Cambridge sketches
Estelle M. H. Merrill, Ed.

“Everything is intellectual here,” said a Western girl last year in anything but a cheerful tone; “even inanimate objects seem to possess intelligence. Yesterday the maid came in to fill my lamp, and as she filled it, the can whistled. All at once the whistle ceased, and the maid, without looking to see if the lamp were full, screwed down the top and prepared to go.”

“Now I may not be philosophic but I am curious, so I said, ‘Mary, what made the can whistle?’ ”

“What do you suppose she answered? ‘Sure, miss, it's the intilligint oil can, it tells when the lamp's full.’ ”

It is this “intelligent-oil-can” atmosphere which the stranger at Radcliffe finds in her college life. and it is at once depressing and stimulating. She is expected to be alive, not only to her own work, but to the work of others, to have a respectable fund of general information, and to know something of what is going on in the world around her.

To be alive even to her own work is not at all times an easy task, for each student is expected to carry the regulation four full courses, and many of the students do more than this amount. Woe to the girl, though, who tries to take work beyond her strength, or who makes up her four full courses by taking seven or eight half courses. If she has not had careful preparation and is not very level-headed, her work will soon drive her into becoming what is popularly denominated a “Radcliffe grind.”

It is a curious fact, by the way, that no girl is proud of being called a “grind.” No matter how long and steadily she works, apply this term to her