Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/409

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
KENNETH BURKE
347

If she appeared at any of the games, the students, at a sign from their cheer-leader, would doff their caps, and cheer for her. There is no greater tribute to her tact than the fact that she was honorary head of both the Athenian Literary Society and the Society of Fine Arts, two organizations which were always facing each other with backs hunched and teeth bared. It was as patroness of these two organizations that she acquired the flattering nickname of "Mrs. Maecenas." For of all her interests in student activities, her guidance of "the arts" had been most faithful.

In the course of her five years at the university Mrs. Maecenas had judged twelve debates on the single tax, fifteen on the inferiority of women to men, and nine on various phases of prohibition, state, national, and locally optional; and to her credit be it said that her verdicts were not always the same on the same subjects. Mrs. Maecenas had read a gross of horror stories that had received good grades in English Composition 22, and were written after the manner of Edgar Allan Poe; and another gross or two that had been cribbed from O. Henry. Mrs. Maecenas had gone through thousands of rhymed documents on pubescent and adolescent affections, still in her capacity as a protectrice of the arts. And when the war started, and a big man in the German department had called the French a degenerate nation, Mrs. Maecenas had written a charming letter to the school paper in which she denounced the Huns and spoke very beautifully of modern French poetry.

But the truth is that Mrs. Maecenas was getting weary. She had seen ten semesters of the university, and her hopes of mothering a little renaissance out here in the wilderness had gradually pined away as the engineering and agricultural schools grew steadily more vigorous. Everywhere, everywliere, typical young Americans were springing up, sturdy tough daisy-minds that were cheerful, healthy, and banal. How could art thrive here, she asked herself, in a land so unfavourable to the artist's temper! These lusty young throats that cheered her at the football games, they were miserably sane and normal. And Mrs. Maecenas found herself entertaining uncharitable feelings towards these fine young men and women who thought so much of her.

Under the plea of ill health, she began to appear less at school festivities. Also, her child was getting older now, and the need of giving it more attention added motivation to her retirement. She