CHAPTER 12 WAITING FOR SPRING Fool was a much happier place after this. Mrs. Nipson never alluded to the matter, but her manner altered. Katie felt that she was no longer watched or distrusted, and her heart grew light. In another week Miss Jane was so much better as to be hearing her classes again. Illness had not changed her materially. It is only in novels that rheumatic fever sweetens tempers and makes disagreeable people over into agreeable ones. Most of the girls disliked her as much as ever. Her tongue was just as sharp and her manner is grim. But for Katie, from that time forward, there was a difference. Miss Jane was not affectionate to her. It was not in her nature to be that. But she was civil and considerate, and in a dry way, friendly, and gradually Katie grew to have a nod sort of liking for her. Do any of you know how incredibly long winter seems and climates where, for weeks together the thermometer stands at zero? There is something hopeless in such cold. You think of summer as if a thing read about somewhere in a book, but which has no actual existence. Winter seems the only reality in the world. Katie and Clover felt this hopelessness growing upon them as the days went on, and the weather became more and more severe. Ten, twenty, even thirty degrees below zero was no unusual register for the hills over thermometers. Such cold half frightened them, but nobody else was frightened or surprised. It was dry, brilliant cold. The December snows lay unmelted on the ground in March, and the paths cut then were crisp and hard still. Only the white walls on either side had risen higher and higher till only a moving line of hoods and tippets was visible above them when the school went out for its daily walk. Morning after morning the girls woke to find thick crusts of frost on their window panes, and every drop of water in the wash bowl or pitcher turned to solid ice. Night after night Clover, who was a chilly little creature, lay shivering and unable to sleep, notwithstanding the hot bricks at her feet and the many wraps which Katie piled upon her. To Katie herself the cold was more bracing than depressing. There was something in her blood which responded to the sharp tingle of frost, and she gained in strength in a remarkable way during this winter. But the long storms told upon her spirits. She pined for spring and home more than she liked to tell, and felt the need of variety in their monotonous life where the creeping days appeared like weeks, and the weeks stretched themselves out and seemed as long as months do in other places. The girls resorted to all sorts of devices to keep themselves alive during this dreary season. They had little epidemics of occupation. At one time it was spattering, when all faces and fingers had a tendency to smudges of India ink, and there was hardly a fine comb or toothbrush fit for use in the establishment. Then a rage for tatting set in, followed by a fever of fancy work, everyone falling in love with the same pattern at the same time, and copying and recopying till nobody could bear the sight of it. At one time Clover counted eighteen girls all at work on the same bead and canvas pincushion. Later there was a short period of decalcomanie, and then came the grand album craze, when thirty-three girls out of the thirty-nine sent for blank books bound in red Morocco and began to collect signatures and sentiments. Here also there was a tendency toward repetition. Sally Austin added to her autograph these lines of her own composition. When on this page your beauty as eyes you bend, let it remind you of your absent friend, Sally J. Austin, Galveston, Texas. The girls found this sentiment charming, at least a dozen borrowed it, and in half the albums in the school you might read, when on this page your beauty as eyes, etc. Esther Dearborn wrote in Clover's book, the better part of Valor is discretion. Why she wrote it, nobody knew, or why it was more applicable to Clover than to anyone else, but the sentiment proved popular and was repeated over and over again, above various neatly written signatures. There was a strife as to who should display the largest collection. Some of the girls sent home for autographs of distinguished persons which they pasted in their books. Rose Red, however, outdid them all. Did I ever show you mine? She asked one day when most of the girls were together in the school room. No, never! cried a number of voices. Have you got one? Oh, do let us see it! Certainly I'll get it right away if you like," said Rose obligingly. She went to her room and returned with a shabby old blank book in her hand. Some of the girls looked disappointed. The cover of mine isn't very nice, explained Rose. I'm going to have it rebound one of these days. You see, it's not a new album at all, nor a school album, but it's very valuable to me. Here she heaved a sentimental sigh. All my friends have written in it," she said. The girls were quite impressed by the man-room which Rose said this. But when they turned over the pages of the album they were even more impressed. Rose had evidently been on intimate terms with a circle of most distinguished persons. Half the autographs in the book were from gentlemen, and they were dated all over the world. Just listen to this! cried Louisa, and she read, Thou mayst forget me, but never, never shall I forget thee, Alfonso of Castile, the Escurial, April 1st. Who's he? asked a circle of awestruck girls. Didn't you ever hear of him? Youngest brother of the King of Spain replied Rose carelessly. Oh, my! and just hear this! exclaimed Annie Sillsby. If you ever deign to cast a thought in my direction, Miss Rose, remember me always as thy devoted servitor, Potemkin Montmorency, St. Petersburg, July 10th. And this! shrieked Alice White. They say love is a thorn, I say it is a dart, and yet I cannot tear thee from my heart. Antonio, count de Valembrosa.  No, Antonio de Valembrosa, I should think I did, replied Rose. Nobody in this country knows him so well, I fancy. And he wrote that for you? How else could it get into my book, goosey? This was unanswerable, and Rose was installed from that time forward in the minds of Bella and the rest as a heroine of the first water. Katie, however, knew better, and the first time she caught Rose alone she attacked her on the subject. Now Rosie Posey confesses, who wrote all those absurd autographs in your book? Absurd autographs? What can you mean? All those counts and things. No, it's no use. You shan't wriggle away until you tell me. Oh, Antonio and dear Potemkin, do you mean them? Yes, of course I do. And you really want to know? Yes. And we'll swear not to tell. Yes. Well then, bursting into a laugh, I wrote every one of them myself. Did you really? When? Day before yesterday. I thought Lily needed taking down. She was so set up with her autographs of Wendell Phillips and Mr. Seward, so I just sat down and wrote a bookful. It only took me half an hour. I meant to write some more. In fact, I had one already. I am dead or pretty near. David's done for me, I fear. Goliath of gaffe. But I was afraid even Bella wouldn't swallow that, so I tore out the page. I'm sorry I did now, for I really think the geese would have believed it. Written in his last moments, you know, to oblige an ancestor of my own, added Rose in a tone of explanation. You monkey! cried Katie, highly diverted. But she kept Rose's counsel, and I daresay some of the Hillsover girls believe in that wonderful album to this day. It was not long after that a sad piece of news came for Bella. Her father was dead. Their home was in Iowa, too far to allow of her returning for the funeral, so the poor little girl stayed at school to bear her trouble as best she might. Katie, who was always kind to children and had somewhat affected Bella from the first on account of her resemblance to Elsie in height and figure, was especially tender to her now, which Bella repaid with the gift of her whole queer little heart. Her affectionate demonstrations were rather of the monkey order, and not unfrequently troublesome. But Katie was never otherwise than patient and gentle with her, though Rose, and even Clover, remonstrated on what they called the singular intimacy. Poor little soul! It's so hard for her, and she's only eleven years old, she told them. She has such a funny way of looking at you sometimes, said Rose, who was very observant. It is just the air of a squirrel who is hidden a nut, and doesn't want you to find out where, and yet can hardly keep indicating it with his paw. She's got something on her mind, I'm sure. Half a dozen things very likely, added Clover. She's such a mischief. But none of them guessed what this something was. Early in January Mrs. Nipson announced that in four weeks she proposed to give a soiree, to which all young ladies whose records were entirely free for Marx during the intervening period would be allowed to come. This announcement created great excitement, and the school set itself to be good. But Marx were easy to get, and gradually one girl after another lost her chance, till by the appointed day only a limited party descended to join the festivities, and nearly half the school was left up stairs to sigh over past sins. Katie and Rose were among the unlucky ones. Rose had incurred a mark by writing a note in study-hour, and Katie by being five minutes late to dinner. They consoled themselves by dressing Clover's hair and making her look as pretty as possible, and then stationed themselves in the upper hall at the head of the stairs to watch her career, and get as much fun out of the occasion as they could. Pretty soon they saw Clover below on Professor Seacum's arm. He was a kingly, pleasant man with a bald head, and it was a fashion among the girls to admire him. "'Doesn't she look pretty?' said Rose. "'Just notice Mrs. Searls, Katie. She's grinning at Clover like the Cheshire Cat. What a wonderful cat that is of hers. She had it when Sylvia was here at school eight years ago. Hush! She'll hear you.' "'No, she won't. There's Ellen beginning her piece. I know she's frightened by the way she plays. Hark how she hurries the time.' "'There. They are going to have refreshments after all,' cried Esther Dearborn as trays of lemonade and cake baskets appeared below on their way to the parlor. Isn't it a shame to have to stay up here?' "'Professor Seacum! Professor!' called Rose in a daring whisper, "'Take pity upon us. We are starving for a piece of cake.' The professor gave a jump, then retreated and looked upward. When he saw the circle of hungry faces peering down he doubled up with laughter. "'Wait a moment,' he whispered back and vanished into the parlor. Pretty soon the girl saw him making his way through the crowd with an immense slice of pound cake in each hand. "'Here, Miss Rose,' he said, "'Catch it!' But Rose ran half-way downstairs, received the cake, dimpled her thanks, and retreated to the darkness above, went sounds preceded, which sent the amused professor into the parlor convulsed with suppressed laughter. Pretty soon Clover stole up the back stairs to report. "'Are you having a nice time? Is the lemonade good? Who have you been talking with?' inquired a chorus of voices. "'Pretty nice. Everybody is old. I haven't been talking to anybody in particular, and the lemonade is only cream of tartar water. I guess it's jolly rub here with you,' replied Clover. "'I must go now. My turn to play comes next.'" Down she ran. "'Except for the glory of the thing, I think we're having more fun than she,' answered Rose. Next week came St. Valentine's Day. Several of the girls received Valentines from home, and they wrote them to each other. Katie and Clover both had one from Phil, exactly alike, with the same purple bird in the middle of the page, and I Love You, printed underneath, and they joined in fabricating a gorgeous one for Rose, which was supposed to come from Potentkin de Montmorency, the hero of the album. But the most surprising Valentine was received by Miss Jane. It came with the others while all the household were at dinner. The girl saw her redden and look angry, but she put the letter in her pocket and said nothing. In the afternoon it came out through Bella that Miss Jane's letter was in poetry, and that she was just as mad as fire about it. Just before tea, Louisa came running down the row to number five where Katie was sitting with Rose. "'Girls, what do you think? That letter which Miss Jane got this morning was a Valentine, the most dreadful thing, but so funny!' She stopped to laugh. "'How do you know?' cried the other two. "'Miss Marsh told Alice Gibbons. She's a sort of cousin, you know, and Miss Marsh often tells her things. She says Miss Jane and Mrs. Nipson are furious and are determined to find out who sent it. It was for Mr. Hardhack, Miss Jane's missionary. Or, no, not for Mr. Hardhack, but from a cannibal who had just eaten Mr. Hardhack up, and he sent Miss Jane a lock of his hair and the recipe the tribe cooked him by. They found him very nice, he said, and he turned out quite tender. That was one of the lines in the poem. Did you ever hear of anything like it? Who do you suppose could have sent it?' "'Who could it have been?' cried the others. Katie had one moment's awful misgiving, but at glance it rose his face, calm and innocent as a baby's, reassured her. It was impossible that she could have done this mischievous thing. Katie, you see, was not privy to that entry in Rose's journal, pay Miss Jane off, nor aware that Rose had just written underneath. Did it. February 14, 1869. Nobody ever found out the author of this audacious Valentine. Rose kept her own counsel, and Miss Jane probably concluded that the better part of Valor was discretion, for the threatened inquiries were never made. And now it lacked but six weeks to the end of the term. The girls counted the days and practiced various devices to make them pass more quickly. Esther Dearborn, who had a turn for arithmetic, set herself to a careful calculation of how many hours, minutes and seconds must pass before the happy time should come. Annie Sillsby strung forty-two tiny squares of cardboard on a thread, and each night slipped one off and burned it up in the candle. Others made diagrams of the time with a division for each day, and every night blotted one out with a sense of triumph. None of these devices made the time hasten. It never moved more slowly than now, when life seemed to consist of a universal waiting. But though Katie's heart bounded at the thought of home till she could hardly bear the gladness she owned to clover, do you know, much as I long to get away, I am half sorry to go. It is parting with something which we shall never have any more. Home is lovely, and I would rather be there than anywhere else. But if you and I live to be a hundred, we shall never be girls at boarding school again. CHAPTER XIII. PARADISE REGAINED Only seven days more to cross off, said Clover, drawing her pencil through one of the squares on the diagram pinned beside her looking glass. Seven more, and then, oh, joy! Papa will be here, and we shall start for home. She was interrupted by the entrance of Katie, holding a letter and looking pale and aggrieved. Oh, Clover! she cried. Just listen to this. Papa can't come for us. Isn't it too bad? And she read, Burnett, March My dear girls, I find that it will not be possible for me to come for you next week as I intended. Several people are severely ill, and old Mrs. Barlow struck down suddenly with paralysis, so I cannot leave. I am sorry, and so will you be, but there is no help for it. Fortunately Mrs. Hall has just heard that some friends of hers are coming westward with their family, and she has written to ask them to take charge of you. The drawback to this plan is that you will have to travel alone as far as Albany, where Mr. Peters, Mrs. Hall's friend, will meet you. I have written to ask Mr. Page to put you on the train and under the care of the conductor on Tuesday morning. I hope you will get through without embarrassment. Mr. Peters will be at the station in Albany to receive you, or if anything should hinder him you ought to drive at once to the Delavan house where they are staying. I enclose a check for your journey. If Dory were five years older I should send him after you. The children are most impatient to have you back. Miss Finch has been suddenly called away by the illness of her sister-in-law, so Elsie is keeping house till you return.  Yours affectionately, P. Carr. Oh, dear, said Clover, with her lip trembling. Now Papa won't see Rosie. No, said Katie, and Rosie and Louisa and the rest won't see him. That is the worst of all. I wanted them to so much. And just think how dismal it will be to travel with people we don't know. It's too, too bad, I declare. I do think old Mrs. Barlow might have put off being ill just one week longer, grumbled Clover. It takes away half the pleasure of going home. The girls might be excused for being cross, for this was a great disappointment. There was no help for it, however, as Papa said. They could only sigh and submit. But the journey to which they had looked forward so much was no longer thought of as a pleasure, only a disagreeable necessity, something which must be endured in order that they might reach home. Five. Four. Three days.  The last dinner was eaten. The last breakfast. There was much mourning over Katie and Clover among the girls who were to return for another year. Louisa and Ellen Gray were inconsolable, and Bella, with a very small pocket handkerchief held tightly in her hand, clung to Katie every moment, crying, and declaring that she would not let her go. The last evening she followed her into number two, where she was dreadfully in the way of the packing, and after various odd contortions and mysterious half-spoken sentences said, Say, won't you tell if I tell you something? What is it? asked Katie absently as she folded and smoothed her best gown.  Well, what is it? Tell me. To Katie's surprise, Bella burst into a violent fit of crying. I'm real sorry I did it! she sobbed. Real sorry! And now you'll never love me any more. Yes, I will. What is it? Do stop crying, Bella, dear, and tell me, said Katie, alarmed at the violence of the sobs. It was for fun! Really and truly it was! But I wanted some cake, too! protested Bella, sniffing very hard. What? And I didn't think anybody would know. Barry Searls doesn't care a bit for us little girls, only for big ones, and I knew if I said Bella, he'd never give me the cake, so I said Miss Carr instead. Bella, did you write that note? inquired Katie almost too much to speak. Yes, and I tied a string to your blind because I knew I could go in and dry it up when you were practicing. But I didn't mean to do any harm, and when Mrs. Florence was so mad and changed your room, I was real sorry! moaned Bella, digging her knuckles into her eyes. Won't you ever love me any more? she demanded. Katie lifted her into her lap and talked so tenderly and seriously that her contrition, which was only half genuine, became real, and she cried in good earnest when Katie kissed her in token of forgiveness. Of course you'll go at once to Mrs. Nipson, said Clover and Rose when Katie imparted the surprising discovery. No, I think not. Why should I? It would only get poor little Bella into a dreadful scrape and she's coming back again, you know. Mrs. Nipson does not believe that story now. Nobody does. We had lived it down, just as I hoped we should. That is much better than having it contradicted. I don't think so, and I should enjoy seeing that little retch of a Bella well whipped, versus did Rose. But Katie was not to be shaken. To please me, promise that not a word shall be said about it, she urged. And to please her, the girls consented. I think Katie was right in saying that Mrs. Nipson no longer believed her guilty in the affair of the note. She had been very friendly to both the sisters of late, and when Clover carried in her album and asked for an autograph she waxed quite sentimental and wrote, I would not exchange the modest Clover for the most beautiful parterre, so bring it back I pray thee to your affectionate teacher Mary Ann Nipson, which a fusion quite overwhelmed the modest Clover, and called out the remark from Rose, Don't she wish she may get you? Miss Jane said twice, I shall miss you, Katie. A speech which, to quote Rose again, made Katie look as surprised as Balaam. Rose herself was not coming back to school. She and the girls were half broken-hearted at parting. They lavished tears, kisses, promises of letters, and vows of eternal friendship. Neither of them, it was agreed, was ever to love anybody else so well. The final moment would have been almost too tragical, had it not been for a last bit of mischief on the part of Rose. It was after the stage was actually at the door, and she had her foot on the step, that, struck by a happy thought, she rushed upstairs again, collected the girls, and each taking a window, they tore down the cotton, flung open the sashes, and startled Mrs. Nipson, who stood below, by the simultaneous waving therefrom of many white flags. Katie, who was already in the stage, had the full benefit of this performance. Always after that, when she thought of the nunnery, her memory recalled this scene. Mrs. Nipson in the doorway, Bella blubbering behind, and overhead, the windows crowded with saucy girls, laughing and triumphantly flapping the long cotton strips which had for so many months obscured the daylight for them all. At Springfield next morning, she and Clover said goodbye to Mr. Page and Lily. The ride to Albany was easy and safe. With every mile their spirits rose. At last they were actually on the way home. At Albany they looked anxiously about the crowded depot for Mr. Peters. Nobody appeared at first, and they had time to grow nervous before they saw a gentle, care-worn little man coming toward them in company with the conductor. I believe you are the young ladies I have come to meet, he said. You must excuse my being late. I was detained by business. There was a great deal to do to move a family out west. He wiped his forehead in a dispirited way. Then he put the girls into a carriage and gave the driver a direction. We'd better leave your baggage at the office as we pass, he said, because we have to get off so early in the morning. How early? The boat goes at six, but we ought to be on board by half past five so as to be well settled before she starts. The boat? said Katie, opening her eyes. Oh, yes, eerie canal, you know. Our furniture goes that way, so we judged it best to do the same and keep an eye on it ourselves. Never be separated from your property if you can help it. That's my maxim. It's the Prairie Bell, one of the finest boats on the canal. When do we get to Buffalo? asked Katie with an uneasy recollection of having heard that canal boats travel slowly. Buffalo, let me see. This is Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Well, if we're lucky we ought to be there Friday evening, so if we're not too late to catch the nightboat on the lake, you'll reach home Saturday afternoon. Four days. The girls looked at each other with dismay too deep for words. Elsie was expecting them by Thursday at latest. What should they do? Telegraph was the only answer that suggested itself. So Katie scribbled a despatch, coming by canal, don't expect us till Saturday, which she begged Mr. Peters to send, and she and Clover agreed and whispers that it was dreadful, but they must bear it as patiently as they could. Oh, the patience which is needed on a canal. The motion which is not so much motion is standing still. The crazy impulse to jump out and help the crawling boat along by pushing it from behind. How one grows to hate the slow monotonous glide, the dull banks, and to envy every swift moving thing in sight, each man on horseback, each bird flying through the air. Mrs. Peters was a thin, anxious woman who spent her life anticipating disasters of all sorts.  Willie, the eldest boy, was always begging leave to go ashore and ride the towing horses. Sammy, the second, could only be kept quiet by means of crooked pins and fish lines of blue yarn, while Paul, the youngest, was possessed with a curiosity as to the underside of the boat, which resulted in his dropping his new hat overboard five times in three days, Mr. Peters and the cabin boy rowing back in a small boat each time to recover it. Mrs. Peters sat on deck with her baby in her lap, and was in a perpetual agony lest the lock should work wrongly, or the boys be drowned, or someone fail to notice the warning cry bridge and have their heads carried off from their shoulders. Nobody did, but the poor lady suffered the anguish of ten accidents in dreading the one which never took place. The births at night were small and cramped, restless children woke and cried, the cabins were close, the decks cold and windy. There was nothing to see and nothing to do. Katie and Clover agreed that they never wanted to see a canalboat again. They were helpful to Mrs. Peters, amused the boys, and kept them out of mischief. And she told her husband that she really thought she shouldn't have lived through the journey if it hadn't been for the Miss Cars. They were such kind girls and so fond of children. But the three days were terribly long. At last they ended. Buffalo was reached in time for the lakeboat, and once established on board, feeling the rapid motion and knowing that each stroke of the paddles took them near a home, the girls were rewarded for their long trial of patience. At four o'clock the next afternoon Burnett was in sight. Long before they touched the wharf, Clover discovered old Whitey and the Carriol and Alexander, waiting for them among the crowd of carriages. Standing on the edge of the dock appeared a well-known figure. Papa! Papa! she shrieked. It seemed as if the girls could not wait for the boat to stop and the plank to be lowered. How delightful it was to feel Papa again, such a sense of home and comfort and shelter as came with his touch. I'll never go away from you again, never, never, repeated Clover, keeping tight hold of his hand as they drove up the hill. Dr. Carr, as he gazed at his girls, was equally happy. They were so bright, affectionate and loving. No. He could never spare them again for the boarding school or anything else, he thought. You must be very tired, he said. Not a bit. I'm hardly ever tired now, replied Katie. Oh, dear! I forgot to thank Mr. Peters for taking care of us, said Clover. Never mind, I did it for you, answered her father. Oh, that baby, she continued. How glad I am it has gone to Toledo, and I didn't hear it cry any more. Katie! Katie, there's home! We're at the gate! The girls looked eagerly out, but no children were visible. They hurried up the gravel path under the locust boughs just beginning to bud. There, over the front door, was an arch of evergreens with Katie and Clover upon it in scarlet letters, and as they reached the porch the door flew open and out poured the children in a tumultuous little crowd. They had been on the roof, looking through a spy glass after the boat. We never knew you had come until we heard the gate, explained John and Dory, while Elsie hugged Clover and Phil, locking his arms around Katie's neck, took his feet off the floor and swung them in an ecstasy of affection until she begged for mercy. How you are grown! Dory, you're as tall as I am! Elsie, darling, how well you look! Oh, isn't it delicious, delicious, delicious to be at home again? There was such a hubbub of endearments and explanations that Dr. Carr could hardly make himself heard. Clover, your waist is grown as small as a pin. You look just like the beautiful princess in Elsie's story, said Johnny. Take the girls into the parlor. Repeat to Dr. Carr, it is cold out here with the door open. Take them upstairs. You don't know what is upstairs! shouted Phil, whereupon Elsie frowned and shook her head at him. The parlor was gay with daffodils and hyacinths and vases of blue violets which smelt delightfully. C.C. had helped arrange them, Elsie said, and just at that moment C.C. herself came in. Her hair was arranged in a sort of pin cushion of puffs with a row of curls on top, where no curls used to grow, and her appearance generally was very fine and fashionable. But she was the same affectionate C.C. as ever, and hugged the girls and danced round them as she used to do at twelve. She had waited until they had had time to kiss once all round, she said, and then she really couldn't wait any longer. Now come upstairs, suggested Elsie when Clover had warmed her feet and the flowers had been admired, and everybody had said ten times over how nice it was to have the girls back, and the girls had replied that it was just as nice to come back. So they all went upstairs, Elsie leading the way. Where are you going? cried C.C.—that's the blue room. But Elsie did not pause.  So we have fixed this for you, and your old one is going to be the spare room instead. Then she threw the door open and led the girls in. See, C.C. she said, this is your bureau and this is Clover's, and look what nice drawers Papa has had put in the closet. Two for you and two for her. Aren't they convenient? Don't you like it? And isn't it a great deal pleasanter than the old room? Oh, a great deal! cried the girls. It is delightful—everything about it. All Katie's old treasures had been transferred from her old quarters to this. There was her cushion chair, her table, her bookshelf, the pictures from the walls. There were some new things, too—a blue carpet, blue paper on the walls, window curtains of fresh chins, and Elsie had made a tasteful pin-cushion for each bureau and Johnny crocheted mats for the wash stand. All together it was as pretty a bower as two sisters just grown into ladies could desire. What are those lovely things hanging on either side of the bed? asked Clover. They were two illuminated texts, sent as a welcome home by Cousin Helen. One was a morning text and the other an evening text, Elsie explained. The evening text, which bore the words, I will lay me down to sleep and take my rest, for it is thou, Lord only, who makes me dwell in safety, was painted in soft purples and greys, and among the poppies and silver lilies, which wreathed it, appeared a cunning little downy bird fast asleep with his head under his wing. The morning text, when I awake I am still with thee, was in bright colors, scarlet and blue and gold, and had a frame of rose garlands and wide awake looking butterflies and hummingbirds. The girls thought they had never seen anything so pretty.  Katie would not take her old place at the tea-tree. She wanted to know how Elsie looked as housekeeper, she said. So she sat on one side of Papa and Clover on the other, and Elsie poured the tea with a mixture of delight and dignity which was worth seeing. I'll begin to-morrow, said Katie. And with that morrow, when she came out of her pretty room and took her place once more as manager of the household, her grown-up life may be said to have begun. So it is time that I should cease to write about her. Grown-up lives may be very interesting, but they have no rightful place in a child's book. If little girls will forget to be little and take it upon them to become young ladies, they must bear the consequences, one of which is that we can follow their fortunes no longer. I wrote these last words sitting in the same green meadow where the first words of what Katie did were written. A year had passed, but a cardinal flower which seemed the same stood looking at itself in the brook, and from the bulrush bed sounded tiny voices. My little goggle-eyed friends were discussing Katie and her conduct as they did then, but with less spirit. For one voice came seldom and faintly, while the other, bold and defiant as ever, repeated over and over again. Katie didn't! Katie didn't! She didn't! Didn't! Didn't! Katie did! sounded faintly from the farther rush. She didn't! She didn't! chirped the undaunted partisan. Silence followed. His opponent was either convinced or tired of the discussion. Katie didn't. The words repeated themselves in my mind as I walked homeward. How much room for didn'ts there is in the world, I thought. What an important part they play. And how glad I am that, with all her own and other people's doings, so many of these didn'ts were included among the things which my Katie did at school.


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Greetings and welcome to the Introduction to Astronomy. In this lecture we are going to talk about ancient astronomy, going back to ancient times, and up through the Dark Ages, and we will pick up later on with the Renaissance and move into modern times. So this is our beginning of the study of very early astronomy. So let's go ahead and get started. And one of the things we can look at, what was the sky? The sky was very important to early people, and why? Well, it was a calendar, because we did not have modern technology. So how did we tell when the seasons were beginning and ending? And it was very difficult to tell them exactly. As you know, it's not always warm all the time, going right up to, say, summer. You do get some colder days, so how do you tell exactly where that was? So for example, the ancient Egyptians used the Rising of Sirius, what they call the Helical Rising of Sirius, when it was first visible in the morning sky when it first appeared. Because that occurred about the same time that the Nile would flood, bringing water to the desert areas of Egypt. So it was important to know when that flooding was coming to be able to be prepared. Navigation was another important thing where this was used, and that was used by the Polynesians. To in order to navigate, how do you navigate at sea without modern technology? Well, even just hundreds of a couple hundred years ago or less we did not have a lot of technology to be able to navigate the oceans. So we could use some things to travel across the Atlantic. Certainly if you head west from Europe, you would end up in one of the Americas. But where on it would you land and how would you know that? And the Polynesians were very good at being able to navigate between the islands of the Pacific where you have no landmarks around, but would still be able to get from one point to another successfully. And do that using the stars. So the patterns of the stars and their positioning in the sky was important for a calendar and for the use in navigation. Now, very early monuments and we're only going to look at one here, although there's lots of them scattered all over the world. Stonehenge is one of these, and it is a collection of very massive stones that are on the plains of Salisbury in England. And you can see them here, massive stones put together and other stones put on top of them. And it's quite possible that this was used as a calendar. And we see alignments with various things here. And if we look at Stonehenge towards the center, when we look out towards this direction that is aligned with the sunrise on the first day of summer. And only on that day, the sun will rise in a very specific location over what is called the Heelstone out there. Now there are other alignments that perhaps work as well, but one of the problems with these early monuments is that we do not have instructions. So there's no instruction manual. We're set trying to decipher by the alignments that we see, not knowing whether all of them were necessarily done intentionally.  Where this, these kind of alignments, not specifically like Stonehenge, but where we see monuments, pyramids built to line up with various astronomical events. Now let's move forward a little bit into the early Greek astronomy. This is kind of the beginnings of our understanding of the universe.  We'll look at a few of these in more detail. Eudoxus gave us one of the very early models of the universe. Aristotle gave us a couple of big things. One, explaining that the earth is round, that the earth is a sphere, and that the universe is geocentric. Now we now know that this is not the case, so he was right on the earth being round, but wrong on a geocentric universe. Eratosthenes was able to measure the circumference of the earth. So following on the earth being round, you could measure the circumference or how far it is around that. Aristarchus was one who gave us the idea that the sun and not earth was the center of the universe. Now this was not accepted at the time, and the fact that so many writings do not exist from this, we don't have the direct writings of Aristarchus to be able to see exactly what his thoughts were on this. But it was put forward that perhaps not earth is not the center of the universe, the earth is not the center of the universe, but the sun is instead. We'll look in more detail at Hipparchus, who gave us stellar magnitudes, how to measure the brightness of stars, and measured procession. And then we'll end up with Ptolemy here, who gave us a mathematical model in his book, The Almagest, that really was a way to be able to calculate positions in the sky. So let's look at a few of these in more detail, starting with Aristotle, who started out with the fact that the heavens were perfect. So what was in the heavens must be perfect, what is on earth is imperfect. And that means that everything moved in circles and at a uniform speed, not speeding up or slowing down. And this really gave us our foundation of planetary motion for over a thousand years, based on the ideas of Aristotle. Now, based on that, we can learn a few more things and we can start to be able to piece together the orbits. But if you remember, Aristotle also told us that the earth is a sphere. And once we know it's a sphere, we can measure how big it is. And that was Eratosthenes here, measuring the circumference of earth. Now, here is a diagram showing that. There is a well at Cyene, shown here, where the sun would shine straight down on the first day of summer. And that meant that it was directly overhead. However, an object at Alexandria cast a shadow. So the sun was not quite directly overhead. It still cast a small shadow, in fact, about seven degrees. Now, he could use that. The fact that this angle is seven degrees also meant that the angle here at the center of earth was seven degrees. So if he knew seven degrees as a ratio, seven degrees to 360 degrees, because 360 would be a full circle, that is equal to the distance between those two cities divided by the circumference of the earth. Well, if we measure the distance between the cities, we can then calculate the circumference and how big the earth was. Now, there are questions as to how accurate he was, but certainly the knowledge that the earth was spherical was very prominent in these early times with the early Greek astronomers. And they knew for sure that earth was a sphere and did go about measuring its circumference. Now, another astronomer, Hisparchus, gave us the idea of magnitudes. Now, we'll come back to magnitudes in a later chapter, but essentially he divided the stars into categories based on their apparent brightness. The brightest stars were those of the first magnitude and the faintest stars that could be seen were those of the sixth magnitude. So that was the range and it kind of gave us a backwards magnitude system because star of magnitude one is now brighter than a star of magnitude six. So we still use this system and it's based on the original work of Hisparchus, but it is backwards. So a smaller number means a brighter star, a larger number, a fainter star. He also determined procession. Procession occurs because the earth spins like the top pictured here. So the earth spins very quickly on its axis once per day and it also makes a slow rotation around the sky taking 26,000 years. And that causes things like the pole star to change over time. So what we see as the pole star now is Polaris. However, 13,000 years from now, the pole will be much closer to the bright star Vega. After that, the star Thubin and in between there will be times where there is no pole star. And 26,000 years from now, we will be back again to Polaris being the pole star. So it's a regular cycle, but takes 26,000 years and is constantly changing the position of the pole, which changes the coordinate system that astronomers use. Now, Tomei with the geocentric universe, giving us the idea, we had the idea that the universe was geocentric or earth-centered. So geomeaning earth and the earth was at the center of the universe. Now, in order to make the orbit's work, that required quite a complicated system. So what you really needed was here was the center and the earth was actually offset a little bit from that. And on the other side of the center was an equant point. The equant is the point opposite that central object, earth, and is the point around which the other object appears to revolve. So the object doesn't revolve directly around earth, but around this equant point. Now, what we see is that as this moves around, then the path is the deferent, that's the orbit here, but the planet itself actually orbits on an epicycle. So there's a central point here with nothing at it where this point goes around on the epicycle while this piece goes around the rest of the deferent. So what it makes is, as we talked about in a previous lecture, it allows to explain retrograde motion and it can allow changes in brightness of a planet as well because sometimes it's closer to earth and sometimes it's further away. And by adjusting the positioning, the size of the epicycle, the size of the deferent to very good accuracy for the time, we were able to map out exactly how big the solar system was and be able to calculate the positions and predict the positions of planets in the future. Now, this ends our story kind of, but we've got one more little bit to look at here because with the fall of Rome in the early part of the millennium, then there was a decline in Western science and as the West extended into the Dark Ages, there was very little advancement in the West. However, things did not stop. The Indian and Arab astronomers continued the work. They took and developed, translated the works from Greek and they developed new mathematics. Now, the Greeks did everything based on geometry. The Greeks were big at geometry and using that for the orbits, but they did not have the concept of algebra and that was developed by the Arab astronomers who continued that. We gave some early, some of these early ones, an early Indian astronomer, Ariyabhatta actually gave us the idea that the earth rotates. It's a better way to be able to explain the motions that we see. Why? Because that does not require the whole celestial sphere to rotate around earth. It's a lot easier to have the earth rotate. We also have Ulug Beg, a Muslim astronomer who built one of the largest observatories of the time, probably the largest observatory of the time and continued observations. Then this work then returned to Europe during the Renaissance. So during the Renaissance, books were returned to Europe. Europe would collect books from other that had been translated and additions made to them and corrections made to them and brought that back leading to a development of the new model of the solar system that we will see in a couple of lectures. So things did not stop after the fall of Rome. They actually just continued on in other parts of the world and then came back to Europe and further advancements continued throughout that time. So let's go ahead and finish up this section with our summary and what we look at, again, the study of the sky was important for two reasons, the calendar, keeping time and navigation. We looked at Stonehenge as an example, but there are many other ancient monuments that we can look at as well that may have been used for timekeeping early on. And we looked at the Greek astronomers who gave us a geocentric model of the universe that lasted for a thousand years. And then that work was improved upon by the Indian and Arab astronomers during the Middle Ages, and then Europe will pick up with that again and take those modifications and continue to build on them in the Renaissance that we will discuss later. So that concludes this lecture on ancient astronomy. We'll be back again next time for another topic in astronomy. So until then, have a great day, everyone.


while other countries had left their nationals to fend for themselves in war-torn Ukraine. Mother India was not about to give up. There were students from like Turkey and Africa. And when I asked them like, what will happen to you guys, any advisory or something, they were like, no, my country people are actually saying that we are the problem. Thank God, at least our country is doing something for us. Prime Minister Modiji had clearly instructed us that while we are evocating our citizens, we may also take care of our neighboring countries. Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Nepalis, many of them traveled on our special flights home. I'm very thankful to the Indian Embassy of Keith for supporting us all the way here. Also thanking the Prime Minister. Meanwhile, Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Haseena has thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi.


We are going to hear from Lou Rockwell on the founding of the Mises Institute and Ron Paul with his thoughts on the founding of the Mises Institute as well. But before, I know most of you are here for Tom Woods talk today at lunch about Lou and about the founding of this organization. So, to Lou Rockwell, I'm speaking tonight on behalf of all the patrons and donors and supporters and friends and family of yours here tonight. On behalf of Marty Rockwell and Pep Barnett, your longtime associates, on behalf of Judge John Benson, the great trustee at Auburn University, he brought the Institute to Auburn on behalf of the Mises Institute Board. For everything you've done to help revive the Austrian school, for putting Mises and Rothbard at the fore of that school, for putting the great Austrian economics works online for anyone for free, for supporting so many scholars and students over the years, for providing a platform for discussing anarcho-capitalism openly, secession openly, private law openly, for creating LouRockwell.com as a truly independent, uncensored source for unapproved dissident thought, and most of all for creating an intellectual home for thousands and thousands of people around the world. I would ask Dr. Paul to present you with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Lou Rockwell. You're the gold standard man. That's beautiful. Thank you, Dr. Paul. Congratulations. The gold standard man. Thank you. Many years ago when I escaped college, I took a job in Boston with a small publishing company which taught me pretty quickly that if I was going to be happy in my work, I had to have an ideological dimension to it. I had to be advanced in the cause of liberty and I wouldn't be happy. So I wrote to Neil McCaffrey, who was the founder and the president of Arlington House Publishers in New Rochelle, New York, and asked him for a job. And he wrote back and he said he would like to have me come to New York and to apply. And so I did and we hit it off and he offered me the job and it was to be an editor, which is something I'd been interested in really from the time. I was a very young boy, negotiating contracts with authors, coming up with ideas for books and that sort of thing. So Neil, it was just a tremendous experience to work for him. He was a great intellectual himself as well as a brilliant businessman. And he did me many great favors, but the one that I want to mention today is when he called me into his office and he said, how do you like to be Ludwig von Mises's editor? So of course I was gobsmacked but I said I would love to do that. And he said that he wanted to bring back into print three of Mises's books. They were out of print, omnipotent government and bureaucracy and theory and history. And also to fix some problems with the texts in one of those books. And to just work with Mises, work with Mrs. Mises, who was a tremendous force for Misesianism and for good, I might say. And so I had the great honor of working with them and bringing those books into print when they were available, the great Leonard Reed of the Foundation for Economic Freedom held a conference to celebrate the fact that these three books come back into print. And I don't know if there are people here who remember the old fee. It was a magnificent building in New York, north of New York City. And it had a gigantic kitchen, a gigantic dining room, among of course many other things in their building. And so Leonard invited me to go first into the get my dinner on the tray. So I'm walking with the tray into the dining room and there are two people in there, Ludwig and Margit von Mises, at the other table. So I went over and I asked them if I could sit with them and introduce myself to them because I dealt with them, especially with her on the phone and by mail, but never in person. So that was the only time that I got to meet Mises, but it was obviously a thrilling experience. And I always remember Murray Rothbard saying that Mises, and for that matter, Mrs. Mises, came from an older and a better civilization than the ones we had now. And it was a tremendous experience to meet him. He was so beautifully dressed, such beautiful manners, and that was true of Mrs. Mises, too. Again, they're just people from another era and a better era. So that was a tremendous experience to work for Neil. And I was offered a job at another enterprise, which turned out not to be exactly what they had advertised themselves to be. But while I was there, Mises passed away. And of course I was very, very saddened by that, but it was a number of years after that when I began to realize that I thought Mises was losing his reputation, not only as a great intellectual, but as a great man of tremendous courage, I mean, just immense courage. So I was worried about that.  The Law and Economic Center at Emory University, and I was the guy who ran the place from an administrative sense. And I should have known that it was going to be bad because right near it, and I had to go right by it every day when I went to work, was the CDC. And Fauci was already there, so I should have known that the whole place was poison. But as I was worried about Mises's reputation, I was worried about the importance of his work. And I remember one day looking around, it was a good-sized place, looking around and thinking, I could do this. And so I went into D.C. where I got the Institute's approval from the city government, which, you know, that sounds odd for a libertarian, but it's really the best place in the country to get permission to have a business or a nonprofit who knows what reasons. But anyway, I was able to get that. Then I applied again to the U.S. government for a 501c3 status. And in those days you could get it pretty quickly. And I was successful, I think, in writing this sort of book. Maybe some people would say I was fooling them, but I wasn't. I was, of course, helped by the fact that Mises had been a refugee, and they liked that. So I got it, and when that happened, I left the law and economics center and got to work to start the Mises Institute. And in those days it consisted really just of an electric typewriter on my kitchen table. But I was defined very quickly. I should say I had a friend who ran the Charles Koch Foundation for Charles Koch, and he'd been a friend of mine, and so I'd written him about this new institute and I would appreciate their support. And he called me and he said, Lou, do you have any idea how much money we've spent to demolish Mises and to make Hayek the key figure in economics? I said no, but there was money ill spent. And he told me that they would do everything possible to oppose us, which I think happened then and not so much now. But I think for a lot of people that would have bothered them, but I must say it stimulated me. I thought it'd be great to have this gigantic operation trying to oppose us.  They all said, even Milton Friedman hated Mises. And I said, well that would be a medal on Mises' chest. That was the case.  And I got immediate tremendous response from people. It turned out, despite what I've been told by this gentleman from the Koch Foundation, that there were a lot of people who loved Mises, who had known Mises as a man and loved his work and had also been worried about his standing at the cost of Austrian economics. So that was great. But I should say that I'm leaving the most important aspect of my life outside of the Mises Institute. It was when I had the chance to work for Ron Paul. I was his Chief of Staff. And when I left for Ron and started the Institute, he did something that I must say unheard of in fundraising. He signed a letter promoting the Institute with the money to go to the Institute and he sent that letter to his own list. And so we got about more than $50,000 from that mailing rod. And this is many, many years ago. And it was that money that started us off, I must say, in a good fashion. And I also thought in those days, perhaps incorrectly, that the Institute needed a connection to a university. So how other people went to colleges and universities all over the country who claimed to be conservative. None of them were interested in us, needless to say. They pretty much invited me out the door when I would talk to them. But there was one place that was interested in. It was Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama. And there was a board member, John Denson, Judge Denson, who was our champion there. This was something he'd been thinking about himself for years. And so he brought about our connection to Auburn. And we had many good years there. And he also protected us when they came after us. And they weren't able to harm us as some other libertarian or conservative organizations had been damaged on college campuses when they turned more and more leftists. That's the question that virtually all do now. And so John, we owe a lot to you.  John always wins his fights, I might say. So we moved to Auburn. And it was a good experience. And Mrs. Mises was not happy about that. She wanted us to be in New York. But I said, I didn't think we could afford it. And it was much more difficult to bring students there and many other reasons. But Mrs. Mises was a strong supporter of the institute. And something else I did in the early days was to invite her to lunch at her favorite restaurant in New York, which was the Russian tea room. And talk to her about it. About what I wanted to do for the institute. So she said, I'll be your chairman. But I want you to promise me that you're never going to leave the institute and you're always going to be dedicated to it. And I said, well, I did give her that promise that would never happen. I want to say she was such a great lady. She said to me, I know you only want my name. That's all you're really interested in. And I said, well, I said, I do want your name. But I want your guidance as well. Because she was extremely smart, a brilliant woman. And she gave us great guidance. And just for almost 10 years that she lived after our luncheon. And just a tremendous lady. She loved Marty. She loved Pat Barnett. And so both of them were in aid to a good relationship with Mrs. Mises. And again, she was somebody from another era, but she worked so hard. I met Marty Rothbard. Some years later said that she was a one woman Mises industry. And she really was. I mean, she just dedicated her life to her husband while he was alive. And then after, of course, after his death. So that she was a great person. And the second person I talked to after Mrs. Mises was Marty Rothbard. And when I told him what I'm planning to do and I wanted him to be the academic vice president, he actually jumped in the air and clapped his hands. I've never, I've seen it on movies or TV or whatever. I've never seen anybody do that at birth. But he was, he dedicated himself to the institute. And I must say I still miss him every day. He was so much fun. Just extraordinary. You couldn't be in his presence for more than several minutes before you were laughing. He, just a sense of humor was just tremendous. And of course, we heard from Joseph Lander today about another aspect of just how what a great thinker Marty Rothbard was. And here I edited the newsletter. He published these papers in and I didn't realize what was going on, obviously, until I heard Joe today. So that was a great experience. We continue to learn from Marty. We continue to learn new things that Marty talked about. And like Mises, of course, he's our, in a sense, the guardian saint of the institute. And those two men, just extraordinary. So it's been a long fight, but a fun fight. And the people who opposed us ideologically, the Southern Poverty Law Center, for example, and other creeps, it was fun to fight them. And I must say John Denson shows the kind of influence he had when they came after us at the Southern Poverty Law Center. He phoned the head of it and they stopped. So, again, John's a great man to have on your son. So I must say these 40 years have gone by very quickly for me, the things that took place 40 years ago just seemed like the other day. But I'm thrilled to have Jeff running things now. And obviously, I'm great scholars. Today, the board voted to make Joseph Lerno a member of the Institute of the Board of Directors. Not to vote, but to make sure that we have the academic view that Joe can give us. And I can tell many stories about Joe, but the one that sticks in my mind is I had the honor to go in after Joey Rothbard died. And of course, Murray had already passed away to go and take care of their apartment, ship the books and papers to the Institute, the furniture to Joey's relatives in Virginia and all that sort of thing. And Murray had a reading chair in their living room and a table next to it. And on the top of the table was Joe's PhD dissertation. And I wish I could have asked Murray, what were you looking at? Because obviously, this has been a few years ago before when Joe received it. But I thought that shows what... And of course, Murray loved Joe and trusted him and thought he was a great economist. And he'd be very pleased to know that he was on our board helping guide us. So I think the Institute has only started. I think that it's tremendous. And this is now a worldwide operation. I mean, the interest in Austrian economics is worldwide. And once these creeps in Washington allow us, the foreign students to come to our programs in the summer, which they're now blocking, or people have to get shots, which thank goodness they won't do. But they're eventually going to have to stop that. We'll get our foreign students back. We have all our brilliant American students. And I think the future is very, very bright for the Mises Institute. And the support of all of you here and many, many thousands of others is going to keep us going, keep us growing, and keep us achieving. And of all the... I've talked about various individuals who supported the Institute intellectually, but the people who support us financially are not only important, we'd go out of business very quickly if they weren't helping us. And so we appreciate your support so much. Appreciate your being here. And thank you, thank you very, very much.


Welcome to learning analytics tools course. In last video, we saw that how to collect data from open-ended learning environment. However, the data collected is clickstream data we collected too much data, like we collect every clicks of the students. So, that we call it as a raw data. So, we saw that data we collect from a classroom environment, MOOC or daily. In classroom environment, we collected performance, engagement, attendance, that data we can collect, it is not in a raw format. Already the data in kind of a feature format, you can create new features from the data. Or in MOOC, we talked about looking at the page views, video watching behavior, that is still again a raw data format. We have to extract features or construct features from that raw data. In Telly also, we showed that there are lot of clickstream or user interaction data can be collected. How do we create features from those kind of raw data? We look at that in this video. So, this is the raw data we collected in the MOOC. This is the sample raw data we collected from Metal. Here is the raw data. The first action is it is the user readable action like this user started solving the problem, then he started solving problem, then he is submitting some questions. Then he is in a functional model is checking something. After checking the functional model, the student moved to the main model, that is the main problem page. After that, he went to the evaluate sub problem, then he went to information simulator, the student is moving towards different subtask in the main problem page. What is he doing in that particular problem page? For example, this tells you that the student is problem map, which location is in context is begin solving the problem, now he is in a functional model. So, where the student is currently is can be captured here. Then the students detail like what is he doing in that particular page can be given from this task like he is checking or he is doing a calculator in the simulator or he is checking the other actions. So, the students detailed action can be captured here and also with the timestamp. This data is directly for MongoDB conversion to CSV, this kind of data we can get it, if we write a logging mechanism, how to log students interaction from a learning environment. But I will show you the better data. From the CSV of MongoDB download, we can convert with a very minimal effect assign a student ID A1, A2 or some student ID we can assign. And the timestamp can be converted to the readable format instead of UTC timestamp, Unix timestamp we saw in the last table, we can convert into a timestamp in a different format. Then we can make readable actions like the student is in functional modeling. So, I went to the first level of action, I do not want to go second level like in functional modeling, what is the student doing? That is depends on your research question. Then you can say what is he doing in that model is doing something else, info center, simulator, some contextual information, you can add another column to add more contextual information. It depends on the research question we are asking. So, my suggestion is capture all the data in a raw format, then create your construct your own features based on what is the research question, what is your aim and how do you want to construct the features. So, this is the data we can obtain from the MongoDB with very little effort. So, let us think about it. So, we have this data, let us do a small activity. Given the raw data you saw in the last two slides, can you list down at least three features? Please pass this video and write down your answers and resume to continue. So, the features in tele can be average time on functional model. For example, a student will be using this metal for multiple sessions and you might be moving around functional model, qualitative model, quantitative model multiple times. What is the average time a student spent on functional model that can be the feature? So, how do you compute it? You have to use Excel sheet, simple Excel sheet tools, tricks, you have to define what are the student ID for a given student ID and you can compute when and when and all students use the functional model and you have to use the timestamp data to compute the average. So, you might know how to use Excel sheet as if you have watched the week 2 video. Now, can you consider the frequency of actions? So, first one is time, the second one is frequency of actions. Number of times a student use functional model in a session or number of times the student use functional model in a week. So, you can come up with the different set of features. So, there are two basic common features we should consider is time and frequency. Like functional model, you can create features for qualitative model, information center, calculator, simulator, you can create a lot of features from the log data. Also, you can compute features like average time per session. What is the average time a student is spending per session? And is it different from group A to group B? Suppose you have a two set of groups, one is control group or experimental group and you might be introducing a new intervention in the OALD for group B, then you want to see that whether this recommendation or intervention improves students average time spent on the OALD. So, you can compute these kind of features from the log data in a raw format. So, how do you construct features? The main thing is domain knowledge. So, that is why the domain expertise is more important to construct these features. The domain expertise in the problem you are handling and also you might know by your experience a student might do these actions in order to complete task Y. So, that kind of domain knowledge will be helpful to create the features. So, or please read research papers which talks about features, feature construction from that you can start your feature construction. The basic thing as I mentioned is time and frequency. XR is the easy tool to start with does not require much coding or any knowledge on programming. In this week, we will teach how to use Excel sheet as a learning analytics tool. Also, the Python or R script is really good. So, I recommend even if you have worked on any programming language, I recommend you to start learning one of these script languages. Especially in Python, please use pandas. Especially in Python, please use the library called pandas. That helps you to process the raw data from the CSV or in a matrix format. Once you have the raw data locked into the Python, you can do a lot of actions just like we do in Excel sheet. Pandas library is really good and I recommend you learning Python. But if you watch the demo of how to use Excel for the LDA, that is enough. So, in this video, we talked about what is raw data, raw data from MongoDB example for matter and also how to construct features. The basic feature construction is please consider time and frequency of each actions, create features from that. Thank you.


good to see you all welcome back everybody hopefully everyone is I don't have as cold as I am it is freezing here in New York I was in this city yesterday and uh do you know I don't know what happened but like it was we had some really nice weather we were like in this high 60s 70s well somebody had this big rainstorm came from nowhere and then old sun it just dropped like 30 degrees like that and then I was out at my uh my friend's restaurant yesterday finally had a nice little steak dinner at a nice steakhouse and you know they had a nice little outdoor dining we couldn't even appreciate it but it was so damn cold Taz it's snowing in Denver my god hopefully we won't have a cold summer you know I remember we had like three years ago but anyway there's no more replaced than being on your lovely home sitting here and trading with us and just happy to see you all here joining us every morning here uh at Simon Trading University so anyway let's go through some of the stocks that I'm moving this morning there's been a lot of action we got a really nice rally yesterday actually and I actually jumped into a couple of nice little swing trades uh I was in cash but then I saw something starting to make some moves and so I made some pops so I did move into a couple I did you know move on my swing trades on certain stocks did really well yesterday on some day trades also uh made back what I lost you know I still didn't make back what I lost on damn I didn't want to look at that day I hate putting it on my calendar too always reminds me how much you screw up right uh but WBT taught me uh treat me pretty well yesterday thank god and for some of you here in the cyber group room I mean me and Josh were just going addict in the way of like oh my god look at these iceberg orders man man they were getting filled and it was that buyout or something like that let me bring up the stock because here I'm chatting away and let me just bring it up we got here it was what was WBT WBT there we go this stock right here just it was just an animal this stock right here right here was the big winner right there and you know I kind of like that stock I mean we were I was watching as it was going through the course of the day but stock had a really really nice push I was done I got out right around I think it was right around here I bought it right around 950 yeah I got out right around yeah 21 I got out and I was happy you know what I mean that was a nice little move right there on that stock and what was nice about it is I did average up it's starting getting pretty nasty though but I know the rumors of buyout and I don't know we didn't come out with the buyout number or something like that so anyway it was nice during the day you could see it had a nice little trend um you could have waited all the way till about three o'clock you could see it right here about 230 you could have probably got in around 22 and you know it did run up to about 2250 not bad for a day's pace so that one did pretty good there was a couple of better ones in the afternoon but we're going to talk about that too but that stock obviously did help me out a lot yesterday but the iceberg the big block iceberg orders we saw 20 50,000 30,000 guy kept pushing it down pushing it down he started getting executed it just was really really cool to see that because remember the main reason what separates us from most people out there is that here at Cybertrain University the way I was trained no way our traders train and you guys know this being in the cyber group room some of you here on YouTube probably don't know that is that you have to just follow the money you really do and that kind explains it you want to use some indicator that looks pretty with beautiful colors everything go knock yourself out with that let me know how it works for you and the only way you know if it's working for you is that you should be doing pretty damn well consistently but if not I think it's just easy just following your orders so anyway let's talk about a couple of stocks that we did traded that did move on yesterday did pretty well so we got that wpt that moved pretty well another one that moved pretty well too was the sklz now this stock is moving again nice little mover you could see was a $45 stock the stock got destroyed was down to $12 it's one of the first days up so this is how you follow and know if it's a good swing trade or a day trade because that's how you become a good swing trade and that's how you become a better options trader I don't like people do the opposite they try options then they do swing trading and then they sell me they'll try day trading you're doing it backwards you keep I say this all the time everyone just want to give you a little tip of the day how do you know what option to trade if you don't even know what the stock is doing right just because it's a it's a sexy lever leverage call it doesn't work that way gotta follow the money but anyway stocks doing pretty well you guys know this by watching it and it was it was in the morning watch list in pre-market what do we have in the pre-market I got this hold on I gotta move this out of my way I got my uh we got right here this was actually a pre-market watch list let me put it in here again we had that one and I think we put it in here we put in in this cyber group um now there it is so we had those stocks that move in and actually shockingly all of them actually moved pretty nicely right there so you could see this stock if when I zoom in we look at yesterday's move but you could see it look at nice little pop right there from 19 to 1950 and uh if you were here earlier when you're supposed to be at nine o'clock you should have been at 1850 so that one's doing pretty well right there another couple of stocks also that did pretty well yesterday was and MVAS and guess what she's moving again so she's actually going back on the watch list MVIS gonna put that all over here but you could see that stock was another nice little mover yesterday you know nice price range $14 stock it was $10 stock um hit I mean this is how you become a very good nature a swing trader the stock right here had major support levels here and you could see it consistently hit hit hit and finally went up so now you could see how you're getting a nice little move and this is how you become a very good once again swing trader because you would have noticed it closing at the highs of the day had a nice push and that stock obviously worked out pretty well another stock that did pretty well to yesterday was bingo now we've been trading bingo we've done very well with bingo you could see here on the swing trade going back on this one the stock was just hovering right around 49 cents this is crazy right a 49 cent stock was the $15 you know so um anyway we've trained that stock going into December thing just kept going up I got a little nervous trading this thing because when we see these things go up as fast as they do they use you come crashing down I mean where do you find a 50 cent stock you know go all the way to $6 up to $15 and you know what it's not a it's not a penny stock too this isn't as that national but anyway the stock obviously yesterday did really really well if you look over here had a nice push around 930 the stock ran from 550 all the way to 570 you know it kind of dwindled nice and nice and then they had I don't know what happened here in the F hours but this is how you basically you know trickle in into an ice swing trade because you had to close it to highs and you know what if you did jump in you did pretty well on that one too another stock that worked pretty well is can can got really hammered another stock you could see here had a big big run up from $4 all the way up to about 38 came crashing down and it started building some really nice support levels here several for several days it didn't want to break this 12 and it all of a sudden boom look where it is right now we have a nice little push to stocks up that almost hit 15 today and you know what that stock can is back on the watch list all right what else that we had that move pretty well I jumped in back into draft king draft king did the same thing draft king did really well on it on yesterday so there was a lot of good stocks that did make some moves what did I have over here to have the other one up here there was another one I forgot here hold on I got to check my swing trading account I want to throw in it that was also pretty good just checking on my phone hold on what do I got here yeah okay so the other stocks that did really well too was Nikola Nikola did roll Nikola got crushed I'm actually I'm swing trading that one I bought that one yesterday that one's doing pretty well this one is really cool too this ACAC now we were trading this two days ago okay I want to bring this back I did it on a swing trade I bought it over here and does anybody know why this stock is going up ACAC anybody know why like what the story is about this look at the name we talked about here on when we were trading it on Monday Biden announced uh right exactly uh Greg Biden actually went there to look at these these uh these buses your school buses they want to go all electric okay so which was kind of weird because when he was there it didn't really move we had this little spike right here but this is where I kind of bought it I'm like I don't know I mean the stock I was looking at it in this way on a swing trade I was looking at this one I'm like you know what the stock obviously has been holding here pretty strong at this support levels and they really didn't break it so I says you know I'm able to jump in and obviously it's working out pretty damn well right now but uh but you can see how that thing added nowhere just was that broke that high 15 and now look at that roughly 18 so that one doing pretty well on that one too so there's these are things like I was telling you yesterday you have to listen you have two completely different governments that moved in and not only that but you also have you know uh a new government here in the United States that owns the White House that owns Congress and owns the Senate so they technically could pass anything they want which will make certain these things that much more easier to come to fruition for us to make money if it's if they had something that they are actually trying to pass in Congress it's going to get passed like it or not so Republicans have really had no shot of stopping other than just screaming and yelling but if they want to pass something and they want all these buses to go to go electric guess what you got to follow the money and that's why these things are moving the way they do so that's what you have to look at and that's what traders have to focus on like their policies love their policies or hate their policies at the end of the day if you want to and this is what you learn as a trader you want to go out there and you want to trade against it let me know how that works out for you you can't you know you know you can't be a leader in trading you got to be a follower because unless you can move the market it's not going to happen so anyway those are pretty good stocks that obviously doing pretty well there's a couple other ones I want to talk about F cell also is moving this morning that one's moving pretty nicely if you caught it early around eight o'clock I was looking here on the big iceberg orders here on level four there was a couple of guys over here that were holding it were bidding it up right around 960 68 you could see it right there and it kind of popped right here I mean I'm not really seeing any substantial iceberg orders bingo is another one you could see it this big guy right here just got executed so right here at 650 stock right now it's a 660 not really a lot of action going on but it's not terrible can was actually really well but there's a lot of people coming out there and selling it you could see it there was big iceberg orders right here around 1484 they held it they kept testing it these guys were not getting through it they were not buying it to get to the next level and boom that's why it just dropped from 1480 all the way down to 1430 another one that looks like they're really testing the waters here is on this sklz now this stock had a really nice move from nine o'clock this morning you could see it right there I'll zoom out a little bit further you could see though these guys were getting hit right here around $19 stock went to 1940 it looks like these 26 000 share and 10 000 share seller at 19 and getting tested somebody just popped their nose right now here at 1940 for about 11 000 that one's doing pretty well um here's another one that's looking pretty good too looks like some guy came here and bit it up looks like he pulled his order he's probably executing the offer right now on XL T another one I don't know what happened with with AT&T but like ATT never went anywhere for crying out loud and now all of a sudden things starting to move so I mean I have friends of mine like maybe I should get an AT&T after three four years and sure enough it should probably damn things start moving but there are a couple of this what the stock is a little bit more advanced gotta be careful they do some shakes here trades a lot of volume you know it's kind of hard to follow like somebody other stocks that we trade and then you got this UNXM so these are the stocks that we're looking at we've got CAN you can see we've got look at that intraday chart MVIS like I said on that MVIS oh I don't even have it here on my level four MVIS let me put it on there and see what's going on but you could see a stock is building a nice little falstow flag right there so that one looks pretty cool and you could see how like I said how it had support levels right there at 10 okay so I got some orders here it looks like I got um yeah these guys got executed right here look at that run around yeah big orders got here got executed so it looks like some buyers are coming in a little bit here so that one looks pretty interesting so looks like it's gonna probably looks like it wants to break it we got UN UXIN TXL and we got them right here on the right so anyway make sure you follow us on Twitter because we will post this on Twitter if you're watching us on you know on YouTube and Facebook and then obviously you know we're gonna post this in a trading room so that pretty much does it I mean yesterday I'm happy that I was able to chip away some of my losses from that stupid day on Tuesday which is very rare you know what happened I just let let things get to me but that's okay what it is there's a couple of nice little stocks I'm moving so we're getting a little bit more of a swing trade that probably gonna start kicking in we're getting some nice nice greens on the watch list and stuff like that listen a lot of stocks took some big hits the only bad thing about being a day trader is like you're like hot and cold you know what I mean you're never warm you're like oh definitely markets gonna you know go one way and all of a sudden things start going and boom they you know they start trending the other way so we got that so anything I'm missing I did not call out anyone see anything today's earth day so maybe maybe a lot of the earth stocks might be moving anything else they would pretty much got them all and guys don't forget today I did post it post a link 12 o'clock today don't miss it open house here at Cybertree University if you want to know more about level three if you want to know about how we train our traders and our students and how we actually how we trade and do this every day as a career don't miss out the links up there please click on it register and we'll see you there and once again if you are new if you've been here at Cybertree University it's always nice to come there get your mind off it you always learn something new and most importantly you could see what other people are saying where you are make sure really appreciate to say oh wow you know what because I'm like like light years ahead just makes you feel better and more engaged and also looking something to look forward to and while you're doing it just one little stock I got one trader on here on YouTube says could you check out this the GR and Q you know I sold the stock early it's a 10% 2.2 million shares but she hasn't done anything since eight o'clock this morning so as of right now she's a scratch okay that's what I basically would say on that one you can see it even on the long-term chart you know it's I mean unless you're doing as a swing trade but I don't really see that much going on out there can you made about 19 cents on that VX RT on the short listen people neglect they don't look shorting is you know people get nervous like oh shorting you think shorting is scary Jesus you got to try options basically it's it's another option and that's even more scary believe me it's a lot easier to do that yeah everyone loves shorting listen whatever goes up I always have a motto comes twice down all right everyone be safe I'll see you back here at 12 o'clock cyber traders if you're in the room you know we'll start commentary unless at 9 30 so let's get ready for the open and hopefully we can continue to streak what happened from yesterday right guys look be safe and we'll see you back at 12


In this panel we will hear from three contemporary artists who are thinking through grief, loss and failed fertility in their work, taking us from deep dark places towards hope and light. Feel free to, yeah, sit down or take, yeah. I'll just introduce all three of you as well as Sophie Williamson who will be doing Q&A afterwards. So Lucy Willow will talk about her work The Last Portrait. Lucy works in sculpture and drawing to create installations that tell stories of loss and grief. At Sea Again 2018 is a memorial artwork video installation depicting the scattering of a son's ashes off the coast of Cornwall in 2016. In 2020 Lucy set up the project Dust which contained a collection of broken artefacts inviting visitors to tell their stories and share experiences of grief through the lens of objects displayed. The Dust of Objects 2022 was presented at the conference Death and Culture for York University. Published work by Lucy includes The Last Portrait in Malady and Mortality, Illness, Disease and Death in Literary and Visual Culture from 2016. Holly Slingsby will present Unheard Songs. Holly is a visual artist working in performance, video and painting. She studied at the Ruskin School of Art at Oxford and the Laid School of Art in London. Her visual language reflects a fascination with iconographic traditions drawing on biblical imagery, mythologies and contemporary culture. Much of Holly's recent work seeks to convey the unspoken experience of infertility. Her work has been shown at Turner Contemporary, Margate and various other places across the UK and the world. I'm really looking forward to all the presentations. Up next we'll have Melanie Stidolf who you've heard from as well and who's really responsible for a lot of what is happening today. Melanie will bring to us a new work titled The Next Dawn, The Next Spring. The title of the work is in fact a quote from Barbara Hepworth. Mel is an artist and curator, public programme at Tate St. Ives. She studied at the University of Leeds and the University of British Columbia in Canada. Her work is influenced by experiences of infertility and childlessness, not by choice. She's drawn to rock pools and misusing photographic equipment. Her photo book Endless Reproduction recently featured in The Guardian. The photo series last summer is currently showing at Newland Gallery and the exchange. We might be able to never cross and see them as well. The three presentations will be followed by a conversation and a Q&A with Sophie J. Williamson, who is among other things the initiator and convener of Undead Matter, an ongoing programme focused on the intimacy of being with dying and its dialogue with the geological. So welcome to all of you. Well, thank you very much Mel for inviting me to speak today. I think this is the first time as an artist that I've actually been invited to speak about motherhood. So I'm really delighted to be able to kind of share some thoughts with you about my experience. So I'm going to be talking about focusing on a work that I made called The Last Portrait. The Last Portrait is a photographic image of my son Jack's ashes. Jack died in 2006 at the age of 15 following a fatal road accident. And much of my work since 2006 has been trying to think about that space of grief and that idea that you kind of occupy this space of strange strangeness, which I'll talk about a little bit more. Yes, so not really trying to make sense of or to navigate, but trying to create visual imagery which reflects that experience of not really knowing where you are anymore. And even though you're in a world where everything is familiar, everything is very, very strange at the same time following that kind of really devastating experience. So before I get to The Last Portrait, I'm going to just put my work in context. I'm going to skip through things very, very quickly. I could talk in lots of depth about lots of the images, but I'm happy to pick up on those later during tea or over lunch. So I'm going to race through a little bit. I'm actually going to start with a quote. I've got something that's really clicking here, is it? It's earrings. I can hear it in my head. Right, I'll ignore that. Can you all hear the clicking? Right, anyway, okay. Ignore the clicking. Okay, I'm going to start with a quote which is from Nick Cave, who writes very, very beautifully about grief. I'm sure lots of you are aware of his writings. He does a newsletter called The Red Hand Files, and this is a quote from one of those editions. Metaphor can create a merciful sense of distance from the cruel idea or unspeakable truth and allow it to exist within us as a kind of poetic radiance, as a work of art. And when I read that, it really felt as if it was a kind of very powerfully connected to how I work with imagery. So sometimes there's things in life that are just too difficult to look at head on, and I don't really do that as an artist. I'm much more looking to try and find that place of metaphor of something that's actually incredibly beautiful. I'm looking for imagery that is beautiful, that sort of escapes, that kind of being able to pin down and defined, and a place where I'm quite invisible within the work. And it's a kind of... The idea of cruel beauty is something that I work with very much in work, so it does have this deep sadness to it, but it's actually imagery that I find quite hypnotically beautiful and quite strange sometimes. I haven't made very many works that directly reference Jack, but this was one of them scattering of his hashes off the coast of Cornwall in 2018. And the imagery, I wasn't expecting to get any imagery from that really. I had a very cheap selfie stick and a very, very cheap underwater camera, and I literally just put it under the water. And then the imagery that came from that was this kind of magical, incredibly beautiful image of Jack's ashes that were floating and being carried away by the current. So from that, I made a series of works that I wasn't expecting to make. So the work came from the beautiful imagery rather than me setting out to make a particular work of art. This space is... I've made a lot of work from this particular space. I have a memorial garden in LaMona for Jack, and recently, under the roots of this beautiful, large ashtray, I discovered an ancient well, and it is like an archetypal portal to the underworld. It's just fantastic. So a lot of my work is looking at those kind of the unfathomable depths of dark spaces. So the well space is something that I could then imagine. This darkness went on and on and on, and it never had a kind of ending to it. So it's a metaphor, the well's been a fantastic kind of source of inspiration, really, of the things that you might draw up from this very dark place. I find myself either looking at things really up close under a microscope, so looking at the details of something, or into black holes, or the depths of space, or the depths of the ocean. So I'm kind of going from something that's vast and massive and not really being able to get any sense of to the microscopic. Some of the images that came from the well were drawn in charcoal, and these reference sonography, that kind of scanning an internal womb space and finding imagery that came from that space, sort of an empty darkness with this sort of flickering traces. Ghost-like images that kind of were echoes of past kind of stories, I guess, connected with wombs and mythology. I've spent a lot of time working in dark landscapes, so all my imagery and all my work come from this idea of investigating the dark. This was in Iceland in 2016, and I was there during the winter months, and the weather was so bad I couldn't leave the village that I was staying in, and so I spent my time in an old factory, and I found this landscape under the floor, so it's kind of like looking up very, very closely at dust and things that maybe kind of slip unnoticed. And I made a series of journal creative writing responses to this, and I'm just going to read a very short extract. I found grief and sadness residing here. The rolling hills carrying the stories of all that had been discarded, abandoned. The space whispered its stories. Sometimes it's necessary to be on your hands and knees in order to discover what is forgotten. Grief does that. Its greatness and its beauty is its ability to bring everything tumbling down. In the darkness on the horizon line, I imagine Ophelia floating on her back on a black river of dust. So I use creative writing quite a bit in my work to try and create this sense that I'm discovering something that's very unknown, and I think it's that place, it's looking for that place where I might find or be able to communicate with Jack, but it's all a kind of poetic connection, a poetic, symbolic, metaphorical kind of connection that I guess that I'm keeping that sense of being a muffa alive through that experience of working with imagery. And also work with images that become quite symbolic. So this idea of umbilical cords and umbilical cords in my kind of poetic imagination are this symbolic cord that could reach across the threshold, especially if I'm thinking of the world, across the threshold, into the underworld and deliver messages to the dead. So I'm always looking at where we can have those communications and carry on taking place with the dead, and especially Jack. So I think that feeling that motherhood is something that is always continuing. I'm always looking for my relationship to Jack and as a mother to continue through the work that I make. That looks strange from my angle on here. I put that in, it's an old piece of work now, 2007, that was looked after by Susanna reminding me the tapes here a long time ago. A lot of the ways that I sort of articulate, I've sort of developed a symbolic language using dust and using microscopic imagery that talks about transience, loss, ephemerality and the beauty of that. So I've put that in because I've made a lot of dust carpets over the years. Recent work has become quite performative, so working with this idea rather than my own story of grief and loss, working with the idea of a mourner, as a character, this was really taken from the Irish tradition of keening where women used to be employed to wail at funerals and they were the kind of conduits of a community where the emotion and grief of the community would be channeled through this idea of a mourner. So this kind of idea that a woman is a vessel that can actually channel the grief of the community has started to kind of play out in work, so it's becoming much more about narratives around grief generally rather than my own personal story. This brings me back to Nick Cave's quotes, that idea of finding poetic metaphor to find a way of living with something which is unbearable to live with and so these child hands and the dead bird at Goldfinch are something that this is a piece that I've lived with for a long time and I just love the beauty of it and the sadness at the same time. Which does bring me to Jack's ashes. So this was a photographic portrait that I made of Jack a month after his death in 2006. When I received his ashes, I had an absolute instinct to go and look at them under a microscope and my father's a marine biologist and has a lab in Bath so I was able to go and have a look at his ashes under a microscope and the image that then I received was this and it's difficult to put it into words but it became, even though it's the end of Jack's story, for me it opened up something immediately which came the beginning of a new relationship with Jack and that's one of omnipresence and it felt very kind of full of hope and something that was just kind of incredible and I've had a long time now, 17 years this year of thinking about this image and working with this image and wondering what this image is and thinking about whether this image has a public face or whether it's something very personal but my journey and my exploration of an ongoing relationship with Jack has been very much through this image and recently I've started to read theories about hyper-objects that Timothy Morton was actually mentioned yesterday evening in the talk but I've just been reading amazing book called Hyper-Objects and it is about this idea, he talks about it in terms of global warming where something is so vast that we can't actually comprehend it but it puts you into this kind of space of strange strangeness where we're going about our daily kind of business in the world but yet everything has changed and everything is different and he also talks about black holes as being hyper-objects and I have started to think about this object as a hyper-object in terms of something that opens out a space for me that is incomprehensible but at the same time I can find a relationship with that in that place so it's an image that I've written a book chapter about I've talked about it at conferences I've hidden it away, I haven't shown people I've brought it out it's never really been shown in an exhibition because it doesn't really feel well it hasn't felt that it could be present in an exhibition but it is something that I think enables me to feel that Jack has this omnipresence and my relationship to him isn't connected to that bodily experience of him being present in this world but he's present in a very different way and this image has actually enabled me to live through the experience of grief in many many many different ways and in the early days of grief it gave me an enormous amount of hope and courage and ability to carry on so I think that way of being with images has been massively important to me as an artist even though I don't really address or talk about motherhood in particular within my work it's always there I'm always looking for that place where communication can take place and where that connection can be held in all work but it's in a poetic and metaphorical sense and I think that might be all I have to say