The Pink Egg

Close to the peak of Old Screamer Mountain, looking out over the foothills of Georgia's Blue Ridge, sits Laurel Falls, a swank camp-school for girls. There for more than 20 years magnetic, pompadoured Lillian (Strange Fruit) Smith has taught a special kind of school. Some 60 well-to-do kids (including, last year, Golfer Robert Tyre Jones's daughters Clara and Ellen) are given, among other things, the facts of life according to the latest precepts of progressive education.

Last week Lillian Smith, in the October issue of Progressive Education, reported verbatim a typical seminar. Miss Lil (as the pupils call her) is relaxed on the greensward, spinning an allegory. Her girls are gathered around.

"Once upon a time," says Miss Lil, "each of us was born. We came out of our mother's body after living with her for nine months. . . ."

(One little girl was staring far away, her eyes on the deep blue of the peaks. "The pink egg," she whispered. . . .)

"We came out of the 'pink egg,' " continued the teacher, "and began growing, but there is not one of us who does not want, sometimes, to go back to it. . . ."

("Like tonight," a tall girl said, "when war has ended and peace has not begun.")

"After we came out of our mother's body, we began to reach out, little by little, toward the world . . . running back toward the pink egg when we grew too afraid . . . or when the steps came too close together or seemed too steep."

("Like giving up the nipple for the cup," one camper murmured. "I sat on that step so long I almost grew a new eggshell. . . .")

"Sometimes a step is harder to climb for one of us than for others. But we all have steps that are hard to pull up to."

("Mine was bed-wetting--still is," an eight-year-old giggled.)

"We sat there in the night and looked at the sky . . ." concludes Lillian Smith. "The wind was blowing cool in our faces, and somehow seemed nearer."

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