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Kansas University Weekly.
WHILE PEREGRINATING about the University the other day the writer wandered into the Art Department where he found the students busily engaged in their work. Pictures in water colors, charcoal and oil were scattered about in artistic profusion. The pictures in water colors are the favorite ones with the students. The pictures of the late ex-Governor Robinson and of Dr. Cordley especially attracted his attention, as they bore evidence of superior skill. The cast of Psyche, the Winged Dancer and the Fawn just received by this department are very beautiful. If the interest of the students in their work is an index of what is being done in art in the University, the Art Department is in a very flourishing condition.
THE COURSES of study in the school of Arts should be thoroughly reclassified and rearranged. They are in many cases not only incongruous in arrangement but limit unjustly the work of certain students. Remotely related branches are included in a single department. This is particularly true of those departments which do not offer work until the Junior and Senior years. Thus a student is deprived in two ways of the opportunity of doing thorough work in some branches, for he must distribute his four optional terms between two branches which may be of equal importance to the line of study he is pursuing, and must include all introductory work in the four terms, as none is given previous to the Junior year.
Four Student Composites.
From a well defined class of about two hundred girls in the University the following composite is made. She is quiet and reserved, but has opinions of her own upon all subjects of importance, and although she has not that broad culture of composite number two, she is his equal or superior in scholarship. She is polite, kind, congenial and ever ready to assist those who need assistance if the means is within her power. She has the purity of Puritan Pricilla and greater tact and independence. She is altogether a typical Kansas girl of whom
the State and perhaps some day the nation will be proud.
The composite is made from a very small number of girls and we are thankful that the number is small. This composite girl has almost no redeeming feature unless it be that she is a fairly good student. As an energetic practical person she is a failure. She is pretty but her pretty face makes her vain and this otherwise pleasing feature is her greatest detriment. It causes her to lose sight of her real aim in life and she passes present, precious moments basking in the sunshine, while those about her are making serious preparation for their life work. Her dainty appearance precludes the thought that she will ever do any work, if she can help it, and the thought of practical every day life gives her cold shivers. She is alas! a butter-fly of fashion. The Golden Rule "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is mere words in her ears. As an illustration—if she meets a girl acquaintance upon the street who is not of her social set, she looks blankly at her or does not notice her at all. Oh Tempora! Oh Mores!
This girl composite is disliked by the majority of the people who know her, envied or tolerated by those of her own social clique and admired perhaps by passing strangers and a few "cholly" boys who let their hearts rule them body and soul.
A pertinent vital question to this girl is, "what will your future be? Practical fellows who rise high in this world do not wish to cultivate her acquaintance, and impractical fellows usually have enough to do to provide for themselves. Perhaps with the reign of the new woman a place will be carved out for her. She could however make a noble woman if she would regenerate herself now, before the bands of habit which are stronger than bands of steel, fasten to her these forbidding features which make her in later years a woman unhonored and unloved.
Again we call attention to exceptions which exist in this class as well as in the other three classes.