who to all appearances have the most money are slowest to cancel your obligations. And with dilatoriness is impatient with the editors when they call your attention to your fault. This characteristic in the active chapter begets similar traits in alumnae, and most of our difficulties along this line with both active and alumnae is found in certain chapters. This indicates that some of you are habitually living beyond your means; you would better estimate a budget of expenditure at the beginning of the coming year, sacrifice your annual dance if need be and acquire the habit of prompt payment of all your dues. One of the first lessons a freshman Alpha Phi should be taught is to pay her obligations when they are due.

"What does the Quarterly reveal concerning the alumnae ? It reveals loyalty and devotion among a great many, yet of nearly a thousand alumnae, not one-third of the number are subscribers. It is not because they lack opportunity: the Quarterly is presented to them constantly in a variety of ways. It is in most cases indifference, because what we really want we find a way for.

"Yet another phase of your character is revealed by the Quarterly. Are you courteous? Sad to relate, we all make mistakes. Sometimes even you are guilty in your Quarterly relations. But if the editors chance to blunder with your account or in mailing your Quarterly, please reflect that they are looking after a thousand details and that it is well nigh impossible to avoid an occasional error. Don't get indignant and cacel your subscription, but show your true womanly instinct, courtesy. It may be said without undue praise that this is one of the charming traits of most of our subscribers. The discourteous word or letter is a great rarity in the editorial sanctum. A few are conspicuous in ebony frames along the hall of editorial memory.

"It is absolutely necessary that we should realize that our magazine has no reason for being except as our official organ. It is ours to support, ours to use. If we do not appreciate it, if we do not contribute to its prosperity, it is nothing. It has no important hearing beyond our boundaries. Other fraternities who read it do so to learn what we are doing and they judge us by what they see in its pages. Does it indicate that we are doing anything worth while?

"Does it indicate that we are intelligent fraternity women with well defined opinions on subjects of importance to the

1

college world? Does it indicate that we are competent to do a share of the general work which each college affords us? Does it indicate that we are truly social? Are we in touch with the alumnae of our chapter and the members of other chapters with whom we may be associated?

"Does it indicate that we give loyally of brain and money for the strengthening of our society? Are we honest in all our obligations? Are we willing to sacrifice our own petty views for the sake of the improvement of the majority? Your answer to all these questions is found in the pages of your magazine.”. Alpha Phi Quarterly.

"Elect as your correspondent the man who can write, and whose sense of duty and personal responsibility is such that it is certain that he will write. No man should have this post because of his mere popularity."-Record of Sigma Alpha Epsilon.

"A new and successful feature of the convention of 1902 was an entire day devoted to the alumnae. The idea was an outgrowth of the increasing number of alumnae associations. In form, the plan originated with Mrs. Penfield, who made the programme, dividing it into two sections: the alumnae in touch. with the world and the alumnae in fraternity relations. The first class of subjects occupied the morning, and was presented under the heads of the alumnae in literary clubs, the alumnae in practical life and alumnae associations."

SUBJECTS FOR DISCUSSION.

I. "The College Woman in Literary Clubs,"

5.

Association,"

Leader,

FLORENCE WALKER

"What Should be the Character of Alumnae

Association Meetings,"

Leader,

KATHARINE LUCAS JOHNSON

6. "Alumnae Help for Chapters,"

Leader,

AVERY TRASK

IDA BONNELL OTSTOTT

7. "The Fraternity's Policy of Extension,"

8.

9.

IO.

II.

Leader,

"How Can the Fraternity be Sure to Have Officers

Capable and Well Informed ?"

Leader,

MARY D. GRIFFITH

"Should Officers be Chosen for a Period of Four Years," MINNIE ROYSE WALKER

Leader,

.

"The Alumnae and the Key,"

13.

Should not Sec. 4, Act. IV, of the Constitution

be Changed?"

Leader,

Leader,

HELEN DUNHAM.

"The Endowment of Kappa Table at Wood's Holl,"

MARY D. GRIFFITH. -Kappa Kappa Gamma.

"The membership of Kappa women in Omega Psi is not to be allowed in the future; that is, no members may hereafter join the interfraternity organization, though of course the standing of those already having joined is not affected. The establishment of a sinking fund to meet possible future emergencies points to the sound financial policy which the grand council has upheld through its past administration and bids fair to continue in this since the personnel of the counsel was not materially changed by the elections. Another very interesting matter was presented to the consideration of the convention through Miss Anna Hitchcock, of Philadelphia, who offered the fraternity a hundred dollars toward the establishment of a twelve hundred dollar fund for a table or scholarship at Wood's Holl, or some similar place. The scholarship would be offered at those colleges and universities where the fraternity has active chapters, but would be open to all properly qualified non-fraternity undergraduates as well as to fraternity members."-Kappa Kappa Gamma Key.

"The two phenomena, fraternities and literary clubs, had the

same cause the increasing number of college women. On the one hand, this increase permitted and even urged choice of companionship in college; on the other, it indicated to the female seminary woman that she would soon fail to understand not only her own daughter, but the whole trend and development of American thought; furthermore, that a spring of learning and of higher life had been opened which she ought to share.

In foreign countries where conventionalities have suppressed initiative and have long distorted and perverted judgment, the latter feeling might have died without action, or might have resulted in the useless and absurd attempt of mothers of families to go to school. In America, untrammeled and natural good sense soon pointed out a better way. Student groups were quietly formed, without a teacher, with little more than a social organization, with meetings adapted to the small amount of time left after home duties had been fulfilled and often with the modest title of reading clubs, not pretending to do any original work. The men of families occasionally smiled and asked their wives what they would do when they had finished copying the encyclopedias; but on the whole, like sensible and just American gentlemen, they encouraged the idea.

Books were the first requisite. I am sure that literary clubs, most of them women's, have done more to add to private libraries and to create town and city libraries than any other one cause. Generally they have worked through other organizations, but the desire and demand that stirred these organizations to action came from the clubs. This is proven by the number of cases in which the clubs came first and the libraries after.

The next thing needed was some members who were wellinformed, but who would not expect to be club instructors. Here the college and fraternity women came in. They were already connected with the clubs by family or social ties, having mother, aunt, elder sister or at least family friends in the ranks of the club members The college had taught them facts, and better than that, discipline. They knew how to get facts, compare, combine, reject and arrive at probable truth. Thus equipped, they were independent of a single, author, and knew how to think for themselves and to show others how to do the same. They also knew that they needed to keep up their studies after they left college or they would lose what they had gained. Best of all, some had had real teachers who taught them a sincere

and ardent love of studies, the kind of love which 'hateth nice hands' and goes into work for the sake of the thing itself.

Still it is probable that the old and new would never have fused properly if it had not been for the influence of fraternity life on college girls. Immature and proud of their scholastic honors, vain of their youth and good looks, and incapable of appreciating the value of experience, they would naturally have shrunk from the company of their elders, or else have offended and alienated them by a pert assumption of superiority. But the intimate association of fraternity life is exactly adapted to teach that form of unselfishness and good sense which is known The new graduate might not be able to estimate the treasure of knowledge and patience which the motherly woman beside her had drawn from life; but fraternity had been tried in vain if it had not taught her to keep herself in abeyance, to respect her seniors and to credit others with good intentions.

as tact.

The club elements are now well amalgamated. The women who have not been educated in college are not nearly so numerous as they were, and are not to be distinguished, on general view, from the others. In their strength and in the comparative leisure and relief from physical labor, caused by modern inventions, they have taken hold of the world's work for the betterment of humanity and added it to their efforts for personal improvement.

And now club women as a whole, that vast body of intelligent people counting itself by thousands, may repay the debt it owes to college and fraternity women. For there is a decided reaction in co-education. In some colleges it has happened that the number of girls, at first very small, has grown to be equal to that of the men and then greater. Then the women would be decidedly in the majority, the curriculum would undergo that mysterious change which designates the girl's school, fewer and fewer pupils would come and the institution would be obliged to close. This is the great bugbear of many colleges at present, and the presidents and chancellors fall into a panic if the catalogue shows an increase in the number of women students. Chicago and other universities have pointed out that the average grades of the women are better than those of the men, and that this seems to be the thing that discourages the men. Surely that ought to be a reason for better conduct and harder study on