college life, the richer and fuller her after-years will be. Both middle
life and old age will be deeper and stronger. Let us think about these
girls, let us think about what it means to be a freshman, and so lessen
our difficulties and increase our pleasures; let us have a big
conception,--a large ideal always at heart--of what the _first year_
should be, and beginning well we shall be the more likely to end well.




II

THE GIRL AND THE SCHOOL


Inside school or college the girl is in several ways responsible for the
atmosphere. Merely in her conversation she can be of service or
dis-service. It may be simply a good joke which she is telling, but if
the joke misrepresents the school she will, perhaps, do lasting harm. If
she is hypercritical--and there is nothing so contagious as
criticism--she influences people in the direction of her thought; she
sets a current of criticism in motion. A student frequently gives vent
to an opinion that is only half-baked--it is well, by the way, to make
zwieback of all our opinions before we pass them around as edible--about
courses and instructors. She does not realize that some opinions to be
worth anything must be the result of a long process of baking, that a
nibble from the corner of a four months' or nine months' course will
not, however understandingly it may be Fletcherized, tell you whether
the course is going to be fruit cake, meringue or common soda crackers.
She may think that she herself is so unimportant that what she says