During the hot, vexatious days she met them with unfailing good cheer.

The inspiring example of her college teachers, and not least the belief she had absorbed on the Madison campus in her girlhood, that teaching is a high calling, eased the way for her at times when--as occasionally happened--she failed to appreciate the beauty of the "system." The superintendent of schools, dropping into the Normal after hours, caught Sylvia in the act of demonstrating a problem in geometry on the blackboard for the benefit of a fellow student who had not yet abandoned the hope of entering the state university that fall.

The superintendent had been in quest of a teacher of mathematics for the Manual Training School, and on appealing to the Wellesley authorities they had sent him Sylvia's name.

Sylvia, the chalk still in her fingers, met his humorous reproaches smilingly.

She had made him appear ridiculous in the eyes of her _alma mater_, he said.