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The Normal College of New York City, continued
To exercise their memories and inspire self-confidence, the students are invited to volunteer personally selected quotations from authors, and "the multitudinous seas" of literature, from the nearest to the farthest, are explored for aphorisms, epigrams, odes, and elegies; Herbert Spencer or Emerson yielding a subtle morsel of philosophy now, and good Thomas à Kempis or Mohammed doing service then in sonorous adoration; the Attic salt of Oliver Wendell Holmes and the envenomed wit of Talleyrand, the ponderous wisdom of Dr. Johnson and the sweet piety of Jonathan Edwards, the musk-and-lavender verse of literary Ladies' Repositories and the robust humor of Shakespeare or Sheridan — scarcely any thing is deemed inappropriate, and the selections made indicate most varied reading, with, perhaps, too great a taste for the florid in rhetoric.
The pause continued. Many of the girls evidently had quotations at their tongues' ends; but the creeping horror of rising amid that great silence and facing the president and the awful-looking row of professors and guests on the platform, the nervous dread of hearing their own voices alone, and feeling that over three thousand eyes were fixed upon them — the ordeal was too much for them, and nearly a minute, lengthened by suspense, elapsed before one, with stronger nerves than her associates, ventured to rise and in a tremulous key repeat a few lines from Thomson: "In the service of mankind to he
A guardian God below; still to employ The mind's brave ardor in heroic aims, Such as may raise us o'er the grovelling herd, And make us shine forever — that is life." That came from a girl with serious intentions; and this game of authors, once begun, was carried on with spirit. Following her was a self-possessed maid, with archly dressed hair and innumerable coquettish touches and twists of ribbon, who quoted a saucy speech of Rosalind's from As You Like It with elocutionary emphasis; and then another risked all her reputation as head of a class in French with a bold excerpt from the maxims of La Rochefoucauld. The individuality that had been temporarily obedient to the disciplinary stroke of the  New York Normal College.
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Books & articles appearing here are modified adaptations
from a private collection of vintage books & magazines. Reproduction of these pages is prohibited without written permission. © Laurel O'Donnell, 1996-2006.
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