Inaugural Addresses It was evening, early in the winter term, and Miss Cursiter was giving her usual inaugural address to the staff.

Their number had increased so considerably that the little class-room was packed to overflowing.

Miss Cursiter stood in the free space at the end, facing six rows of eager faces arranged in the form of a horse-shoe.

She looked upon them and smiled; she joyed with the joy of the creator who sees his idea incarnate before him.
A striking figure, Miss Cursiter.

Tall, academic and austere; a keen eagle head crowned with a mass of iron-grey hair; grey-black eyes burning under a brow of ashen grey; an intelligence fervent with fire of the enthusiast, cold with the renunciant's frost.