University of Virginia Library

BECOMING ACCLIMATIZED

IN your first day at school you will be shown your room; in your room you will find a sad-eyed fat girl. You will be told that this will be your room mate for the year. You will find that you have drawn a blank, that she comes from Topeka, Kan., that her paw made his money in oil, and that she is religious. You will be nice to her for the first week, because you aren't taking any chances at


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the start; you will tolerate her for the rest of the year, because she will do your lessons for you every night.

Across the hall from you there will be two older girls who are back for their second year. One of them will remind you of the angel painted on the ceiling of the Victory Theatre back home, until she starts telling about her summer at Narragansett; from the other you will learn how to inhale.