Page 36 - To Dragma May 1930

MAY, 1930 33

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ISABELLE HENDERSON STEWART

VIRGINIA JUDY ESTERLY

MY DEAR EDITOR:

"Your editorial request that I 'review the magazine under my editor-
ship' brings up many trains of thought—but most of the trains became
sidetracked in mid-transit. Whatever did I do, during my editorship?
I phoned the 'house' at Oregon to ask for a file of To DRAGMA of my
year, to find that Alpha Sigma chapter was not even born at that time,
and that the files—as does our individual interest in most things—dates
only through the life span.

"I have visions of my own files buried deep under a pile of personal
effects—dishes, mattresses, stoves, and what not in the basement of my
house in Berkeley in which the editorial office during my few years was
housed. A call to the university library was similarly fruitless.

"What can I do? Life has played so many tricks with me since then
that my memory has been filled with many things, both light and dark,
that have gradually cast a deep haze of time over those days as deep
as the dust on my To DRAGMA files in the basement in Berkeley.

"But some things I recall. Requests going out, mail after mail for
material—more material—still more material. Answers, generous and
kindly and sometimes productive of splendid articles on this and that
phase of fraternity life, but discouragingly often the pleas came of 'no
time,' 'too much to do.'

"In desperation I decided on an exposition of my private life and
took my editorial pencil in one hand, my baby daughter over my left
arm, a rag doll in my left hand, and, being ambidextrous, drew with my
Pencil a picture of my own immediate busyness, all the while twiddling
the rag doll to keep 'Jinny' the second from breaking in too much on
my fraternity responsibilities.

"Louise Fitch was then editor of the Trident of Delta Delta Delta
and was in person nearby. So I asked her how she kept her magazine
so full and so vital. T write up a lot of articles and keep them in re-
serve,' she said. But that was of no assistance. I was not so gifted.