Miss Stilwell continues:


I know there are a great many things to be taken into
consideration. I know that the college is new and that all
sorts of discouragements are to be expected, and that the best
way is to bear them patiently and hope that all will come out
right in the end. At the same time I am DETERMINED to have
a certain sort of an education, and I must go where l can get
it. . . . Oh! if I could only make you see it as we all
feel it! It is such a bitter disappointment when I had looked
forward for so long to going to college, to find the same
narrowness and cramped feeling.--There is one other thing
that Mrs. S. (the mother of one of the students) spoke of
yesterday, which is very true I am sorry to say, and that is
in regard to the religious influence. She said that she thought
that Mr. Durant by driving the girls so, and continually harping
on the subject, was losing all his influence and was doing just
the opposite of what he intended. I know that with my room-mate
and her set he is a constant source of ridicule and his
exhortations and prayers are retailed in the most terrible way.
I have set my foot down on it and I will not allow anything
of the sort done in my room, but l know that it is done
elsewhere, and that every spark of religious interest is killed
by the process. I have firmly made up my mind that it shall
not affect me and l have succeeded in controlling myself this far.