Oh, dear, I do feel so exultant.... In one sense I do see all the life-preamble to have been needed. The experience in the United States gave me much more chance of success now,—the life there gave me health really to use the chance when it comes.
I hardly fear the future at all;—not the students, nor the work.
I am sorry not to be with Mother, but on the whole this must be best, I think.
Four years of College! All alone? Surely not literally all the time— spiritually, who knows?
What a pity, as I said to U.D. that they will use up gold for toasting-forks!
Well, I am sure the hind-wheels may run by faith for a long time now. Perhaps the tangle is beginning to unravel after all these years,—and I shall have to cry, ‘Oh, why didn’t I bear on better then!’ I suppose that is always the feeling when the cloud begins to lift. But _till_ it lifts,—
‘Still it is hard. No darkness will be light Though we should call it light from night till morn.’
And surely the Father pitieth His children.”
The numberless quotations in the course of her diary,—however fundamentally optimistic—are almost always in a minor key; but the minor key proves inadequate in the face of this great joy. One can see the dark eyes flash as she goes on,—
“‘Fair are the Marcian kalends, The proud ides, when the squadron rides, Shall be Rome’s whitest day.’
Surely I shall have to institute a festival for March 23rd. I wonder who’s the saint. It will be very odd if any other day in my life will be (if all goes well) as vital an epoch as today....
I feel as if everybody was my peer today, for I want everybody to shake hands with me. I am so glad. Dear old Mother!—why are you not here to kiss me?... O.H.?... L.E.S.?... Ursula?... Perhaps _your_ thought is nearest me tonight, because you more than any perhaps realize the day of crisis....”
“Wednesday, March 24th. How very nice it is to wake with a sense of something very good in the wind!”
Indeed it is small wonder that she was elated. Everyone had assured her that the opposition of the doctors was the thing to be feared, and now the Medical Faculty had recorded its vote in her favour. True, the permission only applied, in the first instance, to the Summer Term, and some of the professors may well have thought that the Summer Term would be more than enough to quench the ardour of the solitary woman student. But there is really no need to enquire into the manifold motives that may have swayed them. They had done what she asked, and it was scarcely to be supposed that the professors of the other faculties would prove more obdurate. One thinks with satisfaction of some of the men with whom she now had to deal,—Professor Masson was not the only rock among them. One has but to recall the names of Professor Calderwood, Professor Lorimer, Professor Wilson, and others too, in order to realise that, so far as they were concerned, her feet were on sure ground.