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drained her
independence. She said mournfully, "Would you take care of me?" She
touched his hand. It was warm, solid.
"You bet I would! We'd have, Lord, we'd have bully times in Yankton,
where I'm going to settle----"
"But I want to do something with life."
"What's better than making a comfy home and bringing up some cute
kids and knowing nice homey people?"
It was the immemorial male reply to the restless woman. Thus to the
young Sappho spake the melon-venders; thus the captains to Zenobia;
and in the damp cave over gnawed bones the hairy suitor thus protested
to the woman advocate of matriarchy. In the dialect of Blodgett College
but with the voice of Sappho was Carol's answer:
"Of course. I know. I suppose that's so. Honestly, I do love children.

But there's lots of women that can do housework, but I--well, if you
HAVE got a college education, you ought to use it for the world."
"I know, but you can use it just as well in the home. And gee, Carol,
just think of a bunch of us going out on an auto picnic, some nice
spring evening."
"Yes."
"And sleigh-riding in winter, and going fishing----"
Blarrrrrrr! The orchestra had crashed into the "Soldiers' Chorus"; and
she was protesting, "No! No! You're a dear, but I want to do things. I
don't understand myself but I want--everything in the world! Maybe I
can't sing or write, but I know I can be an influence in library work.
Just suppose I encouraged some boy and he became a great artist! I will!
I will do it! Stewart dear, I can't settle down to nothing but
dish-washing!"
Two minutes later--two hectic minutes--they were disturbed by an
embarrassed couple also seeking the idyllic seclusion of the
overshoe-closet.
After graduation she never saw Stewart Snyder again. She wrote to him
once a week--for one month.

VI
A year Carol spent in Chicago. Her study of library-cataloguing,
recording, books of reference, was easy and not too somniferous. She
reveled in the Art Institute, in symphonies and violin recitals and
chamber music, in the theater and classic dancing. She almost gave up
library work to become one of the young women who dance in
cheese-cloth in the moonlight. She was taken to a certified Studio Party,
with beer, cigarettes, bobbed hair, and a Russian Jewess who sang the
Internationale. It cannot be reported that Carol had anything significant
to say to the Bohemians. She was awkward with them, and felt ignorant,

and she was shocked by the free manners which she had for years
desired. But she heard and remembered discussions of Freud, Romain
Rolland, syndicalism, the Confederation Generale du Travail, feminism
vs. haremism, Chinese lyrics, nationalization of mines, Christian
Science, and fishing in Ontario.
She went home, and that was the beginning and end of her Bohemian
life.
The second cousin of Carol's sister's husband lived in Winnetka, and
once invited her out to Sunday dinner. She walked back through
Wilmette and Evanston, discovered new forms of suburban architecture,
and remembered her desire to recreate villages. She decided that she
would give up library work and, by a miracle whose nature was not
very clearly revealed to her, turn a prairie town into Georgian houses
and Japanese bungalows.
The next day in library class she had to read a theme on the use of the
Cumulative Index, and she was taken so seriously in the discussion that
she put off her career of town-planning--and in the autumn she was in
the public library of St. Paul.

VII
Carol was not unhappy and she was not exhilarated, in the St. Paul
Library. She slowly confessed that she was not visibly affecting lives.
She did, at first, put into her contact with the patrons a willingness
which should have moved worlds. But so few of these stolid worlds
wanted to be moved. When she was in charge of the magazine room the
readers did not ask for suggestions about elevated essays. They grunted,
"Wanta find the Leather Goods Gazette for last February." When she
was giving out books the principal query was, "Can you tell me of a
good, light, exciting love story to read? My husband's going away for a
week."
She was fond of the other librarians; proud of their aspirations. And by

the chance of propinquity she read scores of books unnatural to her gay
white littleness: volumes of anthropology with ditches of foot-notes
filled with heaps of small dusty type, Parisian imagistes, Hindu recipes
for curry, voyages to the Solomon Isles, theosophy with modern
American improvements, treatises upon success in the real-estate
business. She took walks, and was sensible about shoes and diet. And
never did she feel that she was living.
She went to dances and suppers at