Read Online On a Farther Shore by William Souder - Free Book Online
Authors: William Souder
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economically than Pittsburgh. The atmosphere at Johns Hopkins was decidedly southern, and Carson loved listening to the accents of her classmates.
As absorbing as her studies were, Carson was not insulated from the hard times besetting the country.In her second year at Hopkins she became a half-time student and found work as a lab assistant in the medical school, where she helped maintain colonies of rats and fruit flies. Carson hoped to earn enough to make payments on what she still owed to PCW—and to help support her family, most of whom came to live with her early in 1930. They rented a large three-story house outside of Baltimore in the remote, mostly rural area of Stemmers Run. The house had no central heat but did have indoor plumbing and a big fireplace. A handsome grove of oaks sprawled over theproperty, and a two-mile hike through the woods brought you to Chesapeake Bay. The house also featured—incongruously—a tennis court, a step up from the homestead back in Springdale. But life at Stemmers Run could hardly have been comfortable. Carson’s father was in poor health, weak and quiet and spent. Carson’s sister, Marian, divorced again, lived there, too, accompanied by her two energetic young daughters. Mrs. Carson, forever at Rachel’s side, seemed content to encourage her daughter’s studies and happily type her papers. It was apparent to everyone who saw them together how close Carson and her mother were.
Not surprisingly, with Carson the only wage earner in the household, PCW didn’t get the money still owed on her undergraduate studies.In 1932, after many missed payments, Carson settled with the school by signing over the title to the pair of her father’s lots she’d offered as collateral back in 1929.Much later, a neighbor at Stemmers Run would recall stopping in at the Carsons’ early one evening and finding the family seated at the table with only a bowl of apples for dinner.
In the lab, Carson’s problems multiplied.She gave up on snakes and at one point tried to study embryonic development in squirrels. But she couldn’t get the animals to breed. She complained to a friend, “I don’t have time to think any more.” Between working part-time and going to school part-time, she wasn’t making any progress at all. She began to worry that she was running out of time for an ambitious study.Eventually Carson’s adviser suggested that she work on the pronephros in catfish—a project interesting to Carson mainly because it could be done quickly.The pronephros is an embryonic precursor of the kidney, and at the time it was unknown whether it was retained as a functional excretory organ in the adult fish. Carson concluded that it wasn’t, and in June 1932, a full year behind schedule, she submitted a mostly descriptive one-hundred-page master’s thesis featuring drawings and photographs of histological sections. It wasn’t breakthrough science—but it was done.
When Carson later received letters of recommendation from her professors at Johns Hopkins, they all expressed confidence in herteaching abilities but were tepid about the prospect that she would do meaningful scientific research. Whether they’d have thought differently had Carson had the resources to finish her degree on time, or that it was simply the case that she lacked a talent for research, Carson would never know. As the months and then years unspooled at Johns Hopkins, Carson’s fascination with biology remained intact, but her commitment to it as a career waned.
Through graduate school, Carson had steadily increased her efforts to earn money.She started teaching biology in the summers at Johns Hopkins and worked as a lab assistant and zoology instructor at the University of Maryland in College Park,which was a long ride from Stemmers Run by bus or train that Carson made several times each week. In the fall of 1932, Carson began work at Johns Hopkins toward her PhD. She would not complete this degree, but she did fall in
As absorbing as her studies were, Carson was not insulated from the hard times besetting the country.In her second year at Hopkins she became a half-time student and found work as a lab assistant in the medical school, where she helped maintain colonies of rats and fruit flies. Carson hoped to earn enough to make payments on what she still owed to PCW—and to help support her family, most of whom came to live with her early in 1930. They rented a large three-story house outside of Baltimore in the remote, mostly rural area of Stemmers Run. The house had no central heat but did have indoor plumbing and a big fireplace. A handsome grove of oaks sprawled over theproperty, and a two-mile hike through the woods brought you to Chesapeake Bay. The house also featured—incongruously—a tennis court, a step up from the homestead back in Springdale. But life at Stemmers Run could hardly have been comfortable. Carson’s father was in poor health, weak and quiet and spent. Carson’s sister, Marian, divorced again, lived there, too, accompanied by her two energetic young daughters. Mrs. Carson, forever at Rachel’s side, seemed content to encourage her daughter’s studies and happily type her papers. It was apparent to everyone who saw them together how close Carson and her mother were.
Not surprisingly, with Carson the only wage earner in the household, PCW didn’t get the money still owed on her undergraduate studies.In 1932, after many missed payments, Carson settled with the school by signing over the title to the pair of her father’s lots she’d offered as collateral back in 1929.Much later, a neighbor at Stemmers Run would recall stopping in at the Carsons’ early one evening and finding the family seated at the table with only a bowl of apples for dinner.
In the lab, Carson’s problems multiplied.She gave up on snakes and at one point tried to study embryonic development in squirrels. But she couldn’t get the animals to breed. She complained to a friend, “I don’t have time to think any more.” Between working part-time and going to school part-time, she wasn’t making any progress at all. She began to worry that she was running out of time for an ambitious study.Eventually Carson’s adviser suggested that she work on the pronephros in catfish—a project interesting to Carson mainly because it could be done quickly.The pronephros is an embryonic precursor of the kidney, and at the time it was unknown whether it was retained as a functional excretory organ in the adult fish. Carson concluded that it wasn’t, and in June 1932, a full year behind schedule, she submitted a mostly descriptive one-hundred-page master’s thesis featuring drawings and photographs of histological sections. It wasn’t breakthrough science—but it was done.
When Carson later received letters of recommendation from her professors at Johns Hopkins, they all expressed confidence in herteaching abilities but were tepid about the prospect that she would do meaningful scientific research. Whether they’d have thought differently had Carson had the resources to finish her degree on time, or that it was simply the case that she lacked a talent for research, Carson would never know. As the months and then years unspooled at Johns Hopkins, Carson’s fascination with biology remained intact, but her commitment to it as a career waned.
Through graduate school, Carson had steadily increased her efforts to earn money.She started teaching biology in the summers at Johns Hopkins and worked as a lab assistant and zoology instructor at the University of Maryland in College Park,which was a long ride from Stemmers Run by bus or train that Carson made several times each week. In the fall of 1932, Carson began work at Johns Hopkins toward her PhD. She would not complete this degree, but she did fall in
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