Vassar College Digital Library

Aaron, Fannie | to Mother, Father, and Pete, 1919 October

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Identifier
vassar:44744,vcl_Letters_Aaron_Fannie_1919-10_027
Date
1919-10-[?]
Type
Extent
1 item
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: Page 1, vcl_Letters_Aaron_Fannie_1919-10_027
[? oct 1919]

Dear Mother, Father, and Pete:

I shall try my luck at a morning letter, although I shall probably have to stop in the middle of it.

I just came back from French class, where we had one of the fool mile-long assignments again. She is so afraid we won't use two hours! If I did as the others did, it would not be so bad, but whenever anyone cannot answer a question, she calls on me. I can not bluff.

The reason that I happened to be put on the committe to map out a course of class study in English, was that each group coming from one class elected one girl. There were only two from Miss Buck's division, she Miss Kitchel asked Miss Buck which one she considered the best qualified. I am surprised Miss Buck thought I was capable of anything. It meant an awful lot of reading and hunting around on the English 1 reserved sections. The idea is to read essays for class work until Christmas. The essays are to be difficult enough to understand to repay class work. We had a committee meeting in Miss Kitchel's room last night and this morning we are to present several different plans to the class. The plan that I am to present several different plans to the class. The plan that I am to present is the use Steeve's and Ristine's "Representative essays in Modern Thought" as a basic for class work and discussions. Then we are to do a certain amount of reading connected with that and report on it. In addition to it we are to do some outside on any subject we please. The other plan is to get the November issue of the Atlantic Monthly, to study it, and do library reading and writing in connection with it. A list of suggested essays would in that case be posted. That plan appeals to me more, but we will have to take a class vote. One of the members of the committee is the daughter of an English Prof at Yale. Her name is Adams. Is her father anything or don't you happen to know, Pete?

Talking about profs, the two books that I used most in my history topic which I handed in yesterday were West's Alcuin and the Rise of the Christian Schools" and another book which I just happened to think was not connected with Princeton. Another book by Professor Munro whom you always call by his whole name was pretty good for the occasion. I took "The Revivial of the Schools under Charlemagne." It was very interesting and I certainly wently into it thoroughly enough to get a decent mark. My report was about three times as long as most people's. Most of them started to work on them the afternoon before they were due, when the topic was assigned two weeks ahead. I don't believe in that. I committed the first college sin the other night in studying until eleven o'clock. I was very wide awake and I preferred that to getting up at five-thirty. Strange to say I was less tired the next day than any day since I have been here.

I suppose it is too late to tell you now. If you sent food in the last laundery, please don't send any in the next--I have too

 


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much on hand.

I forgot to tell you that last night one of the girls asked Miss Kitchel what division we were. To make a long story short. She has two English sections. I mean Freshman English. One is supposed to be very good, and one is supposed to be not quite to good. We are in the latter. It is nearer the top than the bottom, however. She said she kept girls in section that I am in that she did not consider in any way inferior to those she sent to Miss Buck. Of oucrse[sic] your truly would like to be in A1, but I really like her about ten times more than Miss Buck. She surely was great in her room last night. She was not one bit like a teacher.

I played tennis with Helen Reid yesterday. you know her, Mother. I discovered that she went to Peabody for three weeks before she went to Cincinnati, and that she reported in the room next to where I did.

We had a class meeting Wednesday afternoon to approve a class constitution and to elect officers. Almost all those that stood any showing were from McGlynn's and Main. The two up for President are good. One is in my Latin class, and the other is in miss Buck's English. We were together before.

It is raining today--I guess because I have time for outdoor exercise.

Our Math class, headed by Miss Wells, measured the height of North Tower the other day. I believe I wrote you so, though.

You asked about a week ago what group meetings are, Pete. That is the way the Students' Association operates. I think each floor of a quad hall constitutes a group. Each group elects a delegate to the meeting, at which they get their instruction about what to discuss at the next group meeting. A different representative is elected each time. The Hall president is the head of all the groups in that hall. The meetings take place from nine-thirty to ten, and sometimes later.

We had prose again yesterday in Latin. The last twenty minutes of the hour are devoted to sight prose. We never had any such thing in high school. Yesterday she gave a translation of some Latin we had read, and we had to turn it back into Latin as idiomatically as we could. I had translated to a girl on my floor about an hour before, so it was rather fresh in my mind, considering we had done it in class about two weeks ago. The girl, I just discovered, is a Jewish Presbyterian. I almost laughed in her face when she told me she was going to the Pres. Church in town on Town Sunday--she does not belong to the church, really, she says, but her family do.

We had two Roosevelt lectures in chapel that were not very good, that is, what I heard was not very good.

I got a commencement present from Mrs. A. L. Weil yesterday. It is some sort of fancy hanger.

 


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I am going to take tomorrow night off and write letters. I got a letter from Pill last night, giving me some dope about Bryn Mawr. Hope you see her at the Harvard game, Pete. She is sure I cannot be as busy as she is--I am sure She cannot be as busy as I am. Her paper had the college seal on it. She wrote in parenthesis that that was what it was. I wonder what she thinks I am. She takes only three what she calls Main subjects--Economics, Latin, and English. In addition to that she is tutoring in German and Latin poetry. Evidently her September exams were unsuccessful. They had the Belgian Queen there.

Otherwise nothing new, except that the hour is up.

Without being homseick[sic] or anything like that, I am looking forward to November 15.

Love,




 


: Page 4, vcl_Letters_Aaron_Fannie_1919-10_027
Mr. and Mrs. Marcus Aaron,

402 S. Winebiddle Ave.,

Pittsburgh, Pa.

 


: Page 5, vcl_Letters_Aaron_Fannie_1919-10_027
P. O. Box 882,
Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, N. Y.