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creep closer and closer to you, with wondering but unafraid eyes?”
    Carson went on to say that she was an avid reader and named some of her favorite writers, including Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, and Mark Twain, the last for his “hatred of hypocrisy.” She said she didn’t care for contemporary writers, as the “realism in modern literature does not appeal to me.” Near the close of the essay, Carson’s tone turned pious. She wrote that she was an “idealist” and hinted at an ambition so lofty that it would ultimately bring her near God: “Sometimes I lose sight of my goal, then again it flashes into view, filling me with a new determination to keep the ‘vision splendid’ before my eyes. I may never come to a full realization of my dreams, but ‘a man’s reach must exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?’ ”
    Carson concluded by saying that she’d chosen PCW because it was a Christian college, “founded on ideals of service and honor,” where she could reach a “fuller realization of my self” and thus play her part on “the stage of life.”
    Although Carson would never back away from her childlike fascination with cute, furry animals—it was something she hung on to for life—her choice of the words “vision splendid” was startling. It’s possible, though unlikely, that Carson simply invented the phrase for her essay and put it in quotes for emphasis—or that it was something she’d heard or read without remembering where.What seems more probable is that she was referencing a thoroughly religious book of poems titled
The Vision Splendid
, published in 1917 and written by John Oxenham, a pen name for the English writer William Arthur Dunkerley. The title poem was a meditation on the parallel Oxenhamsaw between the terrible cost of victory in World War I—at the time still not yet in hand—and Christ’s death on the cross. It began like this:
    Here—or hereafter—you shall see it ended
,
    This mighty work to which your souls are set;
    If from beyond—then, with the vision splendid
,
    You shall smile back and never know regret
    Carson had grown up during the war, heard her brother’s stories, felt the normal patriotic allegiance to America’s commitment in the cause. But how a dead soldier’s gaze from heaven could have had any bearing on her hopes of becoming a writer was a mystery. If the vision splendid was a view of the world from the afterlife then what good was it in the here and now? Maybe Carson simply liked the words without knowing what they meant.For her next theme, Carson wrote about field hockey. She earned a B+ on both papers.
    Carson entered college as an English major. She skipped taking a science class her freshman year, when most PCW students got that requirement out of the way. In her sophomore year she signed up for biology—the entry-level class in a program in the midst of an upheaval. In the fall of 1925, the department had offered only three courses: general biology, botany, and human physiology.By Carson’s senior year, there would be ten courses, including advanced botany, general zoology, invertebrate and vertebrate zoology, histology, microbiology, genetics, and embryology.The force behind this change was one of the most compelling figures on campus and head of the biology department—she was actually the entire biology department—Professor Mary Scott Skinker.
    Miss Skinker was an object of fascination among the students, who thought her uncommonly beautiful and almost ethereal in her bearing—she exuded an airy, incorporeal remoteness that may havebeen due to the fact that she was nearsighted and refused to wear glasses. Slender and graceful, Skinker had dark eyes and wore her hair in a loose swirl atop her head. At PCW, everyone dressed for dinner, meeting in the chandeliered dining room of Berry Hall before taking their places at tables set with linen and silver, where faculty members guided the conversation and provided the occasional