A Master's Degree

Margaret McCarter's works include: The Cottonwood's Story (1903), Cuddy's Baby (1907), Cuddy and Other Stories (1908), In Old Quivira (1908), The Prince of the Prairie: A Story of Kansas (1910), The Peace of the Solomon Valley (1911), A Wall of Men (1912), A Master's Degree (1913), Winning the Wilderness (1914), The Corner Stone (1915), Vanguards of the Plains: A Romance of the Old Santa Fe Trail (1917), The Reclaimers (1918), Paying Mother (1920), Homeland (1922) and Widening Waters (1924). A Master's Degree begins on a midwestern college campus. "IT happened by mere chance that the September day on which Professor Vincent Burgess, A.B., from Boston, first entered Sunrise College as instructor in Greek, was the same day on which Vic Burleigh, overgrown country boy from a Kansas claim out beyond the Walnut River, signed up with the secretary of the College Board and paid the entrance fee for his freshman year. And further, by chance, it happened that the two young men had first met at the gateway to the campus, one coming from the East and the other from the West, and having exchanged the courtesies of stranger greeting, they had walked, side by side, up the long avenue to the foot of the slope. Together, they had climbed the broad flight of steps leading up to the imposing doorway of Sunrise, with the great letter S carved in stone relief above it; and, after pausing a moment to take in the matchless wonder of the landscape over which old Sunrise keeps watch, the college portal had swung open, and the two had entered at the same time."