boleth, that college football had become a huge gladiatorial spectacle in which eleven men represented their college and played for unbelievably high stakes-the endowment fund, enrolment, prestige.

One lad from a small college in Ohio told me pathetically that he did not know what they were going to do at his institution. There were only about enough athletes to make up a football-team. This team had not won a game in three years. Attendance at the games did not support other athletics as it does in most colleges. Yet they feared to give up their place in the conference where they were always beaten and drop to a league of colleges nearer their own size because of the loss of prestige it would entail. To drop football and other intercollegiate contests altogether and concentrate on in tramural sports was well-nigh unthinkable.

These lads, from colleges large and small, showed the serpent's tooth to the old grads by declaring that alumni interference in college athletics is objectionable. This remark, they said, was aimed at "the great body of alumni who demand winning football-teams, and through unethical methods secure athletes for the teams of their alma mater."

IV

It would be absurd to claim that the congress reflected the opinion of 410,000 students, or even a majority of them, for the reason that the majority of them probably have no opinion. Recognizing this, the Federation adopted no resolutions. They are not marching up to educational authorities with the announcement that "we represent 410,000 students and we want thus and so done." The delegates are to develop opinion on their own campuses. They are not attempting to wield the big stick, even if they could. Even so, it is going to take intelligent steering to keep the Student Federation off the rocks. At present the offices have to be moved about from year to year. Everything depends upon the interest and enthusiasm with which the undergraduate officials pursue their duties. The inevitable trend is toward a central office with a paid secretary. While this would undoubtedly be mechanically more

efficient, it would in all probability lead to gradual fading of undergraduate participation, with the result that the secretary would become director of policy. From this point the road to uplift and the big stick is short. Already the Federation has been solicited by lady lobbyists to join some thirty other organizations in protest against the government's imperialistic policy. What, one is tempted to ask, would a Federation lobbyist represent except his own opinion?

The Federation Congress, however, does reveal the fact that our splendid isolation has little appeal to American students. Through co-operation with student unions in other countries, the Federation is arranging tours and making it possible for students intending to live in Europe for a time to have quarters in the homes of European students.

What conclusions may we draw from all this? There is no reason for believing that our students have suddenly seen the light, and have become completely intelligent in the course of one college generation. But, if you had been there, you would have seen what a fine, clean-cutlooking crowd they were, and you would, I think, have been a bit encouraged by their attitude. They are taking advantage of our mistakes, and they will go a step farther than we did. They will, that is, if they receive a sympathetic hearing from college authorities. Some educators will inform these students that their ideas are all very nice, but they "don't understand the problems of administration." Met by this attitude generally, the congresses may well rebound from the Scylla of academic adamant into the Charybdis of social carnival. The boys and girls not inclined to bigger and better Bolshevism will turn to gathering rosebuds and lovely lilies for the scandal-sheets to paint with loud yellow daubs.

In the meantime, those who are alumni may better understand the situation if they:

1. Stop worrying about what the younger generation is coming to.

2. Be less jealous of athletic prestige and social customs, and give more thought to the establishment of intellectual traditions.

3. Get acquainted with a few of the young college men and women of to-day.

T

HE occasion was the fourth birthday of Miss Patricia Bellamy, of New York. The tables in the dining salon had been joined in banquet fashion; all the guests of the house-barring not even my husband and me, newcomers that afternoon and total strangers to every one present -had been included in the celebration; and the candle-light and the shadows of fine-leaved pepper-trees moving across the windows, wavered over as odd an assortment of the aged and the decrepit, the worn and the disillusioned-relics of depleted health, depleted hopes, and depleted fortunes seeking the palliatives of milder climate and favorable exchange in this little hôtel pension in the south of France-as ever arrayed themselves in their best and foregathered as the festive playmates of a little girl.

They took their cues from the young Frenchman who, with the diminutive guest of honor, occupied the head of the long board. A little man with a slight, waxed mustache mounted on a round, guileless face, he looked, in spite of accomplished grooming and an accomplished manner, as though he had left his youth and his compulsory military training not many minutes behind him. As the party progressed from alphabet soup to fancy ice-creams, it grew evident that spontaneous play was natural to the Frenchman. He improvised games, communicated zest, and finally staged a table race between the animated bugs, which had served as favors, with the chocolate doll of the centrepiece for a prize, in which his excitement was so infectious that the little girl wound up her own self with one wildly gyrating arm and the old lady with the paralytic hand across from me was

near tears because her striped beetle did only stationary circles.

With the presents, the youngster could no longer be contained in one chair. Throughout the dinner she had been in constant small motion, like the candlelight and the pepper-tree leaves, but now her capering delight was pretty to see. She was a singularly unspoiled child: a creature in miniature with soft, pale curls, a pale mobile little face-a cheek that smiled in its contours before her lips began-and with tentative, confiding little ways. The climax of an affectionate medley of offerings was the gift of the Frenchman-a tiny jewel of a wrist-watch.

"For Patsy? It tick-tocks all by itself!" she squealed.

"Ah-and does one not expect it of a watch?" he chuckled. "It pleases you, ma petite?"

Patsy crowded closer and lifted her face, and the little Frenchman's tenderness, as he kissed her on both cheeks and then on the pursed lips, was so palpitant that it suddenly occurred to me to wonder: "Is he Mr. Bellamy? Is he her father?”

"Oh, no; that is Monsieur Pithou." The Englishwoman at my left further enlightened me: "Patsy has no father; the mother is a young grass widow, not present to-night."

"Oh! Then . . . monsieur is interested in the mother," I ventured. "Well, certainly he is interested in the child."

"You hear it, Mis' Delancey-Mis' McCosh-Ma'am Deux?" Patsy offered, skipping from the old lady with the paralyzed hand to a shy Scottish spinster with a face sadly reminiscent of George Arliss, thence to a Frenchwoman of dignity and refinement, whose smooth black hair, startling in its lustre, was now her one surviving beauty. "You hear it ticktock, Mis' Wingate?" she asked of the

Englishwoman beside me. "And you, too, Mis'-what is your name?"

"I am Mrs. Hunter," I told her. But the Italian garçon, obviously by arrangement, now appeared with a guitar. He bowed, and plunged dramatically into a warm love-song in Italian. Patsy, who again hung over Monsieur Pithou's knee, began a jigging to the music; she pointed this way, that way; now, to that amorous, entirely incongruous accompaniment, and to the breathless, the worshipful delight of all from the garçon to that terrible old Delancey woman, she ran a sad little swandance in the cleared circle of the floor. Arms playing wings, head drooping, she was absorbed in her own small pantomime, unconscious of the spectators as only a very young child can be. The Frenchman, finger to lip, signified to us that we were not, by any false note of applause, to break through that fragile artlessness. Mrs. Wingate, at my left, murmured: "The mother is a professional dancer in a cabaret. Patsy picks up steps as other children pick up words.'

Miss Patricia Bellamy, of New York, in that little fawn-colored frock of costly French simplicity, slid into her place in my picture of a spoiled favorite pursued by a wealthy young Frenchman-though what they were doing in this very modest pension was beyond me.

But Patsy died on the polished floor to the last passionate thump of the guitar; and now a brittle-thin woman, blond and rouged, flaunting a shoddy black satin of extreme cut, moved petulantly into the room and in a hard voice addressed the Frenchman: "What do you mean, Michel, making her dance in public!" "But I do not make her dance, madame"

"You'll turn her stage-conscious, ruin her! Get up off that floor, Pat! You're a bad girl to show off before people! You

"You alone," suggested Monsieur Pithou soothingly, "make her conscious. But come, madame is pleasantly earlya chair, Pierre

"But that person," I breathed, "is never the mother of this exquisite baby!" "Patsy is exactly like her mother-the same frail build, the identical features; that's the tragedy-she inherits such slen

der capacities. You and I"-Mrs. Wingate spoke with passion-"see her now at the height of her loveliness; unless she gets free of that woman, she can hardly grow beyond her four years. Just as sure as little crab-apple-trees make big crabapple-trees, she'll make another bitterbearing

"And my God, Michel, the candy! How many times have I told you Patsy's got a touchy stomach !"

The temperature of the party had chilled. Some one switched on a brutal flood of electricity, and the dance of candle-light and leaf shadows was done. Miss Delancey of the paralyzed hand leaned across the table, and shaking at me a topknot barricaded behind fancy combs, confided horribly: "Meat had no taste, eh? It's got no taste because it's treated with some kind of acid to preserve it. Shocking! . . . That Bertha Bellamy-she's not a proper person. I was in her room looking after Patsy, the little fairy, and it smelled of gin. Shocking, shocking!"

But the Bellamy woman now exploded the party with the announcement that it was Patsy's bedtime. Patsy teased, exhibited her new watch by way of delay. Mrs. Bellamy examined the watch: "Platinum?"

"Only white gold," conciliated Monsieur Pithou. "I owe madame my thanks for her graciousness in permitting me to give to my little friend the trifle."

"Time the kid was in bed," she shrugged. "Scoot, hon!"

Patsy showed sig.s of whimpering. "Time the kid' was in bed,' he coaxed, and the word from him held such. endearing quaintness as to capture even. Patsy's grin.

With her departure, the others sifted back into the main salon to their cards, their gossip, their everlasting talk of ailments. John and I, waiting interminably for the lift, which was stuck above, were inadvertent auditors of the set-to which now occurred between Mrs. Bellamy and Madame Mecari, the proprietress of the house. Mrs. Bellamy, as she sauntered through the hall with Monsieur Pithou in attendance, was requested by madame to step into the cubby-hole of an office. She was then informed that madame

must have a settlement of the bill for her

room.

"Sorry, but it can't be done-you'll have to wait."

"But I have already waited

66

'Madame," insinuated Monsieur Pithou, "chooses a bad time to broach the subject of bills. Only this moment we have wished to thank madame for her kind extras at the party of Mademoiselle Patsy."

"Ah, the infant! That is nothingnothing! I am happy to do all that I can for monsieur's party for the infant."

"My party? But you misunderstand! It is not my party, but Madame Bellamy's party for her daughter; Madame Bellamy has only permitted me to arrange the details."

"Mais parfaitement, monsieur. Mais

"You will please speak to me in English in the presence of madame, and you will please speak to me in the absence of madame concerning this bill. I think," he entreated, "if you will honor me with your trust, I can so arrange it that Madame Mecari will be happy to wait."

"Go to it. But I may as well tell you now, it's apt to be a long wait. They let me off early to-night because they've taken on a new team-pair of cheap little East Side kikes with a line of comedy patter-rotten! From now on they want me only half time. It's a damn shame! I've got a standing offer for a tour of the biggest vaudeville circuit back home, or I could land a stepping single in one of the most exclusive Paris restaurants tomorrow-but here I am, tied to this climate with a delicate kid!"

"You would not leave the child temporarily to me?" breathed Monsieur Pithou. "To me and to Madame Mecari? Ah, we would take such care of her!" "But yes, consider it!" rushed Madame Mecari. "That infant is good b-ee-siness for me the life of this old house

"Papa Micky!" scoffed the Bellamy woman. "Not a chance-while we're registering kicks, Madame Mecari, I'd like to mention that my room's got a stone floor that gets devilish cold without heat

The lift resumed its buzzing.

The only illusion concerning the trio which I now had left was that of the Frenchman's wealth; it, too, collapsed on the following morning, when John and I, entering the Menton office of Thomas Fry, that accomplice of tourists the world over, to cash in on our letter of credit, found Monsieur Pithou installed as clerk behind a mahogany counter. Installed with him was Miss Patricia Bellamy, at present intent upon the mutilation of a circular featuring highly colored scenery in Egypt, and, judging from her familiarity with the several other clerks in the office, Monsieur Pithou's rôle of day-nurse was not a new one. The little Frenchman, it appeared, was committee of one for arrangement of those day-excursions to Grasse, Sospel, etc.; indeed arrangements seemed to be his specialty. While we waited, he booked a large, difficult hotel party for San Remo-distributing outside seats to the hardy young, inside seats to the chilly old, and a place by the driver to the deaf gentleman, advising steamer-rugs for all, assuring them from his heart that Monsieur Thomas Fry's autobusses were never overloaded, that Monsieur Thomas Fry's drivers were invariably cautious.

In a lull, Monsieur Pithou recognized us, called upon me to interpret for him one of Patsy's Americanisms, advised us as to sights to be seen. Patsy's scissors pointed a desert view: "What's that?" "A camel, ma petite."

"Can Patsy see a camel?"

"Camels are in Egypt. Would Patsy go to Egypt with Michel one day? Would she go alone with Michel, without maman?"

"With mama.

When?"

"Ah. . . some time. But what do you say, mignonne, if, on Michel's next holiday, we take a nearer trip to Roquebrune with Monsieur and Madame Hunter here. We see no camels, but we climb many steps up to the roof of the world and we come close to the clouds. You like that? La petite is too housebound, I fear," he worried to me; "she does not take sufficiently the air." Patsy's skin, as she lifted her face to us with that child's wistfulness of waiting upon the moods of her elders, had a waxen quality, a texture of unearthliness, as though,

but momentarily arrested, she might melt away from us at any instant.

Having determined that the mother was not to be separated from the child and the child was not to be separated from the mother, Monsieur Pithou, in his arrangements for the life of Patsy, progressed to the next logical step-the courting of Patsy's mother. Not that one could have read this cause and effect from Monsieur Pithou's manner; he gave a perfect portrayal of the respectful, the genuinely devoted suitor. But we could hardly have stayed in that house without being very much on the inside of the affair. In addition to our geographical proximity to the Bellamys our two rooms were at a corner of the pension, the two French windows and balconies at right angles to each other and overlooking the same garden and in addition to our natural friendliness with them as the only other Americans in the house and, with Monsieur Pithou, as the only authorities on the American species-in addition to these first-hand sources of observation, we lived close to a swarm of old ladies whose chief occupation was the constant retailing of every morsel covering the past, present, and probable future of the case. Mrs. Wingate was the least biassed and the most charitable of these prattlers. One afternoon in the last hour before dinner, she and I rested together in the salon -that medley of plush furniture, gilt mirrors, plaster plaques of cupids, and elderly females bickering, criticising when a sudden, intimate glimpse of Berta and Monsieur Pithou set them all clacking. I had summed our discussion: "Well, she ought not to be allowed with the child. I'd like to adopt Patsy myself."

Mrs. Wingate said: "We all feel that -Monsieur Pithou the strongest. But Berta is jealous of the baby. Those who are nice to Patsy suffer for it; Monsieur Pithou, being the nicest of us all, suffers the hardest. You'd never believe the woman's tyrannical whims and tiradesone minute denying Patsy tested milk, which she needs, the next minute giving her unbottled water, which is really dangerous. Berta has a number of pet precepts-Patsy must not be excited, her delicate stomach must not be upset which she enforces spasmodically and alVOL. LXXXI.—37

"Even her cuddling ways," I broke in, "come from her having served in place of a Pomeranian. That appealing little diffidence, which is half Patsy's charm, comes from her familiarity with the adult slap!"

"Yes. And yet, one is sorry for the mother. She's another of those underdeveloped persons who can't help taking out their own ill luck upon the nearest object."

"You think she's really at the end of her rope?"

But a silence had fallen over the room. We looked up, to discover Berta and the Frenchman standing in the unlit hall, but framed for us, as in a stage-setting, by the draped curtains of the doorway. They had evidently just returned from a promenade: Berta wore a jacket of soiled white fur and a metallic toque; Monsieur Pithou was immaculately gloved and spatted and swung a stick. "Where is my Patsy?" he smiled.

"Oh, somewhere-forget her, can't you?" Berta put a possessive hand upon Monsieur Pithou's coat-sleeve; as he rose to the ardor of her smile, I was abruptly struck by the utter disparity between this round-faced, clear-skinned boy and that veteran coquette. The hand travelled to his cheek; I thought, for one dreadful moment, that they were going to kiss in full view of the pension. But Michel took the hand into his own, and with the gesture of gallantry bent to it. ... Berta laughed out. . . . It struck me that neither was unconscious of the audience: she flaunted a conquest, he announced his honorable intentions. They parted, the gate of the lift clanged shut.

A volley of words was released: "There, did you see that! She's imposed upon him in every other way, and now she'll marry him!" "Thirty-five if she's a day, while he-" "And so experienced, my dear, that one wonders in what moment of negligence she saddled herself with that fairy child. Shocking!"

"But can't he see," I despaired, "what