Free When Patty Went to College by Jean Webster

surely isn't wasting these precious last moments in anything frivolous."
    "She's in her bedroom, with a geometry in one hand and a Greek grammar in the other, trying to learn them both at once."
    "Tell her to come out here; I want to give her some good advice"; and Patty sat down on the divan and surveyed the dictionary-bestrewn room with an appreciative smile.
    "Oh, Patty, I'm so glad to see you!" Lady Clara exclaimed, appearing in the doorway. "The sophomores have been telling us the most dreadful stories about examinations. They aren't true, are they?"
    "Mercy, no! Don't believe a word those sophomores tell you. They were freshmen themselves last year, and if the examinations were as bad as they say, they wouldn't have passed them, either."
    A relieved expression stole over the three faces.
    "You're such a comfort, Patty. Upper-classmen take things easily, don't they?"
    "One gets inured to almost anything in time," said Patty. "Examinations are even entertaining, if you know the right answers."
    "But we won't know the right answers!" one of the freshmen wailed, her terror returning. "We simply don't know anything , and Latin comes to-morrow, and geometry the next day."
    "Oh, well, in that case you can't get through anyway, so don't worry. You must take it philosophically, you know." Patty settled herself among the cushions and smiled upon her frightened auditors with easy nonchalance. "As an example of the uselessness of studying at the eleventh hour when you haven't done anything through the term, I will tell you my experience with freshman Greek. I was badly prepared when I came, I didn't study through the term, and, without exaggeration, I didn't know anything. Three days before examinations I suddenly comprehended the situation, and I began swallowing that grammar in chunks. I drank black coffee to keep awake, and worked till two in the morning, and scarcely stopped cramming irregular verbs for meals. I simply thought in Greek and dreamed in Greek. And, if you will believe it, after all that work I flunked in Greek! It shook my faith in studying for examinations. I've never done it since, and I've never flunked since. I believe that it's just a matter of fate whether you get through or not, so I never bother any more."
    The freshmen looked at one another disconsolately. "If it's all decided beforehand, we're lost."
    Patty smiled reassuringly.
    "A little flunking now and then Will happen to the best of men."
    "But I've heard they send people home, drop them, you know, if they flunk more than a certain amount. Is that so?" Lady Clara inquired in hushed tones.
    "Oh, yes," said Patty; "they have to. I've known some of the brightest girls in college to be dropped."
    Lady Clara groaned. "I'm awfully shaky in geometry, Patty. Do they flunk many girls in that?"
    "Many!" said Patty. "The mere clerical labor of writing out the notes occupies the department two days."
    "Is the examination terribly hard?"
    "I don't remember much about it. It's been such a long time since I was a freshman, you see. They picked out the hardest theorems, I know--things you couldn't even draw, let alone demonstrate: the pyramid that's cut in slices, for one,--I don't remember its name,--and that sprawling one that looks like a snail crawling out of its shell: the devil's coffin, I believe it's called technically. And--oh, yes! they give you originals-- frightful originals, like nothing you've ever had before; and they put a little note at the top of the page telling you to do them first, and you get so muddled trying to think fast that you can't think at all. I know a girl who spent all the two hours trying to think out an original, and just as she got ready to write it down the bell rang and she had to hand in her paper."
    "And what happened?"
    "Oh, she flunked. You couldn't really blame the instructor, you know, for not reading between the lines, for there weren't any lines to read between; but it was sort of a pity, for the girl really knew an awful