The Smith College Monthly Vol 25 PDF Download

Excerpt from The Smith College Monthly, Vol. 9: October, 1901-June, 1902 Most of us come to college with a tabula rasa on which to make our own mark; some few have antecedents with a repu tation to bear the weight of and other few come with a fame already heralded in the college by zealous friends. But the college, or more especially the class, reserves to itself the right of making up its own mind about us. This it does gradually by the aid of our looks, - if perchance we figure on the plat form Of our first class meeting, - by the aid of our recitations, our athletic acquirements, our dramatic talent, and our gen eral deportment. It picks out in the first year or two those whom it considers to have been born great; it admires their genius, and honors it by making of it a yardstick on which to measure the lesser attainments of the majority. Then there is another class of those who have greatness thrust upon them. They come into prominence by some unexpected circumstance or coincidence of their environment or a friend's confidence in their latent possibilities puts them in office; or the chance re mark Of an Observer sets rolling the ball of favorable opinion, which gathers as it goes, and leaves behind it a track as ephem eral as its own substance. Vague things are these, and hard to analyze, where reputation springs up like a mushroom of one night's growth, with no apparent depth of earth. Yet it does not always meet with the mushroom's early fate. One is justi fied in a good deal of seemingly blind faith in human nature by finding how often a reputation meets its equal in reality. Rep utation is a monster that may swell for a time, like Aesop's frog, on air but if it is not to come to the same end, or Shrink to emaciation as the result of its unnatural gymnastics, it must have more substantial stuffing; and it is very likely to get it. Many a student here meets so well the conditions of the great ness thrust upon her that one is convinced that many fail of greatness merely for lack of an opportunity to develop it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.