can't matter, or she may not mean what she says and be merely letting
off steam. Nevertheless her influence is exerted. Some one showed an old
lady, who had never been known to say anything in the least critical of
any human being, the picture of a very fat man prominent in public life.
She looked at it a moment, and then said sweetly: "My, isn't he plump!"
If only there were more old and young ladies like that dear soul!

There is another kind of conversation which may not be ill-natured and
yet does harm. Idle gossiping, talking about things that are not worth
while or speculating about affairs which are not our business and of
which we know little or nothing. Akin to this is fashionably slangy
conversation concerning the latest thing in books, magazine articles,
trivial plays. For even the "tone" of school or college conversation a
student is responsible. She can make her school seem cheap or
cultivated. The remarks which visitors overhear as they go from room to
room or from building to building are likely to indicate the "tone" of
an institution. A catalogue may say all it pleases about a school but in
the end the school is judged by the women it educates and sends out,
even as a tree is known by its fruit. Cultivated, strong women are worth
more in advertisement than all the printed material in the world,
however laudatory.

When a girl has received everything her Alma Mater has to give, she has
no right to be untrue to its fundamental aims and ideals, or to
misrepresent it in any way, either by what she says or by her own
behaviour. Every student in a large institution is in a sense a
pensioner. No student can pay for what is given to her. Is it not a poor
return for her to be reflecting dishonour rather than honour upon her
school?