THE STORY OF WELLESLEY

BY

FLORENCE CONVERSE

ALMA MATER

 To Alma Mater, Wellesley's daughters, All together join and sing. Thro' all her wealth of woods and water Let your happy voices ring; In every changing mood we love her, Love her towers and woods and lake; Oh, changeful sky, bend blue above her, Wake, ye birds, your chorus wake!

 We'll sing her praises now and ever, Blessed fount of truth and love. Our heart's devotion, may it never Faithless or unworthy prove, We'll give our lives and hopes to serve her, Humblest, highest, noblest--all; A stainless name we will preserve her, Answer to her every call. 

 Anne L. Barrett, '86

PREFACE

The day after the Wellesley fire, an eager young reporter on aBoston paper came out to the college by appointment to interviewa group of Wellesley women, alumnae and teachers, grief-strickenby the catastrophe which had befallen them. He came impetuously, with that light-hearted breathlessness so characteristic of youngreporters in the plays of Bernard Shaw and Arnold Bennett. Hewas charmingly in character, and he sent his voice out on the runto meet the smallest alumna in the group:

"Now tell me some pranks!" he cried, with pencil poised. 

What she did tell him need not be recorded here. Neither was itset down in the courteous and sympathetic report which he afterwardswrote for his paper. 

And readers who come to this story of Wellesley for pranks willbe disappointed likewise. Not that the lighter side of theWellesley life is omitted; play-days and pageants, all the brightrevelry of the college year, belong to the story. Wellesley wouldnot be Wellesley if they were left out. But her alumnae, herfaculty, and her undergraduates all agree that the college wasnot founded primarily for the sake of Tree Day, and that theSenior Play is not the goal of the year's endeavor. 

It is the story of the Wellesley her daughters and lovers knowthat I have tried to tell: the Wellesley of serious purpose, consecrated to the noble ideals of Christian Scholarship. 

I am indebted for criticism, to President Pendleton who kindlyread certain parts of the manuscript, to Professor Katharine LeeBates, Professor Vida D. Scudder, and Mrs. Marian Pelton Guild;for historical material, to Miss Charlotte Howard Conant's "AddressDelivered in Memory of Henry Fowle Durant in Wellesley CollegeChapel", February 18, 1906, to Mrs. Louise McCoy North's HistoricalAddress, delivered at Wellesley's quarter centennial, in June 1900, to Professor George Herbert Palmer's "Life of Alice Freeman Palmer, "published by the Houghton Mifflin Co. , to Professor MargaretheMuller's "Carla Wenckebach, Pioneer, " published by Ginn & Co. ;to Dean Waite, Miss Edith Souther Tufts, Professor Sarah F. Whiting, Miss Louise Manning Hodgkins, Professor Emeritus Mary A. Willcox, Mrs. Mary Gilman Ahlers; to Miss Candace C. Stimson, Miss Mary B. Jenkins, the Secretary of the Alumnae Restoration and EndowmentCommittee, and to the many others among alumnae and faculty, whoseletters and articles I quote. Last but not least in my gratefulmemory are all those painstaking and accurate chroniclers, theeditors of the Wellesley Courant, Prelude, Magazine, News, andLegenda, whose labors went so far to lighten mine. 

F. C. 

CONTENTS

 I. THE FOUNDER AND HIS IDEALS II. THE PRESIDENTS AND THEIR ACHIEVEMENT III. THE FACULTY AND THEIR METHODS IV. THE STUDENTS AT WORK AND PLAY V. THE FIRE: AN INTERLUDE VI. THE LOYAL ALUMNAE INDEX [not included]

CHAPTER I

THE FOUNDER AND HIS IDEALS

I. 

As the nineteenth century recedes into history and the essentiallyromantic quality of its great adventures is confirmed by the"beauty touched with strangeness" which illumines their trueperspective, we are discovering, what the adventurers themselvesalways knew, that the movement for the higher education of womenwas not the least romantic of those Victorian quests and stirrings, and that its relation to the greatest adventure of all, Democracy, was peculiarly vital and close. 

We know that the "man in the street", in the sixties and seventies, watching with perplexity and scornful amusement the endeavor ofhis sisters and his daughters--or more probably other men'sdaughters--to prove that the intellectual heritage must be a commonheritage if Democracy was to be a working theory, missed the beautyof the picture. He saw the slim beginning of a procession ofyoung women, whose obstinate, dreaming eyes beheld the visionshitherto relegated by scriptural prerogative and masculine commentaryto their brothers; inevitably his outraged conservatism missedthe beauty; and the strangeness he called queer. That he shouldhave missed the democratic significance of the movement is lessto his credit. But he did miss it, fifty years ago and for severalyears thereafter, even as he is still missing the democraticsignificance of other movements to-day. Processions still passhim by, --for peace, for universal suffrage, May Day, Labor Day, and those black days when the nations mobilize for war, they passhim by, --and the last thing he seems to discover about them istheir democratic significance. But after a long while the meaningof it all has begun to penetrate. To-day, his daughters go tocollege as a matter of course, and he has forgotten that he evergrudged them the opportunity. 

They remind him of it, sometimes, with filial indirection, bycelebrating the benevolence, the intellectual acumen, the idealismof the few men, exceptional in their day, who saw eye to eye withMary Lyon and her kind; the men who welcomed women to Oberlinand Michigan, who founded Vassar and Wellesley and Bryn Mawr, and so helped to organize the procession. Their reminders are evenbeginning to take form as records of achievement; annals very farfrom meager, for achievement piles up faster since Democracy setthe gate of opportunity on the crack, and we pack more into a halfcentury than we used to. And women, more obviously than men, perhaps, have "speeded up" in response to the democratic stimulus;their accomplishment along social, political, industrial, and aboveall, educational lines, since the first woman's college was founded, is not inconsiderable. 

How much, or how little, would have been accomplished, industrially, socially, and politically, without that first woman's college, we shall never know, but the alumnae registers, with their statisticsconcerning the occupations of graduates, are suggestive reading. How little would have been accomplished educationally for women, it is not so difficult to imagine: Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, --with all the bright visions, the fullnessof life that they connote to American women, middle-aged andyoung, --blotted out; coeducational institutions harassed by numbersand inventing drastic legislation to keep out the women; man stillthe almoner of education, and woman his dependent. From all thesehampering probabilities the women's colleges save us to-day. Thisis what constitutes their negative value to education. 

Their positive contribution cannot be summarized so briefly; itsscattered chronicle must be sought in the minutes of trustees'meetings, where it modestly evades the public eye, in the academicformalities of presidents' reports and the journalistic naivete ofcollege periodicals; in the diaries of early graduates; in newspaperclippings and magazine "write-ups"; in historical sketches tocommemorate the decennial or the quarter-century; and from thelips of the pioneers, --teacher and student. For, in the words ofthe graduate thesis, "we are still in the period of the sources. "The would-be historian of a woman's college to-day is in muchthe same relation to her material as the Venerable Bede was tohis when he set out to write his Ecclesiastical History. The thoughtbrings us its own inspiration. If we sift our miracles with asmuch discrimination as he sifted his, we shall be doing well. Weshall discover, among other things, that in addition to the compositeinfluence which these colleges all together exert, each one alsobrings to bear upon our educational problems her individualexperience and ideals. Wellesley, for example, with herwomen-presidents, and the heads of her departments all womenbut three, --the professors of Music, Education, and French, --hasher peculiar testimony to offer concerning the administrative andexecutive powers of women as educators, their capacity for initiativeand organization. 

This is why a general history of the movement for the highereducation of women, although of value, cannot tell us all we needto know, since of necessity it approaches the subject from theoutside. The women's colleges must speak as individuals; each onemust tell her own story, and tell it soon. The bright, experimentaldays are definitely past--except in the sense in which all education, alike for men and women, is perennially an experiment--and ifthe romance of those days is to quicken the imaginations of collegegirls one hundred, two hundred, five hundred years hence, the womenwho were the experiment and who lived the romance must write it down. 

For Wellesley in particular this consciousness of standing atthe threshold of a new epoch is especially poignant. Inevitablythose forty years before the fire of 1914 will go down in herhistory as a period apart. Already for her freshmen the old collegehall is a mythical labyrinth of memory and custom to which theyhave no clue. New happiness will come to the hill above the lake, new beauty will crown it, new memories will hallow it, but--theywill all be new. And if the coming generations of students areto realize that the new Wellesley is what she is because herideals, though purged as by fire, are still the old ideals; if theyare to understand the continuity of Wellesley's tradition, we whohave come through the fire must tell them the story. 

II. 

On Wednesday, November 25, 1914, the workmen who were diggingamong the fire-scarred ruins at the extreme northeast corner ofold College Hall unearthed a buried treasure. To the ordinarytreasure seeker it would have been a thing of little worth, --a roughbowlder of irregular shape and commonplace proportions, --butWellesley eyes saw the symbol. It was the first stone laid inthe foundations of Wellesley College. There was no ceremony whenit was laid, and there were no guests. Mr. And Mrs. Henry FowleDurant came up the hill on a summer morning--Friday, August 18, 1871, was the day--and with the help of the workmen set the stone in place. 

A month later, on the afternoon of Thursday, September 14, 1871, the corner stone was laid, by Mrs. Durant, at the northwest cornerof the building, under the dining-room wing; it is significant thatfrom the foundations up through the growth and expansion of allthe years, women have had a hand in the making of Wellesley. In September, as in August, there were no guests invited, but atthe laying of the corner stone there was a simple ceremony; eachworkman was given a Bible, by Mr. Durant, and a Bible was placedin the corner stone. On December 18, 1914, this stone was uncovered, and the Bible was found in a tin box in a hollow of the stone. As most of the members of the college had scattered for the Christmasvacation, only a little group of people gathered about the placewhere, forty-three years before, Mrs. Durant had laid the stone. Mrs. Durant was too ill to be present, but her cousin, Miss FannieMassie, lifted the tin box out of its hollow and handed it toPresident Pendleton who opened the Bible and read aloud theinscription:

 "This building is humbly dedicated to our Heavenly Father with the hope and prayer that He may always be first in everything in this institution; that His word may be faithfully taught here; and that He will use it as a means of leading precious souls to the Lord Jesus Christ. "

There followed, also in Mrs. Durant's handwriting, two passagesfrom the Scriptures: II Chronicles, 29: 11-16, and the phrasefrom the one hundred twenty-seventh Psalm: "Except the Lordbuild the house they labor in vain that build it. "

This stone is now the corner stone of the new building which riseson College Hill, and another, the keystone of the arch above thenorth door of old College Hall, will be set above the doorway ofthe new administration building, where its deep-graven I. H. S. Will daily remind those who pass beneath it of Wellesley's unbrokentradition of Christian scholarship and service. 

But we must go back to the days before one stone was laid uponanother, if we are to begin at the beginning of Wellesley's story. It was in 1855, the year after his marriage, that Mr. Durant boughtland in Wellesley village, then a part of Needham, and plannedto make the place his summer home. Every one who knew him speaksof his passion for beauty, and he gave that passion free play whenhe chose, all unwittingly, the future site for his college. Thereis no fairer region around Boston than this wooded, hilly countrynear Natick--"the place of hills"--with its little lakes, itstranquil, winding river, its hallowed memories of John Eliot andhis Christian Indian chieftains, Waban and Pegan, its treasuredliterary associations with Harriet Beecher Stowe. Chief Wabangave his name, "Wind" or "Breath", to the college lake; onPegan Hill, from which so many Wellesley girls have looked outover the blue distances of Massachusetts, Chief Pegan's efficientand time-saving squaw used to knit his stockings without heels, because "He handsome foot, and he shapes it hisself"; and Natickis the Old Town of Mrs. Stowe's "Old Town Folks. "

In those first years after they began to spend their summers atWellesley, the family lived in a brown house near what is now thecollege greenhouse, but Mr. Durant meant to build his new houseon the hill above the lake, or on the site of Stone Hall, andto found a great estate for his little son. From time to timehe bought more land; he laid out avenues and planted them withtrees; and then, the little boy for whom all this joy and beautywere destined fell ill of diphtheria and died, July 3, 1863, after a short illness. 

The effect upon the grief-stricken father was startling, and tomany who knew him and more who did not, it was incomprehensible. In the quaint phraseology of one of his contemporaries, he had"avoided the snares of infidelity" hitherto, but his religion hadbeen of a conventional type. During the child's illness heunderwent an old-fashioned religious conversion. The miraclehas happened before, to greater men, and the world has alwayslooked askance. Boston in 1863, and later, was no exception. 

Mr. Durant's career as a lawyer had been brilliant and worldly;he had rarely lost a case. In an article on "Anglo-American Memories"which appeared in the New York Tribune in 1909, he is describedas having "a powerful head, chiseled features, black hair, whichhe wore rather long, an olive complexion, and eyes which flashedthe lightnings of wrath and scorn and irony; then suddenly thesoft rays of sweetness and persuasion for the jury. He couldcoax, intimidate, terrify; and his questions cut like knives. "The author of "Bench and Bar in Massachusetts", who was in collegewith him, says of him: "During the five years of his practiceat the Middlesex Bar he underwent such an initiation into theprofession as no other county could furnish. Shrewdness, energy, resource, strong nerves and mental muscles were needed to wardoff the blows which the trained gladiators of this bar wereaccustomed to inflict. With the lessons learned at the Middlesex Barhe removed to Boston in 1847, where he became associated withthe Honorable Joseph Bell, the brother-in-law of Rufus Choate, and began a career almost phenomenal in its success. His managementof cases in court was artistic. So well taken were the preliminarysteps, so deeply laid was the foundation, so complete andcomprehensive was the preparation of evidence and so adroitlywas it brought out, so carefully studied and understood were thecharacters of jurors, --with their whims and fancies andprejudices, --that he won verdict after verdict in the face ofthe ablest opponents and placed himself by general consent atthe head of the jury lawyers of the Suffolk Bar. " Adjectives lessambiguous and more uncomplimentary than "shrewd" were also appliedto him, and his manner of dominating his juries did not alwayscall forth praise from his contemporaries. In one of the newspaperobituaries at the time of his death it is admitted that he hadbeen "charged with resorting to tricks unbecoming the dignity ofa lawyer, " but the writer adds that it is an open question ifsome, or indeed all of them were not legitimate enough, and mightnot have been paralleled by the practices of some of the ablestof British and Irish barristers. Both in law and in business--forhe had important commercial interests--he had prospered. He wasrich and a man of the world. Boston, although critical, had notfound it unnatural that he should make himself talked about inhis conduct of jury trials; but the conspicuousness of his conversionwas of another sort: it offended against good taste, and incurredfor him the suspicion of hypocrisy. 

For, with that ardor and impetuosity which seem always to havemade half measures impossible to him, Mr. Durant declared thatso far as he was concerned, the Law and the Gospel wereirreconcilable, and gave up his legal practice. A case whichhe had already undertaken for Edward Everett, and from whichMr. Everett was unwilling to release him, is said to be the lastone he conducted; and he pleaded in public for the last timein a hearing at the State House in Boston, some years later, whenhe won for the college the right to confer degrees, a privilegewhich had not been specifically included in the original charter. 

His zeal in conducting religious meetings also offended conventionalpeople. It was unusual, and therefore unsuitable, for a laymanto preach sermons in public. St. Francis and his preaching friarshad established no precedent in Boston of the 'sixties and'seventies, and indeed Mr. Durant's evangelical protestantismmight not have relished the parallel. Boston seems, for the mostpart, to have averted its eyes from the spectacle of the brilliant, possibly unscrupulous, some said tricky, lawyer bringing soulsto Christ. But he did bring them. We are told that "The hallsand churches where he spoke were crowded. The training andexperience which had made him so successful a pleader beforejudge and jury, now, when he was fired with zeal for Christ'scause, made him almost irresistible as a preacher. Very manywere led by him to confess the Christian faith. Henry Wilson, then senator, afterwards vice president, was among them. Theinfluence of the meetings was wonderful and far-reaching. " Weare assured that he "would go nowhere unless the EvangelicalChristians of the place united in an invitation and the ministerswere ready to cooperate. " But the whole affair was of courseintensely distasteful to unemotional people; the very fact thata man could be converted argued his instability; and it isunquestionably true that Boston's attitude toward Mr. Durant wasreflected for many years in her attitude toward the college whichhe founded. 

But over against this picture we can set another, more intimate, more pleasing, although possibly not more discriminating. Whenthe early graduates of Wellesley and the early teachers write ofMr. Durant, they dip their pens in honey and sunshine. The resultis radiant, fiery even, but unconvincingly archangelic. We seehim, "a slight, well-knit figure of medium height in a suit ofgray, with a gray felt hat, the brim slightly turned down; beneathone could see the beautiful gray hair slightly curling at the ends;the fine, clear-cut features, the piercing dark eyes, the mouththat could smile or be stern as occasion might demand. He seemedto have the working power of half a dozen ordinary persons andeverything received his attention. He took the greatest prideand delight in making things as beautiful as possible. " Or heis described as "A slight man--with eyes keen as a lawyer's shouldbe, but gentle and wise as a good man's are, and with a halo ofwavy silver hair. His step was alert, his whole form illuminatewith life. " He is sketched for us addressing the college, inchapel, one September morning of 1876, on the supremacy of Greekliterature, "urging in conclusion all who would venture uponHadley's Grammar as the first thorny stretch toward that celestialmountain peak, to rise. " It is Professor Katharine Lee Bates, writing in 1892, who gives us the picture: "My next neighbor, a valorous little mortal, now a member of the Smith faculty, wasthe first upon her feet, pulling me after her by a tug at mysleeve, coupled with a moral tug more efficacious still. Perhapsa dozen of us freshmen, all told, filed into Professor Horton'srecitation room that morning. " And again, "His prompt and vigorousmethod of introducing a fresh subject to college notice was themaking it a required study for the senior class of the year. '79 grappled with biology, '80 had a senior diet of geology andastronomy. " To these young women, as to his juries in earlierdays, he could use words "that burned and cut like the lash ofa scourge, " and it is evident that they feared "the somberlightnings of his eyes. "

But he won their affection by his sympathy and humor perhaps, quite as much as by his personal beauty, and his ideals ofscholarship, and despite his imperious desire to bring their soulsto Christ. They remember lovingly his little jokes. They tell ofhow he came into College Hall one evening, and said that a motherand daughter had just arrived, and he was perplexed to know whereto put them, but he thought they might stay under the staircaseleading up from the center. And students and teachers, puzzledby this inhospitality but suspecting a joke somewhere, came outinto the center to find the great cast of Niobe and her daughterunder the stairway at the left, where it stayed through all theyears that followed, until College Hall burned down. 

They tell also of the moral he pointed at the unveiling of"The Reading Girl", by John Adams Jackson, which stood for manyyears in the Browning Room. She was reading no light reading, said Mr. Durant, as the twelve men who brought her in could testify. "She is reading Greek, and observe--she doesn't wear bangs. " Theysaw him ardent in friendship as in all else. His devoted friend, and Wellesley's, Professor Eben N. Horsford, has given us a pictureof him which it would be a pity to miss. The two men are standingon the oak-crowned hill, overlooking the lake. "We wandered on, "says Professor Horsford, "over the hill and future site of Norumbega, till we came where now stands the monument to the munificenceof Valeria Stone. There in the shadow of the evergreens we laydown on the carpet of pine foliage and talked, --I remember itwell, --talked long of the problems of life, of things worthliving for; of the hidden ways of Providence as well as of thesubtle ways of men; of the few who rule and are not alwaysrecognized; of the many who are led and are not always consciousof it; of the survival of the fittest in the battle of life, andof the constant presence of the Infinite Pity; of the difficulties, the resolution, the struggle, the conquest that make up the historyof every worthy achievement. I arose with the feeling that I hadbeen taken into the confidence of one of the most gifted of allthe men it had been my privilege to know. We had not talked offriendship; we had been unconsciously sowing its seed. He lovedto illustrate its strength and its steadfastness to me; I havelived to appreciate and reverence the grandeur of the work whichhe accomplished here. "

III. 

If we set them over against each other, the hearsay that besmirchesand the reminiscence that canonizes, we evoke a very human, livingpersonality: a man of keen intellect, of ardent and emotionaltemperament, autocratic, fanatical, fastidious, and beauty-loving;a loyal friend; an unpleasant enemy. "He saw black black andwhite white, for him there was no gray. " He was impatient ofmediocrity. "He could not suffer fools gladly. "

No archangel this, but unquestionably a man of genius, consecratedto the fulfillment of a great vision. It is no wonder that theearly graduates living in the very presence of his high purpose, his pure intention, his spendthrift selflessness, remember thesethings best when they recall old days. After all, these are thethings most worth remembering. 

The best and most carefully balanced study of him which we haveis by Miss Charlotte Howard Conant of the class of '84, in anaddress delivered by her in the College Chapel, February 18, 1906, to commemorate Mr. Durant's birthday. Miss Conant's use of thebiographical material available, and her careful and restrainedestimate of Mr. Durant's character cannot be bettered, and it isa temptation to incorporate her entire pamphlet in this chapter, but we shall have to content ourselves with cogent extracts. 

Henry Fowle Durant, or Henry Welles Smith as he was called in hisboyhood, was born February 20, 1822, in Hanover, New Hampshire. His father, William Smith, "was a lawyer of limited means, butversatile mind and genial disposition. " His mother, Harriet FowleSmith of Watertown, Massachusetts, was one of five sisters renownedfor their beauty and amiability; she was, we are told, intelligentas well as beautiful, "a great reader, and a devoted Christianall her long life. "

Young Henry went to school in Hanover, and in Peacham, Vermont, but in his early boyhood the family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, and from there he was sent to the private school of Mr. AndMrs. Samuel Ripley in Waltham, to complete his preparation forHarvard. Miss Conant writes: "Mr. Ripley was pastor of theUnitarian Church there (in Waltham) from 1809 to 1846, and duringmost of that time supplemented the small salary of a country ministerby receiving twelve or fourteen boys into his family to fit forcollege. From time to time youths rusticated from Harvard werealso sent there to keep up college work. "

"Mrs. Ripley was one of the most remarkable women of her generation. Born in 1793, she very early began to show unusual intellectualability, and before she was seventeen she had become a fine Latinscholar and had read also all the Odyssey in the original. " Herlife-long friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, writes in praise of her:"The rare accomplishments and singular loveliness of her characterendeared her to all.... She became one of the best Greekscholars in the country, and continued in her latest years thehabit of reading Homer, the tragedians, and Plato. But her studiestook a wide range in mathematics, natural philosophy, psychology, theology, and ancient and modern literature. Her keen ear wasopen to whatever new facts astronomy, chemistry, or the theoriesof light and heat had to furnish. Absolutely without pedantry, she had no desire to shine. She was faithful to all the dutiesof wife and mother in a well-ordered and eminently hospitablehousehold wherein she was dearly loved. She was without appetitefor luxury or display or praise or influence, with entireindifference to triffles.... As she advanced in life herpersonal beauty, not remarked in youth, drew the notice of all. "

There could have been no nobler, saner influence for an intellectualboy than the companionship of this unusual woman, and if we areto begin at the beginning of Wellesley's story, we must begin withMrs. Ripley, for Mr. Durant often said that she had great influencein inclining his mind in later life to the higher education of women. 

From Waltham the young man went in 1837 to Harvard, where we hearof him as "not specially studious, and possessing refined andluxurious tastes which interfered somewhat with his pursuit ofthe regular studies of the college. " But evidently he was noordinary idler, for he haunted the Harvard Library, and we knowthat all his life he was a lover of books. In 1841 he was graduatedfrom Harvard, and went home to Lowell to read law in his father'soffice, where Benjamin F. Butler was at that time a partner. The dilettante attitude which characterized his college years isnow no longer in evidence. He writes to a friend, "I shall studylaw for the present to oblige father; he is in some trouble, andI wish to make him as happy as possible. The future course ofmy life is undetermined, except that all shall yield to holy poetry. Indeed it is a sacred duty. I have begun studying law; don't beafraid, however, that I intend to give up poetry. I shall alwaysbe a worshiper of that divinity, and I hope in a few years to beable to give up everything and be a priest in her temple. " Aftera year he writes, "I have not written any poetry this whole summer. Old Mrs. Themis says that I shall not visit any more at theMiss Muses. I'll see the old catamaran hanged, though, but whatI will, and I'll write a sonnet to my old shoe directly, out ofmere desperation. Pity and sympathize with me. " And on March 28, 1843, we find him writing to a college friend:

"I have been attending courts of all kinds and assisting as juniorcounsel in trying cases and all the drudgery of a lawyer's life. One end of my labor has been happily attained, for about threeweeks ago I arrived at the age of twenty-one, and last week Imustered courage to stand an examination of my qualificationsfor an attorney, and the result (unlike that of some examinationsduring my college life) was fortunate, with compliments from thejudge. I feel a certain vanity (not unmixed, by the way, withself-contempt) at my success, for I well remember I and a dearfriend of mine used to mourn over the impossibility of our everbecoming business men, and lo, I am a lawyer. -- I have a rightto bestow my tediousness on any court of the Commonwealth, andthey are bound to hear me. "

From 1843 to 1847 he practiced at the Middlesex Bar, and from1847, when he went to live in Boston, until 1863, he was a memberof the Suffolk Bar. On November 25, 1851, he had his name changedby act of the Legislature. There were eleven other lawyers bythe name of Smith, practicing in Boston, and two of them wereHenry Smiths. To avoid the inevitable confusion, Henry Welles Smithbecame Henry Fowle Durant, both Fowle and Durant being family names. 

In 1852 Mr. Durant was a member of the Boston City Council, butdid not again hold political office. On May 28, 1854, he marriedhis cousin, Pauline Adeline Fowle, of Virginia, daughter of thelate Lieutenant-colonel John Fowle of the United States Army andPaulina Cazenove. On March 2, 1855, the little boy, Henry FowleDurant, Jr. , was born, and on October 10, 1857, a little girl, Pauline Cazenove Durant, who lived less than two months. OnJune 21, 1862, we find the Boston Evening Courier saying of theprominent lawyer: "What the future has in store for Mr. Durantcan of course be only predicted, but his past is secure, and ifhe never rises higher, he can rest in the consciousness that noman ever rose more rapidly at the Suffolk Bar than he has. " Andwithin a year he had put it all behind him, --a sinful and unworthylife, --and had set out to be a new man. That there was sin andunworthiness in the old life we, who look into our own hearts, need not doubt; but how much of sin, how much of unworthiness, happily we need not determine. Mr. Durant was probably his ownseverest critic. 

Miss Conant's characterization of Mr. Durant, in his own wordsdescribing James Otis, is particularly illuminating in its revelationof his temperament. In February, 1860, he said of James Otis, in an address delivered in the Boston Mercantile Library Lecturecourse:

"One cannot study his writings and history and escape the convictionthat there were two natures in this great man. There was thetrained lawyer, man of action, prompt and brave in every emergency. But there was in him another nature higher than this. In all timesmen have entertained angels unawares, ministering spirits, whosemissions are not wholly known to themselves even, men living beyondand in advance of their age. 

"We call them prophets, inspired seers, --in the widest and largestsense poets, for they come to create new empires of thought, newrealms in the history of the mind.... But more ample traditionsremain of his powers as an orator and of the astonishing effectsof his eloquence. He was eminently an orator of action in itsfinest sense; his contemporaries speak of him as a flame of fireand repeat the phrase as if it were the only one which could expressthe intense passion of his eloquence, the electric flames whichhis genius kindled, the magical power which swayed the greatassemblies with the irresistible sweep of the whirlwind. "

Mr. Durant's attitude toward education is also elucidated for usby Miss Conant in her apt quotations from his address on theAmerican Scholar, delivered at Bowdoin College, August, 1862:

"The cause of God's poor is the sublime gospel of American freedom. It is our faith that national greatness has its only enduringfoundation in the intelligence and integrity of the whole people. It is our faith that our institutions approach perfection only whenevery child can be educated and elevated to the station of a freeand intelligent citizen, and we mourn for each one who goes astrayas a loss to the country that cannot be repaired.... From thisfundamental truth that the end of our Republic is to educate andelevate all our people, you can deduce the future of the Americanscholar. 

"The great dangers in the future of America which we have to fearare from our own neglect of our duty. Foes from within are themost deadly enemies, and suicide is the great danger of ourRepublic. With the increase of wealth and commerce comes thegrowing power of gold, and it is a fearful truth for states aswell as for individual men that 'gold rusts deeper than iron. 'Wealth breeds sensuality, degradation, ignorance, and crime. 

"The first object and duty of the true patriot should be to elevateand educate the poor. Ignorance is the modern devil, and theinkstand that Martin Luther hurled at his head in the Castle ofWartburg is the true weapon to fight him with. "

This helps us to understand his desire that Wellesley shouldwelcome poor girls and should give them every opportunity forstudy. Despite his aristocratic tastes he was a true son ofdemocracy; the following, from an address on "The Influences ofRural Life", delivered by him before the Norfolk AgriculturalSociety, in September, 1859, might have been written in thetwentieth century, so modern is its animus:

"The age of iron is passed and the age of gold is passing away;the age of labor is coming. Already we speak of the dignity oflabor, and that phrase is anything but an idle and unmeaning one. It is a true gospel to the man who takes its full meaning; thenation that understands it is free and independent and great. 

"The dignity of labor is but another name for liberty. The chivalryof labor is now the battle cry of the old world and the new. Askyour cornfields to what mysterious power they do homage and paytribute, and they will answer--to labor. In a thousand formsnature repeats the truth, that the laborer alone is what is calledrespectable, is alone worthy of praise and honor and reward. "

IV. 

In a letter accompanying his will, in 1867, Mr. Durant wrote:"The great object we both have in view is the appropriation andconsecration of our country place and other property to theservice of the Lord Jesus Christ, by erecting a seminary on theplan (modified by circumstances) of South Hadley, and by havingan Orphan Asylum, not only for orphans, but for those who aremore forlorn than orphans in having wicked parents. Did ourproperty suffice I would prefer both, as the care (Christian andcharitable) of the children would be blessed work for the pupilsof the seminary. " The orphanage was, indeed, their first idea, and was, obviously, the more natural and conventional memorialfor a little eight-year-old lad, but the idea of the seminarygradually superseded it as Mr. And Mrs. Durant came to take agreater and greater interest in educational problems as distinguishedfrom mere philanthropy. Miss Conant wisely reminds us that, "Just at this time new conditions confronted the common schoolsof the country. The effects of the Civil War were felt in educationas in everything else. During the war the business of teachinghad fallen into women's hands, and the close of the war founda great multitude of new and often very incompetent women teachersfilling positions previously held by men. The opportunities forthe higher education of women were entirely inadequate. Mt. Holyokewas turning away hundreds of girls every year, and there were fewor no other advanced schools for girls of limited means. "

In 1867 Mr. Durant was elected a trustee of Mt. Holyoke. In 1868Mrs. Durant gave to Mt. Holyoke ten thousand dollars, which enabledthe seminary to build its first library building. We are told thatMr. And Mrs. Durant used to say that there could not be too manyMt. Holyokes. And in 1870, on March 17, the charter of WellesleyFemale Seminary was signed by Governor William Claflin. 

On April 16, 1870, the first meeting of the Board of Trustees washeld, at Mr. Durant's Marlborough Street house in Boston, and theReverend Edward N. Kirk, pastor of the Mt. Vernon Church in Boston, was elected president of the board. Mr. Durant arranged that bothmen and women should constitute the Board of Trustees, but thatwomen should constitute the faculty; and by his choice the firstand second presidents of the college were women. The continuanceof this tradition by the trustees has in every respect justifiedthe ideal and the vision of the founder. The trustees were to bemembers of Evangelical churches, but no denomination was to havea majority upon the board. On March 7, 1873, the name of theinstitution was changed by legislative act to Wellesley College. Possibly visits to Vassar had had something to do with the change, for Mr. And Mrs. Durant studied Vassar when they were makingtheir own plans. 

And meanwhile, since the summer of 1871, the great house on thehill above Lake Waban had been rising, story on story. 

Miss Martha Hale Shackford, Wellesley, 1896, in her valuablelittle pamphlet, "College Hall", written immediately after the fire, to preserve for future generations of Wellesley women the traditionsof the vanished building, tells us with what intentness Mr. Durantstudied other colleges, and how, working with the architect, Mr. Hammatt Billings of Boston, "details of line and contourwere determined before ground was broken, and the symmetry ofthe huge building was assured from the beginning. "

"Reminiscences of those days are given by residents of Wellesley, who recall the intense interest of the whole countryside in thisexperiment. From Natick came many high-school girls, on Saturdayafternoons, to watch the work and to make plans for attending thecollege. As the brick-work advanced and the scaffolding rosehigher and higher, the building assumed gigantic proportions, impressive in the extreme. The bricks were brought from Cambridgein small cars, which ran as far as the north lodge and were thendrawn, on a roughly laid switch track, to the side of the buildingby a team of eight mules. Other building materials were unloadedin the meadow and then transferred by cars. As eighteen loadsof bricks arrived daily the pre-academic aspect of the campus wasone of noise and excitement. At certain periods during thefinishing of the interior, there were almost three hundred workmen. "A pretty story has come down to us of one of these workmen whofell ill, and when he found that he could not complete his work, begged that he might lay one more brick before he was taken away, and was lifted up by his comrades that he might set the brickin its place. 

Mr. Durant's eye was upon every detail. He was at hand every dayand sometimes all day, for he often took his lunch up to the campuswith him, and ate it with the workmen in their noon hour. In 1874he writes: "The work is very hard and I get very tired. I dofeel thankful for the privilege of trying to do something inthe cause of Christ. I feel daily that I am not worthy of sucha privilege, and I do wish to be a faithful servant to my Master. Yet this does not prevent me from being very weary and sorelydiscouraged at times. To-night I am so tired I can hardly sit upto write. "

And from one who, as a young girl, was visiting at his countryhouse when the house was building, we have this vivid reminiscence:"My first impression of Mr. Durant was, 'Here is the quickestthinker'--my next--'and the keenest wit I have ever met. ' Thencame the day when under the long walls that stood roofed but barein the solitude above Lake Waban, I sat upon a pile of plank, nowthe flooring of Wellesley College, and listened to Mr. Durant. I could not repeat a word he said. I only knew as he spoke andI listened, the door between the seen and the unseen opened andI saw a great soul and its quest, God's glory. I came back toearth to find this seer, with his vision of the wonder that shouldbe, a master of detail and the most tireless worker. The same dayas this apocalypse, or soon after, I went with Mr. Durant up askeleton stairway to see the view from an upper window. Theworkmen were all gone but one man, who stood resting a grimy handon the fair newly finished wall. For one second I feared to seea blow follow the flash of Mr. Durant's eye, but he lowered ratherthan raised his voice, as after an impressive silence he showedthe scared man the mark left on the wall and his enormity.... Life was keyed high in Mr. Durant's home, and the keynote wasWellesley College. While the walls were rising he kept workman'shours. Long before the family breakfast he was with the builders. At prayers I learned to listen night and morning for the prayerfor Wellesley--sometimes simply an earnest 'Bless Thy college. 'We sat on chairs wonderful in their variety, but all on trial forthe ease and rest of Wellesley, and who can count the stairwaysMrs. Durant went up, not that she might know how steep the stairsof another, but to find the least toilsome steps for Wellesley feet. 

"Night did not bring rest, only a change of work. Letters came andwent like the correspondence of a secretary of state. Devotionand consecration I had seen before, and sacrifice and self-forgetting, but never anything like the relentless toil of those two who toilednot for themselves. If genius and infinite patience met forthe making of Wellesley, side by side with them went the angelsof work and prayer; the twin angels were to have their shrinein the college. "

V. 

On September 8, 1875, the college opened its doors to three hundredand fourteen students. More than two hundred other applicantsfor admission had been refused for lack of room. We can imaginethe excitement of the fortunate three hundred and fourteen, drivingup to the college in family groups, --for their fathers and mothers, and sometimes their grandparents or their aunts came with them. They went up Washington Street, "the long way", past the littleGothic Lodge, and up the avenue between the rows of young elmsand purple beeches. There was a herd of Jersey cows grazing inthe meadow that day, and there is a tradition that the first studententered the college by walking over a narrow plank, as the stepsup to the front door were not yet in place; but the story, thoughpleasantly symbolical, does not square with the well-known energyand impatience of the founder. 

The students were received on their arrival by the president, Miss Ada L. Howard, in the reception room. They were then shownto their rooms by teachers. The majority of the rooms were insuites, a study and bedroom or bedrooms for two, three, and ina few suites, four girls. There were almost no single rooms inthose days, even for the teachers. With a few exceptions, everybedroom and every study had a large window opening outdoors. There were carpets on the floors, and bookshelves in the studies, and the black walnut furniture was simple in design. As one alumnawrites: "The wooden bedsteads with their wooden slats, of vividmemory, the wardrobes, so much more hospitable than the two hookson the door, which Matthew Vassar vouchsafed to his protegees, the high, commodious bureaus, with their 'scant' glass of fashion, are all endeared to us by long association, and by our strainingendeavors to rearrange them in our rooms, without the help of man. "

When the student had showed her room to her anxious relatives, on that first day, she came down to the room that was then thepresident's office, but later became the office of the registrar. There she found Miss Sarah P. Eastman, who, for the first sixyears of the college life, was teacher of history and director ofdomestic work. Later, with her sister, Miss Julia A. Eastman, shebecame one of the founders of Dana Hall, the preparatory schoolin Wellesley village. An alumna of the class of '80 who evidentlyhad dreaded this much-heralded domestic work, writes that MissEastman's personality robbed it of its horrors and made it seema noble and womanly thing. "When, in her sweet and graciousmanner, she asked, 'How would you like to be on the circle toscrape dinner dishes?' you straightway felt that no occupationcould be more noble than scraping those mussy plates. "

"All that day, " we are told, "confusion was inevitable. Mr. Duranthovered about, excited, anxious, yet reassured by the enthusiasmof the students, who entered with eagerness into the new world. He superintended feeding the hungry, answered questions, andstudied with great keenness the faces of the girls who were enteringWellesley College. In the middle of the afternoon it had beendiscovered that no bell had been provided for waking the students, so a messenger went to the village to beg help of Mrs. Horton(the mother of the professor of Greek), who promptly provideda large brass dinnerbell. At six o'clock the next morning twostudents, side by side, walked through all the corridors, ringingthe rising-bell, --an act, as Miss Eastman says, symbolic of theinner awakening to come to all those girls. " Thirty-nine yearslater, at the sound of a bell in the early morning, the householdwere to awake to duty for the last time in the great building. The unquestioning obedience, the prompt intelligence, the unconsciousselflessness with which they obeyed that summons in the dawn ofMarch 17, 1914, witness to that "inner awakening. "

The early days of that first term were given over to examinations, and it was presently discovered that only thirty of the three hundredand fourteen would-be college students were really of college grade. The others were relegated to a preparatory department, of whichMr. Durant was always intolerant, and which was finally discontinuedin 1881, the year of his death. 

Mr. Durant's ideals for the college were of the highest, and inmany respects he was far in advance of his times in his attitudetoward educational matters. He meant Wellesley to be a universitysome day. There is a pretty story, which cannot be told too often, of how he stood one morning with Miss Louise Manning Hodgkins, who was professor of English Literature from 1877 to 1891, andlooked out over the beautiful campus. 

"Do you see what I see?" he asked. 

"No, " was the quiet answer, for there were few who would ventureto say they saw the visions in his eyes. 

"Then I will tell you, " he said. "On that hill an Art School, down there a Musical Conservatory, on the elevation yonder aScientific School, and just beyond that an Observatory, at thefarthest right a Medical College, and just there in the center anew stone chapel, built as the college outgrew the old one. Yes, --this will all be some time--but I shall not be here. "

It is significant that the able lawyer did not number a law schoolamong his university buildings, and that although he gave toWellesley his personal library, the gift did not include his lawlibrary. Nevertheless, there are lawyers among the Wellesleygraduates, and one or two of distinction. 

Mr. Durant's desire that the college should do thorough, original, first-hand work, cannot be too strongly emphasized. Miss Conanttells us that, "For all scientific work he planned laboratorieswhere students might make their own investigations, a very unusualstep for those times. " In 1878, when the Physics laboratory wasstarted at Wellesley, under the direction of Professor Whiting, Harvard had no such laboratory for students. In chemistry also, the Wellesley students had unusual opportunities for conductingtheir own experimental work. Mr. Durant also began the collectionof scientific and literary periodicals containing the originalpapers of the great investigators, now so valuable to the college. "This same idea of original work led him to purchase for thelibrary books for the study of Icelandic and allied languages, sothat the English department might also begin its work at the rootof things. He wished students of Greek and Latin to illuminatetheir work by the light of archeology, topography, and epigraphy. Such books as then existed on these subjects were accordinglyprocured. In 1872 no handbooks of archeology had been prepared, and even in 1882 no university in America offered courses inthat subject. "

His emphasis on physical training for the students was also anadvance upon the general attitude of the time. He realized thatthe Victorian young lady, with her chignon and her Grecian bend, could not hope to make a strong student. The girls were encouragedto row on the lake, to take long, brisk walks, to exercise in thegymnasium. Mr. Durant sent to England for a tennis set, as nonecould be procured in America, "but had some difficulty in persuadingmany of the students to take such very violent exercise. "

But despite these far-seeing plans, he was often, during hislifetime, his own greatest obstacle to their achievement. He broughtto his task a large inexperience of the genus girl, a despotichabit of mind, and a temperamental tendency to play Providence. Theoretically, he wished to give the teachers and students ofWellesley an opportunity to show what women, with the sameeducational facilities as their brothers and a free hand in directingtheir own academic life, could accomplish for civilization. Practically, they had to do as he said, as long as he lived. Therecords in the diaries, letters, and reminiscences which have comedown to us from those early days, are full of Mr. Durant's commandsand coercions. 

On one historic occasion he decides that the entire freshmanschedule shall be changed, for one day, from morning to afternoon, in order that a convention of Massachusetts school superintendents, meeting in Boston, may hear the Wellesley students recite theirGreek, Latin, and Mathematics. In vain do the students protestat being treated like district school children; in vain do theteachers point out the injury to the college dignity; in vain dothe superintendents evince an unflattering lack of interest inthe scholarship of Wellesley. It must be done. It is done. The president of the freshman class is called upon to recite herGreek lesson. She begins. The superintendents chatter and laughdiscourteously among themselves. But the president of the freshmanclass has her own ideas of classroom etiquette. She pauses. Shewaits, silent, until the room is hushed, then she resumes herrecitation before the properly disciplined superintendents. In religious matters, Mr. Durant was, of course, especially active. Like the Christian converts of an earlier day, he would have harriedand hurried souls to Christ. But Victorian girls were less docilethan the medieval Franks and Goths. They seem, many of them, to have eluded or withstood this forceful shepherding with avigilance as determined as Mr. Durant's own. 

But some of the letters and diaries give us such a vivid pictureof this early Wellesley that it would be a pity not to let themspeak. The diary quoted is that of Florence Morse Kingsley, the novelist, who was a student at Wellesley from 1876 to 1879, but left before she was graduated because of trouble with her eyes. Already in the daily record of the sixteen-year-old girl we findthe little turns and twinkles of phrase which make Mrs. Kingsley'sbooks such good reading. 

VI. 

 Wellesley College, September 18th. , 1876. I haven't had time to write in this journal since I came. There is so much to do here all the time. Besides, I have changed rooms and room-mates. I am in No. 72 now and I have a funny little octagon-shaped bedroom all to myself, and two room-mates, I. W. And J. S. Both of these are in the preparatory department. But I am in the semi-collegiate class, because I passed all my mathematics. But I didn't have quite enough of the right Latin to be a full freshman. We get up at 6. 30, have breakfast at 7, then a class at 7. 55, after that comes silent hour, chapel, and section Bible class. Then hours again till dinner-time at one, and after dinner till 4. 55. We can go outdoors all we want to and to the library, but we can't go in each other's rooms, which is a blessing. There are some girls here who would like to talk every minute, morning, noon and night. 

 I went out to walk this afternoon with B. We were walking very slow and talking very fast, when all of a sudden we met Mr. Durant. He was coming along like a steam engine, his white hair flying out in the wind. When he saw us he stopped; of course we stopped too, for we saw he wanted to speak to us. 

 "That isn't the way to walk, girls, " he said, very briskly. "You need to make the blood bound through your veins; that will stimulate the mind and help to make you good students. Come now, I'll walk with you as far as the lodge, and show you what I mean. "

 B. And I just straightened up and walked! Mr. Durant talked to us some about our lessons. He seemed pleased when we told him we liked geometry. When we got back to the college we told the girls about meeting Mr. Durant. I guess nobody will want to dawdle along after this; I'm sure I shan't. 

 Oct. 5. I broke an oar to-day. I'm not used to rowing anyway, and the oar was long; two of us sit on one seat, each pulling an oar. There is room for eight in the boat, beside the captain. We went out to-day in a boat called the Ellida and after going all around the lake we thought it would be fun to go under a little stone bridge. The captain told us to ship our oars; I didn't ship mine enough, and it struck the side of the bridge and snapped right off. I was dreadfully frightened; especially as the captain said right away, "You'll have to tell Mr. Durant. " The captain's name is ----. She was a first year girl, and on that account thinks a great deal of herself. 

 I wish I'd come last year. It must have been lots of fun. Well, anyway, I thought I might as well have the matter of the oar over with, so as soon as we landed I took the two pieces of the oar and marched straight into the office. Mr. Durant sat there at the desk. He appeared to be very busy and he didn't look at me at first. When he did my heart beat so fast I could hardly speak. I guess he saw I was frightened, for he laughed a little and said, "Oh ho, you've had an accident, I see. "

 I told him how it happened, and he said, "Well, you've learned that stone bridges are stronger than oars; and that bit of information will cost you seventy cents. "

 I was so relieved that I laughed right out. "I thought it would cost as much as five dollars, " I said. I like Mr. Durant. 

 October 15. Mr. Durant talked to us in chapel this morning on the subject of being honest about our domestic work. Of course some girls are used to working and can hurry, while others... Don't even know how to tie their shoestrings or braid their hair properly when they first come.... My work is to dust the center on the first floor. It's easy, and if I didn't take lots of time to look at the pictures and palms and things while I am doing it I couldn't possibly make it last an hour. But I'm thorough, so my conscience didn't prick me a bit. But some of the girls got as red as beets and... Cried afterward; she hadn't swept her corridor for two whole days. Mr. Durant certainly does get down to the roots of things, and if you haven't a pretty decent conscience about your lessons and everything, you feel as though you had a clear little window right in the middle of your forehead through which he can look in and see the disorder. Some of the girls say they are just paralyzed when he looks at them; but I'm not. I feel like doing things just as well as I can. 

 Sunday, November 19. We had a missionary from South Africa to preach in the chapel this morning. He seemed to think we were all getting ready to be missionaries, because he said among other things that he hoped to welcome us to the field as soon as possible after we graduated. His complexion was very yellow. It reminded one of ivory, elephants' tusks and that sort of thing. We heard afterward that he wasn't married, and that he hoped to find a suitable helpmate here. But although Mr. Durant introduced him to all the '79 girls I didn't think he liked the looks of any of them. At least he didn't propose to any of them on the spot. They're only sophomores, anyway, when one comes to think of it, but they certainly act as if the dignity of the whole institution rested on their shoulders. Most of them wear trails every day. I wish I had a trail. 

To complete this picture of the college woman in 1876 we needthe description of the college president, by a member of the classof '80: "Miss Howard with her young face, pink cheeks, blue eyes, and puffs of snow-white hair, wearing always a long trailing gownof black silk, cut low at the throat and finished with folds ofsnowy tulle. " None of these writers gives the date at which thetrail disappeared from the classroom. 

The following letters are from Mary Elizabeth Stilwell, a memberof that same class of '79 which wore the trails. She, likeFlorence Morse, left college on account of her health. The lettersare printed by the courtesy of her daughter, Ruth Eleanor McKibben, a graduate of Denison College and a graduate student at Wellesleyduring 1914 and 1915. Elizabeth Stilwell was older and more maturethan Florence Morse, and her letters give us the old Wellesleyfrom quite a different angle. 

 Wellesley College--

 Oct. 16, '75. 

 My Dear Mother:--

 If you are at all discouraged or feel the need of something to cheer you up you had better lay this letter aside and read it some other time, for I expect it will be exceedingly doleful. But really, Mother, I am exceedingly in earnest in what I am going to write and have thought the whole matter over carefully before I have ventured a word on the subject. Wellesley is not a college. The buildings are beautiful, perfect almost; the rooms and their appointments delightful, most of the professors are all that could be desired, some of them are very fine indeed in their several departments, but all these delightful things are not the things that make a college.... And, Oh! the experiments! It is enough to try the patience of a Job. I came here to take a college course, and not to dabble in a little of every insignificant thing that comes up. More than half of my time is taken up in writing essays, practicing elocution, trotting to chapel, and reading poetry with the teacher of English literature, and it seems to make no difference to Miss Howard and Mr. Durant whether the Latin, Greek and Mathematics are well learned or not. The result is that I do not have time to half learn my lessons. My real college work is unsatisfactory, poorly done, and so of course amounts to about nothing. I am not the only one that feels it, but every member of the freshman class has the same feeling, and not only the students but even the professors. You can have no idea of how these very professors have worked to have things different and have expostulated and expostulated with Mr. Durant, but all to no avail. He is as hard as a flint and his mind is made up of the most beautiful theories, but he is perfectly blind to facts. He rules the college, from the amount of Latin we shall read to the kind of meat we shall have for dinner; he even went out into the kitchen the other day and told the cook not to waste so much butter in making the hash, for I heard him myself. 

We must remember that the writer is a young girl, intolerant, asyouth is always intolerant, and that she was writing only one monthafter the college had opened. It is not to be expected that shecould understand the creative excitement under which the founderwas laboring in those first years. We, who look back, can appreciatewhat it must have meant to a man of his imagination and intensity, to see his ideal coming true; naturally, he could not keep hishands off. And we must remember also that until his death Mr. Durantmet the yearly deficit of the college. This gave him a peculiarclaim to have his wishes carried out, whether in the classroom orin the kitchen. 

Miss Stilwell continues:

 I know there are a great many things to be taken into consideration. I know that the college is new and that all sorts of discouragements are to be expected, and that the best way is to bear them patiently and hope that all will come out right in the end. At the same time I am DETERMINED to have a certain sort of an education, and I must go where I can get it.... Oh! if I could only make you see it as we all feel it! It is such a bitter disappointment when I had looked forward for so long to going to college, to find the same narrowness and cramped feeling. --There is one other thing that Mrs. S. (the mother of one of the students) spoke of yesterday, which is very true I am sorry to say, and that is in regard to the religious influence. She said that she thought that Mr. Durant by driving the girls so, and continually harping on the subject, was losing all his influence and was doing just the opposite of what he intended. I know that with my room-mate and her set he is a constant source of ridicule and his exhortations and prayers are retailed in the most terrible way. I have set my foot down on it and I will not allow anything of the sort done in my room, but I know that it is done elsewhere, and that every spark of religious interest is killed by the process. I have firmly made up my mind that it shall not affect me and I have succeeded in controlling myself this far. 

On December 31, we find her writing: "My Greek is the only pleasantthing to which I can look forward, and I am quite sure goodinstruction awaits me there. "

In 1876 she cheers up a bit, and on September 17, writes: "I amgoing to like Miss Lord (professor of Latin) very much indeedand shall derive a great deal of profit from her teaching. " Andon October 8, "Having already had so much Greek, I think I could take the classicalcourse for Honors right through, even though I did not begin Germanuntil another year, and as I am quite anxious to study Chemistryand have the laboratory practice perhaps I had best take Chemistrynow and leave German for another year. It is indeed a problem anda profound one as to what I am to do with my education and I amvery anxious to hear from father in answer to my letter and gethis thoughts on the matter. I have the utmost confidence inMiss Horton's judgment (professor of Greek) and I think I shalltalk the matter over with her in a day or two. "

Evidently the "experiments" which had taken so much of her timein 1875 had now been eliminated, and she was able to respectthe work which she was doing. Her Sunday schedule, which shesends her mother on October 15, 1876, will be of interest to themodern college girl. 

 Rising Bell 7 Breakfast 7. 45 Silent Hour 9. 30 Bible Class 9. 45 Church 11 Dinner 1 Prayer Meeting 5 Supper 5. 30 Section Prayer Meeting 7. 30 Once a Month Missionary Prayer Meeting 8 Silent Hour 9 Bed 9. 30

And in addition to her required work, this ambitious young studenthas arranged a course of reading for herself:

 During the last week I have been in the library a great deal and have been browsing for two or three hours at a time among those delightful books. I have arranged a course of reading upon Art, which I hope to have time to pursue, and then I have made selections from some such authors as Kingsley, Ruskin, De Quincey, Hawthorne, --and Mrs. Jameson, for which I hope to find time. Besides all this you can't imagine what domestic work has been given me. It is in the library where I am to spend 3/4 of an hour a day in arranging "studies" in Shakespeare. The work will be like this:--Mr. Durant has sent for five hundred volumes to form a "Shakespeare library. " I will read some fully detailed life of Shakespeare and note down as I go along such topics as I think are interesting and which will come up next year when the Juniors study Shakespeare. For instance, each one of his plays will form a separate topic, also his early home, his education, his friendships, the different characteristics of his genius, &c. Then all there is in the library upon this author must be read enough to know under what topic or topics it belongs and then noted under these topics. So that when the literature class come to study Shakespeare next year, each one will know just where to go for any information she may want. Mr. Durant came to me himself about it and explained to me what it would be and asked me if I would be willing to take it. He said I could do just as I wanted to about it and if I felt that it would be tiresome and too much like a study and so a strain upon me, he did not want me to take it. I have been thinking of it now for a day or two and have come to the conclusion to undertake it. For it seems to me that it will be an unusual advantage and of great benefit to me. --Another reason why I am pleased and which I could tell to no one but you and father is that I think it shows that Mr. Durant has some confidence in me and what I can do. But--"tell it not in Gath"--that I ever said anything of the kind. 

Thus do we trace Literature 9 (the Shakespeare Course) to itsmodest fountainhead. 

Elizabeth Stilwell left her Alma Mater in 1877, but so cherishedwere the memories of the life which she had criticized as a girl, and so thoroughly did she come to respect its academic standards, that her own daughters grew up thinking that the goal of happygirlhood was Wellesley College. 

From such naive beginnings, amateur in the best sense of the word, the Wellesley of to-day has arisen. Details of the founder's planhave been changed and modified to meet conditions which he couldnot foresee. But his "five great essentials for education atWellesley College" are still the touchstones of Wellesley scholarship. In the founder's own words they are:

FIRST. God with us; no plan can prosper without Him. 

SECOND. Health; no system of education can be in accordancewith God's laws which injures health. 

THIRD. Usefulness; all beauty is the flower of use. 

FOURTH. Thoroughness. 

FIFTH. The one great truth of higher education which the noblestwomanhood demands; viz. The supreme development and unfoldingof every power and faculty, of the Kingly reason, the beautifulimagination, the sensitive emotional nature, and the religiousaspirations. The ideal is of the highest learning in full harmonywith the noblest soul, grand by every charm of culture, usefuland beautiful because useful; feminine purity and delicacy andrefinement giving their luster and their power to the most absolutescience--woman learned without infidelity and wise without conceit, the crowned queen of the world by right of that Knowledge whichis Power and that Beauty which is Truth. "

CHAPTER II

THE PRESIDENTS AND THEIR ACHIEVEMENT

Wellesley's career differs in at least one obvious and importantparticular from the careers of her sister colleges, Smith, Vassar, and Bryn Mawr, --in the swift succession of her presidents duringher formative years. Smith College, opening in the same year asWellesley, 1875, remained under President Seelye's wise guidancefor thirty-five years. Vassar, between 1886 and 1914, had butone president. Bryn Mawr, in 1914, still followed the lead ofMiss Thomas, first dean and then president. In 1911, Wellesley'ssixth president was inaugurated. Of the five who preceded PresidentPendleton, only Miss Hazard served more than six years, and evenMiss Hazard's term of eleven years was broken by more than onelong absence because of illness. 

It is useless to deny that this lack of administrative continuityhad its disadvantages, yet no one who watched the growth anddevelopment of Wellesley during her first forty years could failto mark the genuine progression of her scholarly ideal. Despitean increasingly hampering lack of funds--poverty is not too stronga word--and the disconcerting breaks and changes in her presidentialpolicy, she never took a backward step, and she never stood still. The Wellesley that Miss Freeman inherited was already strainingat its leading strings and impatient of its boarding-school horizons;the Wellesley that Miss Shafer left was a college in every modernacceptation of the term, and its academic prestige has been confirmedand enhanced by each successive president. 

Of these six women who were called to direct the affairs of Wellesleyin her first half century, Miss Ada L. Howard seems to have beenthe least forceful; but her position was one of peculiar difficulty, and she apparently took pains to adjust herself with tact anddignity to conditions which her more spirited successors wouldhave found unbearably galling. Professor George Herbert Palmer, in his biography of his wife, epitomizes the early situation whenhe says that Mr. Durant "had, it is true, appointed Miss Ada L. Howardpresident; but her duties as an executive officer were nominalrather than real; neither his disposition, her health, nor herprevious training allowing her much power. "

Miss Howard was a New Hampshire woman, the daughter of WilliamHawkins Howard and Adaline Cowden Howard. Three of her greatgrandfathers were officers in the War of the Revolution. Her fatheris said to have been a good scholar and an able teacher as wellas a scientific agriculturist, and her mother was "a gentlewomanof sweetness, strength and high womanhood. " When their daughterwas born, the father and mother were living in Temple, a village ofSouthern New Hampshire not very far from Jaffrey. The little girlwas taught by her father, and was later sent to the academy atNew Ipswich, New Hampshire, to the high school at Lowell, and toMt. Holyoke Seminary, where she was graduated. After leavingMt. Holyoke, she taught at Oxford, Ohio, and she was at one timethe principal of the Woman's Department of Knox College, Illinois. In the early '70's this was a career of some distinction, for awoman, and Mr. Durant was justified in thinking that he had foundthe suitable executive head for his college. We hear of his saying, "I have been four years looking for a president. She will be atarget to be shot at, and for the present the position will be oneof severe trials. "

Miss Howard came to Wellesley in 1875, giving up a private schoolof her own, Ivy Hall, in Bridgeton, New Jersey, in order to becomea college president. No far-seeing policies can be traced to her, however; she seems to have been content to press her somewhatnarrow and rigid conception of discipline upon a more or lessrestive student body, and to follow Mr. Durant's lead in all matterspertaining to scholarship and academic expansion. 

We can trace that expansion from year to year through this firstadministration. In 1877 the Board of Visitors was established, and eminent educators and clergymen were invited to visit thecollege at stated intervals and stimulate by their criticism thecollege routine. In 1878 the Students' Aid Society was foundedto help the many young women who were in need of a college training, but who could not afford to pay their own way. Through the wisegenerosity of Mrs. Durant and a group of Boston women, the societywas set upon its feet, and its long career of blessed usefulnesswas begun. This is only one of the many gifts which Wellesleyowes to Mrs. Durant. As Professor Katharine Lee Bates has saidin her charming sketch of Mrs. Durant in the Wellesley Legendafor 1894: "Her specific gifts to Wellesley it is impossible tocompletely enumerate. She has forgotten, and no one else everknew. So long as Mr. Durant was living, husband and wife wereone and inseparable in service and donation. But since his death, while it has been obvious that she spends herself unsparingly incollege cares, adding many of his functions to her own, acontinuous flow of benefits, almost unperceived, has come toWellesley from her open hand. " As long as her health permitted, she lavished "her very life in labor of hand and brain for Wellesley, even as her husband lavished his. "

In 1878 the Teachers' Registry was also established, a method ofregistration by which those students who expected to teach mightbring their names and qualifications before the schools of thecountry. But the most important academic events of this year, and those which reacted directly upon the intellectual life ofthe college, were the establishment of the Physics laboratory, under the careful supervision of Professor Whiting, and theendowment of the Library by Professor Eben N. Horsford of Cambridge. This endowment provided a fund for the purchase of new books andfor various expenses of maintenance, and was only one of the manygifts which Wellesley was to receive from this generous benefactor. Another gift, of this year, was the pipe organ, presented byMr. William H. Groves, for the College Hall Chapel. Later, whenthe new Memorial Chapel was built, this organ was removed toBillings Hall, the concert room of the Department of Music. 

On June 24, 1879, Wellesley held her first Commencement exercises, with a graduating class of eighteen and an address by the ReverendRichard S. Storrs, D. D. , on the "Influence of Woman in the Future. "

In 1880, on May 27, the corner stone of Stone Hall was laid, thesecond building on the college campus. It was the gift of Mrs. Valeria G. Stone, and was intended, in the beginning, as a dormitoryfor the "teacher specials. " Doctor William A. Willcox of Malden, a devoted trustee of Wellesley from 1878 to 1904, and a relativeof Mrs. Stone, was influential in securing this gift for the college, and it was he who first turned the attention of Mr. And Mrs. Durantto the needs of the women who had already been engaged in teaching, but who wished to fit themselves for higher positions by advancedwork in one or more particular directions. At first, there werea good many of them, and even as late as 1889 and 1890 there werea few still in evidence; but gradually, as the number of regularstudents increased, and accommodations became more limited, andas opportunities for college training multiplied, these "T. Specs. "as they were irreverently dubbed by the undergraduates, disappeared, and Stone Hall has for many years been filled with students inregular standing. 

On June 10, 1880, the corner stone of Music Hall was laid; theinscription in the stone reads: "The College of Music is dedicatedto Almighty God with the hope that it will be used in his service. "There are added the following passages from the Bible:

"Trust ye in the Lord forever: for in the Lord Jehovah is everlastingstrength. " Isaiah, 26: 4. 

 "Sing praises to God, sing praises: Sing praises unto our King, sing praises. For God is the King of all the earth. " Psalms, 47: 6-7. 

The building was given by the founders. 

The year 1881 is marked by the closing, in June, of Wellesley'spreparatory department, another intellectual advance. In Junealso, on the tenth, the corner stone of Simpson Cottage was laid. The building was the gift of Mr. Michael Simpson, and has beenused since 1908 as the college hospital. In the autumn of 1881, Stone Hall and Waban Cottage--the latter another gift from thefounders were opened for students. 

On October 3, 1881, Mr. Durant died, and shortly afterwardsMiss Howard resigned. After leaving Wellesley, she lived inMethuen, Massachusetts, and in Brooklyn, New York, where shedied, March 3, 1907. Mrs. Marion Pelton Guild, of the class of'80, says of Miss Howard, in an article on Wellesley written forthe New England Magazine, October, 1914, that "she was in thedifficult position of the nominal captain, who is in fact only alieutenant. Yet she held it with a true self-respect, honoringthe fiery genius of her leader, if she could not always followits more startling fights; and not hesitating to withstand him inhis most positive plans, if her long practical experience suggestedthat it was necessary. " From Mt. Holyoke, her Alma Mater, Miss Howard received, in the latter part of her life, the honorarydegree of Doctor of Letters. 

II. 

Wellesley's second president, Alice E. Freeman, is, of all the six, the one most widely known. Her magnetic personality, her continuedand successful efforts during her administration to bring Wellesleyout of its obscurity and into the public eye, her extended activityin educational matters after her marriage, gave her a prominencethroughout the country which was surpassed by very few women ofher generation. And her husband's reverent and poeticalinterpretation of her character has secured for her reputation aliterary permanence unusual to the woman of affairs who "wroteno books and published only half a dozen articles", and whose manypublic addresses were never written. 

It is from Professor Palmer's "Life of Alice Freeman Palmer", published by the Houghton Mifflin Co. , that the biographicalmaterial for the brief sketch following is derived. 

Alice Elvira Freeman was born at Colesville, Broome County, New York, on February 21, 1855. She was a country child, a farmer's daughteras her mother was before her. James Warren Freeman, the father, was of Scottish blood. His mother was a Knox, and his maternalgrandfather was James Knox of Washington's Life Guard. James Freemanwas, as we should expect, an elder of the Presbyterian church. The mother, Elizabeth Josephine Higley, "had unusual executiveability and a strong disposition to improve social conditionsaround her. She interested herself in temperance, and in legislationfor the better protection of women and children. " Their littledaughter Alice, the eldest of four children, taught herself toread when she was three years old, and we find her going to schoolat the age of four. When she was seven, her father, urged by hiswife, decided to be a physician, and during his two years' absenceat the Albany medical school, Mrs. Freeman supported him and thefour little children. The incident helps us to understand theambition and determination of the seventeen-year-old daughterwhen she declared in the face of her parents' opposition, "thatshe meant to have a college degree if it took her till she wasfifty to get it. If her parents could help her, even partially, she would promise never to marry until she had herself put herbrother through college and given to each of her sisters whatevereducation they might wish--a promise subsequently performed. "

And the girl had her own ideas about the kind of college she meantto attend. It must be a real college. Mt. Holyoke she rejectedbecause it was a young ladies' seminary, and Elmira and Vassarfell under the same suspicion, in her mind, although they werenominally colleges. She chose Michigan, the strongest of thecoeducational colleges, and she entered only two years after itsdoors were opened to women. 

She did not enter in triumph, however; the academy at Windsor, New York, where she had gone to school after her father becamea physician, was good at supplying "general knowledge" but "poorlyequipped for preparing pupils for college", and Doctor Freeman'sdaughter failed to pass her entrance examinations for MichiganUniversity. President Angell tells the story sympathetically in"The Life", as follows:

"In 1872, when Alice Freeman presented herself at my office, accompanied by her father, to apply for admission to the university, she was a simple, modest girl of seventeen. She had pursued herstudies in the little academy at Windsor. Her teacher regardedher as a child of much promise, precocious, possessed of a bright, alert mind, of great industry, of quick sympathies, and of aninstinctive desire to be helpful to others. Her preparation forcollege had been meager, and both she and her father were doubtfulof her ability to pass the required examinations. The doubts werenot without foundation. The examiners, on inspecting her work, were inclined to decide that she ought to do more preparatory workbefore they could accept her. Meantime I had had not a littleconversation with her and her father, and had been impressed withher high intelligence. At my request the examiners decided toallow her to enter on a trial of six weeks. I was confident shewould demonstrate her capacity to go on with her class. I needhardly add that it was soon apparent to her instructors that myconfidence was fully justified. She speedily gained and constantlyheld an excellent position as a scholar. "

President Angell is of course using the term "scholar" in itsundergraduate connotation for, as Professor Palmer has been carefulto state, "In no field of scholarship was she eminent. " Despiteher eagerness for knowledge, her bent was for people rather thanfor books; for what we call the active and objective life, ratherthan for the life of thought. Wellesley has had her scholarpresidents, but Miss Freeman was not one of them. This friendly, human temper showed itself early in her college days. To quoteagain from President Angell: "One of her most striking characteristicsin college was her warm and demonstrative sympathy with her circleof friends.... Without assuming or striving for leadership, shecould not but be to a certain degree a leader among these, someof whom have since attained positions only less conspicuous forusefulness than her own.... No girl of her time on withdrawingfrom college would have been more missed than she. "

It is for this eagerness in friendship, this sympathetic andhelpful interest in the lives of others that Mrs. Palmer is especiallyremembered at Wellesley. Her own college days made her quickto understand the struggles and ambitions of other girls who werehampered by inadequate preparation, or by poverty. Her husbandtells us that, "When a girl had once been spoken to, howeverbriefly, her face and name were fixed on a memory where eachincident of her subsequent career found its place beside theoriginal record. " And he gives the following incident as toldby a superintendent of education. 

"Once after she had been speaking in my city, she asked me to standbeside her at a reception. As the Wellesley graduates came forwardto greet her--there were about eighty of them--she said somethingto each which showed that she knew her. Some she called by theirfirst names; others she asked about their work, their families, or whether they had succeeded in plans about which they hadevidently consulted her. The looks of pleased surprise whichflashed over the faces of those girls I cannot forget. Theyrevealed to me something of Miss Freeman's rich and radiant life. For though she seemed unconscious of doing anything unusual, andfor her I suppose it was usual, her own face reflected the happinessof the girls and showed a serene joy in creating that happiness. "

Her husband, in his analysis of her character, has a remarkablepassage concerning this very quality of disinterestedness. He says:

"Her moral nature was grounded in sympathy. Beginning early, theidentification of herself with others grew into a constant habit, of unusual range and delicacy.... Most persons will agree thatsympathy is the predominantly feminine virtue, and that she wholacks it cannot make its absence good by any collection of otherworthy qualities. In a true woman sympathy directs all else. Tofind a virtue equally central in a man we must turn to truthfulnessor courage. These also a woman should possess, as a man tooshould be sympathetic; but in her they take a subordinate place, subservient to omnipresent sympathy. Within these limits theampler they are, the nobler the woman. 

"I believe Mrs. Palmer had a full share of both these manlyexcellences, and practiced them in thoroughly feminine fashion. She was essentially true, hating humbug in all its disguises.... Her love of plainness and distaste for affectation were forms ofveracity. But in narrative of hers one got much besides plainrealities. These had their significance heightened by her eageremotion, and their picturesqueness by her happy artistry.... Ofcourse the warmth of her sympathy cut off all inclination tofalsehood for its usual selfish purpose. But against generousuntruth she was not so well guarded. Kindness was the firstthing.... Tact too, once become a habit, made adaptation to themind addressed a constant concern. She had extraordinary skillin stuffing kindness with truth; and into a resisting mind couldwithout irritation convey a larger bulk of unwelcome fact thanany one I have known. But that insistence on colorless statementwhich in our time the needs of trade and science have made currentamong men, she did not feel. Lapses from exactitude which do notseparate person from person she easily condoned. "

Surely the manly virtues of truthfulness and courage could be nobetter exemplified than in the writing of this passage. Whetherhis readers, especially the women, will agree with Professor Palmerthat, in woman, truthfulness and courage "take a subordinate place, subservient to omnipresent sympathy", is a question. 

Between 1876 when she was graduated from Michigan, and 1879 whenshe went to Wellesley, Miss Freeman taught with marked success, first at a seminary in the town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, whereshe had charge of the Greek and Latin; and later as assistantprincipal of the high school at Saginaw in Northern Michigan. Hereshe was especially successful in keeping order among unruly pupils. The summer of 1877 she spent in Ann Arbor, studying for a higherdegree, and although she never completed the thesis for this work, the university conferred upon her the degree of Ph. D. In 1882, thefirst year of her presidency at Wellesley. 

In this same summer of 1877, when she was studying at Ann Arbor, she received her first invitation to teach at Wellesley. Mr. Durantoffered her an instructorship in Mathematics, which she declined. In 1878 she was again invited, this time to teach Greek, but hersister Stella was dying, and Miss Freeman, who had now settledher entire family at Saginaw, would not leave them. In June, 1879, the sister died, and in July Miss Freeman became the head of theDepartment of History at Wellesley, at the age of twenty-four. 

Mr. Durant's attention had first been drawn to her by her goodfriend President Angell, and he had evidently followed her careeras a teacher with interest. There seems to have been no abatementin his approval after she went to Wellesley. We are told that theydid not always agree, but this does not seem to have affectedtheir mutual esteem. In her first year, Mr. Durant is said to haveremarked to one of the trustees, "You see that little dark-eyedgirl? She will be the next president of Wellesley. " And beforehe died, he made his wishes definitely known to the board. 

At a meeting of the trustees, on November 15, 1881, Miss Freemanwas appointed vice president of the college and acting presidentfor the year. She was then twenty-six years of age and the youngestprofessor in the college. In 1882 she became president. 

During the next six years, Wellesley's growth was as normal asit was rapid. This is a period of internal organization whichachieved its most important result in the evolution of the AcademicCouncil. "In earlier days, " we are told by Professor Palmer, "teachers of every rank met in the not very important facultymeetings, to discuss such details of government or instruction aswere not already settled by Mr. Durant. " But even then the facultywas built up out of departmental groups, that is, "all teachersdealing with a common subject were banded together under a headprofessor and constituted a single unit, " and, as Mrs. Guild tellsus, Miss Freeman "naturally fell to consulting the heads ofdepartments as the abler and more responsible members of thefaculty, " instead of laying her plans before the whole faculty atits more or less cumbersome weekly meetings. From this innercircle of heads of departments the Academic Council was graduallyevolved. It now includes the president, the dean, professors, associate professors (unless exempted by a special tenure ofoffice), and such other officers of instruction and administrationas may be given this responsibility by vote of the trustees. 

Miss Freeman also "began the formation of standing committeesof the faculty on important subjects, such as entrance examinations, graduate work, preparatory schools, etc. "

This faculty, over which Miss Freeman presided, was a notable one, a body of women exhibiting in marked degree those qualities andvirtues of the true pioneer: courage, patience, originality, resourcefulness, and vision. There were strong groups fromAnn Arbor and Oberlin and Mt. Holyoke, and there was a fourthgroup of "pioneer scholars, not wholly college bred, but enrichedwith whatever amount of academic training they could wring or charmfrom a reluctant world, whom Wellesley will long honor and revere. "

With the organization of the faculty came also the organizationof the college work. Entrance examinations were made more severe. Greek had been first required for entrance in 1881. A certificateof admission was drawn up, stating exactly what the candidate hadaccomplished in preparation for college. Courses of study werestandardized and simplified. In 1882, the methods of Bible studywere reorganized, and instead of the daily classes, to which noserious study had been given, two hours a week of "examinableinstruction" were substituted. In this year also the gymnasiumwas refitted under the supervision of Doctor D. A. Sargent of Harvard. 

Miss Freeman's policy of establishing preparatory schools whichshould be "feeders" for Wellesley was of the greatest importanceto the college at this time, as "in only a few high schools werethe girls allowed to join classes which fitted boys for college. "When Miss Freeman became president, Dana Hall was the only Wellesleypreparatory school in existence; but in 1884, through her efforts, an important school was opened in Philadelphia, and before the endof her presidency, she had been instrumental in furthering theorganization of fifteen other schools in different parts of thecountry, officered for the most part by Wellesley graduates. 

In this same year the Christian Association was organized. Itshistory, bound up as it is with the student life, will be givenmore fully in a later chapter, but we must not forget that MissFreeman gave the association its initial impulse and establishedits broad type. 

In 1884 also, we find Wellesley petitioning before the committeeon education at the State House in Boston, to extend its holdingsfrom six hundred thousand dollars to five million dollars, andgaining the petition. 

On June 22, 1885, the corner stone of the Decennial Cottage, afterwards called Norumbega, was laid. The building was givenby the alumnae, aided by Professor Horsford, Mr. E. A. Goodenowand Mr. Elisha S. Converse of the Board of Trustees. Norumbegawas for many years known as the President's House, for hereMiss Freeman, Miss Shafer, and Mrs. Irvine lived. In the academicyear 1901-02, when Miss Hazard built the house for herself andher successors, the president's modest suite in Norumbega wasset free for other purposes. 

In 1886, Norumbega was opened, and in June of that year, theLibrary Festival was held to celebrate Professor Horsford's manybenefactions to the college. These included the endowment of theLibrary, an appropriation for scientific apparatus, and a systemof pensions. 

In a letter to the trustees, dated January 1, 1886, the donorexplains that the annual appropriation for the library shall befor the salaries of the librarian and assistants, for books forthe library, and for binding and repairs. That the appropriationfor scientific apparatus shall go toward meeting the needs of thedepartments of Physics, Chemistry, Botany, and Biology. And thatthe System of Pensions shall include a Sabbatical Grant, and a"Salary Augment and Pension. " By the Sabbatical Grant, the headsof certain departments are able to take a year of travel andresidence abroad every seventh year on half salary. The donorstipulated, however, that "the offices contemplated in the grantsand pensions must be held by ladies. "

In his memorable address on this occasion, Professor Horsfordoutlines his ideal for the library which he generously endowed:

"But the uses of books at a seat of learning reach beyond the wantsof the undergraduates. The faculty need supplies from the dailywidening field of literature. They should have access to theperiodical issues of contemporary research and criticism in thevarious branches of knowledge pertaining to their individualdepartments. In addition to these, the progressive culture of anestablished college demands a share in whatever adorns and ennoblesscholarly life, and principally the opportunity to know somethingof the best of all the past, --the writers of choice and rare books. To meet this demand there will continue to grow the collections inspecialties for bibliographical research, which starting like thesuite of periodicals with the founder, have been nursed, as theywill continue to be cherished, under the wise direction of theLibrary Council. Some of these will be gathered in concert, itmay be hoped, with neighboring and venerable and hospitableinstitutions, that costly duplicates may be avoided; some will beexclusively our own. 

"To these collections of specialties may come, as to a jointestate in the republic of letters, not alone the faculty of thecollege, but such other persons of culture engaged in literarylabor as may not have found facilities for conducting theirresearches elsewhere, and to whom the trustees may extend invitationto avail themselves of the resources of our library. "

These ideals of scholarship and hospitality the Wellesley CollegeLibrary never forgets. Her Plimpton collection of Italian manuscriptsis a treasure-house for students of the Italy of the Middle Agesand Renaissance; and her alumnae, as well as scholars from othercolleges and other lands, are given every facility for study. 

In 1887, two dormitories were added to the college: Freeman Cottage, the gift of Mrs. Durant, and the Eliot, the joint gift of Mrs. Durantand Mr. H. H. Hunnewell. Originally the Eliot had been used asa boarding-house for the young women working in a shoe factoryat that time running in Wellesley village, but after Mrs. Duranthad enlarged and refurnished it, students who wished to pay a partof their expenses by working their way through college were boardedthere. Some years later it was again enlarged, and used as avillage-house for freshmen. 

In December, 1887, Miss Freeman resigned from Wellesley to marryProfessor George Herbert Palmer of Harvard; but her interest inthe college did not flag, and during her lifetime she continuedto be a member of the Board of Trustees. From 1892 to 1895 sheheld the office of Dean of Women of the University of Chicago; andRadcliffe, Bradford Academy, and the International Institute forGirls, in Spain, can all claim a share in her fostering interest. From 1889 until the end of her life, she was a member of theMassachusetts Board of Education, having been appointed byGovernor Ames and reappointed by Governor Greenhalge and GovernorCrane. 

In addition to the degree of Ph. D. Received from Michigan in 1882, Miss Freeman received the honorary degree of Litt. D. From Columbiain 1887, and in 1895 the honorary degree of LL. D. , from UnionUniversity. 

What she meant to the women who were her comrades at Wellesleyin those early days--the women who held up her hands--is expressedin an address by Professor Whiting at the memorial service heldin the chapel in December, 1903:

"I think of her in her office, which was also her private parlor, with not even a skilled secretary at first, toiling with all thecorrespondence, seeing individual girls on academic and socialmatters, setting them right in cases of discipline, interviewingmembers of the faculty on necessary plans. The work was overwhelmingand sometimes her one assistant would urge her, late in theevening, to nibble a bite from a tray which, to save time, hadbeen sent in to her room at the dinner hour, only to remainuntouched.... No wonder that professors often left their lecturesto be written in the wee small hours, to help in uncongenialadministrative work, which was not in the scope of their recognizedduties. "

The pathos of her death in Paris, in December, 1902, came as ashock to hundreds of people whose lives had been brightened byher eager kindliness; and her memory will always be especiallycherished by the college to which she gave her youth. The beautifulmemorial in the college chapel will speak to generations ofWellesley girls of this lovable and ardent pioneer. 

III. 

Wellesley's debt to her third president, Helen A. Shafer, isnowhere better defined than in the words of a distinguished alumna, Sophonisba P. Breckenridge, writing on Miss Shafer's administration, in the Wellesley College News of November 2, 1901. MissBreckenridge says:

 It is said that in a great city on the shore of a western lake the discovery was made one day that the surface of the water had gradually risen and that stately buildings on the lake front designed for the lower level had been found both misplaced and inadequate to the pressure of the high level. They were fair without, well proportioned and inviting; but they were unsteady and their collapse was feared. To take them down seemed a great loss: to leave them standing as they were was to expose to certain perils those who came and went within them. They proved to be the great opportunity of the engineer. He first, without interrupting their use, or disturbing those who worked within, made them safe and sure and steady, able to meet the increased pressure of the higher level, and then, likewise without interfering with the day's work of any man, by skillful hidden work, adapted them to the new conditions by raising their level in corresponding measure. The story told of that engineer's great achievement in the mechanical world has always seemed applicable to the service rendered by Miss Shafer to the intellectual structure of Wellesley. 

 Under the devoted and watchful supervision of the founders, and under the brilliant direction of Miss Freeman, brave plans had been drawn, honest foundations laid and stately walls erected. The level from which the measurements were taken was no low level. It was the level of the standard of scholarship for women as it was seen by those who designed the whole beautiful structure. To its spacious shelter were tempted women who had to do with scholarly pursuits and girls who would be fitted for a life upon that plane. But during those first years that level itself was rising, and by its rising the very structure was threatened with instability if not collapse. And then she came. Much of the work of her short and unfinished administration was quietly done; making safe unsafe places, bringing stability where instability was shown, requires hidden, delicate, sure labor and absorbed attention. That labor and that attention she gave. It required exact knowledge of the danger, exact fitting of the brace to the rift. That she accomplished until the structure was again fit. And then, by fine mechanical devices, well adapted to their uses, patiently but boldly used, she undertook to raise the level of the whole, that under the new claims upon women Wellesley might have as commanding a position as it had assumed under the earlier circumstances. It was a very definite undertaking to which she put her hand, which she was not allowed to complete. So clearly was it outlined in her mind, so definitely planned, that in the autumn of 1893, she thought if she were allowed four years more she would feel that her task was done and be justified in asking to surrender to other hands the leadership. After the time at which this estimate was made, she was allowed three months, and the hands were stilled. But the hands had been so sure, the work so skillful, the plans so intelligent and the purpose so wise that the essence of the task was accomplished. The peril of collapse had been averted and the level of the whole had been forever raised. The time allowed was five short years, of which one was wholly claimed by the demands of the frail body; the situation presented many difficulties. The service, too, was in many respects of the kind whose glory is in its inconspicuousness and obscure character, a structure that would stand when builders were gone, a device that would serve its end when its inventor was no more. --These are her contribution. And because that contribution was so well made, it has been ever since taken for granted. Her administration is little known and this is as she would have it--since it means that the extent to which her services were needed is likewise little realized. But to those who do know and who do realize, it is a glorious memory and a glorious aspiration. 

 Rare delicacy of perception, keen sympathy, exquisite honesty, scholarly attainment of a very high order, humility of that kind which enables one to sit without mortification among the lowly, without self-consciousness among the great--these are some of the gifts which enabled her to do just the work she did, at the time when just that contribution to the permanence and dignity of Wellesley was so essential. 

Miss Freeman's work we may characterize as, in its nature, extensive. Miss Shafer's was intensive. The scholar and theadministrator were united in her personality, but the scholarled. The crowning achievement of her administration was what wasthen called "the new curriculum. "

In the college calendars from 1876 to 1879, we find as many asseven courses of study outlined. There was a General Course forwhich the degree of B. A. Was granted, with summa cum laude forspecial distinction in scholarship. There were the courses forHonors, in Classics, Mathematics, Modern Languages, and Science;and students doing suitable work in them could be recommended forthe degree. These elective courses made a good showing on paper;but it seems to have been possible to complete them by a minimumof study. There were also courses in Music and Art, extendingover a period of five years instead of the ordinary four allottedto the General Course. Under Miss Freeman, the courses for Honorsdisappeared, and instead of the General Course there were substitutedthe Classical Course, with Greek as an entrance requirement andthe degree of B. A. As its goal; and the Scientific Course, in whichknowledge of French or German was substituted for Greek at entrance, and Mathematics was required through the sophomore year. Thestudent who completed this course received the degree of B. S. 

The "new curriculum" substituted for the two courses, Classicaland Scientific, hitherto offered, a single course leading to thedegree of B. A. As Miss Shafer explains in her report to thetrustees for the year 1892-1893: "Thus we cease to confer theB. S. For a course not essentially scientific, and incapable ofbecoming scientific under existing circumstances, and we offera course broad and strong, containing, as we believe, all theelements, educational and disciplinary, which should pertain toa course in liberal arts. "

Further modifications of the elective system were introducedin a later administration, but the "new curriculum" continues tobe the basis of Wellesley's academic instruction. 

Time and labor were required to bring about these readjustments. The requirements for admission had to be altered to correspondwith the new system, and the Academic Council spent three yearsin perfecting the curriculum in its new form. 

Miss Shafer's own department, Mathematics, had already been broughtup to a very high standard, and at one time the requirements foradmission to Wellesley were higher in Mathematics than those forHarvard. Under Miss Shafer also, the work in English Compositionwas placed on a new basis; elective courses were offered to seniorsand juniors in the Bible Department; a course in Pedagogy, beguntoward the end of Miss Freeman's residency, was encouraged andincreased; the laboratory of Physiological Psychology, the firstin a woman's college and one of the earliest in any college, wasopened in 1891 with Professor Calkins at its head. In all, sixty-seven new courses were opened to the students in these fiveyears. The Academic Council, besides revising the undergraduatecurriculum, also revised its rules governing the work of candidatesfor the Master's degree. 

But the "new curriculum" is not the only achievement for whichWellesley honors Miss Shafer. In June, 1892, she recommendedto the trustees that the alumnae be represented upon the board, and the recommendation was accepted and acted upon by the trustees. In 1914, about one fifth of the trustees were alumnae. 

Professor Burrell, Miss Shafer's student, and later her colleaguein the Department of Mathematics, says:

"From the first she felt a genuine interest in all sides of thesocial life of the students, sympathized with their ambitions andunderstood the bearing of them on the development of the rightspirit in the college. " And the members of the Greek lettersocieties bear her in especial remembrance, for it was she whoaided in the reestablishing in 1889 of the societies Phi Sigmaand Zeta Alpha, which had been suppressed in 1880, under Miss Howard. In 1889 also the Art Society, later known as Tau Zeta Epsilon, wasfounded; in 1891, the Agora, the political society, came intobeing, and 1892 saw the beginnings of Alpha Kappa Chi, the classicalsociety. Miss Shafer also approved and fostered the departmentclubs which began to be formed at this time. And to her wise andsympathetic assistance we owe the beginnings of the collegeperiodicals, --the old Courant, of 1888, the Prelude, which beganin 1889, and the first senior annual, the Legenda of 1889. 

The old boarding-school type of discipline which had flourishedunder Miss Howard, and lingered fitfully under Miss Freeman, gaveplace in Miss Shafer's day to a system of cuts and excuses whichalthough very far from the self-government of the present day, still fostered and respected the dignity of the students. At thebeginning of the academic year 1890-1891, attendance at prayersin chapel on Sunday evening and Monday morning was made optional. In this year also, seniors were given "with necessary restrictions, the privilege of leaving college, or the town, at their owndiscretion, whenever such absence did not take them from theircollege duties. " On September 12, 1893, the seniors began towear the cap and gown throughout the year. 

Other notable events of these five years were the opening of theFaculty Parlor on Monday, September 24, 1888, another of the giftsof Professor Horsford, its gold and garlands now vanished neverto return; the dedication of the Farnsworth Art Building onOctober 3, 1889, the gift of Mr. Isaac D. Farnsworth, a friend ofMr. Durant; the presentation in this same year, by Mr. Stetson, of the Amos W. Stetson collection of paintings; the opening, alsoin 1889, of Wood Cottage, a dormitory built by Mrs. Caroline A. Wood;the gift of a boathouse from the students, in 1893; and on Saturday, January 28, 1893, the opening of the college post office. Welearn, through the president's report for 1892-1893, that duringthis year four professors and one instructor were called to fillprofessorships in other colleges and universities, with double thesalary which they were then receiving, but all preferred to remainat Wellesley. 

This custom of printing an annual report to the trustees may alsobe said to have been inaugurated by Miss Shafer. It is true thatMiss Freeman had printed one such report at the close of her firstyear, but not again. Miss Shafer's clear and dignified presentationsof events and conditions are models of their kind; they set thestandard which her successors have followed. 

Of Miss Shafer's early preparation for her work we have but fewdetails. She was born in Newark, New Jersey, on September 23, 1839, and her father was a clergyman of the Congregational church, ofmingled Scotch and German descent. Her parents moved out toOberlin when she was still a young girl, and she entered the collegeand was graduated in 1863. The Reverend Frederick D. Allen ofBoston, who was a classmate of Miss Shafer's, tells us that therewere two courses at Oberlin in that day, the regular college courseand a parallel, four years' course for young women. It seems thatwomen were also admitted to the college course, but only a fewavailed themselves of the privilege, and Miss Shafer was not oneof these. But Mr. Allen remembers her as "an excellent student, certainly the best among the women of her class. "

After graduating from Oberlin, she taught two years in New Jersey, and then in the Olive Street High School in St. Louis for ten years, "laying the foundation of her distinguished reputation as a teacherof higher mathematics. " Doctor William T. Harris, then superintendentof public schools in St. Louis, and afterwards United StatesCommissioner of Education, commended her very highly; and herold students at Wellesley witness with enthusiasm to her remarkablepowers as a teacher. President Pendleton, who was one of thoseold students, says:

"Doubtless there was no one of these who did not receive the newsof her appointment as president with something of regret. No oneprobably doubted the wisdom of the choice, but all were unwillingthat the inspiration of Miss Shafer's teaching should be lost tothe future Wellesley students. Her record as president leavesunquestioned her power in administrative work, yet all her students, I believe, would say that Miss Shafer was preeminently a teacher. 

"It was my privilege to be one of a class of ten or more studentswho, during the last two years of their college life (1884-1886)elected Miss Shafer's course in Mathematics. It is difficult togive adequate expression to the impression which Miss Shafer madeas a teacher. There was a friendly graciousness in her manner ofmeeting a class which established at once a feeling of sympathybetween student and teacher.... She taught us to aim at clearnessof thought and elegance of method; in short, to attempt to giveto our work a certain finish which belongs only to the scholar.... I believe that it has often been the experience of a Wellesleygirl, that once on her feet in Miss Shafer's classroom, she hassurprised herself by treating a subject more clearly than shewould have thought possible before the recitation. The explanationof this, I think, lay in the fact that Miss Shafer inspired herstudents with her own confidence in their intellectual powers. "

When we realize that during the last ten years of her life shewas fighting tuberculosis, and in a state of health which, forthe ordinary woman, would have justified an invalid existence, we appreciate more fully her indomitable will and selflessness. During the winter of 1890-1891, she was obliged to spend somemonths in Thomasville, Georgia, and in her absence the duties ofher office devolved upon Professor Frances E. Lord, the headof the Department of Latin, whose sympathetic understanding ofMiss Shafer's ideals enabled her to carry through the difficultyear with signal success. Miss Shafer rallied in the mild climate, and probably her life would have been prolonged if she had chosento retire from the college; but her whole heart was in her work, and undoubtedly if she had known that her coming back to Wellesleymeant only two more years of life on earth, she would still havechosen to return. 

Miss Shafer had no surface qualities, although her friends knewwell the keen sense of humor which hid beneath that grave andrather awkward exterior. But when the alumnae who knew her speakof her, the words that rise to their lips are justice, integrity, sympathy. She was an honorary member of the class of 1891, andon December 8, 1902, her portrait, painted by Kenyon Cox, waspresented to the college by the Alumnae Association. 

Miss Shafer's academic degrees were from Oberlin, the M. A. In 1877and the LL. D. In 1893. 

Mrs. Caroline Williamson Montgomery (Wellesley, '89), in a memorialsketch written for the '94 Legenda says: "I have yet to find theWellesley student who could not and would not say, 'I can alwaysfeel sure of the fairness of Miss Shafer's decision. ' Again andagain have Wellesley students said, 'She treats us like women, and knows that we are reasoning beings. ' Often she has said, 'I feel that one of Wellesley's strongest points is in her alumnae. 'And once more, because of this confidence, the alumnae, as whenstudents, were spurred to do their best, were filled with loyaltyfor their alma mater.... If I should try to formulate an expressionof that life in brief, I should say that in her relation to thestudents there was perfect justness; as regards her own position, a passion for duty; as regards her character, simplicity, sincerity, and selflessness. "

For more than sixteen years, from 1877, when she came to thecollege as head of the Department of Mathematics, to January 20, 1894, when she died, its president, she served Wellesley with allher strength, and the college remains forever indebted to herhigh standards and wise leadership. 

IV. 

In choosing Mrs. Irvine to succeed Miss Shafer as president ofWellesley, the trustees abandoned the policy which had governedtheir earlier choices. Miss Freeman and Miss Shafer had beenconnected with the college almost from the beginning. They hadknown its problems only from the inside. Mrs. Irvine was, bycomparison, a newcomer; she had entered the Department of Greekas junior professor in 1890. But almost at once her unusualpersonality made its impression, and in the four years precedingher election to the presidency, she had arisen, as it were in spiteof herself, to a position of power both in the classroom and inthe Academic Council. As an outsider, her criticism, both constructiveand destructive, was peculiarly stimulating and valuable; and eventhose who resented her intrusion could not but recognize the nobledisinterestedness of her ideal for Wellesley. 

The trustees were quick to perceive the value to the college ofthis unusual combination of devotion and clearsightedness, detachmentand loving service. They also realized that the junior professorof Greek was especially well fitted to complete and perfect thecurriculum which Miss Shafer had so ably inaugurated. For Mrs. Irvinewas before all else a scholar, with a scholar's passion forrectitude and high excellence in intellectual standards. 

Julia Josephine (Thomas) Irvine, the daughter of Owen Thomas andMary Frame (Myers) Thomas, was born at Salem, Ohio, November 9, 1848. Her grandparents, strong abolitionists, are said to havemoved to the middle west from the south because they becameunwilling to live in a slave state. Mrs. Irvine's mother was thefirst woman physician west of the Alleghenies, and her mother'ssister also studied medicine. Mrs. Irvine's student life began atAntioch College, Ohio, but later she entered Cornell University, receiving her bachelor's degree in 1875. In the same rear shewas married to Charles James Irvine. In 1876, Cornell gave herthe degree of Master of Arts. After her husband's death in 1886, Mrs. Irvine entered upon her career as a teacher, and in 1890 cameto Wellesley, where her success in the classroom was immediate. Students of those days will never forget the vitality of herteaching, the enthusiasm for study which pervaded her classes. Wellesley has had her share of inspiring teachers, and among theseMrs. Irvine was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant. 

The new president assumed her office reluctantly, and with theunderstanding that she should be allowed to retire after a briefterm of years, when "the exigencies which suggested her appointmenthad ceased to exist. " She knew the college, and she knew herself. With certain aspects of the Wellesley life she could never beentirely in accord. She was a Hicksite Quaker. The Wellesleyof the decade 1890-1900 had moved a long way from the evangelicalrevivalism which had been Mr. Durant's idea of religion, but it wasnot until 1912 that the Quaker students first began to hold theirweekly meetings in the Observatory. About this time also, throughthe kind offices of the Wellesley College Christian Association, a list of the Roman Catholic students then in college was givento the Roman Catholic parish priest. That the trustees in 1895were willing to trust the leadership of the college to a womanwhose religious convictions differed so widely from those of thefounder indicates that even then Wellesley was beginning to outgrowher religious provincialism, and to recognize that a wise toleranceis not incompatible with steadfast Christian witness. 

The religious services which Mrs. Irvine, in her official capacity, conducted for the college were impressive by their simplicity anddistinction. An alumna of 1897 writes: "That commanding figurebehind the reading-desk of the old chapel in College Hall madeevery one, in those days, rejoice when she was to lead the morningservice. " But the trustees, anxious to set her free for the academicside of her work, which now demanded the whole of her time, appointed a dean to relieve her of such other duties as she desiredto delegate to another. This action was made possible by amendmentof the statutes, adopted November 1, 1894, and in 1895, MissMargaret E. Stratton, professor of the Department of Rhetoric, asit was then called, was appointed the first dean of the college. 

The trustees did not define the precise nature of the relationbetween the president and the dean, but left these officers tomake such division of work as should seem to them best, and weread in Mrs. Irvine's report for 1895 that, "For the present theDean remains in charge of all that relates to the public devotionalexercises of the college, and is chairman of the committee incharge of stated religious services. She is the authority referredto in all cases of ordinary discipline, and is the chairman ofthe committee which includes heads of houses and permissionofficers, all these officers are directly responsible to her. "

Regarded from an intellectual and academic point of view, theadministrations of Miss Shafer and Mrs. Irvine are a unit. Mrs. Irvine developed and perfected the policy which Miss Shaferhad initiated and outlined. By 1895, all students were workingunder the new curriculum, and in the succeeding years the detailsof readjustment were finally completed. To carry out the necessarychanges in the courses of study, certain other changes were alsonecessary; methods of teaching which were advanced for the '70'sand '80's had been superseded in the '90's, and must be modifiedor abandoned for Wellesley's best good. To all that was involvedin this ungrateful task, Mrs. Irvine addressed herself with acourage and determination not fully appreciated at the time. Shehad not Mrs. Palmer's skill in conveying unwelcome fact into aresisting mind without irritation; neither had she Miss Shafer'sself-effacing, sympathetic patience. Her handling of situationsand individuals was what we are accustomed to call masculine; ithad, as the French say, the defects of its qualities; but thegeneral result was tonic, and Wellesley's gratitude to this firmand far-seeing administrator increases with the passing of years. 

In November, 1895, the Board of Trustees appointed a specialcommittee on the schools of Music and Art, in order to reorganizethe instruction in these subjects, and as a result the fine artsand music were put upon the same footing and made regular electivesin the academic course, counting for a degree. The heads of thesedepartments were made members of the Academic Council and the termsSchool of Music and School of Art were dropped from the calendar. In 1896, the title Director of School of Music was changed toProfessor of Music. These changes are the more significant, comingat this time, in the witness which they bear to the breadth andelasticity of Mrs. Irvine's academic ideal. A narrower scholasticismwould not have tolerated them, much less pressed for their adoption. Wellesley is one of the earliest of the colleges to place the fine artsand music on her list of electives counting for an academic degree. 

During the year 1895-1896, the Academic Council reviewed its rulesof procedure relating to the maintenance of scholarship throughoutthe course, with the result that, "In order to be recommendedfor the degree of B. A. A student must pass with credit in at leastone half of her college work and in at least one half of thework of the senior year. " This did not involve raising the actualstandard of graduation as reached by the majority of recentgraduates, but relieved the college of the obligation of givingits degree to a student whose work throughout a large part ofher course did not rise above a mere passing grade. 

In Mrs. Irvine's report for 1894-1895, we read that, "Modificationshave been made in the general regulations of the college by whichthe observation of a set period of silent time for all persons is nolonger required. " In the beginning, Mr. Durant had establishedtwo daily periods of twenty minutes each, during which studentswere required to be in their rooms, silent, in order that thosewho so desired might give themselves to meditation, prayer, andthe reading of the Scriptures. Morning and evening, for fifteenyears, the "Silent Bell" rang, and the college houses were hushedin literal silence. In 189 or 1890, the morning interval wasdiscontinued, but evening "silent time" was not done away withuntil 1894, nineteen years after its establishment, and there aremany who regret its passing, and who realize that it was one ofthe wisest and, in a certain sense, most advanced measuresinstituted by Mr. Durant. But it was a despotic measure, andtherefore better allowed to lapse; for to the student mind, especially of the late '80's and early '90's it was an attemptto fetter thought, to force religion upon free individuals, toprescribe times and seasons for spiritual exercises in which thefounder of the college had no right to concern himself. AsWellesley's understanding of democracy developed, the facultyrealized that a rule of this kind, however wise in itself, cannotbe impressed from without; the demand for it must come from thestudents themselves. Whether that demand will ever be made isa question; but undoubtedly there is an increasing realization inthe college world of the need of systematized daily respite ofsome sort from the pressure of unmitigated external activity; theneed of freedom for spiritual recollection in the midst of academicand social business. It is a matter in which the Student GovernmentAssociation would have entire freedom of jurisdiction. 

In 1896, Domestic Work was discontinued. This was a revolutionarychange, for Mr. Durant had believed strongly in the value of thisone hour a day of housework to promote democratic feeling amongstudents of differing grades of wealth; and he had also felt thatit made the college course cheaper, and therefore put its advantageswithin the reach of the "calico girls" as he was so fond of callingthe students who had little money to spend. But domestic work, even in the early days, as we see from Miss Stilwell's letters, soon included more than the washing of dishes and sweeping ofcorridors. Every department had its domestic girls, whose dutiesranged from those of incipient secretary to general chore girl. The experience in setting college dinner tables or sweeping collegerecitation rooms counted for next to nothing in equipping a studentto care for her own home; and the benefit to the "calico girls"was no longer obvious, as the price of tuition had now been raisedseveral times. In May, 1894, the Academic Council voted "thatthe council respectfully make known to the trustees that in theiropinion domestic work is a serious hindrance to the progress ofthe college, and should as soon as possible be done away. " Butit was not until the trustees found that the fees for 1896-1897must be raised, that they decided to abolish domestic work. 

Miss Shackford, in her pamphlet on College Hall, describes, "forthe benefit of those unfamiliar with the old regime, " the systemof domestic work as it obtained during the first twenty years ofWellesley's life. She tells us that it "brought all students intoclose relation with kitchens, pantries and dining-room, with brooms, dusters and other household utensils. Sweeping, dusting, distributing the mail at the various rooms, and clerical work werethe favorite employments, although it is said the students alwaysshowed great generosity in allowing the girls less strong to havethe lighter tasks. Sweeping the matting in the center of thecorridor before breakfast, or sweeping the bare 'sides' of thismatting after breakfast, were tasks that developed into sinecures. The girl who went with long-handled feather duster to dust thestatuary enjoyed a distinction equal to Don Quixote's in tiltingat windmills. Filling the student-lamps, serving in a departmentwhere clerical work was to be done, or, as in science, wherematerials and specimens had to be prepared, were on the listof possibilities. Sophomores in long aprons washed beakers andslides, seniors in cap and gown acted as guides to guests. Agroup of girls from each table changed the courses at meals. Upon one devolved the task of washing whatever silver was requiredfor the next course. Another went out through the passage into theroom where heaters kept the meat and vegetables warm in theirseveral dishes. Perhaps another went further on to the bread-room, where she might even be permitted to cut bread with the bread-cuttingmachine. Dessert was always kept in the remote apartment whereDominick Duckett presided, strumming a guitar, while his blackface had a portentous gravity as he assigned the desserts foreach table. What an ordeal it was for shy freshmen to rise andwalk the length of the dining-room! How many tables were keptwaiting for the next course while errant students surveyed thesunset through the kitchen windows! Some of us remember thetragic moments when, coming in hot and tired from crew practice, we found on the bulletin-board by the dining-room the fateful words, 'strawberries for dinner', and we knew it was our lot to preparethem for the table. "

Other important changes in the college regulations were the openingof the college library on Sunday as a reading-room, and the removalof the ban upon the theater and the opera; both these changes tookplace in 1895. On February 6, 1896, the clause of the statutesconcerning attendance at Sunday service in chapel was amendedto read, "All students are expected to attend this or some otherpublic religious service. "

In 1896-1897, Bible Study was organized into a definite Departmentof Biblical History, Literature, and Interpretation; and in thesame year voluntary classes for Bible Study were inaugurated bythe Christian Association and taught by the students. 

The first step toward informing the students concerning their marksand academic standing was taken in 1897, when the so-called"credit-notes" were instituted, in which students were told whetheror not they had achieved Credit, grade C, in their individualstudies. Mr. Durant had feared that a knowledge of the markswould arouse unworthy competition, but his fears have provedunfounded. 

In this administration also the financial methods of the collegewere revised. Mrs. Irvine, we are reminded by Florence S. MarcyCrofut, of the class of 1897, "established a system of managementand purchasing into which all the halls of residence were brought, and this remains almost without change to the present day. " OnMarch 27, 1895, Mrs. Durant resigned the treasurership of thecollege, which she had held since her husband's death, and uponher nomination, Mr. Alpheus H. Hardy was elected to the office. In 1896, the trustees issued a report in which they informed thefriends of Wellesley that although Mr. Durant, in his will, hadmade the college his residuary legatee, subject to a life tenancy, the personal estate had suffered such depreciation and loss "as torender this prospective endowment of too slight consequence to bereckoned on in any plans for the development and maintenance ofthe college. " At this time, Wellesley was in debt to the amountof $103, 048. 14. During the next nineteen years, trustees andalumnae were to labor incessantly to pay the expenses of thecollege and to secure an endowment fund. What Wellesley owesto the unstinted devotion of Mr. Hardy during these lean yearscan never be adequately expressed. 

The buildings erected during Mrs. Irvine's tenure of office werefew. Fiske Cottage was opened in September, 1894, for the useof students who wished to work their way through college. The"cottage" had been originally the village grammar school, but whenMr. Hunnewell gave a new schoolhouse to the village, the collegewas able, through the generosity of Mrs. Joseph M. Fiske, Mr. William S. Houghton, Mr. Elisha S. Converse, and a few otherfriends, to move the old schoolhouse to the campus and remodel itas a dormitory. In February, 1894, a chemical laboratory was builtunder Norumbega hill, --an ugly wooden building, a distress toall who care for Wellesley's beauty, and an unmistakable witnessto her poverty. 

On November 22, 1897, the corner stone of the Houghton MemorialChapel was laid, a building destined to be one of the mostsatisfactory and beautiful on the campus. It was given byMiss Elizabeth G. Houghton and Mr. Clement S. Houghton of Cambridgeas a memorial of their father, Mr. William S. Houghton, for manyyears a trustee of the college. 

In 1898 Mrs. John C. Whitin, a trustee, gave to the college anastronomical observatory and telescope. The building was completedin 1900. Another gift of 1898, fifty thousand dollars, came fromthe estate of the late Charles T. Wilder, and was used to buildWilder Hall, the fourth dormitory in the group on Norumbega hill. In 1898, the first of the Society houses, the Shakespeare House, was opened. 

On November 4, 1897, Mrs. Irvine presented before the Board ofTrustees a review of the history of the college under the newcurriculum, and a statement of urgent needs which had arisen. She closed with a recommendation that her term of office shouldend in June, 1898, as she believed that the necessities which hadled to her appointment no longer existed, and she recognized thatnew demands pressed, which she was not fitted to meet. As Mrs. Irvinehad stated verbally, both to the Board of Trustees and to a committeeappointed by them to consider her recommendation, that she wouldnot serve under a permanent appointment, the committee "was limitedto the consideration of the time at which that recommendationshould become operative. " They asked the president to change hertime of withdrawal to June, 1899, and she consented to do this, with the provision that she was to be released from her dutiesbefore the end of the year, if her successor were ready to assumethe duties of the office before June, 1899. 

After her retirement from Wellesley, Mrs. Irvine made her home inthe south of France, but she returned to America in 1912 to bepresent at the inauguration of President Pendleton. And in theyear 1913-1914, after the death of Madame Colin, she performeda signal service for the college in temporarily assuming thedirection of the Department of French. Through her good offices, the department was reorganized, but the New England winter hadproved too severe for her after her long sojourn in a milderclimate, and in 1914, Mrs. Irvine returned again to her home inSouthern France, bearing with her the love and gratitude ofWellesley for her years of efficient and unselfish service. During the war of 1914-1915, she had charge of the linen roomin the military hospital at Aix-les-Bains. 

V. 

On March 8, 1899, the trustees announced their election of Wellesley'sfifth president, Caroline Hazard. In June, Mrs. Irvine retired, and the new administration dates from July 1, 1899. 

Unlike her predecessors, Miss Hazard brought to her office notechnical academic training, and no experience as a teacher. Bornat Peacedale, Rhode Island, June 10, 1856, the daughter of Rowlandand Margaret (Rood) Hazard, and the descendant of Thomas Hazard, the founder of Rhode Island, she had been educated by tutors andin a private school in Providence, and later had carried on herstudies abroad. Before coming to Wellesley, she had already wonher own place in the annals of Rhode Island, as editor, by heredition of the philosophical and economic writings of her grandfather, Rowland G. Hazard, the wealthy woolen manufacturer of Peacedale, as author, through a study of life in Narragansett in the eighteenthcentury, entitled "Thomas Hazard, Son of Robert, called College Tom", and as poet, in a volume of Narragansett ballads and a number ofreligious sonnets, followed during her Wellesley years by "A ScallopShell of Quiet", verses of delicate charm and dignity. 

Mrs. Guild has said that Miss Hazard came, "bringing the ease andbreadth of the cultivated woman of the world, who is yet an idealistand a Christian, into an atmosphere perhaps too strictly scholastic. "But she also brought unusual executive ability and training inadministrative affairs, both academic and commercial, for herfather, aside from his manufacturing interests, was a member ofthe corporation of Brown University. Hers is the type of intelligenceand power seen often in England, where women of her social positionhave an interest in large issues and an instinct for affairs, which American women of the same class have not evinced inany arresting degree. 

Miss Hazard's inauguration took place on October 3, 1899, in thenew Houghton Memorial Chapel, which had been dedicated on June 1of that year. This was Wellesley's first formal ceremony ofinauguration, and the brilliant academic procession, moving amongthe autumn trees between old College Hall and the Chapel, markedthe beginning of a new era of dignity and beauty for the college. In the next ten years, under the winning encouragement of hernew president, Wellesley blossomed in courtesy and in all thosesocial graces and pleasant amenities of life which in earlier yearsshe had not always cultivated with sufficient zest. All ofMiss Hazard's influence went out to the dignifying and beautifyingof the life in which she had come to bear a part. 

It is to her that Wellesley owes the tranquil beauty of the morningchapel service. The vested choir of students, the order ofservice, are her ideas, as are the musical vesper services andfestival vespers of Christmas, Easter, and Baccalaureate Sunday, which Professor Macdougall developed so ably at her instigation. By her efforts, the Chair of Music was endowed from the Billingsestate, and in December, 1903, Mr. Thomas Minns, the survivingexecutor of the estate, presented the college with an additionalfifteen thousand dollars, of which two thousand dollars were setaside as a permanent fund for the establishment of the Billingsprize, to be awarded by the president for excellence inmusic, --including its theory and practice, --and the remainder wasused toward the erection of Billings Hall, a second music buildingcontaining a much-needed concert hall and classrooms, completedin 1904. 

Miss Hazard's love of simple, poetical ceremonial did much toincrease the charm of the Wellesley life. Of the several hearthfires which she kindled during the years when she kept Wellesley'sfires alight, the Observatory hearth-warming was perhaps themost charming. The beautiful little building, given and equippedby Mrs. Whitin, a trustee of the college, was formally openedOctober 8, 1900, with addresses by Miss Hazard, Professor Pickeringof Harvard, and Professor Todd of Amherst. In the morning, Miss Hazard had gone out into the college woods and plucked brightautumn leaves to bind into a torch of life to light the fire on thenew hearth. Digitalis, sarsaparilla, eupatorium, she had chosen, for the health of the body; a fern leaf for grace and beauty; theoak and the elm for peace and the civic virtues; evergreen, pine, and hemlock for the aspiring life of the mind and the eternityof thought; rosemary for remembrance, and pansies for thoughts. Firing the torch, she said, "With these holy associations we lightthis fire, that from this building in which the sun and stars areto be observed, true life may ever aspire with the flame to theAuthor of all light. "

Mrs. Whitin then took the lighted torch and kindled the hearth fire, and as the pleasant, aromatic odor spread through the room, the college choir sang the hearth song which Miss Hazard hadwritten for the occasion, and which was later burned in the woodenpanel above the hearth:

 "Stars above that shine and glow, Have their image here below; Flames that from the earth arise, Still aspiring seek the skies. Upward with the flames we soar, Learning ever more and more; Light and love descend till we Heaven reflected here shall see. "

At the beginning of her term of office, Miss Hazard had requestedthe trustees to make "a division of administrative duties somewhatdifferent from that before existing, " as the technical knowledgeof courses of study and the wisdom to advise students as to suchcourses required a special training and preparation which she didnot possess. It was therefore arranged that the dean should takein charge the more strictly academic work, leaving Miss Hazardfree for "the general supervision of affairs, the external relationsof the college, and the home administration, " and Professor Comanof the Department of History and Economics consented to assumethe duties of dean for a year. At the end of the year, however, Miss Hazard having now become thoroughly familiar with the financialcondition of the college, felt that retrenchments were necessary, and asked the trustees to omit the appointment of a dean for theyear 1900-1901. The academic duties of the dean were temporarilyassumed in the president's office by the secretary of the college, Miss Ellen F. Pendleton, and Professor Coman returned to herteaching as head of the new Department of Economics, an officewhich she held with distinction until her retirement as ProfessorEmeritus in 1913. 

Mrs. Guild reminds us that "the pressing problem which confrontedMiss Hazard was monetary. The financial history of WellesleyCollege would be a volume in itself, as those familiar with thestruggles of unendowed institutions of like order can well realize.... The appointment during Mrs. Irvine's administration of a professionaltreasurer, and the gradual accumulation of small endowments, werehelps in the right direction. The alumnae had early begun a seriesof concerted efforts to aid their Alma Mater in solving her everpresent financial problem. Miss Hazard, in generous cooperationwith them and with the trustees, did especially valiant work inclearing the college from its burden of debt; and during heradministration the treasurer's report shows an increase in thecollege funds of $830, 000. " In round numbers, the gifts forendowments and buildings during the period amounted to one millionthree hundred six thousand dollars. Eleven buildings were erectedbetween 1900 and 1909: Wilder Hall and the Observatory werecompleted in 1900; the President's House, Miss Hazard's gift, in1902; Pomeroy and Billings Hall in 1904; Cazenove in 1905; theObservatory House, another gift from Mrs. Whitin, 1906; Beebe, 1908;Shafer, the Gymnasium, and the Library, in 1909. 

During these years also, five professorial chairs were partiallyendowed. The Chair of Economics in 1903; the Chair of BiblicalHistory, by Helen Miller Gould, in December, 1900, to be calledafter her mother, the Helen Day Gould Professorship; the Chair ofArt, under the name of the Clara Bertram Kimball Professorshipof Art; the Chair of Music, from the Billings estate; the Chairof Botany, by Mr. H. H. Hunnewell, January, 1901. And in 1908and 1909, the arrangements with the Boston Normal School ofGymnastics were completed, by which that school, --with an endowmentof one hundred thousand dollars and a gymnasium erected on theWellesley campus through the efforts of Miss Amy Morris Homans, the director, and Wellesley friends, --became a part of WellesleyCollege: the Department of Hygiene and Physical Education. 

Among the notable gifts were the Alexandra Garden in the WestQuadrangle, given by an alumna in memory of her little daughter;the beautiful antique marbles, presented by Miss Hannah ParkerKimball to the Department of Art, in memory of her brother, M. DayKimball; and the Plimpton collection of Italian manuscripts andearly editions, given by George A. Plimpton in memory of his wife, Frances Taylor Pearsons Plimpton, of the class of '84. Of romancesof chivalry, "those poems of adventure, the sources from whichBoiardo and Ariosto borrowed character and episodes for their realpoems, " we have, according to Professor Margaret Jackson, theircurator, perhaps the largest collection in this country, and one ofthe largest in the world. Many of these books are in rare orunique editions. Of the editions of 1543, of Boiardo's "Innamorato"only one other copy is known, that in the Royal Library at Stuttgart. The 1527 edition of the "Orlando Furioso" was unknown until 1821, when Count Nilzi described the copy in his collection. Of the"Gigante Moronte", Wellesley has an absolutely unique copy. A thirteenth-century commentary on Peter Lombard's "Sentences"has marginal notes by Tasso, and a contemporary copy of Savonarola's"Triumph of the Cross" shows on the title page a woodcut of thefrate writing in his cell. Bembo's "Asolini" a first edition, contains autograph corrections. In 1912, Wellesley had the unusualopportunity, which she unselfishly embraced, to return to theNational Library at Florence, Italy, a very precious Florentinemanuscript of the fourteenth century, containing the only knowncopy of the Sirventes and other important historical verses ofAntonio Pucci. 

The most important change in the college life at this time wasundoubtedly the establishment of the System of Student Government, in 1901. As a student movement, this is discussed at length ina later chapter, but Miss Hazard's cordial sympathy with all thatthe change implied should be recorded here. 

Among academic changes, the institution of the Honor Scholarshipsis the most noteworthy. In 1901, two classes of honors for juniorsand seniors were established, the Durant Scholarship and theWellesley College Scholarship, --the Durant being the higher. The names of those students attaining a certain degree of excellence, according to these standards, are annually published; the honorsare non-competitive, and depend upon an absolute standard ofscholarship. At about the same time, honorary mention for freshmenwas also instituted. 

On June 30, 1906, Miss Hazard sailed for Genoa, to take a well-earnedvacation. This was the first time that a president of Wellesleyhad taken a Sabbatical year; the first time that any presidentialterm had extended beyond six years. During Miss Hazard's absence, Miss Pendleton, who had been appointed dean in 1901, conducted theaffairs of the college. On her return, May 20, 1907, Miss Hazardwas met at the Wellesley station by the dean and the senior class, about two hundred and fifty students, and was escorted to thecampus by the presidents of the Student Government Associationand the senior class. The whole college had assembled to welcomeher, lining the avenue from the East Lodge to Simpson, and wavingtheir loving and loyal greetings. It was a touching little ceremony, witnessing as it did to the place she held, and will always hold, in the heart of the college. 

In the spring of 1908 and the winter of 1909, Miss Hazard wasobliged to be absent, because of ill health, and again for a partof 1910. In July, 1910, the trustees announced her resignation tothe faculty. No one has expressed more happily Miss Hazard'sservice to the college than her successor in office, the friendwho was her dean and comrade in work during almost her entireadministration. In the dean's report for 1910 are these veryhuman and loving words:

"President Hazard's great service to the college during her elevenyears of office are evident to all in the way of increased endowment, new buildings, additional departments and officers, advancedsalaries, improved organization and equipment; but those who havehad the privilege of working with her know that even these gains, to which her personal generosity so largely contributed, are lessthan the gifts of character which have brought into the midst ofour busy routine the graces of home and a far-pervading spirit ofloving kindness. 

"Miss Hazard came to us a stranger, but by her gracious bearingand charming hospitality, by her sympathetic interest and eagernessto aid in the work of every department, together with a scrupulousrespect for what she was pleased to call the expert judgment ofthose in charge, by the touches of beauty and gentleness accompanyingall that she did, from the enrichment of our chapel service to theplanting of our campus with daffodils, and by the essentialconsecration of her life, she has so endeared herself to her facultythat her resignation means to us not only the loss of an honoredpresident, but the absence of a friend. "

Miss Hazard's honorary degrees are the A. M. From Michigan andthe Litt. D. From Brown University. She is also an honorary memberof the Eta chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, which was installed atWellesley on January 17, 1905. 

VI. 

On Thursday, October 19, 1911, Ellen Fitz Pendleton was inauguratedpresident of Wellesley College in Houghton Memorial Chapel. 

Professor Calkins, writing in the College News in regard to thiswise choice of the trustees, says: "There has been some discussionof the wisdom of appointing a woman as college president. I mayfrankly avow myself as one of those who have been little concernedfor the appointment of a woman as such. On general principles, I would welcome the appointment of a man as the next president ofBryn Mawr or Wellesley; and, similarly, I would as soon see a womanat the head of Vassar or of Smith. But if our trustees, whenlooking last year for a successor to Miss Hazard in her eminentlysuccessful administration, had rejected the ideally endowedcandidate, solely because she was a woman, they would have indicatedtheir belief that a woman is unfitted for high administrative work. The recent history of our colleges is a refutation of this conclusion. The responsible corporation of a woman's college cannot possiblytake the ground that 'any man' is to be preferred to the rightlyequipped woman; to quote from The Nation, in its issue of June 22, 1911, 'if Wellesley, after its long tradition of women presidents, and able women presidents, had turned from the appointment of awoman, especially when a highly capable successor was at hand, the decision would have meant... The adoption of the principleof the ineligibility of women for the college presidency.... It isan anomaly that women should be permitted to enter upon anintellectual career and should not be permitted to look forwardto the natural rewards of successful labor. '"

Professor Calkins's personal tribute to Miss Pendleton's powerand personality is especially gracious and deserving of quotation, coming as it does from a distinguished alumna of a sister college. She writes:

"Miss Pendleton unites a detailed and thorough knowledge of thehistory, the specific excellences, and the definite needs ofWellesley College, with openness of mind, breadth of outlook andthe endowment for constructive leadership. No college procedureseems to her to be justified by precedent merely; no curriculumor legislation is, in her view, too sacred to be subject to revision. Her wide acquaintance with the policies of other colleges andwith modern tendencies in education prompts her to constantenlargement and modification, while her accurate knowledge ofWellesley's conditions and her large patience are a check on thetoo exuberant spirit of innovation. With Miss Pendleton aspresident, the college is sure to advance with dignity and withsafety. She will do better than 'build up' the college, for shewill quicken and guide its growth from within. 

"Fundamental to the professional is the personal equipment foroffice. Miss Pendleton is unswervingly just, undauntedly generous, and completely devoted to the college. Not every one realizesthat her reserve hides a sympathy as keen as it is deep, thoughno one doubts this who has ever appealed to her for help. Finally, all those who really know her are well aware that she is utterlyself-forgetful, or rather, that it does not occur to her to considerany decision in its bearing on her own position or popularity. This inability to take the narrowly personal point of view is, perhaps, her most distinguishing characteristic.... 

"Miss Pendleton unquestionably conceives the office of collegepresident not as that of absolute monarch but as that of constitutionalruler; not as that of master, but as that of leader. Readers ofthe dean's report for the Sabbatical year of Miss Hazard's absence, in which Miss Pendleton was acting president, will not have failedto notice the spontaneous expression of this sense of comradeshipin Miss Pendleton's reference to the faculty. "

Rhode Island has twice given a president to Wellesley, for EllenFitz Pendleton was born at Westerly, on August 7, 1864, the daughterof Enoch Burrowes Pendleton and Mary Ette (Chapman) Pendleton. In 1882, she entered Wellesley College as a freshman, and sincethat date, her connection with her Alma Mater has been unbroken. Her classmates seem to have recognized her power almost at once, for in June, 1883, at the end of her freshman year, we find her onthe Tree Day program as delivering an essay on the fern beech;and she was later invited into the Shakespeare Society, at thattime Wellesley's one and only literary society. In 1886, MissPendleton was graduated with the degree of B. A. , and entered theDepartment of Mathematics in the autumn of that year as tutor;in 1888, she was promoted to an instructorship which she helduntil 1901, with a leave of absence in 1889 and 1890 for studyat Newnham College, Cambridge, England. In 1891, she receivedthe degree of M. A. From Wellesley. Her honorary degrees are theLitt. D. From Brown University in 1911, and the LL. D. From Mt. Holyokein 1912. In 1895, she was made Schedule Officer, in charge ofthe intricate work involved in arranging and simplifying thecomplicated yearly schedule of college class appointments. In1897, she became secretary of the college and held this positionuntil 1901, when she was made dean and associate professor ofMathematics. During Miss Hazard's absences and after Miss Hazard'sresignation in 1910, she served the college as acting president. 

The announcement of her election to the presidency was made tothe college on June 9, 1911, by the president of the Board ofTrustees, and the joy with which it was received by faculty, alumna, and students was as outspoken as it was genuine. And at herinauguration, many who listened to her clear and simple expositionof her conception of the function of a college must have rejoicedanew to feel that Wellesley's ideals of scholarship were committedto so safe and wise a guardian. Miss Pendleton's ideal cannotbe better expressed than in her own straightforward phrases:

"Happily for both, men and women must work together in the world, and I venture to say that the function of a college for men is notessentially different from that of a college for women. "

Of the twofold function of the college, the training for citizenshipand the preparation of the scholar, she says: "What are thecharacteristics of the ideal citizen, and how may they be developed?He must have learned the important lesson of viewing every questionnot only from his own standpoint but from that of the community; hemust be willing to pay his share of the public tax not only inmoney but also in time and thought for the service of his town andstate; he must have, above all, enthusiasm and capacity for workinghard in whatever kind of endeavor his lot may be cast. It isevident, therefore, that the college must furnish him opportunityfor acquiring a knowledge of history, of the theory of government, of the relations between capital and labor, of the laws ofmathematics, chemistry, physics, which underlie our great industries, and if he is to have an intelligent and sympathetic interest inhis neighbors, and be able to get another's point of view, thiscollege-trained citizen must know something of psychology andthe laws of the mind. Nor can he do all this to his own satisfactionwithout access to other languages and literatures besides his own. Moreover, the ideal citizen must have some power of initiative, and he must have acquired the ability to think clearly andindependently. But it will be urged that a college course of fouryears is entirely too short for such a task. Perhaps, but whatthe college cannot actually give, it can furnish the stimulus andthe power for obtaining later. "

But although Miss Pendleton's attitude toward college educationis characteristically practical, she is careful to make it clearthat the practical educator does not necessarily approve ofincluding vocational training in a college course. "I do notpropose to discuss the question in detail, but is it not fair toask why vocational subjects should be recognized in preparationwhen the aim of the college is not to prepare for a vocation butto develop personal efficiency?"

And her vision includes the scholar, or the genius, as well asthe commonplace student. "The college is essentially a democraticinstitution designed for the rank and file of youth qualified tomake use of the opportunities it offers. But the material equipment, the curriculum, and the teaching force which are necessary todevelop personal efficiency in the ordinary student will havefailed in a part of their purpose if they do not produce a fewstudents with the ability and the desire to extend the field ofhuman knowledge. There will be but few, but fortunate the college, and happy the instructor, that has these few. Such students haveclaims, and the college is bound to satisfy them without losingsight of its first great aim.... It is the task of the college togive such a student as broad a foundation as possible, whileallowing him a more specialized course than is deemed wise forthe ordinary student. The college will have failed in part ofits function if it does not furnish such a student with the powerand the stimulus to continue his search for truth after graduation.... 

"Training for citizenship and the preparation of the scholar arethen the twofold function of the college. To furnish professionaltraining for lawyers, doctors, ministers, engineers, librarians, is manifestly the work of the university or the technical school, and not the function of the college. Neither is it, in my opinion, the work of the college to prepare its students specifically tobe teachers or even wives and husbands, mothers and fathers. Itis rather its part to produce men and women with the power to thinkclearly and independently, who recognize that teaching andhome-making are both fine arts worthy of careful and patientcultivation, and not the necessary accompaniment of a collegediploma. College graduates ought to make, and I believe do make, better teachers, more considerate husbands and wives, wiser fathersand mothers, but the chief function of the college is larger thanthis. The aim of the university and the great technical school isto furnish preparation for some specific profession. The collegemust produce men and women capable of using the opportunitiesoffered by the university, men and women with sound bodies, purehearts and clear minds, who are ready to obey the commandment, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with allthy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind, and thyneighbor as thyself. '"

In this day of diverse and confused educational theories and idealsit is refreshing to read words so discriminating and definite. 

The earliest events of importance in President Pendleton'sadministration are connected, as might be expected, with the alumnae, who were quickened to a more active and objective expressionof loyalty by this first election of a Wellesley alumna to thepresidential office. On June 21, 1911, the Graduate Council, tobe discussed in a later chapter, was established by the AlumnaeAssociation; and on October 5, 1911, the first number of the alumnaeedition of the College News was issued. In the academic year1912-1913, the Monday holiday was abolished and the new schedulewith recitations from Monday morning until Saturday noon wasestablished. After the mid-year examinations in 1912, the studentswere for the first time told their marks. In 1913, the VillageImprovement Association built and equipped, on the college grounds, a kindergarten to be under the joint supervision of the Associationand the Department of Education. The building is used as a freekindergarten for Wellesley children, and also as a practice schoolfor graduate students in the department. A campaign for anendowment fund of one million dollars was also started by thetrustees and alumnae under the leadership and with the adviceof the new president. A committee of alumnae was appointed, withMiss Candace C. Stimson, of the class of '92 as chairman, tocooperate with the trustees in raising the money, and more thanfour hundred thousand dollars had been promised when, in March, 1914, occurred Wellesley's great catastrophe--which she was to translateimmediately into her great opportunity--the burning of oldCollege Hall. 

If, in the years to come, Wellesley fulfills that great opportunity, and becomes in spirit and in truth, as well as in outward seeming, the College Beautiful which her daughters see in their visionsand dream in their dreams, it will be by the soaring, unconquerablefaith--and the prompt and selfless works--of the daughter who saidto a college in ruins, on that March morning, "The members of thecollege will report for duty on the appointed date after the springvacation, " and sent her flock away, comforted, high-hearted, expectant of miracles. 

CHAPTER III

THE FACULTY AND THEIR METHODS

I. 

At Wellesley, to a degree unusual in American colleges, whetherfor men or women, the faculty determine the general policy of thecollege. The president, as chairman of the Academic Council, is in a very real and democratic sense the representative of thefaculty, not the ruler. In Miss Freeman's day, the excellentpresidential habit of consulting with the heads of departmentswas formed, and many of the changes instituted by the young presidentwere suggested and formulated by her older colleagues. InMiss Shafer's day, habit had become precedent, and she would bethe first to point out that the "new curriculum" which will alwaysbe associated with her name, was really the achievement of theAcademic Council and the departments, working through patient yearsto adjust, develop, and balance the minutest details in theircomposite plan. 

The initiative on the part of the faculty has been exerted chieflyalong academic lines, but in some instances it has necessitatedimportant emendations of the statutes; and that the trustees werewilling to alter the statutes on the request of the faculty wouldindicate the friendly confidence felt toward the innovators. 

In the statutes of Wellesley College, as printed in 1885, we readthat "The College was founded for the glory of God and the serviceof the Lord Jesus Christ, in and by the education and culture of women. 

"In order to the attainment of these ends, it is required that everyTrustee, Teacher, and Officer, shall be a member of an Evangelicalchurch, and that the study of the Holy Scriptures shall be pursuedby every student throughout the entire College course under thedirection of the Faculty. "

In the early nineties, pressure from members of the faculty, themselves members of Evangelical churches, induced the trusteesto alter the religious requirement for teachers; and the reorganizationof the Department of Bible Study a few years later resulted ina drastic change in the requirements for students. 

As printed in 1898, the statutes read, "To realize this design itis required that every Trustee shall be a member in good standingof some Evangelical Church; that every teacher shall be of decidedChristian character and influence, and in manifest sympathy withthe religious spirit and aim with which the College was founded;and that the study of the Sacred Scriptures by every student shallextend over the first three years, with opportunities for electivestudies in the same during the fourth year. "

But it was found that freshmen were not mature enough to studyto the best advantage the new courses in Biblical Criticism, andthe statutes as printed in 1912 record still another amendment:"And that the study of the Sacred Scriptures by every studentshall extend over the second and third years, with opportunitiesfor elective studies in the same during the fourth year. "

These changes are the more pleasantly significant, since all actualpower, at Wellesley as at most other colleges, resides with thetrustees if they choose to use it. They "have control of the collegeand all its property, and of the investment and appropriation ofits funds, in conformity with the design of its establishment andwith the act of incorporation. " They have "power to make andexecute such statutes and rules as they may consider needful forthe best administration of their trust, to appoint committees fromtheir own number, or of those not otherwise connected with thecollege, and to prescribe their duties and powers. " It is theirsto appoint "all officers of government or instruction and allemployees needed for the administration of the institution whoseappointment is not otherwise provided for. " They determine theduties and salaries of officers and employees and may remove, either with or without notice, any person whom they have appointed. 

In being governed undemocratically from without by a self-perpetuatingbody of directors, Wellesley is of course no worse off than themajority of American colleges. But that a form of college governmentso patently and unreasonably autocratic should have generated solittle friction during forty years, speaks volumes for thebroadmindedness, the generous tolerance, and the Christianself-control of both faculty and trustees. If, in matters financial, the trustees have been sometimes unwilling to consider the scruplesof groups of individuals on the faculty, along lines of economicmorals, they have nevertheless taken no official steps to suppressthe expression of such scruples. They have withstood any reactionarypressure from individuals of their board, and have always allowedthe faculty entire academic freedom. In matters pertaining tothe college classes, they are usually content to ratify theappointments on the faculty, and approve the alterations in thecurriculum presented to them by the president of the college; andthe president, in turn, leaves the professors and their associatesremarkably free to choose and regulate the personnel and thecourses in the departments. 

In this happy condition of affairs, the alumnae trustees undoubtedlyplay a mediating part, for they understand the college from withinas no clergyman, financier, philanthropist, --no graduate of aman's college--can hope to, be he never so enthusiastic andwell-meaning in the cause of woman's education. But so long asthe faculty are excluded from direct representation on the board, the situation will continue to be anomalous. For it is not toosweeping to assert that Wellesley's development and academicstanding are due to the cooperative wisdom and devoted scholarshipof her faculty. The initiative has been theirs. They have provedthat a college for women can be successfully taught and administeredby women. To them Wellesley owes her academic status. 

From the beginning, women have predominated on the Wellesleyfaculty. The head of the Department of Music has always been aman, but he had no seat upon the Academic Council until 1896. In 1914-1915, of the twenty-eight heads of departments, threewere men, the professors of Music, of Education, and of French. Of the thirty-nine professors and associate professors, not headsof departments, five were men; of the fifty-nine instructors, tenwere men. It is interesting to note that there were no men in thedepartments of Greek, Latin, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Biblical History, Italian, Spanish, Reading and Speaking, Art, and Archaeology, during the academic year 1914-1915. 

Critics sometimes complain of the preponderance of women uponWellesley's faculty, but her policy in this respect has beendeliberate. Every woman's college is making its own experiments, and the results achieved at Wellesley indicate that a faculty madeup largely of women, with a woman at its head, in no way militatesagainst high academic standards, sound scholarship, and efficientadministration. That a more masculine faculty would also havepeculiar advantages, she does not deny. 

From the collegiate point of view, this feminine faculty is a verywell mixed body, for it includes representative graduates from theother women's colleges, and from the more important coeducationalcolleges and state universities, as well as men from Harvard andBrown. The Wellesley women on the faculty are an able minority;but it is the policy of the college to avoid academic in-breedingand to keep the Wellesley influence a minority influence. Of thetwenty-eight heads of departments, five--the professors of EnglishLiterature, Chemistry, Pure Mathematics, Biblical History, andPhysics--are Wellesley graduates, three of them from the celebratedclass of '80. Of the thirty-nine professors and associate professors, in 1914-1915, ten were alumnae of Wellesley, and of the fifty-nineinstructors, seventeen. Since 1895, when Professor Stratton wasappointed dean to assist Mrs. Irvine, Wellesley has had five deans, but only Miss Pendleton, who held the office under Miss Hazardfrom 1901 to 1911, has been a graduate of Wellesley. Miss Coman, who assisted Miss Hazard for one year only, and Miss Chapin, whoconsented to fill the office after Miss Pendleton's appointment tothe presidency until a permanent dean could be chosen, were bothgraduates of the University of Michigan. Dean Waite, who succeededto the office in 1913, is an alumna of Smith College, and has beena member of the Department of English at Wellesley since 1896. 

II. 

Only the women who have helped to promote and establish the highereducation of women can know how exciting and romantic it was to bea professor in a woman's college during the last half-century. To be a teacher was no new thing for a woman; the dame schoolis an ancient institution; all down the centuries, in classicvillas, in the convents of the Middle Ages, in the salons of theeighteenth century, learned ladies with a pedagogic instinct haveleft their impress upon the intellectual life of their times. Butthe possibility that women might be intellectually and physicallycapable of sharing equally with men the burdens and the joys ofdeveloping and directing the scholarship of the race had never beenseriously considered until the nineteenth century. The women whocame to teach in the women's colleges in the '70's and '80's and'90's knew themselves on trial in the eyes of the world as neverwomen had been before. And they brought to that trial the headyenthusiasm and radiant exhilaration and fiery persistence whichpossess all those who rediscover learning and drink deep. Theyknew the kind of selfless inspiration Wyclif knew when he wastranslating the Bible into the language of England's common people. They shared the elation and devotion of Erasmus and his fellows. 

To plan a curriculum in which the humanities and the sciencesshould every one be given a fair chance; to distinguish intelligentlybetween the advantages of the elective system and its disadvantages;to decide, without prejudice, at what points the education of thegirl should differ or diverge from the education of the boy; totry out the pedagogic methods of the men's colleges and discoverwhich were antiquated and should be abolished, which were susceptibleof reform, which were sound; to invent new methods, --these werethe romantic quests to which these enamored devotees were vowed, andto which, through more than half a century, they have been faithful. 

Wellesley's student laboratory for experimental work in physics, established 1878, was preceded in New England only by the studentlaboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Herlaboratory for work in experimental psychology, established byProfessor Calkins in 1891, was the first in any women's collegein the country, and one of the first in any college. In 1886, theAmerican School of Classical Studies at Athens invited Wellesleyto become one of the cooperating colleges to sustain this schooland to enjoy its advantages. The invitation came quite unsolicited, and was the first extended to a woman's college. 

The schoolmen developing and expanding their Trivium and Quadriviumat Oxford, Paris, Bologna, experienced no keener intellectual delightsthan did their belated sisters of Vassar, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley. 

But in order to understand the passion of their point of view, we must remember that the higher education for which the womenof the nineteenth century were enthusiastic was distinctly aneducation along scholarly and intellectual lines; this early andoriginal meaning of the term "higher education", this original anddistinguishing function of the woman's college, are in danger ofbeing blurred and lost sight of to-day by a generation that knewnot Joseph. The zeal with which the advocates of educationaland domestic training are trying to force into the curricula ofwomen's colleges courses on housekeeping, home-making, dressmaking, dairy farming, to say nothing of stenography, typewriting, doubleentry, and the musical glasses minus Shakespeare, is for the mostpart unintelligible to the women who have given their lives to theupbuilding of such colleges as Bryn Mawr, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Vassar, and Wellesley, --not because they minimize the civilizingvalue of either homemakers or business women in a community, orfail to recognize their needs, but simply because women's collegeswere never intended to meet those needs. 

When we go to the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts, we do notcomplain because it lacks the characteristics of the SmithsonianInstitute, or of the Boston Horticultural Show. We are contentthat the Massachusetts Institute of Technology should differ inscope from Harvard University; yet some of us, college graduateseven, seem to have an uneasy feeling that Wellesley and Bryn Mawrmay not be ministering adequately to life, because they do notadd to their curricular activities the varied aims of anAgricultural College, a Business College, a School of Philanthropy, and a Cooking School, with required courses on the modifying ofmilk for infants. Great institutions for vocational training, suchas Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and Simmons College in Boston, have a dignity and a usefulness which no one disputes. UndoubtedlyAmerica needs more of their kind. But to impair the dignity andusefulness of the colleges dedicated to the higher education ofwomen by diluting their academic programs with courses on businessor domesticity will not meet that need. The unwillingness ofcollege faculties to admit vocational courses to the curriculum isnot due to academic conservatism and inability to march withthe times, but to an unclouded and accurate conception of themeaning of the term "higher education. "

But definiteness of aim does not necessarily imply narrownessof scope. The Wellesley Calendar for 1914-1915 contains a listof three hundred and twelve courses on thirty-two subjects, exclusiveof the gymnasium practice, dancing, swimming, and games requiredby the Department of Hygiene. Of these subjects, four are ancientlanguages and their literatures, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Sanskrit. Seven are modern languages and their literatures, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and English Literature, Composition, and Language. Ten are sciences, Mathematics, pure and applied, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Geography, Botany, Zoology and Physiology, Hygiene. Seven are scientifically concerned with the mental andspiritual evolution of the human race, Biblical and Secular History, Economics, Education, Logic, Psychology, and Philosophy. Fourmay be classified as arts: Archaeology, Art, including its history, Music, and Reading and Speaking, which old-fashioned people stillcall Elocution. 

From this wide range of subjects, the candidates for the B. A. Degree are required to take one course in Mathematics, the prescribedfreshman course; one course in English Composition, prescribed forfreshmen; courses in Biblical History and Hygiene; a modernlanguage, unless two modern languages have been presented foradmission; two natural sciences before the junior year, unlessone has already been offered for admission, in which case one isrequired, and a course in Philosophy, which the student shouldordinarily take before her senior year. 

These required studies cover about twenty of the fifty-nine hoursprescribed for the degree; the remaining hours are elective; butthe student must group her electives intelligently, and to this endshe must complete either nine hours of work in each of twodepartments, or twelve hours in one department and six in asecond; she must specialize within limits. 

It will be evident on examining this program that no work isrequired in History, Economics, English Literature and Language, Comparative Philology, Education, Archaeology, Art, Reading andSpeaking, and Music. All the courses in these departments arefree electives. Just what led to this legislation, only those whowere present at the decisive discussions of the Academic Councilcan know. Possibly they have discovered by experience that youngwomen do not need to be coaxed or coerced into studying the arts;that they gravitate naturally to those subjects which deal withhuman society, such as History, Economics, and English Literature;and that the specialist can be depended upon to elect, withoutpressure, courses in Philology or Pedagogy. 

But little effort has been made at Wellesley, so far, to attractgraduate students. In this respect she differs from Bryn Mawr. She offers very few courses planned exclusively for collegegraduates, but opens her advanced courses in most departments toboth seniors and graduates. This does not mean, however, thatthe graduate work is not on a sound basis. Wellesley has not yetexercised her right to give the Doctor's degree, but experttestimony, outside the college, has declared that some of theMaster's theses are of the doctorial grade in quality, if not inquantity; and the work for the Master's degree is said to be moredifficult and more severely scrutinized than in some other collegeswhere the Doctor's degree is made the chief goal of the graduate student. 

The college has in its gift the Alice Freeman Palmer Fellowship, founded in 1903 by Mrs. David P. Kimball of Boston, and yieldingan income of about one thousand dollars. The holder must be awoman, a graduate of Wellesley or some other American college ofapproved standing; she must be "not more than twenty-six years ofage at the time of her appointment, unmarried throughout the wholeof her tenure, and as free as possible from other responsibilities. "She may hold the fellowship for one year only, but "within threeyears from entrance on the fellowship she must present to thefaculty a thesis embodying the results of the research carried onduring the period of tenure. "

Wellesley is proud of her Alice Freeman Palmer Fellows. Of theeleven who have held the Fellowship between 1904 and 1915, fourare Wellesley graduates, Helen Dodd Cook, whose subject wasPhilosophy; Isabelle Stone, working in Greek; Gertrude Schopperle, in Comparative Literature; Laura Alandis Hibbard, in EnglishLiterature. Two are from Radcliffe, and one each from Cornell, Vassar, the University of Dakota, Ripon, and Goucher. The Fellowis left free to study abroad, in an American college or university, or to use the income for independent research. The list ofuniversities at which these young women have studied is as impressiveas it is long. It includes the American Schools for ClassicalStudies at Athens and Rome; the universities of Gottingen, Wurzburg, Munich, Paris, and Cambridge, England; and Yale, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Chicago. 

This is not the place in which to give a detailed account of thework of each one of Wellesley's academic departments. Any intelligentperson who turns the pages of the official calendar may easilydiscover that the standard of admission and the requirements forthe degree of Bachelor of Arts place Wellesley in the first rankamong American colleges, whether for men or for women. But everywoman's college, besides conforming to the general standard, ismaking its own contribution to the higher education of women. At Wellesley, the methods in certain departments have gained adeservedly high reputation. 

The Department of Art, under Professor Alice V. V. Brown, formerlyof the Slater Museum of Norwich, Connecticut, is doing a work inthe proper interpretation and history of art as unique as it isvaluable. The laboratory method is used, and all students arerequired to recognize and indicate the characteristic qualitiesand attributes of the great masters and the different schools ofpaintings by sketching from photographs of the pictures studied. These five and ten minute sketches by young girls, the majority ofwhom have had no training in drawing, are remarkable for thevivacity and accuracy with which they reproduce the salientfeatures of the great paintings. The students are of course giventhe latest results of the modern school of art criticism. Inaddition to the work with undergraduates, the department offerscourses to graduate students who wish to prepare themselves forcuratorships, or lectureships in art museums, and Wellesley womenoccupy positions of trust in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, in the Boston Art Museum, in museums in Chicago, Worcester, andelsewhere. The "Short History of Italian Painting" by ProfessorBrown and Mr. William Rankin is a standard authority. 

The Department of Music, working quite independently of theDepartment of Art, has also adapted laboratory methods to its ownends with unusual results. Under Professor Hamilton C. Macdougall, the head of the department, and Associate Professor Clarence G. Hamilton, courses in musical interpretation have been developedin connection with the courses in practical music. The first-yearclass, meeting once a week, listens to an anonymous musicalselection played by one of its members, and must decide by internalevidence--such as simple cadences, harmonic figuration as appliedto the accompaniment and other characteristics--upon the schoolof the composer, and biographical data. The analysis of themusical selection and the reasons for her decision are set downin her notebook by the listening student. The second-year classconcerns itself with "the thematic and polyphonic melody, thelarger forms, harmony in its aesthetic bearings, the aestheticeffects of the more complicated rhythms, comparative criticismand the various schools of composition. "

These valuable contributions to method and scope in the study ofthe History of Art and the History of Music are original withWellesley, and are distinctly a part of her history. 

Among the departments which carry prestige outside the collegewalls are those of Philosophy and Psychology, English Literature, and German. Wellesley's Department of English Literature isunusually fortunate in having as interpreters of the great literatureof England a group of women of letters of established reputation. What Longfellow, Lowell, Norton, were to the Harvard of their day, Katharine Lee Bates, Vida D. Scudder, Sophie Jewett, and MargaretSherwood are to the Wellesley of their day and ours. Workingtogether, with unfailing enthusiasm for their subjects, and keeninsight into the cultural needs of American girls, they have builtup their department on a sure foundation of accurate scholarshipand tested pedagogic method. At a time when the study of literaturethreatened to become, almost universally, an exercise in the dryrot of philological terms, in the cataloguing of sources, or theanalyzing of literary forms, the department at Wellesley continuedunswervingly to make use of philology, sources, and even art forms, as means to an end; that end the interpretation of literary epochs, the illumination of intellectual and spiritual values in literarymasterpieces, the revelation of the soul of poet, dramatist, essayist, novelist. No teaching of literature is less sentimentalthan the teaching at Wellesley, and no teaching is more quickeningto the imagination. Now that the method of accumulated detail"about it and about it", is being defeated by its own aridity, Wellesley's firm insistence upon listening to literature as toa living voice is justified of her teachers and her students. 

Indications of the reputation achieved by Wellesley's methodsof teaching German are found in the increasing numbers of studentswho come to the college for the sake of the work in the GermanDepartment, and in the fact that teachers' agencies not infrequentlyask candidates for positions if they are familiar with the Wellesleymethods. In an address before the New Hampshire State Teachers'Association, in 1913, Professor Muller describes the aims andideals of her department as they took shape under the constructiveleadership of her predecessor, Professor Wenckebach, and as theyhave been modified and developed in later years to meet the needsof American students. 

"Cinderella became a princess and a ruler over night, " says ProfessorMuller, "that is, German suddenly took the position in our collegethat it has held ever since. Such a result was due not merely tomethods, of course, but first of all to the strong and enthusiasticpersonality that was identified with them, and that was the mainsecret of the unusual effectiveness of Fraulein Wenckebach's teaching. 

"But this German professor had not only live methods and virilepersonal qualities to help her along; she also had what a greatmany of the foreign language teachers in this country must as yetdo without, that is, the absolute confidence, warm appreciation, and financial support of an enlightened administration. PresidentFreeman and the trustees seem to have done practically everythingthat their intrepid professor of German asked for. They not onlysaw that all equipments needed... Were provided, but they alsogenerously stipulated, at Fraulein Wenckebach's urgent request, that all the elementary and intermediate classes in the foreignlanguage departments should be kept small, that is, that theyshould not exceed fifteen. If Fraulein Wenckebach had beenobliged, as many modern language teachers still are, to teachGerman to classes of from thirty to forty students; if she hadmet in the administration of Wellesley College with as littleappreciation and understanding of the fine art and extreme difficultyof foreign language work as high school teachers, for instance, often encounter, her efforts could not possibly have been crownedwith success. 

"Another agent in enabling Fraulein Wenckebach to do such fineconstructive work with her Department was the general Wellesleypolicy, still followed, I am happy to say, of centralizing allpower and responsibility regarding department affairs in the personof the head of the Department. Centralization may not work wellin politics, but a foreign language department working with thereformed methods could not develop the highest efficiency underany other form of government. With a living organism, such asa foreign language department should be, there ought to be one, and only one, responsible person to keep her finger on the pulseof things--otherwise disintegration and ineffectiveness of thework as a whole is sure to follow. "

Professor Muller goes on to say, "Now JOY, genuine joy, in theirwork, based on good, strong, mental exercise, is what we wantand what on the whole we get from our students. It was so in thedays of Fraulein Wenckebach and is so now, I am happy to say--andnot in the literature courses only, but in our elementary drillwork as well. 

"It may be of interest to note that our elementary work and alsothe advanced work in grammar and idiom are at present taught byAmericans wholly. I have come to the conclusion that well-trainedAmericans gifted with vivid personalities get better results alongthose lines than the average teacher of foreign birth and breeding. "

Even in the elementary courses, only those texts are used whichillustrate German life, literature, and history; and the advancedelectives are carefully guarded, so that no student may electcourses in modern German, the novel and the drama, who has notalready been well grounded in Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing. Thedrastic thoroughness with which unpromising students are weededout of the courses in German enhances rather than defeats theirpopularity among undergraduates. 

The learned women who direct Wellesley's work in Philosophy andPsychology lend their own distinction to this department. ProfessorCase, a graduate of the University of Michigan, has been connectedwith the college since 1884, and her courses in Greek Philosophyand the Philosophy of Religion make an appeal to thoughtful studentswhich does not lessen as the years pass. Professor Gamble, Wellesley's own daughter, is the foremost authority on smell, among psychologists. In her chosen field of experimental psychologyshe has achieved results attained by no one else, and her workhas a Continental reputation. Professor Calkins, the head of theDepartment, is one of the distinguished alumnae of Smith College. She has also passed Harvard's examination for the Doctor's degree;but Harvard does not yet confer its degree upon women. She wasthe first woman to receive the degree of Litt. D. From ColumbiaUniversity, and the first woman to be elected to the presidencyof the American Psychological Association, succeeding William Jamesin that office. 

In the Department of Economics and Sociology, organized underthe leadership of Professor Katharine Coman, in 1901, Wellesleyhas been fortunate in having as teachers two women of nationalreputation whose interest in the human side of economic problemshas vitalized for their eager classes a subject which unlesssympathetically handled, lends itself all too easily to mechanicalinterpretations of theory. Professor Coman's wide and intimateknowledge of American economic conditions, as evidenced in herbooks, the "Industrial History of the United States", and "EconomicBeginnings of the Far West", in her studies in Social Insurancepublished in The Survey, and in her practical work for the CollegeSettlements Association and the Consumers' League, and as anactive member of the Strike Committee during the strike of theChicago Garment Workers in 1910-1911, lent to her teaching anappeal which more cloistered theorists can never achieve. Theletters which came to her from alumnae, after her resignationfrom the department in 1913, were of the sort that every teachercherishes. Since her death in January, 1915, some of these lettershave been printed in a memorial number of the Wellesley CollegeNews. Nothing could better illustrate her influence as an intellectualforce in the college to which she came as an instructor in 1880. One of her oldest students writes:

"I am too late for the thirtieth anniversary, but still it isnever too late to say how much I enjoyed my work with you incollege. It always seemed such grown-up work. Partly, I suppose, because it was closely related to the things of life, and partlybecause you demanded a more grown-up and thoughtful point of view. It was a great privilege to have your Economics as a sophomore. I have always meant to tell you, too, of what great practical valueyour seminar in Statistics was to me; it gave me enough insightinto the principles and practice to encourage me to present mywork the first year out of college in statistical form. It wasapproved. Without the incentive and the little experience I hadgained from you I might not have tried to do this. Since then, in whatever field of social work I have been I have found thisability valuable, and I developed enough skill at it to handlethe investigation into wages of the Massachusetts Minimum WageCommission without other training. I am very grateful to you forthis bit of technical training for which I would never have takenthe time later. "

Another says: "It is a pleasure to have an opportunity, after somany years, to make some expression of the gratitude I owe you. The course in Political Economy which I was so wise as to takewith you has proved of vital importance to me. That was in 1887-1888, but as I look back I see that in your teaching then, you presentedto us the ideas, the concepts, which are now accepted principlesof men's thought as to the relation of class to class, of man toman. And so I feel that it was to your enthusiasm, your power ofinspiring your pupils that I owe my own interest in economic andsociological affairs. "

And still another: "I have had more real pleasure from my Economicscourses and Sociology courses than from any others of my collegecourse. Had it not been for yourself and Miss Balch, that workwould not have stood for so much. For your guidance and yourinspiration I am most grateful. I have tried to carry out yourideals as far as possible in the Visiting Nurse work and theSocial Settlement in Omaha ever since leaving Wellesley. "

Professor Emily Greene Balch, who succeeded Miss Coman as headof the Department of Economics, is herself an authority on questionsof immigration; her book, "Our Slavic Fellow Citizens", is animportant contribution to the history of the subject, and has beencited in the German Reichstag as authoritative on Slavic immigration. She has also served on more than one State commission inMassachusetts, --among them the disinterested and competent CityPlanning Board, --and the sanity and judicial balance of her opinionsare recognized and valued by conservatives and radicals alike. Besides the traditional courses in Economic History and Theory, Wellesley offers under Miss Balch a course in Socialism, a criticalstudy of its main theories and political movements, open to juniorsand seniors who have already completed two other courses inEconomics; a course entitled "The Modern Labor Movement", in whichspecial attention is given to labor legislation, factory inspection, and the organization of labor, with a study of methods of meetingthe difficulties of the modern industrial situation; and a coursein Immigration and the problems to which it gives rise in theUnited States. 

The Wellesley fire did the college one good turn by bringing tothe notice of the general public the departments of Science. Whenso many of the laboratories and so much of the equipment wereswept away, outsiders became aware of the excellent work whichwas being done in those laboratories; of the modern work in Geologyand Geography carried on not only in Wellesley but for the teachersof Boston by Professor Fisher who is so wisely developing thedepartment which Professor Niles set on its firm foundation; ofthe work of Professor Robertson who is an authority on the bryozoafauna of the Pacific coast of North America and Japan; of theauthoritative work on the life history of Pinus, by ProfessorFerguson of the Department of Botany; of the quiet, thorough, modern work for students in Physics and Chemistry and Astronomy. 

An evidence of the excellent organization of departmental workat Wellesley is found in the ease and smoothness with which theDepartment of Hygiene, formerly the Boston Normal School ofGymnastics, has become a force in the Wellesley curriculum underthe direction of Miss Amy Morris Homans, who was also the headof the school in Boston. By a gradual process of adjustment, admission to the two years' course leading to a certificate inthe Department of Hygiene "will be limited to applicants who arecandidates for the B. A. Degree at Wellesley College and to thosewho already hold the Bachelor's degree either from Wellesley Collegeor from some other college. " A five years' course is also offered, by which students may obtain both the B. A. Degree and the certificateof the department. But all students, whether working for thecertificate or not, must take a one-hour course in Hygiene inthe freshman year, and two periods a week of practical gymnasticwork in the freshman and sophomore years. 

Like all American colleges, Wellesley makes heavy and constantdemands on the mere pedagogic power of its teachers. Their daysare pretty well filled with the classroom routine and the necessaryand incessant social intercourse with the eager crowd of youth. It may be years before an American college for women can sustainand foster creative scholarship for its own sake, after the exampleof the European universities; but Wellesley is not ungenerous;the Sabbatical Grant gives certain heads of departments an opportunityfor refreshment and personal work every seven years; and even thosewho do not profit by this privilege manage to keep their mindsalive by outside work and contacts. 

Every two years the secretary to the president issues a list offaculty publications, ranging from verse and short stories in thebest magazines to papers in learned reviews for esoteric consumptiononly; from idyllic novels, such as Margaret Sherwood's "Daphne", and sympathetic travel sketches like Katharine Lee Bates's "SpanishHighways and Byways", to scholarly translations, such as SophieJewett's "Pearl" and Vida D. Scudder's "Letters of St. Catherine ofSiena", and philosophical treatises, of which Mary Whiton Calkins's"Persistent Problems of Philosophy", translated into severallanguages, is a notable example. 

But the Wellesley faculty is a public-spirited body; its contributionto the general life is not only abstract and literary; for many ofits members are identified with modern movements toward bettercitizenship. Miss Balch, besides her work on municipal committees, is connected with the Woman's Trade Union League, and is interestedin the great movement for peace. In the spring of 1915, she wasone of those who sailed with Miss Jane Addams to attend the Woman'sPeace Congress at the Hague, and she afterwards visited otherEuropean countries on a mission of peace. Miss Bates is activein promoting the interests of the International Institute in Spain. The American College for Girls in Constantinople often looks toWellesley for teachers, and more than one Wellesley professorhas given a Sabbatical year to the schoolgirls in Constantinople. During the absence of President Patrick, Professor Roxana Vivianof Wellesley was acting president, and had the honor of bringingthe college safely through the perplexities and terrors of theYoung Turks' Revolution in 1908 and 1909. Professor Kendall, of the Department of History, is Wellesley's most distinguishedtraveler. Her book, "A Wayfarer in China", tells the story ofsome of her travels, and she has received the rare honor, fora woman, of being made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Miss Calkins is an officer of the Consumers' League. Miss Scudderhas been identified from its outset with the College SettlementsMovement, and of late years with the new service to Italianimmigrants inaugurated by Denison House. 

As a result of these varied interests, the intellectual fellowshipamong the older women in the college community is of a peculiarlystimulating quality, and the fact that it is almost exclusively afeminine fellowship does not affect its intellectuality. TheWellesley faculty, like the faculty of Harvard, is not a cloisteredbody, and contact with the minds of "a world of men" through booksand the visitations of itinerant scholars is about as easy in theone case as in the other. Every year Wellesley has her share ofdistinguished visitors, American, European, and Oriental, scholars, poets, scientists, statesmen, who enrich her life and enlargeher spiritual vision. 

III. 

One chapter of Wellesley's history it is too soon to write: thestory of the great names and great personalities, the spiritualstuff of which every college is built. This is the chapter onwhich the historians of men's colleges love best to dwell. Butthe women's lips and pens are fountains sealed, for a reticenthundred years--or possibly less, under pressure--with the sealsof academic reserve, and historic perspective, and traditionalmodesty. Most of the women who had a hand in the making ofWellesley's first forty years are still alive. There's the rub. It would not hamper the journalist. But the historian has hisconventions. One hundred years from now, what names, livingto-day, will be written in Wellesley's golden book? Already theyare written in many prophetic hearts. However, women can keepa secret. 

Even of those who have already finished their work on earth, it istoo soon to speak authoritatively; but gratitude and love will notbe silent, and no story of Wellesley's first half-century wouldbe complete that held no records of their devotion and continuinginfluence. 

Among the pioneers, there was no more interesting and forcefulpersonality than Susan Maria Hallowell, who came to Wellesley asProfessor of Natural History in 1875, the friend of Agassiz andAsa Gray. She was a Maine woman, and she had been teachingtwenty-two years, in Bangor and Portland, before she was calledto Wellesley. Her successor in the Department of Botany writesin a memorial sketch of her life:

"With that indefatigable zeal so characteristic of her whole life, she began the work in preparation for the new position. She wentfrom college to college, from university to university, studyingthe scientific libraries and laboratories. At the close of thisinvestigation she announced to the founders of the college thatthe task which they had assigned to her was too great for anyone individual to undertake. There must be several professorshipsrather than one. Of those named she was given first choice, andwhen, in 1876, she opened her laboratories and actually began herteaching in Wellesley College, she did so as professor of Botany, although her title was not formally changed until 1878. 

"The foundations which she laid were so broad and sure, the severalcourses which she organized were so carefully outlined, that, except where necessitated by more recent developments in science, only very slight changes in the arrangement and distribution ofthe work in her department have since been necessary.... Sheorganized and built up a botanical library which from the firstwas second to that of no other college in the country, and isto-day only surpassed by the botanical libraries of a few of ourgreat universities. "

Fortunately the botanical library and the laboratories were housedin Stone Hall, and escaped devastation by the fire. 

Professor Hallowell was the first woman to be admitted to thebotanical lectures and laboratories of the University of Berlin. She "was not a productive scholar", again we quote from ProfessorFerguson, "as that term is now used, and hence her gifts and herachievements are but little known to the botanists of to-day. Shewas preeminently a teacher and an organizer. Only those who knewher in this double capacity can fully realize the richness of hernature and the power of her personality. " She retired from activeservice at the college in February, 1902, when she was madeProfessor Emeritus; but she lived in Wellesley village with herfriend, Miss Horton, the former professor of Greek, until herdeath in 1911. Mrs. North gives us a charming glimpse of thequaint and dignified little old lady. "When in recent years theblossoming forth of academic dress made a pageant of our greatoccasions, the badges of scholarship seemed to her foreign to thesimplicity of true learning, and she walked bravely in theCommencement procession, wearing the little bonnet which henceforthbecame a distinction. "

Another early member of the Department of Botany, Clara EatonCummings, who came to Wellesley as a student in 1876 and kept herconnection with the college until her death, as associate professor, in 1906, was a scientific scholar of distinguished reputation. Her work in cryptogamic botany gained the respect of botanistsfor Wellesley. 

With this pioneer group belongs also Professor Niles, who wasactively connected with the college from 1882 until his retirementas Professor Emeritus in 1908. Wellesley shares with theMassachusetts Institute of Technology her precious memories ofthis devoted gentleman and scholar. His wise planning set theDepartment of Geology and Geography on its present excellentbasis. At his death in 1910, a valuable legacy of geologicalspecimens came to Wellesley, only to be destroyed in 1914 by thefire. But his greatest gifts to the college are those which nofire can ever harm. 

Anne Eugenia Morgan, professor in the Department of Philosophyfrom 1878 to 1900; Mary Adams Currier, enthusiastic head of theDepartment of Elocution from 1875 to 1896, the founder of theMonroe Fund for her department; Doctor Speakman, Doctor Barker, Wellesley's resident physicians in the early days; dear Mrs. Newman, who mothered so many college generations of girls at Norumbega, and will always be to them the ideal house-mother, --when old alumnaespeak these names, their hearts glow with unchanging affection. 

But the most vivid of all these pioneers, and one of the mostwidely known, was Carla Wenckebach. Of her, Wellesley has a pictureand a memory which will not fade, in the brilliant biography[Carla Wenckebach, Pioneer (Ginn & Co. Pub. ). ] by her colleague andclose friend, Margarethe Muller, who succeeded her in the Departmentof German. As an interpretation of character and personality, this book takes its place with Professor Palmer's "Life of AliceFreeman Palmer", among literary biographies of the first rank. 

Professor Wenckebach came to Wellesley in 1883, and we have thestory of her coming, in her own letters, given us in translationby Professor Muller. She was attending the Sauveur Summer Schoolof Languages at Amherst, and had been asked to take some classesthere, in elementary German, where her methods immediately attractedattention; and presently we find her writing:

"Hurrah! I have made a superb catch--not a widower nor a bachelor, but something infinitely superior! I must not anticipate, though, but proceed according to program.... 

"The other day, when I was in my room digging away at my Greeklessons, the landlady brings in three visiting cards, remarkingthat the three ladies who wish to see me are in the reception room. I look at the cards and read: Miss Alice Freeman, President(in German, Rector Magnificus) of Wellesley College; Mrs. Durant, Treasurer; and Miss Denio, Professor of German Literature atWellesley College (Wellesley, you must know, is the largest andmost magnificent of all the women's colleges in the United States). I immediately comprehended that these were three lions (grosseTiere), and I began to have curious presentiments. Fortunately, I was in correct dress, so that I could rush down into our elegantreception room. Here I made a solemn bow, the three ladiesreturning the compliment. The president, a lady who must be agood deal younger than myself, a real Ph. D. (of Philosophy andHistory), told me that she had heard of me and therefore wishedto see me in regard to a vacancy at Wellesley College, which, according to the statutes, must not be filled by a man so longas a woman could be procured. The woman she was looking for mustbe able, she said, to give lectures on German Literature in German, and to expound the works of German writers thoroughly; she wouldengage me for this position, she added, if she found that I wasthe right person for it. 

"I was dumfounded at the mere suggestion of this gift of Heavencoming to me, for I had heard so many beautiful things aboutWellesley that the idea of possibly getting a position theretotally dazed me. Summoning up courage, however, I controlledmy wild joy, and pulling myself together with determination, Igave the ladies the desired account of my studies, my journalisticwork, etc. , whereupon the president informed me that she wouldattend my class the next day. "

The ordeal was successfully passed, and the position of "headteacher in the German Department at Wellesley" was immediatelyoffered her. "Now you think, I suppose, that I fell round thenecks of those angels of joy! I didn't though!" she blithelywrites. But she agreed to visit Wellesley, and her descriptionof this visit gives us old College Hall in a new light. 

"The place in itself is so beautiful that we could hardly realizeits being merely a school. The Royal Palace in Berlin is smallcompared to the main building, which in length and statelinessof appearance surpasses even the great Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. The entrance hall is decorated with magnificent palms, withvaluable paintings, and choice statuary. The walls in all thecorridors are covered with fine engravings; there are carpetseverywhere and elegant pieces of furniture; there is gas, steamheat, and a big elevator; everything, down to the bathrooms, is princely. "

Professor Muller adds, "Of course, she was 'kind enough' to acceptthe position offered, although it was not especially lucrative. 'But what is a high salary, ' she exclaims, 'in comparison to theease and enthusiasm with which I can here plow a new field of work!That, and the honor attached to the position, are worth more tome than thousands of dollars. I am to be a regular grosses Tiernow myself, --what fun, after having been a beast of burden so long!'"

From the first, Wellesley recognized her quality, and wisely gaveit freedom. In addition to her work in German, we owe to her thebeginnings of the Department of Education, through her lectureson Pedagogy. 

Speaking of her power, Professor Muller says: "Truly, as a teacher, especially a teacher of youth, Fraulein Wenckebach was unexcelled. There was that relieving and inspiring, that broadening and yetdeepening quality in her work, that ease and grace and joy, thatmark the work of the elect only, --of those rare souls among uswho are 'near the shaping hand of the Creator. '" And FrauleinWenckebach herself said of her profession: "Every teacher, everyeducator, should above all be a guide. Not one of those who, likesignposts, stretch their wooden arms with pedantic insistence ina given direction, but one, rather, who, after the manner of theheavenly bodies, diffusing warmth and light and cheer, draws theyoung soul irresistibly to leave its dark jungles of prejudice andignorance for the promised land of wisdom and freedom. " And herstudents testify enthusiastically to her unusual success. Oneof them writes:

"To Fraulein Wenckebach as a teacher, I owe more than to any otherteacher I ever had. I cannot remember that she reproved anystudent or that she ever directly urged us to do our best. Shemade no efforts to make her lectures attractive by witticisms, anecdotes, or entertaining illustrations. Yet her students workedwith eager faithfulness, and I, personally, have never been soabsorbed and inspired by any lectures as by hers. The secret ofher power was not merely that she was master of the art of teachingand knew how to arouse interest and awaken the mind to independentthought and inquiry, but that her own earnestness and high purposetouched our lives and made anything less than the highest possibledegree of effort and attainment seem not worth while. "--"We girlsused to say to each other that if we ever taught we should wantto be to our students what she was to us, and if they could feelas we felt toward her and her work we should want no more. Shedemanded the best of us, without demanding, and what she gave uswas beyond measure. --It was courses like hers that made us feelthat college work was the best part of college life. "

These are the things that teachers care most to hear, and in thenineteen years of her service at Wellesley, there were many studentseager to tell her what she had been to them. She writes in 1886:"What a privilege to pour into the receptive mind of young Americangirls the fullness of all that is precious about the German spirit;and how enthusiastically they receive all I can give them!"

In the late eighties and early nineties there came to the collegea notable group of younger women, destined to play an importantpart in Wellesley's life and to increase her academic reputation:Mary Whiton Calkins, Margarethe Muller, Adeline B. Hawes, the ablehead of the Department of Latin, Katharine M. Edwards, of theDepartment of Greek, Sophie de Chantal Hart, of the Departmentof English Composition, Vida D. Scudder, Margaret Sherwood, andSophie Jewett, of the Department of English Literature. In theautumn of 1909, Sophie Jewett died, and never has the college beenstirred to more intimate and personal grief. So many poets, somany scholars, are not lovable; but this scholar-poet quickenedevery heart to love her. To live in her house, to sit at hertable, to listen to her "cadenced voice" in the classrooms, wereprivileges which those who shared them will never forget. Hercolleague, Professor Scudder, speaking at the memorial servicein the College Chapel, said:

"We shall long rejoice to dwell on the ministry of love that washers to exercise in so rare a measure, through her unerring andreverent discernment of all finest aspects of beauty; on hersensitive allegiance to truth; on the fine reticence of herimaginative passion; on that heavenly sympathy and selflessnessof hers, a selflessness so deep that it bore no trace of effort orresolute purpose, but was simply the natural instinct of the soul.... 

"Let us give thanks, then, for all her noble and delicate powers;for her all-controlling Christianity; for her subtle rectitude ofintellectual and spiritual vision; for her swift ardor for allhigh causes and great dreams; for that unbounded tenderness towardyouth, that firm and steady standard of scholarship, that centralhunger for truth, which gave high quality to her teaching, andwhich during twenty years have been at the service of WellesleyCollege and of the Department of English Literature. "

This very giving of herself to the claims of the college hampered, to a certain extent, her poetic creativeness; the volumes thatshe has left are as few as they are precious, every one "a pearl. "Speaking of these poems, Miss Scudder says: "And in her ownverse, --do we not catch to a strange degree, hushed echoes ofheavenly music? These lyrics are not wholly of the earth: theyvibrate subtly with what I can only call the sense of the Eternal. How beautiful, how consoling, that her last book should have beenthat translation, such as only one who was at once true poet andtrue scholar could have made, of the sweetest medieval elegy'The Pearl'!" And Miss Bates, in her preface to the posthumousvolume of "Folk-Ballads of Southern Europe", illumines for usthe scholarship which went into these close and sympathetictranslations:

"For the Roumanian ballads, although she pored over the originals, she had to depend, in the main, upon French translation, whichwas usually available, too, for the Gascon and Breton. Italian, which she knew well, guided her through obscure dialects of Italyand Sicily, but Castilian, Portuguese, and Catalan she puzzled outfor herself with such natural insight that the experts to whomthese translations have been submitted found hardly a word tochange. 'After all, ' as she herself wrote, 'ballads are simplethings, and require, as a rule, but a limited vocabulary, thougha peculiarly idiomatic one. '"

Not the least poetic of her books, although it is written in prose, is the delicate interpretation of St. Francis, written for childrenand called "God's Troubadour. "

 "Erect, serene, she came and went On her high task of beauty bent. For us who knew, nor can forget, The echoes of her laughter yet Make sudden music in the halls. " ["In Memoriam: Sophie Jewett. " A poem by Margaret Sherwood, Wellesley College News, May 1, 1913. ]

In 1913, Madame Colin, who had served the college as head ofthe Department of French since 1905, died during the spring recessafter a three days' illness. Madame Colin had studied at theUniversity of Paris and the Sorbonne, and her ideals for herdepartment were high. 

Among Wellesley's own alumnae, only a very few who were officersof the college during the first forty years have died. Of theseare Caroline Frances Pierce, of the class of 1891, who was librarianfrom 1903 to 1910. To her wise planning we owe the conveniencesand comforts in the new library building which she did not liveto see completed. 

In 1914, the Department of Greek suffered a deep loss in ProfessorAnnie Sybil Montague, of the class of 1879. Besides being amember of the first graduating class, Miss Montague was one ofthe first to receive the degree of M. A. From Wellesley. In 1882, the college conferred this degree for the first time, and MissMontague was one of the two candidates who presented themselves. One of her old students, Annie Kimball Tuell, of the class of 1896, herself an instructor in the Department of English Literature, writes:

 I think Miss Montague would wish that another of her pupils, one who worked with her for an unusually long time, should say--what can most simply and most warmly and most gratefully be said--that she was a good teacher. So I want to say it formally for myself and for all the others and for all the years. For I suppose that if we were doomed to go before our girls for a last judgment, the best and the least of us would care just for the simple bit of testimony that we knew our business and attended to it. And of all the good people who made college days so rich for me, there is none of whom I could say this more entirely than of Miss Montague. 

 Often as I have caught sight of her in the jostling crowd of the second floor, I have felt a lively regret that she was known to so few of the girls, and that her excellent ability to give zest to drill and to stablish fluttering wits in order, could not have a fuller and freer exercise. In the old days we valued what she had to give, and in the usual silent, thankless way, elected her courses as long as there were courses to elect; but we have had to teach many years since to know how special that gift of hers was. Just as closer acquaintance with herself proved her breadth of mind and sympathy not quite understood before, so more intelligent knowledge of her methods showed them to be broader and more fundamental than we had quite comprehended. With her handling, rules and sub-rules ceased to jostle and confuse one another, but grouped themselves in a simpler harmony which we thought a very beautiful discovery, and grammar took on a reasonable unity which seemed a marvel. So we took our laborious days with cheer and enjoyed the energy, for we quite understood that our work would lead to something. 

 But if there could be an interchange of grace and I could take a gift from Miss Montague's personality, I would rather have what she in a matter-of-fact way would take for granted, but what is harder for us who are beginners here to come by, --I mean her altogether fine and blameless relation to her girls outside the classroom. She was a presence always heartily responsive, but never unwary, without the slightest reflection of her personality upon us, with never a word too much of praise or blame, of too much intimacy or of too much reserve. She was a figure of familiar friendliness, ready with sympathy and comprehension, but wholesome, sound and sane, without trace of sentimentality. Above all, I felt her a singularly honorable spirit, toward whom we always turned our best side, to whom we might never go with talk wanton or idle or unkind or critical, but always with our very precious thoughts on whatsoever things are eager, and honest and kindly and of good report. And so she was able to do us much good and no harm at all. She can have had no millstones about her neck to reckon with.... 

 Miss Montague used to have a little class in Plato, and I have not forgotten how quietly we read together one day at the end of the Phaedo of the death of Socrates. After Miss Montague died, I turned to the book and found the place where the servant has brought the cup of poison, but Crito, unreconciled, wants to delay even a little:

 "For the sun, " said he, "is yet on the hills, and many a man has drunk the draught late. "

 "Yes, " said Socrates, "since they wished for delay. But I do not think that I should gain anything by drinking the cup a little later. "

In January, 1915, while this story of Wellesley was being written, Katharine Coman, Professor Emeritus of Economics, went like aconqueror to the triumph of her death. Miss Coman's power asa teacher has been spoken of on an earlier page, but she will beremembered in the college and outside as more than a teacher. Herbooks and her active interest in industrial affairs, her nobleattitude toward life, all have had their share in informing anddirecting and inspiring the college she loved. 

 "A mountain soul, she shines in crystal air Above the smokes and clamors of the town. Her pure, majestic brows serenely wear The stars for crown. 

 "She comrades with the child, the bird, the fern, Poet and sage and rustic chimney-nook, But Pomp must be a pilgrim ere he earn Her mountain look. 

 "Her mountain look, the candor of the snow, The strength of folded granite, and the calm Of choiring pines, whose swayed green branches strow A healing balm. 

 * * * * * * *

 "For lovely is a mountain rosy-lit With dawn, or steeped in sunshine, azure-hot, But loveliest when shadows traverse it, And stain it not. "

[From a poem, "A Mountain Soul, " by Katharine Lee Bates, 1904. ]

CHAPTER IV

THE STUDENTS AT WORK AND PLAY

The safest general statement which can be made about Wellesleystudents of the first forty years of the college is that more thansixty per cent of them have come from outside New England, fromthe Middle West, the Far West, and the South. Possibly there isa Wellesley type. Whether or not it could be differentiated fromthe Smith, the Bryn Mawr, the Vassar, and the Mt. Holyoke types, if the five were set up in a row, unlabeled, is a question. Yetit is true that certain recognizable qualities have developed andtend to persist among the students of Wellesley. 

Wellesley girls are in the best sense democratic. There is noGold Coast on the campus or in the village; money carries nosocial prestige. More money is spent, and more frivolously, thanin the early days; there are more girls, and more rich girls, tospend it; yet the indifference to it except as a mechanicalconvenience, a medium of exchange and an opportunity for service, continues to be naively Utopian. 

But money is not the only touchstone of democratic sensitiveness. At Wellesley there has always been uneasiness at the hint ofunequal opportunity. When the college grew so large that membershipin the six societies took on the aspect of special privilege, restiveness was as marked among the privileged as among theunprivileged, and more outspoken. The first result was the BarnSwallows, a social and dramatic society to which every studentin college might belong if she wished. The second was thereorganization of the six societies on a more democratic andintellectual basis, to prevent "rushing", favoritism, cliques, andall the ills that mutually exclusive clubs are heir to. Theagitation for these reforms came from the societies themselves, and they endured with Spartan determination the months of transitionalmisery and readjustment which their generous idealism brought upontheir heads. 

Enthusiasm for equality also enters into the students' attitudetoward "the academic", and like most enthusiasts, from the FrenchRevolution down, they are capable of confusing the issue. In theearly days, they were not allowed to know their marks, lest theknowledge should rouse an unworthy spirit of competition; and ofall the rules instituted by the founder, this is the one whichthey have been most unwilling to see abolished. Silent Time theyrelinquished with relief; Domestic Work they abandoned withouta pang; Bible Study shrank from four to three years and from threeto two, and then to one, almost without their noticing it. Butwhen, in 1901, the Honor Scholarships were established, a stormof protest burst among the undergraduates, and thundered andlightened for several weeks in the pages of College News. Andnot the least vehement of these protestants were the "Honor girls"themselves. To see their names posted in an alphabetical listof twenty or more students who had achieved, all unwittingly, acertain number of A's and B's throughout their course, seems tohave caused them a mortification more keen than that experiencedby St. Simeon Stylites on his pillar. But that the college idealshould be "degraded" pained them most. 

There was something very touching and encouraging about thiswrong-headed, right-hearted outburst. After the usual Wellesleyfashion, freedom of speech prevailed; everybody spoke her mind. In the end "sweetness and light" dispersed the mists of sentimentwhich had assumed that to acknowledge inequality of achievementwas to abolish equality of opportunity, and burned away the ethicalhaziness which had magnified mediocrity; the crusaders realizedthat the pseudo-compassion which would conceal the idle and thestupid, the industrious and the brilliant, in a common obscurity, is impracticable, since the fool and the genius cannot long behid, and unfair, since the ant and the grasshopper would enjoya like reward, and no democracy has yet claimed that those whodo not work shall eat. When in 1912 the faculty at last decidedto inform the students as to all their marks, the news was receivedwith no protest and with an intelligent appreciation of theintellectual and ethical value of the new privilege. 

The college was founded "for the glory of God and the service ofthe Lord Jesus Christ, in and by the education and culture of women";and Wellesley girls are, in the best sense, religious. There hasbeen no time in the first forty years when the undergraduateswere not earnestly and genuinely preoccupied with religiousquestions and religious living. One recognizes this not only bythe obvious and commonplace signs, such as the interest in theChristian Association, the Student Volunteer Movement, the MissionaryField, Silver Bay, manifested by the conventional Christianstudents; it is evident also in the hunger and thirst of the sincererebels, in such signs as the "Heretics' Bible Class" a volunteergroup which existed for a year or two in the second decade ofthe century, and which has had its prototypes at intervals throughoutthe forty years. One sees it in the interest and enthusiasm ofthe students who follow Professor Case's course in the Philosophyof Hegel; in the reverence and love with which girls of all creedsand of none speak of the Chapel services, and attend them. Whentwo thirds of the girls go voluntarily and as a matter of course toan Ash Wednesday evening service, when Jew and Roman Catholicalike testify eagerly to the value of the morning Chapel servicein their spiritual development, it is evident that the religiouslife is genuine and healthy. And it finds its outlet in thepassion for social service which, if statistics can be trusted, inspires so many of the alumnae. The old-fashioned Puritan, if she still exists, may tremble for the souls of the Wellesleygirls who crowd by hundreds into the "matinee train" on Saturdayafternoon, but let us hope that she would be reassured to findthe voluntary Bible and Mission Study classes attended, and evenconducted, by many of these same girls. She might grieve overthe years of Bible Study lost to the curriculum, and over theintroduction of modern methods of Biblical Higher Criticism intothe classroom; but surely she would be comforted to see how thestudents have arisen to the rescue of the devotional study of theScriptures, with their voluntary classes enthusiastically maintained. It might even touch her sense of humor. 

As the college has grown larger, undoubtedly more and more girlshave come to Wellesley for other than intellectual reasons, --becauseit is "the thing" to go to college, or for "the life. " But it isreassuring to find that the reactions of "the life" upon themalways quicken them to a deeper respect for intellectual values. The "academic" holds first place in the Wellesley life, notperfunctorily but vitally. The students themselves are swift torecognize and rebuke, usually in the "Free Press" or the "Parliamentof Fools", of the College News, any signs of intellectual indifferenceor laxity. Wellesley, like Harvard and other large colleges, hasits uninspiring level stretches of mediocrity; but it has itslittle leaping hills, its soaring peaks as well. Every class hasits band of devoted students for whom the things of the mindare supreme; every class has its scattering of youthful scholarsto give distinction to the academic landscape. 

It would be absurd and useless to deny that Wellesley girls havetheir defects; they are of the sort that press for recognition;defects of manner, and manners, which are not confined to thestudents of any one college, or even to college students, butare due in a measure to the general change in our attitude towardswomen, and to the new freedom in which they all alike share. Itis true that, to a degree, the graces and reserves which givecharm and finish to daily living are sacrificed to the more pushingclaims of study and athletics, in college. It is true that theunmodulated voice, the mushy enunciation, the unrestrained attitude, the slouchy clothes, too often go unrebuked in classroom anddormitory, where it seems to be nobody's business to rebuke them;but it is also usually true that, before they ever came to college, that voice, that attitude, those clothes, went unrebuked and evenunheeded, at home or in the girls' camp, where it emphatically wassomebody's business to heed and rebuke. 

But it is the public which sees the worst of it, especially ontrains, where groups of young voices or extreme fashions in dressbecome quite unintentionally conspicuous. Experienced from within, the life, despite its many little roughnesses, its small lapses intaste, is gracious and gentle, selfless in unobtrusive ways, andgenuinely kind. 

Religious, democratic, intellectually serious is our Wellesleygirl, and last but not least, she is a lover of beauty. How couldshe fail to be? How many times, in early winter twilights, hasshe come over the stile into the Stone Hall meadow, and stoodlong moments, hushed, bespelled, by the tranquil pale lovelinessof the lake, the dusky, rimming hills, the bare, slim blacknessof twig and bough embroidering the silver sky, --the whole luminousetching? How often, mid-morning in spring, has she sat with herbook in a green shade west of the library, and lifted her eyesto see above the daffodil-bank of Longfellow's fountain the bluelake waters laughing between the upspringing trunks of the talloak trees? Wherever there are Wellesley women, when spring iswaking, --in Switzerland, in Sicily, in Japan, in England, --they areremembering the Wellesley spring, that pageant of young greenof lawns and hills and tenderest flushing rose in baby oak leavesand baby maples, that twinkling dance of birches and of poplars, that splendor of the youth of the year amid which young maidensshone and blossomed, starring the campus among the other springflowers. And are there Wellesley women anywhere in the autumnwho do not think of Wellesley and four autumns? Of the long russetvistas of the west woods? Of the army with banners, scarlet andgolden, and bronze and russet and rose, that marched and trumpetedaround Lake Waban's streaming Persian pattern of shadows? Whenyou speak to a Wellesley girl of her Alma Mater, her eyes widenwith the lover's look, and you know that she is seeing a vision ofpure beauty. 

II. 

In 1876, the students, shocked and grieved by the discovery ofone of those cases of cheating with which every college has to dealfrom time to time, met together, and made a very stringent ruleto be enforced by themselves. This "law", enacted on February 18, 1876, marks the first step toward Student Government at Wellesley;it reads as follows:

"The students of Wellesley College unanimously decree as a perpetuallaw of the college that no student shall use a translation or keyin the study of any lesson or in any review, recitation, orexamination. Every student who may enter the college shall bein honor bound to expose every violation of this law. If anystudent shall be known to violate this law, she shall be warnedby a committee of the students and publicly exposed. If theoffense be repeated the students shall demand her immediateexpulsion as unworthy to remain a member of Wellesley College. "It is signed by the presidents of the two classes, 1879 and 1880, then in college. 

Until 1881, when the Courant, the first Wellesley periodical, gavethe students opportunity to express their minds concerning mattersof college policy, we have no definite record of further stepstoward self-government on the part of the undergraduates. Thedisciplinary methods of those early years are amusingly describedby Mary C. Wiggin, of the class of '85, who tells us that authoritywas vested in four bodies, the president, the doctor, the corridorteacher and the head of the Domestic Department. 

"The president was responsible for our going out and our comingin. The 'office' might give permission to leave town, but alltardiness in returning must be explained to the president. Howtimidly four of us came to Miss Freeman in my sophomore year toexplain that the freshman's mother had kept us to supper afterour 'permitted' drive on Monday afternoon! What an occasion itgave her to caution us as to sophomore influence over freshmen!

"Very infrequent were our journeys to Boston in those days, theaterswere forbidden. Once during my four years I saw Booth in 'Macbeth'during a Christmas vacation, salving my conscience with a liberalinterpretation of the phrase, 'while connected with the college', trying to forget the parting injunction, 'Remember, girls, thatYou are Wellesley College. '... 

"In the old days we were seated alphabetically in church andchapel, where attendance was kept in each 'section' by one ofits members. A growing laxity permitted you to sit out of placeon Sunday evenings, provided that you reported to your sectiongirl. Otherwise you would be called to the office to explain yourabsence.... 

"Very slowly did the idea dawn upon me that there was a facultyback of all these very pleasant personal relations. "

But in the late '80's, the advance toward student self-governmentbegins to be traceable, slowly but surely. In the spring of 1887, on the initiative of the faculty, the first formal conferencebetween representatives of faculty and students was called, toconsider questions of class organization. Other conferences tookplace at irregular intervals during the next seven years, asoccasion arose, and these often led to new legislation. Thesubjects discussed were, the Magazine, the Legenda, Athletics, the Junior Prom. In the autumn of 1888, students were firstallowed to hand in excuses for absence from college classes; theresponsibility for giving a "true, valid and signed excuse" restingwith the individual student. In this same autumn the law forbiddingeating between meals was repealed, but students were still notpermitted to keep eatables in their rooms. 

Articles on college courtesy, quiet in the library, articles forand against Domestic Work, begin to appear in the Courant andthe Prelude in 1888 and 1889. In May, 1890, we learn of aStudents' Association, which was the means of obtaining classbulletin boards in the autumn of 1890. From this time also, agitation on all topics of interest to the students is more openlyactive. In September, 1891, the faculty consent to allow librarybooks to be taken out of the library on Saturday afternoon foruse over Sunday. In October, 1891, we find that the Students'Association is to offer a medium for discussion and to foster ascholarly spirit. In December, 1891, a plea appears in the Preludefor occasional conferences between faculty and students on problemsof college policy. In 1892, we read that the individual studentsare allowed to choose a church in the village and attend it onSundays, if they so desire, instead of attending the CollegeChapel. In 1892 also, we have the agitation, in the WellesleyMagazine, for the wearing of cap and gown, and in this year seniorprivileges are extended, and the responsibility for absence fromclass appointments rests with the student. In November, 1892, the Magazine prints an article on Student Government by ProfessorCase of the Department of Philosophy. And the cap and gown censusand discussion go gayly on. Early in 1893, there is a discussionof Student Government. In the spring of this year, there is anagitation for voluntary chapel. In September, the seniors beginto wear the cap and gown throughout the year. The year 1894 seesSilent Time abolished; and agitation, --always courteous andfriendly, --goes on for Student Government, for the opening of thelibrary on Sunday, for the abolition of Domestic Work. In 1893or 1894, Professor Burrell, as head of College Hall, introducesthe custom of having students sign for overtime when they wishto study after ten o'clock at night. In 1894, excuses for absencefrom chapel and classes are no longer required. In the springof 1894, at the request of undergraduates, a conference with thefaculty, in a series of meetings, considers matters of interest instudent life. Beginning with May, 1895, the library is openedon Sundays. 

It is significant to note, in looking over these old files ofcollege magazines, that when the students' interest waned, thefaculty were always ready to administer the necessary prod. Notall the articles in favor of Student Government are written bystudents. President Shafer herself gave the strongest earlyimpetus to the movement, although not through the press. In 1899, Professor Woolley, as head of College Hall, instituted a HouseOrganization, which as an experiment in Student Government amongthe students then living in College Hall was a complete success. In June, 1900, we find arrangements made for a Faculty-StudentConference, to be held during the autumn months; and this bodymet five times. Its establishment did a great deal in paving theway to mutual understanding and trust when the definite questionof Student Government was approached. 

On March 6, 1901, at a mass meeting of the students, and aftera spirited discussion, it was voted that the Academic Council bepetitioned to give self-government to the students in all mattersnot academic. This date is kept every year as the birthday ofStudent Government. At another mass meeting, on April 9, MissKatharine Lord, the President of the Student Association ofBryn Mawr, spoke to the college on Student Government, and onApril 23, there was still another mass meeting. The studentcommittee appointed to confer with the committee from the facultyhad for its chairman Mary Leavens, of the class of 1901, studenthead of College Hall; Miss Pendleton, at that time secretary ofthe college, was the chairman of the faculty committee. StudentGovernment found in her, from the beginning, a convinced and ablechampion. In April, the constitution was submitted to the committeeof the faculty, and in May the constitution and the agreement, aftercareful consideration, were submitted to the Executive Committeeof the Board of Trustees. On May 29, an all day election forpresident was held, resulting in the choice of Frances L. Hughes, 1902, as first president of the Student Government Association ofWellesley College. On June 6, the report was adopted and theagreement was signed by the president and secretary of the Boardof Trustees and the president of the college. On June 7, in thepresence of the faculty and the whole student body, in chapel, theagreement was read and signed on behalf of the faculty by thesecretary of the college. The ceremony was impressive and memorablein its simplicity and solemnity. After Miss Pendleton had signedher name, the students rose and remained standing while the agreementwas signed by Frances L. Hughes, President of the Association for1901 and 1902, May Mathews, President of the Class of 1902, Margaret C. Mills, President of the Class of 1901, and Mary Leavens, President of the House Council of College Hall. The Scripturelesson was taken from I. Corinthians, "Other foundation can noman lay than that is laid, " and the recessional was, "How firma foundation. "

The Association is organized with a president and vice president, chosen from the senior class, and a secretary and a treasurer fromthe juniors; these are all elected by the whole undergraduate body. There is an Executive Board whose members are the president, vice president, secretary and treasurer of the association, thehouse presidents and their proctors, and a representative fromeach of the four classes, elected by the class. The governmentis in all essentials democratic. The rules are made and executedby the whole body of students; but all legislation of the studentsis subject to approval by the college authorities, and if anyquestion arises as to whether or not a subject is within thejurisdiction of the association, it is referred to a joint committeeof seven, made up of a standing committee of three appointed bythe faculty, a standing committee of three appointed by theassociation, and the president of the college. 

In intrusting to the association the management of all mattersnot strictly academic concerning the conduct of students in theircollege life, the College authorities reserve the right to regulateall athletic events and formal entertainments, all societies, clubsand other organizations, all Society houses, and all publications, all matters pertaining to public health and safety and to householdmanagement and the use of college property. The students areresponsible for all matters of registration and absence from college, for the regulation of travel, permission for Sunday callers, rulesgoverning chaperonage, the maintenance of quiet, the generalconduct of students on the campus and in the village. It is theywho have abolished the "ten-o'clock-bedtime rule"; it is they whohave decreed that students shall not go to Boston on Sundays, butthis rule is relaxed for seniors, who are allowed two BostonSundays, in which they may attend church or an afternoon sacredconcert in the city. If a student wishes to spend Sunday awayfrom college, she must go away on Saturday and remain until Monday. 

Questions of minor discipline, such as the enforcing of the ruleof quiet in the dormitories, are handled by the students; not yet, it must be confessed, with complete success, as the quiet in thedormitories--especially the freshman houses--falls short of thatholy calm which studious girls have a right to claim. Seriousmisdemeanors are of course in the jurisdiction of the presidentof the college and the faculty. One very important college duty, the proctoring of examinations, which would seem to be an entirelylegitimate function of the Student Government Association, thestudents themselves have not as yet been willing to assume. Duringthe years when the freshmen, sometimes as many as four hundred, were housed in the village because of the crowded conditions onthe campus, the burden upon the Student Government Association, and especially upon the vice president and her senior assistantswho had charge of the village work, was, in the opinion of manyalumnae and some members of the faculty, heavier than they shouldhave been expected to shoulder; for, when all is said, students docome to college primarily to pursue the intellectual life, ratherthan to be the monitors of undergraduate behavior. Fortunately, with the endowment of the college and the building of new dormitorieson the campus, the village problem will be eliminated. The studentsthemselves are unanimously enthusiastic concerning Student Government, and the history of the association since its establishment revealsan earnest and increasingly intelligent acceptance of responsibilityon the part of the student body. From the beginning the ultimatesuccess of the movement has been almost unquestioned, and theassociation is now as stable an institution, apparently, as theAcademic Council or the Board of Trustees. 

III. 

The most important of the associations which bring Wellesleystudents into touch with the outside world are the ChristianAssociation and the College Settlements Association. These two, with the Consumers' League and the Equal Suffrage League--alsoflourishing organizations--help to foster the spirit of servicewhich has characterized the college from its earliest days. 

The Christian Association did not come into existence until 1884, but in the very first year of the college a Missionary Society wasformed, which gave "Missionary concerts" on Sunday evenings inthe chapel, and adopted as its college missionary, Gertrude Chandler(Wyckoff) of the class of 1879, who went out to the mission fieldin India in 1880. In the first decade also a Temperance Societywas formed, and noted speakers on temperance visited the college. But in 1883, in order to unify the religious work, a ChristianAssociation was proposed. The initiative seems to have come fromthe faculty, and this was natural, as the little group of teachersfrom the University of Michigan--President Freeman, ProfessorChapin of the Department of Greek, Professor Coman of Economics, Professor Case of Philosophy, Professor Chandler of Mathematics, --hadhad a hand in developing the Young Women's Christian Associationat Ann Arbor. 

The first meeting of this Association was held in College HallChapel, October 8, 1884, and we read that it was formed "for thepurpose of promoting Christian fellowship as a means of individualgrowth in character, and of securing, by the union of the varioussocieties already existing, a more systematic arrangement of thework to be done in college by officers and students, for the causeof Christ. "

Those who joined the association pledged themselves to declaretheir belief in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and todedicate their lives to His service. They promised to abide bythe laws of the association and seek its prosperity; ever to striveto live a life consistent with its character as a ChristianAssociation, and, as far as in them lay, to engage in its activities;to cultivate a Christian fellowship with its members, and asopportunity offered, to endeavor to lead others to a Christian life. Wellesley is rightly proud of the Christian simplicity andinclusiveness of this pledge. 

The work of the association included Bible study, devotionalmeetings, individual work, and the development of missionaryinterest. Three hundred and seventy signed as charter members, and Professor Stratton of the Department of Rhetoric was the firstpresident. The students held most of the offices, but it was notuntil 1894 that a student president, --Cornelia Huntington of theclass of 1895--was elected. Since then, this office has alwaysbeen held by a student. From its inception the association receivedthe greatest help and inspiration from Mrs. Durant, for many yearsthe President of the Boston Young Women's Christian Association, which was one of the first of its kind. 

Early in its career, the Wellesley Association adopted, besidesits foreign missionary, a home missionary, and later a citymissionary who worked in New York. An Indian committee wasformed, and Thanksgiving entertainments were given at the Woman'sReformatory in Sherborn and the Dedham Asylum for released prisoners. In this prison work, the college always had the fullest help andsympathy of Mrs. Durant. The Wellesley Student Volunteer Bandwas organized May 26, 1890, and in 1915 there were known to beabout one hundred Wellesley girls in the foreign field, and therewere probably others of whom the college was uninformed. It isa noble and inspiring record. 

In 1905, after the union of many of the Young Women's ChristianAssociations and the formation of the National Board, Wellesleywas urged to affiliate herself with the National Association, butshe was unwilling to narrow her own pledge, to meet the conditionsof the National Board. She felt that she better served the causeof Christian Unity by admitting to her fellowship a wider range ofChristians, so-called, than the National Board was at that timeprepared to tolerate; and she was also more or less fearful of toomuch dictation. It was not until 1913, at the Fourth BiennialConvention of the Young Women's Christian Associations, held atRichmond, Virginia, that Wellesley was received into the Nationalorganization; and she came retaining her own pledge and her ownconstitution. 

In the old days, the Christian Association was the stronghold ofthe dying Evangelicalism, and was looked on with distaste by manyof the radical students; but of late years, its tone and its methodhave changed to meet the needs of the modern girl, and it hasbecome a power throughout the college. The annual report for1913-1914 shows a total membership of 1297. The associationcarries on Mission Study Classes; Bible Classes which the studentsteach, under the direction of volunteers from the faculty, in suchsubjects as "The Social Teachings of Jesus", "The Ideals of Israel'sLeaders as Forces in Our Lives", "Christ in Everyday Life";"General Aid" work, for girls who need to earn money in college. Its Social Committee is active among freshmen and new students. Of its special committees, the one on Conferences and Conventionsplays an important part in quickening the interest in Silver Bay, and the one on "the College in Spain" presents the needs andclaims of the International Institute for Girls at Madrid. Besidesits regular meetings, the Christian Association now has chargeof the Lenten services, and this effort to deepen the devotionallife of the college has met with a swift response from the students. During 1913-1914, in Lent, the chapel was open every afternoonfor meditation and prayer, and cards with selected prayers for eachday were furnished to all who cared to use them. Unquestionably, Wellesley possesses no student organization more living and morelife-giving than its Christian Association. 

Four years after the foundation of the Christian Association, Wellesley had opened her heart and her mind to the College Settlementidea. The movement, as is well known, originated in the late '80'sin America. At the same time that Jane Addams and Ellen GatesStarr were starting Hull House in Chicago, a group of Smith Collegealumnae, chief among whom were Vida D. Scudder, Clara French, Helen Rand (Thayer), and Jean Fine (Spahr), was pressing for theestablishment of a house in the East. And the idea was understoodand fostered by Wellesley about as soon as by Smith, for it wasinterpreted at Wellesley by Professor Scudder, who became a memberof the college faculty, as instructor in English Literature, inthe autumn of 1887. In 1889, the Courant printed an article onCollege Settlements, and students of the later '80's and early '90'swill never forget the ardor and excitement of those days whenWellesley was bearing her part in starting what was to be oneof the important movements for social service in the nineteenthcentury. All her early traditions and activities made the collegeswift to understand and welcome this new idea. 

From the beginning, the social impulse has been inherent inWellesley, and settlement work was native to her. Professor Whitingtells us that there used to be a shoe factory in Wellesley Village, about where the Eliot now stands; that the students became interestedin the girl operatives, most of whom lived in South Natick, andthat they started a factory girls' club which met every Saturdayevening for years, and was led by college girls. In Charles RiverVillage, also at that time a factory town, Mr. Durant heldevangelistic services during one winter, and "teacher specials"used to help him, and to teach in the Sunday School. 

In 1890-1891, probably because of the settlement impulse, workamong the maids in the college was set going by the ChristianAssociation. A maids' parlor was furnished under the old gymnasium, and classes for the maids were started. 

In 1891, the Wellesley Chapter of the College Settlements Associationwas organized. It was Professor Katharine Lee Bates (Wellesley '80)who first suggested the plan for an intercollegiate organization, with chapters in the different colleges for women; and her friendAdaline Emerson (Thompson), a Wellesley graduate of the classof '80, was the first president of the association. Wellesley womenhave ever since taken a prominent part in the direction of theassociation's policy and in the active life of the settlement housesin New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Wellesley hasgiven presidents, secretaries, and many electors to the associationitself, and head-workers and a continuous stream of efficient anddevoted residents, not only to the four College Settlements, butto Social Settlement houses all over the country. The CollegeChapter keeps a special interest in the work of the BostonSettlement, Denison House; students give entertainments occasionallyfor the settlement neighbors, and help in many ways at Christmastime; but practical social service from undergraduates is not theideal nor the desire of the College Settlements Association. Itaims rather at the quickening of sympathy and intelligence onsocial questions, and the moral and financial support which theCollege Chapter can give its representatives out in the world. Such by-products of the settlement interest as the Social StudyCircle, an informal group of undergraduates and teachers whichmet for several years to study social questions, are worth muchmore to the movement than the immature efforts of undergraduatesin directing settlement clubs and classes. 

Already the historic perspective is sufficiently clear for us torealize that the College Settlement Movement is the unique, andperhaps the most important organized contribution of the women'scolleges to civilization during their first half century of existence. Through this movement, in which they have played so large a part, they have exerted an influence upon social thought and conscienceexceeded, in this period, by few other agencies, religious, philanthropic or industrial, if we except the Trade-union Movementand Socialism, which emanate from the workers themselves. Theprominent part which Wellesley has played in it will doubtless beincreasingly understood and valued by her graduates. 

IV. 

Let it be frankly acknowledged: the ordinary adult is usuallybored by the undergraduate periodical--even though he may, onceupon a time, have edited it himself. The shades of the prison-housemake a poor light for the Gothic print of adolescence. But thehistorian, if we may trust allegory, bears a torch. For him nochronicle, whether compiled by twelfth-century monk or twentieth-centurycollegian, can be too remote, too dull, to reflect the gleam. Andsome chronicles, like the Wellesley one, are more rewarding thanothers. 

No one can turn over the pages of these fledgling journals, Courant, Prelude, Magazine, News, without being impressed by the unconsciousclarity with which they reflect not merely the events in the collegecommunity--although they are unusually faithful and accuraterecorders of events--but the college temper of mind, the rangeof ideas, the reaction to interests beyond the campus, the generaltrend of the intellectual and spiritual life. 

The interest in social questions is to the fore astonishinglyearly. In Wellesley's first newspaper, the Courant, published inthe college year 1888-1889, we find articles on the Working Girlsof Boston, on the Single Tax, and notes of a prize essay onChild Labor. And throughout the decade of the '90's, the dominantnote in the Prelude, 1889-1892, and its successor, the WellesleyMagazine, 1892-1911, is the social note. Reports of collegeevents give prominent place to lectures on Woman Suffrage, SocialSettlements, Christian Socialism. In 1893, William Clarke of theLondon Chronicle, a member of the Fabian Society, visiting Americaas a delegate to the Labor Congress in Chicago, gave lectures atWellesley on "The Development of Socialism in England", "TheGovernment of London", "The London Working Classes. " MatthewArnold's visit came too early to be recorded in the college paper, but he was perhaps the first of a notable list of distinguishedEnglishmen who have helped to quicken the interest of Wellesleystudents along social lines. Graham Wallas, Lowes-Dickinson, H. G. Wells, are a few of the names found in the pages of theMagazine and the News. The young editors evidently welcomedpapers on social themes, such as "The Transition in the IndustrialStatus of Women, by Professor Coman"; and the great strikes ofthe decade, The Homestead Strike, the Pennsylvania Coal Strike, the New Bedford Strike, are written up as a matter of course. Itis interesting to note that the paper on the Homestead Strike, with a plea for the unions, was written by an undergraduate, Mary K. Conyngton, who has since won for herself a reputationfor research work in the Labor Bureau at Washington. 

Political articles are only less prominent than social and industrialmaterial. As early as 1893 we have an article on "The Triple Alliance"and in the Magazine of 1898 and 1899 there are papers on "The ColonialExpansion of the Great European Powers", "The Italian Riots ofMay, 1898", "The Philippine Question", "The Dreyfus Incident. "This preoccupation of young college women of the nineteenth centurywith modern industrial and political history is significant whenwe consider the part that woman has elected to play in politicsand reform since the beginning of the twentieth century. 

In the first years of that new century, the Magazine and the weeklyNews begin to reflect the general revival of religious interestamong young people. The Student Volunteer Movement, the increasedactivities in the Christian Associations for both men and women, find their response in Wellesley students. Letters from missionariesare given prominence; the conferences at Silver Bay are writtenup enthusiastically and at great length. Social questions neverlapse, at Wellesley, but during the decade 1900 to 1910, thedominant journalistic note is increasingly religious. Later, withthe activity of the Social Study Circle, an informal club for thestudy of social questions, and its offspring the small but earnestclub for the study of Socialism, the social interests regainedtheir vitality for the student mind. 

Besides the extra mural problems, the periodicals record, of course, the events and the interests of the little college world. Throughthe "Free Press" columns of these papers, the didactic, critical, and combative impulses, always so strong in the undergraduatetemperament, find a safe vent. Mentor and agitator alike arewelcomed in the "Free Press", and many college reforms have beeninaugurated, and many college grievances--real and imagined--havebeen aired in these outspoken columns. And not the least readableportions of the weeklies have been the "Waban Ripples" in thePrelude, and the "Parliament of Fools" in the News. For Wellesleyhas a merry wit and is especially good at laughing at herself, --yes, even at that "Academic" of which she is so loyally proud. Witnessthese naughty parodies of examination questions, which appearedin a "Parliament of Fools" just before the mid-year examinationsof 1915. 

 Philosophy: "Translate the following into Kant, Spencer, Perry, Leibnitz, Hume, Calkins (not more than one page each allowed). 

 "'Little drops of water, little grains of sand, Make the mighty ocean, and a pleasant land. '

 "The remainder of the time may be employed in translating into Kantian terminology, the title of the book: 'Myself and I. '"

 English Literature: "Give dates and significance of the following; and state whether they are persons or books: Stratford-on-Avon, Magna Charta, Louvain, Onamataposa, Synod of Whitby, Bunker Hill, Transcendentalism, Mesopotamia, Albania, Hastings. 

 "Write an imaginary conversation between John Bunyan and Myrtle Reed on the Social significance of Beowulf. 

 "Do you consider that Browning and Carlyle were influenced by the Cubist School? Cite passages not discussed in class to support your view. 

 "Trace the effects of the Norman strain in England in the works of Tolstoi, Cervantes, and Tagore. "

 English Composition: "Write a novelette containing: (a) Plot; (b) two crises; (c) three climaxes; (d) one character. 

 "Write a biography of your own life, bringing out distinctly reasons pro and con. Outline form. "

 Biblical History: "Trace the life of Abraham from Genesis through Malachi. 

 "Quote the authentic passages of the New Testament. Why or why not?

 "Where do the following words recur? Verily, greeting, begat, therefore, Pharisee, holy, notacceptedbythescholars. "

Excellent fooling, this; and it should go far to convince askeptical public that college girls take their educational advantageswith sanity. 

As literary magazines, these Wellesley periodicals are onlysporadically successful. Now and again a true poet flashes throughtheir pages; less often a true story-teller, although the mechanicalexcellence of most of the stories is unquestionable, --they gothrough the motions quite as if they were the real thing. Butthe appeals of the editors for poetry and literary prose; theiroccasional sardonic comments upon the apathy of the college readingpublic, --especially during the waning later years of the Magazine, before it was absorbed into the monthly issue of the News, --wouldseem to indicate that the pure, literary imagination is as rare atWellesley as it is in the world at large. Yet there are shiningpages in these chronicles, pages whose golden promise has been fulfilled. 

In 1911, the Alumnae Association discussed the advisability ofpublishing an alumnae magazine, but it was decided that the timewas not yet ripe for the new enterprise, and instead an agreementwas entered into with the News, by which a certain number ofpages each month were to be at the disposal of the alumnae editor, for articles and essays on college matters which should be ofinterest to the alumnae. The new department has been markedfrom the beginning by dignity and interest, and the papers contributedhave been unusually valuable, especially from the point of viewof college history. 

In 1889 Wellesley's Senior Annual, the Legenda, came into being. In general it has followed the conventional lines of all collegeannuals, but occasionally it has departed from the beaten path, as in 1892, when it was transformed into a Wellesley Songbook;in 1894, when it printed a memorial sketch of Miss Shafer, anda biographical sketch of Mrs. Durant; in 1896, when it becamea storybook of college life. 

In October, 1912, The Wellesley College Press Board was organizedby Mrs. Helene Buhlert Magee, of the class of 1903. The boardis the outgrowth of an attempt by the college authorities, in 1911, to regulate the work of its budding journalists. Up to this timethe newspapers had been supplied, more or less intermittently andoften unsatisfactorily, with items of college news by studentsengaged by the newspapers and responsible only to them. Thecollege now appoints an official reporter from its own faculty, who sends all Wellesley news to the newspapers and is consultedby the regular reporters when they desire special information. The Press Board, organized by this official reporter, consists ofseven students reporting for Boston papers and two for those inNew York. At the time of the Wellesley fire, this board proveditself particularly efficient in disseminating accurate information. 

V. 

But it is not the workaday Wellesley, tranquilly pursuing herserious and semi-serious occupations, that the outsiders knowbest. To them, she is wont to turn her holiday face. And nocollege plays with more zest than Wellesley. Perhaps becauseno college ever had such a perfect playground. Every hill andgrove and hollow of the beautiful campus holds its memories ofplaydays and midsummer nights. 

Those were the nights when Rosalind and Orlando wandered out ofArden into a New England moonlight; when flitting Ariel forsookProspero's isle to make his nest in Wellesley's boweringrhododendrons--in blossom time he is always hovering there, a wingedbloom, for eyes that are not holden. Those were the nights when Puckcame dancing up from Tupelo with Titania's fairy rout a-twinkle at hisheels; when the great Hindu Raj floated from India in his canopiedbarge across the moonlit waters of Lake Waban; when Tristram andIseult, on their way to the court of King Mark, all love distraught, cast anchor in the little cove below Stone Hall and played theirpassion out; when Nicolette kilted her skirts against the dew andargued of love with Aucassin. Those were the nights when theCountess Cathleen--loveliest of Yeats's Irish ladies--found Paradiseand the Heavenly Host awaiting her on a Wellesley hilltop whenshe had sold her soul to feed her starving peasants. 

But the glamour of the sun is as potent as the glamour of themoon at Wellesley. High noon is magical on Tree Day, for thenthe mythic folk of ancient Greece, the hamadryads and Dian's nymphs, Venus and Orpheus and Narcissus, and all the rest, come out anddream a dance of old days on the great green billows of the lawn. To see veiled Cupid, like a living flame, come streaming downamong the hillside trees, down, swift as fire, to the waitingPsyche, is never to forget. No wood near Athens was ever sovision-haunted as Wellesley with the dancing spirits of pastTree Days. 

On that day in early June the whole college turns itself into apageant of spring. From the long hillside above which College Hallonce towered, the faculty and the alumnae watch their youngersisters march in slow processional triumph around and about thewide green campus. Like a moving flower garden the processionwinds upon itself; hundreds and hundreds of seniors and juniorsand sophomores and freshmen, --more than fourteen hundred of themin 1914. Then it breaks ranks and plants itself in parterresat the foot of the hill, masses of blue, and rose, and lavender, and golden blossoming girls. Contrary Mistress Mary's garden wasnothing to it. And after the procession come the dances. Sometimesa Breton Pardon wanders across the sea. The gods from Olympusare very much at home in these groves of academe. Once King Arthur'sknight came riding up the wide avenue at the edge of the green. The spirits of sun and moon, the nymphs of the wind and the rain, have woven their mystical spells on that great greensward. Andin the fairy ring around Longfellow fountain, gnomes and fays andfreshmen play hide-and-seek with the water nixies. 

The first Tree Day was Mr. Durant's idea; no one was more awakethan he, in the old days, to Wellesley's poetic possibilities. And the first trees were gifts from Mr. Hunnewell; two beautifulexotics, Japanese golden evergreens--one for 1879 and one for1880. The two trees were planted on May 16, 1877, the sophomoretree by the library, the freshman tree by the dining room. Anearly chronicler writes, "Then it was that the venerated spademade its first appearance. We had confidently expected a trowel, had written indeed 'Apostrophe to the Trowel' on our programs, and our apostrophist (do not see the dictionary), a girl of aboutthe same height as the spade, but by no means, as she modestlysuggested, of the same mental capacity, was so stricken withastonishment when she had mounted the rostrum and this burlyinstrument was propped up before her, that she nearly forgot herspeech.... And then it was there was introduced the more questionablepractice of planting class trees too delicate to bear the collegecourse. Although a foolish little bird built her nest and laidher eggs in the golden-leaved evergreen of '79, and although amuch handsomer nest with a very much larger egg appeared immediatelyin the Retinospora Precipera Aurea of '80, yet the rival 'nymphswith golden hair' were both soon forced to forsake their witheredtenements; Mr. Hunnewell's exotics, after another trial or two, being succeeded by plebeian hemlocks. "

The true story of the Wellesley spade and how it came to be handeddown from class to class, is recorded in Florence Morse Kingsley'sdiary, where we learn how the "burly instrument" of 1877 wassucceeded by a less unwieldy and more ladylike utensil. Underthe date, April 3, 1878, we find:

 Our class (the class of '81) had a meeting last night. We held it in one of the laboratories on the fifth floor, quite in secret, for we didn't want the '80 girls to find it out. The class of '80 is thought to be extraordinarily brilliant, and they certainly do look down on us freshmen in haughty disdain as being correspondingly stupid. I don't say very much against them, since I---- is an '80 girl: besides, if I work hard I can graduate with '80, but at present my lot is cast with '81. We have decided to have a tree planting, and it is to be entirely original and the first of a series. Mr. Durant has given a Japanese Golden Evergreen to '79 and one to '80. They are precisely alike and they had been planted for quite a while before he thought of turning them into class trees. We heard a dark rumor yesterday to the effect that Mr. Durant is intending to plant another evergreen under the library window and present it to us. But we voted to forestall his generosity. We mean to have an elm, and we want to plant it out in front of the college, in the center or just on the other side of the driveway. The burning question remained as to who should acquaint Mr. Durant with our valuable ideas. Nobody seemed ravenously eager for the job, and finally I was nominated. "You know him better than we do, " they all said, so I finally consented. I haven't a ghost of an idea what to say; for when one comes to think of it, it is rather ungrateful of '81 not to want the evergreen under the library window. 

 April 10. Alice and I went to Mr. Durant to-day about the tree planting; but Alice was stricken with temporary dumbness and never opened her lips, though she had solemnly promised to do at least half the talking; so I had to wade right into the subject alone. I began in medias res, for I couldn't think of a really graceful and diplomatic introduction on the spur of the moment. Mr. Durant was in the office with a pile of papers before him as usual; he appeared to be very preoccupied and he was looking rather severe. The interview proceeded about as follows:

 He glanced up at us sharply and said, "Well, young ladies, " which meant, "Kindly get down to business; my time is valuable. " I got down to it about as gracefully as a cat coming down a tree, like this: "We have decided to have a regular tree-planting, Mr. Durant. " Of course I should have said, "The class of '81 would like to have a tree-planting, if you please. "

 Mr. Durant appeared somewhat startled: "Eh, what's that?" he said, then he settled back in his chair and looked hard at us. His eyes were as keen as frost; but they twinkled--just a little, as I have discovered they can and do twinkle if one isn't afraid to say right out what one means, without unnecessary fuss and twaddle. 

 "Alice and I are delegates from the Class of '81, " I explained, a trifle more lucidly. "The class has voted to plant an elm for our class tree, and we would like to plant it in front of the college in a prominent spot. " We had previously decided gracefully to ignore the evergreen rumor. 

 Mr. Durant looked thoughtful. "Hum, " he said, "I'd planned to give you girls of '81 a choice evergreen, and as for a place for it: what do you say to the plot on the north side, just under the library window?"

 I looked beseechingly at Alice. She was apparently very much occupied in a meek survey of the toes of her boots, which she had stubbed into premature old age scrambling up and down from the boat landings. 

 Meanwhile Mr. Durant was waiting for our look of pleased surprise and joyful acquiescence. Then, without a vestige of diplomacy, I blurted right out, "Yes, Mr. Durant; we heard so; but we don't think, that is, we don't want an evergreen under the library window; we would like a tree that will live a long, long time and grow big like an elm, and we want it where everybody will see it. "

 Mr. Durant looked exceedingly surprised, and for the space of five seconds I was breathless. Then he smiled in the really fascinating way that he has. "Well, " he said, and looked at me again, "what else have you decided to do?"

 Then I told him all about the program we had planned, which is to include an address to the spade (which we hope will be preserved forever and ever), a class song, a procession, and a few other inchoate ideas. Mr. Durant entered right into the spirit of it, he said he liked the idea of a spade to be handed down from class to class. He asked us if we had the spade yet, and I told him "no, " but Alice and I were going to buy it for the class in the village that afternoon. 

 "Well, mind you get a good one, " he advised. We said we would, very joyfully. Then he told us we might select any young elm we wanted, and tie our class colors on it, and he would order it to be transplanted for us. After that he put on his hat and all three of us went out and fixed the spot right in front of the college by the driveway. Mr. Durant himself stuck a little stick in the exact place where the elm of '81 will wave its branches for at least a hundred years, I hope. 

The hundred years are still to run, and old College Hall hasvanished, but the '81 elm stands in its "prominent" place, a treeof ancient memories and visions ever young. 

It was not until 1889 that the pageant element began to takea definite and conspicuous place in the Tree Day exercises. The class of '89 in its senior year gave a masque in which talldryads, robed in green, played their dainty roles; and that sameyear the freshmen, the class of 1892, gave the first Tree Daydance: a very mild dance of pink and white English maidens arounda maypole--but the germ of all the Tree Day dances yet unborn. In its senior year, 1892 celebrated the discovery of America bya sort of kermess of Colonial and Indian dances with tableaux, and ever since, from year to year, the wonder has grown; Zeus, and Venus, and King Arthur have all held court and revel on theWellesley Campus. Every year the long procession across the greengrows longer, more beautiful, more elaborate; the dancing is moreexquisitely planned, more complex, more carefully rehearsed. Inthe spring, Wellesley girls are twirling a-tiptoe in every momentnot spent in class; and in class their thoughts sometimes dance. Indeed, the students of late years have begun to ask themselvesif it may not be possible to obtain quite as beautiful a resultwith less expense of effort and time and money; for Tree Day, the crowning delight of the year, would defeat its own end, whichis pure recreation, if its beauty became a tyrant. 

This multiplication of joys--and their attendant worries--issomething that Wellesley has to take measures to guard against, and the faculty has worked out a scheme of biennial rotatoryfestivities which since 1911-1912 has eased the pressure of revelryin May and June, as well as throughout the winter months. 

Wellesley's list of societies and social clubs is not short, butthe conditions of membership are carefully guarded. As earlyas the second year of the college, five societies came intoexistence: of these, the Beethoven Society and the Microscopical--whichstarted with a membership of six and an exhibition under threemicroscopes at its first meeting--seem to have been open toany who cared to join; the other three--the Zeta Alpha and PhiSigma societies founded in November, 1876, and the Shakespearein January, 1877--were mutually exclusive. The two Greek lettersocieties were literary in aim, and their early programs consistedin literary papers and oral debates. The Shakespeare Society, for many years a branch of the London Shakespeare Society, devoteditself to the study and dramatic presentation of Shakespeare. Itsfirst open-air play was "As You Like It", given in 1889; and until1912, when it conformed to the new plan of biennial rotation, this society gave a Shakespearean play every year at Commencement. 

In 1881, Zeta Alpha and Phi Sigma were discontinued by the faculty, because of pressure of academic work, but in 1889 they werereorganized, and gradually their programs were extended to includedramatic work, poetic plays, and masques. The Phi Sigma Societygives its masque--sometimes an original one--on alternate yearsjust before the Christmas vacation; and Zeta Alpha alternates withthe Classical Society at Commencement. The Zeta Alpha Masqueof 1913, a charming dramatization in verse of an old Hindu legendby Elizabeth McClellan of the class of 1913, was one of the notableevents of Commencement time, a pageant of poetic beauty and orientaldignity; and in 1915 Florence Wilkinson Evans's adaptation of thelovely old poem "Aucassin and Nicolette", was given for thesecond time. 

In 1889, the Art Society--known since 1894 as Tau Zeta Epsilon--wasfounded; and, alternating with the Shakespeare play, it givesin the spring a "Studio Reception", at which pictures from theold masters, with living models, are presented. The effects oflighting and color are so carefully studied, and the compositionsof the originals are so closely followed that the illusion issometimes startling; it is as if real Titians, Rembrandts, andCarpaccios hung on the wails of the Wellesley Barn. In 1889, also, the Glee and Banjo clubs were formed. 

In 1891, the Agora, the political society, came into existence. The serious intellectual quality of its work does honor to thecollege, and its open debates, at which it has sometimes representedthe House of Commons, sometimes one or the other of the AmericanChambers of Congress, are marked events in the college calendar. 

In 1892, Alpha Kappa Chi, the Classical Society, was organized, and of late years its Greek play, presented during Commencementweek, has surpassed both the senior play and the Shakespeare playin dramatic rendering and careful study of the lines. GilbertMurray's translation of the "Medea", presented in 1914, was aperformance of which Wellesley was justly proud. Usually theWellesley plays are better as pageants than as dramatic productions, but the Classical Society is setting a standard for the carefulliterary interpretation and rendering of dramatic texts, whichshould prove stimulating to all the societies and class organizations. 

The senior play is one of the chief events of Commencement week, but the students have not always been fully awake to their dramaticopportunity. If college theatricals have any excuse for being, itis not found in attempts to compete with the commercial stage andimitate the professional actor, but rather in dramatic revivalssuch as the Harvard Delta Upsilon has so spiritedly presented, or in the interpretation of the poetic drama, whether early or late, which modern theaters with their mixed audiences cannot affordto present. The college audience is always a selected audience, and has a right to expect from the college players dramatic caviare. That Wellesley is moving in the right direction may be seen byreading a list of her senior plays, among which are the "CountessCathleen", by Yeats, Alfred Noyes's "Sherwood", and in 1915"The Piper" by Josephine Peabody Marks. 

But Wellesley's recreation is not all rehearsed and formal. May Day, when the seniors roll their hoops in the morning, andall the college comes out to dance on the green and eat ice-creamcones in the afternoon, is full of spontaneous jollity. Before theburning of College Hall, the custom had arisen of cleaning houseon May Day, and six o'clock in the morning saw the seniors outwith pails and mops, scrubbing and decorating the many statueswhich kept watch in the beloved old corridors. 

One of these statutes had become in some sort the genius ofCollege Hall. Of heroic size, a noble representation of womanlyforce and tranquillity, Anne Whitney's statue of Harriet Martineauhad watched the stream of American girlhood flow through "the Center"and surge around the palms for twenty-eight years. The statuewas originally made at the request of Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman, the well-known abolitionist and dear friend of Miss Martineau;but after Mrs. Chapman's death, it was Miss Whitney's to disposeof, and, representing as it did her ideal modern woman, she gaveit in 1886 to Wellesley, where modern womanhood was in the making. In later years, irreverent youth took playful liberties with"Harriet", using her much as a beloved spinster aunt is used byfond but familiar young nieces. No freshman was considered properlymatriculated until she had been dragged between the rungs ofMiss Martineau's great marble chair; May Day always saw "Aunt Harriet"rise like Diana fresh from her bath, to be decked with more or lessbecoming furbelows; and as the presiding genius in the lightercolumns of College News, her humor--an acquired characteristic--wasmerrily appreciated. Of all the lost treasures of College Hallshe is perhaps the most widely mourned. 

The pretty little Society houses, dotted about the campus, alsogive the students opportunity to entertain their guests, bothformally and informally, and during the months following the fire, when Wellesley was cramped for space, they exercised a generoushospitality which put all the college in their debt. 

As the membership in the Shakespeare and Greek letter societiesis limited to between forty and fifty members in each society, the great majority of the students are without these socialprivileges, but the Barn Swallows, founded in 1897, to whichevery member of the college may belong if she wishes, givesperiodic entertainments in the "Barn" which go far to promotegeneral good feeling and social fellowship. The first presidentof the Barn Swallows, Mary E. Haskell, '97, says that it aroseas an Everybody's Club, to give buried talents a chance. "Suddenlywe adjured the Trustees by Joy and Democracy to bless our charter, to be gay once a week, and when they gave the Olympic nod webegged for the Barn to be gay in--and they gave that too. 

"It was a grim joy parlor; rough old floor, bristly with splinters, few windows, no plank walk, no stage, no partitions, no lighting. We hung tin reflectored lanterns on a few of the posts, --thickernear the stage end, --and opened the season with an impromptuopera of the Brontes'. " To Professor Charlotte F. Roberts, Wellesley '80, the Barn Swallows owe their happy name. 

Besides these more formal organizations there are a number ofdepartment clubs, the Deutsche Verein, the Alliance Francaise, the Philosophy Club, the Economics Club, and informal groups suchas the old Rhymesters' Club, which flourished in the late nineties, the Scribblers' which seems to have taken its place and enlargedits scope, the Social Study Circle, the little Socialist Club, andothers through which the students express their intellectual andsocial interests. 

Of Wellesley's many festivities and playtimes it would take toolong to tell: of her Forensic Burnings, held when the last juniorforensic for the year is due; of her processional serenades, withChinese lanterns; of her singing on the chapel steps in the eveningsof May and June. These well-beloved customs have been establishingthemselves year by year more firmly in undergraduate hearts, butit is not always possible to trace them to their "first time. "Most of them date back to the later years of the nineteenth century, or the first of the twentieth. Wellesley's musical cheer seemsto have waked the campus echoes first in the spring of 1890, asa result of a prize offered in November, 1889, although as farback as 1880 there is mention of a cheer. The musical cheer hasso much beauty and dignity, both near at hand and at a distance, that many of the early alumnae and the faculty wish it might sometime quite supersede the ugly barking sounds, imitated from themen's colleges, with which the girls are fain to evince theirapproval and celebrate their triumphs. They invariably end theirbarking with the musical cheer, however, keeping the best for thelast, and relieving the tortured graduate ear. 

Formal athletics at Wellesley developed from the gymnasium practice, the rowing on the lake, and the Tree Day dancing. In the earlyyears, the class crews used to row on the lake and sing at sunset, in their heavy, broad-bottomed old tubs; and from these casualsummer evenings "Float" has been evolved--Wellesley's waterpageant--when Lake Waban is dotted with gay craft, and the crewsin their slim, modern, eight-oared shells, display their skill. This is the festival which the public knows best, for unlikeTree Day, to which outsiders have been admitted on only threeoccasions, "Float" has always been open to friendly guests. Yearby year the festival grows more elaborate. Chinese junks, Indiancanoes, Venetian gondolas, flower boats from fairyland, glide overthe bright sunset waters, and the crews in their old traditionalstar pattern anchor together and sing their merry songs. Thereare new songs every spring, for each crew has its own song, butthere are two of the old songs which are heard at every WellesleyFloat, "Alma Mater", and the song of the lake, that Louise ManningHodgkins wrote for the class of '87. 

 Lake of gray at dawning day, In soft shadows lying, -- Waters kissed by morning mist, Early breezes sighing, -- Fairy vision as thou art, Soon thy fleeting charms depart. Every grace that wins the heart, Like our youth is flying. 

 Lake of blue, a merry crew, Cheer of thee will borrow. Happy hours to-day are ours, Weighted by no sorrow. Other years may bring us tears, Other days be full of fears, Only hope the craft now steers. Cares are for the morrow. 

 Lake of white at holy night, In the moonlight gleaming, -- Softly o'er the wooded shore, Silver radiance streaming, -- On thy wavelets bear away Every care we've known to-day, Bring on thy returning way Peaceful, happy dreaming. 

After the singing, the Hunnewell cup is presented for the crewcompetition; and with the darkness, the fireworks begin to flashup from the opposite shore of the lake. 

Besides the rowing clubs, in the first decade, there were tennisclubs, and occasional outdoor "meets" for cross-country runs, butapparently there was no regular organization combining in oneassociation all the separate clubs until 1896-1897, when we hearof the formation of a "New Athletic Association. " There is alsorecord of a Field Day on May 29, 1899. In 1902, we find the"new athletics"--evidently a still newer variety than those of1897--"recognized by the trustees"; and the first Field Day underthis newest regime occurred on November 3, 1902. All the laterField Days have been held in the late autumn, at the end of thesports season, which now includes a preliminary season in thespring and a final season in the autumn. An accepted candidatefor an organized sport must hold herself ready to practice duringboth seasons, unless disqualified by the physical examiner, andmust confine herself to the one sport which she has chosen. Duringboth seasons the members may be required to practice three timesa week. 

The Athletic Association, under its present constitution, datesfrom March, 1908. All members of the college are eligible formembership, all members of the organized sports are ipso factomembers of the association, and the Director of Physical Trainingis a member ex officio. An annual contribution of one dollar issolicited from each member of the association, and special fundsare raised by voluntary contribution. In the year 1914-1915, theassociation included about twelve hundred members, not all of themdues-paying, however. 

The president of the Athletic Association is always a senior; thevice president, who is also chairman of the Field Day Committee, and the treasurer are juniors; the secretary and custodian aresophomores. The members of the Organized Sports elect theirrespective heads, and each sport is governed by its own rules andregulations and by such intersport legislation as is enacted bythe Executive Board, not in contravention to regulations by theDepartment of Physical Training and Hygiene. In this way theassociation and the department work together for college health. 

The organized sports at Wellesley are: rowing, golf, tennis, basket ball, field hockey, running, archery, and baseball. Theunorganized sports include walking, riding, swimming, fencing, skating, and snowshoeing. Each sport has its instructor, orinstructors, from the Department of Physical Training. The membersare grouped in class squads governed by captains, and each classsquad furnishes a class team whose members are awarded numerals, before a competitive class event, on the basis of records ofhealth, discipline, and skill. Honors, blue W's worn on thesweaters, are awarded on a similar basis. Interclass competitionsfor trophies are held on Field Day, and the association hopes, with the development of outdoor baseball, to establish interhousecompetitions also. The gala days are, besides Field Day in theautumn, the Indoor Meet in the spring at the end of the indoorpractice, "Float" in June, and in winter, when the weather permits, an Ice Carnival on the lake. 

Through the Athletic Association, new tennis courts have been laidout, the golf course has been remodeled, and the boathouse repaired. In 1915, it was making plans for a sheltered amphitheater, bleachers, and a baseball diamond; and despite the fact that dues are notobligatory, more and more students are coming to appreciate thework of the Association and to assume responsibility toward it. 

Wellesley does not believe in intercollegiate sports for women. In this opinion, the women's colleges seem to be agreed; it isone of the points at which they are content to diverge from thepolicy of the men's colleges. Wellesley's sports are organizedto give recreation and healthful exercise to as many students asare fit and willing to take part in them. Some students evendisapprove of interclass competitions, and it is thought thatthe interhouse teams for baseball will serve as an antidote torivalry between the classes. 

The only intercollegiate event in which Wellesley takes part isthe intercollegiate debate. In this contest, Wellesley has beentwice beaten by Vassar, but in March, 1914, she won in the debateagainst Mt. Holyoke, and in March, 1915, in the triangular debate, she defeated both Vassar and Mt. Holyoke. 

In September, 1904, the college was granted a charter of thePhi Beta Kappa Society, and the Wellesley Chapter, --installedJanuary 17, 1905, is known as the Eta of Massachusetts. 

CHAPTER V

THE FIRE: AN INTERLUDE

On the morning of March 17, 1914, College Hall, the oldest andlargest building on the Wellesley campus, was destroyed by fire. No one knows how the fire originated; no one knows who firstdiscovered it. Several people, in the upper part of the house, seem to have been awakened at about the same time by the smoke, and all acted with clear-headed promptness. The night was thickwith fog, and the little wind "that heralds the dawn" was not strongenough to disperse the heavy vapors, else havoc indeed might havebeen wrought throughout the campus and the sleeping village. 

At about half past four o'clock, two students at the west end ofCollege Hall, on the fourth floor, were awakened and saw a fieryglow reflected in their transom. Getting up to investigate, theyfound the fire burning in the zoological laboratory across thecorridor, and one of them immediately set out to warn Miss Tufts, the registrar, and Miss Davis, the Director of the Halls ofResidence, both of whom lived in the building; the other girlhurried off to find the indoor watchman. At the same time, athird girl rang the great Japanese bell in the third floor center. In less than ten minutes after this, every student was out ofthe building. 

The story of that brief ten minutes is packed with self-controland selflessness; trained muscles and minds and souls respondedto the emergency with an automatic efficiency well-nigh unbelievable. Miss Tufts sent the alarm to the president, and then went to therooms of the faculty on the third floor and to the officers of theDomestic Department on the second floor. Miss Davis set a girlto ringing the fast-fire alarm. And down the four long woodenstaircases the girls in kimonos and greatcoats came trooping, each one on the staircase she had been drilled to use, after shehad left her room with its light burning and its corridor door shut. In the first floor center the fire lieutenants called the roll ofthe fire squads, and reported to Miss Davis, who, to make assurancedoubly sure, had the roll called a second time. No one said theword "fire"--this would have been against the rules of the drill. For a brief space there was no sound but "the ominous one offalling heavy brands. " When Miss Davis gave the order to go out, the students walked quietly across the center, with embers andsparks falling about them, and went out on the north side throughthe two long windows at the sides of the front door. 

And all this in ten minutes!

Meanwhile, Professor Calkins, who does not live at the collegebut had happened to spend the night in the Psychology office onthe fifth floor, had been one of the earliest to awake, had wakenedother members of the faculty and helped Professor Case and herwheel-chair to the first floor, and also had sent a man with an axto break in Professor Irvine's door, which was locked. As ithappened, Professor Irvine was spending the night in Cambridge, and her room was not occupied. Most of the members of the facultyseem to have come out of the building as soon as the students did, but two or three, in the east end away from the fire, lingered tosave a very few of their smaller possessions. 

The students, once out, were not allowed to re-enter the building, and they did not attempt to disobey, but formed a long fire linewhich was soon lengthened by girls from other dormitories andextended from the front of College Hall to the library. Veryfew things above the first floor were saved, but many books, pictures, and papers went down this long line of students to findtemporary shelter in the basement of the library. AssociateProfessor Shackford, who wrote the account of the fire in theCollege News, from which these details are taken, tells us howMiss Pendleton, patrolling this busy fire line and questioning thehalf-clad workers, was met with the immediate response, even fromthose who were still barefooted, "I'm perfectly comfortable, Miss Pendleton", "I'm perfectly all right, Miss Pendleton. " MissShackford adds:

"At about five o'clock, a person coming from the hill sawCollege Hall burning between the dining-room and Center, apparently from the third floor up to the roof, in high, clearflames with very little smoke. Suddenly the whole top seemedto catch fire at once, and the blaze rushed downward and upward, leaping in the dull gray atmosphere of a foggy morning. Witha terrific crash the roof fell in, and soon every window in thefront of College Hall was filled with roaring flames, surgingtoward the east, framed in the dark red brick wall which servedto accentuate the lurid glow that had seized and held a buildingalmost one eighth of a mile long. The roar of devastating fury, the crackle of brands, the smell of burning wood and melting iron, filled the air, but almost no sound came from the human beings whosaw the irrepressible blaze consume everything but the brick walls. 

"The old library and the chapel were soon filled with great billowsof flame, which, finding more space for action, made a spectacleof majestic but awful splendor. Eddies of fire crept along theblack-walnut bookcases, and all that dark framework of our belovedold library. By great strides the blaze advanced, until innumerablecurling, writhing flames were rioting all through a spot alwayshushed 'in the quiet and still air of delightful studies. ' Thefire raged across the walls, in and around the sides and thebeautiful curving tops of the windows that for so many springsand summers had framed spaces of green grass on which fitfulshadows had fallen, to be dreamed over by generations of students. In the chapel, tremendous waves swelled and glowed, reachingalmost from floor to ceiling, as they erased the texts from thewalls, demolished the stained-glass windows, defaced, but did notcompletely destroy the college motto graven over them, and, inconvulsive gusts swept from end to end of the chapel, pouring inand out of the windows in brilliant light and color. Seen fromthe campus below, the burning east end of the building loomed upmagnificent even in the havoc and desolation it was suffering. "

At half past eight o'clock, four hours after the first alarm wassounded, there stood on the hill above the lake, bare, rooflesswalls and sky-filled arches as august as any medieval castleof Europe. Like Thomas the Rhymer, they had spent the nightin fairyland, and waked a thousand years old. Romance alreadywhispered through their dismantled, endless aisles. King Arthur'scastle of Camelot was not more remote from to-day than College Hallfrom the twentieth-century March morning. Weeks, months, a littlewhile it stood there, vanishing--like old enchanted Merlin--intothe impenetrable prison of the air. There will be other houseson that hilltop, but never one so permanent as the dear houseinvisible; the double Latin cross, the ten granite columns, theCenter ever green with ageless palms, the "steadfast crosses, ever pointing the heavenward way", --to eyes that see, these havenever disappeared. 

At half past eight o'clock, in the crowded college chapel, PresidentPendleton was saying to her dazed and stricken flock, "We knowthat all things work together for good to them that love God, --whoshall separate us from the love of Christ?" And when she hadgiven thanks, in prayer, for so many lives all blessedly safe, there came the announcement, so quiet, so startling, that thespring term would begin on April 7, the date already set in thecollege calendar. This was the voice of one who actually believedthat faith would remove mountains. And it did. By the faith ofPresident Pendleton, Wellesley College is alive to-day. She didliterally and actually cast the mountain into the sea on thatseventeenth of March, 1914. St. Patrick himself never achieveda greater miracle. 

She knew that two hundred and sixteen people were houseless;that the departments of Zoology, Geology, Physics, and Psychology, had lost their laboratories, their equipment, their lecture rooms;that twenty-eight recitation rooms, all the administrative offices, the offices of twenty departments, the assembly hall, the studyhall, had all been swept away. Yet, in a little less than threeweeks, there had sprung up on the campus a temporary buildingcontaining twenty-nine lecture and recitation rooms, thirteendepartment offices, fifteen administrative offices, three dressingrooms, and a reception room. Plumbing, steam heat, electricity, and telephone service had been installed. A week after collegeopened for the spring term, classes were meeting in the new building. During that first week, offices and classes had been scattered allover the campus, --in the Society houses, in the basements ofdormitories, the Art Building, the Chemistry Building, the Gymnasium, the basement of the Library, the Observatory, the Stone Hall BotanyLaboratories, Billings Hall; all had opened their doors wide. Thetwo hundred and sixteen residents of old College Hall had all beenhoused on the campus; it meant doubling up in single rooms, butthe doublets persuaded themselves and the rest of the collegethat it was a lark. 

This spirit of helpfulness and cheer began on the day of the fire, and seems to have acquired added momentum with the passing months. Clothes, books, money, were loaned as a matter of course. Byhalf past nine o'clock in the morning, the secretary of the deanhad written out from memory the long schedule of the June examinations, to be posted at the beginning of the spring term. Members ofthe faculty were conducting a systematic search for salvage amongthe articles that had been dumped temporarily in the "Barn" and thelibrary; homes had been found for the houseless teachers, mostof whom had lost everything they possessed; several members ofthe faculty had no permanent home but the college, and their worldlygoods were stored in the attic from which nothing could be saved. It is said that when President Pendleton, in chapel, told thestudents to go home as soon as they had collected their possessions, "an unmistakable ripple of girlish laughter ran through thedispossessed congregation. " This was the Franciscan spirit inwhich Wellesley women took their personal losses. For the generallosses, all mourned together, but with hope and courage. In theDepartment of Physics, all the beautiful instruments which ProfessorWhiting had been so wisely and lovingly procuring, since she firstbegan to equip her student-laboratory in 1878, were swept away;Geology and Psychology suffered only less; but the most harrowinglosses were those in the Department of Zoology, where, besidesthe destruction of laboratories and instruments, and the speciallibrary presented to the department by Professor Emeritus Mary A. Willcox, "the fruits of years of special research work which hadattracted international attention have been destroyed.... ProfessorMarion Hubbard had devoted her energies for six years to researchin variation and heredity in beetles.... In view of the increasinginterest in eugenics, scientists awaited the results with keenanticipation, but all the specimens, notes, and apparatus wereswept away. " Professor Robertson, the head of the department, who is an authority on certain deep-sea forms of life, had justfinished her report on the collections from the dredging expeditionof the Prince of Monaco, which had been sent her for identification;and the report and the collections all were lost. 

Among the few things saved were some of the ivies and the roseswhich the classes had planted year by year; these the fire had notinjured; and a slip from the great wistaria vine on the south sideof College Hall has proved to be alive and vigorous. The alumnaegavel and the historic Tree Day spade were also unharmed. Butthat no life was lost outweighs all the other losses, and this wasdue to the fire drill which, in one form or another, has beencarried on at Wellesley since the earliest years of the college. Doctor Edward Abbott, writing of Wellesley in Harper's Magazinefor August, 1876, says:

"Whoever heard of a fire brigade manned by women? There is one atWellesley, for it is believed that however incombustible thecollege building may be, the students should be taught to put outfire, ... And be trained to presence of mind and familiarity withthe thought of what ought to be done in case of fire. " From timeto time the drill has been strengthened and changed in detail, butin 1902, when Miss Olive Davis, Director of Houses of Residence, was appointed by Miss Hazard to be responsible for an efficientfire drill, the modern system was instituted. An article inCollege News explains that "the organization of the presentfire-drill system is much like the old one. With the adoption ofStudent Government, it was put into the hands of the students. Each year a fire chief is elected from the student-body, by thestudents. This girl is a senior. She is counted an officer ofthe Student Government Association, and is responsible to Miss Davis. Then at meetings held at the beginning of the fall term, eachdormitory elects one fire captain, who in turn appoints lieutenantsunder her, --one for every twenty or twenty-five girls. 

"The directions for a fire drill are:

"Upon hearing the alarm (five rings of the house bell), "1. Close your windows, doors, and transoms. 

"2. Turn on the electric lights. 

"3. March in single file, and as quickly as possible, downstairs, and answer to your roll call. 

"Each lieutenant is responsible for all the girls on her list. After the ringing of the alarm, she must look into every roomin her district and see that the directions have been compliedwith and the inmates have gone downstairs. If the windows anddoors have not been shut, she must shut them. Then she goesdownstairs and calls her roll (some lieutenants memorize theirlists). When the lieutenants have finished, the captain callsthe roll of the lieutenants, asking for the number absent in eachdistrict, and the number of windows and doors left open or lightsnot lighted, if any. 

"The captains are required to hold two drills a month. At theregular meetings of the organization at which the fire chiefpresides and Miss Davis is often present, the captains report thedates of their drills, the time of day they were held, the numberof absentees and their reasons, the time required to empty thebuilding, and the order observed by the girls. 

"Drills may be called by the captain at any time of the day ornight. Frequently there were drills at College Hall when it wascrowded with nonresident students, there for classes. In thatcase no roll was called, but merely the time required and theorder reported. The penalty for non-attendance at fire drillsis a fine of fifty cents, and a serious error credited to the absentee. 

"There are devices such as blocking some of the staircases to trainthe girls for an emergency. It was being planned, just about thetime College Hall burned, to have a fire drill there with artificialsmoke, to test the girls. The system is still being constantlychanged and improved. On Miss Davis's desk, the night of thefire, was the rough draft of a plan by which property could bebetter saved in case of fire, without more danger to life. "

A few weeks after the burning of College Hall, a small fire brokeout at the Zeta Alpha House, but was immediately quenched, andAssociate Professor Josephine H. Batchelder, of the class of 1896, writing in College News of the self-control of the students, says:

"Perhaps the best example of 'Wellesley discipline since the fire, 'occurred during the brief excitement occasioned by the Zeta AlphaHouse fire. A few days before this, a special plea had been madefor good order and concentrated work in an overcrowded laboratory, where forty-six students, two divisions, were obliged to meet atthe same time. On this morning, the professor looked up suddenlyat sounds of commotion outside. 'Why, there's a fire-engine goingback to the village!' she said. 'Oh, yes' responded a girl nearthe window. 'We saw it come up some time ago, but you were busyat the blackboard, so we didn't disturb you. ' The professor lookedover her roomful of students quietly at work. 'Well, ' she said, 'I've heard a good deal of boasting about various things the girlswere doing. Now I'm going to begin!'"

And this self-control does not fail as the months pass. Thetemporary administration building, which the students have dubbedthe Hencoop, tests the good temper of every member of the college. Like Chaucer's wicker House of Rumors it is riddled with vagrantnoises, but as it does not whirl about upon its base, it lacks thesanitary ventilating qualities of its dizzy prototype. On thesouth it is exposed to the composite, unmuted discords of Music Hall;on the north, the busy motors ply; within, nineteen of the twenty-sixacademic departments of the college conduct their classes, betweenwalls so thin that every classroom may hear, if it will, therecitations to right of it, recitations to left of it, recitationsacross the corridor, volley and thunder. Though they allconscientiously try to roar as gently as any sucking dove. Theeffect upon the unconcentrated mind is something like--The cosineof X plus the ewig weibliche makes the difference between themessage of Carlyle and that of Matthew Arnold antedate the Bergsoniantheory of the elan vital minus the sine of Y since Barbarians, Philistines and Populace make up the eternal flux wo die citronenbluhn--but fortunately the Wellesley mind does concentrate, anduncomplainingly. The students are working in these murmurousclassrooms with a new seriousness and a devotion which disregardall petty inconveniences and obstacles. 

And the fire has kindled a flame of friendliness between facultyand students; it has burned away the artificial pedagogic barriersand quickened human relations. The flames were not quenchedbefore the students had begun to plan to help in the crippledcourses of study. They put themselves at the disposal of thefaculty for all sorts of work; they offered their notes, their ownbooks; they drew maps; they mounted specimens on slides for theDepartment of Zoology. In that crowded, noisy, one-story buildingthere are not merely the teachers and the taught, but a body oftried friends, moving shoulder to shoulder on pilgrimage to truth. 

CHAPTER VI

THE LOYAL ALUMNAE

I. 

Ever since we became a nation, it has been our habit to congratulateourselves upon the democratic character of our American system ofeducation. In the early days, neither poverty nor social positionwas a bar to the child who loved his books. The daughter of thehired man "spelled down" the farmer's son in the district school;the poor country boy and girl earned their board and tuition atthe academy by doing chores; American colleges made no distinctionsbetween "gentlemen commoners" and common folk; and as our publicschool system developed its kindergartens, its primary, grammar, andhigh schools, free to any child living in the United States, irrespective of his father's health, social status, or citizenship, we might well be excused for thinking that the last word indemocratic education had been spoken. 

But since the beginning of the twentieth century, two new voiceshave begun to be heard; at first sotto voce, they have risenthrough a murmurous pianissimo to a decorous non troppo forte, and they continue crescendo, --the voice of the teacher and thevoice of the graduate. And the burden of their message is thatno educational system is genuinely democratic which may ignorewith impunity the criticisms and suggestions of the teacher who isexpected to carry out the system and the graduate who is asked tofinance it. 

The teachers' point of view is finding expression in the variousorganizations of public school teachers in Chicago, New York, and elsewhere, looking towards reform, both local and general;and in the movement towards the formation of a National Associationof College Professors, started in the spring of 1913 by professorsof Columbia and Johns Hopkins. At a preliminary meeting atBaltimore, in November, 1913, unofficial representatives fromJohns Hopkins, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, Clark, and Wisconsin were present, and a committee of twenty-five wasappointed, with Professor Dewey of Columbia as chairman, "to arrangea plan of organization and draw up a constitution. " PresidentSchurman, in a report to the trustees of Cornell, makes the situationclear when he says:

"The university is an intellectual organization, composed essentiallyof devotees of knowledge--some investigating, some communicating, some acquiring--but all dedicated to the intellectual life.... TheFaculty is essentially the university; yet in the governing boardsof American universities the Faculty is without representation. "President Schurman has suggested that one third of the boardconsist of faculty representatives. At Wellesley, since thefounder's death, the trustees have welcomed recommendations fromthe faculty for departmental appointments and promotions, and thispractice now obtains at Yale and Princeton; the trustees of Princetonhave also voted voluntarily to confer on academic questions witha committee elected by the faculty. 

An admirable exposition of the teachers' case is found in anarticle on "Academic Freedom" by Professor Howard Crosby Warrenof the Department of Psychology at Princeton, in the Atlantic Monthlyfor November, 1914. Professor Warren says that "In point of fact, the teacher to-day is not a free, responsible agent. His career ispractically under the control of laymen. Fully three quartersof our scholars occupy academic positions; and in America, atleast, the teaching investigator, whatever professional standinghe may have attained, is subject to the direction of some body ofmen outside his own craft. As investigator he may be quiteuntrammeled, but as teacher, it has been said, he is half tyrantand half slave.... 

"The scholar is dependent for opportunity to practice his calling, as well as for material advancement, on a governing board whichis generally controlled by clergymen, financiers, or representativesof the state.... 

"The absence of true professional responsibility, coupled withtraditional accountability to a group of men devoid of technicaltraining, narrows the outlook of the average college professor anddwarfs his ideals. Any serious departure from existing educationalpractice, such as the reconstruction of a course or the adoptionof a new study, must be justified by a group of laymen and theirexecutive agent.... 

"In determining the professional standing of a scholar and thesoundness of his teachings, surely the profession itself should bethe court of last appeal. "

The point of view of the graduate has been defining itself slowly, but with increasing clearness, ever since the governing boards ofthe colleges made the very practical discovery that it was the dutyand privilege of the alumnus to raise funds for the support ofhis Alma Mater. It was but natural that the graduates who bandedtogether, usually at the instigation of trustees or directors andalways with their blessing, to secure the conditional giftsproffered to universities and colleges by American multimillionaires, should quickly become sensitive to the fact that they had no powerto direct the spending of the money which they had so efficientlyand laboriously collected. An individual alumnus with sufficientwealth to endow a chair or to erect a building could usually givehis gift on his own terms; but alumni as a body had no way ofinfluencing the policy of the institutions which they were helpingto support. 

The result of this awakening has been what President EmeritusWilliam Jewett Tucker of Dartmouth has called the "Alumni Movement. "More than ten years ago, President Hadley of Yale was aware ofthe stirrings of this movement, when he said, "The influence ofthe public sentiment of the graduates is so overwhelming, thatwherever there is a chance for its organized cooperation, facultiesand students... Are only too glad to follow it. "

It would be incorrect, however, to give the impression that graduateshad had absolutely no share in the government of their respectivecolleges before the Alumni Movement assumed its present proportions. Representatives of the alumni have had a voice in the affairs ofHarvard, Yale, and Princeton. Self-perpetuating boards of trusteeshave elected to their membership a certain number of mature alumni. In some instances, as at Wellesley, the association of graduatesnominates the candidates for graduate vacancies on these boards. 

The benefits of alumnae representation on the Board of Trusteesseem to have occurred to the alumnae and the trustees of Wellesleyalmost simultaneously. As early as June, 1888, the AlumnaeAssociation of Wellesley appointed a committee to present tothe trustees a request for alumnae representation on the Board;but as the Association met but once a year, results could notbe achieved rapidly, and in June, 1889, the committee reportedthat it had not presented the petition as it had been informedunofficially that the possibility of alumnae representation wasalready under consideration by the trustees. In fact, the trustees, at a meeting held the day before the meeting of the AlumnaeAssociation, this very June of 1889, had elected Mrs. MarianPelton Guild, of the class of 1880, a life member of the Board. 

But the alumnae, although appreciating the honor done them bythe election of Mrs. Guild, still did not feel that the questionof representation had been adequately met, and in June, 1891, a new committee was appointed with instructions to inform itselfthoroughly as to methods employed in other colleges to insurethe representation of the graduate body on governing boards, andalso to convey to the trustees the alumnae's strong desire forrepresentation of a specified character. And a second time thetrustees forestalled the committee and, in a letter addressedto the Association and read at the annual meeting in June, 1892, made known their desire "to avail themselves of the cooperationof the Association" and to "cement more closely the bond" unitingthe alumnae to the college by granting them further representationon the Board of Trustees. A committee from the Association wasthen appointed to discuss methods with a committee from the Board, and the results of their deliberations are given by Harriet BrewerSterling, Wellesley, '86, in an article in the Wellesley Magazinefor March, 1895. By the terms of a joint agreement between theBoard and the Association, the Association has the right to nominatethree members from its own number for membership on the Board. These nominees must be graduates of seven years' standing, notmembers of the college faculty. Graduates of less than threeyears' standing are not qualified to vote for the nominees. Thenominations must be ratified by the Board of Trustees. The termof service of these alumnae trustees is six years, but a nomineeis chosen every two years. In order to establish this method ofrotation, two of the three candidates first nominated served fortwo and four years respectively, instead of six. The first electionwas held in the spring of 1894, the nominations were confirmedby the Board in November, and the three new trustees sat withthe Board for the first time at the February meeting of 1895. 

But as graduate organizations have increased in size, and membershiphas been scattered over a wider geographical area, it has becomecorrespondingly difficult to get at the consensus of graduate opinionon college matters and to make sure that alumni, or alumnae, representatives actually do represent their constituents and carryout their wishes. And the Alumni Movement has arisen to meetthe need for "greater unity of organization in alumni bodies. "

In an article on Graduate Councils, in the Wellesley College Newsfor April, 1914, Florence S. Marcy Crofut, Wellesley, '97, hascollected interesting evidence of the impetus and expansion ofthis new factor in the college world. She writes, "More clearlythan generalization would show, proofs lie in actual organizationand accomplishments of the 'Alumni Movement' which has workeditself out in what may be called the Graduate Council Movement.... Since the organization of the Graduate Council of PrincetonUniversity in January, 1905, the Secretary, Mr. H. G. Murray, to whom Wellesley is deeply indebted, has received requests fromtwenty-nine colleges for information in regard to the work ofPrinceton's Council. "

Among these twenty-nine colleges was Wellesley, and the planfor her Graduate Council, presented by the Executive Board ofthe Alumnae Association to the business meeting of the Associationon June 21, 1911, and voted at that meeting, is a legitimateoutgrowth of the ideals which led to the formation of the AlumnaeAssociation in 1880. The preamble of the Association makes thisclear when it says:

"Remembering the benefits we have received from our alma mater, we desire to extend the helpful associations of student life, andto maintain such relations to the college that we may efficientlyaid in her upbuilding and strengthening, to the end that herusefulness may continually increase. "

In an article describing the formation of the Wellesley GraduateCouncil, in the Wellesley College News for October 5, 1911, itis explained that, "From the time since the 1910-12 ExecutiveBoard (of the Alumnae Association) came into office, it has feltthat there was need for a bond between the alumnae and the collegeadministration; and it believes that this need will be met by asmall representative (i. E. Geographical) definitely chosen graduatebody, which shall act as a clearing-house for the larger AlumnaeAssociation. The Executive Board recognized also as an additionalreason for organizing such a graduate body, that it was necessaryto do so if the Wellesley Alumnae Association is to keep abreastof the activities in similar organizations. " The purpose of theCouncil, as stated in 1911, is a fitting expansion of the Association'spreamble of 1880:

"That, as our alumnae are increasing in large numbers and arescattered more and more widely, it will be of advantage to themand to the college that an organized, accredited group of alumnaeshall be chosen from different parts of the country to confer withthe college authorities on matters affecting both alumnae andundergraduate interests, as well as to furnish the college, bythis group, the means of testing the sentiment of Wellesley womenthroughout the country on any matter. "

There are advantages in not being a pioneer, and Wellesley hasbeen able to profit by the experience of her predecessors in thismovement, particularly Princeton and Smith. Membership in theCouncils of Wellesley and Smith is essentially on the samegeographical basis, but Wellesley is unique among the Councilsin having a faculty representation. The relation between facultyand alumnae at Wellesley has always been markedly cordial, andin welcoming to the Council representatives of the faculty whoare not graduates of the college, the alumnae would seem to indicatethat their aims and ideals for their Alma Mater are at one withthose of the faculty. 

The membership of the Wellesley Graduate Council is composedof the president and dean of the college, ex officio; ten membersof the Academic Council, chosen by that body, no more than twoof whom may be alumnae; the three alumnae trustees; the membersof the Executive Board of the Alumnae Association; and the councilorsfrom the Wellesley clubs. As there were more than fifty Wellesleyclubs already in existence in 1915, and every club of from twenty-fiveto one hundred members is allowed one councilor, and every club ofmore than one hundred members is allowed one councilor for eachadditional hundred, while neighboring clubs of less than twenty-fivemembers may unite and be represented jointly by one councilor, it will be seen that the Council is a large and constantly growingbody. Clubs such as the Boston Wellesley Club, and the New YorkWellesley Club, which already had a large membership, receiveda tremendous impetus to increase their numbers after the formationof the Council. All members of the Council, with the exception ofthe president of the college and the dean, who are permanent, serve for two years. 

The officers of the Graduate Council are the corresponding officersof the Alumnae Association, and also serve for two years. TheExecutive Committee of five members includes the president andsecretary of the Council, an alumna trustee chosen annually fromtheir own number by the three alumnae trustees, and two membersat large. 

The Council meets twice during the academic year, at the college;in February, for a period of three days or less, following themid-year examinations, and in June, when the annual meeting isheld at some time previous to the annual meeting of the AlumnaeAssociation. In this respect the Wellesley Council again differsfrom that of Smith, whose committee of five makes but one officialannual visit to the college, --in January. The "Vassar ProvisionalAlumnae Council", like the Wellesley Graduate Council, must holdat least two yearly meetings at the college, but unlike Wellesley, it elects a chairman who may not be at the same time the Presidentof the Vassar Associate Alumnae. Bryn Mawr, we are told byMiss Crofut, has no Graduate Council corresponding exactly tothe Councils of other colleges; but her academic committee of sevenmembers meets "at least once a year with the President of the Collegeand a committee of the faculty to discuss academic affairs. "

The possibilities which lie before the Wellesley Council may bebetter understood if we enumerate a few of the activities undertakenby the Councils of other colleges. At Princeton, since 1905, morethan two million five hundred thousand dollars has been raisedby the Council's efforts. The Preceptorial System has beeninaugurated and is being slowly developed. The university has beenbrought more prominently before preparatory schools. All thecolleges are feeling the need of keeping in touch with thepreparatory schools, not for the sake of mere numbers, but tosecure the best students. Doctor Tucker has suggested thatDartmouth alumni endow outright, "substantial scholarships inhigh schools with which it is desirable to establish relations, "and the suggestion is well worth the consideration of Wellesleywomen. The Yale Alumni Advisory Board has distributed to the"so-called Yale Preparatory Schools" and to schoolboys in manycities, a pamphlet on "Life at Yale. " And Yale has also turned itsattention to tuition charges, "academic-Sheffield relations", thefuture of the Yale Medical School, the Graduate Employment Bureau. 

All of these Councils are concerned with the intellectual and moraltone of the undergraduates. Wellesley's Graduate Council hasa Publicity Committee, one of whose functions is to prevent wrongreports of college matters from getting into the press. Mrs. HeleneBuhlert Magee, Wellesley, '03, who was made Chairman of theIntercollegiate Committee on Press Bureaus, in 1914, and was atthat time also the Manager of the Wellesley Press Board, remindsus that Wellesley is the only college trying to regulate itspublicity through its alumnae clubs in different parts of thecountry, and gives us reason to hope that in time we shall havepublicity agents trained in good methods, "since the members ofeach year's College Press Board, as they go forth, naturally becomethe press representatives of their respective clubs. "

The Council has also a Committee on Undergraduate Activities, whose duty it is to "obtain information regarding the interestsof the undergraduates and from time to time to make suggestionsconcerning the conduct of the same as they affect the alumnae orbring the college before the general public. " This committeeproposes a Rally Day and a Freshman Forum, to be conducted eachyear by a representative alumna equipped to set forth the idealsand principles held by the alumnae. 

A third committee, bearing a direct relation to the undergraduate, is one on Vocational Guidance. In order to help students "to findtheir way to work other than teaching, " and to "present a surveyof all the possibilities open to women in the field of industryto-day, " this committee welcomes the cooperation of Miss FlorenceJackson, a graduate of Smith and for some years a member of theDepartment of Chemistry at Wellesley, who is now at the head ofthe Appointment Bureau of the Women's Educational and IndustrialUnion of Boston. Miss Jackson's practical knowledge of students, her wide acquaintance with vocational opportunities other thanteaching, and her belief in the "value of the cultural course asa sound general foundation most valuable for providing the senseof proportion and vision necessary for the college woman who isto be a useful citizen, " make her an ideal director of this branchof the Council's activities, and the college gladly promotes herwork among the students; the seniors especially welcome herexpert guidance. 

In framing a model constitution for the use of alumnae classes, the Council has done a piece of work which should arouse thegratitude of all future historians of Wellesley, for the modelconstitution contains an article requiring each class to keep arecord which shall contain brief information as to the members of theclass and shall be published in the autumn following each reunion. Lf these records are accurately kept, and if copies are placed onfile in the College Library, accessible to investigators, the nexthistorian of Wellesley will be spared the baffling paucity ofinformation concerning the alumnae which has hampered her predecessor. 

With ten members of the Academic Council on the Graduate Council, and with the president of the college herself an alumna, therelation between the faculty and the Graduate Council is intimateand helpful to both, in the best sense. Relations with thetrustees, as a body, were slower in forming. President Pendleton, at the Council's fifth session, --in the third year of itsexistence, --reported the trustees as much interested in its formation. At the sixth session of the Council, in June, 1914, when the campaignfor the Fire Fund was in full swing, Mr. Lewis Kennedy Morse, the able and devoted treasurer of the college, and member ofthe Board of Trustees, addressed the members upon "The BusinessSide of College Administration", --a talk as interesting as it wasfrank and friendly. In December, 1914, when the first of the newbuildings was already going up on the site of old College Hall, the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees invited a jointcommittee from the faculty and the alumnae to meet with them todiscuss the architectural plans and possibilities for the "newWellesley. " The Alumnae Committee consisted of eleven membersand included representatives "from '83 to 1913, and from Coloradoon the west to Massachusetts on the east. " Its chairman wasCandace C. Stimson, Wellesley, '92, whose name will always ringthrough Wellesley history as the Chairman of the Alumnae Committeefor Restoration and Endowment, --the committee that conducted thegreat nine months' campaign for the Fire Fund. The FacultyCommittee, of five members, chose as its chairman, ProfessorAlice V. V. Brown, the head of the Department of Art. 

Miss Stimson's report to the Graduate Council of this meeting ofthe joint committee with the Executive Board, indicates a "strongsense of good understanding and a feeling of great harmony anddesire for cooperation on the part of Trustees toward the alumnae. "The Faculty Committee and Alumnae Committee were invited to continueand to hold further conferences with the Trustees' Committee"as occasion might offer. " The episode is prophetic of the futurerelations of these three bodies with one another. President Nicholsof Dartmouth is reported as saying that Dartmouth, founded asthe ideal of an individual and governed at first by one man, hasgrown to the point where it is no longer to be controlled asa monarchy or an empire, but as a republic. Such an utterancedoes not fail of its effect upon other colleges. 

II. 

The women who constitute the Wellesley College Alumnae Association, numbered in 1914-1915 five thousand and thirty-five. The membersare all those who have received the Baccalaureate degree fromWellesley, and all those who have received the Master's degree andhave applied for membership. But only dues-paying members receivenotices of meetings and have the right to vote. Non-graduates whopay the annual dues receive the Alumnae Register, and the noticesand publications of the alumnae, but do not vote. 

Authoritative statistics concerning the occupations of Wellesleywomen are not available. About forty per cent of the alumnaeare married. The exact proportion of teachers is not known, butit is of course large. The Wellesley College Christian Associationis of great assistance to the alumnae recorder in keeping in touchwith Wellesley missionaries, but even the Christian Associationdisclaims infallibility in questions of numbers. An article inthe News for February, 1912, by Professor Kendrick, the headof the Department of Bible Study, states that no record is keptof missionaries at work in our own country, but there were thenmissionaries from Wellesley in Mexico and Brazil, as well as thosewho were doing city missionary work in the United States. Themissionary record for 1915 would seem to indicate that there werethen about one hundred Wellesley women at mission stations inforeign countries, including Japan, China, Korea, India, Ceylon, Persia, Turkey, Africa, Europe, Mexico, South America, Alaska, and the Philippines. 

From time to time, the alumnae section of the News publishes anarticle on the occupations and professions of Wellesley graduates, with incomplete lists of the names of those who are engaged inLaw, Medicine, Social Work, Journalism, Teaching, Business, andall the other departments of life into which women are penetrating;and from this all too meager material, the historian is able toglean a few general facts, but no trustworthy statistics. 

In 1914, the list of Wellesley women, most of whom were alumnae, at the head of private schools, included the principals of theNational Cathedral School at Washington, D. C. ; of Abbot Academy, Andover, Walnut Hill School, Natick, Dana Hall, the Weston School, the Longwood School, all in Massachusetts, and two preparatoryschools in Boston; Buffalo Seminary; Kent Place School, and acoeducational school, both in Summit, New Jersey; Hosmer Hall, inSt. Louis; Ingleside School, Taconic School and the CatherineAiken School, in Connecticut; Science Hill, at Shelbyville, Kentucky;Ferry Hall, at Lake Forest, Illinois; the El Paso School for Girls;the Lincoln School, in Providence, Rhode Island; Wyoming Seminary, another coeducational school; as well as schools for American girlsin Germany, France, and Italy. This does not take into accountthe many Wellesley graduates holding positions of importance incolleges, in high schools, and in the grammar and primary schoolsthroughout the country. 

The tentative list of Wellesley women holding positions of importancein social work, in 1914, is equally impressive. The head workersat Denison House, --the Boston College Settlement, --at the BaltimoreSettlement, at Friendly House, Brooklyn, and Hartley House, New York, are all graduates of Wellesley. Probation officers, settlementresidents, Associated Charity workers, Consumers' League secretaries, promoters of Social Welfare Work, leaders of Working Girls' Clubs, members of Trade-union Leagues and the Suffrage League, show manyWellesley names among their numbers. A Wellesley woman is workingat the Hindman School in Kentucky, among the poor whites; anotheris General Superintendent of the Massachusetts Commission forthe Blind; another is Associate Field Secretary of the New YorkCharity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation;another is Head Investigator for the Massachusetts Babies' Hospital. The Superintendent of the State Reformatory for Girls at Lancaster, Massachusetts, is a Wellesley graduate who is doing work of unusualdistinction in this field. Mary K. Conyngton, Wellesley, '94, took part in the Federal investigation into the condition of womanand child wage earners, ordered by Congress in 1907, and hasmade a study of the relations between the occupations, and thecriminality, of women. Her book "How to Help", published byThe Macmillan Company, embodies the results of her experiencein organized charities, investigations for improved housing, andother industrial and municipal reforms. In 1909, Miss Conyngtonreceived a permanent appointment in the Bureau of Labor atWashington, D. C. 

Wellesley has her lawyers and doctors, her architects, herjournalists, her scholars; every year their tribes increase. Among her many journalists are Caroline Maddocks, 1892, andAgnes Edwards Rothery, 1909. 

Of her poets, novelists, short story writers, and essayists, thenames of Katharine Lee Bates, Estelle M. Hurll, Abbie CarterGoodloe, Margarita Spalding Gerry, Florence Wilkinson Evans, Florence Converse, Martha Hale Shackford, Annie Kimball Tuell, Jeannette Marks, are familiar to the readers of the Atlantic, the Century, Scribner's and other magazines; and the more technicalpublications of Gertrude Schopperle, Laura A. Hibbard, EleanorA. McC. Gamble, Lucy J. Freeman, Eloise Robinson, and Flora IsabelMcKinnon, have won the suffrages of scholars. 

Her most noted woman of letters is Katharine Lee Bates, Wellesley, '80, the beloved head of the Department of English Literature. Miss Bates's beautiful hymn, "America", has achieved the distinctionof a national reputation; it has been adopted as one of America'sown songs and is sung by school children all over our country. The list of her books includes, besides her collected poems, "America the Beautiful and Other Poems", published by the ThomasY. Crowell Company, volumes on English and Spanish travel, on theEnglish Religious Drama, a Chaucer for children, an edition ofthe works of Hawthorne, and a forthcoming edition of the Elizabethandramatist, Heywood. Since her undergraduate days, when she wrotethe poems for Wellesley's earliest festivals, down all the yearsin which she has been building up her Department of EnglishLiterature, this loyal daughter has given herself without stint toher Alma Mater. In Wellesley's roll call of alumnae, there is noname more loved and honored than that of Katharine Lee Bates. 

III. 

 "Hear the dollars dropping, Listen as they fall. All for restoration Of our College Hall. "

These words of a college song fitly express the breathless attitudeof the alumnae between March 17, 1914, and January 1, 1915, thenine months and a half during which the campaign was being carriedon to raise the fund for restoration and endowment, after the fire. And they did more than listen; they shook the trees on which thedollars grew, and as the dollars fell, caught them with nimblefingers. They fell "thick as leaves in Vallombrosa. "

Between June, 1913, and June, 1915, $1, 267, 230. 53 was raised byand through Wellesley women. 

In 1913, a campaign for a Million Dollar Endowment Fund had beenstarted, to provide means for increasing the salaries of theteachers. Salaries at Wellesley were at that time lower thanthose paid in every other woman's college, but one, in New England. The fund had been started with an anonymous gift of one hundredthousand dollars, and the committee, with Candace C. Stimson aschairman, planned to secure the one million dollars in two years. By March, 1914, a second anonymous gift of one hundred thousanddollars had been received, the General Education Board had pledgedtwo hundred thousand dollars conditioned on the raising of thewhole amount, Wellesley women had given fifteen thousand dollars, and there had been a few other gifts from outsiders. The amountstill to be raised on the Million Dollar Fund at the time of thefire was five hundred and seventy thousand dollars. 

President Pendleton, in a letter to Wellesley friends, printedin the News on March 28, 1914, ten days after the fire, writes:"Our Campaign for the Million Dollar Endowment Fund must not bedropped... We have between five and six hundred thousand dollarsstill to raise. All the new buildings must be equipped andmaintained. The sum that our Alma Mater requires for immediateneeds is two million dollars. But this is not all. Another millionwill soon be needed, properly to house our departments of Botanyand Chemistry, and to provide a Student-Alumnae building, andsufficient dormitories to house on the campus the more than fivehundred students now living in the village. We are facing agreat crisis in the history of the College. The future of ourAlma Mater is in our hands. Crippled by this loss, Wellesleycannot continue to hold in the future its place in the front rankof colleges, unless the response is generous and immediate. 

"To sum up, Alma Mater needs three million dollars, two millionof which must be raised immediately. Shall we be daunted bythis sum? We are justly proud of the courage and self-controlof those dwellers in College Hall, both Faculty and Students. Shall we be outdone by them in facing a crisis? Shall we be lesscourageous, less resourceful? The public press has describedthe fire as a triumph, not a disaster. Shall we continue thetriumph, and make our College in equipment what it has proveditself in spirit--The College Beautiful? We can and we must. "

The response of the alumnae to this stirring appeal was instantand ardent. The committee for the Million Dollar Endowment Fund, with its valiant chairman, Miss Stimson, shouldered the newresponsibility. "It is a big contract, " they said, "it comes ata season of business depression, and the daughters of Wellesleyare not rich in this world's goods. All this we know, but we know, too, that the greater the need the more eagerly will love andloyalty respond. "

Then came the offer of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollarsby the Rockefeller Foundation, if the college would raise anadditional million and a quarter by January 1, 1915. The intrepidCommittee of Alumnae added to its numbers, merged the two funds, and adopted the new name of Alumnae Committee for Restorationand Endowment. 

Mary B. Jenkins, Wellesley, '03, the committee's devoted secretary, has described the plan of the campaign in the News for March, 1915. As the Wellesley clubs present the best chance of reaching bothgraduate and non-graduate members, a chairman for each club wasappointed, and made responsible for reaching all the Wellesley womenin her geographical section, whether they were members of the clubor not. In states where there were no clubs, state committeesrounded up the scattered alumnae and non-graduates. Fifty-threeclubs appear in the report, twenty-four state committees, and eightforeign countries, --Canada, Mexico, Porto Rico, South America, Europe, Turkey, India, and Persia. Every state in the Union washeard from, and contributions also came from clubs in Japan andChina. The campaign actually circled the globe. By June, 1914, Miss Jenkins tells us, the appeals to the clubs and state committeeshad been sent out, and many had been heard from, but in orderto make sure that no one escaped, the work was now taken up throughcommittees from the thirty-six classes, from 1879 to 1914. InMarch, 1915, when Miss Jenkins's report was printed in the News, 3823 of Wellesley's daughters had contributed, and belatedcontributions were still coming in. In June, 1915, 3903, out of4840, graduates had responded. Every member of the classes of'79, '80, '81, '84, '92, sent a contribution, and the class gift from '79, $520, 161. 00 was the largest from any class; that of '92, $208, 453. 92, being the next largest. The class gifts include not only directcontributions from alumnae, and from social members who did notgraduate with the class, but gifts which alumnae and former studentshave secured from interested friends. Of the remaining classes, five show a contributing list of more than ninety per cent of themembers; eleven show between eighty and ninety per cent; andfifteen between seventy and eighty per cent. Besides the alumnae, 1119 non-graduates had contributed. None of Wellesley's daughtershave been more loyal and more helpful than the non-graduates. 

An analysis of the amount, $1, 267, 230. 53, given by and throughWellesley women between June, 1913, and June, 1915, shows fourgifts of fifty thousand dollars and over, all of which came throughWellesley women, thirty gifts of from two thousand dollars totwenty-five thousand dollars, three quarters of which came fromWellesley women, and many gifts of less than two thousand dollars, "only a negligible quantity of which came from any one but alumnaeand former students. "

Throughout the nine months of the campaign, the Alumnae Committeeand the trustees were working in close touch with each other. Doctor George Herbert Palmer, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy atHarvard, was the chairman of the committee from the trustees, andhe describes himself as chaperoned by alumnae at every point ofthe tour which he so successfully undertook in order to interviewpossible contributors. To him, to Bishop Lawrence, the Presidentof the Board of Trustees, and to Mr. Lewis Kennedy Morse, thetreasurer, the college owes a debt of gratitude which it can neverrepay. No knight of old ever succored distressed damsel morevaliantly, more selflessly, than these three twentieth-centurygentlemen succored and served the beggar maid, Wellesley, in thecause of higher education. Through the activities of the trusteeswere secured the provisional gifts of seven hundred and fiftythousand dollars from the Rockefeller Foundation, and two hundredthousand dollars from the General Education Board, Mr. AndrewCarnegie's $95, 446. 27, to be applied to the extension of the library, and gifts from Mrs. Russell Sage, Mrs. David P. Kimball, and manyothers. Mrs. Lilian Horsford Farlow, a trustee, and the daughterof Prof. Eben N. Horsford, to whom Wellesley is already deeplyindebted, gave ten thousand dollars toward the Fire Fund; andthrough Mrs. Louise McCoy North, trustee and alumna, an unknownbenefactor has given the new building which stands on the hillabove the lake. Because of the modesty of donors, it has beenimpossible to make public a complete list of the gifts. 

From the four undergraduate classes, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, andfrom general undergraduate gifts and activities, came $60, 572. 04, raised in all sorts of ways, --from the presentation of "BeauBrummel" before a Boston audience, to the polishing of shoesat ten cents a shine. One 1917 girl earned ten dollars duringthe summer vacation by laughing at all her father's jokes, whetherold or new, during that period of recreation. Other enterprisingsophomores "swatted" flies at the rate of one cent for two, darnedstockings for five cents a hole, shampooed, mended, raked leaves. Members of the class of 1916 sold lead pencils and jelly, scrubbedfloors, baked angel cake, counted knot holes in the roof of asummer camp. Besides "Beau Brummel", 1915 gave dancing lessonsand sold vacuum cleaners. One student who was living in College Hallat the time of the fire is said to have made ten dollars by chargingten cents for every time that she told of her escape from thebuilding. The class of 1918, entering as freshmen in September, after the fire, raised $5, 540. 60 for the fund when they had beenorganized only a few weeks. 

The methods of the alumnae were no less varied and amusing. The Southern California Club started a College Hall Fund, andnotices were sent out all over the country requesting every alumnato give a dollar for every year that she had lived in College Hall. Seven hundred and fifty dollars came in. There were thes dansants, musicales, concerts, of which the Sousa concert in Boston wasthe most important, operettas, masques, garden parties, costumeparties, salad demonstrations, candy sales, bridge parties; amoving-picture film of Wellesley went the rounds of many clubs, from city to city, through New England and the Middle West. An alumna of the class of 1896 "took in" $949. 20 for subscriptionsto magazines, with a profit of $175. 75 for the fund. She commentson Wellesley taste in magazines by revealing the fact that theAtlantic Monthly "received by far the largest number of subscriptions. "One girl in Colorado baked bread, "but forsook it to give dancinglessons, as paying even better!" In New York, Chicago, and othercities, the tickets for theatrical performances were bought upand sold again at advanced prices. A book of Wellesley recipeswas compiled and sold. An alumna of '92 made a charming etchingof College Hall and sold it on a post card; another, also of '92, wrote and sold a poem of lament on the loss of the dear old building. The Cincinnati Wellesley Club held a Wellesley market for threeSaturdays in May, 1914, and netted somewhat over seventy-fivedollars a day for the three days. One Wellesley club charged tencents for the privilege of shaking hands with its "fire-heroine. "

On Easter Monday, 1914, when the college had just come back towork, after the fire, the "Freeman Fowls" arranged an egg hunt, with egg-shaped tickets at ten cents, for the fund. The studentsfrom Freeman Cottage, dressed as roosters, very scarlet as totopknot and wattles, very feather dustery as to tail, waylaidthe unwary on campus paths and lured them to buy these ticketsand to hunt for the hundreds of brightly colored eggs which thesecommercially canny fowls had hidden on the Art Building Hill. After the hunt was successfully over, the hunters came down tothe front of the new, very new, administration building, alreadycalled the Wellesley Hencoop, where they were greeted by theghosts and wraiths and other astral presentments of the vanishedstatues of College Hall, and where the roosters burst into anantiphonal chant:

 "Come see the Wellesley Chicken-coop, the Chicken-coop, the Chicken-coop. Come see the Wellesley Chicken-coop, (It isn't far from Chapel!) Come get your tickets for a roost, and give Your chicken-hearts a boost, Come see our Wellesley Chicken-roost, (It isn't far from Chapel!)

 "Just see our brand new Collegette, it's College yet, it's College yet, With sixty-six new rooms to let, (They're practicing in Billings). The Collegette is very tall, It isn't far from Music Hall, Our neighbors can't be heard at all (They learn to sing at Billings). 

 "Oh, statues dear from College Hall, from College Hall, from College Hall, Don't hesitate to come and call On Hen-House day at Wellesley. Niobe sad, and Harriet, and Polly Hym and Dian's pet On Hen-House day, --on Hen-House day, O! Hen-House day at Wellesley. Come walk right through the big front door, Each hour we love you more and more, There's fire-escapes from every floor Of the new Hen-house at Wellesley. "

Having thus formally adopted the new building, whose windows anddoors were already wreathed in vines and crimson (paper) roseswhich had sprung up and blossomed over night, the college nowhastened to the top of College Hall Hill, whence, at the crowingof Chanticleer, the egg-rolling began. The Nest Egg for the fund, achieved by these enterprising "Freeman Fowls", was aboutfifty-two dollars. 

Far off in Honolulu there were "College Capers" in which eightWellesley alumnae, helped by graduates of Harvard, Cornell, Bryn Mawr, and other colleges, earned three hundred dollars. 

The News has published a number of letters whose simple revelationof feeling witnesses to the loyalty and love of the Wellesleyalumnae. One writes:

"A month ago, because of obligations and a very small salary, I thought I could give nothing to the Endowment Plan. By Saturdaymorning (after the fire) I had decided I must give a dollar a month. By night I had received a slight increase in salary, therefore lshall send two dollars a month as long as I am able. I wish itwere millions, my admiration and sympathy are so unbounded. "

Another says: "Perhaps you may know that when I was a SeniorI received a scholarship of (I think) $350. It has long been mywish and dream to return that money with large interest, in returnfor all I received from my Alma Mater, and in acknowledgment ofthe success I have since had in my work because of her. I havenever been able to lay aside the sum I had wished to give, butnow that the need has come I can wait no longer, I am thereforesending you my check for $500, hoping that even this sum, so smallin the face of the immense loss, may aid a little because it comesat the right moment. It goes with the wish that it were many, many times the amount, and with the sincerest acknowledgment ofmy indebtedness to Wellesley. "

From China came the message: "In an indefinite way I had intendedto send five or ten dollars some time this year (to the EndowmentFund), but the loss of College Hall makes me realize afresh whatWellesley has meant to me, and I want to give till I feel the pinch. I am writing (the treasurer of the Mission Board) to send youfive dollars a month for ten months. "

From nearer home: "My sister and I intend to go without springsuits this year in order to give twenty-five dollars each towardthe fund; this surely will not be sacrifice, but a great privilege. Then we intend to add more each time we receive our salary.... I cannot say that I was so brave as the girls at the college, whodid not shed a tear as College Hall burned--I could not speak, my voice was so choked with tears, and that night I went supperlessto bed. But though it seems impossible to believe that College Hallis a thing of the past, yet one cannot but feel that from thisso great calamity great good will come--a broader, higher spiritwill be manifested; we shall cease to think in classes, but allunite in great loving thought for the good and the upbuilding--inmore senses than one--of our Alma Mater. "

And the messages and money from friends of the college were noless touching. The children of the Wellesley Kindergarten, whichis connected with the Department of Education in the college, held a sale of their own little handicrafts and made fifty dollarsfor the fund. 

One who signed himself, "Very respectfully, A Working Man, " wrote:"The results of your college's work show that it is of the best. The Student Government is one of the finest things in Americaneducation. The spirit shown at the fire and since is superb. "

Another man, who wished that he "had a daughter to go to Wellesley, the college of high ideals, " said, "I should be ashamed even toride by in the train without contributing this mite to yourRebuilding Fund. "

A woman in Tasmania sent a dollar, "for you are setting a greatideal for the broad education of women.... We (in Australia) havemuch to thank the higher democratic education of America for. "

From many little children money came: from little girls who hopedto come to Wellesley some day, and from the sons and daughtersof Wellesley students. 

The business men of Wellesley town subscribed generously. Manymen as well as women have expressed their admiration of the collegein a tangible way. 

And from Vassar, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Mt. Holyoke, Radcliffe, Barnard, Wells, Simmons, and Sweet Briar, contributions came pouring inunsolicited. Harvard, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, theMassachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts, and others hadalready loaned equipment and material for the impoverishedlaboratories, and direct contributions to the fund came from theUniversity of Idaho, the Musical Clubs of Dartmouth and theInstitute of Technology; from Hobart College, in cooperation withWellesley alumnae, in Geneva, New York; from the Emerson Collegeof Oratory, the College Club of Tucson, Arizona, the Boston andConnecticut branches of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, the Fitchburg Smith College Club, and the Cornell Woman's Clubof New York City. To Smith College, which had so lately raisedits million, Wellesley was also indebted for helpful suggestionsin planning the campaign. 

When the great war broke out in August, 1914, wise unbelieversshook their heads and commiserated Wellesley; but the dauntlessChairman of the Alumnae Restoration and Endowment Committeecontinued to press on with her campaign--to draw dilatory clubsinto line, to prod sluggish classes into activity, to remindindividuals of their opportunity. 

The pledges for the last forty thousand dollars of the fund camesnowing in during Christmas week, and eleven o'clock of the eveningof December 31, 1914, found Miss Stimson's committee in New Yorkcounting at top speed the sheaves of checks and pledges which hadbeen arriving all day. The remarkable thing about the campaign wasthe great number of small amounts which came in, and the numberof alumnae--not the wealthy ones--who doubled their pledges atthe last minute. It was the one dollar and the five-dollar pledgeswhich really saved the day and made it possible for the collegeto secure the large conditional gifts. On the morning of January 1, 1915, the amount was complete. 

IV. 

With 1915, Wellesley enters upon the second phase of her history, but the early, formative years will always shine through the fire, a memory and an inspiration. Nothing that was vital perished inthose flames. Yet already the Wellesley that looks back uponher old self is a different Wellesley. All her repressed desires, spiritual, intellectual, aesthetic, are suddenly set free. Herlovers and her daughters feel the very campus kindle and quickenbeneath their feet to new responsibilities. 

"The New Wellesley!"

No one knows what that shall be, but the words are vision-filled:prophetic of an ordered beauty of architecture, a harmony oftaste, that the old Wellesley, on the far side of the fire, stroveafter but never knew; prophetic of a pinnacled and aspiringscholarship whose solid foundations were laid forty years deepin Christian trust and patience; prophetic of a questing spiritfreed from the old reproach of provincialism; of a ministeringspirit in which the virtue of true courtesy is fulfilled. 

The end of her first half century will see the campus floweringwith the outward and visible signs of the new Wellesley; and evenas the old fire-hallowed bricks have made beautiful the new walls, so the beauty of the old dreams shall shine in the new vision. 

 "Pageant of fretted roofs that cluster* On hill and knoll in the branches green, Ye are but shadows, and not the luster, Garment, ye, of a grace unseen. 

 "All our life is confused with fable, Ever the fact as the phantasy seems: Yet the world of spirit lies sure and stable, Under the shows of the world of dreams. 

 "Not an idle and false derision The rocks that crumble, the stars that fail; Meaning caskets within the vision, Shaping the folds of the woven veil. "

* Katharine Lee Bates: from a poem, "The College Beautiful, " 1886.