when we caught
our first glimpse of Manila Bay and
the city where we now live. April
and May are the hottest months of
the year in Manila, and the soaring
temperatures seemed very strange
after the snow that we left in Fair-
banks. Actually, the heat here was
a shock but a pleasant one after
five years on ice! Within an hour
Joy was in a swimming pool for the
first time in years.

Since this was my first experience
in the Far East, I was very conscious
of the contrasts in the city of Ma-
nila. The new, modern buildings,
often white against the tropical back-
ground of palm trees and poinsettias,
rise high in the air, while beside

them are bombed-out ruins. The
beautiful, wide streets, like Dewey
Boulevard along the bay, remind one
of the parkways in the United States,
but when one enters the pre-war sec-
tion of the old, walled city, the
streets become narrow and con-
gested, packed with cars, taxis, jeep-
nies, calesas, and pedestrians, and
one immediately feels the impact of
the East. It is very disturbing to see
the splendor of the Forbes Park resi-
dential section, with its gorgeous
mansions and landscaped grounds,
set against the squalor and filth of
the hovels where squatters live in
bombed-out buildings. In these places
I saw naked children playing in the
mud, for there were no floors. Be-
coming personally aware of this kind
of life helps an American under-
stand how it is possible for people
living under such conditions of pov-
erty to become confused and easily
led by promises of help from those
who wish to dominate the world.

Another startling contrast shows
in the very nice shops and stores,
many air conditioned, on A. Mabini
Street and the Divisoria Market,
where hundreds of people haggle
and bargain for purchases of all
their needs, from food to bobby
pins. In this market one's ability to
bargain determines the price he
pays! The bargaining is conducted
as a good-natured game but for an
American it can be a very expensive
game unless one is familiar with

current prices! Finding and buyin
daily supplies is a time-consumin
endeavor.

The Filipino people are the mos
hospitable folk I have ever met. W
have been invited into their homes
taken on trips, introduced to thei
immediate families, relatives, ani
friends. They have done everythin
possible to make a stranger feel a
home.

These people are very ambitiouj
and believe strongly in education.
It is a distinct surprise to meet .1
young woman who looks as thougl|
she should be a high school girj
and to find she is a graduate radii
engineer or a doctor with her M.D
degree. A great many of the person
who work in offices are also attend I
ing college at the same time. Th
scholarship competition in ever
field is very keen, and parents makj
tremendous sacrifices to send thei |
children to the United States ami
Europe for their higher education |
This, perhaps, accounts for the grea
number of people I have met wh<
have lived in the States. (So far th|
only one who said she did not likij
the United States joined her husbanq
in the middle of the winter in Minnj
esota. It must have seemed colder tcj
her there than Alaska did to mij
when I went from New York State.j

The Filipino people love music
from the "rock and roll" on jukJ
boxes to the symphonic concerj
music. Although the local instruci
tion in music is quite good, and the;'
have many excellent performers!
many of their best-known artists havi
studied abroad. So far the interesi
in classical music seems to be in for
eign music, and even though therii
is lovely native music, little has beer
done to perpetuate it and give it t(
the world. But there are many conj
certs given by local musicians, anc
visiting artists often perform here.

It seems to me that Filipinos mus|
come into this world dancing. I hav<
seen tiny children and an eighty
year-old lady doing intricate dance;
with grace and beauty. Also, ever
the motions of work of the Filipino:
are rhythmic and patterned, whethei
it be the houseboy, who is polishing
the floor with cocoanut husk on his

THE AGNES SCOT

"eet. or the farm workers threshing
'he rice at harvesting time.
I And the folk dances are very
'ovely. They range from the primi-
. live, stamping rhythm of the Igorot
festival Dance, a dance which is es-
sentially a thanksgiving rite, to the
Carinosa. which is a courtship dance
tnd shows the influence of Spanish
ulture on Philippine life. Some of
he other dances show the Moslem
nfluence in the Philippines. Pos-
sibly the most famous of all the
lances is Tinikling, in which the
lancers imitate the movements of a
Tikling, a long-legged, long-necked
bird, as it walks about in the fields.
In addition to being beautiful folk
dancers, the Filipinos are outstand-
ing dancers on the ballroom floor.
Dancing has been Tommy's and my
tabby since before we were married,
tad we are enjoying very much the
Variety of dance music here. There
kre always rhumbas. tangos, cha-
:has. mambos. pasa-dobles. occasion-
ally a samba, and popular American
liance music. This is so different
from the situation in Alaska, where.
I remember once a few years ago,
We requested that the orchestra play
k rhumba. and when they did, we
became the only people on the dance
floor, much to my dismay.

The pastimes of the people range
from chess to cock-fighting, and
even, periodically, bull-fights. The
Filipinos are true gamblers, and their
games of chance include poker, mah-
jong. Jai-Alai, horse races, cock-
fighting, and the Philippine Charity
Sweepstakes which are legalized, and
from which the winnings are tax-free.
Chess is the most popular form of
game; people from all walks of life
play. Although it is said to be Presi-
dent Garcia's favorite game, in the
Philippines chess is not reserved for
the intellectual but is enjoyed by all.
The culture and physical charac-
teristics of these people show the
influence of many nationalities,
rhese islands were invaded in 100
f\.D. by the Chinese, in 200 A.D. by
the Arabs, in 1521 by the Spanish,
ind in 1898 by the Americans, and
:he religions, customs and character-
istics of each group are seen re-
flected in the present culture and

The carabao is the chief work animal as the mule once was in the United States.

people. There were, of course, other
groups who came but with less last-
ing influences. One of the most ob-
vious results of these invasions is the
variety of religions. Christians form
the largest group (predominantly
Roman Catholics, a minority of
Protestants), and there are Mos-
lems, a few Jews, and pagans.

The Philippine Islands is a coun-
try composed of 7,109 islands, but
many of them are not developed and
are not easily accessible. Transpor-
tation between islands is either by
water or air, and the problem of
roads exists on each individual is-
land. But the traveller finds rewards
outweighing these hazards. A for-
eigner should not come to Manila
and go away thinking he has seen
the Philippines. In the north, Bagiuo
is a mountain resort town with many
lovelv houses and clubs and a very
nice hotel. The mountain scenery
plus the cooler temperatures make
trips there a must in hot weather.
Cebu is one of the oldest cities in
the Philippines; there we saw the
place where Magellan planted the
Cross in 1521 and the old Cathedral
of Santo Nino built in the 16th cen-
tury by the early Spanish conquer-
ors.

There are two interesting places
for a day's outing within fifty miles
of Manila. One is Tagaytay, which is
mountainous. From a lodge there
one can look out over Taal Lake
with its extinct volcano island-crater

which has another lake and a still
smaller island in its center. The
other place is Pagsanjan Falls. To
reach it, we sat, two passengers to
each dugout boat, with our legs flat
on the bottom of the boat, and were
rowed up-river through sixteen steps
of rapids. The river winds tortuouslv
in its banks which are striated with
marks of previous water levels and
covered with tropical vines.

Tommy and I believe that our ex-
periences both in Alaska and in the
Philippine Islands are of excep-
tional value not only for us but
especially for Joy, who is growing
up in this world at a time when ex-
tremes are the order of the day.
Certainly she is learning to adjust
to places no matter how different
they may be in climate, living con-
ditions, or economic development.
Too, although she attends school at
the American School, she has many
friends among the Filipino children
who, large and small, readily accept
her. One little boy two years old.
who speaks no English, talks happily
to her in Tagalog. She replies in
English, and they get along wonder-
fully! The girls who are her age
seem much vounger than Americans
of the same age. They are quite shy,
very quiet, respectful and religious.
And so Joy, at the age of twelve,
has already learned from personal
experience that it is not the differ-
ences but the similarities in people
which are important.

M.UMNAE QUARTERLY / WINTER 1959

A MODERN SAINT

Simone Weil's writings are intensely Christian, even shocking-
ly so in the reality they restore to the Christian paradoxes we
have made into platitudes.

ELLEN DOUGLAS LEYBURN '27

As we survey the range of modern literature, I think
we are bound to be struck by the seriousness with which
our major writers take man's ultimate concerns. Here
and there is a nihilist who seems able simply to shrug
off his sense of meaninglessness and to laugh in a
frivolous way at man's helplessness. So it seems to me
Ionesco does in his at once hopeless and diverting plays
like "The Chairs," where an old couple get ready for a
performance which never occurs, or "The Bald Soprano"
in which the banal conversation returns at the end to a
repetition of the opening dialogue, giving a sense of life
as a phonograph record caught in a discordant groove.
But in the plays of Ionesco's master, Samuel Beckett,
while there is laughter at the incongruities of man's as-
pirations with his actions, there is nevertheless a sense
of passionate concern, a longing to find meaning in this
apparently hopeless round of trivialities and bodily per-
formances. "Waiting for Godot" is to me an intensely
moving play because while the two comical tramps who
represent mankind never find the revelation which thev
seek, they support each other in the search and they
continue to wait and hope. Beckett is often referred to
as a nihilist; but in this play, at least, I find a powerful
affirmation both of human values and of the importance
to man of his sense of something beyond himself.

One of the writers who seems to me to convey most

About The Author

Dr. Leyburn, professor of
English, beloved teacher
and renowned scholar,
holds degrees from Agnes
Scott College, Radcliffe
College and Yale Univer-
sity. This article has been
edited from a chapel talk
which she presented re-
cently at Agnes Scott.

Ellen Douglass Leyburn

poignantly this longing of modern man for meaning and
his despair of finding it is Franz Kafka. In his novels,
The Castle and The Trial, there is a nightmarish sense
of man's bewilderment before his destiny as in the onei
the hero struggles to reach the completely unapproach-
able castle to which he is summoned and in the other he
is involved in the trammels of an incomprehensible proc-
ess of law. But the overpowering impression in both isi
that of the compulsion to seek a meaning. The great reli-
gious impulse of our time as I see it manifest in litera-
ture seems to me to be this longing for a clarity which
is denied. The seeking itself carries a kind of conviction.
Certainly in a writer like Camus there is courage in fac-
ing what seems to be reality and a sense of the im-
portance of ultimate values.

Besides those who write almost with the courage of
despair, which has its own nobility, there, are some
writers like T. S. Eliot who have come through the Waste
Land and found in Christian revelation the ultimate
reality. I should like to discuss a writer who never be-
came a part of an established communion as Eliot has
done, but who was nevertheless profoundly Christian.
Nor did she think of herself as a writer. She published
little during her lifetime, but the posthumous publica-
tions from her journals show a power of pointed ex-
pression which makes the comparison of them with the
Pensees of Pascal seem not at all far fetched.

Simone Weil was born in 1909 into an agnostic Jewish
family in Paris. She died in 1943 in England, really of
starvation because she refused in her illness from under-
nourishment to take more food than the rations of her
compatriots in the occupied zone in France. During her
brief life, she attained to such spiritual vision and such
commitment to it that it seems quite natural to find her
referred to again and again in the accounts of her as a
saint: "the Outsider as Saint in an age of alienation
[one calls her] our kind of saint." Her writings are
intensely Christian, even shockingly so in the reality they

I

THE AGNES SCOTT

restore to the Christian paradoxes we have made into
platitudes; but she did not feel that God intended her to
serve in any communion. "I should betray the truth,"
she declared, "that is to say the aspect of the truth that I
see, if 1 left the point, where I have been since my birth,
at the intersection of Christianity and everything that
is not Christian." One part of Gravity and Grace, the
selection from her diaries made by Gustave Thibon
after her death, he heads Contradictions. This power to
see varied, even conflicting truth as true, is one of the
strongest marks of her special perception. The other is
her absolute commitment to the truth which she sees.

At the age of five she refused to eat sugar because the
soldiers at the front in the first World War could not
get it. This self denying act of her childhood seems
symbolic of the renunciations of her whole life, all made
for the sake of identifying herself with those who suffer
or are deprived. She says in one of her letters, "I have
an essential need, and I think I can say vocation, to move
among men of every class and complexion, mixing with
them and sharing their life and outlook .... so as
to love them just as they are."

At 14 she passed through what one biographer calls
"the darkest spiritual crisis of her life, feeling herself
pushed to the very verge of suicide by an acute sense
of her absolute unworthiness and by the onslaught of
migraine headaches of unbearable intensity." She was
to endure this acute physical pain all her life; but it
never kept her from making the most rigorous demands
on herself. Nor did she ever relinquish the sense of her
own stupidity, feeling that God gave it its use in teaching
humility. Actually she had a brilliant mind and obtained
her baccalaureate with distinction at the age of 15. At
the Ecole nofmale ( Superieure), where she studied
from 1928 to 1931, she attained her agregee de philoso-
phie at the age of 22 and won the undying friendship
and admiration of the philosopher Alain, who introduced
her to Plato, perhaps the strongest intellectual influence
of her life.

At this time she was an ardent radical and shocked the
town where she held her first teaching post by making
friends with industrial workers. Her response to criticism
was to become a worker herself, taking a job in the
Renault automobile factory. Of this experience she
writes: "As I worked in the factory, indistinguishable to
all eyes, including my own, from the anonymous mass,
the affliction of others entered into my flesh and soul."
After she recovered from the pleurisy brought on here
by overwork, she went to Spain to join the Loyalists.
This was her last purely political act; but she never
lost her concern for a good society. One of her few
writings intended for publication is The Need for Roots,
written at the end of her life at the request of the Free
French Government and setting forth not just principles
for the regeneration of France, but her idea of a sound
social order.

It was after the time in Spain that while listening to a
Gregorian chant at Solesmes, she had her first mystical
experience, the feeling of Christ's passion as a real event.

From that time on she made her strange spiritual jour-
ney, so full of meaning for us because of its very indi-
viduality. There were two Roman Catholics who meant
a great deal to her in these years of her development as
a Christian, Father Perrin, to whom her most revealing
letters are addressed, and Gustave Thibon, a lay theo-
logian in charge of a Catholic agricultural colony in the
south of France, under whose guidance she worked in
the fields with the peasants. But in spite of her great
respect for these friends, she felt that she could not
become a Roman Catholic, that her own destiny was to
wail for God outside any group or organization. From
this position she has spoken in a special way to the
modern world.

Leslie Fiedler, who writes the excellent introduction
to the posthumous collection of her writings called
Waiting for God, says, "Simone Weil's writing as a
whole is marked by three characteristic devices: ex-
treme statement or paradox; the equilibrium of contra-
dictions; and exposition by myth. As the life of Simone
Weil reflects a desire to insist on the absolute event at
the risk of being absurd, so her writing tends toward
the extreme statement, the formulation that shocks by
its willingness to push to its ultimate conclusion the
kind of statement we ordinarily accept with the tacit
understanding that no one will take it too seriously.
The outrageous (from the natural point of view) ethics
of Christianity, the paradoxes on which it is based are
a scandal to common sense; but we have protected our-
selves against them by turning them imperceptibly into
platitudes. It is Simone Weil's method to revivify them,
by recreating them in all their pristine offensiveness."
The core of all her thought seems to me to be a tre-
mendous reverence, a sense of the immense distance be-
tween man and God, over which God chooses to come
to man. She often uses the figure of hunger to express
man's state and his having to look in reverence and not
to eat, or the figure of walking toward a goal. She says:
"We cannot take a single step toward heaven. It is not
in our power to travel in a vertical direction. If how-
ever we look heavenward for a long time. God comes
and takes us up."

I have the feeling that the best way to communicate
the quality of such a spirit is simply to let her speak.
Here are some passages from her writing, which I have
grouped according to the themes that recur throughout
her work.

The first general comments are on the nature of religious
truth. She puts our whole concern with it in proper per-
spective by saying:

If we go down into ourselves we find that we possess
exactly what we desire.

An Imaginary divinity has been given to man so that
he may strip himself of it as Christ did of his real
divinity.

Renunciation ... [is the] imitation of God's renuncia-
tion in creation. In a sense God renounces being every-
thing. We should renounce being something. That is
our only good.

AlUMNAE QUARTERLY / WINTER 1959

We are like barrels with no bottom to tliem so long as
we have not understood that we rest on a foundation.

Further she clarifies our relation to truth:

We do not have to understand new things, but by
dint of patience, effort, and method to come to under-
stand with our whole self the truths which are evident.
[Stages of belief.] The most commonplace truth, when
it floods the whole soul, is like a revelation.

About faith she says:

We know by means of our intelligence that what the
intelligence does not comprehend is more real than
what it does comprehend.

Faith is experience that intelligence is enlightened
by love.

Another subject which absorbs her is God's creative act.

Creation is an act of love and it is perpetual. At each
moment of our existence is God's love for us. But God
can only love himself. His love for us is his love for
himself through us. Thus, he who gives us being loves
us in the acceptance of nonbeing.

Then later in the same discussion:

On God's part creation is not an act of self-expansion
but of restraint and renunciation. God and all his
creatures are less than God alone. God accepted this
diminution. He emptied a part of his being from him-
self .... God permitted the existence of things distinct
from himself and worth infinitely less than himself.
By this creative act he denied himself, as Christ has
told us to deny ourselves. God denied himself for our
sakes in order to give us the possibility of denying
ourselves for him. This response, this echo, which it
is in our power to refuse, is the only possible justi-
fication for the folly of love of the creative act.

She speaks of the parallel to God's creativeness in our-
selves.

Creative attention means really giving our attention to
what does not exist. Humanity does not exist in the
anonymous flesh lying inert by the roadside. The Sa-
maritan who stops and looks gives his attention all
the same to this absent humanity, and the actions which
follow prove that it is a question of real attention.

This leads directly to her comments on love.

Among human beings, only the existence of those we
love is fully recognized.

Belief in the existence of other human beings as such
is love.

Lovers or friends desire two things. The one is to love
each other so much that they enter into each other and
only make one being. The other is to love each other
so much that, with half the globe between them, their
union will not be diminished in the slightest degree.
All that man vainly desires here below is perfectly
realized in God. We have all those impossible desires
within us as a mark of our destination, and they are
good for us when we no longer hope to accomplish them.
It is only necessary to know that love is a direction and
not a state of the soul. If one is unaware of this, one
falls into despair at the first onslaught of afflction.

This conception of love is linked to what she says of
affliction.

The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact
that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffer-
ing, but a supernatural use for it.

Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an
equal gratitude.

In general, we must not wish for the disappearance of
any of our troubles, but grace to transform them.

On the other hand she sees beauty as holy.

Only beauty is not the means to anything else. It alone
is good in itself, but without our finding any particular
good or advantage in it. It seems itself to be a promise
and not a good, but it only gives itself; it never gives
anything else.

The beautful is the experimental proof that the incar-
nation is possible.

Hence all art of the highest order is religious in es-
sence. (That is what people have forgotten today.) A
Gregorian melody is as powerful a witness as the death
of a martyr.

Poetry: [is] impossible pain and joy. A poignant touch,
nostalgia. Such is Provencal and English poetry. A joy
which by reason of its unmixed purity hurts, a pain
which by reason of its unmixed purity brings peace.

Of our relation to beauty, she says:

We have to remain quite still and unite ourselves with
that which we desire yet do not approach. We unite
ourselves to God in this way: We cannot approach him.
Distance is the soul of the beautiful.

This idea of attentiveness that means union recurs con-fl
stantly in her writings. The subject of attention is of the
utmost importance to her.

Extreme attention is what constitutes the creative faculty
in man and the only extreme attention is religious. The
amount of creative genius in any period is strictly in
proportion to the amount of extreme attention, and thus
of authentic religion, at that period.
Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.

She gives this account of her practice of attention inl
prayer.

A week afterward I began the vine harvest. I recited
the Our Father in Greek every day before work, and I
repeated it very often in the vineyard. Since that time
I have made a practice of saying it through once each
morning with absolute attention. If during the recitation
my attention wanders or goes to sleep, in the minutest
degree, I begin again until I have once succeeded in
going through it with absolutely pure attention. Some-
times it comes about that I say it again out of sheer
pleasure, but I only do it if I really feel the impulse.
The effect of this practice is extraordinary and sur-
prises me every time, for although I experience it each
day, it exceeds my expectation at each repetition.
At times the very first words tear my thoughts from
my body and transport it to a place outside space where
there is neither perspective nor point of view. The
infinity of the ordinary expanses of perception is re-
placed by an infinity to the second or sometimes the
third degree. At the same time, filling every part of this
infinity of infinity, there is a silence, a silence which is
not the absence of sound but which is the object of a
positive sensation, more positive than that of sound.
Noises, if there are any, only reach me after crossing
this silence.

Sometimes, also, during this recitation or at other
moments, Christ is present with me in person, but his
presence is infinitely more real, more moving, more
clear than on that first occasion when he took possession
of me.

10

THE AGNES SCOTT

Ruth Simpson Blanton '46

Ruth Simpson Blanton '46 died May
13, after heart surgery. Her husband,
The Reverend Leonard Blanton, and
three children are in Laurel, Miss.
Alumnae who were in college with
her will remember her poetry, often
published in The Aurora. We believe
she would like best, as a memorial,
for some of her poems to be pub-
lished here, so that many alumnae
may delight in them. Miss Laney
wrote about her recently in a letter
to Dr. Hayes: "George, I have not
been able to get your news of Ruth
Simpson out of my mind such eag-
erness for life so crushed."

To introduce her poems, we print
first one written about her by her
classmate and close friend, Bunny
Weems Macbeth.

I'LL ALWAYS REMEMBER

Together we aspired to scale the heights
And plumb the depths of all there was to

know.
While you were always first to glimpse new

sights,
You waited while I clambered up below.

Together we heard harmonies inspired,
And practiced many hours side by side.
We shared the world of music. We desired
So many things alike, so much we tried.

Why you should have to leave this world

I do
Not know. You were so full of joy and wit
And lovingkindness. But perhaps you

knew
The end: you were so near the infinite.

Bunny Weems Macbeth

TO A FAVORITE PROFESSOR

(Dr. Hayes)

Can it be so that you have sorrow, too?
You live among the highest hills of thought
With stars around your feet. It is in you
I find the quiet radiance I have sought:
The sunlight of unnumbered centuries,
The spirit which transcends the baffled

years,
The long, still vision of Eternities,
And sympathies too great, too deep, for

tears.

Your voice, your smile enchant me with

their kindness.
You take me from this pebbled world of

mine
To mountaintops. With patience for my

blindness
You teach me '"how man makes himself

divine."
Do you have sorrow, too? Can it be so?
Your spirit is to pain as sun to snow.

Lines written on leaving Agnes
Scott after graduation:

FAREWELL

Does the bird

Say "Soft, soft, soft, they go, they go,"

With tremulous shimmering note? Does he

know
The sweet sad word?

Are there tears

Between the petals of the rose
Because the ivied gate must close
For passing years?

Ruth Simpson Blanton

ON THE EASTER MORN BIRTH

OF ELIZABETH RUTH

(April 21, 1957)

I did not sing the Easter song at Church
That day, but went instead upon a search
For Life, or Death I really had no say
But crimson clover bloomed along my way.
I had to go where those who dress in white
Stayed round about like angels, till the

night
Brought miracle, the empty tomb, bright

earth,
Again the angel voice not Death, but

Birth.

AUTUMN

Star-leaves,

Five-pointed, red,

Purple and saffron-gold,

What is the whisper on the cold

Wind's breath?

Who grieves

For summer fled?

Autumn, dark-bright, will fold

The leaves away; wind-voices old

Sigh, ". . . Death."

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY / WINTER 1959

11

1 wo Seniors . . . Roomrrul

Lila McGeachy '59
President, Student Government

Lila says:

Often we ask ourselves, what is
so special about Agnes Scott? Why
are we so grateful to be a part of
it? What difference does, has, and
will it make in our lives? It seems
to me that we are limited in a com-
prehensive understanding of the col-
lege field; if we graduate from
Agnes Scott, most of us have been
no other place and have no basis for
comparison. And so in an evaluation
we can only judge according to our
own values, or another set of values
which we accept for our own, and
assimilate into ourselves.

Agnes Scott has its roots in a set
of values by which it has guided its
students throughout its relatively
short history of seventy years. Its
founders wanted a Christian college
which would further and nurture the
education of young women. They
wanted it to be a college of the lib-
eral arts, insisting upon a high qual-
ity of scholarship in an atmosphere
of freedom and mutual concern
which they felt could most naturally
develop within the scope of genuine
Christianity.

And so we, the present student
generation, have walked into an
arena of life where for these short
years of our lives we are given a
great deal of freedom and yet we
are given a guide by which to make
decisions and upon which we exer-
cise this freedom. We have become
a part of a heritage which stands
for the best man has to give, and
beyond that, in ultimate terms, the
best man has to give to God.

The girls who come to Agnes
Scott come from very representa-
tive backgrounds, geographic and

THESE FOUR YEJ*

economic. We have 615 students, a
third of whom are from Georgia;
the rest of us are from approxi-
mately thirty different states and six
foreign countries. We are largely
Presbyterian, with lots of good
Methodists, Episcopalians and Bap-
tists keeping us in line; we also have
some Jewish students.

We are different sizes and shapes,
with blue, brown, gray and green
eyes, brown, blonde, red or black
hair. We cry against the idea of the
typical Agnes Scott girl. We are
normal, healthy, happy individuals,
and just because our mothers tried
to teach us nice manners and we like
the southern tradition of young lad-
ies wearing gloves doesn't mean that
we are so special. If there is any-
thing unusual about us, the reason
for this is that we have come in con-
tact with something real and right
in this confused and troubled world.

We live at a high rate of intensity
at Agnes Scott. Most of us want to do
well in our academic work. We want
to accept responsibility, we want to
take advantage of the opportunities
which surround us, we want to really
get to know other students and our
administration and faculty, we want
to read, to play, to date.

Perhaps the finest and most mean-
ingful thing about Agnes Scott is
the people who make it up. The
values of the college and the pur-
poses it sustains are both the subtle
and the open standards of all our
judgments and policies and actions
toward one another. These could not
be carried on without people who be-
lieve in them and live by them.

Because we do somehow care for
each other, we can operate within
the freedom of an honor system.

This is a reciprocal process, I be-
lieve. The honor system is a per-
meating attitude, or approach, to all
matters of our life. It is the guide
by which we make decisions. With
as many folks as we have, all of us
cannot be relative to each person,
and so we have an established struc-
ture, or rules, by which we agree to
co-operate. But the structure does
not limit personal integrity: to fol-
low the structure demands personal
integrity, and the rules are not so
tight that there is no room for choice.

So. for us there is an aura of
trust which living within the bounds
of the honor system allows us to
have. We do not drink for situational
and practical reasons; we make it
no moral issue because that is left
up to each girl; but whether we
drink in our homes or not, we agree
that in order to preserve the dignity
and respect and purposes of our Col-
lege we will unitedly not drink.

We get knocked down with our
papers and tests, in elections, in
sports defeats, but we see each other
pop back up and each of us, then,
learns to do that. We develop aspira-
tions to tackle almost anything, even
if we must stand alone, humanly
speaking, realizing that we may al-
ways get knocked down. We will
tackle Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto
Death, qualitative chemistry, Shakes-
peare's tragedies, or social psychology
right now, and we will put them
into a perspective for future refer-
ence and life experience. Deep down
inside we know that we are absorb-
ing a good and penetrating and de-
manding approach to life and, as
much as we kick in the traces, we are
grateful and willing to continue our
lives in this way.

12

THE AGNES SCOTT

ampus

Leaders Delight i

in

?^T AGNES SCOTT

LILA McGEACHY '59
WARDIE ABERNETHY '59

Wardie Abernethy '59
President, Mortar Bocrd

Wardie says:

To STRIVE for intellectual attain-
: ment, to search for knowledge, to
i pursue and know the truth these
; are the primary reasons we are here
at Agnes Scott, and it is to these
. goals that we first direct our efforts.
: The academic program occupies an
I essential position in our aim to de-
. velop the integrity of each individual
| girl, the whole person.

Our academic system at Agnes
, Scott involves a developing, pro-
\ gressive program. The first two years
, are filled with required courses, cov-
ering a wide range of subjects, to
acquaint the student with a variety
ji of fields in order that she may
choose her major subject intelligent-
ly later on. The last two years are
primarily devoted to one major sub-
ject. However, the opportunity for
studying in departments other than
i the chosen major one are vitally
used. I have a friend who is a
biology major and is taking two
English courses this quarter, and an-
other who is a music major but is
interested as equally in philosophy.
Our educational process at Agnes
Scott is not confined to the class-
room, however. To our campus come
such emminent speakers as Robert
Frost, Arnold Toynbee, Paul Tillich,
and Sir John Gielgud. Some of these
visitors remain on our campus for
several days, talking with the stu-
dents personally.

Student-faculty friendships in and
outside of class are one of the high-
lights of our college careers. These
are friendships which go beyond
their particular area of specializa-
tion and which develop mutual ap-
preciation and understanding. We,

as students, are invited into the
homes of our professors, sometimes
for seminars, other times for fun and
fellowship with their families. Fore-
most among my Agnes Scott memor-
ies are the many Sunday evenings
spent sprawled out on the rug of
Dr. Alston's den listening to Saint-
Saen's Symphony No. 3 in C Minor
and eating do-nuts and hot coffee, or
afternoon teas in the fall when he
subtlely guides us into the TV room
to watch the World Series, a most
important part of a woman's educa-
tion, he says!

As part of the development of the
whole person, we feel that stimula-
tion of leadership qualities is very
important. In this atmosphere of
freedom and self-development, we
have a system of democratic self-
government. The four areas of our
campus life are directed by four stu-
dent boards: Student Government,
Christian Association, Athletic As-
sociaion, and Social Council. A
group related to these four, which
is very close to my heart, is Mortar
Board, a senior society of leaders
and scholars which seeks to serve
the entire campus through creative
thinking and as a liaison between
the college's administration and its
students. We feel that all these ac-
tivities are not so much extra-cur-
ricular as co-curricular, a vital stimu-
lus to our thinking process and our
search for the truth.

Social life at Agnes Scott begins
right in our own gothic halls and
spreads as far away from the Tech
engineers as Princeton Seminary.
First of all, our dormitory life is
both the bane and the blessing of
our existance! Here we find our
rest and friends, as well as a con-

tinual burning of the midnight oil
to put finishing touches on a term
paper. The newness and the inti-
mateness of this closely-knit life in-
volve many growing pains, but the
lessons in thoughtfulness, considera-
tion and understanding gained in
the process are well worth the effort.

At any moment during our 18-
hour waking day, a goodly propor-
tion of students can be found in the
Hub. taking a study-break with
bridge cards, coke bottle and cig-
arette in hand. The Hub, our stu-
dent activities building, is the center
of our campus society; here we play,
we hold bull sessions, we swap
jokes, we swap dates.

Highlights among our campus
events begin each year with Black
Cat Day, a day when the entire cam-
pus community faculty and admin-
istration and families, students and
dates honor the new freshman class
in a day of competition and fun.
Black Cat's a development from, and
a far cry from, the hazing of Fresh-
men in years gone by.

Then in December we have our
annual Christmas party, one of our
most cherished traditions; this in-
cludes a program by our Glee Club
followed by refreshments (always
do nuts and coffee), a big fire and
Christmas carols. In January, the
Junior class sponsors Junior Jaunt,
a week of concentrated money-rais-
ing efforts for local, national and in-
ternational charities, culminating in
a formal dance week end. We at
Agnes Scott cherish these oppor-
tunities to join together as a unit,
realizing, enjoying and appreciating
the bond of love which ties us to-
gether within a mutually giving and
receiving unit.

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY / WINTER 1959

13

Retired Classics Head Dies

Miss Catherine Torrance, retired
chairman of the classics department
at Agnes Scott, died October 20,
1958.

Born in Charleston, Ind., Miss
Torrance was a graduate of Hanover
College. Hanover, Ind. She received
her master of arts and doctor of
philosophy degres from the Univer-
sity of Chicago.

Miss Torrance came to Agnes
Scott in 1909 as co-principal of the
Academy. She later joined the col-
lege as a teacher of Latin, and re-
tired as head of the classics depart-
ment.

GFFIC Contributors Increase;
1958 Gifts Total $72,500

The Georgia Foundation for Inde
pendent Colleges has distribute!
$72,500 to the state's four-year, ac

e credited, private colleges not suj
ported by taxes during 1958. Moi
than 175 businesses and other frienc.
have made contributions to th
united fund for independent highe
education.

The amount contributed to th
Foundation in 1958 is a $25,000 in
crease over 1957 gifts. Number o

y contributors has doubled.

Unless otherwise designated b
donors. 60 per cent of each contri
bution is divided equally among th
member colleges, and 40 per cent i
divided on the basis of enrollmeni
The nine member colleges whic
share in the gifts are Mercei
Emory, Agnes Scott, Wesleyan. L<
Grange, Shorter. Tift, Oglethorpe
and Brenau.

n

Dr. Virginia Tuggle '44, new "Phi Bete"

J

Meet the members of the art department: Marie Huper, art history and sculpture; Robert Westervelt, ceramics; Ferdinand Warren, painting.

DEATHS

FACULTY

Catherine Torrance, former co-principal of
the Academy and head of the classics de-
partment of Agnes Scott, Oct. 19.

INSTITUTE

Ola Bob Jester Harbour, Sept. 29.
Juliet Webb Hutton, Aug. 31, 1957.

1920

Clara Boynton Cole Heath, May 4. Her
sister is Elizabeth Cole Shaw '28.

1927

Lib Norfleet Miller's father, Sept. 12, 1957.

1928

Laurence Lowe McCullough, husband of
Mary Crenshaw McCullough, Dec. 12.

1929

Robert James Varner, husband of Jose-

phine Pou Varner, and father of Joanne
Varner '54 and Barbara Varner '59, Sept.
30.

1933

Mrs. Charles N. Alexander, mother of
Mary Charles Alexander Parker, Sept. 18.

1935

Mary Lillian Deason's mother, in May.

1946

Eleanor Reynolds Verdery's mother, Sept.
16.

1948

Mrs. B. C. Davidson, mother of Alice
Davidson, in October.

1951

Jeanne Kline Mallory's mother, Oct. 14.
Jeanne Kline Mallory's father. Oct. 31.

21

I \j3\AA,

We CeleLrate F

ounder's Day and Al

umnae

Weel

ee-en<

' YOU ARE one of the many alumnae
ho read The Quarterly by begin-
ng with the class-news section and
iving the articles for future per-
ial, please do turn back, now, to
ige 2 and digest the Faculty's state-
ent on the crisis facing education

Georgia and, by implication, in
her southern states.
Such a clear-cut assertion of the
asons for the necessity of keeping
>en our public schools, from such
qualified group, cannot but make
umnae hearts rejoice. And, I trust.

will bear some weight with Geor-
a's General Assembly, which opens
5 sessions as I am writing this, the
!th of January.

By February 21. 1959, no prophet,
en, could foretell in what direc-
Dns the General Assembly may
ive moved. On that date, the Alum-
le Association, with help in plan-
ng from the Faculty Committee on
lumnae Relations, will hold an open
rum for members of the five local
umnae clubs on the subject of this
isis in education. (I will report to
)u on this in the spring issue of
he Quarterly. ) After the forum. Dr.
cCain will speak to the local alum-
le at an informal luncheon.
It seems to me that Agnes Scott
umnae do, at least once a year,
ad thoughts about their College
>pping into mind. And this occurs.

usually, around February 22, which
the College celebrated for many years
with a holiday. This is now no
longer possible in the college's cal-
endar, because class time cannot be
taken from the too-short winter quar-
ter. This year, Dr. McCain will talk
to the students about the early days
of the College as only he can at
chapel on Friday, February 20.

And we who are alumnae can cer-
tainly, and do, commemorate the
founding of Agnes Scott. For some
of us fortunate enough to be living
in communities where alumnae have
banded together to form clubs, there
will be Founder's Day meetings of
alumnae clubs. Beyond the Atlanta
area, the clubs which have reported
to their regional vice-presidents
and /or the Alumnae Office on plans
for such gatherings include Baton
Rouge. La.; Birmingham, Ala.;
Charlotte. N. C; Columbia. S. C. ;
Huntsville, Ala. (organizing a new
club I ; Jacksonville. Fla.. Los An-
geles, Calif., and Washington, D. C.

From plans for Founder's Day.
my thoughts must project to mid-
April and Alumnae Week End, Class
Reunions, the Alumnae Luncheon
to Spring at Agnes Scott. It must be
admitted that I find this projection
a bit difficult, with Decatur's tem-
perature now hovering around 20.
It helps to remember the soft greens

and softer breezes of a spring in
Georgia, and to know that April
will bring dresses of white and pink
dogwood blossoms to Atlanta and
the campus. I do. indeed, hope that
April 17-18 will also bring many of
you back to the campus.

Reunion classes this year are, un-
der the Dix plan: 1908, '09, '10.
'11, '27, '28, '29, '30, '46, '47, '48,
'49, '58. Milestone reunions will be
held by the classes of 1934 (their
25th) and 1954 (their 5th.) Two
classes. 1909 and '49, which are
tapped under the Dix system for re-
unions this year are also milestone
reunion classes, the 50th and the
tenth.

Reunion class chairmen are al-
ready laying plans for special re-
union gatherings. And the Alumnae
Association is working with the Fac-
ulty Committee on Alumnae Rela-
tions to make the April week end the
kind that you want when you return
to the campus. Blackfriars will pre-
sent their annual spring play that
Friday and Saturday nights; Satur-
day morning there will be a "Going-
Back-to-College" hour for those of
us who yearn for some intellectual
stimulation; and the hour before the
Alumnae Luncheon we will meet in-
formally with the faculty. So, come
one. come all!

AwvU (oJ^HsAjy ^W^Jfvv. ' J %

/ 5-S

/;Mj* /44<*>***\

u

y>
I
p

THE "HISTORY OF PRINTING" MURAL

l\ remarkable mural depicting the history
of the written word has been created by
Ferdinand Warren, N. A., head of the art
department at Agnes Scott. Commissioned
by an Atlanta printing house, the mural
celebrates printing from primitive cave
drawings through the Gutenburg Bible to
contemporary presses. Mr. Warren has em-
ployed dynamic texture and color in each
panel; international recognition has been
predicted for his innovations in the mural.

nmna

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY

SPRING 1959

'Parmenides said, 'Reality cannot be otherwise than logic will allow

that which is is, that which is not is not.'

Now have I lost you?"

SPECIAL REPORT

THE COLLEGE
TEACHER: 1959

See Page 10

AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE / DECATUR, GEORGI,

Volume 37, Number 3

CONTENTS

The Lifeline To Greatness W. E. McNair 4

What America Reads Sybil Corbett Riddle '52 6

The College Teacher: 1959 A Special Report 10

Worthy Notes 27

Class News Eloise H. Ketchin 28

COVER It is a task to try to portray in pictures the art of teaching. Here
the camera has captured C. Benton, Kline, Jr., dean of the faculty, teaching
a philosophy class. See article on p. 10. (Cover photographs by Gaspar-
Ware; frontispiece by W. A. Calder. I

The Alumnae Association of Agnes Scott College

Officers

Bella Wilson Lewis '34, President
Evelyn Baty Landis '40, Vice-President
Sybil Corbett Riddle '52, Vice-President
Caroline Hodges Roberts '48,

Vice-President
Mitzi Kiser Law '54, Vice-President
Alice McDonald Richardson '29,

Secretary
Betty Jean Ellison Candler, '49,

Treasurer

Staff

Ann Worthy Johnson, "38,

Director of Alumnae Affairs
Eloise Hardeman Ketchin.

House Manager
Dorothy Weakley '56, Office Manager

Alumnae Trustees

Mary Prim Fowler '29

Sarah Catherine Wood Marshall '36

Chairmen

Elizabeth Blackshear Flinn '38,

Class Council
Patricia Collins Andretta '28,

Constitution
Mary Wallace Kirk '11, Education
Alice Glenn Lowry '29, Entertainment
Doris Dunn St. Clair x-'38, House
Louise Girardeau Cook, '28,

Nominations
Mary Caroline Lee Mackay, '40,

Property
Jean Grey Morgan, '31, Publications
Dorothy Cheek Callaway, '29,

Special Events
Barbara Smith Hull, '47,

Vocational Guidance

MEMBER OF AMERICAN ALUMNI COUNCIL

The Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly is published four
times a year (November, February, April and July) by
the Alumnae Association of Agnes Scott College at
Decatur, Georgia. Contributors to the Alumnae Fund
receive the magazine. Yearly subscription, $2.00. Single
copy 50 cents. Entered as second-class matter at the
Post Office of Decatur, Georgia, under Act of Au-gust,
24, 1912.

*fc

^

- .**

%tt

4*~ "MP'

/*>-

'*.

Black buildings on this drawing show tentative locations of new gymnasium, fine arts building and dormitory.

THE LIFELINE TO GREATNESS

Large Plans Are Ready for Agnes Scoit's Development

By W. EJwarJ McNa

Someone has said, "Make no small plans; they have no
magic to challenge men's minds." Assuredly Agnes Scott
has never made any small plans. In the earliest days when
the institution had only five thousand dollars capital
and no physical property, Colonel George W. Scott, our
founder, wrote that it was his desire for the school to
be as great as any institution of its kind in the land.
From that day until now that same purpose has directed
every effort and permeated all the plans of Agnes Scott.
Certainly no small plans have been made. Through the
years since 1889 one challenge after another has been
met until today there is no college which surpasses Agnes
Scott in academic recognition and. in the area of inde-

U 3^*5

=* a.

tftt

r^A

About the Author

Dr. McNair is Director of
Public Relations and De-
velopment at Agnes Scott
and is also a member of
the English department's
faculty. He holds a degree
from Davidson College
and two from Emory Uni-
versity.

Dr. W. E. McNair

pendent colleges for women, only seven which \ks\
greater financial assets. Indeed, we of the present ai
the recipients of a remarkable heritage of sacrifice, d
votion, and unstinting effort.

However, one is worthy of a great heritage only <
he rises to its privileges and increases its values for sui
ceeding generations. It was in this spirit that the Boar
of Trustees in 1953 took the action which launched th
development program in which we are now engaged.

This program, as originally adopted on June 5, 195"
envisioned increasing the assets of the college by $10
025.000. In 1957 this goal was increased to $10,475,00(
this total being the aggregate of $8,050,000 for endow
ment and .$2,425,000 for buildings, grounds, and equip
ment. It is intended that this challenging goal be reache
by 1964, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the foundin
of the college.

Since the inception of this program much has bee:
accomplished. Hopkins Hall (completed in 1953) ani
Walters Hall (completed in 19561 were among the need
outlined in 1953. The renovation of Main, Rebekah Scott
and Inman, as set forth in the initial development plans
has been completed. Additional property has been pur
chased, and many campus improvements have been made
Moreover, in the last six years the endowment of thi
college has been increased by more than $5,000,000
thereby bringing Agnes Scott's total assets to approxij
mately $13,500,000. Of this total, $6,500,000 has beeij
added within the framework of the development goal o

THE AGNES SCOT'

$10,475,000. Indeed, much has been achieved! But much
still remains to be done before 1964. What, then, are the
plans for raising the remaining $4,000,000 and how is
it to be used?

Let us deal with the second of these questions first. At
least half of the sum to be raised will go into endowment.
This area of the college's assets cannot be overempha-
sized, for it is the life-line to the maintenance of the
academic excellence which characterizes Agnes Scott. In
the ten year period 1948-1958 the total expenditure for
'faculty salaries has increased by more than 105%. but
iwhen one considers both that the cost of living has con-
tinued to rise and that faculty compensation was at a
.very low level in 1948, it is clear that the college still
has much to do in this area. The competition in getting
and holding skilled faculty members is becoming increas-
jingly keen, and if Agnes Scott is to continue as a college
'where quality work is done, increased endowment from
which income can be derived for the improvement of
faculty salaries must be secured. (See the special article
on page 10.) Further, there is need for additional invested
funds for purposes of scholarships, or many young
women who are in every way fitted for Agnes Scott will
be unable to attend. The importance of increasing faculty
salaries and of strengthening scholarship resources is
attested by the circumstance that almost 80% of the total
development goal is earmarked for endowment.

New Buildings Needed

In the realm of additional buildings there are also
specific plans. For a long time Agnes Scott has needed
an adequate student activities building. The old library,
popularly known as the Hub, has in a makeshift way
served this area of campus life for twenty years, but it
was never intended to be used as an activities building.
A commodious student center, then, is a must. Such a
center as the Trustees have in mind needs to be in the
dining hall-dormitory-classroom area of the campus;
however all building sites on this part of the campus
have long been in use. When it was realized that the
student body has completely outgrown the present Bucher
Scott Gymnasium (erected in 1925), the problem of the
right location for the student activities building was
solved. The gymnasium will be completely remodeled into
an up-to-date student center and a new gymnasium will
be constructed at the southwest end of the hockey field,
this new physical education building to be large, modern,
and functional in design.

Another structure included in Agnes Scott's develop-
ment program is a new fine arts building designed to
accommodate the departments of art and speech. The
art department, cramped as it now is in one wing of the
third floor of Buttrick and in a portion of the basement
of Campbell Hall (the science building), is in dire need
of improved facilities. Also the department of speech has
limped along for many years in inadequate quarters on
the first floor of Bebekah Scott. The new building, as
currently planned, will contain not only an art gallery
but also class rooms, laboratories, offices, and a work-shop

theater all facilities sorely needed by these departments
in which work is steadily growing in scope and im-
portance. Further, the shifting of the art department to
this new building will free the space it now occupies and
relieve over-crowding in other areas of Agnes Scott's
academic program. Present plans call for the new fine
arts building to front on McDonough street south of
Campbell Hall.

An additional dormitory is also in the picture. This
building, it is hoped, will allow the college to eliminate
the present outmoded "cottages" and house all resident
students in adequate structures. This new dormitory, as
now planned, will stand on the site presently occupied
by Cunningham and Tart cottages.

Bealizing that a major capital funds campaign will of
necessity be a part of the completion of the seventv-
fifth anniversary development plans, the Board of Trus-
tees in the fall of 1958 through its development com-
mittee, of which President Emeritus James Boss McCain
is chairman, retained the firm of Marts and Lundy of
New York to conduct a pre-campaign survey to determine
what specific goals the college should aim for in a capital
funds campaign. In this survey confidential interviews
were held with a representative cross-section of alumnae,
parents, students, faculty, and other friends of the col-
lege, not only in the Atlanta area but also in four other
geographical centers. In addition the administration of
the college was asked to supply a vast amount of infor-
mation. Having gathered all this material, officials of
Marts and Lundy studied it carefully and early in 1959
submitted a full report of findings plus recommenda-
tions. On March 13, 1959. the president of the firm met
with the Board of Trustees and discussed what should
be the next steps Agnes Scott would take.

Campaign To Be Launched

Meanwhile in January, 1959. during the period that
Marts and Lundy was formulating its report and recom-
mendations, Agnes Scott received from an anonymous
donor a conditional gift of S500,000 payable on the con-
dition that Agnes Scott raise the remaining $4,000,000 of
its development goal on or before January 26. 1964.

On the basis of this recent anonymous gift and the
amount remaining to be secured toward the development
ooal of 1964. the Board of Trustees in its meeting on
March 13, 1959, unanimously voted to set the goal for
the forthcoming capital funds effort at $4,500,000. The
Board further approved in general the Marts and Lundy
report with its recommendations and authorized the
development committee to engage Marts and Lundy to
conduct the capital funds campaign, delegating to the
committee the responsibility and authority for working
out and effecting this program.

Thus. Agnes Scott is launched in another momentous
activity one characterized by large plans. The aim and
purpose of this program is to undergird the college for
the challenging days ahead. It is designed to give Agnes
Scott the resources necessary for the greatness which we
firmly believe is the college's destiny.

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY / SPRING 1959

i

By SYBIL CORBETT RIDDLE '52

.0 THOSE OF US who are enter-
tained by browsing the shelves of a
second-hand bookstore, or reading
the dim titles of our parents' or
grandparents' library, the study of
the best-selling books of America can
be fascinating and adventurous. The
literary taste of an age is a transient,
varied, colorful show. For the true
record of the vast public who take
part in contemporary events, we must
discover what they were thinking as
well as what they were doing, and
what they were reading of the mil-
lions of pages of fiction and non-fic-
tion written for them to digest.

What makes a book popular? Re-
cently in the New Yorker magazine,
a cartoonist showed a publisher's
agent exclaiming, "It can't miss, J.

About the Author

Sybil, Gene and their two children are
living in Birmingham. She is a regional
vice-president of the Alumnae Association
and is completing a master's degree in
English ; she used material from her thesis
for this article.

G. ! The author got disillusioned with
Communism, escaped from behind
the Iron Curtain, came to the United
States, lived on a sharecropper's farm
in Georgia, spent a year in a state
insane asylum, turned to religion,
and now is a monk!" Thus if we look
for elements that produce best-sellers
through the years, we are certain to
glean a great many ill-assorted themes
and no obvious answer to the ques-
tion of literary taste.

Certain themes do reappear, how-
ever, over the decades, religion, ro-
mance, self-help, historical or nostal-
gic episodes. It is heartening to re-
member one clear fact for the sake of
the Christian foundations of our na-
tion, though they seem often to have
fallen. As Frank Luther Mott points
out in Golden Multitudes, "Strictly
speaking, there is only one all-time
best seller the Bible and all others
are only "better sellers" or "good
sellers."

If religion is a constant factor in
popular books of America's three and
a half cenutries, so, too, is romance,
chiefly of the historical or nostalgic
school. The novels of Sir Walter Scott
and of James Fenimore Cooper, his
American counterpart, were the most
popular books in America in the
early 1800's. The ideals of chivalry
and honor in the ante bellum period
of the South were derived in great
measure from Scott's medieval novels.
Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace, published
in 1880, sparked a revival of the
historical romance lasting to the turn
of the cenutry. The 1930's and '40's
saw a revival of the romance in the

nostalgic vein; notable in this era
were Anthony Adverse, and of course,
Gone with the Wind.

It would appear that periods o)
stress and insecurity lead people to
the religious theme for sources ol
faith and to the romantic ideal for
escape and entertainment. Whatever
the theme or plot of a best-seller, thd
single unifying element creating a
popular book in a given era is simply
the particular needs of the people at
that point in history.

Let's take a look now at the lead-
ing books of the nation since 1900.
We shall divide the half-century into
four periods ; first, the Turn of the i i
Century, then World War I and the i
"Roaring Twenties," next, the De- 1
pression 30's and World War II and I
last, the Post-war Decade just past.

At the turn of the century, the
U. S. could most truly be said to
"stand on the threshold." Industry '
was booming, railroads had con- j
quered the West, capitalism and
giants of finance were in their hey-
day. But while facing the world with I
a bold and braggadocio front, the >
nation was torn with internal dissen- j
sion.

In reading taste there was pri-
marily a nostalgia for the early days
of the nation. James Lane Allen and !,
Winston Churchill were the leading II
novelists, and their tool of expression U
was the historical romance. Allen, j
author of The Choir Invisible and
The Kentucky Cardinal, was a sen- \\
timentalist, whose novels were marked
by high ideals and nobly simple char- I
acters. Winston Churchill, whose I

THE AGNES SCOTT

looks like Richard Carvel, The Crisis,
nd The Crossing, led best-selling lists
,f fiction from 1901 to 1913, wrote
n\h greater pith, taking as subjects
he Revolutionary hero, the conflict
if rebel heroine and Yankee lover
If the Civil War period, and the ad-
entures of George Rogers Clark.

Another group of novels had a yet
/ider appeal. These were books which
adiated happiness and optimistic
mtlook to the so-called down trodden
nasses of the period, victims of in-
lustrialism. Alice Rice led with Mrs.
Viggs of the Cabbage Patch, the
cene laid not in the vegetable garden
it all, but in the slums of the Louis-
ville factory district. Kate Douglas
biggin followed with Rebecca of
iunnybrook Farm, in which an or-
phan girl portrayed unfailing optim-
um in the face of poverty and sore
jrials. Then appeared a sentimental
Wthor whose fiction was to outsell
kll others in this field, Gene Stratton-
Porter, whose Laddie, Girl of the
limberlost, and The Harvester are
fond recollections of my own teen-
age reading. Another Mrs. Porter
(Eleanor H.) scored with the Polly-
nna stores. Following these were the
ighty-nine Grace Livingston Hill
'wholesome romances," perennial
avorites of countless young girls and
ttheir mothers.

The same innocent type of fiction,
though more rugged, attracted men.
The popularity of these books stem-
Jmed in part from the tremendous ap-
peal of Theodore Roosevelt's espousal
of the rough outdoor life. Jack Lon-
don and Harold Bell Wright exem-
plify this type of novelist, the first
with pictures of primitive and wild
jlife, the second with heroes who lived
(clean and worked hard, and typified
a kind of simple, muscular Christian-
ity. How simple were the tastes in
those days none of the psychological
iprobings of the sex life of a middle-
'aged lawyer as seen in James Gould
ICozzens' recent tome By Love Pos-
sessed. Zane Grey later set an all-time
ihigh record for total sales of adult
I fiction with his myths of the western
range. These proved to be exciting
escape literature, "printed day-
dreams" for the pre-movie era.
Lastly in this period, there was the

literature of the muckrakers. Socially
conscious Americans read Lincoln
Steffens' Shame of the Cities (1904)
and other books whose authors
pointed to the ills of industrialism.
Such lurid themes as poverty, child
labor, starvation and slums called
forth a new realism in fiction. Out-
standing of the new generation of
authors were Frank Norris with The
Pit (1903), Upton Sinclair with The
Jungle (1906), and Winston Church-
ill's Coniston ( 1906) . Sinclair's fam-
ous novel prompted an investigation
of filthy conditions in the meat-pack-
ing industry, and resulted in pure
food legislation.

T

YPICAL OF American feeling on
the eve of World War I was the
election slogan of Woodrow Wilson
"He kept us out of war." Despite
tremendous propaganda efforts of
German and English journalists to
sway public opinion each to his own
side, and the war at sea that sank
American ships and lost American
lives, the American people remained
relatively indifferent to the war in
Europe right up to the eve of this
country's entrance into the conflict.
The top sellers in fiction to 1917 con-
tinued to be the pale romances of
Gene Stratton-Porter, and the he-man
action stories of Zane Grey and Har-
old Bell Wright.

Beginning with the fact of United
States' participation in the war, how-
ever, there was a demand for war
literature. One of the first and most
influential of the war books was H.
G. Wells' novel, Mr. Britling Sees It
Through (1916-17), which gave
Americans an insight into British
character and behavior as an ally in
war. The non-fiction list showed more
clearly what the now war-minded
United States wanted to read. There

was the war poetry of Robert W.
Service, and of Alan Seeger, who
wrote "I Have a Rendezvous with
Death." Arthur G. Empey's book
Over the Top glorified the doughboy,
and Edward Streeter's Dere Mable
(1918) gave a touch of humor. The
non-fiction of 1918 was primarily
concerned with the bloody events in
Europe, such as Richard Harding
Davis' Adventures, and the several
books by Coningsby Dawson on war
as a crusade.

In 1919 the top book in fiction was
the famous Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse by Ibanez, an arresting
combination of exciting romance and
hatred of the Germans. Later, in
1921, the movie version of this war
novel became the pathway to stardom
for Rudolf Valentino. Following this,
there was a complete fadeout of war
books through the 1920's decade. A
final postscript was added to the war
literature in 1929, as a bitter novel
by Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet
on the Western Front, summed up
the disillusionment of a people sated
with glory and honor, bent on achiev-
ing material success.

T

_ he year 1920 is almost a magic
date, for it ushered in a period of
profound change in habits, attitudes,
morals, and ideas among the Amer-
ican people. Three primary elements
of the new, so-called sophisticated
attitude may be mentioned. The com-
plete revulsion against the war just
fought could be summed up in F.
Scott Fitzgerald's statement that a
new generation found "all Gods dead,
all wars fought, all faiths in man
shaken." The automobile, shining
symbol of speed, adventure, cosmo-
politanism, brought far-flung altera-
tion in habit and outlook for the
average American family. Movies,
radios, phonographs and jazz soon
were replacing the quiet of the family
parlor. Wartime had as always
brought upheavals in society; labor
came to the fore, as well as new rich,
new middle, and especially new poor
classes. The status of women was al-
tered as we "emancipated ones"
may still testify.

In the intellectual field, Freud and

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY / SPRING 1959

WHAT AMERICA READS

Continued from page 7

Darwin were seeping through the up-
per learned circles to greater num-
bers of readers. Established writers
and new ones gave impetus to a new
morality and a breaking-down of old
standards of behavior and belief.
Notable new writings were the fiction
of Mary Roberts Rinehart [Danger-
ous Days, 1919) and Edith Wharton
(Age oj Innocence, 1921). Sinclair
Lewis in Main Street, published in
1921, brought a new note of realism
into American fiction, which he con-
tinued in his later best-selling novels
Arroivsmith, Dodsworth, and Bab-
bitt, the last adding a vivid new word
to the American language idiom.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels, be-
ginning in 1920 with This Side oj
Paradise, never reached the best seller
lists, and were read by only a limited
public. Nevertheless, they seemed to
sum up the feeling of the jazz age.
His works in turn affected other au-
thors who did reach into every
crevice of American life. His new
description of hero and heroine as
enjoying to the fullest the pleasures
of the moment was in direct conflict
with the earlier romantic notions of
nobility, chastity, and idealism.

In non-fiction, there was a steadier
re-examination of former standards,
a questioning of morals as judged by
practical needs of the day, which
represented a saner feel for values
than that in fiction. The trend began
with Henry Adams' critical examina-
tion of his boyhood training in the
light of contemporary need, in The
Education of Henry Adams. This

solid book led the best-selling non-
fiction in 1919. and has since become
a classic in our literature. Other
books which were read for the light
they might shed on past and future
were Henrick Van Loon's The Story
of Mankind, (19221 James Harvey
Robinson's The Mind in the Making
1 1922), H. G. Wells' The Outline of
History (1921-22), Lytton Strachey's
Queen Victoria ( 1922 I , setting a new
and urbane style for biography, and
Will Durant's Story of Philosophy
(1926-27). The religious theme pre-
dominated in The Life of Christ
(1923) by Papini, an interpretation
in the light of the new psychology,
and the books of Bruce Barton : The
Man Nobody Knows and The Book
Nobody Knows (1925-26), the last
two on practical religion, written in
a breezy, businessman's language.
The rise of aviation was hailed with
the popularity of We by Charles
Lindbergh (1927) and Skyward by
Admiral Richard Byrd (1928). There
were many notable biographies which
were widely read during the period,
especially Victoria and Elizabeth and
Essex by Strachey, Ludwig's three of
Napoleon, Goethe, and Lincoln, and
one of Henry VIII by Hackett.

.HE change in temper from 1920
to 1930 was a phenomenon which
took place almost overnight. Apropos
was the sudden switch in popular
song titles: 1928 "Making Whoo-
pee," 1929 "Brother, Can You
Spare a Dime?," 1933 "Who's
Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" People
were unemployed, dispossessed, pov-
erty-stricken; there were hungry,
wandering millions. Then came the
New Deal with its optimism and its
determination to make things better.
Where could they go but up?

Although John Steinbeck's Grapes
of Wrath did not appear until 1939,
it quickly became the epic of the
decade. Almost as stirring in its
propaganda as Uncle Toms Cabin in
the 1850's, it became the subject of
impassioned discussion and the pe-
riod's most popular novel, represent-
ing the search for answers in terms
of social values.

The search went on in other areas,

too, as great numbers of peopl
sought new sources of faith. Man
new sects and cults sprang up, note
bly the Oxford Group with uppe
class appeal, and Jehovah's Witnesse
and Father Divine's "branch hef
vens" at the other end of the pol(
This religious fervor is reflected i
the fact that in the period from 193
to 1945 there was at least one reli{.
ious book on every annual best-selle
list, while in the 1920's there wa
hardly a volume. The Lloyd C. Doug
las books began to appear in thi
decade,Magnificent Obsession (1932)
Forgive Us Trespasses (1932), Gree.
Light (1935), White Banners (1936
and Disputed Passage (1939). Henr
C. Link's well-known Return to Re
ligion came out in 1937, and Sholen
Asch's series of books began wit!
The Nazarene in 1939. In the forties
the demand for Bibles exceeded th
book stores' supply, and heading th
list of fiction best sellers for thre<
consecutive years were Keys oj th
Kingdom by A. J. Cronin, Song o
Bernadette, by Franz Werfel, anc
The Robe, by Lloyd C. Douglas.

Rising from the same psychologica
need of the people for reaffirmatioj
of old values was Pearl Buck's Th
Good Earth, which topped the fictioi
lists in 1931 and '32. In the sarrn
vein was Hilton's Lost Horizoi
(1935) ; in non-fiction, Lin Yutang'
graceful Oriental philosophy, Th
Importance of Living, topped the lis
in 1938.

The general reader sought othei
sorts of escape. There were Ely Cul
bertson's Contract Bridge manuals
also Life Begins at Forty, You Must
Relax, Orchids on Your Budged
especially Dale Carnegie's classic
How to Win Friends and Influenct
People, all of which offered momen
tary vistas of success and security
Escape readers also created a tre
mendous vogue for the mystery anc
detective story, especially the Earh
Stanley Gardner series.

Readers in the '30's and '40'$
seemed to prefer, however, historica
novels. Hervey Allen's Anthony Ad
verse in 1933 led off, topped the fie
tion best sellers for two years run
ning and set the pace for others tc
follow. The greatest of all was Gone

8

THE AGNES SCOT1

with the Wind, which appeared in
1936, and proceeded to become
America's largest-selling novel. Its
dual appeal of action and characteri-
sation was teamed with romanticism
in setting and plot, realism in char-
acters, and it became part of the fiber
bf American thought.

The appeal of the romantic past
(Was a product of the hard times, to
Ipeople frustrated by the present.
Typical of a people's nostalgia were
these best sellers, 1935, Thomas
Wolfe's Of Time and the River; 1936,
George Santayana's The Last Puri-
tan; 1938, Marjorie Kinnan Rawl-
tfngs, The Yearling; 1939, Eliza-
beth Page's The Tree of Liberty.

liXs World War II approached,
'there developed a great interest in
'non-fiction concerned with the
rumbling events in Europe. Amer-
icans bought Hitler's Mein Kampf,
Vincent Sheehan's Not Peace but a
Sword, John Gunther's Inside Asia,
and William Shirer's Berlin Diary.
In 1941, 7 out of 10 books on the
non-fiction best-selling list were con-
cerned with the war; in 1943, the
proportion was 8 out of 10.

The war best sellers included few
jnovels, however. An exception was
for Whom the Bells Tolls by Hem-
'ingway, published in 1940, which
Isold 1 million copies by 1946. Stein-
beck's The Moon is Down and John
Hersey's A Bell for Adano were also
highly popular war novels. The rash
of war fiction in the postwar decade
came as an afterthought.

By 1945, the reading public had
been greatly increased; it has been
estimated that about 49 million
people over 15 read at least one book
a month.

The world was as greatly altered
after this war as by any previous con-
flict. Events required a knowledge of
new scientific discoveries and a re-
orientation to a world always on the
brink of war, if not involved in actual
hostilities.

Readers were led first of all to
search for realities in religion. Rabbi
Joshua Liebman's Peace of Mind,
blending religious faith and techni-
ques of modern psychology, was sec-

ond on the best-selling non-fiction list
in 1946, led all others in 1947 and
was in third place in 1948.

Other religious books were best-
sellers, but none so popular as Peace
of Mind. Norman Vincent Peale
reached a large public with Guide to
Confident Living in 1948 and The
Power of Positive Thinking in 1952.
Fulton J. Sheen's Peace of Soul and
Fulton Oursler's Greatest Story Ever
Told also made the best-seller lists.
In 1950, 1952 and 1954 we had the
Peter Marshall books, beginning with
Mr. Jones, Meet the Master, then
Catherine Marshall's two based on
her husband's life. Beginning in 1952,
the Revised Standard Version of the
Bible headed the non-fiction list for
four consecutive years.

The religious theme in fiction
again reflected the American's seek-
ing of answers to the problems of the
insecure days. Sample leading books
were The Robe, Russell Janney's The
Miracle of the Bells, Lloyd C. Doug-
las' Big Fisherman, Agnes Sligh
Turnbull's The Bishop's Mantle,
Moses and Mary, by Sholem Asch.
and Cardinal Spellman's The Foun-
dling.

One of the most surprising best
sellers of the postwar period was
Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History.
This British historian linked history
with theology and showed that the
collapse of nations is concurrent with
the failure of morals.

Other strong sellers were the Kin-
sey books on Male and Female Sexual
Behavior (1948 and 1953). Thus,
sensationalism became an habitual
attitude following the horrors of war
and psychological maladjustments.
High on the lists of best-selling fic-
tion were Earth and High Heaven by
Gwethalyn Graham, Laura Z. Hob-
son's Gentlemen's Agreement, Strange
Fruit by Lillian Smith, and John
Steinbeck's The Wayward Bus. We
find this a continuing trend a
reater preoccupation with sex and

Drawings by Mary Dunn '59

sensationalism in fiction than ever
before.

Biographical books came back into
vogue beginning with Betty Mc-
Donald's The Egg and I (1945).
Books about Franklin D. Roosevelt
were legion; ranging from recollec-
tions of cabinet members, his wife
and son, to his secret-service guard
and housekeeper, any and all Roose-
velt reminiscences were collected.
Other biographical studies which cap-
tured the popular interest were: Black
Boy by Richard Wright, Together by
the wife of Gen. George C. Marshall.
Gilbreth and Carey's Cheaper by the
Dozen, Tallulah by the most famous
Bankhead. the political autobiog-
raphy Witness, by Whittaker Cham-
bers, and /'// Cry Tomorrow by Lil-
lian Roth.

In non-fiction there was a rash of
non-reading books; 1945-55 was the
era of the do-it-yourselfer. Especially
popular were cookbooks (4 best sellers
in 10 years) , garden books, canasta
books, picture books ranging from
The American Past in 1947 to Ed-
ward Steichen's Family of Man in
1955, from the Life and Times of the
Schmoo in 1948 to Pogo in 1951.

Now we may ask, what of the
American reader today? Stuffed with
psychology and sex, reaching for a
practical religion, dreaming of doing
it himself, what conscious thought
does the general reader take for the
issues of his time that will determine
the future?

Reading down the list of best sell-
ers in recent years, especially non-
fiction, we are forced to conclude
with Randall Jarrell, writing in the
Saturday Evening Post for July 26,
1958, that the taste of the age is ap-
palling. Yet when many more mil-
lions than ever before actually are
reading something, that is itself a
heartening fact. The tragedy is that
to be intellectual is to be an egg-
head, to read widely and construc-
tively from the scholars of today is
unheard of, certainly to discuss your
thoughts on the crucial issues of the
day with your neighbor often is to
meet a blank wall. Yet, in a democ-
racy, it behooves us all to become
well-informed, to discipline ourselves
to constructive and critical thinking.

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY / SPRING 1959

PORTRAIT OF A POET: 1959

Tlic

College

Teacher:

1939

Poet Robert Frost's portrait, painted by Ferdinand Warren (left), head of the

art department, hangs in the McCain Library. It was unveiled in January when

Mr. Frost made his annual visit to Agnes Scott.

Robert Frost wrote in a letter to Dr. Alston,
upon the occasion of Miss Laney's retirement,
"We teachers aren't permitted to visit each other's
classes but we somehow come to know the good
ones from the bad ones among us." The good ones
are the core of higher education, and the following
special report helps us understand why and how
we must keep them so today.

THE COLLEGE
TEACHER: 1959

"If I were sitting here

and the whole outside world

were indifferent to what I

was doing, I would still want

to be doing just what I arn."

I'VE ALWAYS FOUND IT SOMEWHAT HARD TO
SAY JUST WHY I CHOSE TO BE A PROFESSOR.

There are many reasons, not all of them tangible
things which can be pulled out and explained. I still
hear people say, "Those who can, do; those who
can't, teach." But there are many teachers who can.
They are teachers because they have more than the
usual desire to communicate. They are excited enough
about something to want to tell others, have others
love it as they love it, tell people the how of some-
thing, and the why.

I like to see students who will carry the intellectual
spark into the world beyond my time. And I like to
think that maybe I have something to do with this.

THERE IS A CERTAIN FREEDOM
IN THIS JOB, TOO.

A professor doesn't punch a time clock. He is allowet
the responsibility of planning his own time and activi
ties. This freedom of movement provides somethin
very valuable time to think and consider.

I've always had the freedom to teach what I believ
to be true. I have never been interfered with in wha
I wanted to say either in the small college or in thl
large university. I know there have been and are inj
fringements on academic freedom. But they've neve
happened to me.

THE COLLEGE
TEACHER: 1959

I LIKE YOUNG PEOPLE.
I REGARD MYSELF AS YOUNG.

I'm still eager about many of the things I was eager
about as a young man. It is gratifying to see bright
young men and women excited and enthusiastic about
scholarship. There are times when I feel that I'm only
an old worn boulder in the never-ending stream of
students. There are times when I want to flee, when I
look ahead to a quieter life of contemplation, of
reading things I've always wanted to read. Then a
brilliant and likeable human being comes along,
whom I feel I can help and this makes it all the
more worthwhile. When I see a young teacher get a
start, I get a vicarious feeling of beginning again.

THE COLLEGE
TEACHER: 1959

PEOPLE ASK ME ABOUT THE
"DRAWBACKS" IN TEACHING.

I find it difficult to be glib about this. There are majo
problems to be faced. There is this business of salaries
of status and dignity, of anti-intellectualism, of to<
much to do in too little time. But these are problems
not drawbacks. A teacher doesn't become a teache
in spite of them, but with an awareness that the;
exist and need to be solved.

AND THERE IS THIS
MATTER OF "STATUS."

Terms like "egghead" tend to suggest that the in-
tellectual is something like a toadstool almost phys-
ically different from everyone else. America is ob-
sessed with stereotypes. There is a whole spectrum of
personalities in education, all individuals. The notion
that the intellectual is somebody totally removed from
what human beings are supposed to be is absurd.

TODAY MAN HAS LESS TIME
ALONE THAN ANY MAN BEFORE HIM.

But we are here for only a limited time, and I would
rather spend such time as I have thinking about the
meaning of the universe and the purpose of man, than
doing something else. I've spent hours in libraries
and on park benches, escaping long enough to do a
little thinking. I can be found occasionally sitting
out there with sparrows perching on me, almost.

"We may always be running just to keep
from falling behind. But the person who
is a teacher because he wants to teach,
because he is deeply interested in people
and scholarship, will pursue it as long as
he can." Loren C. Eiseley

T

Ik

.he circumstance is a strange one. In recen
years Americans have spent more money on the trappings o
higher education than ever before in history. Mor<
parents than ever have set their sights on a college educatior
for their children. More buildings than eve
have been put up to accommodate the crowds. But in th<
midst of this national preoccupation with higheij
education, the indispensable element in education thel
teacher somehow has been overlooked
The results are unfortunate not only for college teachers, but
for college teaching as well, and for all whose lives it touches,
If allowed to persist, present conditions could lead
to so serious a decline in the excellence of higher education'
that we would require generations to recover from it.!
Among educators, the problem is the subject
of current concern and debate and experiment. What is missing,
and urgently needed, is full public awareness of the
problem and full public support of measures to deal with it.i

H,

.ere is a task for the college alumnus and alumna. No one

knows the value of higher education better than

the educated. No one is better able to take action, and to

persuade others to take action, to preserve and increase its value.!

Will they do it? The outlines of the problem, and some

guideposts to action, appear in the pages that follow.

I WILL WE RUN OUT OF
I COLLEGE TEACHERS?

No; there will always be someone to fill classroom vacancies. But
quality is almost certain to drop unless something is done quickly

WHERE WILL THE TEACHERS COME FROM?
The number of students enrolled in America's
colleges and universities this year exceeds last
j year's figure by more than a quarter million. In ten years
it should pass six million nearly double today's en-
! rollment.

The number of teachers also may have to double. Some
educators say that within a decade 495,000 may be needed
J more than twice the present number.

Can we hope to meet the demand? If so, what is likely
1 to happen to the quality of teaching in the process?

"Great numbers of youngsters will flood into our col-
i leges and universities whether we are prepared or not," a
I report of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of
Teaching has pointed out. "These youngsters will be
taught taught well or taught badly. And the demand for
teachers will somehow be at least partly met if not with
well-prepared teachers then with ill-prepared, if not with
superior teachers then with inferior ones."

Most immediate is the problem of finding enough
qualified teachers to meet classes next fall. Col-
lege administrators must scramble to do so.

"The staffing problems are the worst in my 30 years'
experience at hiring teaching staff," said one college presi-
dent, replying to a survey by the U.S. Office of Educa-
tion's Division of Higher Education.

"The securing and retaining of well-trained, effective
teachers is the outstanding problem confronting all col-
leges today," said another.

One logical place to start reckoning with the teacher
shortage is on the present faculties of American colleges
and universities. The shortage is hardly alleviated by the
fact that substantial numbers of men and women find it
necessary to leave college teaching each year, for largely

financial reasons. So serious is this problem and so
relevant is it to the college alumnus and alumna that a
separate article in this report is devoted to it.

The scarcity of funds has led most colleges and uni-
versities to seek at least short-range solutions to the
teacher shortage by other means.

Difficulty in finding young new teachers to fill faculty
vacancies is turning the attention of more and more ad-
ministrators to the other end of the academic line, where
tried and able teachers are about to retire. A few institu-
tions have modified the upper age limits for faculty. Others
are keeping selected faculty members on the payroll past
the usual retirement age. A number of institutions are
filling their own vacancies with the cream of the men and
women retired elsewhere, and two organizations, the Asso-
ciation of American Colleges and the American Associa-
tion of University Professors, with the aid of a grant from
the Ford Foundation, have set up a "Retired Professors
Registry" to facilitate the process.

Old restraints and handicaps for the woman teacher are
disappearing in the colleges. Indeed, there are special
opportunities for her, as she earns her standing alongside
the man who teaches. But there is no room for com-
placency here. We can no longer take it for granted that
the woman teacher will be any more available than the
man, for she exercises the privilege of her sex to change
her mind about teaching as about other matters. Says
Dean Nancy Duke Lewis of Pembroke College: "The day
has passed when we could assume that every woman who
earned her Ph.D. would go into college teaching. She
needs something positive today to attract her to the col-
leges because of the welcome that awaits her talents in
business, industry, government, or the foundations. Her
freedom to choose comes at a time when undergraduate
women particularly need distinguished women scholars to

inspire them to do their best in the classroom and labo-
ratory and certainly to encourage them to elect college
teaching as a career."

SOME HARD-PRESSED ADMINISTRATORS find themselves
forced to accelerate promotions and salary increases
in order to attract and hold faculty members. Many
are being forced to settle for less qualified teachers.

In an effort to attract and keep teachers, most colleges
are providing such necessities as improved research facili-
ties and secretarial help to relieve faculty members of
paperwork and administrative burdens, thus giving faculty
members more time to concentrate on teaching and
research.

In the process of revising their curricula many colleges
are eliminating courses that overlap one another or are
considered frivolous. Some are increasing the size of
lecture classes and eliminating classes they deem too small.

Finally, somewhat in desperation (but also with the
firm conviction that the technological age must, after all,
have something of value to offer even to the most basic
and fundamental exercises of education), experiments are
being conducted with teaching by films and television.

At Penn State, where televised instruction is in its ninth
semester, TV has met with mixed reactions. Students
consider it a good technique for teaching courses with

large enrollments and their performance in courses em
ploying television has been as good as that of student
having personal contact with their teachers. The reactioi
of faculty members has been less favorable. But accept
ance appears to be growing: the number of courses offero
on television has grown steadily, and the number of facult
members teaching via TV has grown, also.

Elsewhere, teachers are far from unanimity on the sub
ject of TV. "Must the TV technicians take over the col
leges?" asked Professor Ernest Earnest of Temple Uni
versity in an article title last fall. "Like the conventiona
lecture system, TV lends itself to the sausage-stuffing con
cept of education," Professor Earnest said. The classroom
he argued, "is the place for testing ideas and skills, for th
interchange of ideas" objectives difficult to attain whei
one's teacher is merely a shadow on a fluorescent screen

The TV pioneers, however, believe the medium, usee
properly, holds great promise for the future.

FOR the long run, the traditional sources of suppl;
for college teaching fall far short of meeting the de
mand. The Ph.D., for example, long regarded b}
many colleges and universities as the ideal "driver';
license" for teachers, is awarded to fewer than 9,(XX
persons per year. Even if, as is probable, the number o;
students enrolled in Ph.D. programs rises over the nexi

i few years, it will be a long time before they have traveled
jthe full route to the degree.

Meanwhile, the demand for Ph.D.'s grows, as industry,
i consulting firms, and government compete for many of the
jmen and women who do obtain the degree. Thus, at the
| very time that a great increase is occurring in the number
of undergraduates who must be taught, the supply of new
icollege teachers with the rank of Ph.D. is even shorter
than usual.

"During each of the past four years," reported the
National Education Association in 1958, "the average
i level of preparation of newly employed teachers has
j fallen. Four years ago no less than 3 1 .4 per cent of the
I new teachers held the earned doctor's degree. Last year
only 23.5 per cent were at this high level of preparation."

Here are some of the causes of concern about the
Ph.D., to which educators are directing their
attention:
The Ph.D. program, as it now exists in most graduate
schools, does not sufficiently emphasize the development
of teaching skills. As a result, many Ph.D.'s go into
teaching with little or no idea how to teach, and make
a mess of it when they try. Many who don't go into
teaching might have done so, had a greater emphasis been
laid upon it when they were graduate students.

The Ph.D. program is indefinite in its time require-
ments: they vary from school to school, from department
to department, from student to student, far more than
seems warranted. "Generally the Ph.D. takes at least
four years to get," says a committee of the Association
of Graduate Schools. "More often it takes six or seven,
and not infrequently ten to fifteen. ... If we put our heads
to the matter, certainly we ought to be able to say to a
good student: 'With a leeway of not more than one year,
it will take you so and so long to take the Ph.D.' "

"Uncertainty about the time required," says the
Association's Committee on Policies in Graduate Educa-
tion, "leads in turn to another kind of uncertainty
financial uncertainty. Doubt and confusion on this score
have a host of disastrous effects. Many superior men,
facing unknowns here, abandon thoughts about working
for a Ph.D. and realistically go off to law or the like. . . ."

A lthough roughly half of the teachers in Amer-
/\ ica's colleges and universities hold the Ph.D., more
*- *- than three quarters of the newcomers to college
and university teaching, these days, don't have one. In
the years ahead, it appears inevitable that the proportion
of Ph.D.'s to non-Ph.D.'s on America's faculties will
diminish.

Next in line, after the doctorate, is the master's degree.

For centuries the master's was "the" degree, until, with
the growth of the Ph.D. in America, it began to be moved
into a back seat. In Great Britain its prestige is still high.

But in America the M.A. has, in some graduate schools,
deteriorated. Where the M.A.'s standards have been kept
high, on the other hand, able students have been able to
prepare themselves, not only adequately but well, for
college teaching.

Today the M.A. is one source of hope in the teacher
shortage. "If the M.A. were of universal dignity and
good standing," says the report of the Committee on
Policies in Graduate Education, ". . . this ancient degree
could bring us succor in the decade ahead. . . .

"The nub of the problem ... is to get rid of 'good' and
'bad' M.A.'s and to set up generally a 'rehabilitated' de-
gree which will have such worth in its own right that
a man entering graduate school will consider the possi-
bility of working toward the M.A. as the first step to the
Ph.D "

One problem would remain. "If you have a master's
degree you are still a mister and if you have a Ph.D., no
matter where it is from, you are a doctor," Dean G. Bruce
Dearing, of the University of Delaware, has said. "The
town looks at you differently. Business looks at you dif-
ferently. The dean may; it depends on how discriminating
he is."

The problem won't be solved, W. R. Dennes, former
dean of the graduate school of the University of California
at Berkeley, has said, "until universities have the courage
... to select men very largely on the quality of work they
have done and soft-pedal this matter of degrees."

A point for parents and prospective students to remem-
ber and one of which alumni and alumnae might re-
mind them is that counting the number of Ph.D.'s in a
college catalogue is not the only, or even necessarily the
best, way to judge the worth of an educational institution
or its faculty's abilities. To base one's judgment solely on
such a count is quite a temptation, as William James noted
56 years ago in "The Ph.D. Octopus": "The dazzled read-
er of the list, the parent or student, says to himself, 'This
must be a terribly distinguished crowd their titles shine
like the stars in the firmament; Ph.D.'s, Sc.D.'s, and
Litt.D.'s bespangle the page as if they were sprinkled over
it from a pepper caster.' "

The Ph.D. will remain higher education's most honored
earned degree. It stands for a depth of scholarship and
productive research to which the master has not yet
addressed himself so intensively. But many educational
leaders expect the doctoral programs to give more em-

phasis to teaching. At the same time the master's degre
will be strengthened and given more prestige.

In the process the graduate schools will have taken
long step toward solving the shortage of qualified colleg
teachers.

Some of the changes being made by colleges an.
universities to meet the teacher shortage constitut
reasonable and overdue reforms. Other changes ar
admittedly desperate and possibly dangerous attempt
to meet today's needs.

The central problem is to get more young peopl
interested in college teaching. Here, college alumni an
alumnae have an opportunity to provide a badly need
service to higher education and to superior young peopl
themselves. The problem of teacher supply is not on
with which the college administrator is able to cope alone

President J. Seelye Bixler, of Colby College, recentl
said: "Let us cultivate a teacher-centered point of view
There is tragedy as well as truth in the old saying that i
Europe when you meet a teacher you tip your hat, whereal
over here you tap your head. Our debt to our teachers il
very great, and fortunately we are beginning to realizl
that we must make some attempt to balance the accounl
Money and prestige are among the first requirements.

"Most important is independence. Too often we si
back with the comfortable feeling that our teachers hav
all the freedom they desire. We forget that the payol
comes in times of stress. Are we really willing to allo\
them independence of thought when a national emergencl
is in the offing? Are we ready to defend them against al
pressure groups and to acknowledge their right to act a
critics of our customs, our institutions, and even oul
national policy? Evidence abounds that for some of ou
more vociferous compatriots this is too much. They see n<
reason why such privileges should be offered or why ;
teacher should not express his patriotism in the same out
worn and often irrelevant shibboleths they find so dea
and so hard to give up. Surely our educational task ha
not been completed until we have persuaded them that ;
teacher should be a pioneer, a leader, and at times a non
conformist with a recognized right to dissent. As Howan
Mumford Jones has observed, we can hardly allow our
selves to become a nation proud of machines that thinll
and suspicious of any man who tries to."

By lending their support to programs designed to imi
prove the climate for teachers at their own colleges, alumn I
can do much to alter the conviction held by many tha|
teaching is tolerable only to martyrs.

WHAT PRICE
DEDICATION?

Most teachers teach because they love their jobs. But low pay is
forcing many to leave the profession, just when we need them most

very Tuesday evening for the past three and a half
months, the principal activity of a 34-year-old
associate professor of chemistry at a first-rate mid-

estern college has centered around Section 3 of the pre-
vious Sunday's New York Times. The Times, which ar-
tives at his office in Tuesday afternoon's mail delivery,
:ustomarily devotes page after page of Section 3 to large
telp-wanted ads, most of them directed at scientists and
Engineers. The associate professor, a Ph.D., is job-
Wnting.

"There's certainly no secret about it," he told a recent
lisitor. "At least two others in the department are look-
'ng, too. We'd all give a lot to be able to stay in teachi-
ng; that's what we're trained for, that's what we like.
But we simply can't swing it financially."

"I'm up against it this spring," says the chairman of
he physics department at an eastern college for women.
''Within the past two weeks two of my people, one an
issociate and one an assistant professor, turned in their
resignations, effective in June. Both are leaving the field
one for a job in industry, the other for government
ivork. I've got strings out, all over the country, but so
"ar I've found no suitable replacements. We've always
srided ourselves on having Ph.D.'s in these jobs, but it
ooks as if that's one resolution we'll have to break in
1959-60."

"We're a long way from being able to compete with
ndustry when young people put teaching and industry on
the scales," says Vice Chancellor Vern O. Knudsen of
UCLA. "Salary is the real rub, of course. Ph.D.'s in
physics here in Los Angeles are getting $8-12,000 in

industry without any experience, while about all we can
offer them is $5,500. Things are not much better in the
chemistry department."

One young Ph.D. candidate sums it up thus: "We want
to teach and we want to do basic research, but industry
offers us twice the salary we can get as teachers. We talk
it over with our wives, but it's pretty hard to turn down
$10,000 to work for less than half that amount."

"That woman you saw leaving my office: she's one of
our most brilliant young teachers, and she was ready to
leave us," said a women's college dean recently. "I per-
suaded her to postpone her decision for a couple of
months, until the results of the alumnae fund drive are in.
We're going to use that money entirely for raising sala-
ries, this year. If it goes over the top, we'll be able to hold
some of our best people. If it falls short. . . I'm on the
phone every morning, talking to the fund chairman,
counting those dollars, and praying."

The dimensions of the teacher-salary problem in the
United States and Canada are enormous. It has
reached a point of crisis in public institutions and in
private institutions, in richly endowed institutions as well
as in poorer ones. It exists even in Catholic colleges and
universities, where, as student populations grow, more
and more laymen must be found in order to supplement
the limited number of clerics available for teaching posts.
"In a generation," says Seymour E. Harris, the dis-
tinguished Harvard economist, "the college professor has
lost 50 per cent in economic status as compared to the
average American. His real income has declined sub-

stantially, while that of the average American has risen
by 70-80 per cent."

Figures assembled by the American Association of
University Professors show how seriously the college
teacher's economic standing has deteriorated. Since
1939, according to the AAUP's latest study (published in
1958), the purchasing power of lawyers rose 34 per cent,
that of dentists 54 per cent, and that of doctors 98 per
cent. But at the five state universities surveyed by the
AAUP, the purchasing power of teachers in all ranks rose
only 9 per cent. And at twenty-eight privately controlled
institutions, the purchasing power of teachers' salaries
dropped by 8.5 per cent. While nearly everybody else in
the country was gaining ground spectacularly, teachers
were losing it.

The AAUP's sample, it should be noted, is not repre-
sentative of all colleges and universities in the United
States and Canada. The institutions it contains are, as
the AAUP says, "among the better colleges and universi-
ties in the country in salary matters." For America as a
whole, the situation is even worse.

The National Education Association, which studied
the salaries paid in the 1957-58 academic year by more
than three quarters of the nation's degree-granting insti-
tutions and by nearly two thirds of the junior colleges,
found that half of all college and university teachers
earned less than $6,015 per year. College instructors
earned a median salary of only $4,562 not much better
than the median salary of teachers in public elementary
schools, whose economic plight is well known.

The implications of such statistics are plain.

"Higher salaries," says Robert Lekachman, professor
of economics at Barnard College, "would make teaching
a reasonable alternative for the bright young lawyer, the
bright young doctor. Any ill-paid occupation becomes
something of a refuge for the ill-trained, the lazy, and the
incompetent. If the scale of salaries isn't improved, the
quality of teaching won't improve; it will worsen. Unless
Americans are willing to pay more for higher education,
they will have to be satisfied with an inferior product."

Says President Margaret Clapp of Wellesley College,
which is devoting all of its fund-raising efforts to accumu-
lating enough money ($15 million) to strengthen faculty
salaries: "Since the war, in an effort to keep alive the
profession, discussion in America of teachers' salaries has
necessarily centered on the minimums paid. But insofar
as money is a factor in decision, wherever minimums only
are stressed, the appeal is to the underprivileged and the
timid; able and ambitious youths are not likely to listen."

PEOPLE IN SHORT SUPPLY

WHAT IS THE ANSWER?
It appears certain that if college teaching is tc
attract and hold top-grade men and women, i
drastic step must be taken: salaries must be doubled
within five to ten years.

There is nothing extravagant about such a proposal:
indeed, it may dangerously understate the need. The
current situation is so serious that even doubling his sal-
ary would not enable the college teacher to regain his
former status in the American economy.
Professor Harris of Harvard figures it this way:
For every $100 he earned in 1930, the college faculty
member earned only $85, in terms of 1930 dollars, in
1957. By contrast, the average American got $175 in
1957 for every $100 he earned in 1930. Even if the pro-
fessor's salary is doubled in ten years, he will get only a

TEACHERS IN THE MARKETPLACE

$70 increase in buying power over 1930. By contrast, the
i average American is expected to have $127 more buying
i power at the end of the same period.

In this respect, Professor Harris notes, doubling faculty

salaries is a modest program. "But in another sense," he

says, "the proposed rise seems large indeed. None of the
: authorities . . . has told us where the money is coming
. from." It seems quite clear that a fundamental change in
; public attitudes toward faculty salaries will be necessary

before significant progress can be made.

Finding the money is a problem with which each
college must wrestle today without cease.
For some, it is a matter of convincing taxpayers
and state legislators that appropriating money for faculty

salaries is even more important than appropriating
money for campus buildings. (Curiously, buildings are
usually easier to "sell" than pay raises, despite the seem-
ingly obvious fact that no one was ever educated by a pile
of bricks.)

For others, it has been a matter of fund-raising cam-
paigns ("We are writing salary increases into our 1959-60
budget, even though we don't have any idea where the
money is coming from," says the president of a privately
supported college in the Mid-Atlantic region); of finding
additional salary money in budgets that are already
spread thin ("We're cutting back our library's book
budget again, to gain some funds in the salary accounts");
of tuition increases ("This is about the only private enter-
prise in the country which gladly subsidizes its customers;
maybe we're crazy"); of promoting research contracts
("We claim to be a privately supported university, but
what would we do without the AEC?"); and of bar-
gaining.

"The tendency to bargain, on the part of both the col-
leges and the teachers, is a deplorable development," says
the dean of a university in the South. But it is a grow-
ing practice. As a result, inequities have developed: the
teacher in a field in which people are in short supply or in
industrial demand or the teacher who is adept at
"campus politics" is likely to fare better than his col-
leagues who are less favorably situated.

"Before you check with the administration on the
actual appointment of a specific individual," says a
faculty man quoted in the recent and revealing book, The
Academic Marketplace, "you can be honest and say to
the man, 'Would you be interested in coming at this
amount?' and he says, 'No, but I would be interested at
this amount.' " One result of such bargaining has been
that newly hired faculty members often make more
money than was paid to the people they replace a happy
circumstance for the newcomers, but not likely to raise
the morale of others on the faculty.

"We have been compelled to set the beginning salary
of such personnel as physics professors at least $1,500
higher than salaries in such fields as history, art, physical
education, and English," wrote the dean of faculty in a
state college in the Rocky Mountain area, in response to a
recent government questionnaire dealing with salary prac-
tices. "This began about 1954 and has worked until the
present year, when the differential perhaps may be in-
creased even more."

Bargaining is not new in Academe (Thorstein Veblen
referred to it in The Higher Learning, which he wrote in

1918), but never has it been as widespread or as much a
matter of desperation as today. In colleges and universi-
ties, whose members like to think of themselves as equally
dedicated to all fields of human knowledge, it may prove
to be a weakening factor of serious proportions.

Many colleges and universities have managed to make
modest across-the-board increases, designed to restore
part of the faculty's lost purchasing power. In the 1957
58 academic year, 1,197 institutions, 84.5 per cent of
those answering a U.S. Office of Education survey ques-
tion on the point, gave salary increases of at least 5 per
cent to their faculties as a whole. More than half of them
(248 public institutions and 329 privately supported insti-
tutions) said their action was due wholly or in part to the
teacher shortage.

Others have found fringe benefits to be a partial
answer. Providing low-cost housing is a particularly suc-
cessful way of attracting and holding faculty members;
and since housing is a major item in a family budget, it
is as good as or better than a salary increase. Oglethorpe
University in Georgia, for example, a 200-student, pri-
vate, liberal arts institution, long ago built houses on cam-
pus land (in one of the most desirable residential areas on
the outskirts of Atlanta), which it rents to faculty mem-
bers at about one-third the area's going rate. (The cost
of a three-bedroom faculty house: $50 per month.) "It's
our major selling point," says Oglethorpe's president,
Donald Agnew, "and we use it for all it's worth."

Dartmouth, in addition to attacking the salary problem
itself, has worked out a program of fringe benefits that
includes full payment of retirement premiums (16 per
cent of each faculty member's annual salary), group in-
surance coverage, paying the tuition of faculty children at
any college in the country, liberal mortgage loans, and
contributing to the improvement of local schools which
faculty members' children attend.

Taking care of trouble spots while attempting to whittle
down the salary problem as a whole, searching for new
funds while reapportioning existing ones, the colleges and
universities are dealing with their salary crises as best they
can, and sometimes ingeniously. But still the gap between
salary increases and the rising figures on the Bureau of
Labor Statistics' consumer price index persists.

HOW CAN THE GAP BE CLOSED?
First, stringent economies must be applied by
educational institutions themselves. Any waste
that occurs, as well as most luxuries, is probably being
subsidized by low salaries. Some "waste" may be hidden

in educational theories so old that they are acceptec
without question; if so, the theories must be re-examine<
and, if found invalid, replaced with new ones. The ide;
of the small class, for example, has long been honorec
by administrators and faculty members alike; there i
now reason to suspect that large classes can be equall;
effective in many courses a suspicion which, if foun<
correct, should be translated into action by those institu
tions which are able to do so. Tuition may have to bi
increased a prospect at which many public-college, a
well as many private-college, educators shudder, bu
which appears justified and fair if the increases can b
tied to a system of loans, scholarships, and tuition re
bates based on a student's or his family's ability to pay

Second, massive aid must come from the public, botl
in the form of taxes for increased salaries in state anc
municipal institutions and in the form of direct gifts t<
both public and private institutions. Anyone who give:
money to a college or university for unrestricted use o:
earmarked for faculty salaries can be sure that he is mak
ing one of the best possible investments in the free world'
future. If he is himself a college alumnus, he may con
sider it a repayment of a debt he incurred when his col
lege or university subsidized a large part of his own edu
cation (virtually nowhere does, or did, a student's tuitioi
cover costs). If he is a corporation executive or director
he may consider it a legitimate cost of doing business; th
supply of well-educated men and women (the alternativt
to which is half-educated men and women) is depended
upon it. If he is a parent, he may consider it a premiun
on a policy to insure high-quality education for his chil
dren quality which, without such aid, he can be certair
will deteriorate.

Plain talk between educators and the public is a thirc
necessity. The president of Barnard College, Millicent Cl
Mcintosh, says: "The 'plight' is not of the faculty, but ot
the public. The faculty will take care of themselves in the
future either by leaving the teaching profession or bj
never entering it. Those who care for education, those
who run institutions of learning, and those who have chil
dren all these will be left holding the bag." It is hard tc
believe that if Americans and particularly college alum
ni and alumnae had been aware of the problem, they
would have let faculty salaries fall into a sad state. Ameri-
cans know the value of excellence in higher education too
well to have blithely let its basic element excellent teach-
ing slip into its present peril. First we must rescue it;
then we must make certain that it does not fall into dis-
repair again.

Some

Questions

for

Alumni

and

Alumnae

Is your Alma Mater having difficulty finding qualified
new teachers to fill vacancies and expand its faculty to
meet climbing enrollments?

Has the economic status of faculty members of your
college kept up with inflationary trends?

Are the physical facilities of your college, including
laboratories and libraries, good enough to attract and
hold qualified teachers?

Is your community one which respects the college
teacher? Is the social and educational environment of
your college's "home town" one in which a teacher would
like to raise his family?

Are the restrictions on time and freedom of teachers
at your college such as to discourage adventurous research ,
careful preparation of instruction, and the expression of
honest conviction?

To meet the teacher shortage, is your college forced
to resort to hiring practices that are unfair to segments of
the faculty it already has?

Are courses of proved merit being curtailed? Are
classes becoming larger than subject matter or safeguards
of teacher-student relationships would warrant?

Are you, as an alumnus, and your college as an insti-
tution, doing everything possible to encourage talented
young people to pursue careers in college teaching?

If you are dissatisfied with the answers to these questions,
your college may need help. Contact alumni officials at
your college to learn if your concern is justified. If it is,
register your interest in helping the college authorities
find solutions through appropriate programs of organized
alumni cooperation.

EDITORIAL STAFF

DAVID A. BURR

The University of Oklahoma

DAN H. FENN, Jr.
Harvard University

RANDOLPH L. FORT

Emory University

CORBIN GWALTNEY

The Johns Hopkins University

L. FRANKLIN HEALD

The University of New Hampshire

CHARLES M. HELMKEN

St. John's University

JEAN D. LINEHAN
The American Alumni Council

ROBERT L. PAYTON

Washington University

MARIAN POVERMAN
Barnard College

FRANCES PROVENCE

Baylor University

ROBERT M. RHODES

Lehigh University

WILLIAM SCHRAMM

The University of Pennsylvania

VERNE A. STADTMAN

The University of California

FREDERIC A. STOTT, Jr.

Phillips Academy, Andover

FRANK -J. TATE

The Ohio State University

ERIK WENSBERG

Columbia University

CHARLES E. WIDMAYER

Dartmouth College

REBA W1LCOXON

The University of Arkansas

CHESLEY WORTHINGTON

Brown University

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Photographs: Alan J. Bearden

Printing: R. R. Donnelley & Sons Co.

This survey was made possible in part by funds granted by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
That Corporation is not, however, the author, owner, publisher, or proprietor of this publication
and is not to be understood as approving by virtue of its grant any of the statements made or
views expressed therein.

The editors are indebted to Loren C. Eiseley, professor of anthropology at the University of
Pennsylvania, for his contributions to the introductory picture section of this report.

No part of this report may be reprinted
without express permission of the editors.

PRINTED IN U.S.A.

(jJcrdtko/

"Oi Shoes and Snips and Sealing W

ax

This issue of The Quarterly has been
|a particularly exciting one for me,
its editor, for two reasons. First, we
were able to publish the special ar-
ticle (see page 10) on faculty prob-
lems. Dave Garroway said, on his
TV program, "Today," March 25th,
that the article would be published
in "all the better alumni magazines
in the nation." Our thanks go to the
American Alumni Council under
whose auspices the report was pre-
pared, and to the Carnegie Corpora-
tion which granted funds to the
Council for editing costs.

Second, this issue is being mailed
to all alumnae whose addresses we
have, and our thanks go to the Col-
lege for the additional financial
bounty to make this possible.

And more hearty thanks go to the
College for the good news that next
year all four issues of The Quarterly
will go to all alumnae, beginning
with the fall issue. This means that
a contribution to the Alumnae Fund
is no longer a requisite for receiving
the magazine.

It also means that next year we
must plan our contributions to the
Alumnae Fund with honest care: we
are supporting the kind of education
we received and want others to con-
tinue to receive. More of us need to
contribute, and all of us need to
contribute more.

Now is the moment to turn back

and read, or re-read, Dr. McNair's
article (page 4j on plans for Agnes
Scott's development. I like Ed's
phrase describing this whole effort as
"Agnes Scott's vision of greatness."

Dr. Alston makes this vision more
explicit in his address at the Alum-
nae Luncheon on April 18. Be as-
sured that alumnae will be kept in-
formed as plans and decisions are
made in the development program.

The moving of Class Reunions, the
Alumnae Luncheon and the Annual
Meeting of the Alumnae Association
out of the hectic Commencement
weekend has proved to be propitious.
Alumnae can more quickly plunge
into Agnes Scott's own atmosphere
when College is in session.

So, many good heads and hands
have worked to help alumnae do just
this on April 17-18. Roberta Winter
'27 and her Blackfriars chose four
contemporary one-act plays to pro-
duce for us; three faculty members
were asked to do special lectures for
us, Dr. Garber on archeology and
the Bible, Dr. Omwake on child de-
velopment and Dr. Sims on current
educational trends. There was also a
pleasantly informal hour with the
faculty and Dr. Calder had "Obser-
vatory Open House" for us. Behind
this program lies an attempt to
answer the demand from you for in-
tellectual stimulation when you re-
turn.

Another hue and cry from you is
to continue publishing new addresses
in The Quarterly. We accede to this
demand in this issue and will con-
tinue to print them in next year's is-
sues; they cannot be reprinted in the
last issue this year, Summer, 1959.

Several of you have asked where
to get Simone Weil's books. This
stems from Miss Leyburn's article on
her writings in the last Quarterly.
The three books from which Miss
Leyburn quoted, Gravity and Grace,
The Need for Roots and Waiting for
God, are all published by Putnam,
210 Madison Ave., N. Y. 16. There
is also a paper-back edition of The
Need for Roots, published by Beacon
Press, 25 Beacon St., Boston 8.

This leads me to confess that my
printer and I have been in some
sack-cloth and several ashes; there
was a typographical error in Miss
Leyburn's name in the Winter Quar-
terly, and to the first person who
writes me about a gross error on the
front cover of that issue, I'll send,
free, a copy of a book titled: A
Primer of Alumni Work.

My calendar shows May Day back
in its proper place the legend of
Orpheus and Eurydice will be its
theme, and modern dance its hall-
mark. Then, we draw one deep breath
and Agnes Scott's seventieth Com-
mencement will be at hand, June 8,
1959.

(^^-vtuO^VW ^^sW^hf^v. >*

27

71

1

)r. George Hayes, head of the English department, and Dr. Mat
French department, are on leave this quarter, and each

garet Phyth
is traveling

ian '16, head of the
tn Europe.

Alumnae Fund Report
April 1, 1959

Total: $17,066.79

Restricted $ 4,054.6

Unrestricted _ 13,012.1

Total Contributors: 1435

22% of 6592 contacted

35% of graduates

The overall percentage of contribute
(22%) is based on the total number <
alumnae who are contacted we have 65<!
current addresses for graduates and no!
graduates. The class percentages (whi(
will be published in the summer issue '
the Quarterly) are figured on the numb
of graduates in the class.

si
nl
r l

James T. Cleland, Baccalaureate speaker
is Dean of Duke University's Chapel.

L

DEATHS

INSTITUTE

Ona Spilman Moise, Feb. 15.
Annie Trotti Wilson, Jan. 12.

ACADEMY

John Lorton Lee, husband of Lidie Whit-
ner Lee and father of Lorton Lee '49 and
Lidie Lee Walters '47, Jan. 16.

1909

Edith Lou Dimmick, June, 1958. Her
daughter is Harriet Dimmock '35.

1912

Martha Hall Young's mother, in the winter.

1926

Frances Cooper Stone, Dec. 14, 1958.
Professor L. 0. Freeman, father of Mary
Freeman Curtis and grandfather of Memye
Curtis Tucker '56. Dec. 14, 1958.

1932

Elizabeth Howard Reeve's mother, Aug.,
1958.

1935

Josephine Ailnmson, July 6, 1958.
William M. Cook, father of Sarah Cook
Thompson, Feb. 15.

32

1936

Tom Maxwell, son of Sallie McRee Max-
well and Tom, Jan. 30.

1938

Edgar B. Kernan, father of Mary Anne
Kernan, Feb. 7.

1939

Cary Wheeler Bowers, Feb. 13.

1950

Nancy Wilkinson, Jan. 31.

1951

W. Frank Woods, father of Marie Woods,
Dec. 29, 1958.

1954

A. H. Rogers, father of Gail Rogers Min-
chew and Celeste Rogers '58, Jan. 31.

Marion Tennant Moorefield's father, Nov.
25.

1956

D. Lee Williamson, husband of Nancy
Fraser Williamson. Jan. 18.
John Rogers, Jr., husband of Jean Oregon'
Rogers. Dec. 23, 1958.

I

^'rw.

w/

THE

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY

ON HAVING A POINT
OF REFERENCE

SEE PAGE 4

SUMMER

B.A. and other things in hand

eSsTToQ no o s bsuS v

mm

Jk . "**. . >

i, '

^

THE

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY

SUMMER 1959

AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE / DECATUR, GEORGI

Volume 37, Number 4

CONTENTS

On Having a Point of Reference James T. Cleland 4

Eloise H. Ketchin 8

Class News

Worthy Notes

19

COVER Jane King '59, her parents, Mr. and Mrs. M. M. King, and
brother, Al, of Bristol, Va., leave Inman Hall (where Jane served as
house president) with a small portion of the car's load. (See back cover)
Photographs by Kerr Studies. Frontispiece (by Jim Brantley) shows the
1959 baccalaureate procession.

The Alumnae Association of Agnes Scott College

Officers

Bella Wilson Lewis "34, President
Evelyn Baty Landis '40, Vice-President
Kathleen Buchanan Cabell '47

Vice-President
Caroline Hodges Roberts '48,

Vice-President
Marybeth Little Weston '48,

Vice-President
Gene Slack Morse "41, Secretary
Betty Jean Ellison Candler, '49,

Treasurer

Staff

Ann Worthy Johnson, '38,

Director of Alumnae Affairs

Eloise Hardeman Ketchin,
House Manager

Dorothy Weakley '56,

Assistant Director of Alumnae Affairs

Alumnae Trustees

Mary Prim Fowler '29

Sarah Catherine Wood Marshall '36

Chairmen

'38,

Elizabeth Blackshear Flinn

Class Council
Sara Frances McDonald '36, Constitutio
Mary Wallace Kirk '11, Education
Alice Glenn Lowry '29, Entertainment
Doris Dunn St. Clair x-'38, House
Jean Bailey Owen '39, Nominations
Virginia Brown McKenzie '47, Propert
Jean Grey Morgan, '31, Publications
Dorothy Cheek Callaway, '29,

Special Events
Barbara Smith Hull, '47,

Vocational Guidance

MEMBER OF AMERICAN ALUMNI COUNCIL

The Agnes Scott Alumnae Quarterly is published four
times a year (November, February, April and July) by
the Alumnae Association of Agnes Scott College at
Decatur, Georgia. Contributors to the Alumnae Fund
receive the magazine. Yearly subscription, $2.00. Single
copy 50 cents. Entered as second-class matter at the
Post Office of Decatur, Georgia, under Act of August,
24, 1912.

!

mm

_

""-"' "^i

ON HAVING A POINT Ol

Such A Point Agnes Scott Can Be Suggests The 1Q5Q Baccalaure%

Many OF YOU are acquainted, I hope, with the
writings of John Buchan, the Scottish novelist,
essayist, poet and biographer, who died a few
years ago when Governor General of Canada. Perhaps
you know him better as Lord Tweedsmuir. His auto-
biography Pilgrim's Way has been a best-seller, and
it may well become a classic.

There is one tale in it that has always been a sheer
delight to me. It brings together two very diverse geo-
graphical localities. One is Rothiemurchus. a little high-
land hamlet nestling under the shoulders of the Cairn-
gorms, part of the mountainous backbone of Scotland.
It is a wee bit village; in 1957 the parish kirk could
boast of but 154 members. The place with which it is
linked is Baghdad, the fabled old Mohammedan city in
Iraq, on the eastern bank of the Tigris. It was once
renowned for learning and culture; it was a cross-center
of trade and was known for its minarets and gardens
and palaces. What have these two places in common in
John Buchan's tale a Scottish village and a Mesopotam-
ian city?

For that we have to go back to the War of 1914-18.
Baghdad was a Turkish base of operations against the
British in Mesopotamia. In 1916 General Townshend had
been defeated at Kut, and British prestige was at a low
ebb in the Near East. But in 1917 a new campaign was
opened, and in due course Baghdad was captured. There
was in that successful British force a boy from Rothie-
murchus, who was wounded and shipped home. A friend
of John Buchan saw the soldier in hospital and asked
him where he had received his wound. He answered
simply and to the point: "It was twa miles on the Roth-
iemurchus side of Baghdad." Two miles on the Roth-
iemurchus side of Baghdad! And John Buchan com-
mented: "His native parish under the knees of the
Cairngorms was the point from which he adjusted him-
self in a fantastic world, and the city of the Caliphs was
only an adjunct." The Rothiemurchus side of Baghdad!
He estimated the world by what he knew as really mean-
ingful to him. He had a point of reference that was fixed,
steady, immutable, to which all else referred, and by
which all else was measured. He drew his meridian not
through the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, but through
his mother's cottage in Rothiemurchus. No longer is
Baghdad a far away place, with a strange-sounding

name, when you know which part of it is the Roth-
iemurchus side. You domesticate it. You make it a suburb
of home.

a Rothiemurchus as
hdads of the world.

IT IS IMPORTANT for us to have
we dwell in and visit the Ba^
Why?
For one thing, it gives us a fixed point amid the drift
and swirl of the passing show. It is a passport from
home in the midst of a world of alien visas. It is a point
of reference by which we fix the geography of the world
we experience. Think of David in the Old Testament,
chased all over the foothills of Judah by the Philistines;
separated from home, a fugitive with a price on his
head, a stranger in his own land. Do you recall how he
sits with his men outside the Cave of Adullam, during a
lull in the constant, miserable going-to-and-fro? He re-
flects. And his mind goes back to one place. Bethlehem
his village, his father's farm, the flocks he tended his
home. He mutters to himself, yet loudly enough for
others to hear: "Oh, that someone would give me a drink
of water from the well of Bethlehem that is at the gate."
(II Samuel 23:15) Three of his men did just that. They
broke through the Philistine lines and brought him a
skinful of Bethlehem water. That steadied David. He
went on from there to complete and decisive victory, to
the kingship. He made Jerusalem his capital city, but he
is always known as "David of Bethlehem." A point of
reference can be a stabilizing influence, partly because
it is a known and loved fact in a world of
That's Rothiemurchus over against Baghdad.

A point of reference can also be a source of endless
satisfaction. It can be a memory that sweetens the sour
days, that gives a chuckle to the heart when the environ-
ment is gloomy and the atmosphere raw. Leigh Hunt
has put that fact into memorable lines:
Jenny kiss'd me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in !
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,

Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss'd me.

change.

THE AGNES SCOTT

tEFERENCE

par ess by James T. Clef an a

These last four times have caught something that noth-
ing can destroy or even damage:
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad.

Sav that health and wealth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add.
Jenny kiss'd me.
There's a memory from Rothiemurchus that is a source
of endless satisfaction in Baghdad.

A point of reference can be a point of return. It is not
good for us to be drifters, voyagers with no home port,
tramp steamers which seldom return to the home waters.
It breeds restlessness and a discontent; it makes us foot-
less rather than footloose. We become a thing of shreds
and patches, a picker-up of unconsidered trifles. Baghdad
is fun: it is exciting; it is stimulating; it is challenging.
But it is wise to take time out, to go home on furlough,
to see the old familiar faces and the half-forgotten scenes.
Here are some lines from The Laws of the Navy, a parody
on Kipling's The Laa- of the Jungle:

When the ship that is tired returneth,

With the signs of the sea showing plain;
Men place her in dock for a season.

And her speed she regaineth again.
So shalt thou, lest perchance thou grow weary,

In the uttermost parts of the sea.
Pray for leave, for the good of the service,
As much and as oft as may be.
It may be fun to be a ramblin' wreck. But I'm sure it is
more sensible fun to be a ramblin' wreck from Georgia
Tech. Because then one does have a point of return. Don't
forget to come back to Rothiemurchus after you have
wearied your feet and yourself in Baghdad.

Thus, it is a good thing to have a point of reference.
It steadies us. delights us, and receives us to itself.

THE HOPE OF the administration and faculty of this
college is. I am sure, that Agnes Scott will be to
vou just such a point of reference. They want
Agnes Scott to be for each of you an established, known,
and loved fact. They want it to be a source of endless
satisfaction. They want it to be a point of glad return.
They want it to be Rothiemurchus in a world of a thou-
sand Baghdads.

For those of you who are graduating, the College has

continued on page 6

DR. ALSTON LEADS A COMMENCEMENT SERVICE IN GAINES CHAPEL.

ALUMNAE QUARTERLY / SUMMER 1959

BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS Continued

sought to enlarge your cultural interests; to stabilize
you with a sense oi history; to cultivate a taste in lit-
erature, in more than one literature; to stretch your
thinking and to make it thinking. It has strived to open
up enough vistas to make you wish to wander down
them for years. Not all of you will. I think of the re-
action of two students to a course on Shakespeare. One
became so excited about the dramatist and his era that
he made the Elibabethan period his avocation. He laid
possessive hands on great wealth in the commercial
world, and when he died he gave his college and his
nation and the world the Folger Shakespearean Library
in Washington.

The other student, returning to his Alma Mater for a
reunion, stumbled across his English professor and com-
mented: "There is a question I've been meaning to ask
you for years. You may recall that I never completed
your class. I left in the middle of Hamlet. Would you
tell me: How did the play ever come out?" (Yet I am
told he probably makes a good alumnus. We shall not
go into the connotation of "good." I For some of you
the elect your courses have offered you a fixed point
of judgment and taste, a norm of deep satisfaction by
which you will test what life brings to you.

In the papers you have written you have sought to
add something to the sum total of your knowledge. It
may be a very little something, at its best; but it is
something discovered, nourished, and brough to ma-
turity with care, with accuracy, with insight, and with
due recognition of the contribution of others. That is a
sound point of reference for the future.

That is true in the scientific disciplines also. There
you have been subjected to the demands of measurable
accuracy. You have been rigorously taught to seek the
truth, come whence it may, cost what it will. You have
been disciplined to obey the laws of nature. Sometimes

you have been able to' adapt them for man's comforl
but only if you cooperated with them. That is a gooi
point of reference.

Thus Agnes Scott has hoped and tried to be in dii
ferent areas, with different interests, a Rothiemurchus-
an established fact in your life, and an experience o
deep satisfaction. Morever, it wishes to be a point o
return. You will come back for class reunions, or at othe
seasons. Good, but not good enough. The folk who taugh
you know that, and they ask you keep in touch in sucl
a way that the standards set and accepted may be main
tained and improved for the College and for you. Ther
are the alumnae groups throughout the land, where no*
and again you may hear about your Alma Mater and it
hopes and fears, its disappointments and successes. Ni
matter in what Baghdad you exist, Rothiemurchus wil
be whispering its wisdom and its love. It will keep yoi
in mind of its various points of reference.

Although these individual and separate points o
/\ reference are good, there is one criticism o
A. .m. them which is valid. They are too numerous ti
make for an integrated alumnae body. Loyalty to an'
one of them would mean the fragmentation of life rathe
than its unification. They would set you off in separati
fields of enterprise, with scarcely a gate breaching thi
walls and hedges. Good fences do not necessarily maki
good neighbors. Robert Frost is right: "Something then
is that doesn't love a wall."

In a college we seek the truth. It is surely a valid as
sumption that there is a unity to truth, and that eacl
several part is what it is by virtue of its place within th(
whole. But it is an obivous fact that no one academic
study ever grasps the whole. Some would say that then
is no attempt made by any to grasp the whole. They art

!

JAMES T. CLELAND, Duke University

A Rothiemurchus for Dr. Cleland may well be
Duke University, where this Scotsman is now
the James B. Duke Professor of Preaching and
Dean of the Chapel. Born in Glasgow in 1908,
Dr. Cleland earned his M. A. at Glasgow Uni-
versity and then came to Union Theological
Seminary in New York, from which he holds two
degrees, S.T.M. (summa cum laude) and Th.D.
Davidson College has awarded him an honor-
ary D.D. degree. Aside from degrees, he is
a master of the arts of preaching and teach-
ing; in addition to holding five lectureships at
theological seminaries, he has been on the fac-
ulties of Amherst, Union Theological Seminary,

Pacific School of Religion and Duke. He wen i
to Duke as Professor of Preaching in 1954 anc[
was named Dean of the Chapel there in 1955
He is in such demand as a speaker, teacheii
and preacher that President Alston had to in
vite him many months ago to preach Agnel
Scott's 1959 Baccalaureate Sermon. His word:!
go so straight to alumnae hearts, as well as tcl
Seniors', that we wanted to share them witr
alumnae. If you would like to persue his writ
ings further, he lists the following publications
The True and Lively Word (1954) and sermon;
in Best Sermons, 1949-50 (1949) and in Thefj
Interpreter's Bible (1953-57, Vols. II and VI).

THE AGNES SCOTT

'severally content with the area prescribed to each. Each
has enough to do to probe the depths of its own particu-
lar interest. Yet there must be some unity, some over-all
wholeness, which embraces every particular area, so as
to give meaning to the business of living something
which unites literary criticism and nuclear physics,
Which links the Mendelian Law and the Beethoven Fifth,
which makes Karl Marx and Winston Churchill brothers
lunder the skin, away under the skin. How do we find
'their interrelatedness, and so the unity in which all
'cohere? Here we are driven back to philosophy and
religion. We are forced back, down and up to the idea of
God. That is all-important to any person as a person,
though it may seem remote to her as an economist, as a
nurse, as a musician, as an English major, or as a house-
Wife. Theology will always be in theory the Queen of the
Sciences. As Dr. Van Dusen, the President of Union
Theological Seminary, has pointed out: it will be the
Queen of the Sciences, "not because the Church says so,
or because superstition or tradition have so imposed it
upon human credulity, or because it was so recognized
iin one great age of learning, but because of the nature
! of Reality because if there be a God at all, He must
! be the ultimate and controlling Reality, through which
all else derives its being; and the truth concerning Him,
as best we can .apprehend it, must be the keystone of the
ever-incomplete arch of human knowledge." I imagine
that it why we are here in this Baccalaureate Service
Sbefore you graduate on the morrow. It is a recognition
of that fact that only under God is our knowledge com-
iplete; that the fear of the Lord i.e., religion is some-
thing beyond knowledge; it is the beginning of wisdom.

I hope you will make the 139th Psalm part of your
iheritage. It is the poetic prayer of a God-conscious man,
la man who knows that no matter what he thinks or says
or does, no matter where he is in life or death, he is
constantly under the eye of God. Do what he will, he
cannot escape God once he has become aware of Him.
It is an awesome fact, to become so aware of the living
God. Listen to Him:

Lord, thou hast searched me. and known me.

Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou under-
standest my thought afar off.

Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art ac-
quainted with all my ways.

For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, Lord, thou
knowest it altogether.

Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand

it is high, I can-

upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

not attain unto it.
Whilher shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee

from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed

in hell, behold, thou ait there.
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the utter-
most parts of the sea;
Even there shall ihy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall

hold me.
If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night

shall be light about me.
Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night

shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both

alike to thee.

AtUMNAE QUARTERLY / SUMMER 1959

Let us bring that norm to our condition. It is good
to be a research student in Medieval History. Yes, but
it is not the point of reference for testing life. It is good
to be a buyer of merchandise. Yes, but at most it gives
you a job. It is good to be a nurse. Yes, but how do
you relate new life and new death in your care of the
patient? What the different disciplines can each give
us is its distinctive point of reference for making a liv-
ing or enjoying a life. Each gives us a point of refer-
ence. They cannot, and do not, (or should not I, give us
the point of reference for mortal men and women, who
are set in the mystery of whence and whither. When
man thinks hard, and thinks wholly, not fragmentarily.
he begins to think of God and His ways with men. That
has been obvious in fiction like Mountain Meadow and
movies like The Little World of Don Camillo. It is the
nub of plays as old as the Antigone and as new as Fam-
ily Portrait.

We need your separate brains, your distinctive trained
minds, on this question of integration and unification in
God, because it is a question of the whole truth. We
need your insights and researches, not in competition,
but in cooperation, to help us know more and more
about God and His purpose for man. It means that the
poet and the scientist, the prophet and the technician,
the mystic and the research scholar should work to-
gether. This question of God is tremendously important
for all of you, because long before you were Agnes Scott
graduates ( and long after I , you were women, the crea-
tures of a Creator. He is the point of reference.

I HAVE BEEN talking about Rothiemurchus and Bagh-
dad. I want to change the name of one of these
towns to another name already mentioned. Baghdad
remains; it is always with us. I want to substitute an-
other for Rothiemurchus. An Old Testament story tells
us of a statesman, Daniel by name, who was caught in
a political frame-up in the town of Babylon, not too far
from the present site of Baghdad. He was commanded by
law to do something against his principles. What did
he do? He opened his windows toward Jerusalem, and
laid the matter before God. Then he defied the authori-
ties. Now, why Jerusalem? That was his homeland, his
spiritual homeland. He tested Babylon by Jerusalem.

Our churches are oriented east; the altar or the com-
munion table stands in what is the ecclesiastical East
even if it be not the geographical east. Why? Because
it, too, points to Jerusalem. It reminds us of Daniel and
of a greater than Daniel. It reminds us of Jesus the
Christ, whose standard was so consciously and consisten-
ly the idea of God that, in an endeavor to understand
him, men called him the Son of God, the Word of God
become flesh. When we begin to know what he was seek-
ing to do in the name of God. and begin to understand
what he was seeking to teach about the character and
will of God, and begin to follow in the way that he
walked through life under the eye of God. then our
Rothiemurchus will be Jerusalem. And we shall live, and
one day we shall die, on the Jerusalem side of Baghdad.

DEATHS

INSTITUTE

1936

Ruth Holleyman Patillo, April 9.

Nina Jones, March 5. Her sisters are
Lillian Jones Grey Academy, and Inez
Jones Wright "11.

Annie Laurie McDuffie Monroe, April
25.

ACADEMY

Emmakate Amorous Vretman, April 15.
Dr. Hal Curtis Miller, husband of Lil-
lian Davies Miller, Feb. 27.

1911

Virginia Hoffman Leach, March 26.

1913

Christian A. Raauschenberg, husband of
Lina Andrews Rauschenberg, March 3.

1919

Margaret Burge. April 16.

George W. Stowe, father of Mary M:
garet Stowe Hunter and Mabel Stoi
Query "43. April 18.

1938

Walter Goode Paschall, husband of El
King Paschall, May 5.

1942

Mrs. Roscoe Arant, mother of Marti
Arant Allgood and Louise Arant Rice '5
April 12.

1949

Sarah Elizabeth ""Boo" Agel. daughter
"Penny" Rogers Agel and Fred, Feb. 2

1951

J. Donald Reid, husband of Ann Kinca
Reid, Feb. 28.

1956

Jacqueline Plant Fincher's father, Man

14.

THE AGNES SCO"

Lcrfcu^ .

Brief Words On Some Beloved Agnes Scott Folk

nes Scott's Commencement, the end of the academic
ar and publishing the year's last issue of the Quarterly
ake me feel as if I should write you an evaluation, a
miming up of 1958-59.

But President Alston will do this for you and more
jautifully and better than I could in his annual report.
p, I would just like to call to your minds some of the
eople who are a part of Agnes Scott.
First, let me commend to you. individually and col-
ctively, the Class of 1959. 108 strong. As they assume
umnae status, they should know that they are, indeed,
welcome addition to the 3600 graduates of the College,
nd let me assure them that we will begin publishing
ews about them in the fall issue of this magazine.
During the year, several alumnae have been asked to
spresent Agnes Scott at colleges and universities which
ere holding inaugurations for new presidents. This
srvice on the part of alumnae is a good example of the
vo-way path between alumnae and the College. I quote
rom a report Ann Alvis Shibut '56 wrote after attend-
ig such a ceremony at the University of Hawaii: "'I did
ome thinking on the way home: I had welcomed the
nance to participate in the ceremony for several reasons:
) repay in some way all that Agnes Scott had meant to
le. . . . The experience of serving as Agnes Scott's dele-
ate .. . brought me an enriched feeling of pride in my
wn alma mater and its administration and faculty."

Other alumnae representing Agnes Scott were: Vir-
inia Sevier Hanna '27, Virginia Caldwell Payne '37,
lentry Burks Bielaski '41, Sybil Corbett Riddle '52, Scott
Jewell Newton '45, Helen Land Ledbetter '52, Frances
ireg Marsden '41, Mitzi Kiser Law '54, Isabel Ferguson
lagardine '25, Eugenie Dozier '27, Miriam Preston St.
llair '27 and Mary Ford Kennerly '19.

One page 9 you will find that Miss McKinney, beloved
rofessor-emeritus of English, has been in the news re-
ently. So, also, has been Dr. Alma Sydenstricker, pro-
sssor-emeritus of Bible, who, at the age of 93 has just
ompleted a nine-months course in Bible study, given to
ame 200 women in weekly classes in her home in Bates-

LUMNAE QUARTERLY / SUMMER 1959

ville, Ark. A story about her was published in the
Arkansas Democrat May 10, 1959, from which I quote:

"Mrs. Sydenstricker has a brilliant mind. She was
graduated from Montgomery College, Montgomery, Mo.,
her birthplace, at the age of 16. When only 22 she was
awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree at the Uni-
versity of Wooster, now Wooster College, in Ohio. She
was the first woman ever to receive a Ph.D. degree from
the school, and at that time she was among the few
women in the nation with a Ph.D. degree ....

"Mrs. Sydenstricker speaks and reads six different
languages. Her large Bible is written in six languages
Hebrew. Latin. Greek. German. French and Italian . . .
She has been 'retired' as a professor of Bible at Agnes
Scott College since 1943 after serving in that capacity
for 26 years . . . Dr. Sydenstricker is already looking
forward to next fall's classes."

The exigencies of printing space do not allow me to
quote from the many letters we receive from Agnes Scott
people or to print the letters themselves. There is space
to share with you part of one from an alumna of my
class, 1938.

Elsie West Meehan wrote of her pleasure in knowing
that the Quarterly would go to all alumnae next year,
because "we don't have any conscious interest in current
events, and like the senile, remember mostly the cold
grits on the breakfast table, the mission furniture in
Inman, the sickly atmosphere of the old Infirmary, an-
tique toilet fixtures, library at the Murphey Candler, and
a quick snack in the Alumnae House.

"It is the new Quarterly with its photograph of Hop-
kins Hall in dogwood dress that stimulates one's interest
in ASC today; class news to make her nostalgic; familiar
names of forgotten faculty members: and blueprints of
development plans to make the reader suddenly aware
of her link to something alive and growing."

{"XryrH, CjJ

3T

19

ACCALAUREATE. receiving diplomas, the most unglamorous item in the schedule,

daisy chain, hook burning, teas and cof- A typical commencement morning scene

fee are not the only events significant to on the Agnes Scott campus is the graduate

Commencement at Agnes Scott. The moving and her family striving to pack the variety

of a four-year accumulation is perhaps the of possessions into the family car.

82608

FOR REFERENCE

Do Not Take From This Room