Motion Study at St. Katharine's

by Elizabeth Jordan

Motion Study at St. Katharine's

BY ELIZABETH JORDAN

IT is indeed hard to begin this narrative—there are so many important things that ought to be said in the first paragraph. Perhaps the most important of all is this, so I will say it at once and let the rest wait.

No one can appreciate this story unless she has tried to do good, and failed. If she has, and if she remembers exactly how she felt when failure fell, and if she has read the lives of Cleopatra and Bryan and Napoleon, she may read on.

It began thus: I was sitting at my desk in the study-hall one evening last week, wondering whether I should read Newcomb's Principles of Political Economy or Madame Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled. I had learned my lessons, and I had half an hour left, which was enough to learn all about either political economy or theosophy. But I was 'most sure it wasn't enough time to learn all about them both; so I sat for a minute fingering the two books and wondering which I would tear the literary heart out of, as another author beautifully expresses it.

Sister Irmingarde was at her desk at the head of the study-hall, sitting with her eyes on a book that lay open before her. When she is reading one cannot see her eyes at all—only eyelids that seem closed, and long, black eyelashes resting on her cheeks. This night, as I looked at her, her face seemed to me like a beautiful home that some one had locked up and left, with the shutters closed and all the blinds drawn down. While I was thinking this, and wondering whether the other girls were clever enough to think of it, and reaching for my note-book so I could preserve it, the study-hall, which had been cool and gray and ordinary, suddenly became bright and warm and cheerful. A kind of ripple passed over the girls, like a breeze touching a field of grain, and they all seemed to sway forward a little, as if they were pulled by invisible strings. Full well did I know what those things meant. Sister Irmingarde had raised her eyes from her book and was smiling.

I love to see her do that. It is almost the only thing that diverts my mind when I am thinking of my art. I happened to catch her eye, so I smiled back, of course, with all my heart, and she made a little gesture which meant that I was to come to her desk. I was there almost before she had finished the gesture, and she closed the book she had been reading and offered it to me.

"Here is a book that should interest you, May," she said. "Look it over when you have time and tell me what you think of it." Then, as she was handing it to me, she opened it again and showed me a paragraph she had marked in the second chapter, and told me to read that first because it would give me the thing in a nutshell. I thanked her and took the book back to my desk. There were twenty-five minutes left of the study hour, so I slid Newcomb and Blavatsky out of the way and began the new book without losing a second. It is always thrilling to read anything Sister Irmingarde recommends, even when the book is instructive; and I'd rather talk about books with her than go to three matinées.

Of course I started at the place she had marked, and I will admit to the gentle reader that as I read the icy chill of disappointment touched my soul. What I wanted to read about was Life, and this book was about motions—not emotions, you know; just plain motions.

The writer said motions were important indeed, and that everybody wasted a great many of them, and that the world would be a changed and wonderful place if people would be more careful about them. In the paragraph Sister Irmingarde had marked he told about a girl who made boxes in a factory. She was very quick, and she made more boxes in five minutes than any other girl in any factory anywhere. She was so wonderful that people came to the box-factory to see her work; and she won prizes and held the box-making record of the world, and all her dear companions were jealous of her. The man who wrote the book said he heard about how fast she worked, so he got permission to visit the factory and watch her—for he was almost sure that she wasted motions.

The gentle reader will admit that this was not exciting, but it became more interesting when the man got to the factory and sat down to watch the girl make boxes. He did not fall in love with her. I hasten to explain this at once, lest the gentle reader expect him to, and be disappointed, as I was. No. He just watched her make boxes; and he discovered that his terrible, innermost suspicions were correct. She wasted motions. Even this wonderful girl wasted them. I don't remember exactly what the figures were, but I think she wasted twenty-eight motions every time she made a box. She made thirty-five boxes every five minutes, so you can see for yourself that the poor girl wasted nine hundred and eighty motions every five minutes, instead of saving them all and using them to make seventy- two boxes in five minutes, as she could have done if she had been really clever and careful about her motions.

When the man told this to the girl she was annoyed and spoke rudely to him—for she had been greatly praised in the past, as I said before. But he pointed out how much she could earn by making seventy-two boxes instead of thirty-five, and he showed her how to do it and to save her motions instead of throwing them carelessly around the factory, as it were. (I put in that "as it were" without thinking, and now I know that when I did it I wasted eighteen motions, for the words were not necessary. Motion study makes life seem terribly serious.)

We will now return to the girl making the boxes. In half an hour after the man met her she was making seventy-two boxes every five minutes, with tears of joy on her pale cheeks.

After telling about this unusual and interesting girl, the author went on to show how we all waste time and money by wasting our motions, and his book told how "fatigue-eliminating devices" would help every one to work "with the reliability of a steam-valve, the joy of a hunting-dog, and the inspiration of an artist." All we have to do in manual work, he said, is to shorten the distance the right hand has to move, and have the left hand in position to begin the next motion right off, and remember our "variables," and consider separately every element that affects the amount of work we are able to turn out. He said in writing, for instance, we ought to save at least one motion on every letter of the alphabet, and shorten the distance the hand has to travel, besides.

That's all I read then. My brain felt tired and not very clear when I got through. I put my hand up to my brow to see if it was really as hot as it felt, and I remembered that I was wasting a motion, so I took it down in a hurry and wasted another. But of course I couldn't leave it there. Then I looked around at my dear companions, to divert my mind.

Kittie James sat just across from me, sharpening a pencil and wasting so many motions that it made me feel sick to watch her. 'Most every time she shaved off a piece of wood she laid down the knife and looked at the pencil and picked up the shaving and threw it in the waste-paper basket, instead of waiting to throw them all in at once. It was a dreadful sight, after what I had been reading. I turned a hopeful gaze on Mabel Blossom. She was tearing a paper into little bits and dropping half of them on her desk and getting them mixed up with her notes, and, naturally, having to pick them all up again. Maudie Joyce was copying something from a book she was reading, and wasting at least one hundred motions over every paragraph. I looked around the room. Every blessed girl there was wasting motions just as fast as she could waste them, and as I gazed I saw my duty. I realized that what this noble man was doing out in the world I could do in our quiet convent halls. I could "stop the waste" and develop "increased efficiency," as he called it. I thought it over quickly, and my brain throbbed like an engine, I decided that first of all I would teach myself, and next I would teach the girls.

I wanted to begin that very minute, so I sat for a long time studying the things on my desk and planning how I could get them all into the big drawer below it with one motion. It was hard, for there were lots of things there. At last I tried to do it with a noble sweep of the arm, but I didn't get it just right; so the things all fell off the desk, and the ink spilled, and the pens and pencils rolled over the floor and got under the girls' feet, and I had to get down on my hands and knees and grovel around for them for five minutes. Sister Irmingarde looked dreadfully surprised and all the girls giggled. But I didn't mind very much. I had begun my new Work; and, anyway, I saved one motion by not returning Mabel Blossom's nod when we separated in the hall. Mabel had giggled harder than any one else over the things I spilled.

The next morning I started St. Katharine's Motion-Study Club, and made myself the president. All the girls joined right off. Most of them seemed to think it was going to be like moving pictures, but they realized their sad error before I got through with them. We went to work in a scientific way, as the man advised in the book. The first thing to do was to study the girls carefully and make notes of their motions, and show them how they could improve. I interested Kittie James immediately by telling her how many motions she wasted at the table. Kittie loves to eat, so I explained to her how much more she could eat if she saved her motions. We have only half an hour for meals, and Kittie saw the point at once; but she was not clever enough to apply it the way she should have done. Her idea was to save her own motions by making the other girls wait on her. I pointed out this error, and Janet Trelawney helped me by making some sketches showing Kittie saving motions at the table. Kittie looked at the pictures and resigned from the club, but I got her back again the next night by giving a spread for her in my room.

Janet's pictures gave me a very good idea. She had a camera, and I persuaded her to take snapshots of all the girls when they didn't know it but were wasting motions. These gave us what real writers call "powerful weapons." After we made a careful study of every girl, and wrote out a list of things she had to do regularly, we "enumerated all the motions required in that effort," as the author of the book advised, and we showed the girls that they were throwing away thousands of motions every day. It was simply fascinating after that to see how things worked out. Of course 'most every girl started wrong. Janet Trelawney, who plays the piano beautifully, decided that she could eliminate a lot of motions by not practising any more, and Sister Cecilia had a dreadful time with Janet until I heard about it and pointed out her mistakes to the poor, misguided child. I showed Janet how she could save motions by not glancing at the clock during practice hour, and by not getting up and looking into the garden until she got through. And Sister Cecilia was really enthusiastic when I showed her and Janet how many motions Janet could save by memorizing all her music and not having to turn the sheets. There were over three hundred motions saved every hour, but Janet was cold and unresponsive when I discovered this.

I turned my attention to Adeline Thurston next, and my heart leaped with joy over the dear girl's delight when I showed her how many motions she could save in writing. Adeline writes poetry, and I proved that by making her letters ever so much smaller she could write ever so many more poems without tiring her hand. Adeline was so grateful she almost cried, for she is a frail child and has to save her strength. She tried my plan right off and it worked beautifully, except that the next time she composed a poem she made the letters so small she couldn't read them afterward, so her beautiful poem was lost to the world. Adeline resigned from the club that very day, and I had to give her my new belt-buckle to get her back. We had to have her, for she is always the secretary of every club and writes the most beautiful Minutes. She wouldn't save any motions on her poetry after her sad experience, but she saved thousands on the reports of the Motion-Study Club. She couldn't read them, and nobody else could, either; but of course nobody dared to complain.

The most interesting experiment of all was with Mabel Muriel Murphy. Long ere this I have told the gentle reader how messy Mabel Muriel used to be about her clothes, and how, with Sister Edna's help, she reformed and became the neatest girl at St. Katharine's. Since then it has always taken Mabel one full hour to dress and undress. As we are only allowed half an hour, Mabel Muriel had to get up thirty minutes earlier than the rest of us every morning, and go to her room half an hour earlier every night. Thus she missed many pleasant and instructive occasions, including "spreads." Mabel Muriel told me with her own lips that this was often irksome, and when I told her I thought by saving motions she could dress and undress in thirty minutes her face lit up with joy.

The first morning I stole into her room and tried to show her how to save motions we were both an hour late. You see, we made the motions fewer, but as we had to study each motion a long time before we made it, it wasn't really much saving. Mabel Muriel was interested, though, and bound to keep at it; so the second morning, when she dressed without my help and tried to apply our principles, she was an hour and a half late, and Sister Edna called her aside and uttered stern reproaches. The third morning Mabel Muriel came into the class-room on time, but her hair was over her left ear, and three buttons on the back of her blouse were unbuttoned, and her placket was open. Sister Edna had to talk to her again, and her experiment could not yet be called a success.

We then watched with fascinated interest a grim contest between science and affection. Mabel Muriel was dreadfully anxious to learn to dress in thirty minutes, and just as anxious to please Sister Edna, who is her Ideal, by looking neat. So sometimes she would be neat and late, and sometimes messy and on time, but never neat and early, as she was wont to be ere she took up motion study. It was a terrible thing to watch, for when Mabel Muriel Murphy sets her jaw and goes at anything she keeps at it with awful determination. I tried to stop her, for I felt responsible; but as another Literary Artist says, "I had put in motion forces I could not control." All I could do, alas! was to stealthily button Mabel Muriel up the back whenever I got a chance in a class-room.

Was I, all this time, the gentle reader asks, neglecting my dear friends Maudie Joyce and Mabel Blossom? Nay. But the things that happened to them are almost too sad to describe. I fain would pass them o'er, but that would not be Art. The true Literary Artist writes of Life as it is, even when he has to plunge his pen into the quivering human heart to do it and write his words with Blood. Therefore, I continue.

In the beginning Mabel and Maudie were not very enthusiastic over the Motion-Study Club. They said they thought motion study was silly. But after I had talked to them, and Janet had made a lot of snapshots when they didn't know it, and I had read some of the man's book to them and told them all about the girl in the box-factory, they began to understand. Mabel Blossom has a way of pulling at her lips and pinching her eyebrows and rubbing her forehead when she is studying, and I added these motions up, "estimated their force," as the man said we must do, and showed Mabel that in the next year she would have wasted billions of motions, not to speak of pulling her face out of shape. I showed, too, that her eyebrows would be gone in about eight years more, and that her mouth would be pulled half-way to her left ear in two years and seven months. You'd better believe that interested—yea, staggered—Mabel Blossom. I also reminded her of the beautiful theory that no lady lifts her hands to her face or head after she is dressed, unless she has to use her handkerchief. At St. Katharine's we are not supposed to do a single thing to our features after the dressing-hour, except to make them reflect what Sister Edna calls "a quick and eager intelligence."

The very morning I talked to her, Mabel stopped pulling her mouth, and I pointed out to her at noon that she had saved seventy-three motions. The same morning Maudie had saved two hundred and seventeen motions by not dusting and arranging her desk as usual, but I was not so much gratified with this result. It "left much to be desired," as Sister Irmingarde says about our recitations.

That night we talked about "motion study" and "increased efficiency" until the Great Silence fell, and the more we talked the more enthusiastic Mabel and Maudie got. After this they were the most zealous members of the club, and though I was giving most of my time to it now, and holding meetings every day, Mabel and Maudie did even more than I did, because there were two of them. They did not exactly work with the reliability of a steam-valve, but all the other girls admitted that they certainly showed the joy of a hunting-dog in chasing their dear companions and making them do things.

They wrote down every girl's name in a special book they had, and then they took all her measurements, because the author of the book said it was necessary to consider the anatomy of workers. Then they carried the girl off to distant corners in the convent grounds and talked to her long and earnestly. Sometimes the girl was grateful and sometimes she wasn't, but, whether she was or not, Mabel and Maudie clung to her and drilled her in motion study, at first alone and then with other girls. Wherever I looked I could see silent groups of girls making strange, mysterious motions under the trees and along the river-bank, or standing petrified in one spot, because they had made a wrong motion and didn't dare to move for fear of making another. Maudie and Mabel went about looking so busy it seemed almost wicked to speak to them. They had a plan of their own and were working it up in secret. Little did I wot, alas! what it would prove to be.

All this time I was so busy myself I didn't have a minute to study my lessons. Usually I can get them by reading them over once, but now I didn't even have time to do that. There was always some girl standing around waiting to tell me how she had cut down her motions from six thousand seven hundred and eight every day to five hundred and twenty-two, and asking how she could do even better; and it was simply wonderful to watch her go through the few motions that were left and then tell her how many she could drop. I got eight girls down to sixty-nine a day, but they weren't really graceful over them. And when Sister Edna called them before her and asked if it was indolence or paralysis that ailed them, they all cried and blamed me.

It was a whole week before I noticed how different things seemed at St. Katharine's. I had been so busy I hadn't really paid much attention to the girls when we were together; I was more interested in working with them alone or in little groups. But finally I noticed that they didn't seem exactly natural. They stopped waving their hands to one another when they met on the campus, and they did their studying standing up to save the motion of sitting down, and Mabel Blossom went about with a fixed look of awful anxiety on her face because she was afraid she would waste a movement of the lips in smiling. The girls spent all their spare time telling one another how they saved motions, and ever and anon Mabel Blossom and Maudie Joyce drilled them in something new.

This was the way things were when Mother Mary Caroline came to visit St. Katharine's. Mother Mary Caroline is the head of our whole convent Order, and she spends her time traveling from one of her convents to another and giving the Sisters and the House Superiors advice. She comes to St. Katharine's about once a year. It is always a great occasion, and we have a special entertainment for her. She is old—as much as fifty, I should think—and thin, and she has a face like a white rose that has faded, and brown eyes that always look tired. But she is very gracious and dignified, and she acts like what she is—a Frenchwoman with noble blood flowing through her veins. Her nuns are devoted to her, and count the months till she comes. Every girl at St. Katharine's is on her best behavior when Mother Mary Caroline is within the convent walls. I have to explain all this so the gentle reader will realize how embarrassing was the thing that happened.

One Saturday morning while we were entering the refectory the word ran along the lines that Reverend Mother Mary Caroline had arrived the night before, and would see us in the study-hall as soon as we had finished breakfast. The girls were excited, but Mabel Blossom and Maudie Joyce were the worst of all. They rushed up and down the lines whispering to their friends, which, of course, was against the rules. I remember wondering what they were saying and wishing they would hurry and tell me; and then I noticed that most of the girls looked a little scared. I decided I would keep out of it, whatever it was, and I pretended I had forgotten something and went to my room. When I got back the girls were seated, and talking was not allowed after that. I didn't really think much about what they had been whispering, for the night before I had thought of a way to do my hair with three motions, and I had tried it that morning, and I wanted to know how they liked it. I was just crazy for a chance to ask them, especially as I was afraid the hair would fall down before my chance came.

There wasn't time to ask more than two or three of them, though, for we went straight from the refectory to the study-hall, and we are not allowed to speak after we have crossed its threshold. I went to my favorite desk at the back of the hall—the last seat of the middle row. I like it because when I sit there I can see the whole room and what all the girls are doing, and I can look, too, at Sister Irmingarde, who is down at the front in a direct line from me. That is why I saw so plainly the unusual incidents that now took place.

The room was strangely quiet. It always is quiet, but usually one hears the rustling of pages as we turn the leaves of our books, or the shuffling of the girls' feet. But motion study had stopped most of that the week before, and now the girls hardly seemed to breathe. Sister Irmingarde raised her head and looked slowly around the room, and as she looked I saw her catch her lower lip between her teeth for an instant, the way she does when she is puzzled. If she meant to speak, she didn't have time, for the door opened suddenly and Mother Mary Caroline came in with Mother Emily, the House Superior, by her side. Every girl rose to her feet as if some one had touched a spring in her. They are used to that, and always do it pretty well. (If we were all in our graves we'd rise from force of habit if Mother Mary Caroline entered the cemetery.) But this morning those eighty girls got up like one girl rising. Then, instead of settling back comfortably into their seats when Mother Emily gave the signal, they sat down again with a bang that shook the room. You see, they had let themselves drop to save bending their knees. After that not one foot slipped! Not one single hand or head moved! They sat like eighty stone images, looking straight ahead.

I was a little behind the rest, for I hadn't known what was coming. But I sat as still as they did, for I saw now why Mabel and Maudie had been drilling the girls so much.

Reverend Mother looked surprised, and Sister Irmingarde's eyes narrowed a little and took on a queer, watchful expression. Then she struck her bell sharply, as a signal that books could be opened, for she and Mother Emily and Mother Mary Caroline always have a little low-voiced chat before they pay much attention to us. She had stood up, too, when Reverend Mother came in, and had given the visitors chairs. Now, as she struck the bell, the right hand of every girl went toward her book like a piston-rod, and drew it toward her, and the left hand went forward and opened it; and the head of every girl bent at the same angle over the page of every book and stayed there. It was done exactly as if they were all parts of a big machine, but without a sound.

We stayed that way for five minutes. I don't believe a single girl moved a single muscle, and when you remember that there were eighty girls and more than four thousand muscles, you'd better believe it was a strain to see them all, as it were, in disuse. I never felt so odd in my life.

Mother Mary Caroline rose, and again every girl rose with her. There was a swish of skirts as they stood, and another bang as they dropped when she motioned them to sit. That was all, but now every eye was fixed with a glassy stare on Mother Caroline's face.

I don't know what she thought of us. She didn't make any sign, except to glance once at Sister Irmingarde's white face and then look away. She talked to those eighty graven images for a few minutes, the way she always did, and when she stopped the eighty girls brought their hands together just once—in one great clap. I don't know what kept me from clapping right along, as we had always done. I suppose it was instinct—or terror; for now Sister Irmingarde had started to her feet, and her face was scarlet up to the edge of the white band that covered her brow. I saw Mother Caroline touch her on the arm, and Sister Irmingarde stood still, and the flush faded slowly from her face.

Mother Caroline spoke to us very quietly.

"Young ladies," she said, "you may resume your work."

At that every right hand in the room reached out, opened an ink-well, grasped a pen from the pen-rack on each desk, and put it into the ink. Then every right hand drew back. At the same time every left hand pushed a pad of writing-paper into position, and every head bent above the pad. Next every hand seized a blotter, blotted a page, and turned it over, while every right hand went on writing. It was a wonderful, almost a terrible sight. No one can imagine how queer it made me feel. I stared until my eyes bulged out of my head, and while I was staring Sister Irmingarde came quietly down the center aisle and stood beside me.

"May," she said, in a voice so low I could hardly hear her, "what does this mean? Is it some of your work?"

I stood up and tried to speak, but I couldn't tell her exactly why they were doing it, and she must have seen by my face that I couldn't. And I didn't know what to say, for I couldn't clear myself and desert my dear companions if they were going to have trouble. She stood looking at me for a minute, and her black eyes burned in her white face like a live coal among ashes. (Please notice that about the coal and the ashes, and ask yourself if any one else would have thought of it at such a moment.)

Suddenly the girl who sat across the aisle from me giggled—a dreadfully frightened giggle—and a girl near her giggled, too.

Sister Irmingarde spoke again then, in a tone we had never heard her use before. I will make another comparison here, as this is a good place. Her voice sounded like a convent bell ringing out at five o'clock on a dreadfully cold winter morning over a frozen lake.

"Silence!" she said. And there was silence. Then she added, "Miss Blossom, possibly you can explain this extraordinary performance."

Mabel Blossom stood up, pale but calm.

"Yes, Sister," she said, in clear, ringing tones, "I can. It's 'increased efficiency.' It means that we have reduced the motions of our study hour from eight hundred and four to seventeen, and we wanted to show you and Mother Caroline how we do it. We wanted to give you a surprise."

Sister Irmingarde stared at her a minute. Then she took her handkerchief out of her sleeve and wiped her brow.

"You have done it," she said, in faint tones. "You have certainly done it."

She walked back to her desk without another word. I looked at Mother Mary Caroline. She had turned her back to the room, but I saw her shoulders shaking, and a terrible weight was lifted from my heart. For the next five minutes Mother Caroline, Mother Emily, and Sister Irmingarde talked in low tones, and their black-veiled heads were very close together. Then Mother Caroline and Mother Emily went away.

After they had gone, Sister Irmingarde sat still for a little while, as if she had had a shock and wanted time to pull herself together. We waited, and I need not tell the gentle reader that we suffered—for it was all too plain that our "surprise" had not been a success. Then Sister Irmingarde began to talk to us. She told us we had "come dangerously near creating an impression of discourtesy toward Reverend Mother," and she warned us against taking up fads and wasting time on experiments we did not understand, and, above all, against taking any "concerted action" without consulting her. She said there had been "a general paralysis of effort" in St. Katharine's during the past week, and she ordered us to make up all the lessons we had lost. Then she swept the room with her beautiful eyes, and smiled her lovely smile—the first since that dreadful half-hour—and we all straightened up again like thirsty plants that have been watered.

"Oh, my girls, my girls," she said, "what will you do next?"

Maudie Joyce is sometimes strangely dull. She was now.

"We thought you'd like it, Sister," she said. "Didn't you, really?"

Sister Irmingarde wiped her forehead again, as if even to think of it was too much for her.

"Like it!" she said. And she added, "For one horrible moment I thought you had all gone mad—or that I had!"

Those words were the death-knell of Motion Study in our midst.