Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/84

tage of being the exceptions instead of the rule. The novelty of their position dazes them a little; and, like the realistic story-tellers and the impressionist painters, they are perhaps more occupied with their points of view than with the things they are viewing. This is not incompatible with a very winning simplicity of demeanor, and the common jest which represents the college girl as prickly with the asperities of knowledge, is a fabric of man's jocund and inexhaustible imagination. Mr. Barrie, it is true, tells a very amusing story of being invited, as a mere lad, to meet some young women students at an Edinburgh party, and of being frightened out of his scanty self-possession when one of them asked him severely whether he did not consider that Berkeley's immaterialism was founded on an ontological misconception. But even Mr. Barrie has a fertile fancy, and perhaps the experience was not quite so bad as it sounds. There is more reason in the complaint I have heard many times from mothers, that college gives their daughters a distaste for social life, and a rather ungracious disregard for its amenities and obligations.