When I was sent away to school, I expected to learn something of life.  But I was disapointed.  I do not desire to criticize this Institution of Learning.  It is an excellent one, as is shown by the fact that the best Families send their daughters here.  But to learn life one must know something of both sides of it, Male and Female.  It was, therefore, a matter of deep regret to me to find that, with the exception of the Dancing Master, who has three children, and the Gardner, there were no members of the sterner sex to be seen.

The Athletic Coach was a girl!  As she has left now to be married, I venture to say that she was not what Lord Chesterfield so uphoniously termed “SUAVITER in MODO, FORTATER in re.”

When we go out to walk we are taken to the country, and the three matinees a year we see in the city are mostly Shakspeare, aranged for the young.  We are allowed only certain magazines, the Atlantic Monthly and one or two others, and Barbara Armstrong was penalized for having a framed photograph of her brother in running clothes.

At the school dances we are compeled to dance with each other, and the result is that when at home at Holaday parties I always try to lead, which annoys the boys I dance with.

Notwithstanding all this it is an excellent school.  We learn a great deal, and our dear Principle is a most charming and erudite person.  But we see very little of Life.  And if school is a preparation for Life, where are we?

Being here alone since the day after Christmas, I have had time to think everything out.  I am naturally a thinking person.  And now I am no longer indignant.  I realize that I was wrong, and that I am only paying the penalty that I deserve although I consider it most unfair to be given French translation to do.  I do not object to going to bed at nine o’clock, although ten is the hour in the Upper House, because I have time then to look back over things, and to reflect, to think.

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”  Shakspeare.

Body of theme: 

I now approach the narative of what happened during the first four days of my Christmas Holiday.

For a period before the fifteenth of December, I was rather worried.  All the girls in the school were getting new clothes for Christmas parties, and their Families were sending on invitations in great numbers, to various festivaties that were to occur when they went home.

Nothing, however, had come for me, and I was worried.  But on the 16th mother’s visiting Secretary sent on four that I was to accept, with tiped acceptances for me to copy and send.  She also sent me the good news that I was to have two party dresses, and I was to send on my measurements for them.

One of the parties was a dinner and theater party, to be given by Carter Brooks on New Year’s Day.  Carter Brooks is the well-known Yale Center, although now no longer such but selling advertizing, etcetera.