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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/2362-h.zip b/2362-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..351c2b3 --- /dev/null +++ b/2362-h.zip diff --git a/2362-h/2362-h.htm b/2362-h/2362-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..002b784 --- /dev/null +++ b/2362-h/2362-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,8286 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<HTML> +<HEAD> + +<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> + +<TITLE> +The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Story of Wellesley, by Florence Converse +</TITLE> + +<STYLE TYPE="text/css"> +BODY { color: Black; + background: White; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; + text-align: justify } + +P {text-indent: 4% } + +P.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +P.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: small } + +P.letter {font-size: small ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +P.block {font-size: small ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +P.footnote {font-size: small ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +P.finis { text-align: center ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +</STYLE> + +</HEAD> + +<BODY> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of Wellesley, by Florence Converse + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Story of Wellesley + +Author: Florence Converse + +Posting Date: March 1, 2009 [EBook #2362] +Release Date: October, 2000 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF WELLESLEY *** + + + + +Produced by Stephanie L. Johnson. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + +</pre> + + +<BR><BR> + +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +THE STORY OF WELLESLEY +</H1> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +BY +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +FLORENCE CONVERSE +</H2> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +ALMA MATER +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + To Alma Mater, Wellesley's daughters,<BR> + All together join and sing.<BR> + Thro' all her wealth of woods and water<BR> + Let your happy voices ring;<BR> + In every changing mood we love her,<BR> + Love her towers and woods and lake;<BR> + Oh, changeful sky, bend blue above her,<BR> + Wake, ye birds, your chorus wake!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + We'll sing her praises now and ever,<BR> + Blessed fount of truth and love.<BR> + Our heart's devotion, may it never<BR> + Faithless or unworthy prove,<BR> + We'll give our lives and hopes to serve her,<BR> + Humblest, highest, noblest—all;<BR> + A stainless name we will preserve her,<BR> + Answer to her every call.<BR> +<BR> + Anne L. Barrett, '86<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +PREFACE +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +The day after the Wellesley fire, an eager young reporter on a +Boston paper came out to the college by appointment to interview +a group of Wellesley women, alumnae and teachers, grief-stricken +by the catastrophe which had befallen them. He came impetuously, +with that light-hearted breathlessness so characteristic of young +reporters in the plays of Bernard Shaw and Arnold Bennett. He +was charmingly in character, and he sent his voice out on the run +to meet the smallest alumna in the group: +</P> + +<P> +"Now tell me some pranks!" he cried, with pencil poised. +</P> + +<P> +What she did tell him need not be recorded here. Neither was it +set down in the courteous and sympathetic report which he afterwards +wrote for his paper. +</P> + +<P> +And readers who come to this story of Wellesley for pranks will +be disappointed likewise. Not that the lighter side of the +Wellesley life is omitted; play-days and pageants, all the bright +revelry of the college year, belong to the story. Wellesley would +not be Wellesley if they were left out. But her alumnae, her +faculty, and her undergraduates all agree that the college was +not founded primarily for the sake of Tree Day, and that the +Senior Play is not the goal of the year's endeavor. +</P> + +<P> +It is the story of the Wellesley her daughters and lovers know +that I have tried to tell: the Wellesley of serious purpose, +consecrated to the noble ideals of Christian Scholarship. +</P> + +<P> +I am indebted for criticism, to President Pendleton who kindly +read certain parts of the manuscript, to Professor Katharine Lee +Bates, Professor Vida D. Scudder, and Mrs. Marian Pelton Guild; +for historical material, to Miss Charlotte Howard Conant's "Address +Delivered in Memory of Henry Fowle Durant in Wellesley College +Chapel", February 18, 1906, to Mrs. Louise McCoy North's Historical +Address, 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 Margarethe +Muller'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 Endowment +Committee, and to the many others among alumnae and faculty, whose +letters and articles I quote. Last but not least in my grateful +memory are all those painstaking and accurate chroniclers, the +editors of the Wellesley Courant, Prelude, Magazine, News, and +Legenda, whose labors went so far to lighten mine. +<BR><BR> +F.C. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +CONTENTS +</H2> + +<BR> + +<TABLE ALIGN="center" WIDTH="80%"> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">I. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap01">THE FOUNDER AND HIS IDEALS</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">II. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap02">THE PRESIDENTS AND THEIR ACHIEVEMENT</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">III. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap03">THE FACULTY AND THEIR METHODS</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IV. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap04">THE STUDENTS AT WORK AND PLAY</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">V. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap05">THE FIRE: AN INTERLUDE</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VI. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap06">THE LOYAL ALUMNAE</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top"> </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +INDEX [not included]</TD> +</TR> + +</TABLE> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap01"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER I +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE FOUNDER AND HIS IDEALS +</H3> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +I. +</H4> + +<P> +As the nineteenth century recedes into history and the essentially +romantic quality of its great adventures is confirmed by the +"beauty touched with strangeness" which illumines their true +perspective, we are discovering, what the adventurers themselves +always knew, that the movement for the higher education of women +was 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. +</P> + +<P> +We know that the "man in the street", in the sixties and seventies, +watching with perplexity and scornful amusement the endeavor of +his sisters and his daughters—or more probably other men's +daughters—to prove that the intellectual heritage must be a common +heritage if Democracy was to be a working theory, missed the beauty +of the picture. He saw the slim beginning of a procession of +young women, whose obstinate, dreaming eyes beheld the visions +hitherto relegated by scriptural prerogative and masculine commentary +to their brothers; inevitably his outraged conservatism missed +the beauty; and the strangeness he called queer. That he should +have missed the democratic significance of the movement is less +to his credit. But he did miss it, fifty years ago and for several +years thereafter, even as he is still missing the democratic +significance of other movements to-day. Processions still pass +him by,—for peace, for universal suffrage, May Day, Labor Day, +and those black days when the nations mobilize for war, they pass +him by,—and the last thing he seems to discover about them is +their democratic significance. But after a long while the meaning +of it all has begun to penetrate. To-day, his daughters go to +college as a matter of course, and he has forgotten that he ever +grudged them the opportunity. +</P> + +<P> +They remind him of it, sometimes, with filial indirection, by +celebrating the benevolence, the intellectual acumen, the idealism +of the few men, exceptional in their day, who saw eye to eye with +Mary Lyon and her kind; the men who welcomed women to Oberlin +and Michigan, who founded Vassar and Wellesley and Bryn Mawr, +and so helped to organize the procession. Their reminders are even +beginning to take form as records of achievement; annals very far +from meager, for achievement piles up faster since Democracy set +the gate of opportunity on the crack, and we pack more into a half +century 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 above +all, educational lines, since the first woman's college was founded, +is not inconsiderable. +</P> + +<P> +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 statistics +concerning 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 fullness +of life that they connote to American women, middle-aged and +young,—blotted out; coeducational institutions harassed by numbers +and inventing drastic legislation to keep out the women; man still +the almoner of education, and woman his dependent. From all these +hampering probabilities the women's colleges save us to-day. This +is what constitutes their negative value to education. +</P> + +<P> +Their positive contribution cannot be summarized so briefly; its +scattered chronicle must be sought in the minutes of trustees' +meetings, where it modestly evades the public eye, in the academic +formalities of presidents' reports and the journalistic naivete of +college periodicals; in the diaries of early graduates; in newspaper +clippings and magazine "write-ups"; in historical sketches to +commemorate the decennial or the quarter-century; and from the +lips of the pioneers,—teacher and student. For, in the words of +the graduate thesis, "we are still in the period of the sources." +The would-be historian of a woman's college to-day is in much +the same relation to her material as the Venerable Bede was to +his when he set out to write his Ecclesiastical History. The thought +brings us its own inspiration. If we sift our miracles with as +much discrimination as he sifted his, we shall be doing well. We +shall discover, among other things, that in addition to the composite +influence which these colleges all together exert, each one also +brings to bear upon our educational problems her individual +experience and ideals. Wellesley, for example, with her +women-presidents, and the heads of her departments all women +but three,—the professors of Music, Education, and French,—has +her peculiar testimony to offer concerning the administrative and +executive powers of women as educators, their capacity for initiative +and organization. +</P> + +<P> +This is why a general history of the movement for the higher +education of women, although of value, cannot tell us all we need +to know, since of necessity it approaches the subject from the +outside. The women's colleges must speak as individuals; each one +must tell her own story, and tell it soon. The bright, experimental +days are definitely past—except in the sense in which all education, +alike for men and women, is perennially an experiment—and if +the romance of those days is to quicken the imaginations of college +girls one hundred, two hundred, five hundred years hence, the women +who were the experiment and who lived the romance must write it down. +</P> + +<P> +For Wellesley in particular this consciousness of standing at +the threshold of a new epoch is especially poignant. Inevitably +those forty years before the fire of 1914 will go down in her +history as a period apart. Already for her freshmen the old college +hall is a mythical labyrinth of memory and custom to which they +have no clue. New happiness will come to the hill above the lake, +new beauty will crown it, new memories will hallow it, but—they +will all be new. And if the coming generations of students are +to realize that the new Wellesley is what she is because her +ideals, though purged as by fire, are still the old ideals; if they +are to understand the continuity of Wellesley's tradition, we who +have come through the fire must tell them the story. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +II. +</H4> + +<P> +On Wednesday, November 25, 1914, the workmen who were digging +among the fire-scarred ruins at the extreme northeast corner of +old College Hall unearthed a buried treasure. To the ordinary +treasure seeker it would have been a thing of little worth,—a rough +bowlder of irregular shape and commonplace proportions,—but +Wellesley eyes saw the symbol. It was the first stone laid in +the foundations of Wellesley College. There was no ceremony when +it was laid, and there were no guests. Mr. and Mrs. Henry Fowle +Durant 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. +</P> + +<P> +A month later, on the afternoon of Thursday, September 14, 1871, +the corner stone was laid, by Mrs. Durant, at the northwest corner +of the building, under the dining-room wing; it is significant that +from the foundations up through the growth and expansion of all +the years, women have had a hand in the making of Wellesley. +In September, as in August, there were no guests invited, but at +the laying of the corner stone there was a simple ceremony; each +workman was given a Bible, by Mr. Durant, and a Bible was placed +in 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 Christmas +vacation, only a little group of people gathered about the place +where, forty-three years before, Mrs. Durant had laid the stone. +Mrs. Durant was too ill to be present, but her cousin, Miss Fannie +Massie, lifted the tin box out of its hollow and handed it to +President Pendleton who opened the Bible and read aloud the +inscription: +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + "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." +</P> + +<P> +There followed, also in Mrs. Durant's handwriting, two passages +from the Scriptures: II Chronicles, 29: 11-16, and the phrase +from the one hundred twenty-seventh Psalm: "Except the Lord +build the house they labor in vain that build it." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +This stone is now the corner stone of the new building which rises +on College Hill, and another, the keystone of the arch above the +north door of old College Hall, will be set above the doorway of +the new administration building, where its deep-graven I.H.S. +will daily remind those who pass beneath it of Wellesley's unbroken +tradition of Christian scholarship and service. +</P> + +<P> +But we must go back to the days before one stone was laid upon +another, if we are to begin at the beginning of Wellesley's story. +It was in 1855, the year after his marriage, that Mr. Durant bought +land in Wellesley village, then a part of Needham, and planned +to make the place his summer home. Every one who knew him speaks +of his passion for beauty, and he gave that passion free play when +he chose, all unwittingly, the future site for his college. There +is no fairer region around Boston than this wooded, hilly country +near Natick—"the place of hills"—with its little lakes, its +tranquil, winding river, its hallowed memories of John Eliot and +his Christian Indian chieftains, Waban and Pegan, its treasured +literary associations with Harriet Beecher Stowe. Chief Waban +gave his name, "Wind" or "Breath", to the college lake; on +Pegan Hill, from which so many Wellesley girls have looked out +over the blue distances of Massachusetts, Chief Pegan's efficient +and time-saving squaw used to knit his stockings without heels, +because "He handsome foot, and he shapes it hisself"; and Natick +is the Old Town of Mrs. Stowe's "Old Town Folks." +</P> + +<P> +In those first years after they began to spend their summers at +Wellesley, the family lived in a brown house near what is now the +college greenhouse, but Mr. Durant meant to build his new house +on the hill above the lake, or on the site of Stone Hall, and +to found a great estate for his little son. From time to time +he bought more land; he laid out avenues and planted them with +trees; and then, the little boy for whom all this joy and beauty +were destined fell ill of diphtheria and died, July 3, 1863, +after a short illness. +</P> + +<P> +The effect upon the grief-stricken father was startling, and to +many 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 had +been of a conventional type. During the child's illness he +underwent an old-fashioned religious conversion. The miracle +has happened before, to greater men, and the world has always +looked askance. Boston in 1863, and later, was no exception. +</P> + +<P> +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 described +as having "a powerful head, chiseled features, black hair, which +he wore rather long, an olive complexion, and eyes which flashed +the lightnings of wrath and scorn and irony; then suddenly the +soft rays of sweetness and persuasion for the jury. He could +coax, intimidate, terrify; and his questions cut like knives." +The author of "Bench and Bar in Massachusetts", who was in college +with him, says of him: "During the five years of his practice +at the Middlesex Bar he underwent such an initiation into the +profession as no other county could furnish. Shrewdness, energy, +resource, strong nerves and mental muscles were needed to ward +off the blows which the trained gladiators of this bar were +accustomed to inflict. With the lessons learned at the Middlesex Bar +he removed to Boston in 1847, where he became associated with +the Honorable Joseph Bell, the brother-in-law of Rufus Choate, +and began a career almost phenomenal in its success. His management +of cases in court was artistic. So well taken were the preliminary +steps, so deeply laid was the foundation, so complete and +comprehensive was the preparation of evidence and so adroitly +was it brought out, so carefully studied and understood were the +characters of jurors,—with their whims and fancies and +prejudices,—that he won verdict after verdict in the face of +the ablest opponents and placed himself by general consent at +the head of the jury lawyers of the Suffolk Bar." Adjectives less +ambiguous and more uncomplimentary than "shrewd" were also applied +to him, and his manner of dominating his juries did not always +call forth praise from his contemporaries. In one of the newspaper +obituaries at the time of his death it is admitted that he had +been "charged with resorting to tricks unbecoming the dignity of +a lawyer," but the writer adds that it is an open question if +some, or indeed all of them were not legitimate enough, and might +not have been paralleled by the practices of some of the ablest +of British and Irish barristers. Both in law and in business—for +he had important commercial interests—he had prospered. He was +rich and a man of the world. Boston, although critical, had not +found it unnatural that he should make himself talked about in +his conduct of jury trials; but the conspicuousness of his conversion +was of another sort: it offended against good taste, and incurred +for him the suspicion of hypocrisy. +</P> + +<P> +For, with that ardor and impetuosity which seem always to have +made half measures impossible to him, Mr. Durant declared that +so far as he was concerned, the Law and the Gospel were +irreconcilable, and gave up his legal practice. A case which +he had already undertaken for Edward Everett, and from which +Mr. Everett was unwilling to release him, is said to be the last +one he conducted; and he pleaded in public for the last time +in a hearing at the State House in Boston, some years later, when +he won for the college the right to confer degrees, a privilege +which had not been specifically included in the original charter. +</P> + +<P> +His zeal in conducting religious meetings also offended conventional +people. It was unusual, and therefore unsuitable, for a layman +to preach sermons in public. St. Francis and his preaching friars +had established no precedent in Boston of the 'sixties and +'seventies, and indeed Mr. Durant's evangelical protestantism +might not have relished the parallel. Boston seems, for the most +part, to have averted its eyes from the spectacle of the brilliant, +possibly unscrupulous, some said tricky, lawyer bringing souls +to Christ. But he did bring them. We are told that "The halls +and churches where he spoke were crowded. The training and +experience which had made him so successful a pleader before +judge and jury, now, when he was fired with zeal for Christ's +cause, made him almost irresistible as a preacher. Very many +were led by him to confess the Christian faith. Henry Wilson, +then senator, afterwards vice president, was among them. The +influence of the meetings was wonderful and far-reaching." We +are assured that he "would go nowhere unless the Evangelical +Christians of the place united in an invitation and the ministers +were ready to cooperate." But the whole affair was of course +intensely distasteful to unemotional people; the very fact that +a man could be converted argued his instability; and it is +unquestionably true that Boston's attitude toward Mr. Durant was +reflected for many years in her attitude toward the college which +he founded. +</P> + +<P> +But over against this picture we can set another, more intimate, +more pleasing, although possibly not more discriminating. When +the early graduates of Wellesley and the early teachers write of +Mr. Durant, they dip their pens in honey and sunshine. The result +is radiant, fiery even, but unconvincingly archangelic. We see +him, "a slight, well-knit figure of medium height in a suit of +gray, with a gray felt hat, the brim slightly turned down; beneath +one could see the beautiful gray hair slightly curling at the ends; +the fine, clear-cut features, the piercing dark eyes, the mouth +that could smile or be stern as occasion might demand. He seemed +to have the working power of half a dozen ordinary persons and +everything received his attention. He took the greatest pride +and delight in making things as beautiful as possible." Or he +is described as "A slight man—with eyes keen as a lawyer's should +be, but gentle and wise as a good man's are, and with a halo of +wavy silver hair. His step was alert, his whole form illuminate +with life." He is sketched for us addressing the college, in +chapel, one September morning of 1876, on the supremacy of Greek +literature, "urging in conclusion all who would venture upon +Hadley's Grammar as the first thorny stretch toward that celestial +mountain 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, was +the first upon her feet, pulling me after her by a tug at my +sleeve, coupled with a moral tug more efficacious still. Perhaps +a dozen of us freshmen, all told, filed into Professor Horton's +recitation room that morning." And again, "His prompt and vigorous +method of introducing a fresh subject to college notice was the +making it a required study for the senior class of the year. +'79 grappled with biology, '80 had a senior diet of geology and +astronomy." To these young women, as to his juries in earlier +days, he could use words "that burned and cut like the lash of +a scourge," and it is evident that they feared "the somber +lightnings of his eyes." +</P> + +<P> +But he won their affection by his sympathy and humor perhaps, +quite as much as by his personal beauty, and his ideals of +scholarship, and despite his imperious desire to bring their souls +to Christ. They remember lovingly his little jokes. They tell of +how he came into College Hall one evening, and said that a mother +and daughter had just arrived, and he was perplexed to know where +to put them, but he thought they might stay under the staircase +leading up from the center. And students and teachers, puzzled +by this inhospitality but suspecting a joke somewhere, came out +into the center to find the great cast of Niobe and her daughter +under the stairway at the left, where it stayed through all the +years that followed, until College Hall burned down. +</P> + +<P> +They tell also of the moral he pointed at the unveiling of +"The Reading Girl", by John Adams Jackson, which stood for many +years 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." They +saw him ardent in friendship as in all else. His devoted friend, +and Wellesley's, Professor Eben N. Horsford, has given us a picture +of him which it would be a pity to miss. The two men are standing +on 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 munificence +of Valeria Stone. There in the shadow of the evergreens we lay +down on the carpet of pine foliage and talked,—I remember it +well,—talked long of the problems of life, of things worth +living for; of the hidden ways of Providence as well as of the +subtle ways of men; of the few who rule and are not always +recognized; of the many who are led and are not always conscious +of it; of the survival of the fittest in the battle of life, and +of the constant presence of the Infinite Pity; of the difficulties, +the resolution, the struggle, the conquest that make up the history +of every worthy achievement. I arose with the feeling that I had +been taken into the confidence of one of the most gifted of all +the men it had been my privilege to know. We had not talked of +friendship; we had been unconsciously sowing its seed. He loved +to illustrate its strength and its steadfastness to me; I have +lived to appreciate and reverence the grandeur of the work which +he accomplished here." +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +III. +</H4> + +<P> +If we set them over against each other, the hearsay that besmirches +and the reminiscence that canonizes, we evoke a very human, living +personality: a man of keen intellect, of ardent and emotional +temperament, autocratic, fanatical, fastidious, and beauty-loving; +a loyal friend; an unpleasant enemy. "He saw black black and +white white, for him there was no gray." He was impatient of +mediocrity. "He could not suffer fools gladly." +</P> + +<P> +No archangel this, but unquestionably a man of genius, consecrated +to the fulfillment of a great vision. It is no wonder that the +early graduates living in the very presence of his high purpose, +his pure intention, his spendthrift selflessness, remember these +things best when they recall old days. After all, these are the +things most worth remembering. +</P> + +<P> +The best and most carefully balanced study of him which we have +is by Miss Charlotte Howard Conant of the class of '84, in an +address delivered by her in the College Chapel, February 18, 1906, +to commemorate Mr. Durant's birthday. Miss Conant's use of the +biographical material available, and her careful and restrained +estimate of Mr. Durant's character cannot be bettered, and it is +a temptation to incorporate her entire pamphlet in this chapter, +but we shall have to content ourselves with cogent extracts. +</P> + +<P> +Henry Fowle Durant, or Henry Welles Smith as he was called in his +boyhood, was born February 20, 1822, in Hanover, New Hampshire. +His father, William Smith, "was a lawyer of limited means, but +versatile mind and genial disposition." His mother, Harriet Fowle +Smith of Watertown, Massachusetts, was one of five sisters renowned +for their beauty and amiability; she was, we are told, intelligent +as well as beautiful, "a great reader, and a devoted Christian +all her long life." +</P> + +<P> +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. and +Mrs. Samuel Ripley in Waltham, to complete his preparation for +Harvard. Miss Conant writes: "Mr. Ripley was pastor of the +Unitarian Church there (in Waltham) from 1809 to 1846, and during +most of that time supplemented the small salary of a country minister +by receiving twelve or fourteen boys into his family to fit for +college. From time to time youths rusticated from Harvard were +also sent there to keep up college work." +</P> + +<P> +"Mrs. Ripley was one of the most remarkable women of her generation. +Born in 1793, she very early began to show unusual intellectual +ability, and before she was seventeen she had become a fine Latin +scholar and had read also all the Odyssey in the original." Her +life-long friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, writes in praise of her: +"The rare accomplishments and singular loveliness of her character +endeared her to all.... She became one of the best Greek +scholars in the country, and continued in her latest years the +habit of reading Homer, the tragedians, and Plato. But her studies +took a wide range in mathematics, natural philosophy, psychology, +theology, and ancient and modern literature. Her keen ear was +open to whatever new facts astronomy, chemistry, or the theories +of light and heat had to furnish. Absolutely without pedantry, +she had no desire to shine. She was faithful to all the duties +of wife and mother in a well-ordered and eminently hospitable +household wherein she was dearly loved. She was without appetite +for luxury or display or praise or influence, with entire +indifference to triffles.... As she advanced in life her +personal beauty, not remarked in youth, drew the notice of all." +</P> + +<P> +There could have been no nobler, saner influence for an intellectual +boy than the companionship of this unusual woman, and if we are +to begin at the beginning of Wellesley's story, we must begin with +Mrs. Ripley, for Mr. Durant often said that she had great influence +in inclining his mind in later life to the higher education of women. +</P> + +<P> +From Waltham the young man went in 1837 to Harvard, where we hear +of him as "not specially studious, and possessing refined and +luxurious tastes which interfered somewhat with his pursuit of +the regular studies of the college." But evidently he was no +ordinary idler, for he haunted the Harvard Library, and we know +that all his life he was a lover of books. In 1841 he was graduated +from Harvard, and went home to Lowell to read law in his father's +office, where Benjamin F. Butler was at that time a partner. +The dilettante attitude which characterized his college years is +now no longer in evidence. He writes to a friend, "I shall study +law for the present to oblige father; he is in some trouble, and +I wish to make him as happy as possible. The future course of +my life is undetermined, except that all shall yield to holy poetry. +Indeed it is a sacred duty. I have begun studying law; don't be +afraid, however, that I intend to give up poetry. I shall always +be a worshiper of that divinity, and I hope in a few years to be +able to give up everything and be a priest in her temple." After +a year he writes, "I have not written any poetry this whole summer. +Old Mrs. Themis says that I shall not visit any more at the +Miss Muses. I'll see the old catamaran hanged, though, but what +I will, and I'll write a sonnet to my old shoe directly, out of +mere desperation. Pity and sympathize with me." And on March 28, +1843, we find him writing to a college friend: +</P> + +<P> +"I have been attending courts of all kinds and assisting as junior +counsel in trying cases and all the drudgery of a lawyer's life. +One end of my labor has been happily attained, for about three +weeks ago I arrived at the age of twenty-one, and last week I +mustered courage to stand an examination of my qualifications +for an attorney, and the result (unlike that of some examinations +during my college life) was fortunate, with compliments from the +judge. I feel a certain vanity (not unmixed, by the way, with +self-contempt) at my success, for I well remember I and a dear +friend of mine used to mourn over the impossibility of our ever +becoming business men, and lo, I am a lawyer.— I have a right +to bestow my tediousness on any court of the Commonwealth, and +they are bound to hear me." +</P> + +<P> +From 1843 to 1847 he practiced at the Middlesex Bar, and from +1847, when he went to live in Boston, until 1863, he was a member +of the Suffolk Bar. On November 25, 1851, he had his name changed +by act of the Legislature. There were eleven other lawyers by +the name of Smith, practicing in Boston, and two of them were +Henry Smiths. To avoid the inevitable confusion, Henry Welles Smith +became Henry Fowle Durant, both Fowle and Durant being family names. +</P> + +<P> +In 1852 Mr. Durant was a member of the Boston City Council, but +did not again hold political office. On May 28, 1854, he married +his cousin, Pauline Adeline Fowle, of Virginia, daughter of the +late Lieutenant-colonel John Fowle of the United States Army and +Paulina Cazenove. On March 2, 1855, the little boy, Henry Fowle +Durant, Jr., was born, and on October 10, 1857, a little girl, +Pauline Cazenove Durant, who lived less than two months. On +June 21, 1862, we find the Boston Evening Courier saying of the +prominent lawyer: "What the future has in store for Mr. Durant +can of course be only predicted, but his past is secure, and if +he never rises higher, he can rest in the consciousness that no +man ever rose more rapidly at the Suffolk Bar than he has." And +within a year he had put it all behind him,—a sinful and unworthy +life,—and had set out to be a new man. That there was sin and +unworthiness 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 own +severest critic. +</P> + +<P> +Miss Conant's characterization of Mr. Durant, in his own words +describing James Otis, is particularly illuminating in its revelation +of his temperament. In February, 1860, he said of James Otis, +in an address delivered in the Boston Mercantile Library Lecture +course: +</P> + +<P> +"One cannot study his writings and history and escape the conviction +that there were two natures in this great man. There was the +trained lawyer, man of action, prompt and brave in every emergency. +But there was in him another nature higher than this. In all times +men have entertained angels unawares, ministering spirits, whose +missions are not wholly known to themselves even, men living beyond +and in advance of their age. +</P> + +<P> +"We call them prophets, inspired seers,—in the widest and largest +sense poets, for they come to create new empires of thought, new +realms in the history of the mind.... But more ample traditions +remain of his powers as an orator and of the astonishing effects +of his eloquence. He was eminently an orator of action in its +finest sense; his contemporaries speak of him as a flame of fire +and repeat the phrase as if it were the only one which could express +the intense passion of his eloquence, the electric flames which +his genius kindled, the magical power which swayed the great +assemblies with the irresistible sweep of the whirlwind." +</P> + +<P> +Mr. Durant's attitude toward education is also elucidated for us +by Miss Conant in her apt quotations from his address on the +American Scholar, delivered at Bowdoin College, August, 1862: +</P> + +<P> +"The cause of God's poor is the sublime gospel of American freedom. +It is our faith that national greatness has its only enduring +foundation in the intelligence and integrity of the whole people. +It is our faith that our institutions approach perfection only when +every child can be educated and elevated to the station of a free +and intelligent citizen, and we mourn for each one who goes astray +as a loss to the country that cannot be repaired.... From this +fundamental truth that the end of our Republic is to educate and +elevate all our people, you can deduce the future of the American +scholar. +</P> + +<P> +"The great dangers in the future of America which we have to fear +are from our own neglect of our duty. Foes from within are the +most deadly enemies, and suicide is the great danger of our +Republic. With the increase of wealth and commerce comes the +growing power of gold, and it is a fearful truth for states as +well as for individual men that 'gold rusts deeper than iron.' +Wealth breeds sensuality, degradation, ignorance, and crime. +</P> + +<P> +"The first object and duty of the true patriot should be to elevate +and educate the poor. Ignorance is the modern devil, and the +inkstand that Martin Luther hurled at his head in the Castle of +Wartburg is the true weapon to fight him with." +</P> + +<P> +This helps us to understand his desire that Wellesley should +welcome poor girls and should give them every opportunity for +study. Despite his aristocratic tastes he was a true son of +democracy; the following, from an address on "The Influences of +Rural Life", delivered by him before the Norfolk Agricultural +Society, in September, 1859, might have been written in the +twentieth century, so modern is its animus: +</P> + +<P> +"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 of +labor, and that phrase is anything but an idle and unmeaning one. +It is a true gospel to the man who takes its full meaning; the +nation that understands it is free and independent and great. +</P> + +<P> +"The dignity of labor is but another name for liberty. The chivalry +of labor is now the battle cry of the old world and the new. Ask +your cornfields to what mysterious power they do homage and pay +tribute, and they will answer—to labor. In a thousand forms +nature repeats the truth, that the laborer alone is what is called +respectable, is alone worthy of praise and honor and reward." +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +IV. +</H4> + +<P> +In a letter accompanying his will, in 1867, Mr. Durant wrote: +"The great object we both have in view is the appropriation and +consecration of our country place and other property to the +service of the Lord Jesus Christ, by erecting a seminary on the +plan (modified by circumstances) of South Hadley, and by having +an Orphan Asylum, not only for orphans, but for those who are +more forlorn than orphans in having wicked parents. Did our +property suffice I would prefer both, as the care (Christian and +charitable) of the children would be blessed work for the pupils +of the seminary." The orphanage was, indeed, their first idea, +and was, obviously, the more natural and conventional memorial +for a little eight-year-old lad, but the idea of the seminary +gradually superseded it as Mr. and Mrs. Durant came to take a +greater and greater interest in educational problems as distinguished +from mere philanthropy. Miss Conant wisely reminds us that, +"Just at this time new conditions confronted the common schools +of the country. The effects of the Civil War were felt in education +as in everything else. During the war the business of teaching +had fallen into women's hands, and the close of the war found +a great multitude of new and often very incompetent women teachers +filling positions previously held by men. The opportunities for +the higher education of women were entirely inadequate. Mt. Holyoke +was turning away hundreds of girls every year, and there were few +or no other advanced schools for girls of limited means." +</P> + +<P> +In 1867 Mr. Durant was elected a trustee of Mt. Holyoke. In 1868 +Mrs. Durant gave to Mt. Holyoke ten thousand dollars, which enabled +the seminary to build its first library building. We are told that +Mr. and Mrs. Durant used to say that there could not be too many +Mt. Holyokes. And in 1870, on March 17, the charter of Wellesley +Female Seminary was signed by Governor William Claflin. +</P> + +<P> +On April 16, 1870, the first meeting of the Board of Trustees was +held, at Mr. Durant's Marlborough Street house in Boston, and the +Reverend Edward N. Kirk, pastor of the Mt. Vernon Church in Boston, +was elected president of the board. Mr. Durant arranged that both +men and women should constitute the Board of Trustees, but that +women should constitute the faculty; and by his choice the first +and second presidents of the college were women. The continuance +of this tradition by the trustees has in every respect justified +the ideal and the vision of the founder. The trustees were to be +members of Evangelical churches, but no denomination was to have +a majority upon the board. On March 7, 1873, the name of the +institution 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 making +their own plans. +</P> + +<P> +And meanwhile, since the summer of 1871, the great house on the +hill above Lake Waban had been rising, story on story. +</P> + +<P> +Miss Martha Hale Shackford, Wellesley, 1896, in her valuable +little pamphlet, "College Hall", written immediately after the fire, +to preserve for future generations of Wellesley women the traditions +of the vanished building, tells us with what intentness Mr. Durant +studied other colleges, and how, working with the architect, +Mr. Hammatt Billings of Boston, "details of line and contour +were determined before ground was broken, and the symmetry of +the huge building was assured from the beginning." +</P> + +<P> +"Reminiscences of those days are given by residents of Wellesley, +who recall the intense interest of the whole countryside in this +experiment. From Natick came many high-school girls, on Saturday +afternoons, to watch the work and to make plans for attending the +college. As the brick-work advanced and the scaffolding rose +higher and higher, the building assumed gigantic proportions, +impressive in the extreme. The bricks were brought from Cambridge +in small cars, which ran as far as the north lodge and were then +drawn, on a roughly laid switch track, to the side of the building +by a team of eight mules. Other building materials were unloaded +in the meadow and then transferred by cars. As eighteen loads +of bricks arrived daily the pre-academic aspect of the campus was +one of noise and excitement. At certain periods during the +finishing of the interior, there were almost three hundred workmen." +A pretty story has come down to us of one of these workmen who +fell 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 brick +in its place. +</P> + +<P> +Mr. Durant's eye was upon every detail. He was at hand every day +and sometimes all day, for he often took his lunch up to the campus +with him, and ate it with the workmen in their noon hour. In 1874 +he writes: "The work is very hard and I get very tired. I do +feel thankful for the privilege of trying to do something in +the cause of Christ. I feel daily that I am not worthy of such +a privilege, and I do wish to be a faithful servant to my Master. +Yet this does not prevent me from being very weary and sorely +discouraged at times. To-night I am so tired I can hardly sit up +to write." +</P> + +<P> +And from one who, as a young girl, was visiting at his country +house when the house was building, we have this vivid reminiscence: +"My first impression of Mr. Durant was, 'Here is the quickest +thinker'—my next—'and the keenest wit I have ever met.' Then +came the day when under the long walls that stood roofed but bare +in the solitude above Lake Waban, I sat upon a pile of plank, now +the flooring of Wellesley College, and listened to Mr. Durant. +I could not repeat a word he said. I only knew as he spoke and +I listened, the door between the seen and the unseen opened and +I saw a great soul and its quest, God's glory. I came back to +earth to find this seer, with his vision of the wonder that should +be, a master of detail and the most tireless worker. The same day +as this apocalypse, or soon after, I went with Mr. Durant up a +skeleton stairway to see the view from an upper window. The +workmen were all gone but one man, who stood resting a grimy hand +on the fair newly finished wall. For one second I feared to see +a blow follow the flash of Mr. Durant's eye, but he lowered rather +than raised his voice, as after an impressive silence he showed +the scared man the mark left on the wall and his enormity.... +Life was keyed high in Mr. Durant's home, and the keynote was +Wellesley College. While the walls were rising he kept workman's +hours. Long before the family breakfast he was with the builders. +At prayers I learned to listen night and morning for the prayer +for Wellesley—sometimes simply an earnest 'Bless Thy college.' +We sat on chairs wonderful in their variety, but all on trial for +the ease and rest of Wellesley, and who can count the stairways +Mrs. Durant went up, not that she might know how steep the stairs +of another, but to find the least toilsome steps for Wellesley feet. +</P> + +<P> +"Night did not bring rest, only a change of work. Letters came and +went like the correspondence of a secretary of state. Devotion +and consecration I had seen before, and sacrifice and self-forgetting, +but never anything like the relentless toil of those two who toiled +not for themselves. If genius and infinite patience met for +the making of Wellesley, side by side with them went the angels +of work and prayer; the twin angels were to have their shrine +in the college." +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +V. +</H4> + +<P> +On September 8, 1875, the college opened its doors to three hundred +and fourteen students. More than two hundred other applicants +for admission had been refused for lack of room. We can imagine +the excitement of the fortunate three hundred and fourteen, driving +up 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 little +Gothic Lodge, and up the avenue between the rows of young elms +and purple beeches. There was a herd of Jersey cows grazing in +the meadow that day, and there is a tradition that the first student +entered the college by walking over a narrow plank, as the steps +up to the front door were not yet in place; but the story, though +pleasantly symbolical, does not square with the well-known energy +and impatience of the founder. +</P> + +<P> +The students were received on their arrival by the president, +Miss Ada L. Howard, in the reception room. They were then shown +to their rooms by teachers. The majority of the rooms were in +suites, a study and bedroom or bedrooms for two, three, and in +a few suites, four girls. There were almost no single rooms in +those days, even for the teachers. With a few exceptions, every +bedroom 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 alumna +writes: "The wooden bedsteads with their wooden slats, of vivid +memory, the wardrobes, so much more hospitable than the two hooks +on 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 straining +endeavors to rearrange them in our rooms, without the help of man." +</P> + +<P> +When the student had showed her room to her anxious relatives, +on that first day, she came down to the room that was then the +president's office, but later became the office of the registrar. +There she found Miss Sarah P. Eastman, who, for the first six +years of the college life, was teacher of history and director of +domestic work. Later, with her sister, Miss Julia A. Eastman, she +became one of the founders of Dana Hall, the preparatory school +in Wellesley village. An alumna of the class of '80 who evidently +had dreaded this much-heralded domestic work, writes that Miss +Eastman's personality robbed it of its horrors and made it seem +a noble and womanly thing. "When, in her sweet and gracious +manner, she asked, 'How would you like to be on the circle to +scrape dinner dishes?' you straightway felt that no occupation +could be more noble than scraping those mussy plates." +</P> + +<P> +"All that day," we are told, "confusion was inevitable. Mr. Durant +hovered about, excited, anxious, yet reassured by the enthusiasm +of the students, who entered with eagerness into the new world. +He superintended feeding the hungry, answered questions, and +studied with great keenness the faces of the girls who were entering +Wellesley College. In the middle of the afternoon it had been +discovered 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 provided +a large brass dinnerbell. At six o'clock the next morning two +students, side by side, walked through all the corridors, ringing +the rising-bell,—an act, as Miss Eastman says, symbolic of the +inner awakening to come to all those girls." Thirty-nine years +later, at the sound of a bell in the early morning, the household +were to awake to duty for the last time in the great building. +The unquestioning obedience, the prompt intelligence, the unconscious +selflessness with which they obeyed that summons in the dawn of +March 17, 1914, witness to that "inner awakening." +</P> + +<P> +The early days of that first term were given over to examinations, +and it was presently discovered that only thirty of the three hundred +and fourteen would-be college students were really of college grade. +The others were relegated to a preparatory department, of which +Mr. Durant was always intolerant, and which was finally discontinued +in 1881, the year of his death. +</P> + +<P> +Mr. Durant's ideals for the college were of the highest, and in +many respects he was far in advance of his times in his attitude +toward educational matters. He meant Wellesley to be a university +some 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, and +looked out over the beautiful campus. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you see what I see?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"No," was the quiet answer, for there were few who would venture +to say they saw the visions in his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Then I will tell you," he said. "On that hill an Art School, +down there a Musical Conservatory, on the elevation yonder a +Scientific School, and just beyond that an Observatory, at the +farthest right a Medical College, and just there in the center a +new stone chapel, built as the college outgrew the old one. +Yes,—this will all be some time—but I shall not be here." +</P> + +<P> +It is significant that the able lawyer did not number a law school +among his university buildings, and that although he gave to +Wellesley his personal library, the gift did not include his law +library. Nevertheless, there are lawyers among the Wellesley +graduates, and one or two of distinction. +</P> + +<P> +Mr. Durant's desire that the college should do thorough, original, +first-hand work, cannot be too strongly emphasized. Miss Conant +tells us that, "For all scientific work he planned laboratories +where students might make their own investigations, a very unusual +step for those times." In 1878, when the Physics laboratory was +started 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 conducting +their own experimental work. Mr. Durant also began the collection +of scientific and literary periodicals containing the original +papers of the great investigators, now so valuable to the college. +"This same idea of original work led him to purchase for the +library books for the study of Icelandic and allied languages, so +that the English department might also begin its work at the root +of things. He wished students of Greek and Latin to illuminate +their work by the light of archeology, topography, and epigraphy. +Such books as then existed on these subjects were accordingly +procured. In 1872 no handbooks of archeology had been prepared, +and even in 1882 no university in America offered courses in +that subject." +</P> + +<P> +His emphasis on physical training for the students was also an +advance upon the general attitude of the time. He realized that +the Victorian young lady, with her chignon and her Grecian bend, +could not hope to make a strong student. The girls were encouraged +to row on the lake, to take long, brisk walks, to exercise in the +gymnasium. Mr. Durant sent to England for a tennis set, as none +could be procured in America, "but had some difficulty in persuading +many of the students to take such very violent exercise." +</P> + +<P> +But despite these far-seeing plans, he was often, during his +lifetime, his own greatest obstacle to their achievement. He brought +to his task a large inexperience of the genus girl, a despotic +habit of mind, and a temperamental tendency to play Providence. +Theoretically, he wished to give the teachers and students of +Wellesley an opportunity to show what women, with the same +educational facilities as their brothers and a free hand in directing +their own academic life, could accomplish for civilization. +Practically, they had to do as he said, as long as he lived. The +records in the diaries, letters, and reminiscences which have come +down to us from those early days, are full of Mr. Durant's commands +and coercions. +</P> + +<P> +On one historic occasion he decides that the entire freshman +schedule 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 their +Greek, Latin, and Mathematics. In vain do the students protest +at being treated like district school children; in vain do the +teachers point out the injury to the college dignity; in vain do +the superintendents evince an unflattering lack of interest in +the scholarship of Wellesley. It must be done. It is done. +The president of the freshman class is called upon to recite her +Greek lesson. She begins. The superintendents chatter and laugh +discourteously among themselves. But the president of the freshman +class has her own ideas of classroom etiquette. She pauses. She +waits, silent, until the room is hushed, then she resumes her +recitation 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 harried +and hurried souls to Christ. But Victorian girls were less docile +than the medieval Franks and Goths. They seem, many of them, +to have eluded or withstood this forceful shepherding with a +vigilance as determined as Mr. Durant's own. +</P> + +<P> +But some of the letters and diaries give us such a vivid picture +of this early Wellesley that it would be a pity not to let them +speak. 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 find +the little turns and twinkles of phrase which make Mrs. Kingsley's +books such good reading. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +VI. +</H4> + +<P CLASS="letter"> + 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. +</P> + +<P CLASS="letter"> + 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. +</P> + +<P CLASS="letter"> + "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." +</P> + +<P CLASS="letter"> + 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. +</P> + +<P CLASS="letter"> + 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. +</P> + +<P CLASS="letter"> + 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." +</P> + +<P CLASS="letter"> + 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." +</P> + +<P CLASS="letter"> + 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. +</P> + +<P CLASS="letter"> + 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. +</P> + +<P CLASS="letter"> + 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. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P> +To complete this picture of the college woman in 1876 we need +the description of the college president, by a member of the class +of '80: "Miss Howard with her young face, pink cheeks, blue eyes, +and puffs of snow-white hair, wearing always a long trailing gown +of black silk, cut low at the throat and finished with folds of +snowy tulle." None of these writers gives the date at which the +trail disappeared from the classroom. +</P> + +<P> +The following letters are from Mary Elizabeth Stilwell, a member +of that same class of '79 which wore the trails. She, like +Florence Morse, left college on account of her health. The letters +are printed by the courtesy of her daughter, Ruth Eleanor McKibben, +a graduate of Denison College and a graduate student at Wellesley +during 1914 and 1915. Elizabeth Stilwell was older and more mature +than Florence Morse, and her letters give us the old Wellesley +from quite a different angle. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="letter"> + Wellesley College—<BR> + Oct. 16, '75.<BR> +<BR> + My Dear Mother:—<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="letter"> + 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. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +We must remember that the writer is a young girl, intolerant, as +youth is always intolerant, and that she was writing only one month +after the college had opened. It is not to be expected that she +could understand the creative excitement under which the founder +was laboring in those first years. We, who look back, can appreciate +what it must have meant to a man of his imagination and intensity, +to see his ideal coming true; naturally, he could not keep his +hands off. And we must remember also that until his death Mr. Durant +met the yearly deficit of the college. This gave him a peculiar +claim to have his wishes carried out, whether in the classroom or +in the kitchen. +</P> + +<P> +Miss Stilwell continues: +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="letter"> + 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. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P> +On December 31, we find her writing: "My Greek is the only pleasant +thing to which I can look forward, and I am quite sure good +instruction awaits me there." +</P> + +<P> +In 1876 she cheers up a bit, and on September 17, writes: "I am +going to like Miss Lord (professor of Latin) very much indeed +and shall derive a great deal of profit from her teaching." And +on October 8, +</P> + +<P> +"Having already had so much Greek, I think I could take the classical +course for Honors right through, even though I did not begin German +until another year, and as I am quite anxious to study Chemistry +and have the laboratory practice perhaps I had best take Chemistry +now and leave German for another year. It is indeed a problem and +a profound one as to what I am to do with my education and I am +very anxious to hear from father in answer to my letter and get +his thoughts on the matter. I have the utmost confidence in +Miss Horton's judgment (professor of Greek) and I think I shall +talk the matter over with her in a day or two." +</P> + +<P> +Evidently the "experiments" which had taken so much of her time +in 1875 had now been eliminated, and she was able to respect +the work which she was doing. Her Sunday schedule, which she +sends her mother on October 15, 1876, will be of interest to the +modern college girl. +</P> + +<PRE> + 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 +</PRE> + +<P> +And in addition to her required work, this ambitious young student +has arranged a course of reading for herself: +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="block"> + 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. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Thus do we trace Literature 9 (the Shakespeare Course) to its +modest fountainhead. +</P> + +<P> +Elizabeth Stilwell left her Alma Mater in 1877, but so cherished +were 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 happy +girlhood was Wellesley College. +</P> + +<P> +From such naive beginnings, amateur in the best sense of the word, +the Wellesley of to-day has arisen. Details of the founder's plan +have been changed and modified to meet conditions which he could +not foresee. But his "five great essentials for education at +Wellesley College" are still the touchstones of Wellesley scholarship. +In the founder's own words they are: +</P> + +<P> +FIRST. God with us; no plan can prosper without Him. +</P> + +<P> +SECOND. Health; no system of education can be in accordance +with God's laws which injures health. +</P> + +<P> +THIRD. Usefulness; all beauty is the flower of use. +</P> + +<P> +FOURTH. Thoroughness. +</P> + +<P> +FIFTH. The one great truth of higher education which the noblest +womanhood demands; viz. the supreme development and unfolding +of every power and faculty, of the Kingly reason, the beautiful +imagination, the sensitive emotional nature, and the religious +aspirations. The ideal is of the highest learning in full harmony +with the noblest soul, grand by every charm of culture, useful +and beautiful because useful; feminine purity and delicacy and +refinement giving their luster and their power to the most absolute +science—woman learned without infidelity and wise without conceit, +the crowned queen of the world by right of that Knowledge which +is Power and that Beauty which is Truth." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap02"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER II +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE PRESIDENTS AND THEIR ACHIEVEMENT +</H3> + +<P> +Wellesley's career differs in at least one obvious and important +particular from the careers of her sister colleges, Smith, Vassar, +and Bryn Mawr,—in the swift succession of her presidents during +her formative years. Smith College, opening in the same year as +Wellesley, 1875, remained under President Seelye's wise guidance +for thirty-five years. Vassar, between 1886 and 1914, had but +one president. Bryn Mawr, in 1914, still followed the lead of +Miss Thomas, first dean and then president. In 1911, Wellesley's +sixth president was inaugurated. Of the five who preceded President +Pendleton, only Miss Hazard served more than six years, and even +Miss Hazard's term of eleven years was broken by more than one +long absence because of illness. +</P> + +<P> +It is useless to deny that this lack of administrative continuity +had its disadvantages, yet no one who watched the growth and +development of Wellesley during her first forty years could fail +to mark the genuine progression of her scholarly ideal. Despite +an increasingly hampering lack of funds—poverty is not too strong +a word—and the disconcerting breaks and changes in her presidential +policy, she never took a backward step, and she never stood still. +The Wellesley that Miss Freeman inherited was already straining +at its leading strings and impatient of its boarding-school horizons; +the Wellesley that Miss Shafer left was a college in every modern +acceptation of the term, and its academic prestige has been confirmed +and enhanced by each successive president. +</P> + +<P> +Of these six women who were called to direct the affairs of Wellesley +in her first half century, Miss Ada L. Howard seems to have been +the least forceful; but her position was one of peculiar difficulty, +and she apparently took pains to adjust herself with tact and +dignity to conditions which her more spirited successors would +have found unbearably galling. Professor George Herbert Palmer, +in his biography of his wife, epitomizes the early situation when +he says that Mr. Durant "had, it is true, appointed Miss Ada L. Howard +president; but her duties as an executive officer were nominal +rather than real; neither his disposition, her health, nor her +previous training allowing her much power." +</P> + +<P> +Miss Howard was a New Hampshire woman, the daughter of William +Hawkins Howard and Adaline Cowden Howard. Three of her great +grandfathers were officers in the War of the Revolution. Her father +is said to have been a good scholar and an able teacher as well +as a scientific agriculturist, and her mother was "a gentlewoman +of sweetness, strength and high womanhood." When their daughter +was born, the father and mother were living in Temple, a village of +Southern New Hampshire not very far from Jaffrey. The little girl +was taught by her father, and was later sent to the academy at +New Ipswich, New Hampshire, to the high school at Lowell, and to +Mt. Holyoke Seminary, where she was graduated. After leaving +Mt. Holyoke, she taught at Oxford, Ohio, and she was at one time +the principal of the Woman's Department of Knox College, Illinois. +In the early '70's this was a career of some distinction, for a +woman, and Mr. Durant was justified in thinking that he had found +the suitable executive head for his college. We hear of his saying, +"I have been four years looking for a president. She will be a +target to be shot at, and for the present the position will be one +of severe trials." +</P> + +<P> +Miss Howard came to Wellesley in 1875, giving up a private school +of her own, Ivy Hall, in Bridgeton, New Jersey, in order to become +a college president. No far-seeing policies can be traced to her, +however; she seems to have been content to press her somewhat +narrow and rigid conception of discipline upon a more or less +restive student body, and to follow Mr. Durant's lead in all matters +pertaining to scholarship and academic expansion. +</P> + +<P> +We can trace that expansion from year to year through this first +administration. In 1877 the Board of Visitors was established, +and eminent educators and clergymen were invited to visit the +college at stated intervals and stimulate by their criticism the +college routine. In 1878 the Students' Aid Society was founded +to 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 wise +generosity of Mrs. Durant and a group of Boston women, the society +was set upon its feet, and its long career of blessed usefulness +was begun. This is only one of the many gifts which Wellesley +owes to Mrs. Durant. As Professor Katharine Lee Bates has said +in her charming sketch of Mrs. Durant in the Wellesley Legenda +for 1894: "Her specific gifts to Wellesley it is impossible to +completely enumerate. She has forgotten, and no one else ever +knew. So long as Mr. Durant was living, husband and wife were +one and inseparable in service and donation. But since his death, +while it has been obvious that she spends herself unsparingly in +college cares, adding many of his functions to her own, a +continuous flow of benefits, almost unperceived, has come to +Wellesley 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." +</P> + +<P> +In 1878 the Teachers' Registry was also established, a method of +registration by which those students who expected to teach might +bring their names and qualifications before the schools of the +country. But the most important academic events of this year, +and those which reacted directly upon the intellectual life of +the college, were the establishment of the Physics laboratory, +under the careful supervision of Professor Whiting, and the +endowment of the Library by Professor Eben N. Horsford of Cambridge. +This endowment provided a fund for the purchase of new books and +for various expenses of maintenance, and was only one of the many +gifts which Wellesley was to receive from this generous benefactor. +Another gift, of this year, was the pipe organ, presented by +Mr. William H. Groves, for the College Hall Chapel. Later, when +the new Memorial Chapel was built, this organ was removed to +Billings Hall, the concert room of the Department of Music. +</P> + +<P> +On June 24, 1879, Wellesley held her first Commencement exercises, +with a graduating class of eighteen and an address by the Reverend +Richard S. Storrs, D.D., on the "Influence of Woman in the Future." +</P> + +<P> +In 1880, on May 27, the corner stone of Stone Hall was laid, the +second building on the college campus. It was the gift of Mrs. +Valeria G. Stone, and was intended, in the beginning, as a dormitory +for the "teacher specials." Doctor William A. Willcox of Malden, +a devoted trustee of Wellesley from 1878 to 1904, and a relative +of Mrs. Stone, was influential in securing this gift for the college, +and it was he who first turned the attention of Mr. and Mrs. Durant +to the needs of the women who had already been engaged in teaching, +but who wished to fit themselves for higher positions by advanced +work in one or more particular directions. At first, there were +a good many of them, and even as late as 1889 and 1890 there were +a few still in evidence; but gradually, as the number of regular +students increased, and accommodations became more limited, and +as 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 in +regular standing. +</P> + +<P> +On June 10, 1880, the corner stone of Music Hall was laid; the +inscription in the stone reads: "The College of Music is dedicated +to Almighty God with the hope that it will be used in his service." +There are added the following passages from the Bible: +</P> + +<P> +"Trust ye in the Lord forever: for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting +strength." Isaiah, 26: 4. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Sing praises to God, sing praises:<BR> + Sing praises unto our King, sing praises.<BR> + For God is the King of all the earth." Psalms, 47: 6-7.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +The building was given by the founders. +</P> + +<P> +The year 1881 is marked by the closing, in June, of Wellesley's +preparatory department, another intellectual advance. In June +also, on the tenth, the corner stone of Simpson Cottage was laid. +The building was the gift of Mr. Michael Simpson, and has been +used since 1908 as the college hospital. In the autumn of 1881, +Stone Hall and Waban Cottage—the latter another gift from the +founders were opened for students. +</P> + +<P> +On October 3, 1881, Mr. Durant died, and shortly afterwards +Miss Howard resigned. After leaving Wellesley, she lived in +Methuen, Massachusetts, and in Brooklyn, New York, where she +died, March 3, 1907. Mrs. Marion Pelton Guild, of the class of +'80, says of Miss Howard, in an article on Wellesley written for +the New England Magazine, October, 1914, that "she was in the +difficult position of the nominal captain, who is in fact only a +lieutenant. Yet she held it with a true self-respect, honoring +the fiery genius of her leader, if she could not always follow +its more startling fights; and not hesitating to withstand him in +his most positive plans, if her long practical experience suggested +that it was necessary." From Mt. Holyoke, her Alma Mater, +Miss Howard received, in the latter part of her life, the honorary +degree of Doctor of Letters. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +II. +</H4> + +<P> +Wellesley's second president, Alice E. Freeman, is, of all the six, +the one most widely known. Her magnetic personality, her continued +and successful efforts during her administration to bring Wellesley +out of its obscurity and into the public eye, her extended activity +in educational matters after her marriage, gave her a prominence +throughout the country which was surpassed by very few women of +her generation. And her husband's reverent and poetical +interpretation of her character has secured for her reputation a +literary permanence unusual to the woman of affairs who "wrote +no books and published only half a dozen articles", and whose many +public addresses were never written. +</P> + +<P> +It is from Professor Palmer's "Life of Alice Freeman Palmer", +published by the Houghton Mifflin Co., that the biographical +material for the brief sketch following is derived. +</P> + +<P> +Alice Elvira Freeman was born at Colesville, Broome County, New York, +on February 21, 1855. She was a country child, a farmer's daughter +as her mother was before her. James Warren Freeman, the father, +was of Scottish blood. His mother was a Knox, and his maternal +grandfather was James Knox of Washington's Life Guard. James Freeman +was, as we should expect, an elder of the Presbyterian church. +The mother, Elizabeth Josephine Higley, "had unusual executive +ability and a strong disposition to improve social conditions +around her. She interested herself in temperance, and in legislation +for the better protection of women and children." Their little +daughter Alice, the eldest of four children, taught herself to +read when she was three years old, and we find her going to school +at the age of four. When she was seven, her father, urged by his +wife, decided to be a physician, and during his two years' absence +at the Albany medical school, Mrs. Freeman supported him and the +four little children. The incident helps us to understand the +ambition and determination of the seventeen-year-old daughter +when she declared in the face of her parents' opposition, "that +she meant to have a college degree if it took her till she was +fifty to get it. If her parents could help her, even partially, +she would promise never to marry until she had herself put her +brother through college and given to each of her sisters whatever +education they might wish—a promise subsequently performed." +</P> + +<P> +And the girl had her own ideas about the kind of college she meant +to attend. It must be a real college. Mt. Holyoke she rejected +because it was a young ladies' seminary, and Elmira and Vassar +fell under the same suspicion, in her mind, although they were +nominally colleges. She chose Michigan, the strongest of the +coeducational colleges, and she entered only two years after its +doors were opened to women. +</P> + +<P> +She did not enter in triumph, however; the academy at Windsor, +New York, where she had gone to school after her father became +a physician, was good at supplying "general knowledge" but "poorly +equipped for preparing pupils for college", and Doctor Freeman's +daughter failed to pass her entrance examinations for Michigan +University. President Angell tells the story sympathetically in +"The Life", as follows: +</P> + +<P> +"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 her +studies in the little academy at Windsor. Her teacher regarded +her as a child of much promise, precocious, possessed of a bright, +alert mind, of great industry, of quick sympathies, and of an +instinctive desire to be helpful to others. Her preparation for +college had been meager, and both she and her father were doubtful +of her ability to pass the required examinations. The doubts were +not without foundation. The examiners, on inspecting her work, +were inclined to decide that she ought to do more preparatory work +before they could accept her. Meantime I had had not a little +conversation with her and her father, and had been impressed with +her high intelligence. At my request the examiners decided to +allow her to enter on a trial of six weeks. I was confident she +would demonstrate her capacity to go on with her class. I need +hardly add that it was soon apparent to her instructors that my +confidence was fully justified. She speedily gained and constantly +held an excellent position as a scholar." +</P> + +<P> +President Angell is of course using the term "scholar" in its +undergraduate connotation for, as Professor Palmer has been careful +to state, "In no field of scholarship was she eminent." Despite +her eagerness for knowledge, her bent was for people rather than +for books; for what we call the active and objective life, rather +than for the life of thought. Wellesley has had her scholar +presidents, but Miss Freeman was not one of them. This friendly, +human temper showed itself early in her college days. To quote +again from President Angell: "One of her most striking characteristics +in college was her warm and demonstrative sympathy with her circle +of friends.... Without assuming or striving for leadership, she +could not but be to a certain degree a leader among these, some +of whom have since attained positions only less conspicuous for +usefulness than her own.... No girl of her time on withdrawing +from college would have been more missed than she." +</P> + +<P> +It is for this eagerness in friendship, this sympathetic and +helpful interest in the lives of others that Mrs. Palmer is especially +remembered at Wellesley. Her own college days made her quick +to understand the struggles and ambitions of other girls who were +hampered by inadequate preparation, or by poverty. Her husband +tells us that, "When a girl had once been spoken to, however +briefly, her face and name were fixed on a memory where each +incident of her subsequent career found its place beside the +original record." And he gives the following incident as told +by a superintendent of education. +</P> + +<P> +"Once after she had been speaking in my city, she asked me to stand +beside her at a reception. As the Wellesley graduates came forward +to greet her—there were about eighty of them—she said something +to each which showed that she knew her. Some she called by their +first names; others she asked about their work, their families, +or whether they had succeeded in plans about which they had +evidently consulted her. The looks of pleased surprise which +flashed over the faces of those girls I cannot forget. They +revealed to me something of Miss Freeman's rich and radiant life. +For though she seemed unconscious of doing anything unusual, and +for her I suppose it was usual, her own face reflected the happiness +of the girls and showed a serene joy in creating that happiness." +</P> + +<P> +Her husband, in his analysis of her character, has a remarkable +passage concerning this very quality of disinterestedness. He says: +</P> + +<P> +"Her moral nature was grounded in sympathy. Beginning early, the +identification of herself with others grew into a constant habit, +of unusual range and delicacy.... Most persons will agree that +sympathy is the predominantly feminine virtue, and that she who +lacks it cannot make its absence good by any collection of other +worthy qualities. In a true woman sympathy directs all else. To +find a virtue equally central in a man we must turn to truthfulness +or courage. These also a woman should possess, as a man too +should be sympathetic; but in her they take a subordinate place, +subservient to omnipresent sympathy. Within these limits the +ampler they are, the nobler the woman. +</P> + +<P> +"I believe Mrs. Palmer had a full share of both these manly +excellences, 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 of +veracity. But in narrative of hers one got much besides plain +realities. These had their significance heightened by her eager +emotion, and their picturesqueness by her happy artistry.... Of +course the warmth of her sympathy cut off all inclination to +falsehood for its usual selfish purpose. But against generous +untruth she was not so well guarded. Kindness was the first +thing.... Tact too, once become a habit, made adaptation to the +mind addressed a constant concern. She had extraordinary skill +in stuffing kindness with truth; and into a resisting mind could +without irritation convey a larger bulk of unwelcome fact than +any one I have known. But that insistence on colorless statement +which in our time the needs of trade and science have made current +among men, she did not feel. Lapses from exactitude which do not +separate person from person she easily condoned." +</P> + +<P> +Surely the manly virtues of truthfulness and courage could be no +better exemplified than in the writing of this passage. Whether +his readers, especially the women, will agree with Professor Palmer +that, in woman, truthfulness and courage "take a subordinate place, +subservient to omnipresent sympathy", is a question. +</P> + +<P> +Between 1876 when she was graduated from Michigan, and 1879 when +she went to Wellesley, Miss Freeman taught with marked success, +first at a seminary in the town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where +she had charge of the Greek and Latin; and later as assistant +principal of the high school at Saginaw in Northern Michigan. Here +she was especially successful in keeping order among unruly pupils. +The summer of 1877 she spent in Ann Arbor, studying for a higher +degree, and although she never completed the thesis for this work, +the university conferred upon her the degree of Ph.D. in 1882, the +first year of her presidency at Wellesley. +</P> + +<P> +In this same summer of 1877, when she was studying at Ann Arbor, +she received her first invitation to teach at Wellesley. Mr. Durant +offered her an instructorship in Mathematics, which she declined. +In 1878 she was again invited, this time to teach Greek, but her +sister Stella was dying, and Miss Freeman, who had now settled +her entire family at Saginaw, would not leave them. In June, 1879, +the sister died, and in July Miss Freeman became the head of the +Department of History at Wellesley, at the age of twenty-four. +</P> + +<P> +Mr. Durant's attention had first been drawn to her by her good +friend President Angell, and he had evidently followed her career +as a teacher with interest. There seems to have been no abatement +in his approval after she went to Wellesley. We are told that they +did not always agree, but this does not seem to have affected +their mutual esteem. In her first year, Mr. Durant is said to have +remarked to one of the trustees, "You see that little dark-eyed +girl? She will be the next president of Wellesley." And before +he died, he made his wishes definitely known to the board. +</P> + +<P> +At a meeting of the trustees, on November 15, 1881, Miss Freeman +was appointed vice president of the college and acting president +for the year. She was then twenty-six years of age and the youngest +professor in the college. In 1882 she became president. +</P> + +<P> +During the next six years, Wellesley's growth was as normal as +it was rapid. This is a period of internal organization which +achieved its most important result in the evolution of the Academic +Council. "In earlier days," we are told by Professor Palmer, +"teachers of every rank met in the not very important faculty +meetings, to discuss such details of government or instruction as +were not already settled by Mr. Durant." But even then the faculty +was built up out of departmental groups, that is, "all teachers +dealing with a common subject were banded together under a head +professor and constituted a single unit," and, as Mrs. Guild tells +us, Miss Freeman "naturally fell to consulting the heads of +departments as the abler and more responsible members of the +faculty," instead of laying her plans before the whole faculty at +its more or less cumbersome weekly meetings. From this inner +circle of heads of departments the Academic Council was gradually +evolved. It now includes the president, the dean, professors, +associate professors (unless exempted by a special tenure of +office), and such other officers of instruction and administration +as may be given this responsibility by vote of the trustees. +</P> + +<P> +Miss Freeman also "began the formation of standing committees +of the faculty on important subjects, such as entrance examinations, +graduate work, preparatory schools, etc." +</P> + +<P> +This faculty, over which Miss Freeman presided, was a notable one, +a body of women exhibiting in marked degree those qualities and +virtues of the true pioneer: courage, patience, originality, +resourcefulness, and vision. There were strong groups from +Ann Arbor and Oberlin and Mt. Holyoke, and there was a fourth +group of "pioneer scholars, not wholly college bred, but enriched +with whatever amount of academic training they could wring or charm +from a reluctant world, whom Wellesley will long honor and revere." +</P> + +<P> +With the organization of the faculty came also the organization +of the college work. Entrance examinations were made more severe. +Greek had been first required for entrance in 1881. A certificate +of admission was drawn up, stating exactly what the candidate had +accomplished in preparation for college. Courses of study were +standardized and simplified. In 1882, the methods of Bible study +were reorganized, and instead of the daily classes, to which no +serious study had been given, two hours a week of "examinable +instruction" were substituted. In this year also the gymnasium +was refitted under the supervision of Doctor D. A. Sargent of Harvard. +</P> + +<P> +Miss Freeman's policy of establishing preparatory schools which +should be "feeders" for Wellesley was of the greatest importance +to the college at this time, as "in only a few high schools were +the girls allowed to join classes which fitted boys for college." +When Miss Freeman became president, Dana Hall was the only Wellesley +preparatory school in existence; but in 1884, through her efforts, +an important school was opened in Philadelphia, and before the end +of her presidency, she had been instrumental in furthering the +organization of fifteen other schools in different parts of the +country, officered for the most part by Wellesley graduates. +</P> + +<P> +In this same year the Christian Association was organized. Its +history, bound up as it is with the student life, will be given +more fully in a later chapter, but we must not forget that Miss +Freeman gave the association its initial impulse and established +its broad type. +</P> + +<P> +In 1884 also, we find Wellesley petitioning before the committee +on education at the State House in Boston, to extend its holdings +from six hundred thousand dollars to five million dollars, and +gaining the petition. +</P> + +<P> +On June 22, 1885, the corner stone of the Decennial Cottage, +afterwards called Norumbega, was laid. The building was given +by the alumnae, aided by Professor Horsford, Mr. E. A. Goodenow +and Mr. Elisha S. Converse of the Board of Trustees. Norumbega +was for many years known as the President's House, for here +Miss Freeman, Miss Shafer, and Mrs. Irvine lived. In the academic +year 1901-02, when Miss Hazard built the house for herself and +her successors, the president's modest suite in Norumbega was +set free for other purposes. +</P> + +<P> +In 1886, Norumbega was opened, and in June of that year, the +Library Festival was held to celebrate Professor Horsford's many +benefactions to the college. These included the endowment of the +Library, an appropriation for scientific apparatus, and a system +of pensions. +</P> + +<P> +In a letter to the trustees, dated January 1, 1886, the donor +explains that the annual appropriation for the library shall be +for the salaries of the librarian and assistants, for books for +the library, and for binding and repairs. That the appropriation +for scientific apparatus shall go toward meeting the needs of the +departments of Physics, Chemistry, Botany, and Biology. And that +the System of Pensions shall include a Sabbatical Grant, and a +"Salary Augment and Pension." By the Sabbatical Grant, the heads +of certain departments are able to take a year of travel and +residence abroad every seventh year on half salary. The donor +stipulated, however, that "the offices contemplated in the grants +and pensions must be held by ladies." +</P> + +<P> +In his memorable address on this occasion, Professor Horsford +outlines his ideal for the library which he generously endowed: +</P> + +<P> +"But the uses of books at a seat of learning reach beyond the wants +of the undergraduates. The faculty need supplies from the daily +widening field of literature. They should have access to the +periodical issues of contemporary research and criticism in the +various branches of knowledge pertaining to their individual +departments. In addition to these, the progressive culture of an +established college demands a share in whatever adorns and ennobles +scholarly life, and principally the opportunity to know something +of the best of all the past,—the writers of choice and rare books. +To meet this demand there will continue to grow the collections in +specialties for bibliographical research, which starting like the +suite of periodicals with the founder, have been nursed, as they +will continue to be cherished, under the wise direction of the +Library Council. Some of these will be gathered in concert, it +may be hoped, with neighboring and venerable and hospitable +institutions, that costly duplicates may be avoided; some will be +exclusively our own. +</P> + +<P> +"To these collections of specialties may come, as to a joint +estate in the republic of letters, not alone the faculty of the +college, but such other persons of culture engaged in literary +labor as may not have found facilities for conducting their +researches elsewhere, and to whom the trustees may extend invitation +to avail themselves of the resources of our library." +</P> + +<P> +These ideals of scholarship and hospitality the Wellesley College +Library never forgets. Her Plimpton collection of Italian manuscripts +is a treasure-house for students of the Italy of the Middle Ages +and Renaissance; and her alumnae, as well as scholars from other +colleges and other lands, are given every facility for study. +</P> + +<P> +In 1887, two dormitories were added to the college: Freeman Cottage, +the gift of Mrs. Durant, and the Eliot, the joint gift of Mrs. Durant +and Mr. H. H. Hunnewell. Originally the Eliot had been used as +a boarding-house for the young women working in a shoe factory +at that time running in Wellesley village, but after Mrs. Durant +had enlarged and refurnished it, students who wished to pay a part +of their expenses by working their way through college were boarded +there. Some years later it was again enlarged, and used as a +village-house for freshmen. +</P> + +<P> +In December, 1887, Miss Freeman resigned from Wellesley to marry +Professor George Herbert Palmer of Harvard; but her interest in +the college did not flag, and during her lifetime she continued +to be a member of the Board of Trustees. From 1892 to 1895 she +held the office of Dean of Women of the University of Chicago; and +Radcliffe, Bradford Academy, and the International Institute for +Girls, in Spain, can all claim a share in her fostering interest. +From 1889 until the end of her life, she was a member of the +Massachusetts Board of Education, having been appointed by +Governor Ames and reappointed by Governor Greenhalge and Governor +Crane. +</P> + +<P> +In addition to the degree of Ph.D. received from Michigan in 1882, +Miss Freeman received the honorary degree of Litt.D. from Columbia +in 1887, and in 1895 the honorary degree of LL.D., from Union +University. +</P> + +<P> +What she meant to the women who were her comrades at Wellesley +in those early days—the women who held up her hands—is expressed +in an address by Professor Whiting at the memorial service held +in the chapel in December, 1903: +</P> + +<P> +"I think of her in her office, which was also her private parlor, +with not even a skilled secretary at first, toiling with all the +correspondence, seeing individual girls on academic and social +matters, setting them right in cases of discipline, interviewing +members of the faculty on necessary plans. The work was overwhelming +and sometimes her one assistant would urge her, late in the +evening, to nibble a bite from a tray which, to save time, had +been sent in to her room at the dinner hour, only to remain +untouched.... No wonder that professors often left their lectures +to be written in the wee small hours, to help in uncongenial +administrative work, which was not in the scope of their recognized +duties." +</P> + +<P> +The pathos of her death in Paris, in December, 1902, came as a +shock to hundreds of people whose lives had been brightened by +her eager kindliness; and her memory will always be especially +cherished by the college to which she gave her youth. The beautiful +memorial in the college chapel will speak to generations of +Wellesley girls of this lovable and ardent pioneer. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +III. +</H4> + +<P> +Wellesley's debt to her third president, Helen A. Shafer, is +nowhere 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. Miss +Breckenridge says: +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + 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. +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + 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. +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + 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. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P> +Miss Freeman's work we may characterize as, in its nature, +extensive. Miss Shafer's was intensive. The scholar and the +administrator were united in her personality, but the scholar +led. The crowning achievement of her administration was what was +then called "the new curriculum." +</P> + +<P> +In the college calendars from 1876 to 1879, we find as many as +seven courses of study outlined. There was a General Course for +which the degree of B.A. was granted, with summa cum laude for +special distinction in scholarship. There were the courses for +Honors, in Classics, Mathematics, Modern Languages, and Science; +and students doing suitable work in them could be recommended for +the degree. These elective courses made a good showing on paper; +but it seems to have been possible to complete them by a minimum +of study. There were also courses in Music and Art, extending +over a period of five years instead of the ordinary four allotted +to the General Course. Under Miss Freeman, the courses for Honors +disappeared, and instead of the General Course there were substituted +the Classical Course, with Greek as an entrance requirement and +the degree of B.A. as its goal; and the Scientific Course, in which +knowledge of French or German was substituted for Greek at entrance, +and Mathematics was required through the sophomore year. The +student who completed this course received the degree of B.S. +</P> + +<P> +The "new curriculum" substituted for the two courses, Classical +and Scientific, hitherto offered, a single course leading to the +degree of B.A. As Miss Shafer explains in her report to the +trustees for the year 1892-1893: "Thus we cease to confer the +B.S. for a course not essentially scientific, and incapable of +becoming scientific under existing circumstances, and we offer +a course broad and strong, containing, as we believe, all the +elements, educational and disciplinary, which should pertain to +a course in liberal arts." +</P> + +<P> +Further modifications of the elective system were introduced +in a later administration, but the "new curriculum" continues to +be the basis of Wellesley's academic instruction. +</P> + +<P> +Time and labor were required to bring about these readjustments. +The requirements for admission had to be altered to correspond +with the new system, and the Academic Council spent three years +in perfecting the curriculum in its new form. +</P> + +<P> +Miss Shafer's own department, Mathematics, had already been brought +up to a very high standard, and at one time the requirements for +admission to Wellesley were higher in Mathematics than those for +Harvard. Under Miss Shafer also, the work in English Composition +was placed on a new basis; elective courses were offered to seniors +and juniors in the Bible Department; a course in Pedagogy, begun +toward the end of Miss Freeman's residency, was encouraged and +increased; the laboratory of Physiological Psychology, the first +in a woman's college and one of the earliest in any college, was +opened in 1891 with Professor Calkins at its head. In all, +sixty-seven new courses were opened to the students in these five +years. The Academic Council, besides revising the undergraduate +curriculum, also revised its rules governing the work of candidates +for the Master's degree. +</P> + +<P> +But the "new curriculum" is not the only achievement for which +Wellesley honors Miss Shafer. In June, 1892, she recommended +to 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. +</P> + +<P> +Professor Burrell, Miss Shafer's student, and later her colleague +in the Department of Mathematics, says: +</P> + +<P> +"From the first she felt a genuine interest in all sides of the +social life of the students, sympathized with their ambitions and +understood the bearing of them on the development of the right +spirit in the college." And the members of the Greek letter +societies bear her in especial remembrance, for it was she who +aided in the reestablishing in 1889 of the societies Phi Sigma +and Zeta Alpha, which had been suppressed in 1880, under Miss Howard. +In 1889 also the Art Society, later known as Tau Zeta Epsilon, was +founded; in 1891, the Agora, the political society, came into +being, and 1892 saw the beginnings of Alpha Kappa Chi, the classical +society. Miss Shafer also approved and fostered the department +clubs which began to be formed at this time. And to her wise and +sympathetic assistance we owe the beginnings of the college +periodicals,—the old Courant, of 1888, the Prelude, which began +in 1889, and the first senior annual, the Legenda of 1889. +</P> + +<P> +The old boarding-school type of discipline which had flourished +under Miss Howard, and lingered fitfully under Miss Freeman, gave +place in Miss Shafer's day to a system of cuts and excuses which +although very far from the self-government of the present day, +still fostered and respected the dignity of the students. At the +beginning of the academic year 1890-1891, attendance at prayers +in 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 own +discretion, whenever such absence did not take them from their +college duties." On September 12, 1893, the seniors began to +wear the cap and gown throughout the year. +</P> + +<P> +Other notable events of these five years were the opening of the +Faculty Parlor on Monday, September 24, 1888, another of the gifts +of Professor Horsford, its gold and garlands now vanished never +to return; the dedication of the Farnsworth Art Building on +October 3, 1889, the gift of Mr. Isaac D. Farnsworth, a friend of +Mr. Durant; the presentation in this same year, by Mr. Stetson, +of the Amos W. Stetson collection of paintings; the opening, also +in 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. We +learn, through the president's report for 1892-1893, that during +this year four professors and one instructor were called to fill +professorships in other colleges and universities, with double the +salary which they were then receiving, but all preferred to remain +at Wellesley. +</P> + +<P> +This custom of printing an annual report to the trustees may also +be said to have been inaugurated by Miss Shafer. It is true that +Miss Freeman had printed one such report at the close of her first +year, but not again. Miss Shafer's clear and dignified presentations +of events and conditions are models of their kind; they set the +standard which her successors have followed. +</P> + +<P> +Of Miss Shafer's early preparation for her work we have but few +details. She was born in Newark, New Jersey, on September 23, 1839, +and her father was a clergyman of the Congregational church, of +mingled Scotch and German descent. Her parents moved out to +Oberlin when she was still a young girl, and she entered the college +and was graduated in 1863. The Reverend Frederick D. Allen of +Boston, who was a classmate of Miss Shafer's, tells us that there +were two courses at Oberlin in that day, the regular college course +and a parallel, four years' course for young women. It seems that +women were also admitted to the college course, but only a few +availed themselves of the privilege, and Miss Shafer was not one +of these. But Mr. Allen remembers her as "an excellent student, +certainly the best among the women of her class." +</P> + +<P> +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 teacher +of higher mathematics." Doctor William T. Harris, then superintendent +of public schools in St. Louis, and afterwards United States +Commissioner of Education, commended her very highly; and her +old students at Wellesley witness with enthusiasm to her remarkable +powers as a teacher. President Pendleton, who was one of those +old students, says: +</P> + +<P> +"Doubtless there was no one of these who did not receive the news +of her appointment as president with something of regret. No one +probably doubted the wisdom of the choice, but all were unwilling +that the inspiration of Miss Shafer's teaching should be lost to +the future Wellesley students. Her record as president leaves +unquestioned her power in administrative work, yet all her students, +I believe, would say that Miss Shafer was preeminently a teacher. +</P> + +<P> +"It was my privilege to be one of a class of ten or more students +who, during the last two years of their college life (1884-1886) +elected Miss Shafer's course in Mathematics. It is difficult to +give adequate expression to the impression which Miss Shafer made +as a teacher. There was a friendly graciousness in her manner of +meeting a class which established at once a feeling of sympathy +between student and teacher.... She taught us to aim at clearness +of thought and elegance of method; in short, to attempt to give +to our work a certain finish which belongs only to the scholar.... +I believe that it has often been the experience of a Wellesley +girl, that once on her feet in Miss Shafer's classroom, she has +surprised herself by treating a subject more clearly than she +would have thought possible before the recitation. The explanation +of this, I think, lay in the fact that Miss Shafer inspired her +students with her own confidence in their intellectual powers." +</P> + +<P> +When we realize that during the last ten years of her life she +was fighting tuberculosis, and in a state of health which, for +the 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 some +months in Thomasville, Georgia, and in her absence the duties of +her office devolved upon Professor Frances E. Lord, the head +of the Department of Latin, whose sympathetic understanding of +Miss Shafer's ideals enabled her to carry through the difficult +year with signal success. Miss Shafer rallied in the mild climate, +and probably her life would have been prolonged if she had chosen +to retire from the college; but her whole heart was in her work, +and undoubtedly if she had known that her coming back to Wellesley +meant only two more years of life on earth, she would still have +chosen to return. +</P> + +<P> +Miss Shafer had no surface qualities, although her friends knew +well the keen sense of humor which hid beneath that grave and +rather awkward exterior. But when the alumnae who knew her speak +of her, the words that rise to their lips are justice, integrity, +sympathy. She was an honorary member of the class of 1891, and +on December 8, 1902, her portrait, painted by Kenyon Cox, was +presented to the college by the Alumnae Association. +</P> + +<P> +Miss Shafer's academic degrees were from Oberlin, the M.A. in 1877 +and the LL.D. in 1893. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Caroline Williamson Montgomery (Wellesley, '89), in a memorial +sketch written for the '94 Legenda says: "I have yet to find the +Wellesley student who could not and would not say, 'I can always +feel sure of the fairness of Miss Shafer's decision.' Again and +again 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 when +students, were spurred to do their best, were filled with loyalty +for their alma mater.... If I should try to formulate an expression +of that life in brief, I should say that in her relation to the +students there was perfect justness; as regards her own position, +a passion for duty; as regards her character, simplicity, sincerity, +and selflessness." +</P> + +<P> +For more than sixteen years, from 1877, when she came to the +college as head of the Department of Mathematics, to January 20, +1894, when she died, its president, she served Wellesley with all +her strength, and the college remains forever indebted to her +high standards and wise leadership. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +IV. +</H4> + +<P> +In choosing Mrs. Irvine to succeed Miss Shafer as president of +Wellesley, the trustees abandoned the policy which had governed +their earlier choices. Miss Freeman and Miss Shafer had been +connected with the college almost from the beginning. They had +known its problems only from the inside. Mrs. Irvine was, by +comparison, a newcomer; she had entered the Department of Greek +as junior professor in 1890. But almost at once her unusual +personality made its impression, and in the four years preceding +her election to the presidency, she had arisen, as it were in spite +of herself, to a position of power both in the classroom and in +the Academic Council. As an outsider, her criticism, both constructive +and destructive, was peculiarly stimulating and valuable; and even +those who resented her intrusion could not but recognize the noble +disinterestedness of her ideal for Wellesley. +</P> + +<P> +The trustees were quick to perceive the value to the college of +this unusual combination of devotion and clearsightedness, detachment +and loving service. They also realized that the junior professor +of Greek was especially well fitted to complete and perfect the +curriculum which Miss Shafer had so ably inaugurated. For Mrs. Irvine +was before all else a scholar, with a scholar's passion for +rectitude and high excellence in intellectual standards. +</P> + +<P> +Julia Josephine (Thomas) Irvine, the daughter of Owen Thomas and +Mary Frame (Myers) Thomas, was born at Salem, Ohio, November 9, +1848. Her grandparents, strong abolitionists, are said to have +moved to the middle west from the south because they became +unwilling to live in a slave state. Mrs. Irvine's mother was the +first woman physician west of the Alleghenies, and her mother's +sister also studied medicine. Mrs. Irvine's student life began at +Antioch College, Ohio, but later she entered Cornell University, +receiving her bachelor's degree in 1875. In the same rear she +was married to Charles James Irvine. In 1876, Cornell gave her +the degree of Master of Arts. After her husband's death in 1886, +Mrs. Irvine entered upon her career as a teacher, and in 1890 came +to Wellesley, where her success in the classroom was immediate. +Students of those days will never forget the vitality of her +teaching, the enthusiasm for study which pervaded her classes. +Wellesley has had her share of inspiring teachers, and among these +Mrs. Irvine was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant. +</P> + +<P> +The new president assumed her office reluctantly, and with the +understanding that she should be allowed to retire after a brief +term of years, when "the exigencies which suggested her appointment +had ceased to exist." She knew the college, and she knew herself. +With certain aspects of the Wellesley life she could never be +entirely in accord. She was a Hicksite Quaker. The Wellesley +of the decade 1890-1900 had moved a long way from the evangelical +revivalism which had been Mr. Durant's idea of religion, but it was +not until 1912 that the Quaker students first began to hold their +weekly meetings in the Observatory. About this time also, through +the kind offices of the Wellesley College Christian Association, +a list of the Roman Catholic students then in college was given +to the Roman Catholic parish priest. That the trustees in 1895 +were willing to trust the leadership of the college to a woman +whose religious convictions differed so widely from those of the +founder indicates that even then Wellesley was beginning to outgrow +her religious provincialism, and to recognize that a wise tolerance +is not incompatible with steadfast Christian witness. +</P> + +<P> +The religious services which Mrs. Irvine, in her official capacity, +conducted for the college were impressive by their simplicity and +distinction. An alumna of 1897 writes: "That commanding figure +behind the reading-desk of the old chapel in College Hall made +every one, in those days, rejoice when she was to lead the morning +service." But the trustees, anxious to set her free for the academic +side of her work, which now demanded the whole of her time, +appointed a dean to relieve her of such other duties as she desired +to delegate to another. This action was made possible by amendment +of the statutes, adopted November 1, 1894, and in 1895, Miss +Margaret E. Stratton, professor of the Department of Rhetoric, as +it was then called, was appointed the first dean of the college. +</P> + +<P> +The trustees did not define the precise nature of the relation +between the president and the dean, but left these officers to +make such division of work as should seem to them best, and we +read in Mrs. Irvine's report for 1895 that, "For the present the +Dean remains in charge of all that relates to the public devotional +exercises of the college, and is chairman of the committee in +charge of stated religious services. She is the authority referred +to in all cases of ordinary discipline, and is the chairman of +the committee which includes heads of houses and permission +officers, all these officers are directly responsible to her." +</P> + +<P> +Regarded from an intellectual and academic point of view, the +administrations of Miss Shafer and Mrs. Irvine are a unit. +Mrs. Irvine developed and perfected the policy which Miss Shafer +had initiated and outlined. By 1895, all students were working +under the new curriculum, and in the succeeding years the details +of readjustment were finally completed. To carry out the necessary +changes in the courses of study, certain other changes were also +necessary; methods of teaching which were advanced for the '70's +and '80's had been superseded in the '90's, and must be modified +or abandoned for Wellesley's best good. To all that was involved +in this ungrateful task, Mrs. Irvine addressed herself with a +courage and determination not fully appreciated at the time. She +had not Mrs. Palmer's skill in conveying unwelcome fact into a +resisting mind without irritation; neither had she Miss Shafer's +self-effacing, sympathetic patience. Her handling of situations +and individuals was what we are accustomed to call masculine; it +had, as the French say, the defects of its qualities; but the +general result was tonic, and Wellesley's gratitude to this firm +and far-seeing administrator increases with the passing of years. +</P> + +<P> +In November, 1895, the Board of Trustees appointed a special +committee on the schools of Music and Art, in order to reorganize +the instruction in these subjects, and as a result the fine arts +and music were put upon the same footing and made regular electives +in the academic course, counting for a degree. The heads of these +departments were made members of the Academic Council and the terms +School of Music and School of Art were dropped from the calendar. +In 1896, the title Director of School of Music was changed to +Professor of Music. These changes are the more significant, coming +at this time, in the witness which they bear to the breadth and +elasticity of Mrs. Irvine's academic ideal. A narrower scholasticism +would not have tolerated them, much less pressed for their adoption. +Wellesley is one of the earliest of the colleges to place the fine arts +and music on her list of electives counting for an academic degree. +</P> + +<P> +During the year 1895-1896, the Academic Council reviewed its rules +of procedure relating to the maintenance of scholarship throughout +the course, with the result that, "In order to be recommended +for the degree of B.A. a student must pass with credit in at least +one half of her college work and in at least one half of the +work of the senior year." This did not involve raising the actual +standard of graduation as reached by the majority of recent +graduates, but relieved the college of the obligation of giving +its degree to a student whose work throughout a large part of +her course did not rise above a mere passing grade. +</P> + +<P> +In Mrs. Irvine's report for 1894-1895, we read that, "Modifications +have been made in the general regulations of the college by which +the observation of a set period of silent time for all persons is no +longer required." In the beginning, Mr. Durant had established +two daily periods of twenty minutes each, during which students +were required to be in their rooms, silent, in order that those +who so desired might give themselves to meditation, prayer, and +the reading of the Scriptures. Morning and evening, for fifteen +years, the "Silent Bell" rang, and the college houses were hushed +in literal silence. In 189 or 1890, the morning interval was +discontinued, but evening "silent time" was not done away with +until 1894, nineteen years after its establishment, and there are +many who regret its passing, and who realize that it was one of +the wisest and, in a certain sense, most advanced measures +instituted by Mr. Durant. But it was a despotic measure, and +therefore better allowed to lapse; for to the student mind, +especially of the late '80's and early '90's it was an attempt +to fetter thought, to force religion upon free individuals, to +prescribe times and seasons for spiritual exercises in which the +founder of the college had no right to concern himself. As +Wellesley's understanding of democracy developed, the faculty +realized that a rule of this kind, however wise in itself, cannot +be impressed from without; the demand for it must come from the +students themselves. Whether that demand will ever be made is +a question; but undoubtedly there is an increasing realization in +the college world of the need of systematized daily respite of +some sort from the pressure of unmitigated external activity; the +need of freedom for spiritual recollection in the midst of academic +and social business. It is a matter in which the Student Government +Association would have entire freedom of jurisdiction. +</P> + +<P> +In 1896, Domestic Work was discontinued. This was a revolutionary +change, for Mr. Durant had believed strongly in the value of this +one hour a day of housework to promote democratic feeling among +students of differing grades of wealth; and he had also felt that +it made the college course cheaper, and therefore put its advantages +within the reach of the "calico girls" as he was so fond of calling +the 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 of +corridors. Every department had its domestic girls, whose duties +ranged from those of incipient secretary to general chore girl. +The experience in setting college dinner tables or sweeping college +recitation rooms counted for next to nothing in equipping a student +to care for her own home; and the benefit to the "calico girls" +was no longer obvious, as the price of tuition had now been raised +several times. In May, 1894, the Academic Council voted "that +the council respectfully make known to the trustees that in their +opinion domestic work is a serious hindrance to the progress of +the college, and should as soon as possible be done away." But +it was not until the trustees found that the fees for 1896-1897 +must be raised, that they decided to abolish domestic work. +</P> + +<P> +Miss Shackford, in her pamphlet on College Hall, describes, "for +the benefit of those unfamiliar with the old regime," the system +of domestic work as it obtained during the first twenty years of +Wellesley's life. She tells us that it "brought all students into +close 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 were +the favorite employments, although it is said the students always +showed great generosity in allowing the girls less strong to have +the lighter tasks. Sweeping the matting in the center of the +corridor before breakfast, or sweeping the bare 'sides' of this +matting after breakfast, were tasks that developed into sinecures. +The girl who went with long-handled feather duster to dust the +statuary enjoyed a distinction equal to Don Quixote's in tilting +at windmills. Filling the student-lamps, serving in a department +where clerical work was to be done, or, as in science, where +materials and specimens had to be prepared, were on the list +of possibilities. Sophomores in long aprons washed beakers and +slides, seniors in cap and gown acted as guides to guests. A +group of girls from each table changed the courses at meals. +Upon one devolved the task of washing whatever silver was required +for the next course. Another went out through the passage into the +room where heaters kept the meat and vegetables warm in their +several dishes. Perhaps another went further on to the bread-room, +where she might even be permitted to cut bread with the bread-cutting +machine. Dessert was always kept in the remote apartment where +Dominick Duckett presided, strumming a guitar, while his black +face had a portentous gravity as he assigned the desserts for +each table. What an ordeal it was for shy freshmen to rise and +walk the length of the dining-room! How many tables were kept +waiting for the next course while errant students surveyed the +sunset through the kitchen windows! Some of us remember the +tragic 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 prepare +them for the table." +</P> + +<P> +Other important changes in the college regulations were the opening +of the college library on Sunday as a reading-room, and the removal +of the ban upon the theater and the opera; both these changes took +place in 1895. On February 6, 1896, the clause of the statutes +concerning attendance at Sunday service in chapel was amended +to read, "All students are expected to attend this or some other +public religious service." +</P> + +<P> +In 1896-1897, Bible Study was organized into a definite Department +of Biblical History, Literature, and Interpretation; and in the +same year voluntary classes for Bible Study were inaugurated by +the Christian Association and taught by the students. +</P> + +<P> +The first step toward informing the students concerning their marks +and academic standing was taken in 1897, when the so-called +"credit-notes" were instituted, in which students were told whether +or not they had achieved Credit, grade C, in their individual +studies. Mr. Durant had feared that a knowledge of the marks +would arouse unworthy competition, but his fears have proved +unfounded. +</P> + +<P> +In this administration also the financial methods of the college +were revised. Mrs. Irvine, we are reminded by Florence S. Marcy +Crofut, of the class of 1897, "established a system of management +and purchasing into which all the halls of residence were brought, +and this remains almost without change to the present day." On +March 27, 1895, Mrs. Durant resigned the treasurership of the +college, which she had held since her husband's death, and upon +her nomination, Mr. Alpheus H. Hardy was elected to the office. +In 1896, the trustees issued a report in which they informed the +friends of Wellesley that although Mr. Durant, in his will, had +made the college his residuary legatee, subject to a life tenancy, +the personal estate had suffered such depreciation and loss "as to +render this prospective endowment of too slight consequence to be +reckoned on in any plans for the development and maintenance of +the college." At this time, Wellesley was in debt to the amount +of $103,048.14. During the next nineteen years, trustees and +alumnae were to labor incessantly to pay the expenses of the +college and to secure an endowment fund. What Wellesley owes +to the unstinted devotion of Mr. Hardy during these lean years +can never be adequately expressed. +</P> + +<P> +The buildings erected during Mrs. Irvine's tenure of office were +few. Fiske Cottage was opened in September, 1894, for the use +of students who wished to work their way through college. The +"cottage" had been originally the village grammar school, but when +Mr. Hunnewell gave a new schoolhouse to the village, the college +was able, through the generosity of Mrs. Joseph M. Fiske, +Mr. William S. Houghton, Mr. Elisha S. Converse, and a few other +friends, to move the old schoolhouse to the campus and remodel it +as a dormitory. In February, 1894, a chemical laboratory was built +under Norumbega hill,—an ugly wooden building, a distress to +all who care for Wellesley's beauty, and an unmistakable witness +to her poverty. +</P> + +<P> +On November 22, 1897, the corner stone of the Houghton Memorial +Chapel was laid, a building destined to be one of the most +satisfactory and beautiful on the campus. It was given by +Miss Elizabeth G. Houghton and Mr. Clement S. Houghton of Cambridge +as a memorial of their father, Mr. William S. Houghton, for many +years a trustee of the college. +</P> + +<P> +In 1898 Mrs. John C. Whitin, a trustee, gave to the college an +astronomical observatory and telescope. The building was completed +in 1900. Another gift of 1898, fifty thousand dollars, came from +the estate of the late Charles T. Wilder, and was used to build +Wilder Hall, the fourth dormitory in the group on Norumbega hill. +In 1898, the first of the Society houses, the Shakespeare House, +was opened. +</P> + +<P> +On November 4, 1897, Mrs. Irvine presented before the Board of +Trustees a review of the history of the college under the new +curriculum, and a statement of urgent needs which had arisen. +She closed with a recommendation that her term of office should +end in June, 1898, as she believed that the necessities which had +led to her appointment no longer existed, and she recognized that +new demands pressed, which she was not fitted to meet. As Mrs. Irvine +had stated verbally, both to the Board of Trustees and to a committee +appointed by them to consider her recommendation, that she would +not serve under a permanent appointment, the committee "was limited +to the consideration of the time at which that recommendation +should become operative." They asked the president to change her +time of withdrawal to June, 1899, and she consented to do this, +with the provision that she was to be released from her duties +before the end of the year, if her successor were ready to assume +the duties of the office before June, 1899. +</P> + +<P> +After her retirement from Wellesley, Mrs. Irvine made her home in +the south of France, but she returned to America in 1912 to be +present at the inauguration of President Pendleton. And in the +year 1913-1914, after the death of Madame Colin, she performed +a signal service for the college in temporarily assuming the +direction of the Department of French. Through her good offices, +the department was reorganized, but the New England winter had +proved too severe for her after her long sojourn in a milder +climate, and in 1914, Mrs. Irvine returned again to her home in +Southern France, bearing with her the love and gratitude of +Wellesley for her years of efficient and unselfish service. +During the war of 1914-1915, she had charge of the linen room +in the military hospital at Aix-les-Bains. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +V. +</H4> + +<P> +On March 8, 1899, the trustees announced their election of Wellesley's +fifth president, Caroline Hazard. In June, Mrs. Irvine retired, +and the new administration dates from July 1, 1899. +</P> + +<P> +Unlike her predecessors, Miss Hazard brought to her office no +technical academic training, and no experience as a teacher. Born +at Peacedale, Rhode Island, June 10, 1856, the daughter of Rowland +and Margaret (Rood) Hazard, and the descendant of Thomas Hazard, +the founder of Rhode Island, she had been educated by tutors and +in a private school in Providence, and later had carried on her +studies abroad. Before coming to Wellesley, she had already won +her own place in the annals of Rhode Island, as editor, by her +edition 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 eighteenth +century, entitled "Thomas Hazard, Son of Robert, called College Tom", +and as poet, in a volume of Narragansett ballads and a number of +religious sonnets, followed during her Wellesley years by "A Scallop +Shell of Quiet", verses of delicate charm and dignity. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Guild has said that Miss Hazard came, "bringing the ease and +breadth of the cultivated woman of the world, who is yet an idealist +and a Christian, into an atmosphere perhaps too strictly scholastic." +But she also brought unusual executive ability and training in +administrative affairs, both academic and commercial, for her +father, aside from his manufacturing interests, was a member of +the corporation of Brown University. Hers is the type of intelligence +and power seen often in England, where women of her social position +have an interest in large issues and an instinct for affairs, +which American women of the same class have not evinced in +any arresting degree. +</P> + +<P> +Miss Hazard's inauguration took place on October 3, 1899, in the +new Houghton Memorial Chapel, which had been dedicated on June 1 +of that year. This was Wellesley's first formal ceremony of +inauguration, and the brilliant academic procession, moving among +the autumn trees between old College Hall and the Chapel, marked +the beginning of a new era of dignity and beauty for the college. +In the next ten years, under the winning encouragement of her +new president, Wellesley blossomed in courtesy and in all those +social graces and pleasant amenities of life which in earlier years +she had not always cultivated with sufficient zest. All of +Miss Hazard's influence went out to the dignifying and beautifying +of the life in which she had come to bear a part. +</P> + +<P> +It is to her that Wellesley owes the tranquil beauty of the morning +chapel service. The vested choir of students, the order of +service, are her ideas, as are the musical vesper services and +festival 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 Billings +estate, and in December, 1903, Mr. Thomas Minns, the surviving +executor of the estate, presented the college with an additional +fifteen thousand dollars, of which two thousand dollars were set +aside as a permanent fund for the establishment of the Billings +prize, to be awarded by the president for excellence in +music,—including its theory and practice,—and the remainder was +used toward the erection of Billings Hall, a second music building +containing a much-needed concert hall and classrooms, completed +in 1904. +</P> + +<P> +Miss Hazard's love of simple, poetical ceremonial did much to +increase the charm of the Wellesley life. Of the several hearth +fires which she kindled during the years when she kept Wellesley's +fires alight, the Observatory hearth-warming was perhaps the +most charming. The beautiful little building, given and equipped +by Mrs. Whitin, a trustee of the college, was formally opened +October 8, 1900, with addresses by Miss Hazard, Professor Pickering +of Harvard, and Professor Todd of Amherst. In the morning, +Miss Hazard had gone out into the college woods and plucked bright +autumn leaves to bind into a torch of life to light the fire on the +new hearth. Digitalis, sarsaparilla, eupatorium, she had chosen, +for the health of the body; a fern leaf for grace and beauty; the +oak and the elm for peace and the civic virtues; evergreen, pine, +and hemlock for the aspiring life of the mind and the eternity +of thought; rosemary for remembrance, and pansies for thoughts. +Firing the torch, she said, "With these holy associations we light +this fire, that from this building in which the sun and stars are +to be observed, true life may ever aspire with the flame to the +Author of all light." +</P> + +<P> +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 had +written for the occasion, and which was later burned in the wooden +panel above the hearth: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Stars above that shine and glow,<BR> + Have their image here below;<BR> + Flames that from the earth arise,<BR> + Still aspiring seek the skies.<BR> + Upward with the flames we soar,<BR> + Learning ever more and more;<BR> + Light and love descend till we<BR> + Heaven reflected here shall see."<BR> +</P> + +<P> +At the beginning of her term of office, Miss Hazard had requested +the trustees to make "a division of administrative duties somewhat +different from that before existing," as the technical knowledge +of courses of study and the wisdom to advise students as to such +courses required a special training and preparation which she did +not possess. It was therefore arranged that the dean should take +in charge the more strictly academic work, leaving Miss Hazard +free for "the general supervision of affairs, the external relations +of the college, and the home administration," and Professor Coman +of the Department of History and Economics consented to assume +the duties of dean for a year. At the end of the year, however, +Miss Hazard having now become thoroughly familiar with the financial +condition of the college, felt that retrenchments were necessary, +and asked the trustees to omit the appointment of a dean for the +year 1900-1901. The academic duties of the dean were temporarily +assumed in the president's office by the secretary of the college, +Miss Ellen F. Pendleton, and Professor Coman returned to her +teaching as head of the new Department of Economics, an office +which she held with distinction until her retirement as Professor +Emeritus in 1913. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Guild reminds us that "the pressing problem which confronted +Miss Hazard was monetary. The financial history of Wellesley +College would be a volume in itself, as those familiar with the +struggles of unendowed institutions of like order can well realize.... +The appointment during Mrs. Irvine's administration of a professional +treasurer, and the gradual accumulation of small endowments, were +helps in the right direction. The alumnae had early begun a series +of concerted efforts to aid their Alma Mater in solving her ever +present financial problem. Miss Hazard, in generous cooperation +with them and with the trustees, did especially valiant work in +clearing the college from its burden of debt; and during her +administration the treasurer's report shows an increase in the +college funds of $830,000." In round numbers, the gifts for +endowments and buildings during the period amounted to one million +three hundred six thousand dollars. Eleven buildings were erected +between 1900 and 1909: Wilder Hall and the Observatory were +completed in 1900; the President's House, Miss Hazard's gift, in +1902; Pomeroy and Billings Hall in 1904; Cazenove in 1905; the +Observatory House, another gift from Mrs. Whitin, 1906; Beebe, 1908; +Shafer, the Gymnasium, and the Library, in 1909. +</P> + +<P> +During these years also, five professorial chairs were partially +endowed. The Chair of Economics in 1903; the Chair of Biblical +History, by Helen Miller Gould, in December, 1900, to be called +after her mother, the Helen Day Gould Professorship; the Chair of +Art, under the name of the Clara Bertram Kimball Professorship +of Art; the Chair of Music, from the Billings estate; the Chair +of Botany, by Mr. H.H. Hunnewell, January, 1901. And in 1908 +and 1909, the arrangements with the Boston Normal School of +Gymnastics were completed, by which that school,—with an endowment +of one hundred thousand dollars and a gymnasium erected on the +Wellesley campus through the efforts of Miss Amy Morris Homans, +the director, and Wellesley friends,—became a part of Wellesley +College: the Department of Hygiene and Physical Education. +</P> + +<P> +Among the notable gifts were the Alexandra Garden in the West +Quadrangle, given by an alumna in memory of her little daughter; +the beautiful antique marbles, presented by Miss Hannah Parker +Kimball to the Department of Art, in memory of her brother, M. Day +Kimball; and the Plimpton collection of Italian manuscripts and +early editions, given by George A. Plimpton in memory of his wife, +Frances Taylor Pearsons Plimpton, of the class of '84. Of romances +of chivalry, "those poems of adventure, the sources from which +Boiardo and Ariosto borrowed character and episodes for their real +poems," we have, according to Professor Margaret Jackson, their +curator, perhaps the largest collection in this country, and one of +the largest in the world. Many of these books are in rare or +unique 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 the +frate writing in his cell. Bembo's "Asolini" a first edition, +contains autograph corrections. In 1912, Wellesley had the unusual +opportunity, which she unselfishly embraced, to return to the +National Library at Florence, Italy, a very precious Florentine +manuscript of the fourteenth century, containing the only known +copy of the Sirventes and other important historical verses of +Antonio Pucci. +</P> + +<P> +The most important change in the college life at this time was +undoubtedly the establishment of the System of Student Government, +in 1901. As a student movement, this is discussed at length in +a later chapter, but Miss Hazard's cordial sympathy with all that +the change implied should be recorded here. +</P> + +<P> +Among academic changes, the institution of the Honor Scholarships +is the most noteworthy. In 1901, two classes of honors for juniors +and seniors were established, the Durant Scholarship and the +Wellesley 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 honors +are non-competitive, and depend upon an absolute standard of +scholarship. At about the same time, honorary mention for freshmen +was also instituted. +</P> + +<P> +On June 30, 1906, Miss Hazard sailed for Genoa, to take a well-earned +vacation. This was the first time that a president of Wellesley +had taken a Sabbatical year; the first time that any presidential +term had extended beyond six years. During Miss Hazard's absence, +Miss Pendleton, who had been appointed dean in 1901, conducted the +affairs of the college. On her return, May 20, 1907, Miss Hazard +was met at the Wellesley station by the dean and the senior class, +about two hundred and fifty students, and was escorted to the +campus by the presidents of the Student Government Association +and the senior class. The whole college had assembled to welcome +her, lining the avenue from the East Lodge to Simpson, and waving +their 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. +</P> + +<P> +In the spring of 1908 and the winter of 1909, Miss Hazard was +obliged to be absent, because of ill health, and again for a part +of 1910. In July, 1910, the trustees announced her resignation to +the faculty. No one has expressed more happily Miss Hazard's +service to the college than her successor in office, the friend +who was her dean and comrade in work during almost her entire +administration. In the dean's report for 1910 are these very +human and loving words: +</P> + +<P> +"President Hazard's great service to the college during her eleven +years of office are evident to all in the way of increased endowment, +new buildings, additional departments and officers, advanced +salaries, improved organization and equipment; but those who have +had the privilege of working with her know that even these gains, +to which her personal generosity so largely contributed, are less +than the gifts of character which have brought into the midst of +our busy routine the graces of home and a far-pervading spirit of +loving kindness. +</P> + +<P> +"Miss Hazard came to us a stranger, but by her gracious bearing +and charming hospitality, by her sympathetic interest and eagerness +to aid in the work of every department, together with a scrupulous +respect for what she was pleased to call the expert judgment of +those in charge, by the touches of beauty and gentleness accompanying +all that she did, from the enrichment of our chapel service to the +planting of our campus with daffodils, and by the essential +consecration of her life, she has so endeared herself to her faculty +that her resignation means to us not only the loss of an honored +president, but the absence of a friend." +</P> + +<P> +Miss Hazard's honorary degrees are the A.M. from Michigan and +the Litt.D. from Brown University. She is also an honorary member +of the Eta chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, which was installed at +Wellesley on January 17, 1905. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +VI. +</H4> + +<P> +On Thursday, October 19, 1911, Ellen Fitz Pendleton was inaugurated +president of Wellesley College in Houghton Memorial Chapel. +</P> + +<P> +Professor Calkins, writing in the College News in regard to this +wise choice of the trustees, says: "There has been some discussion +of the wisdom of appointing a woman as college president. I may +frankly avow myself as one of those who have been little concerned +for the appointment of a woman as such. On general principles, +I would welcome the appointment of a man as the next president of +Bryn Mawr or Wellesley; and, similarly, I would as soon see a woman +at the head of Vassar or of Smith. But if our trustees, when +looking last year for a successor to Miss Hazard in her eminently +successful administration, had rejected the ideally endowed +candidate, solely because she was a woman, they would have indicated +their 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 possibly +take the ground that 'any man' is to be preferred to the rightly +equipped 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 a +woman, especially when a highly capable successor was at hand, +the decision would have meant... the adoption of the principle +of the ineligibility of women for the college presidency.... It is +an anomaly that women should be permitted to enter upon an +intellectual career and should not be permitted to look forward +to the natural rewards of successful labor.'" +</P> + +<P> +Professor Calkins's personal tribute to Miss Pendleton's power +and personality is especially gracious and deserving of quotation, +coming as it does from a distinguished alumna of a sister college. +She writes: +</P> + +<P> +"Miss Pendleton unites a detailed and thorough knowledge of the +history, the specific excellences, and the definite needs of +Wellesley College, with openness of mind, breadth of outlook and +the endowment for constructive leadership. No college procedure +seems to her to be justified by precedent merely; no curriculum +or legislation is, in her view, too sacred to be subject to revision. +Her wide acquaintance with the policies of other colleges and +with modern tendencies in education prompts her to constant +enlargement and modification, while her accurate knowledge of +Wellesley's conditions and her large patience are a check on the +too exuberant spirit of innovation. With Miss Pendleton as +president, the college is sure to advance with dignity and with +safety. She will do better than 'build up' the college, for she +will quicken and guide its growth from within. +</P> + +<P> +"Fundamental to the professional is the personal equipment for +office. Miss Pendleton is unswervingly just, undauntedly generous, +and completely devoted to the college. Not every one realizes +that her reserve hides a sympathy as keen as it is deep, though +no one doubts this who has ever appealed to her for help. Finally, +all those who really know her are well aware that she is utterly +self-forgetful, or rather, that it does not occur to her to consider +any 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.... +</P> + +<P> +"Miss Pendleton unquestionably conceives the office of college +president not as that of absolute monarch but as that of constitutional +ruler; not as that of master, but as that of leader. Readers of +the dean's report for the Sabbatical year of Miss Hazard's absence, +in which Miss Pendleton was acting president, will not have failed +to notice the spontaneous expression of this sense of comradeship +in Miss Pendleton's reference to the faculty." +</P> + +<P> +Rhode Island has twice given a president to Wellesley, for Ellen +Fitz Pendleton was born at Westerly, on August 7, 1864, the daughter +of Enoch Burrowes Pendleton and Mary Ette (Chapman) Pendleton. +In 1882, she entered Wellesley College as a freshman, and since +that 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 on +the Tree Day program as delivering an essay on the fern beech; +and she was later invited into the Shakespeare Society, at that +time Wellesley's one and only literary society. In 1886, Miss +Pendleton was graduated with the degree of B.A., and entered the +Department of Mathematics in the autumn of that year as tutor; +in 1888, she was promoted to an instructorship which she held +until 1901, with a leave of absence in 1889 and 1890 for study +at Newnham College, Cambridge, England. In 1891, she received +the degree of M.A. from Wellesley. Her honorary degrees are the +Litt.D. from Brown University in 1911, and the LL.D. from Mt. Holyoke +in 1912. In 1895, she was made Schedule Officer, in charge of +the intricate work involved in arranging and simplifying the +complicated yearly schedule of college class appointments. In +1897, she became secretary of the college and held this position +until 1901, when she was made dean and associate professor of +Mathematics. During Miss Hazard's absences and after Miss Hazard's +resignation in 1910, she served the college as acting president. +</P> + +<P> +The announcement of her election to the presidency was made to +the college on June 9, 1911, by the president of the Board of +Trustees, and the joy with which it was received by faculty, alumna, +and students was as outspoken as it was genuine. And at her +inauguration, many who listened to her clear and simple exposition +of her conception of the function of a college must have rejoiced +anew to feel that Wellesley's ideals of scholarship were committed +to so safe and wise a guardian. Miss Pendleton's ideal cannot +be better expressed than in her own straightforward phrases: +</P> + +<P> +"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 not +essentially different from that of a college for women." +</P> + +<P> +Of the twofold function of the college, the training for citizenship +and the preparation of the scholar, she says: "What are the +characteristics of the ideal citizen, and how may they be developed? +He must have learned the important lesson of viewing every question +not only from his own standpoint but from that of the community; he +must be willing to pay his share of the public tax not only in +money but also in time and thought for the service of his town and +state; he must have, above all, enthusiasm and capacity for working +hard in whatever kind of endeavor his lot may be cast. It is +evident, therefore, that the college must furnish him opportunity +for acquiring a knowledge of history, of the theory of government, +of the relations between capital and labor, of the laws of +mathematics, chemistry, physics, which underlie our great industries, +and if he is to have an intelligent and sympathetic interest in +his neighbors, and be able to get another's point of view, this +college-trained citizen must know something of psychology and +the laws of the mind. Nor can he do all this to his own satisfaction +without 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 and +independently. But it will be urged that a college course of four +years is entirely too short for such a task. Perhaps, but what +the college cannot actually give, it can furnish the stimulus and +the power for obtaining later." +</P> + +<P> +But although Miss Pendleton's attitude toward college education +is characteristically practical, she is careful to make it clear +that the practical educator does not necessarily approve of +including vocational training in a college course. "I do not +propose to discuss the question in detail, but is it not fair to +ask why vocational subjects should be recognized in preparation +when the aim of the college is not to prepare for a vocation but +to develop personal efficiency?" +</P> + +<P> +And her vision includes the scholar, or the genius, as well as +the commonplace student. "The college is essentially a democratic +institution designed for the rank and file of youth qualified to +make use of the opportunities it offers. But the material equipment, +the curriculum, and the teaching force which are necessary to +develop personal efficiency in the ordinary student will have +failed in a part of their purpose if they do not produce a few +students with the ability and the desire to extend the field of +human knowledge. There will be but few, but fortunate the college, +and happy the instructor, that has these few. Such students have +claims, and the college is bound to satisfy them without losing +sight of its first great aim.... It is the task of the college to +give such a student as broad a foundation as possible, while +allowing him a more specialized course than is deemed wise for +the ordinary student. The college will have failed in part of +its function if it does not furnish such a student with the power +and the stimulus to continue his search for truth after graduation.... +</P> + +<P> +"Training for citizenship and the preparation of the scholar are +then the twofold function of the college. To furnish professional +training 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 to +be teachers or even wives and husbands, mothers and fathers. It +is rather its part to produce men and women with the power to think +clearly and independently, who recognize that teaching and +home-making are both fine arts worthy of careful and patient +cultivation, and not the necessary accompaniment of a college +diploma. College graduates ought to make, and I believe do make, +better teachers, more considerate husbands and wives, wiser fathers +and mothers, but the chief function of the college is larger than +this. The aim of the university and the great technical school is +to furnish preparation for some specific profession. The college +must produce men and women capable of using the opportunities +offered by the university, men and women with sound bodies, pure +hearts and clear minds, who are ready to obey the commandment, +'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all +thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind, and thy +neighbor as thyself.'" +</P> + +<P> +In this day of diverse and confused educational theories and ideals +it is refreshing to read words so discriminating and definite. +</P> + +<P> +The earliest events of importance in President Pendleton's +administration are connected, as might be expected, with the alumnae, +who were quickened to a more active and objective expression +of loyalty by this first election of a Wellesley alumna to the +presidential office. On June 21, 1911, the Graduate Council, to +be discussed in a later chapter, was established by the Alumnae +Association; and on October 5, 1911, the first number of the alumnae +edition of the College News was issued. In the academic year +1912-1913, the Monday holiday was abolished and the new schedule +with recitations from Monday morning until Saturday noon was +established. After the mid-year examinations in 1912, the students +were for the first time told their marks. In 1913, the Village +Improvement Association built and equipped, on the college grounds, +a kindergarten to be under the joint supervision of the Association +and the Department of Education. The building is used as a free +kindergarten for Wellesley children, and also as a practice school +for graduate students in the department. A campaign for an +endowment fund of one million dollars was also started by the +trustees and alumnae under the leadership and with the advice +of the new president. A committee of alumnae was appointed, with +Miss Candace C. Stimson, of the class of '92 as chairman, to +cooperate with the trustees in raising the money, and more than +four hundred thousand dollars had been promised when, in March, 1914, +occurred Wellesley's great catastrophe—which she was to translate +immediately into her great opportunity—the burning of old +College Hall. +</P> + +<P> +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 visions +and dream in their dreams, it will be by the soaring, unconquerable +faith—and the prompt and selfless works—of the daughter who said +to a college in ruins, on that March morning, "The members of the +college will report for duty on the appointed date after the spring +vacation," and sent her flock away, comforted, high-hearted, +expectant of miracles. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap03"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER III +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE FACULTY AND THEIR METHODS +</H3> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +I. +</H4> + +<P> +At Wellesley, to a degree unusual in American colleges, whether +for men or women, the faculty determine the general policy of the +college. The president, as chairman of the Academic Council, +is in a very real and democratic sense the representative of the +faculty, not the ruler. In Miss Freeman's day, the excellent +presidential habit of consulting with the heads of departments +was formed, and many of the changes instituted by the young president +were suggested and formulated by her older colleagues. In +Miss Shafer's day, habit had become precedent, and she would be +the first to point out that the "new curriculum" which will always +be associated with her name, was really the achievement of the +Academic Council and the departments, working through patient years +to adjust, develop, and balance the minutest details in their +composite plan. +</P> + +<P> +The initiative on the part of the faculty has been exerted chiefly +along academic lines, but in some instances it has necessitated +important emendations of the statutes; and that the trustees were +willing to alter the statutes on the request of the faculty would +indicate the friendly confidence felt toward the innovators. +</P> + +<P> +In the statutes of Wellesley College, as printed in 1885, we read +that "The College was founded for the glory of God and the service +of the Lord Jesus Christ, in and by the education and culture of women. +</P> + +<P> +"In order to the attainment of these ends, it is required that every +Trustee, Teacher, and Officer, shall be a member of an Evangelical +church, and that the study of the Holy Scriptures shall be pursued +by every student throughout the entire College course under the +direction of the Faculty." +</P> + +<P> +In the early nineties, pressure from members of the faculty, +themselves members of Evangelical churches, induced the trustees +to alter the religious requirement for teachers; and the reorganization +of the Department of Bible Study a few years later resulted in +a drastic change in the requirements for students. +</P> + +<P> +As printed in 1898, the statutes read, "To realize this design it +is required that every Trustee shall be a member in good standing +of some Evangelical Church; that every teacher shall be of decided +Christian character and influence, and in manifest sympathy with +the religious spirit and aim with which the College was founded; +and that the study of the Sacred Scriptures by every student shall +extend over the first three years, with opportunities for elective +studies in the same during the fourth year." +</P> + +<P> +But it was found that freshmen were not mature enough to study +to the best advantage the new courses in Biblical Criticism, and +the statutes as printed in 1912 record still another amendment: +"And that the study of the Sacred Scriptures by every student +shall extend over the second and third years, with opportunities +for elective studies in the same during the fourth year." +</P> + +<P> +These changes are the more pleasantly significant, since all actual +power, at Wellesley as at most other colleges, resides with the +trustees if they choose to use it. They "have control of the college +and all its property, and of the investment and appropriation of +its funds, in conformity with the design of its establishment and +with the act of incorporation." They have "power to make and +execute such statutes and rules as they may consider needful for +the best administration of their trust, to appoint committees from +their own number, or of those not otherwise connected with the +college, and to prescribe their duties and powers." It is theirs +to appoint "all officers of government or instruction and all +employees needed for the administration of the institution whose +appointment is not otherwise provided for." They determine the +duties and salaries of officers and employees and may remove, +either with or without notice, any person whom they have appointed. +</P> + +<P> +In being governed undemocratically from without by a self-perpetuating +body of directors, Wellesley is of course no worse off than the +majority of American colleges. But that a form of college government +so patently and unreasonably autocratic should have generated so +little friction during forty years, speaks volumes for the +broadmindedness, the generous tolerance, and the Christian +self-control of both faculty and trustees. If, in matters financial, +the trustees have been sometimes unwilling to consider the scruples +of groups of individuals on the faculty, along lines of economic +morals, they have nevertheless taken no official steps to suppress +the expression of such scruples. They have withstood any reactionary +pressure from individuals of their board, and have always allowed +the faculty entire academic freedom. In matters pertaining to +the college classes, they are usually content to ratify the +appointments on the faculty, and approve the alterations in the +curriculum presented to them by the president of the college; and +the president, in turn, leaves the professors and their associates +remarkably free to choose and regulate the personnel and the +courses in the departments. +</P> + +<P> +In this happy condition of affairs, the alumnae trustees undoubtedly +play a mediating part, for they understand the college from within +as no clergyman, financier, philanthropist,—no graduate of a +man's college—can hope to, be he never so enthusiastic and +well-meaning in the cause of woman's education. But so long as +the faculty are excluded from direct representation on the board, +the situation will continue to be anomalous. For it is not too +sweeping to assert that Wellesley's development and academic +standing are due to the cooperative wisdom and devoted scholarship +of her faculty. The initiative has been theirs. They have proved +that a college for women can be successfully taught and administered +by women. To them Wellesley owes her academic status. +</P> + +<P> +From the beginning, women have predominated on the Wellesley +faculty. The head of the Department of Music has always been a +man, but he had no seat upon the Academic Council until 1896. +In 1914-1915, of the twenty-eight heads of departments, three +were men, the professors of Music, of Education, and of French. +Of the thirty-nine professors and associate professors, not heads +of departments, five were men; of the fifty-nine instructors, ten +were men. It is interesting to note that there were no men in the +departments of Greek, Latin, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, +Astronomy, Biblical History, Italian, Spanish, Reading and Speaking, +Art, and Archaeology, during the academic year 1914-1915. +</P> + +<P> +Critics sometimes complain of the preponderance of women upon +Wellesley's faculty, but her policy in this respect has been +deliberate. Every woman's college is making its own experiments, +and the results achieved at Wellesley indicate that a faculty made +up largely of women, with a woman at its head, in no way militates +against high academic standards, sound scholarship, and efficient +administration. That a more masculine faculty would also have +peculiar advantages, she does not deny. +</P> + +<P> +From the collegiate point of view, this feminine faculty is a very +well mixed body, for it includes representative graduates from the +other women's colleges, and from the more important coeducational +colleges and state universities, as well as men from Harvard and +Brown. The Wellesley women on the faculty are an able minority; +but it is the policy of the college to avoid academic in-breeding +and to keep the Wellesley influence a minority influence. Of the +twenty-eight heads of departments, five—the professors of English +Literature, Chemistry, Pure Mathematics, Biblical History, and +Physics—are Wellesley graduates, three of them from the celebrated +class of '80. Of the thirty-nine professors and associate professors, +in 1914-1915, ten were alumnae of Wellesley, and of the fifty-nine +instructors, seventeen. Since 1895, when Professor Stratton was +appointed dean to assist Mrs. Irvine, Wellesley has had five deans, +but only Miss Pendleton, who held the office under Miss Hazard +from 1901 to 1911, has been a graduate of Wellesley. Miss Coman, +who assisted Miss Hazard for one year only, and Miss Chapin, who +consented to fill the office after Miss Pendleton's appointment to +the presidency until a permanent dean could be chosen, were both +graduates of the University of Michigan. Dean Waite, who succeeded +to the office in 1913, is an alumna of Smith College, and has been +a member of the Department of English at Wellesley since 1896. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +II. +</H4> + +<P> +Only the women who have helped to promote and establish the higher +education of women can know how exciting and romantic it was to be +a professor in a woman's college during the last half-century. +To be a teacher was no new thing for a woman; the dame school +is an ancient institution; all down the centuries, in classic +villas, in the convents of the Middle Ages, in the salons of the +eighteenth century, learned ladies with a pedagogic instinct have +left their impress upon the intellectual life of their times. But +the possibility that women might be intellectually and physically +capable of sharing equally with men the burdens and the joys of +developing and directing the scholarship of the race had never been +seriously considered until the nineteenth century. The women who +came 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 never +women had been before. And they brought to that trial the heady +enthusiasm and radiant exhilaration and fiery persistence which +possess all those who rediscover learning and drink deep. They +knew the kind of selfless inspiration Wyclif knew when he was +translating the Bible into the language of England's common people. +They shared the elation and devotion of Erasmus and his fellows. +</P> + +<P> +To plan a curriculum in which the humanities and the sciences +should every one be given a fair chance; to distinguish intelligently +between the advantages of the elective system and its disadvantages; +to decide, without prejudice, at what points the education of the +girl should differ or diverge from the education of the boy; to +try out the pedagogic methods of the men's colleges and discover +which were antiquated and should be abolished, which were susceptible +of reform, which were sound; to invent new methods,—these were +the romantic quests to which these enamored devotees were vowed, and +to which, through more than half a century, they have been faithful. +</P> + +<P> +Wellesley's student laboratory for experimental work in physics, +established 1878, was preceded in New England only by the student +laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her +laboratory for work in experimental psychology, established by +Professor Calkins in 1891, was the first in any women's college +in the country, and one of the first in any college. In 1886, the +American School of Classical Studies at Athens invited Wellesley +to become one of the cooperating colleges to sustain this school +and to enjoy its advantages. The invitation came quite unsolicited, +and was the first extended to a woman's college. +</P> + +<P> +The schoolmen developing and expanding their Trivium and Quadrivium +at Oxford, Paris, Bologna, experienced no keener intellectual delights +than did their belated sisters of Vassar, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley. +</P> + +<P> +But in order to understand the passion of their point of view, +we must remember that the higher education for which the women +of the nineteenth century were enthusiastic was distinctly an +education along scholarly and intellectual lines; this early and +original meaning of the term "higher education", this original and +distinguishing function of the woman's college, are in danger of +being blurred and lost sight of to-day by a generation that knew +not Joseph. The zeal with which the advocates of educational +and domestic training are trying to force into the curricula of +women's colleges courses on housekeeping, home-making, dressmaking, +dairy farming, to say nothing of stenography, typewriting, double +entry, and the musical glasses minus Shakespeare, is for the most +part unintelligible to the women who have given their lives to the +upbuilding of such colleges as Bryn Mawr, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, +Vassar, and Wellesley,—not because they minimize the civilizing +value of either homemakers or business women in a community, or +fail to recognize their needs, but simply because women's colleges +were never intended to meet those needs. +</P> + +<P> +When we go to the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts, we do not +complain because it lacks the characteristics of the Smithsonian +Institute, or of the Boston Horticultural Show. We are content +that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology should differ in +scope from Harvard University; yet some of us, college graduates +even, seem to have an uneasy feeling that Wellesley and Bryn Mawr +may not be ministering adequately to life, because they do not +add to their curricular activities the varied aims of an +Agricultural College, a Business College, a School of Philanthropy, +and a Cooking School, with required courses on the modifying of +milk for infants. Great institutions for vocational training, such +as Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and Simmons College in Boston, +have a dignity and a usefulness which no one disputes. Undoubtedly +America needs more of their kind. But to impair the dignity and +usefulness of the colleges dedicated to the higher education of +women by diluting their academic programs with courses on business +or domesticity will not meet that need. The unwillingness of +college faculties to admit vocational courses to the curriculum is +not due to academic conservatism and inability to march with +the times, but to an unclouded and accurate conception of the +meaning of the term "higher education." +</P> + +<P> +But definiteness of aim does not necessarily imply narrowness +of scope. The Wellesley Calendar for 1914-1915 contains a list +of three hundred and twelve courses on thirty-two subjects, exclusive +of the gymnasium practice, dancing, swimming, and games required +by the Department of Hygiene. Of these subjects, four are ancient +languages 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 and +spiritual evolution of the human race, Biblical and Secular History, +Economics, Education, Logic, Psychology, and Philosophy. Four +may be classified as arts: Archaeology, Art, including its history, +Music, and Reading and Speaking, which old-fashioned people still +call Elocution. +</P> + +<P> +From this wide range of subjects, the candidates for the B.A. +degree are required to take one course in Mathematics, the prescribed +freshman course; one course in English Composition, prescribed for +freshmen; courses in Biblical History and Hygiene; a modern +language, unless two modern languages have been presented for +admission; two natural sciences before the junior year, unless +one has already been offered for admission, in which case one is +required, and a course in Philosophy, which the student should +ordinarily take before her senior year. +</P> + +<P> +These required studies cover about twenty of the fifty-nine hours +prescribed for the degree; the remaining hours are elective; but +the student must group her electives intelligently, and to this end +she must complete either nine hours of work in each of two +departments, or twelve hours in one department and six in a +second; she must specialize within limits. +</P> + +<P> +It will be evident on examining this program that no work is +required in History, Economics, English Literature and Language, +Comparative Philology, Education, Archaeology, Art, Reading and +Speaking, and Music. All the courses in these departments are +free electives. Just what led to this legislation, only those who +were present at the decisive discussions of the Academic Council +can know. Possibly they have discovered by experience that young +women do not need to be coaxed or coerced into studying the arts; +that they gravitate naturally to those subjects which deal with +human society, such as History, Economics, and English Literature; +and that the specialist can be depended upon to elect, without +pressure, courses in Philology or Pedagogy. +</P> + +<P> +But little effort has been made at Wellesley, so far, to attract +graduate students. In this respect she differs from Bryn Mawr. +She offers very few courses planned exclusively for college +graduates, but opens her advanced courses in most departments to +both seniors and graduates. This does not mean, however, that +the graduate work is not on a sound basis. Wellesley has not yet +exercised her right to give the Doctor's degree, but expert +testimony, outside the college, has declared that some of the +Master's theses are of the doctorial grade in quality, if not in +quantity; and the work for the Master's degree is said to be more +difficult and more severely scrutinized than in some other colleges +where the Doctor's degree is made the chief goal of the graduate student. +</P> + +<P> +The college has in its gift the Alice Freeman Palmer Fellowship, +founded in 1903 by Mrs. David P. Kimball of Boston, and yielding +an income of about one thousand dollars. The holder must be a +woman, a graduate of Wellesley or some other American college of +approved standing; she must be "not more than twenty-six years of +age at the time of her appointment, unmarried throughout the whole +of her tenure, and as free as possible from other responsibilities." +She may hold the fellowship for one year only, but "within three +years from entrance on the fellowship she must present to the +faculty a thesis embodying the results of the research carried on +during the period of tenure." +</P> + +<P> +Wellesley is proud of her Alice Freeman Palmer Fellows. Of the +eleven who have held the Fellowship between 1904 and 1915, four +are Wellesley graduates, Helen Dodd Cook, whose subject was +Philosophy; Isabelle Stone, working in Greek; Gertrude Schopperle, +in Comparative Literature; Laura Alandis Hibbard, in English +Literature. Two are from Radcliffe, and one each from Cornell, +Vassar, the University of Dakota, Ripon, and Goucher. The Fellow +is left free to study abroad, in an American college or university, +or to use the income for independent research. The list of +universities at which these young women have studied is as impressive +as it is long. It includes the American Schools for Classical +Studies at Athens and Rome; the universities of Gottingen, Wurzburg, +Munich, Paris, and Cambridge, England; and Yale, Johns Hopkins, +and the University of Chicago. +</P> + +<P> +This is not the place in which to give a detailed account of the +work of each one of Wellesley's academic departments. Any intelligent +person who turns the pages of the official calendar may easily +discover that the standard of admission and the requirements for +the degree of Bachelor of Arts place Wellesley in the first rank +among American colleges, whether for men or for women. But every +woman's college, besides conforming to the general standard, is +making its own contribution to the higher education of women. +At Wellesley, the methods in certain departments have gained a +deservedly high reputation. +</P> + +<P> +The Department of Art, under Professor Alice V.V. Brown, formerly +of the Slater Museum of Norwich, Connecticut, is doing a work in +the proper interpretation and history of art as unique as it is +valuable. The laboratory method is used, and all students are +required to recognize and indicate the characteristic qualities +and attributes of the great masters and the different schools of +paintings by sketching from photographs of the pictures studied. +These five and ten minute sketches by young girls, the majority of +whom have had no training in drawing, are remarkable for the +vivacity and accuracy with which they reproduce the salient +features of the great paintings. The students are of course given +the latest results of the modern school of art criticism. In +addition to the work with undergraduates, the department offers +courses to graduate students who wish to prepare themselves for +curatorships, or lectureships in art museums, and Wellesley women +occupy positions of trust in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, +in the Boston Art Museum, in museums in Chicago, Worcester, and +elsewhere. The "Short History of Italian Painting" by Professor +Brown and Mr. William Rankin is a standard authority. +</P> + +<P> +The Department of Music, working quite independently of the +Department of Art, has also adapted laboratory methods to its own +ends 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 developed +in connection with the courses in practical music. The first-year +class, meeting once a week, listens to an anonymous musical +selection played by one of its members, and must decide by internal +evidence—such as simple cadences, harmonic figuration as applied +to the accompaniment and other characteristics—upon the school +of the composer, and biographical data. The analysis of the +musical selection and the reasons for her decision are set down +in her notebook by the listening student. The second-year class +concerns itself with "the thematic and polyphonic melody, the +larger forms, harmony in its aesthetic bearings, the aesthetic +effects of the more complicated rhythms, comparative criticism +and the various schools of composition." +</P> + +<P> +These valuable contributions to method and scope in the study of +the History of Art and the History of Music are original with +Wellesley, and are distinctly a part of her history. +</P> + +<P> +Among the departments which carry prestige outside the college +walls are those of Philosophy and Psychology, English Literature, +and German. Wellesley's Department of English Literature is +unusually fortunate in having as interpreters of the great literature +of 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 Margaret +Sherwood are to the Wellesley of their day and ours. Working +together, with unfailing enthusiasm for their subjects, and keen +insight into the cultural needs of American girls, they have built +up their department on a sure foundation of accurate scholarship +and tested pedagogic method. At a time when the study of literature +threatened to become, almost universally, an exercise in the dry +rot of philological terms, in the cataloguing of sources, or the +analyzing of literary forms, the department at Wellesley continued +unswervingly 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 literary +masterpieces, the revelation of the soul of poet, dramatist, +essayist, novelist. No teaching of literature is less sentimental +than the teaching at Wellesley, and no teaching is more quickening +to 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 to +a living voice is justified of her teachers and her students. +</P> + +<P> +Indications of the reputation achieved by Wellesley's methods +of teaching German are found in the increasing numbers of students +who come to the college for the sake of the work in the German +Department, and in the fact that teachers' agencies not infrequently +ask candidates for positions if they are familiar with the Wellesley +methods. In an address before the New Hampshire State Teachers' +Association, in 1913, Professor Muller describes the aims and +ideals of her department as they took shape under the constructive +leadership of her predecessor, Professor Wenckebach, and as they +have been modified and developed in later years to meet the needs +of American students. +</P> + +<P> +"Cinderella became a princess and a ruler over night," says Professor +Muller, "that is, German suddenly took the position in our college +that it has held ever since. Such a result was due not merely to +methods, of course, but first of all to the strong and enthusiastic +personality that was identified with them, and that was the main +secret of the unusual effectiveness of Fraulein Wenckebach's teaching. +</P> + +<P> +"But this German professor had not only live methods and virile +personal qualities to help her along; she also had what a great +many of the foreign language teachers in this country must as yet +do without, that is, the absolute confidence, warm appreciation, +and financial support of an enlightened administration. President +Freeman and the trustees seem to have done practically everything +that their intrepid professor of German asked for. They not only +saw that all equipments needed... were provided, but they also +generously stipulated, at Fraulein Wenckebach's urgent request, +that all the elementary and intermediate classes in the foreign +language departments should be kept small, that is, that they +should not exceed fifteen. If Fraulein Wenckebach had been +obliged, as many modern language teachers still are, to teach +German to classes of from thirty to forty students; if she had +met in the administration of Wellesley College with as little +appreciation and understanding of the fine art and extreme difficulty +of foreign language work as high school teachers, for instance, +often encounter, her efforts could not possibly have been crowned +with success. +</P> + +<P> +"Another agent in enabling Fraulein Wenckebach to do such fine +constructive work with her Department was the general Wellesley +policy, still followed, I am happy to say, of centralizing all +power and responsibility regarding department affairs in the person +of the head of the Department. Centralization may not work well +in politics, but a foreign language department working with the +reformed methods could not develop the highest efficiency under +any other form of government. With a living organism, such as +a foreign language department should be, there ought to be one, +and only one, responsible person to keep her finger on the pulse +of things—otherwise disintegration and ineffectiveness of the +work as a whole is sure to follow." +</P> + +<P> +Professor Muller goes on to say, "Now JOY, genuine joy, in their +work, based on good, strong, mental exercise, is what we want +and what on the whole we get from our students. It was so in the +days of Fraulein Wenckebach and is so now, I am happy to say—and +not in the literature courses only, but in our elementary drill +work as well. +</P> + +<P> +"It may be of interest to note that our elementary work and also +the advanced work in grammar and idiom are at present taught by +Americans wholly. I have come to the conclusion that well-trained +Americans gifted with vivid personalities get better results along +those lines than the average teacher of foreign birth and breeding." +</P> + +<P> +Even in the elementary courses, only those texts are used which +illustrate German life, literature, and history; and the advanced +electives are carefully guarded, so that no student may elect +courses in modern German, the novel and the drama, who has not +already been well grounded in Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing. The +drastic thoroughness with which unpromising students are weeded +out of the courses in German enhances rather than defeats their +popularity among undergraduates. +</P> + +<P> +The learned women who direct Wellesley's work in Philosophy and +Psychology lend their own distinction to this department. Professor +Case, a graduate of the University of Michigan, has been connected +with the college since 1884, and her courses in Greek Philosophy +and the Philosophy of Religion make an appeal to thoughtful students +which 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 psychology +she has achieved results attained by no one else, and her work +has a Continental reputation. Professor Calkins, the head of the +Department, 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 was +the first woman to receive the degree of Litt.D. from Columbia +University, and the first woman to be elected to the presidency +of the American Psychological Association, succeeding William James +in that office. +</P> + +<P> +In the Department of Economics and Sociology, organized under +the leadership of Professor Katharine Coman, in 1901, Wellesley +has been fortunate in having as teachers two women of national +reputation whose interest in the human side of economic problems +has vitalized for their eager classes a subject which unless +sympathetically handled, lends itself all too easily to mechanical +interpretations of theory. Professor Coman's wide and intimate +knowledge of American economic conditions, as evidenced in her +books, the "Industrial History of the United States", and "Economic +Beginnings of the Far West", in her studies in Social Insurance +published in The Survey, and in her practical work for the College +Settlements Association and the Consumers' League, and as an +active member of the Strike Committee during the strike of the +Chicago Garment Workers in 1910-1911, lent to her teaching an +appeal which more cloistered theorists can never achieve. The +letters which came to her from alumnae, after her resignation +from the department in 1913, were of the sort that every teacher +cherishes. Since her death in January, 1915, some of these letters +have been printed in a memorial number of the Wellesley College +News. Nothing could better illustrate her influence as an intellectual +force in the college to which she came as an instructor in 1880. +One of her oldest students writes: +</P> + +<P> +"I am too late for the thirtieth anniversary, but still it is +never too late to say how much I enjoyed my work with you in +college. It always seemed such grown-up work. Partly, I suppose, +because it was closely related to the things of life, and partly +because 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 value +your seminar in Statistics was to me; it gave me enough insight +into the principles and practice to encourage me to present my +work the first year out of college in statistical form. It was +approved. Without the incentive and the little experience I had +gained from you I might not have tried to do this. Since then, +in whatever field of social work I have been I have found this +ability valuable, and I developed enough skill at it to handle +the investigation into wages of the Massachusetts Minimum Wage +Commission without other training. I am very grateful to you for +this bit of technical training for which I would never have taken +the time later." +</P> + +<P> +Another says: "It is a pleasure to have an opportunity, after so +many years, to make some expression of the gratitude I owe you. +The course in Political Economy which I was so wise as to take +with 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 presented +to us the ideas, the concepts, which are now accepted principles +of men's thought as to the relation of class to class, of man to +man. And so I feel that it was to your enthusiasm, your power of +inspiring your pupils that I owe my own interest in economic and +sociological affairs." +</P> + +<P> +And still another: "I have had more real pleasure from my Economics +courses and Sociology courses than from any others of my college +course. Had it not been for yourself and Miss Balch, that work +would not have stood for so much. For your guidance and your +inspiration I am most grateful. I have tried to carry out your +ideals as far as possible in the Visiting Nurse work and the +Social Settlement in Omaha ever since leaving Wellesley." +</P> + +<P> +Professor Emily Greene Balch, who succeeded Miss Coman as head +of the Department of Economics, is herself an authority on questions +of immigration; her book, "Our Slavic Fellow Citizens", is an +important contribution to the history of the subject, and has been +cited in the German Reichstag as authoritative on Slavic immigration. +She has also served on more than one State commission in +Massachusetts,—among them the disinterested and competent City +Planning Board,—and the sanity and judicial balance of her opinions +are 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 critical +study of its main theories and political movements, open to juniors +and seniors who have already completed two other courses in +Economics; a course entitled "The Modern Labor Movement", in which +special attention is given to labor legislation, factory inspection, +and the organization of labor, with a study of methods of meeting +the difficulties of the modern industrial situation; and a course +in Immigration and the problems to which it gives rise in the +United States. +</P> + +<P> +The Wellesley fire did the college one good turn by bringing to +the notice of the general public the departments of Science. When +so many of the laboratories and so much of the equipment were +swept away, outsiders became aware of the excellent work which +was being done in those laboratories; of the modern work in Geology +and Geography carried on not only in Wellesley but for the teachers +of Boston by Professor Fisher who is so wisely developing the +department which Professor Niles set on its firm foundation; of +the work of Professor Robertson who is an authority on the bryozoa +fauna of the Pacific coast of North America and Japan; of the +authoritative work on the life history of Pinus, by Professor +Ferguson of the Department of Botany; of the quiet, thorough, +modern work for students in Physics and Chemistry and Astronomy. +</P> + +<P> +An evidence of the excellent organization of departmental work +at Wellesley is found in the ease and smoothness with which the +Department of Hygiene, formerly the Boston Normal School of +Gymnastics, has become a force in the Wellesley curriculum under +the direction of Miss Amy Morris Homans, who was also the head +of the school in Boston. By a gradual process of adjustment, +admission to the two years' course leading to a certificate in +the Department of Hygiene "will be limited to applicants who are +candidates for the B.A. degree at Wellesley College and to those +who already hold the Bachelor's degree either from Wellesley College +or from some other college." A five years' course is also offered, +by which students may obtain both the B.A. degree and the certificate +of the department. But all students, whether working for the +certificate or not, must take a one-hour course in Hygiene in +the freshman year, and two periods a week of practical gymnastic +work in the freshman and sophomore years. +</P> + +<P> +Like all American colleges, Wellesley makes heavy and constant +demands on the mere pedagogic power of its teachers. Their days +are pretty well filled with the classroom routine and the necessary +and incessant social intercourse with the eager crowd of youth. +It may be years before an American college for women can sustain +and foster creative scholarship for its own sake, after the example +of the European universities; but Wellesley is not ungenerous; +the Sabbatical Grant gives certain heads of departments an opportunity +for refreshment and personal work every seven years; and even those +who do not profit by this privilege manage to keep their minds +alive by outside work and contacts. +</P> + +<P> +Every two years the secretary to the president issues a list of +faculty publications, ranging from verse and short stories in the +best magazines to papers in learned reviews for esoteric consumption +only; from idyllic novels, such as Margaret Sherwood's "Daphne", +and sympathetic travel sketches like Katharine Lee Bates's "Spanish +Highways and Byways", to scholarly translations, such as Sophie +Jewett's "Pearl" and Vida D. Scudder's "Letters of St. Catherine of +Siena", and philosophical treatises, of which Mary Whiton Calkins's +"Persistent Problems of Philosophy", translated into several +languages, is a notable example. +</P> + +<P> +But the Wellesley faculty is a public-spirited body; its contribution +to the general life is not only abstract and literary; for many of +its members are identified with modern movements toward better +citizenship. Miss Balch, besides her work on municipal committees, +is connected with the Woman's Trade Union League, and is interested +in the great movement for peace. In the spring of 1915, she was +one of those who sailed with Miss Jane Addams to attend the Woman's +Peace Congress at the Hague, and she afterwards visited other +European countries on a mission of peace. Miss Bates is active +in promoting the interests of the International Institute in Spain. +The American College for Girls in Constantinople often looks to +Wellesley for teachers, and more than one Wellesley professor +has given a Sabbatical year to the schoolgirls in Constantinople. +During the absence of President Patrick, Professor Roxana Vivian +of Wellesley was acting president, and had the honor of bringing +the college safely through the perplexities and terrors of the +Young Turks' Revolution in 1908 and 1909. Professor Kendall, +of the Department of History, is Wellesley's most distinguished +traveler. Her book, "A Wayfarer in China", tells the story of +some of her travels, and she has received the rare honor, for +a woman, of being made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. +Miss Calkins is an officer of the Consumers' League. Miss Scudder +has been identified from its outset with the College Settlements +Movement, and of late years with the new service to Italian +immigrants inaugurated by Denison House. +</P> + +<P> +As a result of these varied interests, the intellectual fellowship +among the older women in the college community is of a peculiarly +stimulating quality, and the fact that it is almost exclusively a +feminine fellowship does not affect its intellectuality. The +Wellesley faculty, like the faculty of Harvard, is not a cloistered +body, and contact with the minds of "a world of men" through books +and the visitations of itinerant scholars is about as easy in the +one case as in the other. Every year Wellesley has her share of +distinguished visitors, American, European, and Oriental, scholars, +poets, scientists, statesmen, who enrich her life and enlarge +her spiritual vision. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +III. +</H4> + +<P> +One chapter of Wellesley's history it is too soon to write: the +story of the great names and great personalities, the spiritual +stuff of which every college is built. This is the chapter on +which the historians of men's colleges love best to dwell. But +the women's lips and pens are fountains sealed, for a reticent +hundred years—or possibly less, under pressure—with the seals +of academic reserve, and historic perspective, and traditional +modesty. Most of the women who had a hand in the making of +Wellesley's first forty years are still alive. There's the rub. +It would not hamper the journalist. But the historian has his +conventions. One hundred years from now, what names, living +to-day, will be written in Wellesley's golden book? Already they +are written in many prophetic hearts. However, women can keep +a secret. +</P> + +<P> +Even of those who have already finished their work on earth, it is +too soon to speak authoritatively; but gratitude and love will not +be silent, and no story of Wellesley's first half-century would +be complete that held no records of their devotion and continuing +influence. +</P> + +<P> +Among the pioneers, there was no more interesting and forceful +personality than Susan Maria Hallowell, who came to Wellesley as +Professor of Natural History in 1875, the friend of Agassiz and +Asa Gray. She was a Maine woman, and she had been teaching +twenty-two years, in Bangor and Portland, before she was called +to Wellesley. Her successor in the Department of Botany writes +in a memorial sketch of her life: +</P> + +<P> +"With that indefatigable zeal so characteristic of her whole life, +she began the work in preparation for the new position. She went +from college to college, from university to university, studying +the scientific libraries and laboratories. At the close of this +investigation she announced to the founders of the college that +the task which they had assigned to her was too great for any +one individual to undertake. There must be several professorships +rather than one. Of those named she was given first choice, and +when, in 1876, she opened her laboratories and actually began her +teaching in Wellesley College, she did so as professor of Botany, +although her title was not formally changed until 1878. +</P> + +<P> +"The foundations which she laid were so broad and sure, the several +courses 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 of +the work in her department have since been necessary.... She +organized and built up a botanical library which from the first +was second to that of no other college in the country, and is +to-day only surpassed by the botanical libraries of a few of our +great universities." +</P> + +<P> +Fortunately the botanical library and the laboratories were housed +in Stone Hall, and escaped devastation by the fire. +</P> + +<P> +Professor Hallowell was the first woman to be admitted to the +botanical lectures and laboratories of the University of Berlin. +She "was not a productive scholar", again we quote from Professor +Ferguson, "as that term is now used, and hence her gifts and her +achievements are but little known to the botanists of to-day. She +was preeminently a teacher and an organizer. Only those who knew +her in this double capacity can fully realize the richness of her +nature and the power of her personality." She retired from active +service at the college in February, 1902, when she was made +Professor Emeritus; but she lived in Wellesley village with her +friend, Miss Horton, the former professor of Greek, until her +death in 1911. Mrs. North gives us a charming glimpse of the +quaint and dignified little old lady. "When in recent years the +blossoming forth of academic dress made a pageant of our great +occasions, the badges of scholarship seemed to her foreign to the +simplicity of true learning, and she walked bravely in the +Commencement procession, wearing the little bonnet which henceforth +became a distinction." +</P> + +<P> +Another early member of the Department of Botany, Clara Eaton +Cummings, who came to Wellesley as a student in 1876 and kept her +connection 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 botanists +for Wellesley. +</P> + +<P> +With this pioneer group belongs also Professor Niles, who was +actively connected with the college from 1882 until his retirement +as Professor Emeritus in 1908. Wellesley shares with the +Massachusetts Institute of Technology her precious memories of +this devoted gentleman and scholar. His wise planning set the +Department of Geology and Geography on its present excellent +basis. At his death in 1910, a valuable legacy of geological +specimens came to Wellesley, only to be destroyed in 1914 by the +fire. But his greatest gifts to the college are those which no +fire can ever harm. +</P> + +<P> +Anne Eugenia Morgan, professor in the Department of Philosophy +from 1878 to 1900; Mary Adams Currier, enthusiastic head of the +Department of Elocution from 1875 to 1896, the founder of the +Monroe 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 alumnae +speak these names, their hearts glow with unchanging affection. +</P> + +<P> +But the most vivid of all these pioneers, and one of the most +widely known, was Carla Wenckebach. Of her, Wellesley has a picture +and a memory which will not fade, in the brilliant biography +[Carla Wenckebach, Pioneer (Ginn & Co. pub.).] by her colleague and +close friend, Margarethe Muller, who succeeded her in the Department +of German. As an interpretation of character and personality, +this book takes its place with Professor Palmer's "Life of Alice +Freeman Palmer", among literary biographies of the first rank. +</P> + +<P> +Professor Wenckebach came to Wellesley in 1883, and we have the +story of her coming, in her own letters, given us in translation +by Professor Muller. She was attending the Sauveur Summer School +of Languages at Amherst, and had been asked to take some classes +there, in elementary German, where her methods immediately attracted +attention; and presently we find her writing: +</P> + +<P> +"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.... +</P> + +<P> +"The other day, when I was in my room digging away at my Greek +lessons, the landlady brings in three visiting cards, remarking +that 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 at +Wellesley College (Wellesley, you must know, is the largest and +most magnificent of all the women's colleges in the United States). +I immediately comprehended that these were three lions (grosse +Tiere), and I began to have curious presentiments. Fortunately, +I was in correct dress, so that I could rush down into our elegant +reception room. Here I made a solemn bow, the three ladies +returning the compliment. The president, a lady who must be a +good deal younger than myself, a real Ph.D. (of Philosophy and +History), told me that she had heard of me and therefore wished +to see me in regard to a vacancy at Wellesley College, which, +according to the statutes, must not be filled by a man so long +as a woman could be procured. The woman she was looking for must +be able, she said, to give lectures on German Literature in German, +and to expound the works of German writers thoroughly; she would +engage me for this position, she added, if she found that I was +the right person for it. +</P> + +<P> +"I was dumfounded at the mere suggestion of this gift of Heaven +coming to me, for I had heard so many beautiful things about +Wellesley that the idea of possibly getting a position there +totally dazed me. Summoning up courage, however, I controlled +my wild joy, and pulling myself together with determination, I +gave the ladies the desired account of my studies, my journalistic +work, etc., whereupon the president informed me that she would +attend my class the next day." +</P> + +<P> +The ordeal was successfully passed, and the position of "head +teacher in the German Department at Wellesley" was immediately +offered her. "Now you think, I suppose, that I fell round the +necks of those angels of joy! I didn't though!" she blithely +writes. But she agreed to visit Wellesley, and her description +of this visit gives us old College Hall in a new light. +</P> + +<P> +"The place in itself is so beautiful that we could hardly realize +its being merely a school. The Royal Palace in Berlin is small +compared to the main building, which in length and stateliness +of appearance surpasses even the great Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. +The entrance hall is decorated with magnificent palms, with +valuable paintings, and choice statuary. The walls in all the +corridors are covered with fine engravings; there are carpets +everywhere and elegant pieces of furniture; there is gas, steam +heat, and a big elevator; everything, down to the bathrooms, +is princely." +</P> + +<P> +Professor Muller adds, "Of course, she was 'kind enough' to accept +the position offered, although it was not especially lucrative. +'But what is a high salary,' she exclaims, 'in comparison to the +ease and enthusiasm with which I can here plow a new field of work! +That, and the honor attached to the position, are worth more to +me than thousands of dollars. I am to be a regular grosses Tier +now myself,—what fun, after having been a beast of burden so long!'" +</P> + +<P> +From the first, Wellesley recognized her quality, and wisely gave +it freedom. In addition to her work in German, we owe to her the +beginnings of the Department of Education, through her lectures +on Pedagogy. +</P> + +<P> +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 yet +deepening quality in her work, that ease and grace and joy, that +mark the work of the elect only,—of those rare souls among us +who are 'near the shaping hand of the Creator.'" And Fraulein +Wenckebach herself said of her profession: "Every teacher, every +educator, should above all be a guide. Not one of those who, like +signposts, stretch their wooden arms with pedantic insistence in +a given direction, but one, rather, who, after the manner of the +heavenly bodies, diffusing warmth and light and cheer, draws the +young soul irresistibly to leave its dark jungles of prejudice and +ignorance for the promised land of wisdom and freedom." And her +students testify enthusiastically to her unusual success. One +of them writes: +</P> + +<P> +"To Fraulein Wenckebach as a teacher, I owe more than to any other +teacher I ever had. I cannot remember that she reproved any +student or that she ever directly urged us to do our best. She +made no efforts to make her lectures attractive by witticisms, +anecdotes, or entertaining illustrations. Yet her students worked +with eager faithfulness, and I, personally, have never been so +absorbed and inspired by any lectures as by hers. The secret of +her power was not merely that she was master of the art of teaching +and knew how to arouse interest and awaken the mind to independent +thought and inquiry, but that her own earnestness and high purpose +touched our lives and made anything less than the highest possible +degree of effort and attainment seem not worth while."—"We girls +used to say to each other that if we ever taught we should want +to be to our students what she was to us, and if they could feel +as we felt toward her and her work we should want no more. She +demanded the best of us, without demanding, and what she gave us +was beyond measure.—It was courses like hers that made us feel +that college work was the best part of college life." +</P> + +<P> +These are the things that teachers care most to hear, and in the +nineteen years of her service at Wellesley, there were many students +eager to tell her what she had been to them. She writes in 1886: +"What a privilege to pour into the receptive mind of young American +girls the fullness of all that is precious about the German spirit; +and how enthusiastically they receive all I can give them!" +</P> + +<P> +In the late eighties and early nineties there came to the college +a notable group of younger women, destined to play an important +part in Wellesley's life and to increase her academic reputation: +Mary Whiton Calkins, Margarethe Muller, Adeline B. Hawes, the able +head of the Department of Latin, Katharine M. Edwards, of the +Department of Greek, Sophie de Chantal Hart, of the Department +of English Composition, Vida D. Scudder, Margaret Sherwood, and +Sophie Jewett, of the Department of English Literature. In the +autumn of 1909, Sophie Jewett died, and never has the college been +stirred to more intimate and personal grief. So many poets, so +many scholars, are not lovable; but this scholar-poet quickened +every heart to love her. To live in her house, to sit at her +table, to listen to her "cadenced voice" in the classrooms, were +privileges which those who shared them will never forget. Her +colleague, Professor Scudder, speaking at the memorial service +in the College Chapel, said: +</P> + +<P> +"We shall long rejoice to dwell on the ministry of love that was +hers to exercise in so rare a measure, through her unerring and +reverent discernment of all finest aspects of beauty; on her +sensitive allegiance to truth; on the fine reticence of her +imaginative passion; on that heavenly sympathy and selflessness +of hers, a selflessness so deep that it bore no trace of effort or +resolute purpose, but was simply the natural instinct of the soul.... +</P> + +<P> +"Let us give thanks, then, for all her noble and delicate powers; +for her all-controlling Christianity; for her subtle rectitude of +intellectual and spiritual vision; for her swift ardor for all +high causes and great dreams; for that unbounded tenderness toward +youth, that firm and steady standard of scholarship, that central +hunger for truth, which gave high quality to her teaching, and +which during twenty years have been at the service of Wellesley +College and of the Department of English Literature." +</P> + +<P> +This very giving of herself to the claims of the college hampered, +to a certain extent, her poetic creativeness; the volumes that +she has left are as few as they are precious, every one "a pearl." +Speaking of these poems, Miss Scudder says: "And in her own +verse,—do we not catch to a strange degree, hushed echoes of +heavenly music? These lyrics are not wholly of the earth: they +vibrate subtly with what I can only call the sense of the Eternal. +How beautiful, how consoling, that her last book should have been +that translation, such as only one who was at once true poet and +true scholar could have made, of the sweetest medieval elegy +'The Pearl'!" And Miss Bates, in her preface to the posthumous +volume of "Folk-Ballads of Southern Europe", illumines for us +the scholarship which went into these close and sympathetic +translations: +</P> + +<P> +"For the Roumanian ballads, although she pored over the originals, +she had to depend, in the main, upon French translation, which +was usually available, too, for the Gascon and Breton. Italian, +which she knew well, guided her through obscure dialects of Italy +and Sicily, but Castilian, Portuguese, and Catalan she puzzled out +for herself with such natural insight that the experts to whom +these translations have been submitted found hardly a word to +change. 'After all,' as she herself wrote, 'ballads are simple +things, and require, as a rule, but a limited vocabulary, though +a peculiarly idiomatic one.'" +</P> + +<P> +Not the least poetic of her books, although it is written in prose, +is the delicate interpretation of St. Francis, written for children +and called "God's Troubadour." +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Erect, serene, she came and went<BR> + On her high task of beauty bent.<BR> + For us who knew, nor can forget,<BR> + The echoes of her laughter yet<BR> + Make sudden music in the halls."<BR> + ["In Memoriam: Sophie Jewett." A poem by Margaret Sherwood,<BR> + Wellesley College News, May 1, 1913.]<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +In 1913, Madame Colin, who had served the college as head of +the Department of French since 1905, died during the spring recess +after a three days' illness. Madame Colin had studied at the +University of Paris and the Sorbonne, and her ideals for her +department were high. +</P> + +<P> +Among Wellesley's own alumnae, only a very few who were officers +of the college during the first forty years have died. Of these +are Caroline Frances Pierce, of the class of 1891, who was librarian +from 1903 to 1910. To her wise planning we owe the conveniences +and comforts in the new library building which she did not live +to see completed. +</P> + +<P> +In 1914, the Department of Greek suffered a deep loss in Professor +Annie Sybil Montague, of the class of 1879. Besides being a +member of the first graduating class, Miss Montague was one of +the first to receive the degree of M.A. from Wellesley. In 1882, +the college conferred this degree for the first time, and Miss +Montague 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: +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + 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. +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + 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. +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + 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.... +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + 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: +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + "For the sun," said he, "is yet on the hills, and many a man + has drunk the draught late." +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + "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." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +In January, 1915, while this story of Wellesley was being written, +Katharine Coman, Professor Emeritus of Economics, went like a +conqueror to the triumph of her death. Miss Coman's power as +a teacher has been spoken of on an earlier page, but she will be +remembered in the college and outside as more than a teacher. Her +books and her active interest in industrial affairs, her noble +attitude toward life, all have had their share in informing and +directing and inspiring the college she loved. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "A mountain soul, she shines in crystal air<BR> + Above the smokes and clamors of the town.<BR> + Her pure, majestic brows serenely wear<BR> + The stars for crown.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "She comrades with the child, the bird, the fern,<BR> + Poet and sage and rustic chimney-nook,<BR> + But Pomp must be a pilgrim ere he earn<BR> + Her mountain look.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Her mountain look, the candor of the snow,<BR> + The strength of folded granite, and the calm<BR> + Of choiring pines, whose swayed green branches strow<BR> + A healing balm.<BR> +</P> + +<HR WIDTH="60%" ALIGN="center"> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "For lovely is a mountain rosy-lit<BR> + With dawn, or steeped in sunshine, azure-hot,<BR> + But loveliest when shadows traverse it,<BR> + And stain it not."<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +[From a poem, "A Mountain Soul," by Katharine Lee Bates, 1904.] +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap04"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER IV +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE STUDENTS AT WORK AND PLAY +</H3> + +<P> +The safest general statement which can be made about Wellesley +students of the first forty years of the college is that more than +sixty per cent of them have come from outside New England, from +the Middle West, the Far West, and the South. Possibly there is +a Wellesley type. Whether or not it could be differentiated from +the Smith, the Bryn Mawr, the Vassar, and the Mt. Holyoke types, +if the five were set up in a row, unlabeled, is a question. Yet +it is true that certain recognizable qualities have developed and +tend to persist among the students of Wellesley. +</P> + +<P> +Wellesley girls are in the best sense democratic. There is no +Gold Coast on the campus or in the village; money carries no +social prestige. More money is spent, and more frivolously, than +in the early days; there are more girls, and more rich girls, to +spend it; yet the indifference to it except as a mechanical +convenience, a medium of exchange and an opportunity for service, +continues to be naively Utopian. +</P> + +<P> +But money is not the only touchstone of democratic sensitiveness. +At Wellesley there has always been uneasiness at the hint of +unequal opportunity. When the college grew so large that membership +in the six societies took on the aspect of special privilege, +restiveness was as marked among the privileged as among the +unprivileged, and more outspoken. The first result was the Barn +Swallows, a social and dramatic society to which every student +in college might belong if she wished. The second was the +reorganization of the six societies on a more democratic and +intellectual basis, to prevent "rushing", favoritism, cliques, and +all the ills that mutually exclusive clubs are heir to. The +agitation for these reforms came from the societies themselves, +and they endured with Spartan determination the months of transitional +misery and readjustment which their generous idealism brought upon +their heads. +</P> + +<P> +Enthusiasm for equality also enters into the students' attitude +toward "the academic", and like most enthusiasts, from the French +Revolution down, they are capable of confusing the issue. In the +early days, they were not allowed to know their marks, lest the +knowledge should rouse an unworthy spirit of competition; and of +all the rules instituted by the founder, this is the one which +they have been most unwilling to see abolished. Silent Time they +relinquished with relief; Domestic Work they abandoned without +a pang; Bible Study shrank from four to three years and from three +to two, and then to one, almost without their noticing it. But +when, in 1901, the Honor Scholarships were established, a storm +of protest burst among the undergraduates, and thundered and +lightened for several weeks in the pages of College News. And +not the least vehement of these protestants were the "Honor girls" +themselves. To see their names posted in an alphabetical list +of twenty or more students who had achieved, all unwittingly, a +certain number of A's and B's throughout their course, seems to +have caused them a mortification more keen than that experienced +by St. Simeon Stylites on his pillar. But that the college ideal +should be "degraded" pained them most. +</P> + +<P> +There was something very touching and encouraging about this +wrong-headed, right-hearted outburst. After the usual Wellesley +fashion, freedom of speech prevailed; everybody spoke her mind. +In the end "sweetness and light" dispersed the mists of sentiment +which had assumed that to acknowledge inequality of achievement +was to abolish equality of opportunity, and burned away the ethical +haziness which had magnified mediocrity; the crusaders realized +that the pseudo-compassion which would conceal the idle and the +stupid, the industrious and the brilliant, in a common obscurity, +is impracticable, since the fool and the genius cannot long be +hid, and unfair, since the ant and the grasshopper would enjoy +a like reward, and no democracy has yet claimed that those who +do not work shall eat. When in 1912 the faculty at last decided +to inform the students as to all their marks, the news was received +with no protest and with an intelligent appreciation of the +intellectual and ethical value of the new privilege. +</P> + +<P> +The college was founded "for the glory of God and the service of +the Lord Jesus Christ, in and by the education and culture of women"; +and Wellesley girls are, in the best sense, religious. There has +been no time in the first forty years when the undergraduates +were not earnestly and genuinely preoccupied with religious +questions and religious living. One recognizes this not only by +the obvious and commonplace signs, such as the interest in the +Christian Association, the Student Volunteer Movement, the Missionary +Field, Silver Bay, manifested by the conventional Christian +students; it is evident also in the hunger and thirst of the sincere +rebels, in such signs as the "Heretics' Bible Class" a volunteer +group which existed for a year or two in the second decade of +the century, and which has had its prototypes at intervals throughout +the forty years. One sees it in the interest and enthusiasm of +the students who follow Professor Case's course in the Philosophy +of Hegel; in the reverence and love with which girls of all creeds +and of none speak of the Chapel services, and attend them. When +two thirds of the girls go voluntarily and as a matter of course to +an Ash Wednesday evening service, when Jew and Roman Catholic +alike testify eagerly to the value of the morning Chapel service +in their spiritual development, it is evident that the religious +life is genuine and healthy. And it finds its outlet in the +passion 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 Wellesley +girls who crowd by hundreds into the "matinee train" on Saturday +afternoon, but let us hope that she would be reassured to find +the voluntary Bible and Mission Study classes attended, and even +conducted, by many of these same girls. She might grieve over +the years of Bible Study lost to the curriculum, and over the +introduction of modern methods of Biblical Higher Criticism into +the classroom; but surely she would be comforted to see how the +students have arisen to the rescue of the devotional study of the +Scriptures, with their voluntary classes enthusiastically maintained. +It might even touch her sense of humor. +</P> + +<P> +As the college has grown larger, undoubtedly more and more girls +have come to Wellesley for other than intellectual reasons,—because +it is "the thing" to go to college, or for "the life." But it is +reassuring to find that the reactions of "the life" upon them +always quicken them to a deeper respect for intellectual values. +The "academic" holds first place in the Wellesley life, not +perfunctorily but vitally. The students themselves are swift to +recognize and rebuke, usually in the "Free Press" or the "Parliament +of Fools", of the College News, any signs of intellectual indifference +or laxity. Wellesley, like Harvard and other large colleges, has +its uninspiring level stretches of mediocrity; but it has its +little leaping hills, its soaring peaks as well. Every class has +its band of devoted students for whom the things of the mind +are supreme; every class has its scattering of youthful scholars +to give distinction to the academic landscape. +</P> + +<P> +It would be absurd and useless to deny that Wellesley girls have +their defects; they are of the sort that press for recognition; +defects of manner, and manners, which are not confined to the +students of any one college, or even to college students, but +are due in a measure to the general change in our attitude towards +women, and to the new freedom in which they all alike share. It +is true that, to a degree, the graces and reserves which give +charm and finish to daily living are sacrificed to the more pushing +claims of study and athletics, in college. It is true that the +unmodulated voice, the mushy enunciation, the unrestrained attitude, +the slouchy clothes, too often go unrebuked in classroom and +dormitory, 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 even +unheeded, at home or in the girls' camp, where it emphatically was +somebody's business to heed and rebuke. +</P> + +<P> +But it is the public which sees the worst of it, especially on +trains, where groups of young voices or extreme fashions in dress +become quite unintentionally conspicuous. Experienced from within, +the life, despite its many little roughnesses, its small lapses in +taste, is gracious and gentle, selfless in unobtrusive ways, and +genuinely kind. +</P> + +<P> +Religious, democratic, intellectually serious is our Wellesley +girl, and last but not least, she is a lover of beauty. How could +she fail to be? How many times, in early winter twilights, has +she come over the stile into the Stone Hall meadow, and stood +long moments, hushed, bespelled, by the tranquil pale loveliness +of the lake, the dusky, rimming hills, the bare, slim blackness +of twig and bough embroidering the silver sky,—the whole luminous +etching? How often, mid-morning in spring, has she sat with her +book in a green shade west of the library, and lifted her eyes +to see above the daffodil-bank of Longfellow's fountain the blue +lake waters laughing between the upspringing trunks of the tall +oak trees? Wherever there are Wellesley women, when spring is +waking,—in Switzerland, in Sicily, in Japan, in England,—they are +remembering the Wellesley spring, that pageant of young green +of lawns and hills and tenderest flushing rose in baby oak leaves +and baby maples, that twinkling dance of birches and of poplars, +that splendor of the youth of the year amid which young maidens +shone and blossomed, starring the campus among the other spring +flowers. And are there Wellesley women anywhere in the autumn +who do not think of Wellesley and four autumns? Of the long russet +vistas of the west woods? Of the army with banners, scarlet and +golden, and bronze and russet and rose, that marched and trumpeted +around Lake Waban's streaming Persian pattern of shadows? When +you speak to a Wellesley girl of her Alma Mater, her eyes widen +with the lover's look, and you know that she is seeing a vision of +pure beauty. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +II. +</H4> + +<P> +In 1876, the students, shocked and grieved by the discovery of +one of those cases of cheating with which every college has to deal +from time to time, met together, and made a very stringent rule +to be enforced by themselves. This "law", enacted on February 18, +1876, marks the first step toward Student Government at Wellesley; +it reads as follows: +</P> + +<P> +"The students of Wellesley College unanimously decree as a perpetual +law of the college that no student shall use a translation or key +in the study of any lesson or in any review, recitation, or +examination. Every student who may enter the college shall be +in honor bound to expose every violation of this law. If any +student shall be known to violate this law, she shall be warned +by a committee of the students and publicly exposed. If the +offense be repeated the students shall demand her immediate +expulsion 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. +</P> + +<P> +Until 1881, when the Courant, the first Wellesley periodical, gave +the students opportunity to express their minds concerning matters +of college policy, we have no definite record of further steps +toward self-government on the part of the undergraduates. The +disciplinary methods of those early years are amusingly described +by Mary C. Wiggin, of the class of '85, who tells us that authority +was vested in four bodies, the president, the doctor, the corridor +teacher and the head of the Domestic Department. +</P> + +<P> +"The president was responsible for our going out and our coming +in. The 'office' might give permission to leave town, but all +tardiness in returning must be explained to the president. How +timidly four of us came to Miss Freeman in my sophomore year to +explain that the freshman's mother had kept us to supper after +our 'permitted' drive on Monday afternoon! What an occasion it +gave her to caution us as to sophomore influence over freshmen! +</P> + +<P> +"Very infrequent were our journeys to Boston in those days, theaters +were forbidden. Once during my four years I saw Booth in 'Macbeth' +during a Christmas vacation, salving my conscience with a liberal +interpretation of the phrase, 'while connected with the college', +trying to forget the parting injunction, 'Remember, girls, that +You are Wellesley College.'... +</P> + +<P> +"In the old days we were seated alphabetically in church and +chapel, where attendance was kept in each 'section' by one of +its members. A growing laxity permitted you to sit out of place +on Sunday evenings, provided that you reported to your section +girl. Otherwise you would be called to the office to explain your +absence.... +</P> + +<P> +"Very slowly did the idea dawn upon me that there was a faculty +back of all these very pleasant personal relations." +</P> + +<P> +But in the late '80's, the advance toward student self-government +begins to be traceable, slowly but surely. In the spring of 1887, +on the initiative of the faculty, the first formal conference +between representatives of faculty and students was called, to +consider questions of class organization. Other conferences took +place at irregular intervals during the next seven years, as +occasion arose, and these often led to new legislation. The +subjects discussed were, the Magazine, the Legenda, Athletics, +the Junior Prom. In the autumn of 1888, students were first +allowed to hand in excuses for absence from college classes; the +responsibility for giving a "true, valid and signed excuse" resting +with the individual student. In this same autumn the law forbidding +eating between meals was repealed, but students were still not +permitted to keep eatables in their rooms. +</P> + +<P> +Articles on college courtesy, quiet in the library, articles for +and against Domestic Work, begin to appear in the Courant and +the Prelude in 1888 and 1889. In May, 1890, we learn of a +Students' Association, which was the means of obtaining class +bulletin boards in the autumn of 1890. From this time also, +agitation on all topics of interest to the students is more openly +active. In September, 1891, the faculty consent to allow library +books to be taken out of the library on Saturday afternoon for +use over Sunday. In October, 1891, we find that the Students' +Association is to offer a medium for discussion and to foster a +scholarly spirit. In December, 1891, a plea appears in the Prelude +for occasional conferences between faculty and students on problems +of college policy. In 1892, we read that the individual students +are allowed to choose a church in the village and attend it on +Sundays, if they so desire, instead of attending the College +Chapel. In 1892 also, we have the agitation, in the Wellesley +Magazine, for the wearing of cap and gown, and in this year senior +privileges are extended, and the responsibility for absence from +class appointments rests with the student. In November, 1892, +the Magazine prints an article on Student Government by Professor +Case of the Department of Philosophy. And the cap and gown census +and discussion go gayly on. Early in 1893, there is a discussion +of Student Government. In the spring of this year, there is an +agitation for voluntary chapel. In September, the seniors begin +to wear the cap and gown throughout the year. The year 1894 sees +Silent Time abolished; and agitation,—always courteous and +friendly,—goes on for Student Government, for the opening of the +library on Sunday, for the abolition of Domestic Work. In 1893 +or 1894, Professor Burrell, as head of College Hall, introduces +the custom of having students sign for overtime when they wish +to study after ten o'clock at night. In 1894, excuses for absence +from chapel and classes are no longer required. In the spring +of 1894, at the request of undergraduates, a conference with the +faculty, in a series of meetings, considers matters of interest in +student life. Beginning with May, 1895, the library is opened +on Sundays. +</P> + +<P> +It is significant to note, in looking over these old files of +college magazines, that when the students' interest waned, the +faculty were always ready to administer the necessary prod. Not +all the articles in favor of Student Government are written by +students. President Shafer herself gave the strongest early +impetus to the movement, although not through the press. In 1899, +Professor Woolley, as head of College Hall, instituted a House +Organization, which as an experiment in Student Government among +the students then living in College Hall was a complete success. +In June, 1900, we find arrangements made for a Faculty-Student +Conference, to be held during the autumn months; and this body +met five times. Its establishment did a great deal in paving the +way to mutual understanding and trust when the definite question +of Student Government was approached. +</P> + +<P> +On March 6, 1901, at a mass meeting of the students, and after +a spirited discussion, it was voted that the Academic Council be +petitioned to give self-government to the students in all matters +not academic. This date is kept every year as the birthday of +Student Government. At another mass meeting, on April 9, Miss +Katharine Lord, the President of the Student Association of +Bryn Mawr, spoke to the college on Student Government, and on +April 23, there was still another mass meeting. The student +committee appointed to confer with the committee from the faculty +had for its chairman Mary Leavens, of the class of 1901, student +head of College Hall; Miss Pendleton, at that time secretary of +the college, was the chairman of the faculty committee. Student +Government found in her, from the beginning, a convinced and able +champion. In April, the constitution was submitted to the committee +of the faculty, and in May the constitution and the agreement, after +careful consideration, were submitted to the Executive Committee +of the Board of Trustees. On May 29, an all day election for +president was held, resulting in the choice of Frances L. Hughes, +1902, as first president of the Student Government Association of +Wellesley College. On June 6, the report was adopted and the +agreement was signed by the president and secretary of the Board +of Trustees and the president of the college. On June 7, in the +presence of the faculty and the whole student body, in chapel, the +agreement was read and signed on behalf of the faculty by the +secretary of the college. The ceremony was impressive and memorable +in its simplicity and solemnity. After Miss Pendleton had signed +her name, the students rose and remained standing while the agreement +was signed by Frances L. Hughes, President of the Association for +1901 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 Scripture +lesson was taken from I. Corinthians, "Other foundation can no +man lay than that is laid," and the recessional was, "How firm +a foundation." +</P> + +<P> +The Association is organized with a president and vice president, +chosen from the senior class, and a secretary and a treasurer from +the 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, the +house presidents and their proctors, and a representative from +each of the four classes, elected by the class. The government +is in all essentials democratic. The rules are made and executed +by the whole body of students; but all legislation of the students +is subject to approval by the college authorities, and if any +question arises as to whether or not a subject is within the +jurisdiction of the association, it is referred to a joint committee +of seven, made up of a standing committee of three appointed by +the faculty, a standing committee of three appointed by the +association, and the president of the college. +</P> + +<P> +In intrusting to the association the management of all matters +not strictly academic concerning the conduct of students in their +college life, the College authorities reserve the right to regulate +all athletic events and formal entertainments, all societies, clubs +and other organizations, all Society houses, and all publications, +all matters pertaining to public health and safety and to household +management and the use of college property. The students are +responsible for all matters of registration and absence from college, +for the regulation of travel, permission for Sunday callers, rules +governing chaperonage, the maintenance of quiet, the general +conduct of students on the campus and in the village. It is they +who have abolished the "ten-o'clock-bedtime rule"; it is they who +have decreed that students shall not go to Boston on Sundays, but +this rule is relaxed for seniors, who are allowed two Boston +Sundays, in which they may attend church or an afternoon sacred +concert in the city. If a student wishes to spend Sunday away +from college, she must go away on Saturday and remain until Monday. +</P> + +<P> +Questions of minor discipline, such as the enforcing of the rule +of quiet in the dormitories, are handled by the students; not yet, +it must be confessed, with complete success, as the quiet in the +dormitories—especially the freshman houses—falls short of that +holy calm which studious girls have a right to claim. Serious +misdemeanors are of course in the jurisdiction of the president +of the college and the faculty. One very important college duty, +the proctoring of examinations, which would seem to be an entirely +legitimate function of the Student Government Association, the +students themselves have not as yet been willing to assume. During +the years when the freshmen, sometimes as many as four hundred, +were housed in the village because of the crowded conditions on +the campus, the burden upon the Student Government Association, +and especially upon the vice president and her senior assistants +who had charge of the village work, was, in the opinion of many +alumnae and some members of the faculty, heavier than they should +have been expected to shoulder; for, when all is said, students do +come to college primarily to pursue the intellectual life, rather +than to be the monitors of undergraduate behavior. Fortunately, +with the endowment of the college and the building of new dormitories +on the campus, the village problem will be eliminated. The students +themselves are unanimously enthusiastic concerning Student Government, +and the history of the association since its establishment reveals +an earnest and increasingly intelligent acceptance of responsibility +on the part of the student body. From the beginning the ultimate +success of the movement has been almost unquestioned, and the +association is now as stable an institution, apparently, as the +Academic Council or the Board of Trustees. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +III. +</H4> + +<P> +The most important of the associations which bring Wellesley +students into touch with the outside world are the Christian +Association and the College Settlements Association. These two, +with the Consumers' League and the Equal Suffrage League—also +flourishing organizations—help to foster the spirit of service +which has characterized the college from its earliest days. +</P> + +<P> +The Christian Association did not come into existence until 1884, +but in the very first year of the college a Missionary Society was +formed, which gave "Missionary concerts" on Sunday evenings in +the chapel, and adopted as its college missionary, Gertrude Chandler +(Wyckoff) of the class of 1879, who went out to the mission field +in India in 1880. In the first decade also a Temperance Society +was formed, and noted speakers on temperance visited the college. +But in 1883, in order to unify the religious work, a Christian +Association was proposed. The initiative seems to have come from +the faculty, and this was natural, as the little group of teachers +from the University of Michigan—President Freeman, Professor +Chapin of the Department of Greek, Professor Coman of Economics, +Professor Case of Philosophy, Professor Chandler of Mathematics,—had +had a hand in developing the Young Women's Christian Association +at Ann Arbor. +</P> + +<P> +The first meeting of this Association was held in College Hall +Chapel, October 8, 1884, and we read that it was formed "for the +purpose of promoting Christian fellowship as a means of individual +growth in character, and of securing, by the union of the various +societies already existing, a more systematic arrangement of the +work to be done in college by officers and students, for the cause +of Christ." +</P> + +<P> +Those who joined the association pledged themselves to declare +their belief in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and to +dedicate their lives to His service. They promised to abide by +the laws of the association and seek its prosperity; ever to strive +to live a life consistent with its character as a Christian +Association, and, as far as in them lay, to engage in its activities; +to cultivate a Christian fellowship with its members, and as +opportunity offered, to endeavor to lead others to a Christian life. +Wellesley is rightly proud of the Christian simplicity and +inclusiveness of this pledge. +</P> + +<P> +The work of the association included Bible study, devotional +meetings, individual work, and the development of missionary +interest. Three hundred and seventy signed as charter members, +and Professor Stratton of the Department of Rhetoric was the first +president. The students held most of the offices, but it was not +until 1894 that a student president,—Cornelia Huntington of the +class of 1895—was elected. Since then, this office has always +been held by a student. From its inception the association received +the greatest help and inspiration from Mrs. Durant, for many years +the President of the Boston Young Women's Christian Association, +which was one of the first of its kind. +</P> + +<P> +Early in its career, the Wellesley Association adopted, besides +its foreign missionary, a home missionary, and later a city +missionary who worked in New York. An Indian committee was +formed, and Thanksgiving entertainments were given at the Woman's +Reformatory in Sherborn and the Dedham Asylum for released prisoners. +In this prison work, the college always had the fullest help and +sympathy of Mrs. Durant. The Wellesley Student Volunteer Band +was organized May 26, 1890, and in 1915 there were known to be +about one hundred Wellesley girls in the foreign field, and there +were probably others of whom the college was uninformed. It is +a noble and inspiring record. +</P> + +<P> +In 1905, after the union of many of the Young Women's Christian +Associations and the formation of the National Board, Wellesley +was urged to affiliate herself with the National Association, but +she was unwilling to narrow her own pledge, to meet the conditions +of the National Board. She felt that she better served the cause +of Christian Unity by admitting to her fellowship a wider range of +Christians, so-called, than the National Board was at that time +prepared to tolerate; and she was also more or less fearful of too +much dictation. It was not until 1913, at the Fourth Biennial +Convention of the Young Women's Christian Associations, held at +Richmond, Virginia, that Wellesley was received into the National +organization; and she came retaining her own pledge and her own +constitution. +</P> + +<P> +In the old days, the Christian Association was the stronghold of +the dying Evangelicalism, and was looked on with distaste by many +of the radical students; but of late years, its tone and its method +have changed to meet the needs of the modern girl, and it has +become a power throughout the college. The annual report for +1913-1914 shows a total membership of 1297. The association +carries on Mission Study Classes; Bible Classes which the students +teach, under the direction of volunteers from the faculty, in such +subjects as "The Social Teachings of Jesus", "The Ideals of Israel's +Leaders 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 Conventions +plays an important part in quickening the interest in Silver Bay, +and the one on "the College in Spain" presents the needs and +claims of the International Institute for Girls at Madrid. Besides +its regular meetings, the Christian Association now has charge +of the Lenten services, and this effort to deepen the devotional +life of the college has met with a swift response from the students. +During 1913-1914, in Lent, the chapel was open every afternoon +for meditation and prayer, and cards with selected prayers for each +day were furnished to all who cared to use them. Unquestionably, +Wellesley possesses no student organization more living and more +life-giving than its Christian Association. +</P> + +<P> +Four years after the foundation of the Christian Association, +Wellesley had opened her heart and her mind to the College Settlement +idea. The movement, as is well known, originated in the late '80's +in America. At the same time that Jane Addams and Ellen Gates +Starr were starting Hull House in Chicago, a group of Smith College +alumnae, chief among whom were Vida D. Scudder, Clara French, +Helen Rand (Thayer), and Jean Fine (Spahr), was pressing for the +establishment of a house in the East. And the idea was understood +and fostered by Wellesley about as soon as by Smith, for it was +interpreted at Wellesley by Professor Scudder, who became a member +of the college faculty, as instructor in English Literature, in +the autumn of 1887. In 1889, the Courant printed an article on +College Settlements, and students of the later '80's and early '90's +will never forget the ardor and excitement of those days when +Wellesley was bearing her part in starting what was to be one +of the important movements for social service in the nineteenth +century. All her early traditions and activities made the college +swift to understand and welcome this new idea. +</P> + +<P> +From the beginning, the social impulse has been inherent in +Wellesley, and settlement work was native to her. Professor Whiting +tells us that there used to be a shoe factory in Wellesley Village, +about where the Eliot now stands; that the students became interested +in the girl operatives, most of whom lived in South Natick, and +that they started a factory girls' club which met every Saturday +evening for years, and was led by college girls. In Charles River +Village, also at that time a factory town, Mr. Durant held +evangelistic services during one winter, and "teacher specials" +used to help him, and to teach in the Sunday School. +</P> + +<P> +In 1890-1891, probably because of the settlement impulse, work +among the maids in the college was set going by the Christian +Association. A maids' parlor was furnished under the old gymnasium, +and classes for the maids were started. +</P> + +<P> +In 1891, the Wellesley Chapter of the College Settlements Association +was 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 friend +Adaline Emerson (Thompson), a Wellesley graduate of the class +of '80, was the first president of the association. Wellesley women +have ever since taken a prominent part in the direction of the +association's policy and in the active life of the settlement houses +in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Wellesley has +given presidents, secretaries, and many electors to the association +itself, and head-workers and a continuous stream of efficient and +devoted residents, not only to the four College Settlements, but +to Social Settlement houses all over the country. The College +Chapter keeps a special interest in the work of the Boston +Settlement, Denison House; students give entertainments occasionally +for the settlement neighbors, and help in many ways at Christmas +time; but practical social service from undergraduates is not the +ideal nor the desire of the College Settlements Association. It +aims rather at the quickening of sympathy and intelligence on +social questions, and the moral and financial support which the +College Chapter can give its representatives out in the world. +Such by-products of the settlement interest as the Social Study +Circle, an informal group of undergraduates and teachers which +met for several years to study social questions, are worth much +more to the movement than the immature efforts of undergraduates +in directing settlement clubs and classes. +</P> + +<P> +Already the historic perspective is sufficiently clear for us to +realize that the College Settlement Movement is the unique, and +perhaps the most important organized contribution of the women's +colleges 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 conscience +exceeded, in this period, by few other agencies, religious, +philanthropic or industrial, if we except the Trade-union Movement +and Socialism, which emanate from the workers themselves. The +prominent part which Wellesley has played in it will doubtless be +increasingly understood and valued by her graduates. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +IV. +</H4> + +<P> +Let it be frankly acknowledged: the ordinary adult is usually +bored by the undergraduate periodical—even though he may, once +upon a time, have edited it himself. The shades of the prison-house +make a poor light for the Gothic print of adolescence. But the +historian, if we may trust allegory, bears a torch. For him no +chronicle, whether compiled by twelfth-century monk or twentieth-century +collegian, can be too remote, too dull, to reflect the gleam. And +some chronicles, like the Wellesley one, are more rewarding than +others. +</P> + +<P> +No one can turn over the pages of these fledgling journals, Courant, +Prelude, Magazine, News, without being impressed by the unconscious +clarity with which they reflect not merely the events in the college +community—although they are unusually faithful and accurate +recorders of events—but the college temper of mind, the range +of ideas, the reaction to interests beyond the campus, the general +trend of the intellectual and spiritual life. +</P> + +<P> +The interest in social questions is to the fore astonishingly +early. In Wellesley's first newspaper, the Courant, published in +the college year 1888-1889, we find articles on the Working Girls +of Boston, on the Single Tax, and notes of a prize essay on +Child Labor. And throughout the decade of the '90's, the dominant +note in the Prelude, 1889-1892, and its successor, the Wellesley +Magazine, 1892-1911, is the social note. Reports of college +events give prominent place to lectures on Woman Suffrage, Social +Settlements, Christian Socialism. In 1893, William Clarke of the +London Chronicle, a member of the Fabian Society, visiting America +as a delegate to the Labor Congress in Chicago, gave lectures at +Wellesley on "The Development of Socialism in England", "The +Government of London", "The London Working Classes." Matthew +Arnold's visit came too early to be recorded in the college paper, +but he was perhaps the first of a notable list of distinguished +Englishmen who have helped to quicken the interest of Wellesley +students along social lines. Graham Wallas, Lowes-Dickinson, +H. G. Wells, are a few of the names found in the pages of the +Magazine and the News. The young editors evidently welcomed +papers on social themes, such as "The Transition in the Industrial +Status of Women, by Professor Coman"; and the great strikes of +the decade, The Homestead Strike, the Pennsylvania Coal Strike, +the New Bedford Strike, are written up as a matter of course. It +is 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 reputation +for research work in the Labor Bureau at Washington. +</P> + +<P> +Political articles are only less prominent than social and industrial +material. 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 Colonial +Expansion of the Great European Powers", "The Italian Riots of +May, 1898", "The Philippine Question", "The Dreyfus Incident." +This preoccupation of young college women of the nineteenth century +with modern industrial and political history is significant when +we consider the part that woman has elected to play in politics +and reform since the beginning of the twentieth century. +</P> + +<P> +In the first years of that new century, the Magazine and the weekly +News begin to reflect the general revival of religious interest +among young people. The Student Volunteer Movement, the increased +activities in the Christian Associations for both men and women, +find their response in Wellesley students. Letters from missionaries +are given prominence; the conferences at Silver Bay are written +up enthusiastically and at great length. Social questions never +lapse, at Wellesley, but during the decade 1900 to 1910, the +dominant journalistic note is increasingly religious. Later, with +the activity of the Social Study Circle, an informal club for the +study of social questions, and its offspring the small but earnest +club for the study of Socialism, the social interests regained +their vitality for the student mind. +</P> + +<P> +Besides the extra mural problems, the periodicals record, of course, +the events and the interests of the little college world. Through +the "Free Press" columns of these papers, the didactic, critical, +and combative impulses, always so strong in the undergraduate +temperament, find a safe vent. Mentor and agitator alike are +welcomed in the "Free Press", and many college reforms have been +inaugurated, and many college grievances—real and imagined—have +been aired in these outspoken columns. And not the least readable +portions of the weeklies have been the "Waban Ripples" in the +Prelude, and the "Parliament of Fools" in the News. For Wellesley +has a merry wit and is especially good at laughing at herself,—yes, +even at that "Academic" of which she is so loyally proud. Witness +these naughty parodies of examination questions, which appeared +in a "Parliament of Fools" just before the mid-year examinations +of 1915. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="block"> + Philosophy:<BR> + "Translate the following into Kant, Spencer, Perry, Leibnitz, + Hume, Calkins (not more than one page each allowed). +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "'Little drops of water, little grains of sand,<BR> + Make the mighty ocean, and a pleasant land.'<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + "The remainder of the time may be employed in translating + into Kantian terminology, the title of the book: 'Myself and I.'" +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="block"> + English Literature:<BR> + "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. +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + "Write an imaginary conversation between John Bunyan and + Myrtle Reed on the Social significance of Beowulf. +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + "Do you consider that Browning and Carlyle were influenced by + the Cubist School? Cite passages not discussed in class to + support your view. +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + "Trace the effects of the Norman strain in England in the works + of Tolstoi, Cervantes, and Tagore." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="block"> + English Composition:<BR> + "Write a novelette containing:<BR> + (a) Plot; (b) two crises; (c) three climaxes; (d) one character. +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + "Write a biography of your own life, bringing out distinctly + reasons pro and con. Outline form." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="block"> + Biblical History:<BR> + "Trace the life of Abraham from Genesis through Malachi. +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + "Quote the authentic passages of the New Testament. Why or + why not?<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + "Where do the following words recur? Verily, greeting, begat, + therefore, Pharisee, holy, notacceptedbythescholars." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Excellent fooling, this; and it should go far to convince a +skeptical public that college girls take their educational advantages +with sanity. +</P> + +<P> +As literary magazines, these Wellesley periodicals are only +sporadically successful. Now and again a true poet flashes through +their pages; less often a true story-teller, although the mechanical +excellence of most of the stories is unquestionable,—they go +through the motions quite as if they were the real thing. But +the appeals of the editors for poetry and literary prose; their +occasional sardonic comments upon the apathy of the college reading +public,—especially during the waning later years of the Magazine, +before it was absorbed into the monthly issue of the News,—would +seem to indicate that the pure, literary imagination is as rare at +Wellesley as it is in the world at large. Yet there are shining +pages in these chronicles, pages whose golden promise has been fulfilled. +</P> + +<P> +In 1911, the Alumnae Association discussed the advisability of +publishing an alumnae magazine, but it was decided that the time +was not yet ripe for the new enterprise, and instead an agreement +was entered into with the News, by which a certain number of +pages each month were to be at the disposal of the alumnae editor, +for articles and essays on college matters which should be of +interest to the alumnae. The new department has been marked +from the beginning by dignity and interest, and the papers contributed +have been unusually valuable, especially from the point of view +of college history. +</P> + +<P> +In 1889 Wellesley's Senior Annual, the Legenda, came into being. +In general it has followed the conventional lines of all college +annuals, 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, and +a biographical sketch of Mrs. Durant; in 1896, when it became +a storybook of college life. +</P> + +<P> +In October, 1912, The Wellesley College Press Board was organized +by Mrs. Helene Buhlert Magee, of the class of 1903. The board +is the outgrowth of an attempt by the college authorities, in 1911, +to regulate the work of its budding journalists. Up to this time +the newspapers had been supplied, more or less intermittently and +often unsatisfactorily, with items of college news by students +engaged by the newspapers and responsible only to them. The +college now appoints an official reporter from its own faculty, +who sends all Wellesley news to the newspapers and is consulted +by the regular reporters when they desire special information. +The Press Board, organized by this official reporter, consists of +seven students reporting for Boston papers and two for those in +New York. At the time of the Wellesley fire, this board proved +itself particularly efficient in disseminating accurate information. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +V. +</H4> + +<P> +But it is not the workaday Wellesley, tranquilly pursuing her +serious and semi-serious occupations, that the outsiders know +best. To them, she is wont to turn her holiday face. And no +college plays with more zest than Wellesley. Perhaps because +no college ever had such a perfect playground. Every hill and +grove and hollow of the beautiful campus holds its memories of +playdays and midsummer nights. +</P> + +<P> +Those were the nights when Rosalind and Orlando wandered out of +Arden into a New England moonlight; when flitting Ariel forsook +Prospero's isle to make his nest in Wellesley's bowering +rhododendrons—in blossom time he is always hovering there, a winged +bloom, for eyes that are not holden. Those were the nights when Puck +came dancing up from Tupelo with Titania's fairy rout a-twinkle at his +heels; when the great Hindu Raj floated from India in his canopied +barge across the moonlit waters of Lake Waban; when Tristram and +Iseult, on their way to the court of King Mark, all love distraught, +cast anchor in the little cove below Stone Hall and played their +passion out; when Nicolette kilted her skirts against the dew and +argued of love with Aucassin. Those were the nights when the +Countess Cathleen—loveliest of Yeats's Irish ladies—found Paradise +and the Heavenly Host awaiting her on a Wellesley hilltop when +she had sold her soul to feed her starving peasants. +</P> + +<P> +But the glamour of the sun is as potent as the glamour of the +moon at Wellesley. High noon is magical on Tree Day, for then +the mythic folk of ancient Greece, the hamadryads and Dian's nymphs, +Venus and Orpheus and Narcissus, and all the rest, come out and +dream a dance of old days on the great green billows of the lawn. +To see veiled Cupid, like a living flame, come streaming down +among the hillside trees, down, swift as fire, to the waiting +Psyche, is never to forget. No wood near Athens was ever so +vision-haunted as Wellesley with the dancing spirits of past +Tree Days. +</P> + +<P> +On that day in early June the whole college turns itself into a +pageant of spring. From the long hillside above which College Hall +once towered, the faculty and the alumnae watch their younger +sisters march in slow processional triumph around and about the +wide green campus. Like a moving flower garden the procession +winds upon itself; hundreds and hundreds of seniors and juniors +and sophomores and freshmen,—more than fourteen hundred of them +in 1914. Then it breaks ranks and plants itself in parterres +at the foot of the hill, masses of blue, and rose, and lavender, +and golden blossoming girls. Contrary Mistress Mary's garden was +nothing to it. And after the procession come the dances. Sometimes +a Breton Pardon wanders across the sea. The gods from Olympus +are very much at home in these groves of academe. Once King Arthur's +knight 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. And +in the fairy ring around Longfellow fountain, gnomes and fays and +freshmen play hide-and-seek with the water nixies. +</P> + +<P> +The first Tree Day was Mr. Durant's idea; no one was more awake +than he, in the old days, to Wellesley's poetic possibilities. +And the first trees were gifts from Mr. Hunnewell; two beautiful +exotics, Japanese golden evergreens—one for 1879 and one for +1880. The two trees were planted on May 16, 1877, the sophomore +tree by the library, the freshman tree by the dining room. An +early chronicler writes, "Then it was that the venerated spade +made 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 about +the same height as the spade, but by no means, as she modestly +suggested, of the same mental capacity, was so stricken with +astonishment when she had mounted the rostrum and this burly +instrument was propped up before her, that she nearly forgot her +speech.... And then it was there was introduced the more questionable +practice of planting class trees too delicate to bear the college +course. Although a foolish little bird built her nest and laid +her eggs in the golden-leaved evergreen of '79, and although a +much handsomer nest with a very much larger egg appeared immediately +in the Retinospora Precipera Aurea of '80, yet the rival 'nymphs +with golden hair' were both soon forced to forsake their withered +tenements; Mr. Hunnewell's exotics, after another trial or two, +being succeeded by plebeian hemlocks." +</P> + +<P> +The true story of the Wellesley spade and how it came to be handed +down from class to class, is recorded in Florence Morse Kingsley's +diary, where we learn how the "burly instrument" of 1877 was +succeeded by a less unwieldy and more ladylike utensil. Under +the date, April 3, 1878, we find: +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + 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. +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + 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: +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + 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." +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + 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. +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + "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. +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + 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?" +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + 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. +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + 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." +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + 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?" +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + 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. +</P> + +<P CLASS="block"> + "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. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +The hundred years are still to run, and old College Hall has +vanished, but the '81 elm stands in its "prominent" place, a tree +of ancient memories and visions ever young. +</P> + +<P> +It was not until 1889 that the pageant element began to take +a definite and conspicuous place in the Tree Day exercises. +The class of '89 in its senior year gave a masque in which tall +dryads, robed in green, played their dainty roles; and that same +year the freshmen, the class of 1892, gave the first Tree Day +dance: a very mild dance of pink and white English maidens around +a maypole—but the germ of all the Tree Day dances yet unborn. +In its senior year, 1892 celebrated the discovery of America by +a 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 the +Wellesley Campus. Every year the long procession across the green +grows longer, more beautiful, more elaborate; the dancing is more +exquisitely planned, more complex, more carefully rehearsed. In +the spring, Wellesley girls are twirling a-tiptoe in every moment +not spent in class; and in class their thoughts sometimes dance. +Indeed, the students of late years have begun to ask themselves +if it may not be possible to obtain quite as beautiful a result +with less expense of effort and time and money; for Tree Day, +the crowning delight of the year, would defeat its own end, which +is pure recreation, if its beauty became a tyrant. +</P> + +<P> +This multiplication of joys—and their attendant worries—is +something that Wellesley has to take measures to guard against, +and the faculty has worked out a scheme of biennial rotatory +festivities which since 1911-1912 has eased the pressure of revelry +in May and June, as well as throughout the winter months. +</P> + +<P> +Wellesley's list of societies and social clubs is not short, but +the conditions of membership are carefully guarded. As early +as the second year of the college, five societies came into +existence: of these, the Beethoven Society and the Microscopical—which +started with a membership of six and an exhibition under three +microscopes at its first meeting—seem to have been open to +any who cared to join; the other three—the Zeta Alpha and Phi +Sigma societies founded in November, 1876, and the Shakespeare +in January, 1877—were mutually exclusive. The two Greek letter +societies were literary in aim, and their early programs consisted +in literary papers and oral debates. The Shakespeare Society, +for many years a branch of the London Shakespeare Society, devoted +itself to the study and dramatic presentation of Shakespeare. Its +first open-air play was "As You Like It", given in 1889; and until +1912, when it conformed to the new plan of biennial rotation, +this society gave a Shakespearean play every year at Commencement. +</P> + +<P> +In 1881, Zeta Alpha and Phi Sigma were discontinued by the faculty, +because of pressure of academic work, but in 1889 they were +reorganized, and gradually their programs were extended to include +dramatic work, poetic plays, and masques. The Phi Sigma Society +gives its masque—sometimes an original one—on alternate years +just before the Christmas vacation; and Zeta Alpha alternates with +the Classical Society at Commencement. The Zeta Alpha Masque +of 1913, a charming dramatization in verse of an old Hindu legend +by Elizabeth McClellan of the class of 1913, was one of the notable +events of Commencement time, a pageant of poetic beauty and oriental +dignity; and in 1915 Florence Wilkinson Evans's adaptation of the +lovely old poem "Aucassin and Nicolette", was given for the +second time. +</P> + +<P> +In 1889, the Art Society—known since 1894 as Tau Zeta Epsilon—was +founded; and, alternating with the Shakespeare play, it gives +in the spring a "Studio Reception", at which pictures from the +old masters, with living models, are presented. The effects of +lighting and color are so carefully studied, and the compositions +of the originals are so closely followed that the illusion is +sometimes startling; it is as if real Titians, Rembrandts, and +Carpaccios hung on the wails of the Wellesley Barn. In 1889, +also, the Glee and Banjo clubs were formed. +</P> + +<P> +In 1891, the Agora, the political society, came into existence. +The serious intellectual quality of its work does honor to the +college, and its open debates, at which it has sometimes represented +the House of Commons, sometimes one or the other of the American +Chambers of Congress, are marked events in the college calendar. +</P> + +<P> +In 1892, Alpha Kappa Chi, the Classical Society, was organized, +and of late years its Greek play, presented during Commencement +week, has surpassed both the senior play and the Shakespeare play +in dramatic rendering and careful study of the lines. Gilbert +Murray's translation of the "Medea", presented in 1914, was a +performance of which Wellesley was justly proud. Usually the +Wellesley plays are better as pageants than as dramatic productions, +but the Classical Society is setting a standard for the careful +literary interpretation and rendering of dramatic texts, which +should prove stimulating to all the societies and class organizations. +</P> + +<P> +The senior play is one of the chief events of Commencement week, +but the students have not always been fully awake to their dramatic +opportunity. If college theatricals have any excuse for being, it +is not found in attempts to compete with the commercial stage and +imitate the professional actor, but rather in dramatic revivals +such 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 afford +to 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 by +reading a list of her senior plays, among which are the "Countess +Cathleen", by Yeats, Alfred Noyes's "Sherwood", and in 1915 +"The Piper" by Josephine Peabody Marks. +</P> + +<P> +But Wellesley's recreation is not all rehearsed and formal. +May Day, when the seniors roll their hoops in the morning, and +all the college comes out to dance on the green and eat ice-cream +cones in the afternoon, is full of spontaneous jollity. Before the +burning of College Hall, the custom had arisen of cleaning house +on May Day, and six o'clock in the morning saw the seniors out +with pails and mops, scrubbing and decorating the many statues +which kept watch in the beloved old corridors. +</P> + +<P> +One of these statutes had become in some sort the genius of +College Hall. Of heroic size, a noble representation of womanly +force and tranquillity, Anne Whitney's statue of Harriet Martineau +had watched the stream of American girlhood flow through "the Center" +and surge around the palms for twenty-eight years. The statue +was 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 dispose +of, and, representing as it did her ideal modern woman, she gave +it 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 by +fond but familiar young nieces. No freshman was considered properly +matriculated until she had been dragged between the rungs of +Miss Martineau's great marble chair; May Day always saw "Aunt Harriet" +rise like Diana fresh from her bath, to be decked with more or less +becoming furbelows; and as the presiding genius in the lighter +columns of College News, her humor—an acquired characteristic—was +merrily appreciated. Of all the lost treasures of College Hall +she is perhaps the most widely mourned. +</P> + +<P> +The pretty little Society houses, dotted about the campus, also +give the students opportunity to entertain their guests, both +formally and informally, and during the months following the fire, +when Wellesley was cramped for space, they exercised a generous +hospitality which put all the college in their debt. +</P> + +<P> +As the membership in the Shakespeare and Greek letter societies +is limited to between forty and fifty members in each society, +the great majority of the students are without these social +privileges, but the Barn Swallows, founded in 1897, to which +every member of the college may belong if she wishes, gives +periodic entertainments in the "Barn" which go far to promote +general good feeling and social fellowship. The first president +of the Barn Swallows, Mary E. Haskell, '97, says that it arose +as an Everybody's Club, to give buried talents a chance. "Suddenly +we adjured the Trustees by Joy and Democracy to bless our charter, +to be gay once a week, and when they gave the Olympic nod we +begged for the Barn to be gay in—and they gave that too. +</P> + +<P> +"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,—thicker +near the stage end,—and opened the season with an impromptu +opera of the Brontes'." To Professor Charlotte F. Roberts, +Wellesley '80, the Barn Swallows owe their happy name. +</P> + +<P> +Besides these more formal organizations there are a number of +department clubs, the Deutsche Verein, the Alliance Francaise, +the Philosophy Club, the Economics Club, and informal groups such +as the old Rhymesters' Club, which flourished in the late nineties, +the Scribblers' which seems to have taken its place and enlarged +its scope, the Social Study Circle, the little Socialist Club, and +others through which the students express their intellectual and +social interests. +</P> + +<P> +Of Wellesley's many festivities and playtimes it would take too +long to tell: of her Forensic Burnings, held when the last junior +forensic for the year is due; of her processional serenades, with +Chinese lanterns; of her singing on the chapel steps in the evenings +of May and June. These well-beloved customs have been establishing +themselves year by year more firmly in undergraduate hearts, but +it 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 seems +to have waked the campus echoes first in the spring of 1890, as +a result of a prize offered in November, 1889, although as far +back as 1880 there is mention of a cheer. The musical cheer has +so much beauty and dignity, both near at hand and at a distance, +that many of the early alumnae and the faculty wish it might some +time quite supersede the ugly barking sounds, imitated from the +men's colleges, with which the girls are fain to evince their +approval and celebrate their triumphs. They invariably end their +barking with the musical cheer, however, keeping the best for the +last, and relieving the tortured graduate ear. +</P> + +<P> +Formal athletics at Wellesley developed from the gymnasium practice, +the rowing on the lake, and the Tree Day dancing. In the early +years, the class crews used to row on the lake and sing at sunset, +in their heavy, broad-bottomed old tubs; and from these casual +summer evenings "Float" has been evolved—Wellesley's water +pageant—when Lake Waban is dotted with gay craft, and the crews +in their slim, modern, eight-oared shells, display their skill. +This is the festival which the public knows best, for unlike +Tree Day, to which outsiders have been admitted on only three +occasions, "Float" has always been open to friendly guests. Year +by year the festival grows more elaborate. Chinese junks, Indian +canoes, Venetian gondolas, flower boats from fairyland, glide over +the bright sunset waters, and the crews in their old traditional +star pattern anchor together and sing their merry songs. There +are new songs every spring, for each crew has its own song, but +there are two of the old songs which are heard at every Wellesley +Float, "Alma Mater", and the song of the lake, that Louise Manning +Hodgkins wrote for the class of '87. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Lake of gray at dawning day,<BR> + In soft shadows lying,—<BR> + Waters kissed by morning mist,<BR> + Early breezes sighing,—<BR> + Fairy vision as thou art,<BR> + Soon thy fleeting charms depart.<BR> + Every grace that wins the heart,<BR> + Like our youth is flying.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Lake of blue, a merry crew,<BR> + Cheer of thee will borrow.<BR> + Happy hours to-day are ours,<BR> + Weighted by no sorrow.<BR> + Other years may bring us tears,<BR> + Other days be full of fears,<BR> + Only hope the craft now steers.<BR> + Cares are for the morrow.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Lake of white at holy night,<BR> + In the moonlight gleaming,—<BR> + Softly o'er the wooded shore,<BR> + Silver radiance streaming,—<BR> + On thy wavelets bear away<BR> + Every care we've known to-day,<BR> + Bring on thy returning way<BR> + Peaceful, happy dreaming.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +After the singing, the Hunnewell cup is presented for the crew +competition; and with the darkness, the fireworks begin to flash +up from the opposite shore of the lake. +</P> + +<P> +Besides the rowing clubs, in the first decade, there were tennis +clubs, and occasional outdoor "meets" for cross-country runs, but +apparently there was no regular organization combining in one +association all the separate clubs until 1896-1897, when we hear +of the formation of a "New Athletic Association." There is also +record of a Field Day on May 29, 1899. In 1902, we find the +"new athletics"—evidently a still newer variety than those of +1897—"recognized by the trustees"; and the first Field Day under +this newest regime occurred on November 3, 1902. All the later +Field Days have been held in the late autumn, at the end of the +sports season, which now includes a preliminary season in the +spring and a final season in the autumn. An accepted candidate +for an organized sport must hold herself ready to practice during +both seasons, unless disqualified by the physical examiner, and +must confine herself to the one sport which she has chosen. During +both seasons the members may be required to practice three times +a week. +</P> + +<P> +The Athletic Association, under its present constitution, dates +from March, 1908. All members of the college are eligible for +membership, all members of the organized sports are ipso facto +members of the association, and the Director of Physical Training +is a member ex officio. An annual contribution of one dollar is +solicited from each member of the association, and special funds +are raised by voluntary contribution. In the year 1914-1915, the +association included about twelve hundred members, not all of them +dues-paying, however. +</P> + +<P> +The president of the Athletic Association is always a senior; the +vice president, who is also chairman of the Field Day Committee, +and the treasurer are juniors; the secretary and custodian are +sophomores. The members of the Organized Sports elect their +respective heads, and each sport is governed by its own rules and +regulations and by such intersport legislation as is enacted by +the Executive Board, not in contravention to regulations by the +Department of Physical Training and Hygiene. In this way the +association and the department work together for college health. +</P> + +<P> +The organized sports at Wellesley are: rowing, golf, tennis, +basket ball, field hockey, running, archery, and baseball. The +unorganized sports include walking, riding, swimming, fencing, +skating, and snowshoeing. Each sport has its instructor, or +instructors, from the Department of Physical Training. The members +are grouped in class squads governed by captains, and each class +squad furnishes a class team whose members are awarded numerals, +before a competitive class event, on the basis of records of +health, discipline, and skill. Honors, blue W's worn on the +sweaters, are awarded on a similar basis. Interclass competitions +for trophies are held on Field Day, and the association hopes, +with the development of outdoor baseball, to establish interhouse +competitions also. The gala days are, besides Field Day in the +autumn, the Indoor Meet in the spring at the end of the indoor +practice, "Float" in June, and in winter, when the weather permits, +an Ice Carnival on the lake. +</P> + +<P> +Through the Athletic Association, new tennis courts have been laid +out, 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 not +obligatory, more and more students are coming to appreciate the +work of the Association and to assume responsibility toward it. +</P> + +<P> +Wellesley does not believe in intercollegiate sports for women. +In this opinion, the women's colleges seem to be agreed; it is +one of the points at which they are content to diverge from the +policy of the men's colleges. Wellesley's sports are organized +to give recreation and healthful exercise to as many students as +are fit and willing to take part in them. Some students even +disapprove of interclass competitions, and it is thought that +the interhouse teams for baseball will serve as an antidote to +rivalry between the classes. +</P> + +<P> +The only intercollegiate event in which Wellesley takes part is +the intercollegiate debate. In this contest, Wellesley has been +twice beaten by Vassar, but in March, 1914, she won in the debate +against Mt. Holyoke, and in March, 1915, in the triangular debate, +she defeated both Vassar and Mt. Holyoke. +</P> + +<P> +In September, 1904, the college was granted a charter of the +Phi Beta Kappa Society, and the Wellesley Chapter,—installed +January 17, 1905, is known as the Eta of Massachusetts. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap05"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER V +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE FIRE: AN INTERLUDE +</H3> + +<P> +On the morning of March 17, 1914, College Hall, the oldest and +largest building on the Wellesley campus, was destroyed by fire. +No one knows how the fire originated; no one knows who first +discovered 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 thick +with fog, and the little wind "that heralds the dawn" was not strong +enough to disperse the heavy vapors, else havoc indeed might have +been wrought throughout the campus and the sleeping village. +</P> + +<P> +At about half past four o'clock, two students at the west end of +College Hall, on the fourth floor, were awakened and saw a fiery +glow reflected in their transom. Getting up to investigate, they +found the fire burning in the zoological laboratory across the +corridor, and one of them immediately set out to warn Miss Tufts, +the registrar, and Miss Davis, the Director of the Halls of +Residence, both of whom lived in the building; the other girl +hurried off to find the indoor watchman. At the same time, a +third girl rang the great Japanese bell in the third floor center. +In less than ten minutes after this, every student was out of +the building. +</P> + +<P> +The story of that brief ten minutes is packed with self-control +and selflessness; trained muscles and minds and souls responded +to the emergency with an automatic efficiency well-nigh unbelievable. +Miss Tufts sent the alarm to the president, and then went to the +rooms of the faculty on the third floor and to the officers of the +Domestic Department on the second floor. Miss Davis set a girl +to ringing the fast-fire alarm. And down the four long wooden +staircases the girls in kimonos and greatcoats came trooping, +each one on the staircase she had been drilled to use, after she +had left her room with its light burning and its corridor door shut. +In the first floor center the fire lieutenants called the roll of +the fire squads, and reported to Miss Davis, who, to make assurance +doubly sure, had the roll called a second time. No one said the +word "fire"—this would have been against the rules of the drill. +For a brief space there was no sound but "the ominous one of +falling heavy brands." When Miss Davis gave the order to go out, +the students walked quietly across the center, with embers and +sparks falling about them, and went out on the north side through +the two long windows at the sides of the front door. +</P> + +<P> +And all this in ten minutes! +</P> + +<P> +Meanwhile, Professor Calkins, who does not live at the college +but had happened to spend the night in the Psychology office on +the fifth floor, had been one of the earliest to awake, had wakened +other members of the faculty and helped Professor Case and her +wheel-chair to the first floor, and also had sent a man with an ax +to break in Professor Irvine's door, which was locked. As it +happened, Professor Irvine was spending the night in Cambridge, +and her room was not occupied. Most of the members of the faculty +seem 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 to +save a very few of their smaller possessions. +</P> + +<P> +The students, once out, were not allowed to re-enter the building, +and they did not attempt to disobey, but formed a long fire line +which was soon lengthened by girls from other dormitories and +extended from the front of College Hall to the library. Very +few things above the first floor were saved, but many books, +pictures, and papers went down this long line of students to find +temporary shelter in the basement of the library. Associate +Professor Shackford, who wrote the account of the fire in the +College News, from which these details are taken, tells us how +Miss Pendleton, patrolling this busy fire line and questioning the +half-clad workers, was met with the immediate response, even from +those who were still barefooted, "I'm perfectly comfortable, +Miss Pendleton", "I'm perfectly all right, Miss Pendleton." Miss +Shackford adds: +</P> + +<P> +"At about five o'clock, a person coming from the hill saw +College Hall burning between the dining-room and Center, +apparently from the third floor up to the roof, in high, clear +flames with very little smoke. Suddenly the whole top seemed +to catch fire at once, and the blaze rushed downward and upward, +leaping in the dull gray atmosphere of a foggy morning. With +a terrific crash the roof fell in, and soon every window in the +front of College Hall was filled with roaring flames, surging +toward the east, framed in the dark red brick wall which served +to accentuate the lurid glow that had seized and held a building +almost 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 who +saw the irrepressible blaze consume everything but the brick walls. +</P> + +<P> +"The old library and the chapel were soon filled with great billows +of flame, which, finding more space for action, made a spectacle +of majestic but awful splendor. Eddies of fire crept along the +black-walnut bookcases, and all that dark framework of our beloved +old library. By great strides the blaze advanced, until innumerable +curling, writhing flames were rioting all through a spot always +hushed 'in the quiet and still air of delightful studies.' The +fire raged across the walls, in and around the sides and the +beautiful curving tops of the windows that for so many springs +and summers had framed spaces of green grass on which fitful +shadows had fallen, to be dreamed over by generations of students. +In the chapel, tremendous waves swelled and glowed, reaching +almost from floor to ceiling, as they erased the texts from the +walls, demolished the stained-glass windows, defaced, but did not +completely destroy the college motto graven over them, and, in +convulsive gusts swept from end to end of the chapel, pouring in +and out of the windows in brilliant light and color. Seen from +the campus below, the burning east end of the building loomed up +magnificent even in the havoc and desolation it was suffering." +</P> + +<P> +At half past eight o'clock, four hours after the first alarm was +sounded, there stood on the hill above the lake, bare, roofless +walls and sky-filled arches as august as any medieval castle +of Europe. Like Thomas the Rhymer, they had spent the night +in fairyland, and waked a thousand years old. Romance already +whispered through their dismantled, endless aisles. King Arthur's +castle of Camelot was not more remote from to-day than College Hall +from the twentieth-century March morning. Weeks, months, a little +while it stood there, vanishing—like old enchanted Merlin—into +the impenetrable prison of the air. There will be other houses +on that hilltop, but never one so permanent as the dear house +invisible; the double Latin cross, the ten granite columns, the +Center ever green with ageless palms, the "steadfast crosses, +ever pointing the heavenward way",—to eyes that see, these have +never disappeared. +</P> + +<P> +At half past eight o'clock, in the crowded college chapel, President +Pendleton was saying to her dazed and stricken flock, "We know +that all things work together for good to them that love God,—who +shall separate us from the love of Christ?" And when she had +given thanks, in prayer, for so many lives all blessedly safe, +there came the announcement, so quiet, so startling, that the +spring term would begin on April 7, the date already set in the +college calendar. This was the voice of one who actually believed +that faith would remove mountains. And it did. By the faith of +President Pendleton, Wellesley College is alive to-day. She did +literally and actually cast the mountain into the sea on that +seventeenth of March, 1914. St. Patrick himself never achieved +a greater miracle. +</P> + +<P> +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 study +hall, had all been swept away. Yet, in a little less than three +weeks, there had sprung up on the campus a temporary building +containing twenty-nine lecture and recitation rooms, thirteen +department offices, fifteen administrative offices, three dressing +rooms, and a reception room. Plumbing, steam heat, electricity, +and telephone service had been installed. A week after college +opened for the spring term, classes were meeting in the new building. +During that first week, offices and classes had been scattered all +over the campus,—in the Society houses, in the basements of +dormitories, the Art Building, the Chemistry Building, the Gymnasium, +the basement of the Library, the Observatory, the Stone Hall Botany +Laboratories, Billings Hall; all had opened their doors wide. The +two hundred and sixteen residents of old College Hall had all been +housed on the campus; it meant doubling up in single rooms, but +the doublets persuaded themselves and the rest of the college +that it was a lark. +</P> + +<P> +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. By +half past nine o'clock in the morning, the secretary of the dean +had written out from memory the long schedule of the June examinations, +to be posted at the beginning of the spring term. Members of +the faculty were conducting a systematic search for salvage among +the articles that had been dumped temporarily in the "Barn" and the +library; homes had been found for the houseless teachers, most +of whom had lost everything they possessed; several members of +the faculty had no permanent home but the college, and their worldly +goods were stored in the attic from which nothing could be saved. +It is said that when President Pendleton, in chapel, told the +students to go home as soon as they had collected their possessions, +"an unmistakable ripple of girlish laughter ran through the +dispossessed congregation." This was the Franciscan spirit in +which Wellesley women took their personal losses. For the general +losses, all mourned together, but with hope and courage. In the +Department of Physics, all the beautiful instruments which Professor +Whiting had been so wisely and lovingly procuring, since she first +began to equip her student-laboratory in 1878, were swept away; +Geology and Psychology suffered only less; but the most harrowing +losses were those in the Department of Zoology, where, besides +the destruction of laboratories and instruments, and the special +library presented to the department by Professor Emeritus Mary A. +Willcox, "the fruits of years of special research work which had +attracted international attention have been destroyed.... Professor +Marion Hubbard had devoted her energies for six years to research +in variation and heredity in beetles.... In view of the increasing +interest in eugenics, scientists awaited the results with keen +anticipation, but all the specimens, notes, and apparatus were +swept away." Professor Robertson, the head of the department, +who is an authority on certain deep-sea forms of life, had just +finished her report on the collections from the dredging expedition +of the Prince of Monaco, which had been sent her for identification; +and the report and the collections all were lost. +</P> + +<P> +Among the few things saved were some of the ivies and the roses +which the classes had planted year by year; these the fire had not +injured; and a slip from the great wistaria vine on the south side +of College Hall has proved to be alive and vigorous. The alumnae +gavel and the historic Tree Day spade were also unharmed. But +that no life was lost outweighs all the other losses, and this was +due to the fire drill which, in one form or another, has been +carried on at Wellesley since the earliest years of the college. +Doctor Edward Abbott, writing of Wellesley in Harper's Magazine +for August, 1876, says: +</P> + +<P> +"Whoever heard of a fire brigade manned by women? There is one at +Wellesley, for it is believed that however incombustible the +college building may be, the students should be taught to put out +fire,... and be trained to presence of mind and familiarity with +the thought of what ought to be done in case of fire." From time +to time the drill has been strengthened and changed in detail, but +in 1902, when Miss Olive Davis, Director of Houses of Residence, +was appointed by Miss Hazard to be responsible for an efficient +fire drill, the modern system was instituted. An article in +College News explains that "the organization of the present +fire-drill system is much like the old one. With the adoption of +Student Government, it was put into the hands of the students. +Each year a fire chief is elected from the student-body, by the +students. This girl is a senior. She is counted an officer of +the Student Government Association, and is responsible to Miss Davis. +Then at meetings held at the beginning of the fall term, each +dormitory elects one fire captain, who in turn appoints lieutenants +under her,—one for every twenty or twenty-five girls. +</P> + +<P> +"The directions for a fire drill are: +</P> + +<P> +"Upon hearing the alarm (five rings of the house bell), +</P> + +<P> +"1. Close your windows, doors, and transoms. +</P> + +<P> +"2. Turn on the electric lights. +</P> + +<P> +"3. March in single file, and as quickly as possible, downstairs, +and answer to your roll call. +</P> + +<P> +"Each lieutenant is responsible for all the girls on her list. +After the ringing of the alarm, she must look into every room +in her district and see that the directions have been complied +with and the inmates have gone downstairs. If the windows and +doors have not been shut, she must shut them. Then she goes +downstairs and calls her roll (some lieutenants memorize their +lists). When the lieutenants have finished, the captain calls +the roll of the lieutenants, asking for the number absent in each +district, and the number of windows and doors left open or lights +not lighted, if any. +</P> + +<P> +"The captains are required to hold two drills a month. At the +regular meetings of the organization at which the fire chief +presides and Miss Davis is often present, the captains report the +dates of their drills, the time of day they were held, the number +of absentees and their reasons, the time required to empty the +building, and the order observed by the girls. +</P> + +<P> +"Drills may be called by the captain at any time of the day or +night. Frequently there were drills at College Hall when it was +crowded with nonresident students, there for classes. In that +case no roll was called, but merely the time required and the +order reported. The penalty for non-attendance at fire drills +is a fine of fifty cents, and a serious error credited to the absentee. +</P> + +<P> +"There are devices such as blocking some of the staircases to train +the girls for an emergency. It was being planned, just about the +time College Hall burned, to have a fire drill there with artificial +smoke, to test the girls. The system is still being constantly +changed and improved. On Miss Davis's desk, the night of the +fire, was the rough draft of a plan by which property could be +better saved in case of fire, without more danger to life." +</P> + +<P> +A few weeks after the burning of College Hall, a small fire broke +out at the Zeta Alpha House, but was immediately quenched, and +Associate Professor Josephine H. Batchelder, of the class of 1896, +writing in College News of the self-control of the students, says: +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps the best example of 'Wellesley discipline since the fire,' +occurred during the brief excitement occasioned by the Zeta Alpha +House fire. A few days before this, a special plea had been made +for good order and concentrated work in an overcrowded laboratory, +where forty-six students, two divisions, were obliged to meet at +the same time. On this morning, the professor looked up suddenly +at sounds of commotion outside. 'Why, there's a fire-engine going +back to the village!' she said. 'Oh, yes' responded a girl near +the window. 'We saw it come up some time ago, but you were busy +at the blackboard, so we didn't disturb you.' The professor looked +over her roomful of students quietly at work. 'Well,' she said, +'I've heard a good deal of boasting about various things the girls +were doing. Now I'm going to begin!'" +</P> + +<P> +And this self-control does not fail as the months pass. The +temporary administration building, which the students have dubbed +the Hencoop, tests the good temper of every member of the college. +Like Chaucer's wicker House of Rumors it is riddled with vagrant +noises, but as it does not whirl about upon its base, it lacks the +sanitary ventilating qualities of its dizzy prototype. On the +south it is exposed to the composite, unmuted discords of Music Hall; +on the north, the busy motors ply; within, nineteen of the twenty-six +academic departments of the college conduct their classes, between +walls so thin that every classroom may hear, if it will, the +recitations to right of it, recitations to left of it, recitations +across the corridor, volley and thunder. Though they all +conscientiously try to roar as gently as any sucking dove. The +effect upon the unconcentrated mind is something like—The cosine +of X plus the ewig weibliche makes the difference between the +message of Carlyle and that of Matthew Arnold antedate the Bergsonian +theory of the elan vital minus the sine of Y since Barbarians, +Philistines and Populace make up the eternal flux wo die citronen +bluhn—but fortunately the Wellesley mind does concentrate, and +uncomplainingly. The students are working in these murmurous +classrooms with a new seriousness and a devotion which disregard +all petty inconveniences and obstacles. +</P> + +<P> +And the fire has kindled a flame of friendliness between faculty +and students; it has burned away the artificial pedagogic barriers +and quickened human relations. The flames were not quenched +before the students had begun to plan to help in the crippled +courses of study. They put themselves at the disposal of the +faculty for all sorts of work; they offered their notes, their own +books; they drew maps; they mounted specimens on slides for the +Department of Zoology. In that crowded, noisy, one-story building +there are not merely the teachers and the taught, but a body of +tried friends, moving shoulder to shoulder on pilgrimage to truth. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap06"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER VI +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE LOYAL ALUMNAE +</H3> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +I. +</H4> + +<P> +Ever since we became a nation, it has been our habit to congratulate +ourselves upon the democratic character of our American system of +education. In the early days, neither poverty nor social position +was a bar to the child who loved his books. The daughter of the +hired man "spelled down" the farmer's son in the district school; +the poor country boy and girl earned their board and tuition at +the academy by doing chores; American colleges made no distinctions +between "gentlemen commoners" and common folk; and as our public +school system developed its kindergartens, its primary, grammar, and +high 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 in +democratic education had been spoken. +</P> + +<P> +But since the beginning of the twentieth century, two new voices +have begun to be heard; at first sotto voce, they have risen +through a murmurous pianissimo to a decorous non troppo forte, +and they continue crescendo,—the voice of the teacher and the +voice of the graduate. And the burden of their message is that +no educational system is genuinely democratic which may ignore +with impunity the criticisms and suggestions of the teacher who is +expected to carry out the system and the graduate who is asked to +finance it. +</P> + +<P> +The teachers' point of view is finding expression in the various +organizations 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 Association +of College Professors, started in the spring of 1913 by professors +of Columbia and Johns Hopkins. At a preliminary meeting at +Baltimore, in November, 1913, unofficial representatives from +Johns Hopkins, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, Clark, +and Wisconsin were present, and a committee of twenty-five was +appointed, with Professor Dewey of Columbia as chairman, "to arrange +a plan of organization and draw up a constitution." President +Schurman, in a report to the trustees of Cornell, makes the situation +clear when he says: +</P> + +<P> +"The university is an intellectual organization, composed essentially +of devotees of knowledge—some investigating, some communicating, +some acquiring—but all dedicated to the intellectual life.... The +Faculty is essentially the university; yet in the governing boards +of American universities the Faculty is without representation." +President Schurman has suggested that one third of the board +consist of faculty representatives. At Wellesley, since the +founder's death, the trustees have welcomed recommendations from +the faculty for departmental appointments and promotions, and this +practice now obtains at Yale and Princeton; the trustees of Princeton +have also voted voluntarily to confer on academic questions with +a committee elected by the faculty. +</P> + +<P> +An admirable exposition of the teachers' case is found in an +article on "Academic Freedom" by Professor Howard Crosby Warren +of the Department of Psychology at Princeton, in the Atlantic Monthly +for November, 1914. Professor Warren says that "In point of fact, +the teacher to-day is not a free, responsible agent. His career is +practically under the control of laymen. Fully three quarters +of our scholars occupy academic positions; and in America, at +least, the teaching investigator, whatever professional standing +he may have attained, is subject to the direction of some body of +men outside his own craft. As investigator he may be quite +untrammeled, but as teacher, it has been said, he is half tyrant +and half slave.... +</P> + +<P> +"The scholar is dependent for opportunity to practice his calling, +as well as for material advancement, on a governing board which +is generally controlled by clergymen, financiers, or representatives +of the state.... +</P> + +<P> +"The absence of true professional responsibility, coupled with +traditional accountability to a group of men devoid of technical +training, narrows the outlook of the average college professor and +dwarfs his ideals. Any serious departure from existing educational +practice, such as the reconstruction of a course or the adoption +of a new study, must be justified by a group of laymen and their +executive agent.... +</P> + +<P> +"In determining the professional standing of a scholar and the +soundness of his teachings, surely the profession itself should be +the court of last appeal." +</P> + +<P> +The point of view of the graduate has been defining itself slowly, +but with increasing clearness, ever since the governing boards of +the colleges made the very practical discovery that it was the duty +and privilege of the alumnus to raise funds for the support of +his Alma Mater. It was but natural that the graduates who banded +together, usually at the instigation of trustees or directors and +always with their blessing, to secure the conditional gifts +proffered to universities and colleges by American multimillionaires, +should quickly become sensitive to the fact that they had no power +to direct the spending of the money which they had so efficiently +and laboriously collected. An individual alumnus with sufficient +wealth to endow a chair or to erect a building could usually give +his gift on his own terms; but alumni as a body had no way of +influencing the policy of the institutions which they were helping +to support. +</P> + +<P> +The result of this awakening has been what President Emeritus +William Jewett Tucker of Dartmouth has called the "Alumni Movement." +More than ten years ago, President Hadley of Yale was aware of +the stirrings of this movement, when he said, "The influence of +the public sentiment of the graduates is so overwhelming, that +wherever there is a chance for its organized cooperation, faculties +and students... are only too glad to follow it." +</P> + +<P> +It would be incorrect, however, to give the impression that graduates +had had absolutely no share in the government of their respective +colleges before the Alumni Movement assumed its present proportions. +Representatives of the alumni have had a voice in the affairs of +Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Self-perpetuating boards of trustees +have elected to their membership a certain number of mature alumni. +In some instances, as at Wellesley, the association of graduates +nominates the candidates for graduate vacancies on these boards. +</P> + +<P> +The benefits of alumnae representation on the Board of Trustees +seem to have occurred to the alumnae and the trustees of Wellesley +almost simultaneously. As early as June, 1888, the Alumnae +Association of Wellesley appointed a committee to present to +the trustees a request for alumnae representation on the Board; +but as the Association met but once a year, results could not +be achieved rapidly, and in June, 1889, the committee reported +that it had not presented the petition as it had been informed +unofficially that the possibility of alumnae representation was +already under consideration by the trustees. In fact, the trustees, +at a meeting held the day before the meeting of the Alumnae +Association, this very June of 1889, had elected Mrs. Marian +Pelton Guild, of the class of 1880, a life member of the Board. +</P> + +<P> +But the alumnae, although appreciating the honor done them by +the election of Mrs. Guild, still did not feel that the question +of representation had been adequately met, and in June, 1891, +a new committee was appointed with instructions to inform itself +thoroughly as to methods employed in other colleges to insure +the representation of the graduate body on governing boards, and +also to convey to the trustees the alumnae's strong desire for +representation of a specified character. And a second time the +trustees forestalled the committee and, in a letter addressed +to the Association and read at the annual meeting in June, 1892, +made known their desire "to avail themselves of the cooperation +of the Association" and to "cement more closely the bond" uniting +the alumnae to the college by granting them further representation +on the Board of Trustees. A committee from the Association was +then appointed to discuss methods with a committee from the Board, +and the results of their deliberations are given by Harriet Brewer +Sterling, Wellesley, '86, in an article in the Wellesley Magazine +for March, 1895. By the terms of a joint agreement between the +Board and the Association, the Association has the right to nominate +three members from its own number for membership on the Board. +These nominees must be graduates of seven years' standing, not +members of the college faculty. Graduates of less than three +years' standing are not qualified to vote for the nominees. The +nominations must be ratified by the Board of Trustees. The term +of service of these alumnae trustees is six years, but a nominee +is chosen every two years. In order to establish this method of +rotation, two of the three candidates first nominated served for +two and four years respectively, instead of six. The first election +was held in the spring of 1894, the nominations were confirmed +by the Board in November, and the three new trustees sat with +the Board for the first time at the February meeting of 1895. +</P> + +<P> +But as graduate organizations have increased in size, and membership +has been scattered over a wider geographical area, it has become +correspondingly difficult to get at the consensus of graduate opinion +on college matters and to make sure that alumni, or alumnae, +representatives actually do represent their constituents and carry +out their wishes. And the Alumni Movement has arisen to meet +the need for "greater unity of organization in alumni bodies." +</P> + +<P> +In an article on Graduate Councils, in the Wellesley College News +for April, 1914, Florence S. Marcy Crofut, Wellesley, '97, has +collected interesting evidence of the impetus and expansion of +this new factor in the college world. She writes, "More clearly +than generalization would show, proofs lie in actual organization +and accomplishments of the 'Alumni Movement' which has worked +itself out in what may be called the Graduate Council Movement.... +Since the organization of the Graduate Council of Princeton +University in January, 1905, the Secretary, Mr. H. G. Murray, +to whom Wellesley is deeply indebted, has received requests from +twenty-nine colleges for information in regard to the work of +Princeton's Council." +</P> + +<P> +Among these twenty-nine colleges was Wellesley, and the plan +for her Graduate Council, presented by the Executive Board of +the Alumnae Association to the business meeting of the Association +on June 21, 1911, and voted at that meeting, is a legitimate +outgrowth of the ideals which led to the formation of the Alumnae +Association in 1880. The preamble of the Association makes this +clear when it says: +</P> + +<P> +"Remembering the benefits we have received from our alma mater, +we desire to extend the helpful associations of student life, and +to maintain such relations to the college that we may efficiently +aid in her upbuilding and strengthening, to the end that her +usefulness may continually increase." +</P> + +<P> +In an article describing the formation of the Wellesley Graduate +Council, in the Wellesley College News for October 5, 1911, it +is explained that, "From the time since the 1910-12 Executive +Board (of the Alumnae Association) came into office, it has felt +that there was need for a bond between the alumnae and the college +administration; and it believes that this need will be met by a +small representative (i.e. geographical) definitely chosen graduate +body, which shall act as a clearing-house for the larger Alumnae +Association. The Executive Board recognized also as an additional +reason for organizing such a graduate body, that it was necessary +to do so if the Wellesley Alumnae Association is to keep abreast +of the activities in similar organizations." The purpose of the +Council, as stated in 1911, is a fitting expansion of the Association's +preamble of 1880: +</P> + +<P> +"That, as our alumnae are increasing in large numbers and are +scattered more and more widely, it will be of advantage to them +and to the college that an organized, accredited group of alumnae +shall be chosen from different parts of the country to confer with +the college authorities on matters affecting both alumnae and +undergraduate interests, as well as to furnish the college, by +this group, the means of testing the sentiment of Wellesley women +throughout the country on any matter." +</P> + +<P> +There are advantages in not being a pioneer, and Wellesley has +been able to profit by the experience of her predecessors in this +movement, particularly Princeton and Smith. Membership in the +Councils of Wellesley and Smith is essentially on the same +geographical basis, but Wellesley is unique among the Councils +in having a faculty representation. The relation between faculty +and alumnae at Wellesley has always been markedly cordial, and +in welcoming to the Council representatives of the faculty who +are not graduates of the college, the alumnae would seem to indicate +that their aims and ideals for their Alma Mater are at one with +those of the faculty. +</P> + +<P> +The membership of the Wellesley Graduate Council is composed +of the president and dean of the college, ex officio; ten members +of the Academic Council, chosen by that body, no more than two +of whom may be alumnae; the three alumnae trustees; the members +of the Executive Board of the Alumnae Association; and the councilors +from the Wellesley clubs. As there were more than fifty Wellesley +clubs already in existence in 1915, and every club of from twenty-five +to one hundred members is allowed one councilor, and every club of +more than one hundred members is allowed one councilor for each +additional hundred, while neighboring clubs of less than twenty-five +members may unite and be represented jointly by one councilor, +it will be seen that the Council is a large and constantly growing +body. Clubs such as the Boston Wellesley Club, and the New York +Wellesley Club, which already had a large membership, received +a tremendous impetus to increase their numbers after the formation +of the Council. All members of the Council, with the exception of +the president of the college and the dean, who are permanent, +serve for two years. +</P> + +<P> +The officers of the Graduate Council are the corresponding officers +of the Alumnae Association, and also serve for two years. The +Executive Committee of five members includes the president and +secretary of the Council, an alumna trustee chosen annually from +their own number by the three alumnae trustees, and two members +at large. +</P> + +<P> +The Council meets twice during the academic year, at the college; +in February, for a period of three days or less, following the +mid-year examinations, and in June, when the annual meeting is +held at some time previous to the annual meeting of the Alumnae +Association. In this respect the Wellesley Council again differs +from that of Smith, whose committee of five makes but one official +annual visit to the college,—in January. The "Vassar Provisional +Alumnae Council", like the Wellesley Graduate Council, must hold +at least two yearly meetings at the college, but unlike Wellesley, +it elects a chairman who may not be at the same time the President +of the Vassar Associate Alumnae. Bryn Mawr, we are told by +Miss Crofut, has no Graduate Council corresponding exactly to +the Councils of other colleges; but her academic committee of seven +members meets "at least once a year with the President of the College +and a committee of the faculty to discuss academic affairs." +</P> + +<P> +The possibilities which lie before the Wellesley Council may be +better understood if we enumerate a few of the activities undertaken +by the Councils of other colleges. At Princeton, since 1905, more +than two million five hundred thousand dollars has been raised +by the Council's efforts. The Preceptorial System has been +inaugurated and is being slowly developed. The university has been +brought more prominently before preparatory schools. All the +colleges are feeling the need of keeping in touch with the +preparatory schools, not for the sake of mere numbers, but to +secure the best students. Doctor Tucker has suggested that +Dartmouth alumni endow outright, "substantial scholarships in +high schools with which it is desirable to establish relations," +and the suggestion is well worth the consideration of Wellesley +women. The Yale Alumni Advisory Board has distributed to the +"so-called Yale Preparatory Schools" and to schoolboys in many +cities, a pamphlet on "Life at Yale." And Yale has also turned its +attention to tuition charges, "academic-Sheffield relations", the +future of the Yale Medical School, the Graduate Employment Bureau. +</P> + +<P> +All of these Councils are concerned with the intellectual and moral +tone of the undergraduates. Wellesley's Graduate Council has +a Publicity Committee, one of whose functions is to prevent wrong +reports of college matters from getting into the press. Mrs. Helene +Buhlert Magee, Wellesley, '03, who was made Chairman of the +Intercollegiate Committee on Press Bureaus, in 1914, and was at +that time also the Manager of the Wellesley Press Board, reminds +us that Wellesley is the only college trying to regulate its +publicity through its alumnae clubs in different parts of the +country, and gives us reason to hope that in time we shall have +publicity agents trained in good methods, "since the members of +each year's College Press Board, as they go forth, naturally become +the press representatives of their respective clubs." +</P> + +<P> +The Council has also a Committee on Undergraduate Activities, +whose duty it is to "obtain information regarding the interests +of the undergraduates and from time to time to make suggestions +concerning the conduct of the same as they affect the alumnae or +bring the college before the general public." This committee +proposes a Rally Day and a Freshman Forum, to be conducted each +year by a representative alumna equipped to set forth the ideals +and principles held by the alumnae. +</P> + +<P> +A third committee, bearing a direct relation to the undergraduate, +is one on Vocational Guidance. In order to help students "to find +their way to work other than teaching," and to "present a survey +of all the possibilities open to women in the field of industry +to-day," this committee welcomes the cooperation of Miss Florence +Jackson, a graduate of Smith and for some years a member of the +Department of Chemistry at Wellesley, who is now at the head of +the Appointment Bureau of the Women's Educational and Industrial +Union of Boston. Miss Jackson's practical knowledge of students, +her wide acquaintance with vocational opportunities other than +teaching, and her belief in the "value of the cultural course as +a sound general foundation most valuable for providing the sense +of proportion and vision necessary for the college woman who is +to be a useful citizen," make her an ideal director of this branch +of the Council's activities, and the college gladly promotes her +work among the students; the seniors especially welcome her +expert guidance. +</P> + +<P> +In framing a model constitution for the use of alumnae classes, +the Council has done a piece of work which should arouse the +gratitude of all future historians of Wellesley, for the model +constitution contains an article requiring each class to keep a +record which shall contain brief information as to the members of the +class and shall be published in the autumn following each reunion. +lf these records are accurately kept, and if copies are placed on +file in the College Library, accessible to investigators, the next +historian of Wellesley will be spared the baffling paucity of +information concerning the alumnae which has hampered her predecessor. +</P> + +<P> +With ten members of the Academic Council on the Graduate Council, +and with the president of the college herself an alumna, the +relation between the faculty and the Graduate Council is intimate +and helpful to both, in the best sense. Relations with the +trustees, as a body, were slower in forming. President Pendleton, +at the Council's fifth session,—in the third year of its +existence,—reported the trustees as much interested in its formation. +At the sixth session of the Council, in June, 1914, when the campaign +for the Fire Fund was in full swing, Mr. Lewis Kennedy Morse, +the able and devoted treasurer of the college, and member of +the Board of Trustees, addressed the members upon "The Business +Side of College Administration",—a talk as interesting as it was +frank and friendly. In December, 1914, when the first of the new +buildings was already going up on the site of old College Hall, +the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees invited a joint +committee from the faculty and the alumnae to meet with them to +discuss the architectural plans and possibilities for the "new +Wellesley." The Alumnae Committee consisted of eleven members +and included representatives "from '83 to 1913, and from Colorado +on the west to Massachusetts on the east." Its chairman was +Candace C. Stimson, Wellesley, '92, whose name will always ring +through Wellesley history as the Chairman of the Alumnae Committee +for Restoration and Endowment,—the committee that conducted the +great nine months' campaign for the Fire Fund. The Faculty +Committee, of five members, chose as its chairman, Professor +Alice V.V. Brown, the head of the Department of Art. +</P> + +<P> +Miss Stimson's report to the Graduate Council of this meeting of +the joint committee with the Executive Board, indicates a "strong +sense of good understanding and a feeling of great harmony and +desire for cooperation on the part of Trustees toward the alumnae." +The Faculty Committee and Alumnae Committee were invited to continue +and to hold further conferences with the Trustees' Committee +"as occasion might offer." The episode is prophetic of the future +relations of these three bodies with one another. President Nichols +of Dartmouth is reported as saying that Dartmouth, founded as +the ideal of an individual and governed at first by one man, has +grown to the point where it is no longer to be controlled as +a monarchy or an empire, but as a republic. Such an utterance +does not fail of its effect upon other colleges. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +II. +</H4> + +<P> +The women who constitute the Wellesley College Alumnae Association, +numbered in 1914-1915 five thousand and thirty-five. The members +are all those who have received the Baccalaureate degree from +Wellesley, and all those who have received the Master's degree and +have applied for membership. But only dues-paying members receive +notices of meetings and have the right to vote. Non-graduates who +pay the annual dues receive the Alumnae Register, and the notices +and publications of the alumnae, but do not vote. +</P> + +<P> +Authoritative statistics concerning the occupations of Wellesley +women are not available. About forty per cent of the alumnae +are married. The exact proportion of teachers is not known, but +it is of course large. The Wellesley College Christian Association +is of great assistance to the alumnae recorder in keeping in touch +with Wellesley missionaries, but even the Christian Association +disclaims infallibility in questions of numbers. An article in +the News for February, 1912, by Professor Kendrick, the head +of the Department of Bible Study, states that no record is kept +of missionaries at work in our own country, but there were then +missionaries from Wellesley in Mexico and Brazil, as well as those +who were doing city missionary work in the United States. The +missionary record for 1915 would seem to indicate that there were +then about one hundred Wellesley women at mission stations in +foreign countries, including Japan, China, Korea, India, Ceylon, +Persia, Turkey, Africa, Europe, Mexico, South America, Alaska, +and the Philippines. +</P> + +<P> +From time to time, the alumnae section of the News publishes an +article on the occupations and professions of Wellesley graduates, +with incomplete lists of the names of those who are engaged in +Law, Medicine, Social Work, Journalism, Teaching, Business, and +all the other departments of life into which women are penetrating; +and from this all too meager material, the historian is able to +glean a few general facts, but no trustworthy statistics. +</P> + +<P> +In 1914, the list of Wellesley women, most of whom were alumnae, +at the head of private schools, included the principals of the +National 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 preparatory +schools in Boston; Buffalo Seminary; Kent Place School, and a +coeducational school, both in Summit, New Jersey; Hosmer Hall, in +St. Louis; Ingleside School, Taconic School and the Catherine +Aiken 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 girls +in Germany, France, and Italy. This does not take into account +the many Wellesley graduates holding positions of importance in +colleges, in high schools, and in the grammar and primary schools +throughout the country. +</P> + +<P> +The tentative list of Wellesley women holding positions of importance +in social work, in 1914, is equally impressive. The head workers +at Denison House,—the Boston College Settlement,—at the Baltimore +Settlement, at Friendly House, Brooklyn, and Hartley House, New York, +are all graduates of Wellesley. Probation officers, settlement +residents, 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 many +Wellesley names among their numbers. A Wellesley woman is working +at the Hindman School in Kentucky, among the poor whites; another +is General Superintendent of the Massachusetts Commission for +the Blind; another is Associate Field Secretary of the New York +Charity 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 unusual +distinction in this field. Mary K. Conyngton, Wellesley, '94, +took part in the Federal investigation into the condition of woman +and child wage earners, ordered by Congress in 1907, and has +made a study of the relations between the occupations, and the +criminality, of women. Her book "How to Help", published by +The Macmillan Company, embodies the results of her experience +in organized charities, investigations for improved housing, and +other industrial and municipal reforms. In 1909, Miss Conyngton +received a permanent appointment in the Bureau of Labor at +Washington, D.C. +</P> + +<P> +Wellesley has her lawyers and doctors, her architects, her +journalists, her scholars; every year their tribes increase. +Among her many journalists are Caroline Maddocks, 1892, and +Agnes Edwards Rothery, 1909. +</P> + +<P> +Of her poets, novelists, short story writers, and essayists, the +names of Katharine Lee Bates, Estelle M. Hurll, Abbie Carter +Goodloe, 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 technical +publications of Gertrude Schopperle, Laura A. Hibbard, Eleanor +A. McC. Gamble, Lucy J. Freeman, Eloise Robinson, and Flora Isabel +McKinnon, have won the suffrages of scholars. +</P> + +<P> +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 distinction +of a national reputation; it has been adopted as one of America's +own 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 Thomas +Y. Crowell Company, volumes on English and Spanish travel, on the +English Religious Drama, a Chaucer for children, an edition of +the works of Hawthorne, and a forthcoming edition of the Elizabethan +dramatist, Heywood. Since her undergraduate days, when she wrote +the poems for Wellesley's earliest festivals, down all the years +in which she has been building up her Department of English +Literature, this loyal daughter has given herself without stint to +her Alma Mater. In Wellesley's roll call of alumnae, there is no +name more loved and honored than that of Katharine Lee Bates. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +III. +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Hear the dollars dropping,<BR> + Listen as they fall.<BR> + All for restoration<BR> + Of our College Hall."<BR> +</P> + +<P> +These words of a college song fitly express the breathless attitude +of the alumnae between March 17, 1914, and January 1, 1915, the +nine months and a half during which the campaign was being carried +on to raise the fund for restoration and endowment, after the fire. +And they did more than listen; they shook the trees on which the +dollars grew, and as the dollars fell, caught them with nimble +fingers. They fell "thick as leaves in Vallombrosa." +</P> + +<P> +Between June, 1913, and June, 1915, $1,267,230.53 was raised by +and through Wellesley women. +</P> + +<P> +In 1913, a campaign for a Million Dollar Endowment Fund had been +started, to provide means for increasing the salaries of the +teachers. Salaries at Wellesley were at that time lower than +those paid in every other woman's college, but one, in New England. +The fund had been started with an anonymous gift of one hundred +thousand dollars, and the committee, with Candace C. Stimson as +chairman, planned to secure the one million dollars in two years. +By March, 1914, a second anonymous gift of one hundred thousand +dollars had been received, the General Education Board had pledged +two hundred thousand dollars conditioned on the raising of the +whole amount, Wellesley women had given fifteen thousand dollars, +and there had been a few other gifts from outsiders. The amount +still to be raised on the Million Dollar Fund at the time of the +fire was five hundred and seventy thousand dollars. +</P> + +<P> +President Pendleton, in a letter to Wellesley friends, printed +in the News on March 28, 1914, ten days after the fire, writes: +"Our Campaign for the Million Dollar Endowment Fund must not be +dropped... we have between five and six hundred thousand dollars +still to raise. All the new buildings must be equipped and +maintained. The sum that our Alma Mater requires for immediate +needs is two million dollars. But this is not all. Another million +will soon be needed, properly to house our departments of Botany +and Chemistry, and to provide a Student-Alumnae building, and +sufficient dormitories to house on the campus the more than five +hundred students now living in the village. We are facing a +great crisis in the history of the College. The future of our +Alma Mater is in our hands. Crippled by this loss, Wellesley +cannot continue to hold in the future its place in the front rank +of colleges, unless the response is generous and immediate. +</P> + +<P> +"To sum up, Alma Mater needs three million dollars, two million +of which must be raised immediately. Shall we be daunted by +this sum? We are justly proud of the courage and self-control +of those dwellers in College Hall, both Faculty and Students. +Shall we be outdone by them in facing a crisis? Shall we be less +courageous, less resourceful? The public press has described +the fire as a triumph, not a disaster. Shall we continue the +triumph, and make our College in equipment what it has proved +itself in spirit—The College Beautiful? We can and we must." +</P> + +<P> +The response of the alumnae to this stirring appeal was instant +and ardent. The committee for the Million Dollar Endowment Fund, +with its valiant chairman, Miss Stimson, shouldered the new +responsibility. "It is a big contract," they said, "it comes at +a season of business depression, and the daughters of Wellesley +are 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 and +loyalty respond." +</P> + +<P> +Then came the offer of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars +by the Rockefeller Foundation, if the college would raise an +additional million and a quarter by January 1, 1915. The intrepid +Committee of Alumnae added to its numbers, merged the two funds, +and adopted the new name of Alumnae Committee for Restoration +and Endowment. +</P> + +<P> +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 both +graduate and non-graduate members, a chairman for each club was +appointed, and made responsible for reaching all the Wellesley women +in her geographical section, whether they were members of the club +or not. In states where there were no clubs, state committees +rounded up the scattered alumnae and non-graduates. Fifty-three +clubs appear in the report, twenty-four state committees, and eight +foreign countries,—Canada, Mexico, Porto Rico, South America, +Europe, Turkey, India, and Persia. Every state in the Union was +heard from, and contributions also came from clubs in Japan and +China. The campaign actually circled the globe. By June, 1914, +Miss Jenkins tells us, the appeals to the clubs and state committees +had been sent out, and many had been heard from, but in order +to make sure that no one escaped, the work was now taken up through +committees from the thirty-six classes, from 1879 to 1914. In +March, 1915, when Miss Jenkins's report was printed in the News, +3823 of Wellesley's daughters had contributed, and belated +contributions were still coming in. In June, 1915, 3903, out of +4840, 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 direct +contributions from alumnae, and from social members who did not +graduate with the class, but gifts which alumnae and former students +have secured from interested friends. Of the remaining classes, +five show a contributing list of more than ninety per cent of the +members; eleven show between eighty and ninety per cent; and +fifteen between seventy and eighty per cent. Besides the alumnae, +1119 non-graduates had contributed. None of Wellesley's daughters +have been more loyal and more helpful than the non-graduates. +</P> + +<P> +An analysis of the amount, $1,267,230.53, given by and through +Wellesley women between June, 1913, and June, 1915, shows four +gifts of fifty thousand dollars and over, all of which came through +Wellesley women, thirty gifts of from two thousand dollars to +twenty-five thousand dollars, three quarters of which came from +Wellesley women, and many gifts of less than two thousand dollars, +"only a negligible quantity of which came from any one but alumnae +and former students." +</P> + +<P> +Throughout the nine months of the campaign, the Alumnae Committee +and the trustees were working in close touch with each other. +Doctor George Herbert Palmer, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at +Harvard, was the chairman of the committee from the trustees, and +he describes himself as chaperoned by alumnae at every point of +the tour which he so successfully undertook in order to interview +possible contributors. To him, to Bishop Lawrence, the President +of the Board of Trustees, and to Mr. Lewis Kennedy Morse, the +treasurer, the college owes a debt of gratitude which it can never +repay. No knight of old ever succored distressed damsel more +valiantly, more selflessly, than these three twentieth-century +gentlemen succored and served the beggar maid, Wellesley, in the +cause of higher education. Through the activities of the trustees +were secured the provisional gifts of seven hundred and fifty +thousand dollars from the Rockefeller Foundation, and two hundred +thousand dollars from the General Education Board, Mr. Andrew +Carnegie's $95,446.27, to be applied to the extension of the library, +and gifts from Mrs. Russell Sage, Mrs. David P. Kimball, and many +others. Mrs. Lilian Horsford Farlow, a trustee, and the daughter +of Prof. Eben N. Horsford, to whom Wellesley is already deeply +indebted, gave ten thousand dollars toward the Fire Fund; and +through Mrs. Louise McCoy North, trustee and alumna, an unknown +benefactor has given the new building which stands on the hill +above the lake. Because of the modesty of donors, it has been +impossible to make public a complete list of the gifts. +</P> + +<P> +From the four undergraduate classes, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, and +from general undergraduate gifts and activities, came $60,572.04, +raised in all sorts of ways,—from the presentation of "Beau +Brummel" before a Boston audience, to the polishing of shoes +at ten cents a shine. One 1917 girl earned ten dollars during +the summer vacation by laughing at all her father's jokes, whether +old or new, during that period of recreation. Other enterprising +sophomores "swatted" flies at the rate of one cent for two, darned +stockings for five cents a hole, shampooed, mended, raked leaves. +Members of the class of 1916 sold lead pencils and jelly, scrubbed +floors, baked angel cake, counted knot holes in the roof of a +summer camp. Besides "Beau Brummel", 1915 gave dancing lessons +and sold vacuum cleaners. One student who was living in College Hall +at the time of the fire is said to have made ten dollars by charging +ten cents for every time that she told of her escape from the +building. The class of 1918, entering as freshmen in September, +after the fire, raised $5,540.60 for the fund when they had been +organized only a few weeks. +</P> + +<P> +The methods of the alumnae were no less varied and amusing. +The Southern California Club started a College Hall Fund, and +notices were sent out all over the country requesting every alumna +to 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 was +the most important, operettas, masques, garden parties, costume +parties, salad demonstrations, candy sales, bridge parties; a +moving-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 subscriptions +to magazines, with a profit of $175.75 for the fund. She comments +on Wellesley taste in magazines by revealing the fact that the +Atlantic Monthly "received by far the largest number of subscriptions." +One girl in Colorado baked bread, "but forsook it to give dancing +lessons, as paying even better!" In New York, Chicago, and other +cities, the tickets for theatrical performances were bought up +and sold again at advanced prices. A book of Wellesley recipes +was compiled and sold. An alumna of '92 made a charming etching +of 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 three +Saturdays in May, 1914, and netted somewhat over seventy-five +dollars a day for the three days. One Wellesley club charged ten +cents for the privilege of shaking hands with its "fire-heroine." +</P> + +<P> +On Easter Monday, 1914, when the college had just come back to +work, after the fire, the "Freeman Fowls" arranged an egg hunt, +with egg-shaped tickets at ten cents, for the fund. The students +from Freeman Cottage, dressed as roosters, very scarlet as to +topknot and wattles, very feather dustery as to tail, waylaid +the unwary on campus paths and lured them to buy these tickets +and to hunt for the hundreds of brightly colored eggs which these +commercially canny fowls had hidden on the Art Building Hill. +After the hunt was successfully over, the hunters came down to +the front of the new, very new, administration building, already +called the Wellesley Hencoop, where they were greeted by the +ghosts and wraiths and other astral presentments of the vanished +statues of College Hall, and where the roosters burst into an +antiphonal chant: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Come see the Wellesley Chicken-coop, the<BR> + Chicken-coop, the Chicken-coop.<BR> + Come see the Wellesley Chicken-coop,<BR> + (It isn't far from Chapel!)<BR> + Come get your tickets for a roost, and give<BR> + Your chicken-hearts a boost,<BR> + Come see our Wellesley Chicken-roost,<BR> + (It isn't far from Chapel!)<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Just see our brand new Collegette, it's<BR> + College yet, it's College yet,<BR> + With sixty-six new rooms to let,<BR> + (They're practicing in Billings).<BR> + The Collegette is very tall,<BR> + It isn't far from Music Hall,<BR> + Our neighbors can't be heard at all<BR> + (They learn to sing at Billings).<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Oh, statues dear from College Hall, from<BR> + College Hall, from College Hall,<BR> + Don't hesitate to come and call<BR> + On Hen-House day at Wellesley.<BR> + Niobe sad, and Harriet, and Polly Hym and Dian's pet<BR> + On Hen-House day,—on Hen-House day,<BR> + O! Hen-House day at Wellesley.<BR> + Come walk right through the big front door,<BR> + Each hour we love you more and more,<BR> + There's fire-escapes from every floor<BR> + Of the new Hen-house at Wellesley."<BR> +</P> + +<P> +Having thus formally adopted the new building, whose windows and +doors were already wreathed in vines and crimson (paper) roses +which had sprung up and blossomed over night, the college now +hastened to the top of College Hall Hill, whence, at the crowing +of Chanticleer, the egg-rolling began. The Nest Egg for the fund, +achieved by these enterprising "Freeman Fowls", was about +fifty-two dollars. +</P> + +<P> +Far off in Honolulu there were "College Capers" in which eight +Wellesley alumnae, helped by graduates of Harvard, Cornell, +Bryn Mawr, and other colleges, earned three hundred dollars. +</P> + +<P> +The News has published a number of letters whose simple revelation +of feeling witnesses to the loyalty and love of the Wellesley +alumnae. One writes: +</P> + +<P> +"A month ago, because of obligations and a very small salary, +I thought I could give nothing to the Endowment Plan. By Saturday +morning (after the fire) I had decided I must give a dollar a month. +By night I had received a slight increase in salary, therefore l +shall send two dollars a month as long as I am able. I wish it +were millions, my admiration and sympathy are so unbounded." +</P> + +<P> +Another says: "Perhaps you may know that when I was a Senior +I received a scholarship of (I think) $350. It has long been my +wish and dream to return that money with large interest, in return +for all I received from my Alma Mater, and in acknowledgment of +the success I have since had in my work because of her. I have +never been able to lay aside the sum I had wished to give, but +now that the need has come I can wait no longer, I am therefore +sending you my check for $500, hoping that even this sum, so small +in the face of the immense loss, may aid a little because it comes +at the right moment. It goes with the wish that it were many, +many times the amount, and with the sincerest acknowledgment of +my indebtedness to Wellesley." +</P> + +<P> +From China came the message: "In an indefinite way I had intended +to send five or ten dollars some time this year (to the Endowment +Fund), but the loss of College Hall makes me realize afresh what +Wellesley 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 you +five dollars a month for ten months." +</P> + +<P> +From nearer home: "My sister and I intend to go without spring +suits this year in order to give twenty-five dollars each toward +the 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, who +did not shed a tear as College Hall burned—I could not speak, +my voice was so choked with tears, and that night I went supperless +to bed. But though it seems impossible to believe that College Hall +is a thing of the past, yet one cannot but feel that from this +so great calamity great good will come—a broader, higher spirit +will be manifested; we shall cease to think in classes, but all +unite in great loving thought for the good and the upbuilding—in +more senses than one—of our Alma Mater." +</P> + +<P> +And the messages and money from friends of the college were no +less touching. The children of the Wellesley Kindergarten, which +is connected with the Department of Education in the college, +held a sale of their own little handicrafts and made fifty dollars +for the fund. +</P> + +<P> +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 American +education. The spirit shown at the fire and since is superb." +</P> + +<P> +Another man, who wished that he "had a daughter to go to Wellesley, +the college of high ideals," said, "I should be ashamed even to +ride by in the train without contributing this mite to your +Rebuilding Fund." +</P> + +<P> +A woman in Tasmania sent a dollar, "for you are setting a great +ideal for the broad education of women.... We (in Australia) have +much to thank the higher democratic education of America for." +</P> + +<P> +From many little children money came: from little girls who hoped +to come to Wellesley some day, and from the sons and daughters +of Wellesley students. +</P> + +<P> +The business men of Wellesley town subscribed generously. Many +men as well as women have expressed their admiration of the college +in a tangible way. +</P> + +<P> +And from Vassar, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Mt. Holyoke, Radcliffe, Barnard, +Wells, Simmons, and Sweet Briar, contributions came pouring in +unsolicited. Harvard, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, the +Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts, and others had +already loaned equipment and material for the impoverished +laboratories, and direct contributions to the fund came from the +University of Idaho, the Musical Clubs of Dartmouth and the +Institute of Technology; from Hobart College, in cooperation with +Wellesley alumnae, in Geneva, New York; from the Emerson College +of Oratory, the College Club of Tucson, Arizona, the Boston and +Connecticut branches of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, +the Fitchburg Smith College Club, and the Cornell Woman's Club +of New York City. To Smith College, which had so lately raised +its million, Wellesley was also indebted for helpful suggestions +in planning the campaign. +</P> + +<P> +When the great war broke out in August, 1914, wise unbelievers +shook their heads and commiserated Wellesley; but the dauntless +Chairman of the Alumnae Restoration and Endowment Committee +continued to press on with her campaign—to draw dilatory clubs +into line, to prod sluggish classes into activity, to remind +individuals of their opportunity. +</P> + +<P> +The pledges for the last forty thousand dollars of the fund came +snowing in during Christmas week, and eleven o'clock of the evening +of December 31, 1914, found Miss Stimson's committee in New York +counting at top speed the sheaves of checks and pledges which had +been arriving all day. The remarkable thing about the campaign was +the great number of small amounts which came in, and the number +of alumnae—not the wealthy ones—who doubled their pledges at +the last minute. It was the one dollar and the five-dollar pledges +which really saved the day and made it possible for the college +to secure the large conditional gifts. On the morning of January 1, +1915, the amount was complete. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +IV. +</H4> + +<P> +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 in +those flames. Yet already the Wellesley that looks back upon +her old self is a different Wellesley. All her repressed desires, +spiritual, intellectual, aesthetic, are suddenly set free. Her +lovers and her daughters feel the very campus kindle and quicken +beneath their feet to new responsibilities. +</P> + +<P> +"The New Wellesley!" +</P> + +<P> +No one knows what that shall be, but the words are vision-filled: +prophetic of an ordered beauty of architecture, a harmony of +taste, that the old Wellesley, on the far side of the fire, strove +after but never knew; prophetic of a pinnacled and aspiring +scholarship whose solid foundations were laid forty years deep +in Christian trust and patience; prophetic of a questing spirit +freed from the old reproach of provincialism; of a ministering +spirit in which the virtue of true courtesy is fulfilled. +</P> + +<P> +The end of her first half century will see the campus flowering +with the outward and visible signs of the new Wellesley; and even +as the old fire-hallowed bricks have made beautiful the new walls, +so the beauty of the old dreams shall shine in the new vision. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Pageant of fretted roofs that cluster*<BR> + On hill and knoll in the branches green,<BR> + Ye are but shadows, and not the luster,<BR> + Garment, ye, of a grace unseen.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "All our life is confused with fable,<BR> + Ever the fact as the phantasy seems:<BR> + Yet the world of spirit lies sure and stable,<BR> + Under the shows of the world of dreams.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Not an idle and false derision<BR> + The rocks that crumble, the stars that fail;<BR> + Meaning caskets within the vision,<BR> + Shaping the folds of the woven veil."<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +* Katharine Lee Bates: from a poem, "The College Beautiful," 1886. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Story of Wellesley, by Florence Converse + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF WELLESLEY *** + +***** This file should be named 2362-h.htm or 2362-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/3/6/2362/ + +Produced by Stephanie L. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Story of Wellesley + +Author: Florence Converse + +Posting Date: March 1, 2009 [EBook #2362] +Release Date: October, 2000 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF WELLESLEY *** + + + + +Produced by Stephanie L. Johnson. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + + + + + +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 a +Boston paper came out to the college by appointment to interview +a group of Wellesley women, alumnae and teachers, grief-stricken +by the catastrophe which had befallen them. He came impetuously, +with that light-hearted breathlessness so characteristic of young +reporters in the plays of Bernard Shaw and Arnold Bennett. He +was charmingly in character, and he sent his voice out on the run +to 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 it +set down in the courteous and sympathetic report which he afterwards +wrote for his paper. + +And readers who come to this story of Wellesley for pranks will +be disappointed likewise. Not that the lighter side of the +Wellesley life is omitted; play-days and pageants, all the bright +revelry of the college year, belong to the story. Wellesley would +not be Wellesley if they were left out. But her alumnae, her +faculty, and her undergraduates all agree that the college was +not founded primarily for the sake of Tree Day, and that the +Senior Play is not the goal of the year's endeavor. + +It is the story of the Wellesley her daughters and lovers know +that 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 kindly +read certain parts of the manuscript, to Professor Katharine Lee +Bates, Professor Vida D. Scudder, and Mrs. Marian Pelton Guild; +for historical material, to Miss Charlotte Howard Conant's "Address +Delivered in Memory of Henry Fowle Durant in Wellesley College +Chapel", February 18, 1906, to Mrs. Louise McCoy North's Historical +Address, 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 Margarethe +Muller'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 Endowment +Committee, and to the many others among alumnae and faculty, whose +letters and articles I quote. Last but not least in my grateful +memory are all those painstaking and accurate chroniclers, the +editors of the Wellesley Courant, Prelude, Magazine, News, and +Legenda, 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 essentially +romantic quality of its great adventures is confirmed by the +"beauty touched with strangeness" which illumines their true +perspective, we are discovering, what the adventurers themselves +always knew, that the movement for the higher education of women +was 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 of +his sisters and his daughters--or more probably other men's +daughters--to prove that the intellectual heritage must be a common +heritage if Democracy was to be a working theory, missed the beauty +of the picture. He saw the slim beginning of a procession of +young women, whose obstinate, dreaming eyes beheld the visions +hitherto relegated by scriptural prerogative and masculine commentary +to their brothers; inevitably his outraged conservatism missed +the beauty; and the strangeness he called queer. That he should +have missed the democratic significance of the movement is less +to his credit. But he did miss it, fifty years ago and for several +years thereafter, even as he is still missing the democratic +significance of other movements to-day. Processions still pass +him by,--for peace, for universal suffrage, May Day, Labor Day, +and those black days when the nations mobilize for war, they pass +him by,--and the last thing he seems to discover about them is +their democratic significance. But after a long while the meaning +of it all has begun to penetrate. To-day, his daughters go to +college as a matter of course, and he has forgotten that he ever +grudged them the opportunity. + +They remind him of it, sometimes, with filial indirection, by +celebrating the benevolence, the intellectual acumen, the idealism +of the few men, exceptional in their day, who saw eye to eye with +Mary Lyon and her kind; the men who welcomed women to Oberlin +and Michigan, who founded Vassar and Wellesley and Bryn Mawr, +and so helped to organize the procession. Their reminders are even +beginning to take form as records of achievement; annals very far +from meager, for achievement piles up faster since Democracy set +the gate of opportunity on the crack, and we pack more into a half +century 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 above +all, 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 statistics +concerning 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 fullness +of life that they connote to American women, middle-aged and +young,--blotted out; coeducational institutions harassed by numbers +and inventing drastic legislation to keep out the women; man still +the almoner of education, and woman his dependent. From all these +hampering probabilities the women's colleges save us to-day. This +is what constitutes their negative value to education. + +Their positive contribution cannot be summarized so briefly; its +scattered chronicle must be sought in the minutes of trustees' +meetings, where it modestly evades the public eye, in the academic +formalities of presidents' reports and the journalistic naivete of +college periodicals; in the diaries of early graduates; in newspaper +clippings and magazine "write-ups"; in historical sketches to +commemorate the decennial or the quarter-century; and from the +lips of the pioneers,--teacher and student. For, in the words of +the graduate thesis, "we are still in the period of the sources." +The would-be historian of a woman's college to-day is in much +the same relation to her material as the Venerable Bede was to +his when he set out to write his Ecclesiastical History. The thought +brings us its own inspiration. If we sift our miracles with as +much discrimination as he sifted his, we shall be doing well. We +shall discover, among other things, that in addition to the composite +influence which these colleges all together exert, each one also +brings to bear upon our educational problems her individual +experience and ideals. Wellesley, for example, with her +women-presidents, and the heads of her departments all women +but three,--the professors of Music, Education, and French,--has +her peculiar testimony to offer concerning the administrative and +executive powers of women as educators, their capacity for initiative +and organization. + +This is why a general history of the movement for the higher +education of women, although of value, cannot tell us all we need +to know, since of necessity it approaches the subject from the +outside. The women's colleges must speak as individuals; each one +must tell her own story, and tell it soon. The bright, experimental +days are definitely past--except in the sense in which all education, +alike for men and women, is perennially an experiment--and if +the romance of those days is to quicken the imaginations of college +girls one hundred, two hundred, five hundred years hence, the women +who were the experiment and who lived the romance must write it down. + +For Wellesley in particular this consciousness of standing at +the threshold of a new epoch is especially poignant. Inevitably +those forty years before the fire of 1914 will go down in her +history as a period apart. Already for her freshmen the old college +hall is a mythical labyrinth of memory and custom to which they +have no clue. New happiness will come to the hill above the lake, +new beauty will crown it, new memories will hallow it, but--they +will all be new. And if the coming generations of students are +to realize that the new Wellesley is what she is because her +ideals, though purged as by fire, are still the old ideals; if they +are to understand the continuity of Wellesley's tradition, we who +have come through the fire must tell them the story. + + +II. + +On Wednesday, November 25, 1914, the workmen who were digging +among the fire-scarred ruins at the extreme northeast corner of +old College Hall unearthed a buried treasure. To the ordinary +treasure seeker it would have been a thing of little worth,--a rough +bowlder of irregular shape and commonplace proportions,--but +Wellesley eyes saw the symbol. It was the first stone laid in +the foundations of Wellesley College. There was no ceremony when +it was laid, and there were no guests. Mr. and Mrs. Henry Fowle +Durant 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 corner +of the building, under the dining-room wing; it is significant that +from the foundations up through the growth and expansion of all +the years, women have had a hand in the making of Wellesley. +In September, as in August, there were no guests invited, but at +the laying of the corner stone there was a simple ceremony; each +workman was given a Bible, by Mr. Durant, and a Bible was placed +in 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 Christmas +vacation, only a little group of people gathered about the place +where, forty-three years before, Mrs. Durant had laid the stone. +Mrs. Durant was too ill to be present, but her cousin, Miss Fannie +Massie, lifted the tin box out of its hollow and handed it to +President Pendleton who opened the Bible and read aloud the +inscription: + + "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 passages +from the Scriptures: II Chronicles, 29: 11-16, and the phrase +from the one hundred twenty-seventh Psalm: "Except the Lord +build the house they labor in vain that build it." + + +This stone is now the corner stone of the new building which rises +on College Hill, and another, the keystone of the arch above the +north door of old College Hall, will be set above the doorway of +the new administration building, where its deep-graven I.H.S. +will daily remind those who pass beneath it of Wellesley's unbroken +tradition of Christian scholarship and service. + +But we must go back to the days before one stone was laid upon +another, if we are to begin at the beginning of Wellesley's story. +It was in 1855, the year after his marriage, that Mr. Durant bought +land in Wellesley village, then a part of Needham, and planned +to make the place his summer home. Every one who knew him speaks +of his passion for beauty, and he gave that passion free play when +he chose, all unwittingly, the future site for his college. There +is no fairer region around Boston than this wooded, hilly country +near Natick--"the place of hills"--with its little lakes, its +tranquil, winding river, its hallowed memories of John Eliot and +his Christian Indian chieftains, Waban and Pegan, its treasured +literary associations with Harriet Beecher Stowe. Chief Waban +gave his name, "Wind" or "Breath", to the college lake; on +Pegan Hill, from which so many Wellesley girls have looked out +over the blue distances of Massachusetts, Chief Pegan's efficient +and time-saving squaw used to knit his stockings without heels, +because "He handsome foot, and he shapes it hisself"; and Natick +is the Old Town of Mrs. Stowe's "Old Town Folks." + +In those first years after they began to spend their summers at +Wellesley, the family lived in a brown house near what is now the +college greenhouse, but Mr. Durant meant to build his new house +on the hill above the lake, or on the site of Stone Hall, and +to found a great estate for his little son. From time to time +he bought more land; he laid out avenues and planted them with +trees; and then, the little boy for whom all this joy and beauty +were destined fell ill of diphtheria and died, July 3, 1863, +after a short illness. + +The effect upon the grief-stricken father was startling, and to +many 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 had +been of a conventional type. During the child's illness he +underwent an old-fashioned religious conversion. The miracle +has happened before, to greater men, and the world has always +looked 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 described +as having "a powerful head, chiseled features, black hair, which +he wore rather long, an olive complexion, and eyes which flashed +the lightnings of wrath and scorn and irony; then suddenly the +soft rays of sweetness and persuasion for the jury. He could +coax, intimidate, terrify; and his questions cut like knives." +The author of "Bench and Bar in Massachusetts", who was in college +with him, says of him: "During the five years of his practice +at the Middlesex Bar he underwent such an initiation into the +profession as no other county could furnish. Shrewdness, energy, +resource, strong nerves and mental muscles were needed to ward +off the blows which the trained gladiators of this bar were +accustomed to inflict. With the lessons learned at the Middlesex Bar +he removed to Boston in 1847, where he became associated with +the Honorable Joseph Bell, the brother-in-law of Rufus Choate, +and began a career almost phenomenal in its success. His management +of cases in court was artistic. So well taken were the preliminary +steps, so deeply laid was the foundation, so complete and +comprehensive was the preparation of evidence and so adroitly +was it brought out, so carefully studied and understood were the +characters of jurors,--with their whims and fancies and +prejudices,--that he won verdict after verdict in the face of +the ablest opponents and placed himself by general consent at +the head of the jury lawyers of the Suffolk Bar." Adjectives less +ambiguous and more uncomplimentary than "shrewd" were also applied +to him, and his manner of dominating his juries did not always +call forth praise from his contemporaries. In one of the newspaper +obituaries at the time of his death it is admitted that he had +been "charged with resorting to tricks unbecoming the dignity of +a lawyer," but the writer adds that it is an open question if +some, or indeed all of them were not legitimate enough, and might +not have been paralleled by the practices of some of the ablest +of British and Irish barristers. Both in law and in business--for +he had important commercial interests--he had prospered. He was +rich and a man of the world. Boston, although critical, had not +found it unnatural that he should make himself talked about in +his conduct of jury trials; but the conspicuousness of his conversion +was of another sort: it offended against good taste, and incurred +for him the suspicion of hypocrisy. + +For, with that ardor and impetuosity which seem always to have +made half measures impossible to him, Mr. Durant declared that +so far as he was concerned, the Law and the Gospel were +irreconcilable, and gave up his legal practice. A case which +he had already undertaken for Edward Everett, and from which +Mr. Everett was unwilling to release him, is said to be the last +one he conducted; and he pleaded in public for the last time +in a hearing at the State House in Boston, some years later, when +he won for the college the right to confer degrees, a privilege +which had not been specifically included in the original charter. + +His zeal in conducting religious meetings also offended conventional +people. It was unusual, and therefore unsuitable, for a layman +to preach sermons in public. St. Francis and his preaching friars +had established no precedent in Boston of the 'sixties and +'seventies, and indeed Mr. Durant's evangelical protestantism +might not have relished the parallel. Boston seems, for the most +part, to have averted its eyes from the spectacle of the brilliant, +possibly unscrupulous, some said tricky, lawyer bringing souls +to Christ. But he did bring them. We are told that "The halls +and churches where he spoke were crowded. The training and +experience which had made him so successful a pleader before +judge and jury, now, when he was fired with zeal for Christ's +cause, made him almost irresistible as a preacher. Very many +were led by him to confess the Christian faith. Henry Wilson, +then senator, afterwards vice president, was among them. The +influence of the meetings was wonderful and far-reaching." We +are assured that he "would go nowhere unless the Evangelical +Christians of the place united in an invitation and the ministers +were ready to cooperate." But the whole affair was of course +intensely distasteful to unemotional people; the very fact that +a man could be converted argued his instability; and it is +unquestionably true that Boston's attitude toward Mr. Durant was +reflected for many years in her attitude toward the college which +he founded. + +But over against this picture we can set another, more intimate, +more pleasing, although possibly not more discriminating. When +the early graduates of Wellesley and the early teachers write of +Mr. Durant, they dip their pens in honey and sunshine. The result +is radiant, fiery even, but unconvincingly archangelic. We see +him, "a slight, well-knit figure of medium height in a suit of +gray, with a gray felt hat, the brim slightly turned down; beneath +one could see the beautiful gray hair slightly curling at the ends; +the fine, clear-cut features, the piercing dark eyes, the mouth +that could smile or be stern as occasion might demand. He seemed +to have the working power of half a dozen ordinary persons and +everything received his attention. He took the greatest pride +and delight in making things as beautiful as possible." Or he +is described as "A slight man--with eyes keen as a lawyer's should +be, but gentle and wise as a good man's are, and with a halo of +wavy silver hair. His step was alert, his whole form illuminate +with life." He is sketched for us addressing the college, in +chapel, one September morning of 1876, on the supremacy of Greek +literature, "urging in conclusion all who would venture upon +Hadley's Grammar as the first thorny stretch toward that celestial +mountain 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, was +the first upon her feet, pulling me after her by a tug at my +sleeve, coupled with a moral tug more efficacious still. Perhaps +a dozen of us freshmen, all told, filed into Professor Horton's +recitation room that morning." And again, "His prompt and vigorous +method of introducing a fresh subject to college notice was the +making it a required study for the senior class of the year. +'79 grappled with biology, '80 had a senior diet of geology and +astronomy." To these young women, as to his juries in earlier +days, he could use words "that burned and cut like the lash of +a scourge," and it is evident that they feared "the somber +lightnings 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 of +scholarship, and despite his imperious desire to bring their souls +to Christ. They remember lovingly his little jokes. They tell of +how he came into College Hall one evening, and said that a mother +and daughter had just arrived, and he was perplexed to know where +to put them, but he thought they might stay under the staircase +leading up from the center. And students and teachers, puzzled +by this inhospitality but suspecting a joke somewhere, came out +into the center to find the great cast of Niobe and her daughter +under the stairway at the left, where it stayed through all the +years 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 many +years 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." They +saw him ardent in friendship as in all else. His devoted friend, +and Wellesley's, Professor Eben N. Horsford, has given us a picture +of him which it would be a pity to miss. The two men are standing +on 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 munificence +of Valeria Stone. There in the shadow of the evergreens we lay +down on the carpet of pine foliage and talked,--I remember it +well,--talked long of the problems of life, of things worth +living for; of the hidden ways of Providence as well as of the +subtle ways of men; of the few who rule and are not always +recognized; of the many who are led and are not always conscious +of it; of the survival of the fittest in the battle of life, and +of the constant presence of the Infinite Pity; of the difficulties, +the resolution, the struggle, the conquest that make up the history +of every worthy achievement. I arose with the feeling that I had +been taken into the confidence of one of the most gifted of all +the men it had been my privilege to know. We had not talked of +friendship; we had been unconsciously sowing its seed. He loved +to illustrate its strength and its steadfastness to me; I have +lived to appreciate and reverence the grandeur of the work which +he accomplished here." + + +III. + +If we set them over against each other, the hearsay that besmirches +and the reminiscence that canonizes, we evoke a very human, living +personality: a man of keen intellect, of ardent and emotional +temperament, autocratic, fanatical, fastidious, and beauty-loving; +a loyal friend; an unpleasant enemy. "He saw black black and +white white, for him there was no gray." He was impatient of +mediocrity. "He could not suffer fools gladly." + +No archangel this, but unquestionably a man of genius, consecrated +to the fulfillment of a great vision. It is no wonder that the +early graduates living in the very presence of his high purpose, +his pure intention, his spendthrift selflessness, remember these +things best when they recall old days. After all, these are the +things most worth remembering. + +The best and most carefully balanced study of him which we have +is by Miss Charlotte Howard Conant of the class of '84, in an +address delivered by her in the College Chapel, February 18, 1906, +to commemorate Mr. Durant's birthday. Miss Conant's use of the +biographical material available, and her careful and restrained +estimate of Mr. Durant's character cannot be bettered, and it is +a 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 his +boyhood, was born February 20, 1822, in Hanover, New Hampshire. +His father, William Smith, "was a lawyer of limited means, but +versatile mind and genial disposition." His mother, Harriet Fowle +Smith of Watertown, Massachusetts, was one of five sisters renowned +for their beauty and amiability; she was, we are told, intelligent +as well as beautiful, "a great reader, and a devoted Christian +all 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. and +Mrs. Samuel Ripley in Waltham, to complete his preparation for +Harvard. Miss Conant writes: "Mr. Ripley was pastor of the +Unitarian Church there (in Waltham) from 1809 to 1846, and during +most of that time supplemented the small salary of a country minister +by receiving twelve or fourteen boys into his family to fit for +college. From time to time youths rusticated from Harvard were +also 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 intellectual +ability, and before she was seventeen she had become a fine Latin +scholar and had read also all the Odyssey in the original." Her +life-long friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, writes in praise of her: +"The rare accomplishments and singular loveliness of her character +endeared her to all.... She became one of the best Greek +scholars in the country, and continued in her latest years the +habit of reading Homer, the tragedians, and Plato. But her studies +took a wide range in mathematics, natural philosophy, psychology, +theology, and ancient and modern literature. Her keen ear was +open to whatever new facts astronomy, chemistry, or the theories +of light and heat had to furnish. Absolutely without pedantry, +she had no desire to shine. She was faithful to all the duties +of wife and mother in a well-ordered and eminently hospitable +household wherein she was dearly loved. She was without appetite +for luxury or display or praise or influence, with entire +indifference to triffles.... As she advanced in life her +personal beauty, not remarked in youth, drew the notice of all." + +There could have been no nobler, saner influence for an intellectual +boy than the companionship of this unusual woman, and if we are +to begin at the beginning of Wellesley's story, we must begin with +Mrs. Ripley, for Mr. Durant often said that she had great influence +in inclining his mind in later life to the higher education of women. + +From Waltham the young man went in 1837 to Harvard, where we hear +of him as "not specially studious, and possessing refined and +luxurious tastes which interfered somewhat with his pursuit of +the regular studies of the college." But evidently he was no +ordinary idler, for he haunted the Harvard Library, and we know +that all his life he was a lover of books. In 1841 he was graduated +from Harvard, and went home to Lowell to read law in his father's +office, where Benjamin F. Butler was at that time a partner. +The dilettante attitude which characterized his college years is +now no longer in evidence. He writes to a friend, "I shall study +law for the present to oblige father; he is in some trouble, and +I wish to make him as happy as possible. The future course of +my life is undetermined, except that all shall yield to holy poetry. +Indeed it is a sacred duty. I have begun studying law; don't be +afraid, however, that I intend to give up poetry. I shall always +be a worshiper of that divinity, and I hope in a few years to be +able to give up everything and be a priest in her temple." After +a year he writes, "I have not written any poetry this whole summer. +Old Mrs. Themis says that I shall not visit any more at the +Miss Muses. I'll see the old catamaran hanged, though, but what +I will, and I'll write a sonnet to my old shoe directly, out of +mere 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 junior +counsel in trying cases and all the drudgery of a lawyer's life. +One end of my labor has been happily attained, for about three +weeks ago I arrived at the age of twenty-one, and last week I +mustered courage to stand an examination of my qualifications +for an attorney, and the result (unlike that of some examinations +during my college life) was fortunate, with compliments from the +judge. I feel a certain vanity (not unmixed, by the way, with +self-contempt) at my success, for I well remember I and a dear +friend of mine used to mourn over the impossibility of our ever +becoming business men, and lo, I am a lawyer.-- I have a right +to bestow my tediousness on any court of the Commonwealth, and +they are bound to hear me." + +From 1843 to 1847 he practiced at the Middlesex Bar, and from +1847, when he went to live in Boston, until 1863, he was a member +of the Suffolk Bar. On November 25, 1851, he had his name changed +by act of the Legislature. There were eleven other lawyers by +the name of Smith, practicing in Boston, and two of them were +Henry Smiths. To avoid the inevitable confusion, Henry Welles Smith +became Henry Fowle Durant, both Fowle and Durant being family names. + +In 1852 Mr. Durant was a member of the Boston City Council, but +did not again hold political office. On May 28, 1854, he married +his cousin, Pauline Adeline Fowle, of Virginia, daughter of the +late Lieutenant-colonel John Fowle of the United States Army and +Paulina Cazenove. On March 2, 1855, the little boy, Henry Fowle +Durant, Jr., was born, and on October 10, 1857, a little girl, +Pauline Cazenove Durant, who lived less than two months. On +June 21, 1862, we find the Boston Evening Courier saying of the +prominent lawyer: "What the future has in store for Mr. Durant +can of course be only predicted, but his past is secure, and if +he never rises higher, he can rest in the consciousness that no +man ever rose more rapidly at the Suffolk Bar than he has." And +within a year he had put it all behind him,--a sinful and unworthy +life,--and had set out to be a new man. That there was sin and +unworthiness 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 own +severest critic. + +Miss Conant's characterization of Mr. Durant, in his own words +describing James Otis, is particularly illuminating in its revelation +of his temperament. In February, 1860, he said of James Otis, +in an address delivered in the Boston Mercantile Library Lecture +course: + +"One cannot study his writings and history and escape the conviction +that there were two natures in this great man. There was the +trained lawyer, man of action, prompt and brave in every emergency. +But there was in him another nature higher than this. In all times +men have entertained angels unawares, ministering spirits, whose +missions are not wholly known to themselves even, men living beyond +and in advance of their age. + +"We call them prophets, inspired seers,--in the widest and largest +sense poets, for they come to create new empires of thought, new +realms in the history of the mind.... But more ample traditions +remain of his powers as an orator and of the astonishing effects +of his eloquence. He was eminently an orator of action in its +finest sense; his contemporaries speak of him as a flame of fire +and repeat the phrase as if it were the only one which could express +the intense passion of his eloquence, the electric flames which +his genius kindled, the magical power which swayed the great +assemblies with the irresistible sweep of the whirlwind." + +Mr. Durant's attitude toward education is also elucidated for us +by Miss Conant in her apt quotations from his address on the +American 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 enduring +foundation in the intelligence and integrity of the whole people. +It is our faith that our institutions approach perfection only when +every child can be educated and elevated to the station of a free +and intelligent citizen, and we mourn for each one who goes astray +as a loss to the country that cannot be repaired.... From this +fundamental truth that the end of our Republic is to educate and +elevate all our people, you can deduce the future of the American +scholar. + +"The great dangers in the future of America which we have to fear +are from our own neglect of our duty. Foes from within are the +most deadly enemies, and suicide is the great danger of our +Republic. With the increase of wealth and commerce comes the +growing power of gold, and it is a fearful truth for states as +well 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 elevate +and educate the poor. Ignorance is the modern devil, and the +inkstand that Martin Luther hurled at his head in the Castle of +Wartburg is the true weapon to fight him with." + +This helps us to understand his desire that Wellesley should +welcome poor girls and should give them every opportunity for +study. Despite his aristocratic tastes he was a true son of +democracy; the following, from an address on "The Influences of +Rural Life", delivered by him before the Norfolk Agricultural +Society, in September, 1859, might have been written in the +twentieth 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 of +labor, and that phrase is anything but an idle and unmeaning one. +It is a true gospel to the man who takes its full meaning; the +nation that understands it is free and independent and great. + +"The dignity of labor is but another name for liberty. The chivalry +of labor is now the battle cry of the old world and the new. Ask +your cornfields to what mysterious power they do homage and pay +tribute, and they will answer--to labor. In a thousand forms +nature repeats the truth, that the laborer alone is what is called +respectable, 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 and +consecration of our country place and other property to the +service of the Lord Jesus Christ, by erecting a seminary on the +plan (modified by circumstances) of South Hadley, and by having +an Orphan Asylum, not only for orphans, but for those who are +more forlorn than orphans in having wicked parents. Did our +property suffice I would prefer both, as the care (Christian and +charitable) of the children would be blessed work for the pupils +of the seminary." The orphanage was, indeed, their first idea, +and was, obviously, the more natural and conventional memorial +for a little eight-year-old lad, but the idea of the seminary +gradually superseded it as Mr. and Mrs. Durant came to take a +greater and greater interest in educational problems as distinguished +from mere philanthropy. Miss Conant wisely reminds us that, +"Just at this time new conditions confronted the common schools +of the country. The effects of the Civil War were felt in education +as in everything else. During the war the business of teaching +had fallen into women's hands, and the close of the war found +a great multitude of new and often very incompetent women teachers +filling positions previously held by men. The opportunities for +the higher education of women were entirely inadequate. Mt. Holyoke +was turning away hundreds of girls every year, and there were few +or no other advanced schools for girls of limited means." + +In 1867 Mr. Durant was elected a trustee of Mt. Holyoke. In 1868 +Mrs. Durant gave to Mt. Holyoke ten thousand dollars, which enabled +the seminary to build its first library building. We are told that +Mr. and Mrs. Durant used to say that there could not be too many +Mt. Holyokes. And in 1870, on March 17, the charter of Wellesley +Female Seminary was signed by Governor William Claflin. + +On April 16, 1870, the first meeting of the Board of Trustees was +held, at Mr. Durant's Marlborough Street house in Boston, and the +Reverend Edward N. Kirk, pastor of the Mt. Vernon Church in Boston, +was elected president of the board. Mr. Durant arranged that both +men and women should constitute the Board of Trustees, but that +women should constitute the faculty; and by his choice the first +and second presidents of the college were women. The continuance +of this tradition by the trustees has in every respect justified +the ideal and the vision of the founder. The trustees were to be +members of Evangelical churches, but no denomination was to have +a majority upon the board. On March 7, 1873, the name of the +institution 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 making +their own plans. + +And meanwhile, since the summer of 1871, the great house on the +hill above Lake Waban had been rising, story on story. + +Miss Martha Hale Shackford, Wellesley, 1896, in her valuable +little pamphlet, "College Hall", written immediately after the fire, +to preserve for future generations of Wellesley women the traditions +of the vanished building, tells us with what intentness Mr. Durant +studied other colleges, and how, working with the architect, +Mr. Hammatt Billings of Boston, "details of line and contour +were determined before ground was broken, and the symmetry of +the 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 this +experiment. From Natick came many high-school girls, on Saturday +afternoons, to watch the work and to make plans for attending the +college. As the brick-work advanced and the scaffolding rose +higher and higher, the building assumed gigantic proportions, +impressive in the extreme. The bricks were brought from Cambridge +in small cars, which ran as far as the north lodge and were then +drawn, on a roughly laid switch track, to the side of the building +by a team of eight mules. Other building materials were unloaded +in the meadow and then transferred by cars. As eighteen loads +of bricks arrived daily the pre-academic aspect of the campus was +one of noise and excitement. At certain periods during the +finishing of the interior, there were almost three hundred workmen." +A pretty story has come down to us of one of these workmen who +fell 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 brick +in its place. + +Mr. Durant's eye was upon every detail. He was at hand every day +and sometimes all day, for he often took his lunch up to the campus +with him, and ate it with the workmen in their noon hour. In 1874 +he writes: "The work is very hard and I get very tired. I do +feel thankful for the privilege of trying to do something in +the cause of Christ. I feel daily that I am not worthy of such +a privilege, and I do wish to be a faithful servant to my Master. +Yet this does not prevent me from being very weary and sorely +discouraged at times. To-night I am so tired I can hardly sit up +to write." + +And from one who, as a young girl, was visiting at his country +house when the house was building, we have this vivid reminiscence: +"My first impression of Mr. Durant was, 'Here is the quickest +thinker'--my next--'and the keenest wit I have ever met.' Then +came the day when under the long walls that stood roofed but bare +in the solitude above Lake Waban, I sat upon a pile of plank, now +the flooring of Wellesley College, and listened to Mr. Durant. +I could not repeat a word he said. I only knew as he spoke and +I listened, the door between the seen and the unseen opened and +I saw a great soul and its quest, God's glory. I came back to +earth to find this seer, with his vision of the wonder that should +be, a master of detail and the most tireless worker. The same day +as this apocalypse, or soon after, I went with Mr. Durant up a +skeleton stairway to see the view from an upper window. The +workmen were all gone but one man, who stood resting a grimy hand +on the fair newly finished wall. For one second I feared to see +a blow follow the flash of Mr. Durant's eye, but he lowered rather +than raised his voice, as after an impressive silence he showed +the scared man the mark left on the wall and his enormity.... +Life was keyed high in Mr. Durant's home, and the keynote was +Wellesley College. While the walls were rising he kept workman's +hours. Long before the family breakfast he was with the builders. +At prayers I learned to listen night and morning for the prayer +for Wellesley--sometimes simply an earnest 'Bless Thy college.' +We sat on chairs wonderful in their variety, but all on trial for +the ease and rest of Wellesley, and who can count the stairways +Mrs. Durant went up, not that she might know how steep the stairs +of another, but to find the least toilsome steps for Wellesley feet. + +"Night did not bring rest, only a change of work. Letters came and +went like the correspondence of a secretary of state. Devotion +and consecration I had seen before, and sacrifice and self-forgetting, +but never anything like the relentless toil of those two who toiled +not for themselves. If genius and infinite patience met for +the making of Wellesley, side by side with them went the angels +of work and prayer; the twin angels were to have their shrine +in the college." + + +V. + +On September 8, 1875, the college opened its doors to three hundred +and fourteen students. More than two hundred other applicants +for admission had been refused for lack of room. We can imagine +the excitement of the fortunate three hundred and fourteen, driving +up 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 little +Gothic Lodge, and up the avenue between the rows of young elms +and purple beeches. There was a herd of Jersey cows grazing in +the meadow that day, and there is a tradition that the first student +entered the college by walking over a narrow plank, as the steps +up to the front door were not yet in place; but the story, though +pleasantly symbolical, does not square with the well-known energy +and 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 shown +to their rooms by teachers. The majority of the rooms were in +suites, a study and bedroom or bedrooms for two, three, and in +a few suites, four girls. There were almost no single rooms in +those days, even for the teachers. With a few exceptions, every +bedroom 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 alumna +writes: "The wooden bedsteads with their wooden slats, of vivid +memory, the wardrobes, so much more hospitable than the two hooks +on 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 straining +endeavors 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 the +president's office, but later became the office of the registrar. +There she found Miss Sarah P. Eastman, who, for the first six +years of the college life, was teacher of history and director of +domestic work. Later, with her sister, Miss Julia A. Eastman, she +became one of the founders of Dana Hall, the preparatory school +in Wellesley village. An alumna of the class of '80 who evidently +had dreaded this much-heralded domestic work, writes that Miss +Eastman's personality robbed it of its horrors and made it seem +a noble and womanly thing. "When, in her sweet and gracious +manner, she asked, 'How would you like to be on the circle to +scrape dinner dishes?' you straightway felt that no occupation +could be more noble than scraping those mussy plates." + +"All that day," we are told, "confusion was inevitable. Mr. Durant +hovered about, excited, anxious, yet reassured by the enthusiasm +of the students, who entered with eagerness into the new world. +He superintended feeding the hungry, answered questions, and +studied with great keenness the faces of the girls who were entering +Wellesley College. In the middle of the afternoon it had been +discovered 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 provided +a large brass dinnerbell. At six o'clock the next morning two +students, side by side, walked through all the corridors, ringing +the rising-bell,--an act, as Miss Eastman says, symbolic of the +inner awakening to come to all those girls." Thirty-nine years +later, at the sound of a bell in the early morning, the household +were to awake to duty for the last time in the great building. +The unquestioning obedience, the prompt intelligence, the unconscious +selflessness with which they obeyed that summons in the dawn of +March 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 hundred +and fourteen would-be college students were really of college grade. +The others were relegated to a preparatory department, of which +Mr. Durant was always intolerant, and which was finally discontinued +in 1881, the year of his death. + +Mr. Durant's ideals for the college were of the highest, and in +many respects he was far in advance of his times in his attitude +toward educational matters. He meant Wellesley to be a university +some 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, and +looked out over the beautiful campus. + +"Do you see what I see?" he asked. + +"No," was the quiet answer, for there were few who would venture +to 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 a +Scientific School, and just beyond that an Observatory, at the +farthest right a Medical College, and just there in the center a +new 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 school +among his university buildings, and that although he gave to +Wellesley his personal library, the gift did not include his law +library. Nevertheless, there are lawyers among the Wellesley +graduates, 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 Conant +tells us that, "For all scientific work he planned laboratories +where students might make their own investigations, a very unusual +step for those times." In 1878, when the Physics laboratory was +started 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 conducting +their own experimental work. Mr. Durant also began the collection +of scientific and literary periodicals containing the original +papers of the great investigators, now so valuable to the college. +"This same idea of original work led him to purchase for the +library books for the study of Icelandic and allied languages, so +that the English department might also begin its work at the root +of things. He wished students of Greek and Latin to illuminate +their work by the light of archeology, topography, and epigraphy. +Such books as then existed on these subjects were accordingly +procured. In 1872 no handbooks of archeology had been prepared, +and even in 1882 no university in America offered courses in +that subject." + +His emphasis on physical training for the students was also an +advance upon the general attitude of the time. He realized that +the Victorian young lady, with her chignon and her Grecian bend, +could not hope to make a strong student. The girls were encouraged +to row on the lake, to take long, brisk walks, to exercise in the +gymnasium. Mr. Durant sent to England for a tennis set, as none +could be procured in America, "but had some difficulty in persuading +many of the students to take such very violent exercise." + +But despite these far-seeing plans, he was often, during his +lifetime, his own greatest obstacle to their achievement. He brought +to his task a large inexperience of the genus girl, a despotic +habit of mind, and a temperamental tendency to play Providence. +Theoretically, he wished to give the teachers and students of +Wellesley an opportunity to show what women, with the same +educational facilities as their brothers and a free hand in directing +their own academic life, could accomplish for civilization. +Practically, they had to do as he said, as long as he lived. The +records in the diaries, letters, and reminiscences which have come +down to us from those early days, are full of Mr. Durant's commands +and coercions. + +On one historic occasion he decides that the entire freshman +schedule 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 their +Greek, Latin, and Mathematics. In vain do the students protest +at being treated like district school children; in vain do the +teachers point out the injury to the college dignity; in vain do +the superintendents evince an unflattering lack of interest in +the scholarship of Wellesley. It must be done. It is done. +The president of the freshman class is called upon to recite her +Greek lesson. She begins. The superintendents chatter and laugh +discourteously among themselves. But the president of the freshman +class has her own ideas of classroom etiquette. She pauses. She +waits, silent, until the room is hushed, then she resumes her +recitation 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 harried +and hurried souls to Christ. But Victorian girls were less docile +than the medieval Franks and Goths. They seem, many of them, +to have eluded or withstood this forceful shepherding with a +vigilance as determined as Mr. Durant's own. + +But some of the letters and diaries give us such a vivid picture +of this early Wellesley that it would be a pity not to let them +speak. 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 find +the little turns and twinkles of phrase which make Mrs. Kingsley's +books 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 need +the description of the college president, by a member of the class +of '80: "Miss Howard with her young face, pink cheeks, blue eyes, +and puffs of snow-white hair, wearing always a long trailing gown +of black silk, cut low at the throat and finished with folds of +snowy tulle." None of these writers gives the date at which the +trail disappeared from the classroom. + +The following letters are from Mary Elizabeth Stilwell, a member +of that same class of '79 which wore the trails. She, like +Florence Morse, left college on account of her health. The letters +are printed by the courtesy of her daughter, Ruth Eleanor McKibben, +a graduate of Denison College and a graduate student at Wellesley +during 1914 and 1915. Elizabeth Stilwell was older and more mature +than Florence Morse, and her letters give us the old Wellesley +from 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, as +youth is always intolerant, and that she was writing only one month +after the college had opened. It is not to be expected that she +could understand the creative excitement under which the founder +was laboring in those first years. We, who look back, can appreciate +what it must have meant to a man of his imagination and intensity, +to see his ideal coming true; naturally, he could not keep his +hands off. And we must remember also that until his death Mr. Durant +met the yearly deficit of the college. This gave him a peculiar +claim to have his wishes carried out, whether in the classroom or +in 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 pleasant +thing to which I can look forward, and I am quite sure good +instruction awaits me there." + +In 1876 she cheers up a bit, and on September 17, writes: "I am +going to like Miss Lord (professor of Latin) very much indeed +and shall derive a great deal of profit from her teaching." And +on October 8, + +"Having already had so much Greek, I think I could take the classical +course for Honors right through, even though I did not begin German +until another year, and as I am quite anxious to study Chemistry +and have the laboratory practice perhaps I had best take Chemistry +now and leave German for another year. It is indeed a problem and +a profound one as to what I am to do with my education and I am +very anxious to hear from father in answer to my letter and get +his thoughts on the matter. I have the utmost confidence in +Miss Horton's judgment (professor of Greek) and I think I shall +talk the matter over with her in a day or two." + +Evidently the "experiments" which had taken so much of her time +in 1875 had now been eliminated, and she was able to respect +the work which she was doing. Her Sunday schedule, which she +sends her mother on October 15, 1876, will be of interest to the +modern 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 student +has 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 its +modest fountainhead. + +Elizabeth Stilwell left her Alma Mater in 1877, but so cherished +were 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 happy +girlhood 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 plan +have been changed and modified to meet conditions which he could +not foresee. But his "five great essentials for education at +Wellesley 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 accordance +with 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 noblest +womanhood demands; viz. the supreme development and unfolding +of every power and faculty, of the Kingly reason, the beautiful +imagination, the sensitive emotional nature, and the religious +aspirations. The ideal is of the highest learning in full harmony +with the noblest soul, grand by every charm of culture, useful +and beautiful because useful; feminine purity and delicacy and +refinement giving their luster and their power to the most absolute +science--woman learned without infidelity and wise without conceit, +the crowned queen of the world by right of that Knowledge which +is Power and that Beauty which is Truth." + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE PRESIDENTS AND THEIR ACHIEVEMENT + +Wellesley's career differs in at least one obvious and important +particular from the careers of her sister colleges, Smith, Vassar, +and Bryn Mawr,--in the swift succession of her presidents during +her formative years. Smith College, opening in the same year as +Wellesley, 1875, remained under President Seelye's wise guidance +for thirty-five years. Vassar, between 1886 and 1914, had but +one president. Bryn Mawr, in 1914, still followed the lead of +Miss Thomas, first dean and then president. In 1911, Wellesley's +sixth president was inaugurated. Of the five who preceded President +Pendleton, only Miss Hazard served more than six years, and even +Miss Hazard's term of eleven years was broken by more than one +long absence because of illness. + +It is useless to deny that this lack of administrative continuity +had its disadvantages, yet no one who watched the growth and +development of Wellesley during her first forty years could fail +to mark the genuine progression of her scholarly ideal. Despite +an increasingly hampering lack of funds--poverty is not too strong +a word--and the disconcerting breaks and changes in her presidential +policy, she never took a backward step, and she never stood still. +The Wellesley that Miss Freeman inherited was already straining +at its leading strings and impatient of its boarding-school horizons; +the Wellesley that Miss Shafer left was a college in every modern +acceptation of the term, and its academic prestige has been confirmed +and enhanced by each successive president. + +Of these six women who were called to direct the affairs of Wellesley +in her first half century, Miss Ada L. Howard seems to have been +the least forceful; but her position was one of peculiar difficulty, +and she apparently took pains to adjust herself with tact and +dignity to conditions which her more spirited successors would +have found unbearably galling. Professor George Herbert Palmer, +in his biography of his wife, epitomizes the early situation when +he says that Mr. Durant "had, it is true, appointed Miss Ada L. Howard +president; but her duties as an executive officer were nominal +rather than real; neither his disposition, her health, nor her +previous training allowing her much power." + +Miss Howard was a New Hampshire woman, the daughter of William +Hawkins Howard and Adaline Cowden Howard. Three of her great +grandfathers were officers in the War of the Revolution. Her father +is said to have been a good scholar and an able teacher as well +as a scientific agriculturist, and her mother was "a gentlewoman +of sweetness, strength and high womanhood." When their daughter +was born, the father and mother were living in Temple, a village of +Southern New Hampshire not very far from Jaffrey. The little girl +was taught by her father, and was later sent to the academy at +New Ipswich, New Hampshire, to the high school at Lowell, and to +Mt. Holyoke Seminary, where she was graduated. After leaving +Mt. Holyoke, she taught at Oxford, Ohio, and she was at one time +the principal of the Woman's Department of Knox College, Illinois. +In the early '70's this was a career of some distinction, for a +woman, and Mr. Durant was justified in thinking that he had found +the suitable executive head for his college. We hear of his saying, +"I have been four years looking for a president. She will be a +target to be shot at, and for the present the position will be one +of severe trials." + +Miss Howard came to Wellesley in 1875, giving up a private school +of her own, Ivy Hall, in Bridgeton, New Jersey, in order to become +a college president. No far-seeing policies can be traced to her, +however; she seems to have been content to press her somewhat +narrow and rigid conception of discipline upon a more or less +restive student body, and to follow Mr. Durant's lead in all matters +pertaining to scholarship and academic expansion. + +We can trace that expansion from year to year through this first +administration. In 1877 the Board of Visitors was established, +and eminent educators and clergymen were invited to visit the +college at stated intervals and stimulate by their criticism the +college routine. In 1878 the Students' Aid Society was founded +to 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 wise +generosity of Mrs. Durant and a group of Boston women, the society +was set upon its feet, and its long career of blessed usefulness +was begun. This is only one of the many gifts which Wellesley +owes to Mrs. Durant. As Professor Katharine Lee Bates has said +in her charming sketch of Mrs. Durant in the Wellesley Legenda +for 1894: "Her specific gifts to Wellesley it is impossible to +completely enumerate. She has forgotten, and no one else ever +knew. So long as Mr. Durant was living, husband and wife were +one and inseparable in service and donation. But since his death, +while it has been obvious that she spends herself unsparingly in +college cares, adding many of his functions to her own, a +continuous flow of benefits, almost unperceived, has come to +Wellesley 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 of +registration by which those students who expected to teach might +bring their names and qualifications before the schools of the +country. But the most important academic events of this year, +and those which reacted directly upon the intellectual life of +the college, were the establishment of the Physics laboratory, +under the careful supervision of Professor Whiting, and the +endowment of the Library by Professor Eben N. Horsford of Cambridge. +This endowment provided a fund for the purchase of new books and +for various expenses of maintenance, and was only one of the many +gifts which Wellesley was to receive from this generous benefactor. +Another gift, of this year, was the pipe organ, presented by +Mr. William H. Groves, for the College Hall Chapel. Later, when +the new Memorial Chapel was built, this organ was removed to +Billings 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 Reverend +Richard 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, the +second building on the college campus. It was the gift of Mrs. +Valeria G. Stone, and was intended, in the beginning, as a dormitory +for the "teacher specials." Doctor William A. Willcox of Malden, +a devoted trustee of Wellesley from 1878 to 1904, and a relative +of Mrs. Stone, was influential in securing this gift for the college, +and it was he who first turned the attention of Mr. and Mrs. Durant +to the needs of the women who had already been engaged in teaching, +but who wished to fit themselves for higher positions by advanced +work in one or more particular directions. At first, there were +a good many of them, and even as late as 1889 and 1890 there were +a few still in evidence; but gradually, as the number of regular +students increased, and accommodations became more limited, and +as 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 in +regular standing. + +On June 10, 1880, the corner stone of Music Hall was laid; the +inscription in the stone reads: "The College of Music is dedicated +to 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 everlasting +strength." 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's +preparatory department, another intellectual advance. In June +also, on the tenth, the corner stone of Simpson Cottage was laid. +The building was the gift of Mr. Michael Simpson, and has been +used since 1908 as the college hospital. In the autumn of 1881, +Stone Hall and Waban Cottage--the latter another gift from the +founders were opened for students. + +On October 3, 1881, Mr. Durant died, and shortly afterwards +Miss Howard resigned. After leaving Wellesley, she lived in +Methuen, Massachusetts, and in Brooklyn, New York, where she +died, March 3, 1907. Mrs. Marion Pelton Guild, of the class of +'80, says of Miss Howard, in an article on Wellesley written for +the New England Magazine, October, 1914, that "she was in the +difficult position of the nominal captain, who is in fact only a +lieutenant. Yet she held it with a true self-respect, honoring +the fiery genius of her leader, if she could not always follow +its more startling fights; and not hesitating to withstand him in +his most positive plans, if her long practical experience suggested +that it was necessary." From Mt. Holyoke, her Alma Mater, +Miss Howard received, in the latter part of her life, the honorary +degree 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 continued +and successful efforts during her administration to bring Wellesley +out of its obscurity and into the public eye, her extended activity +in educational matters after her marriage, gave her a prominence +throughout the country which was surpassed by very few women of +her generation. And her husband's reverent and poetical +interpretation of her character has secured for her reputation a +literary permanence unusual to the woman of affairs who "wrote +no books and published only half a dozen articles", and whose many +public addresses were never written. + +It is from Professor Palmer's "Life of Alice Freeman Palmer", +published by the Houghton Mifflin Co., that the biographical +material 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 daughter +as her mother was before her. James Warren Freeman, the father, +was of Scottish blood. His mother was a Knox, and his maternal +grandfather was James Knox of Washington's Life Guard. James Freeman +was, as we should expect, an elder of the Presbyterian church. +The mother, Elizabeth Josephine Higley, "had unusual executive +ability and a strong disposition to improve social conditions +around her. She interested herself in temperance, and in legislation +for the better protection of women and children." Their little +daughter Alice, the eldest of four children, taught herself to +read when she was three years old, and we find her going to school +at the age of four. When she was seven, her father, urged by his +wife, decided to be a physician, and during his two years' absence +at the Albany medical school, Mrs. Freeman supported him and the +four little children. The incident helps us to understand the +ambition and determination of the seventeen-year-old daughter +when she declared in the face of her parents' opposition, "that +she meant to have a college degree if it took her till she was +fifty to get it. If her parents could help her, even partially, +she would promise never to marry until she had herself put her +brother through college and given to each of her sisters whatever +education they might wish--a promise subsequently performed." + +And the girl had her own ideas about the kind of college she meant +to attend. It must be a real college. Mt. Holyoke she rejected +because it was a young ladies' seminary, and Elmira and Vassar +fell under the same suspicion, in her mind, although they were +nominally colleges. She chose Michigan, the strongest of the +coeducational colleges, and she entered only two years after its +doors 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 became +a physician, was good at supplying "general knowledge" but "poorly +equipped for preparing pupils for college", and Doctor Freeman's +daughter failed to pass her entrance examinations for Michigan +University. 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 her +studies in the little academy at Windsor. Her teacher regarded +her as a child of much promise, precocious, possessed of a bright, +alert mind, of great industry, of quick sympathies, and of an +instinctive desire to be helpful to others. Her preparation for +college had been meager, and both she and her father were doubtful +of her ability to pass the required examinations. The doubts were +not without foundation. The examiners, on inspecting her work, +were inclined to decide that she ought to do more preparatory work +before they could accept her. Meantime I had had not a little +conversation with her and her father, and had been impressed with +her high intelligence. At my request the examiners decided to +allow her to enter on a trial of six weeks. I was confident she +would demonstrate her capacity to go on with her class. I need +hardly add that it was soon apparent to her instructors that my +confidence was fully justified. She speedily gained and constantly +held an excellent position as a scholar." + +President Angell is of course using the term "scholar" in its +undergraduate connotation for, as Professor Palmer has been careful +to state, "In no field of scholarship was she eminent." Despite +her eagerness for knowledge, her bent was for people rather than +for books; for what we call the active and objective life, rather +than for the life of thought. Wellesley has had her scholar +presidents, but Miss Freeman was not one of them. This friendly, +human temper showed itself early in her college days. To quote +again from President Angell: "One of her most striking characteristics +in college was her warm and demonstrative sympathy with her circle +of friends.... Without assuming or striving for leadership, she +could not but be to a certain degree a leader among these, some +of whom have since attained positions only less conspicuous for +usefulness than her own.... No girl of her time on withdrawing +from college would have been more missed than she." + +It is for this eagerness in friendship, this sympathetic and +helpful interest in the lives of others that Mrs. Palmer is especially +remembered at Wellesley. Her own college days made her quick +to understand the struggles and ambitions of other girls who were +hampered by inadequate preparation, or by poverty. Her husband +tells us that, "When a girl had once been spoken to, however +briefly, her face and name were fixed on a memory where each +incident of her subsequent career found its place beside the +original record." And he gives the following incident as told +by a superintendent of education. + +"Once after she had been speaking in my city, she asked me to stand +beside her at a reception. As the Wellesley graduates came forward +to greet her--there were about eighty of them--she said something +to each which showed that she knew her. Some she called by their +first names; others she asked about their work, their families, +or whether they had succeeded in plans about which they had +evidently consulted her. The looks of pleased surprise which +flashed over the faces of those girls I cannot forget. They +revealed to me something of Miss Freeman's rich and radiant life. +For though she seemed unconscious of doing anything unusual, and +for her I suppose it was usual, her own face reflected the happiness +of the girls and showed a serene joy in creating that happiness." + +Her husband, in his analysis of her character, has a remarkable +passage concerning this very quality of disinterestedness. He says: + +"Her moral nature was grounded in sympathy. Beginning early, the +identification of herself with others grew into a constant habit, +of unusual range and delicacy.... Most persons will agree that +sympathy is the predominantly feminine virtue, and that she who +lacks it cannot make its absence good by any collection of other +worthy qualities. In a true woman sympathy directs all else. To +find a virtue equally central in a man we must turn to truthfulness +or courage. These also a woman should possess, as a man too +should be sympathetic; but in her they take a subordinate place, +subservient to omnipresent sympathy. Within these limits the +ampler they are, the nobler the woman. + +"I believe Mrs. Palmer had a full share of both these manly +excellences, 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 of +veracity. But in narrative of hers one got much besides plain +realities. These had their significance heightened by her eager +emotion, and their picturesqueness by her happy artistry.... Of +course the warmth of her sympathy cut off all inclination to +falsehood for its usual selfish purpose. But against generous +untruth she was not so well guarded. Kindness was the first +thing.... Tact too, once become a habit, made adaptation to the +mind addressed a constant concern. She had extraordinary skill +in stuffing kindness with truth; and into a resisting mind could +without irritation convey a larger bulk of unwelcome fact than +any one I have known. But that insistence on colorless statement +which in our time the needs of trade and science have made current +among men, she did not feel. Lapses from exactitude which do not +separate person from person she easily condoned." + +Surely the manly virtues of truthfulness and courage could be no +better exemplified than in the writing of this passage. Whether +his readers, especially the women, will agree with Professor Palmer +that, 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 when +she went to Wellesley, Miss Freeman taught with marked success, +first at a seminary in the town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where +she had charge of the Greek and Latin; and later as assistant +principal of the high school at Saginaw in Northern Michigan. Here +she was especially successful in keeping order among unruly pupils. +The summer of 1877 she spent in Ann Arbor, studying for a higher +degree, and although she never completed the thesis for this work, +the university conferred upon her the degree of Ph.D. in 1882, the +first 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. Durant +offered her an instructorship in Mathematics, which she declined. +In 1878 she was again invited, this time to teach Greek, but her +sister Stella was dying, and Miss Freeman, who had now settled +her entire family at Saginaw, would not leave them. In June, 1879, +the sister died, and in July Miss Freeman became the head of the +Department of History at Wellesley, at the age of twenty-four. + +Mr. Durant's attention had first been drawn to her by her good +friend President Angell, and he had evidently followed her career +as a teacher with interest. There seems to have been no abatement +in his approval after she went to Wellesley. We are told that they +did not always agree, but this does not seem to have affected +their mutual esteem. In her first year, Mr. Durant is said to have +remarked to one of the trustees, "You see that little dark-eyed +girl? She will be the next president of Wellesley." And before +he died, he made his wishes definitely known to the board. + +At a meeting of the trustees, on November 15, 1881, Miss Freeman +was appointed vice president of the college and acting president +for the year. She was then twenty-six years of age and the youngest +professor in the college. In 1882 she became president. + +During the next six years, Wellesley's growth was as normal as +it was rapid. This is a period of internal organization which +achieved its most important result in the evolution of the Academic +Council. "In earlier days," we are told by Professor Palmer, +"teachers of every rank met in the not very important faculty +meetings, to discuss such details of government or instruction as +were not already settled by Mr. Durant." But even then the faculty +was built up out of departmental groups, that is, "all teachers +dealing with a common subject were banded together under a head +professor and constituted a single unit," and, as Mrs. Guild tells +us, Miss Freeman "naturally fell to consulting the heads of +departments as the abler and more responsible members of the +faculty," instead of laying her plans before the whole faculty at +its more or less cumbersome weekly meetings. From this inner +circle of heads of departments the Academic Council was gradually +evolved. It now includes the president, the dean, professors, +associate professors (unless exempted by a special tenure of +office), and such other officers of instruction and administration +as may be given this responsibility by vote of the trustees. + +Miss Freeman also "began the formation of standing committees +of 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 and +virtues of the true pioneer: courage, patience, originality, +resourcefulness, and vision. There were strong groups from +Ann Arbor and Oberlin and Mt. Holyoke, and there was a fourth +group of "pioneer scholars, not wholly college bred, but enriched +with whatever amount of academic training they could wring or charm +from a reluctant world, whom Wellesley will long honor and revere." + +With the organization of the faculty came also the organization +of the college work. Entrance examinations were made more severe. +Greek had been first required for entrance in 1881. A certificate +of admission was drawn up, stating exactly what the candidate had +accomplished in preparation for college. Courses of study were +standardized and simplified. In 1882, the methods of Bible study +were reorganized, and instead of the daily classes, to which no +serious study had been given, two hours a week of "examinable +instruction" were substituted. In this year also the gymnasium +was refitted under the supervision of Doctor D. A. Sargent of Harvard. + +Miss Freeman's policy of establishing preparatory schools which +should be "feeders" for Wellesley was of the greatest importance +to the college at this time, as "in only a few high schools were +the girls allowed to join classes which fitted boys for college." +When Miss Freeman became president, Dana Hall was the only Wellesley +preparatory school in existence; but in 1884, through her efforts, +an important school was opened in Philadelphia, and before the end +of her presidency, she had been instrumental in furthering the +organization of fifteen other schools in different parts of the +country, officered for the most part by Wellesley graduates. + +In this same year the Christian Association was organized. Its +history, bound up as it is with the student life, will be given +more fully in a later chapter, but we must not forget that Miss +Freeman gave the association its initial impulse and established +its broad type. + +In 1884 also, we find Wellesley petitioning before the committee +on education at the State House in Boston, to extend its holdings +from six hundred thousand dollars to five million dollars, and +gaining the petition. + +On June 22, 1885, the corner stone of the Decennial Cottage, +afterwards called Norumbega, was laid. The building was given +by the alumnae, aided by Professor Horsford, Mr. E. A. Goodenow +and Mr. Elisha S. Converse of the Board of Trustees. Norumbega +was for many years known as the President's House, for here +Miss Freeman, Miss Shafer, and Mrs. Irvine lived. In the academic +year 1901-02, when Miss Hazard built the house for herself and +her successors, the president's modest suite in Norumbega was +set free for other purposes. + +In 1886, Norumbega was opened, and in June of that year, the +Library Festival was held to celebrate Professor Horsford's many +benefactions to the college. These included the endowment of the +Library, an appropriation for scientific apparatus, and a system +of pensions. + +In a letter to the trustees, dated January 1, 1886, the donor +explains that the annual appropriation for the library shall be +for the salaries of the librarian and assistants, for books for +the library, and for binding and repairs. That the appropriation +for scientific apparatus shall go toward meeting the needs of the +departments of Physics, Chemistry, Botany, and Biology. And that +the System of Pensions shall include a Sabbatical Grant, and a +"Salary Augment and Pension." By the Sabbatical Grant, the heads +of certain departments are able to take a year of travel and +residence abroad every seventh year on half salary. The donor +stipulated, however, that "the offices contemplated in the grants +and pensions must be held by ladies." + +In his memorable address on this occasion, Professor Horsford +outlines his ideal for the library which he generously endowed: + +"But the uses of books at a seat of learning reach beyond the wants +of the undergraduates. The faculty need supplies from the daily +widening field of literature. They should have access to the +periodical issues of contemporary research and criticism in the +various branches of knowledge pertaining to their individual +departments. In addition to these, the progressive culture of an +established college demands a share in whatever adorns and ennobles +scholarly life, and principally the opportunity to know something +of the best of all the past,--the writers of choice and rare books. +To meet this demand there will continue to grow the collections in +specialties for bibliographical research, which starting like the +suite of periodicals with the founder, have been nursed, as they +will continue to be cherished, under the wise direction of the +Library Council. Some of these will be gathered in concert, it +may be hoped, with neighboring and venerable and hospitable +institutions, that costly duplicates may be avoided; some will be +exclusively our own. + +"To these collections of specialties may come, as to a joint +estate in the republic of letters, not alone the faculty of the +college, but such other persons of culture engaged in literary +labor as may not have found facilities for conducting their +researches elsewhere, and to whom the trustees may extend invitation +to avail themselves of the resources of our library." + +These ideals of scholarship and hospitality the Wellesley College +Library never forgets. Her Plimpton collection of Italian manuscripts +is a treasure-house for students of the Italy of the Middle Ages +and Renaissance; and her alumnae, as well as scholars from other +colleges 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. Durant +and Mr. H. H. Hunnewell. Originally the Eliot had been used as +a boarding-house for the young women working in a shoe factory +at that time running in Wellesley village, but after Mrs. Durant +had enlarged and refurnished it, students who wished to pay a part +of their expenses by working their way through college were boarded +there. Some years later it was again enlarged, and used as a +village-house for freshmen. + +In December, 1887, Miss Freeman resigned from Wellesley to marry +Professor George Herbert Palmer of Harvard; but her interest in +the college did not flag, and during her lifetime she continued +to be a member of the Board of Trustees. From 1892 to 1895 she +held the office of Dean of Women of the University of Chicago; and +Radcliffe, Bradford Academy, and the International Institute for +Girls, in Spain, can all claim a share in her fostering interest. +From 1889 until the end of her life, she was a member of the +Massachusetts Board of Education, having been appointed by +Governor Ames and reappointed by Governor Greenhalge and Governor +Crane. + +In addition to the degree of Ph.D. received from Michigan in 1882, +Miss Freeman received the honorary degree of Litt.D. from Columbia +in 1887, and in 1895 the honorary degree of LL.D., from Union +University. + +What she meant to the women who were her comrades at Wellesley +in those early days--the women who held up her hands--is expressed +in an address by Professor Whiting at the memorial service held +in 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 the +correspondence, seeing individual girls on academic and social +matters, setting them right in cases of discipline, interviewing +members of the faculty on necessary plans. The work was overwhelming +and sometimes her one assistant would urge her, late in the +evening, to nibble a bite from a tray which, to save time, had +been sent in to her room at the dinner hour, only to remain +untouched.... No wonder that professors often left their lectures +to be written in the wee small hours, to help in uncongenial +administrative work, which was not in the scope of their recognized +duties." + +The pathos of her death in Paris, in December, 1902, came as a +shock to hundreds of people whose lives had been brightened by +her eager kindliness; and her memory will always be especially +cherished by the college to which she gave her youth. The beautiful +memorial in the college chapel will speak to generations of +Wellesley girls of this lovable and ardent pioneer. + + +III. + +Wellesley's debt to her third president, Helen A. Shafer, is +nowhere 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. Miss +Breckenridge 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 the +administrator were united in her personality, but the scholar +led. The crowning achievement of her administration was what was +then called "the new curriculum." + +In the college calendars from 1876 to 1879, we find as many as +seven courses of study outlined. There was a General Course for +which the degree of B.A. was granted, with summa cum laude for +special distinction in scholarship. There were the courses for +Honors, in Classics, Mathematics, Modern Languages, and Science; +and students doing suitable work in them could be recommended for +the degree. These elective courses made a good showing on paper; +but it seems to have been possible to complete them by a minimum +of study. There were also courses in Music and Art, extending +over a period of five years instead of the ordinary four allotted +to the General Course. Under Miss Freeman, the courses for Honors +disappeared, and instead of the General Course there were substituted +the Classical Course, with Greek as an entrance requirement and +the degree of B.A. as its goal; and the Scientific Course, in which +knowledge of French or German was substituted for Greek at entrance, +and Mathematics was required through the sophomore year. The +student who completed this course received the degree of B.S. + +The "new curriculum" substituted for the two courses, Classical +and Scientific, hitherto offered, a single course leading to the +degree of B.A. As Miss Shafer explains in her report to the +trustees for the year 1892-1893: "Thus we cease to confer the +B.S. for a course not essentially scientific, and incapable of +becoming scientific under existing circumstances, and we offer +a course broad and strong, containing, as we believe, all the +elements, educational and disciplinary, which should pertain to +a course in liberal arts." + +Further modifications of the elective system were introduced +in a later administration, but the "new curriculum" continues to +be 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 correspond +with the new system, and the Academic Council spent three years +in perfecting the curriculum in its new form. + +Miss Shafer's own department, Mathematics, had already been brought +up to a very high standard, and at one time the requirements for +admission to Wellesley were higher in Mathematics than those for +Harvard. Under Miss Shafer also, the work in English Composition +was placed on a new basis; elective courses were offered to seniors +and juniors in the Bible Department; a course in Pedagogy, begun +toward the end of Miss Freeman's residency, was encouraged and +increased; the laboratory of Physiological Psychology, the first +in a woman's college and one of the earliest in any college, was +opened in 1891 with Professor Calkins at its head. In all, +sixty-seven new courses were opened to the students in these five +years. The Academic Council, besides revising the undergraduate +curriculum, also revised its rules governing the work of candidates +for the Master's degree. + +But the "new curriculum" is not the only achievement for which +Wellesley honors Miss Shafer. In June, 1892, she recommended +to 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 colleague +in the Department of Mathematics, says: + +"From the first she felt a genuine interest in all sides of the +social life of the students, sympathized with their ambitions and +understood the bearing of them on the development of the right +spirit in the college." And the members of the Greek letter +societies bear her in especial remembrance, for it was she who +aided in the reestablishing in 1889 of the societies Phi Sigma +and Zeta Alpha, which had been suppressed in 1880, under Miss Howard. +In 1889 also the Art Society, later known as Tau Zeta Epsilon, was +founded; in 1891, the Agora, the political society, came into +being, and 1892 saw the beginnings of Alpha Kappa Chi, the classical +society. Miss Shafer also approved and fostered the department +clubs which began to be formed at this time. And to her wise and +sympathetic assistance we owe the beginnings of the college +periodicals,--the old Courant, of 1888, the Prelude, which began +in 1889, and the first senior annual, the Legenda of 1889. + +The old boarding-school type of discipline which had flourished +under Miss Howard, and lingered fitfully under Miss Freeman, gave +place in Miss Shafer's day to a system of cuts and excuses which +although very far from the self-government of the present day, +still fostered and respected the dignity of the students. At the +beginning of the academic year 1890-1891, attendance at prayers +in 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 own +discretion, whenever such absence did not take them from their +college duties." On September 12, 1893, the seniors began to +wear the cap and gown throughout the year. + +Other notable events of these five years were the opening of the +Faculty Parlor on Monday, September 24, 1888, another of the gifts +of Professor Horsford, its gold and garlands now vanished never +to return; the dedication of the Farnsworth Art Building on +October 3, 1889, the gift of Mr. Isaac D. Farnsworth, a friend of +Mr. Durant; the presentation in this same year, by Mr. Stetson, +of the Amos W. Stetson collection of paintings; the opening, also +in 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. We +learn, through the president's report for 1892-1893, that during +this year four professors and one instructor were called to fill +professorships in other colleges and universities, with double the +salary which they were then receiving, but all preferred to remain +at Wellesley. + +This custom of printing an annual report to the trustees may also +be said to have been inaugurated by Miss Shafer. It is true that +Miss Freeman had printed one such report at the close of her first +year, but not again. Miss Shafer's clear and dignified presentations +of events and conditions are models of their kind; they set the +standard which her successors have followed. + +Of Miss Shafer's early preparation for her work we have but few +details. She was born in Newark, New Jersey, on September 23, 1839, +and her father was a clergyman of the Congregational church, of +mingled Scotch and German descent. Her parents moved out to +Oberlin when she was still a young girl, and she entered the college +and was graduated in 1863. The Reverend Frederick D. Allen of +Boston, who was a classmate of Miss Shafer's, tells us that there +were two courses at Oberlin in that day, the regular college course +and a parallel, four years' course for young women. It seems that +women were also admitted to the college course, but only a few +availed themselves of the privilege, and Miss Shafer was not one +of 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 teacher +of higher mathematics." Doctor William T. Harris, then superintendent +of public schools in St. Louis, and afterwards United States +Commissioner of Education, commended her very highly; and her +old students at Wellesley witness with enthusiasm to her remarkable +powers as a teacher. President Pendleton, who was one of those +old students, says: + +"Doubtless there was no one of these who did not receive the news +of her appointment as president with something of regret. No one +probably doubted the wisdom of the choice, but all were unwilling +that the inspiration of Miss Shafer's teaching should be lost to +the future Wellesley students. Her record as president leaves +unquestioned 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 students +who, during the last two years of their college life (1884-1886) +elected Miss Shafer's course in Mathematics. It is difficult to +give adequate expression to the impression which Miss Shafer made +as a teacher. There was a friendly graciousness in her manner of +meeting a class which established at once a feeling of sympathy +between student and teacher.... She taught us to aim at clearness +of thought and elegance of method; in short, to attempt to give +to our work a certain finish which belongs only to the scholar.... +I believe that it has often been the experience of a Wellesley +girl, that once on her feet in Miss Shafer's classroom, she has +surprised herself by treating a subject more clearly than she +would have thought possible before the recitation. The explanation +of this, I think, lay in the fact that Miss Shafer inspired her +students with her own confidence in their intellectual powers." + +When we realize that during the last ten years of her life she +was fighting tuberculosis, and in a state of health which, for +the 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 some +months in Thomasville, Georgia, and in her absence the duties of +her office devolved upon Professor Frances E. Lord, the head +of the Department of Latin, whose sympathetic understanding of +Miss Shafer's ideals enabled her to carry through the difficult +year with signal success. Miss Shafer rallied in the mild climate, +and probably her life would have been prolonged if she had chosen +to retire from the college; but her whole heart was in her work, +and undoubtedly if she had known that her coming back to Wellesley +meant only two more years of life on earth, she would still have +chosen to return. + +Miss Shafer had no surface qualities, although her friends knew +well the keen sense of humor which hid beneath that grave and +rather awkward exterior. But when the alumnae who knew her speak +of her, the words that rise to their lips are justice, integrity, +sympathy. She was an honorary member of the class of 1891, and +on December 8, 1902, her portrait, painted by Kenyon Cox, was +presented to the college by the Alumnae Association. + +Miss Shafer's academic degrees were from Oberlin, the M.A. in 1877 +and the LL.D. in 1893. + +Mrs. Caroline Williamson Montgomery (Wellesley, '89), in a memorial +sketch written for the '94 Legenda says: "I have yet to find the +Wellesley student who could not and would not say, 'I can always +feel sure of the fairness of Miss Shafer's decision.' Again and +again 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 when +students, were spurred to do their best, were filled with loyalty +for their alma mater.... If I should try to formulate an expression +of that life in brief, I should say that in her relation to the +students 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 the +college as head of the Department of Mathematics, to January 20, +1894, when she died, its president, she served Wellesley with all +her strength, and the college remains forever indebted to her +high standards and wise leadership. + + +IV. + +In choosing Mrs. Irvine to succeed Miss Shafer as president of +Wellesley, the trustees abandoned the policy which had governed +their earlier choices. Miss Freeman and Miss Shafer had been +connected with the college almost from the beginning. They had +known its problems only from the inside. Mrs. Irvine was, by +comparison, a newcomer; she had entered the Department of Greek +as junior professor in 1890. But almost at once her unusual +personality made its impression, and in the four years preceding +her election to the presidency, she had arisen, as it were in spite +of herself, to a position of power both in the classroom and in +the Academic Council. As an outsider, her criticism, both constructive +and destructive, was peculiarly stimulating and valuable; and even +those who resented her intrusion could not but recognize the noble +disinterestedness of her ideal for Wellesley. + +The trustees were quick to perceive the value to the college of +this unusual combination of devotion and clearsightedness, detachment +and loving service. They also realized that the junior professor +of Greek was especially well fitted to complete and perfect the +curriculum which Miss Shafer had so ably inaugurated. For Mrs. Irvine +was before all else a scholar, with a scholar's passion for +rectitude and high excellence in intellectual standards. + +Julia Josephine (Thomas) Irvine, the daughter of Owen Thomas and +Mary Frame (Myers) Thomas, was born at Salem, Ohio, November 9, +1848. Her grandparents, strong abolitionists, are said to have +moved to the middle west from the south because they became +unwilling to live in a slave state. Mrs. Irvine's mother was the +first woman physician west of the Alleghenies, and her mother's +sister also studied medicine. Mrs. Irvine's student life began at +Antioch College, Ohio, but later she entered Cornell University, +receiving her bachelor's degree in 1875. In the same rear she +was married to Charles James Irvine. In 1876, Cornell gave her +the degree of Master of Arts. After her husband's death in 1886, +Mrs. Irvine entered upon her career as a teacher, and in 1890 came +to Wellesley, where her success in the classroom was immediate. +Students of those days will never forget the vitality of her +teaching, the enthusiasm for study which pervaded her classes. +Wellesley has had her share of inspiring teachers, and among these +Mrs. Irvine was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant. + +The new president assumed her office reluctantly, and with the +understanding that she should be allowed to retire after a brief +term of years, when "the exigencies which suggested her appointment +had ceased to exist." She knew the college, and she knew herself. +With certain aspects of the Wellesley life she could never be +entirely in accord. She was a Hicksite Quaker. The Wellesley +of the decade 1890-1900 had moved a long way from the evangelical +revivalism which had been Mr. Durant's idea of religion, but it was +not until 1912 that the Quaker students first began to hold their +weekly meetings in the Observatory. About this time also, through +the kind offices of the Wellesley College Christian Association, +a list of the Roman Catholic students then in college was given +to the Roman Catholic parish priest. That the trustees in 1895 +were willing to trust the leadership of the college to a woman +whose religious convictions differed so widely from those of the +founder indicates that even then Wellesley was beginning to outgrow +her religious provincialism, and to recognize that a wise tolerance +is 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 and +distinction. An alumna of 1897 writes: "That commanding figure +behind the reading-desk of the old chapel in College Hall made +every one, in those days, rejoice when she was to lead the morning +service." But the trustees, anxious to set her free for the academic +side of her work, which now demanded the whole of her time, +appointed a dean to relieve her of such other duties as she desired +to delegate to another. This action was made possible by amendment +of the statutes, adopted November 1, 1894, and in 1895, Miss +Margaret E. Stratton, professor of the Department of Rhetoric, as +it was then called, was appointed the first dean of the college. + +The trustees did not define the precise nature of the relation +between the president and the dean, but left these officers to +make such division of work as should seem to them best, and we +read in Mrs. Irvine's report for 1895 that, "For the present the +Dean remains in charge of all that relates to the public devotional +exercises of the college, and is chairman of the committee in +charge of stated religious services. She is the authority referred +to in all cases of ordinary discipline, and is the chairman of +the committee which includes heads of houses and permission +officers, all these officers are directly responsible to her." + +Regarded from an intellectual and academic point of view, the +administrations of Miss Shafer and Mrs. Irvine are a unit. +Mrs. Irvine developed and perfected the policy which Miss Shafer +had initiated and outlined. By 1895, all students were working +under the new curriculum, and in the succeeding years the details +of readjustment were finally completed. To carry out the necessary +changes in the courses of study, certain other changes were also +necessary; methods of teaching which were advanced for the '70's +and '80's had been superseded in the '90's, and must be modified +or abandoned for Wellesley's best good. To all that was involved +in this ungrateful task, Mrs. Irvine addressed herself with a +courage and determination not fully appreciated at the time. She +had not Mrs. Palmer's skill in conveying unwelcome fact into a +resisting mind without irritation; neither had she Miss Shafer's +self-effacing, sympathetic patience. Her handling of situations +and individuals was what we are accustomed to call masculine; it +had, as the French say, the defects of its qualities; but the +general result was tonic, and Wellesley's gratitude to this firm +and far-seeing administrator increases with the passing of years. + +In November, 1895, the Board of Trustees appointed a special +committee on the schools of Music and Art, in order to reorganize +the instruction in these subjects, and as a result the fine arts +and music were put upon the same footing and made regular electives +in the academic course, counting for a degree. The heads of these +departments were made members of the Academic Council and the terms +School of Music and School of Art were dropped from the calendar. +In 1896, the title Director of School of Music was changed to +Professor of Music. These changes are the more significant, coming +at this time, in the witness which they bear to the breadth and +elasticity of Mrs. Irvine's academic ideal. A narrower scholasticism +would not have tolerated them, much less pressed for their adoption. +Wellesley is one of the earliest of the colleges to place the fine arts +and music on her list of electives counting for an academic degree. + +During the year 1895-1896, the Academic Council reviewed its rules +of procedure relating to the maintenance of scholarship throughout +the course, with the result that, "In order to be recommended +for the degree of B.A. a student must pass with credit in at least +one half of her college work and in at least one half of the +work of the senior year." This did not involve raising the actual +standard of graduation as reached by the majority of recent +graduates, but relieved the college of the obligation of giving +its degree to a student whose work throughout a large part of +her course did not rise above a mere passing grade. + +In Mrs. Irvine's report for 1894-1895, we read that, "Modifications +have been made in the general regulations of the college by which +the observation of a set period of silent time for all persons is no +longer required." In the beginning, Mr. Durant had established +two daily periods of twenty minutes each, during which students +were required to be in their rooms, silent, in order that those +who so desired might give themselves to meditation, prayer, and +the reading of the Scriptures. Morning and evening, for fifteen +years, the "Silent Bell" rang, and the college houses were hushed +in literal silence. In 189 or 1890, the morning interval was +discontinued, but evening "silent time" was not done away with +until 1894, nineteen years after its establishment, and there are +many who regret its passing, and who realize that it was one of +the wisest and, in a certain sense, most advanced measures +instituted by Mr. Durant. But it was a despotic measure, and +therefore better allowed to lapse; for to the student mind, +especially of the late '80's and early '90's it was an attempt +to fetter thought, to force religion upon free individuals, to +prescribe times and seasons for spiritual exercises in which the +founder of the college had no right to concern himself. As +Wellesley's understanding of democracy developed, the faculty +realized that a rule of this kind, however wise in itself, cannot +be impressed from without; the demand for it must come from the +students themselves. Whether that demand will ever be made is +a question; but undoubtedly there is an increasing realization in +the college world of the need of systematized daily respite of +some sort from the pressure of unmitigated external activity; the +need of freedom for spiritual recollection in the midst of academic +and social business. It is a matter in which the Student Government +Association would have entire freedom of jurisdiction. + +In 1896, Domestic Work was discontinued. This was a revolutionary +change, for Mr. Durant had believed strongly in the value of this +one hour a day of housework to promote democratic feeling among +students of differing grades of wealth; and he had also felt that +it made the college course cheaper, and therefore put its advantages +within the reach of the "calico girls" as he was so fond of calling +the 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 of +corridors. Every department had its domestic girls, whose duties +ranged from those of incipient secretary to general chore girl. +The experience in setting college dinner tables or sweeping college +recitation rooms counted for next to nothing in equipping a student +to care for her own home; and the benefit to the "calico girls" +was no longer obvious, as the price of tuition had now been raised +several times. In May, 1894, the Academic Council voted "that +the council respectfully make known to the trustees that in their +opinion domestic work is a serious hindrance to the progress of +the college, and should as soon as possible be done away." But +it was not until the trustees found that the fees for 1896-1897 +must be raised, that they decided to abolish domestic work. + +Miss Shackford, in her pamphlet on College Hall, describes, "for +the benefit of those unfamiliar with the old regime," the system +of domestic work as it obtained during the first twenty years of +Wellesley's life. She tells us that it "brought all students into +close 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 were +the favorite employments, although it is said the students always +showed great generosity in allowing the girls less strong to have +the lighter tasks. Sweeping the matting in the center of the +corridor before breakfast, or sweeping the bare 'sides' of this +matting after breakfast, were tasks that developed into sinecures. +The girl who went with long-handled feather duster to dust the +statuary enjoyed a distinction equal to Don Quixote's in tilting +at windmills. Filling the student-lamps, serving in a department +where clerical work was to be done, or, as in science, where +materials and specimens had to be prepared, were on the list +of possibilities. Sophomores in long aprons washed beakers and +slides, seniors in cap and gown acted as guides to guests. A +group of girls from each table changed the courses at meals. +Upon one devolved the task of washing whatever silver was required +for the next course. Another went out through the passage into the +room where heaters kept the meat and vegetables warm in their +several dishes. Perhaps another went further on to the bread-room, +where she might even be permitted to cut bread with the bread-cutting +machine. Dessert was always kept in the remote apartment where +Dominick Duckett presided, strumming a guitar, while his black +face had a portentous gravity as he assigned the desserts for +each table. What an ordeal it was for shy freshmen to rise and +walk the length of the dining-room! How many tables were kept +waiting for the next course while errant students surveyed the +sunset through the kitchen windows! Some of us remember the +tragic 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 prepare +them for the table." + +Other important changes in the college regulations were the opening +of the college library on Sunday as a reading-room, and the removal +of the ban upon the theater and the opera; both these changes took +place in 1895. On February 6, 1896, the clause of the statutes +concerning attendance at Sunday service in chapel was amended +to read, "All students are expected to attend this or some other +public religious service." + +In 1896-1897, Bible Study was organized into a definite Department +of Biblical History, Literature, and Interpretation; and in the +same year voluntary classes for Bible Study were inaugurated by +the Christian Association and taught by the students. + +The first step toward informing the students concerning their marks +and academic standing was taken in 1897, when the so-called +"credit-notes" were instituted, in which students were told whether +or not they had achieved Credit, grade C, in their individual +studies. Mr. Durant had feared that a knowledge of the marks +would arouse unworthy competition, but his fears have proved +unfounded. + +In this administration also the financial methods of the college +were revised. Mrs. Irvine, we are reminded by Florence S. Marcy +Crofut, of the class of 1897, "established a system of management +and purchasing into which all the halls of residence were brought, +and this remains almost without change to the present day." On +March 27, 1895, Mrs. Durant resigned the treasurership of the +college, which she had held since her husband's death, and upon +her nomination, Mr. Alpheus H. Hardy was elected to the office. +In 1896, the trustees issued a report in which they informed the +friends of Wellesley that although Mr. Durant, in his will, had +made the college his residuary legatee, subject to a life tenancy, +the personal estate had suffered such depreciation and loss "as to +render this prospective endowment of too slight consequence to be +reckoned on in any plans for the development and maintenance of +the college." At this time, Wellesley was in debt to the amount +of $103,048.14. During the next nineteen years, trustees and +alumnae were to labor incessantly to pay the expenses of the +college and to secure an endowment fund. What Wellesley owes +to the unstinted devotion of Mr. Hardy during these lean years +can never be adequately expressed. + +The buildings erected during Mrs. Irvine's tenure of office were +few. Fiske Cottage was opened in September, 1894, for the use +of students who wished to work their way through college. The +"cottage" had been originally the village grammar school, but when +Mr. Hunnewell gave a new schoolhouse to the village, the college +was able, through the generosity of Mrs. Joseph M. Fiske, +Mr. William S. Houghton, Mr. Elisha S. Converse, and a few other +friends, to move the old schoolhouse to the campus and remodel it +as a dormitory. In February, 1894, a chemical laboratory was built +under Norumbega hill,--an ugly wooden building, a distress to +all who care for Wellesley's beauty, and an unmistakable witness +to her poverty. + +On November 22, 1897, the corner stone of the Houghton Memorial +Chapel was laid, a building destined to be one of the most +satisfactory and beautiful on the campus. It was given by +Miss Elizabeth G. Houghton and Mr. Clement S. Houghton of Cambridge +as a memorial of their father, Mr. William S. Houghton, for many +years a trustee of the college. + +In 1898 Mrs. John C. Whitin, a trustee, gave to the college an +astronomical observatory and telescope. The building was completed +in 1900. Another gift of 1898, fifty thousand dollars, came from +the estate of the late Charles T. Wilder, and was used to build +Wilder 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 of +Trustees a review of the history of the college under the new +curriculum, and a statement of urgent needs which had arisen. +She closed with a recommendation that her term of office should +end in June, 1898, as she believed that the necessities which had +led to her appointment no longer existed, and she recognized that +new demands pressed, which she was not fitted to meet. As Mrs. Irvine +had stated verbally, both to the Board of Trustees and to a committee +appointed by them to consider her recommendation, that she would +not serve under a permanent appointment, the committee "was limited +to the consideration of the time at which that recommendation +should become operative." They asked the president to change her +time of withdrawal to June, 1899, and she consented to do this, +with the provision that she was to be released from her duties +before the end of the year, if her successor were ready to assume +the duties of the office before June, 1899. + +After her retirement from Wellesley, Mrs. Irvine made her home in +the south of France, but she returned to America in 1912 to be +present at the inauguration of President Pendleton. And in the +year 1913-1914, after the death of Madame Colin, she performed +a signal service for the college in temporarily assuming the +direction of the Department of French. Through her good offices, +the department was reorganized, but the New England winter had +proved too severe for her after her long sojourn in a milder +climate, and in 1914, Mrs. Irvine returned again to her home in +Southern France, bearing with her the love and gratitude of +Wellesley for her years of efficient and unselfish service. +During the war of 1914-1915, she had charge of the linen room +in the military hospital at Aix-les-Bains. + + +V. + +On March 8, 1899, the trustees announced their election of Wellesley's +fifth 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 no +technical academic training, and no experience as a teacher. Born +at Peacedale, Rhode Island, June 10, 1856, the daughter of Rowland +and Margaret (Rood) Hazard, and the descendant of Thomas Hazard, +the founder of Rhode Island, she had been educated by tutors and +in a private school in Providence, and later had carried on her +studies abroad. Before coming to Wellesley, she had already won +her own place in the annals of Rhode Island, as editor, by her +edition 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 eighteenth +century, entitled "Thomas Hazard, Son of Robert, called College Tom", +and as poet, in a volume of Narragansett ballads and a number of +religious sonnets, followed during her Wellesley years by "A Scallop +Shell of Quiet", verses of delicate charm and dignity. + +Mrs. Guild has said that Miss Hazard came, "bringing the ease and +breadth of the cultivated woman of the world, who is yet an idealist +and a Christian, into an atmosphere perhaps too strictly scholastic." +But she also brought unusual executive ability and training in +administrative affairs, both academic and commercial, for her +father, aside from his manufacturing interests, was a member of +the corporation of Brown University. Hers is the type of intelligence +and power seen often in England, where women of her social position +have an interest in large issues and an instinct for affairs, +which American women of the same class have not evinced in +any arresting degree. + +Miss Hazard's inauguration took place on October 3, 1899, in the +new Houghton Memorial Chapel, which had been dedicated on June 1 +of that year. This was Wellesley's first formal ceremony of +inauguration, and the brilliant academic procession, moving among +the autumn trees between old College Hall and the Chapel, marked +the beginning of a new era of dignity and beauty for the college. +In the next ten years, under the winning encouragement of her +new president, Wellesley blossomed in courtesy and in all those +social graces and pleasant amenities of life which in earlier years +she had not always cultivated with sufficient zest. All of +Miss Hazard's influence went out to the dignifying and beautifying +of the life in which she had come to bear a part. + +It is to her that Wellesley owes the tranquil beauty of the morning +chapel service. The vested choir of students, the order of +service, are her ideas, as are the musical vesper services and +festival 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 Billings +estate, and in December, 1903, Mr. Thomas Minns, the surviving +executor of the estate, presented the college with an additional +fifteen thousand dollars, of which two thousand dollars were set +aside as a permanent fund for the establishment of the Billings +prize, to be awarded by the president for excellence in +music,--including its theory and practice,--and the remainder was +used toward the erection of Billings Hall, a second music building +containing a much-needed concert hall and classrooms, completed +in 1904. + +Miss Hazard's love of simple, poetical ceremonial did much to +increase the charm of the Wellesley life. Of the several hearth +fires which she kindled during the years when she kept Wellesley's +fires alight, the Observatory hearth-warming was perhaps the +most charming. The beautiful little building, given and equipped +by Mrs. Whitin, a trustee of the college, was formally opened +October 8, 1900, with addresses by Miss Hazard, Professor Pickering +of Harvard, and Professor Todd of Amherst. In the morning, +Miss Hazard had gone out into the college woods and plucked bright +autumn leaves to bind into a torch of life to light the fire on the +new hearth. Digitalis, sarsaparilla, eupatorium, she had chosen, +for the health of the body; a fern leaf for grace and beauty; the +oak and the elm for peace and the civic virtues; evergreen, pine, +and hemlock for the aspiring life of the mind and the eternity +of thought; rosemary for remembrance, and pansies for thoughts. +Firing the torch, she said, "With these holy associations we light +this fire, that from this building in which the sun and stars are +to be observed, true life may ever aspire with the flame to the +Author 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 had +written for the occasion, and which was later burned in the wooden +panel 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 requested +the trustees to make "a division of administrative duties somewhat +different from that before existing," as the technical knowledge +of courses of study and the wisdom to advise students as to such +courses required a special training and preparation which she did +not possess. It was therefore arranged that the dean should take +in charge the more strictly academic work, leaving Miss Hazard +free for "the general supervision of affairs, the external relations +of the college, and the home administration," and Professor Coman +of the Department of History and Economics consented to assume +the duties of dean for a year. At the end of the year, however, +Miss Hazard having now become thoroughly familiar with the financial +condition of the college, felt that retrenchments were necessary, +and asked the trustees to omit the appointment of a dean for the +year 1900-1901. The academic duties of the dean were temporarily +assumed in the president's office by the secretary of the college, +Miss Ellen F. Pendleton, and Professor Coman returned to her +teaching as head of the new Department of Economics, an office +which she held with distinction until her retirement as Professor +Emeritus in 1913. + +Mrs. Guild reminds us that "the pressing problem which confronted +Miss Hazard was monetary. The financial history of Wellesley +College would be a volume in itself, as those familiar with the +struggles of unendowed institutions of like order can well realize.... +The appointment during Mrs. Irvine's administration of a professional +treasurer, and the gradual accumulation of small endowments, were +helps in the right direction. The alumnae had early begun a series +of concerted efforts to aid their Alma Mater in solving her ever +present financial problem. Miss Hazard, in generous cooperation +with them and with the trustees, did especially valiant work in +clearing the college from its burden of debt; and during her +administration the treasurer's report shows an increase in the +college funds of $830,000." In round numbers, the gifts for +endowments and buildings during the period amounted to one million +three hundred six thousand dollars. Eleven buildings were erected +between 1900 and 1909: Wilder Hall and the Observatory were +completed in 1900; the President's House, Miss Hazard's gift, in +1902; Pomeroy and Billings Hall in 1904; Cazenove in 1905; the +Observatory 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 partially +endowed. The Chair of Economics in 1903; the Chair of Biblical +History, by Helen Miller Gould, in December, 1900, to be called +after her mother, the Helen Day Gould Professorship; the Chair of +Art, under the name of the Clara Bertram Kimball Professorship +of Art; the Chair of Music, from the Billings estate; the Chair +of Botany, by Mr. H.H. Hunnewell, January, 1901. And in 1908 +and 1909, the arrangements with the Boston Normal School of +Gymnastics were completed, by which that school,--with an endowment +of one hundred thousand dollars and a gymnasium erected on the +Wellesley campus through the efforts of Miss Amy Morris Homans, +the director, and Wellesley friends,--became a part of Wellesley +College: the Department of Hygiene and Physical Education. + +Among the notable gifts were the Alexandra Garden in the West +Quadrangle, given by an alumna in memory of her little daughter; +the beautiful antique marbles, presented by Miss Hannah Parker +Kimball to the Department of Art, in memory of her brother, M. Day +Kimball; and the Plimpton collection of Italian manuscripts and +early editions, given by George A. Plimpton in memory of his wife, +Frances Taylor Pearsons Plimpton, of the class of '84. Of romances +of chivalry, "those poems of adventure, the sources from which +Boiardo and Ariosto borrowed character and episodes for their real +poems," we have, according to Professor Margaret Jackson, their +curator, perhaps the largest collection in this country, and one of +the largest in the world. Many of these books are in rare or +unique 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 the +frate writing in his cell. Bembo's "Asolini" a first edition, +contains autograph corrections. In 1912, Wellesley had the unusual +opportunity, which she unselfishly embraced, to return to the +National Library at Florence, Italy, a very precious Florentine +manuscript of the fourteenth century, containing the only known +copy of the Sirventes and other important historical verses of +Antonio Pucci. + +The most important change in the college life at this time was +undoubtedly the establishment of the System of Student Government, +in 1901. As a student movement, this is discussed at length in +a later chapter, but Miss Hazard's cordial sympathy with all that +the change implied should be recorded here. + +Among academic changes, the institution of the Honor Scholarships +is the most noteworthy. In 1901, two classes of honors for juniors +and seniors were established, the Durant Scholarship and the +Wellesley 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 honors +are non-competitive, and depend upon an absolute standard of +scholarship. At about the same time, honorary mention for freshmen +was also instituted. + +On June 30, 1906, Miss Hazard sailed for Genoa, to take a well-earned +vacation. This was the first time that a president of Wellesley +had taken a Sabbatical year; the first time that any presidential +term had extended beyond six years. During Miss Hazard's absence, +Miss Pendleton, who had been appointed dean in 1901, conducted the +affairs of the college. On her return, May 20, 1907, Miss Hazard +was met at the Wellesley station by the dean and the senior class, +about two hundred and fifty students, and was escorted to the +campus by the presidents of the Student Government Association +and the senior class. The whole college had assembled to welcome +her, lining the avenue from the East Lodge to Simpson, and waving +their 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 was +obliged to be absent, because of ill health, and again for a part +of 1910. In July, 1910, the trustees announced her resignation to +the faculty. No one has expressed more happily Miss Hazard's +service to the college than her successor in office, the friend +who was her dean and comrade in work during almost her entire +administration. In the dean's report for 1910 are these very +human and loving words: + +"President Hazard's great service to the college during her eleven +years of office are evident to all in the way of increased endowment, +new buildings, additional departments and officers, advanced +salaries, improved organization and equipment; but those who have +had the privilege of working with her know that even these gains, +to which her personal generosity so largely contributed, are less +than the gifts of character which have brought into the midst of +our busy routine the graces of home and a far-pervading spirit of +loving kindness. + +"Miss Hazard came to us a stranger, but by her gracious bearing +and charming hospitality, by her sympathetic interest and eagerness +to aid in the work of every department, together with a scrupulous +respect for what she was pleased to call the expert judgment of +those in charge, by the touches of beauty and gentleness accompanying +all that she did, from the enrichment of our chapel service to the +planting of our campus with daffodils, and by the essential +consecration of her life, she has so endeared herself to her faculty +that her resignation means to us not only the loss of an honored +president, but the absence of a friend." + +Miss Hazard's honorary degrees are the A.M. from Michigan and +the Litt.D. from Brown University. She is also an honorary member +of the Eta chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, which was installed at +Wellesley on January 17, 1905. + + +VI. + +On Thursday, October 19, 1911, Ellen Fitz Pendleton was inaugurated +president of Wellesley College in Houghton Memorial Chapel. + +Professor Calkins, writing in the College News in regard to this +wise choice of the trustees, says: "There has been some discussion +of the wisdom of appointing a woman as college president. I may +frankly avow myself as one of those who have been little concerned +for the appointment of a woman as such. On general principles, +I would welcome the appointment of a man as the next president of +Bryn Mawr or Wellesley; and, similarly, I would as soon see a woman +at the head of Vassar or of Smith. But if our trustees, when +looking last year for a successor to Miss Hazard in her eminently +successful administration, had rejected the ideally endowed +candidate, solely because she was a woman, they would have indicated +their 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 possibly +take the ground that 'any man' is to be preferred to the rightly +equipped 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 a +woman, especially when a highly capable successor was at hand, +the decision would have meant... the adoption of the principle +of the ineligibility of women for the college presidency.... It is +an anomaly that women should be permitted to enter upon an +intellectual career and should not be permitted to look forward +to the natural rewards of successful labor.'" + +Professor Calkins's personal tribute to Miss Pendleton's power +and 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 the +history, the specific excellences, and the definite needs of +Wellesley College, with openness of mind, breadth of outlook and +the endowment for constructive leadership. No college procedure +seems to her to be justified by precedent merely; no curriculum +or legislation is, in her view, too sacred to be subject to revision. +Her wide acquaintance with the policies of other colleges and +with modern tendencies in education prompts her to constant +enlargement and modification, while her accurate knowledge of +Wellesley's conditions and her large patience are a check on the +too exuberant spirit of innovation. With Miss Pendleton as +president, the college is sure to advance with dignity and with +safety. She will do better than 'build up' the college, for she +will quicken and guide its growth from within. + +"Fundamental to the professional is the personal equipment for +office. Miss Pendleton is unswervingly just, undauntedly generous, +and completely devoted to the college. Not every one realizes +that her reserve hides a sympathy as keen as it is deep, though +no one doubts this who has ever appealed to her for help. Finally, +all those who really know her are well aware that she is utterly +self-forgetful, or rather, that it does not occur to her to consider +any 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 college +president not as that of absolute monarch but as that of constitutional +ruler; not as that of master, but as that of leader. Readers of +the dean's report for the Sabbatical year of Miss Hazard's absence, +in which Miss Pendleton was acting president, will not have failed +to notice the spontaneous expression of this sense of comradeship +in Miss Pendleton's reference to the faculty." + +Rhode Island has twice given a president to Wellesley, for Ellen +Fitz Pendleton was born at Westerly, on August 7, 1864, the daughter +of Enoch Burrowes Pendleton and Mary Ette (Chapman) Pendleton. +In 1882, she entered Wellesley College as a freshman, and since +that 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 on +the Tree Day program as delivering an essay on the fern beech; +and she was later invited into the Shakespeare Society, at that +time Wellesley's one and only literary society. In 1886, Miss +Pendleton was graduated with the degree of B.A., and entered the +Department of Mathematics in the autumn of that year as tutor; +in 1888, she was promoted to an instructorship which she held +until 1901, with a leave of absence in 1889 and 1890 for study +at Newnham College, Cambridge, England. In 1891, she received +the degree of M.A. from Wellesley. Her honorary degrees are the +Litt.D. from Brown University in 1911, and the LL.D. from Mt. Holyoke +in 1912. In 1895, she was made Schedule Officer, in charge of +the intricate work involved in arranging and simplifying the +complicated yearly schedule of college class appointments. In +1897, she became secretary of the college and held this position +until 1901, when she was made dean and associate professor of +Mathematics. During Miss Hazard's absences and after Miss Hazard's +resignation in 1910, she served the college as acting president. + +The announcement of her election to the presidency was made to +the college on June 9, 1911, by the president of the Board of +Trustees, and the joy with which it was received by faculty, alumna, +and students was as outspoken as it was genuine. And at her +inauguration, many who listened to her clear and simple exposition +of her conception of the function of a college must have rejoiced +anew to feel that Wellesley's ideals of scholarship were committed +to so safe and wise a guardian. Miss Pendleton's ideal cannot +be 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 not +essentially different from that of a college for women." + +Of the twofold function of the college, the training for citizenship +and the preparation of the scholar, she says: "What are the +characteristics of the ideal citizen, and how may they be developed? +He must have learned the important lesson of viewing every question +not only from his own standpoint but from that of the community; he +must be willing to pay his share of the public tax not only in +money but also in time and thought for the service of his town and +state; he must have, above all, enthusiasm and capacity for working +hard in whatever kind of endeavor his lot may be cast. It is +evident, therefore, that the college must furnish him opportunity +for acquiring a knowledge of history, of the theory of government, +of the relations between capital and labor, of the laws of +mathematics, chemistry, physics, which underlie our great industries, +and if he is to have an intelligent and sympathetic interest in +his neighbors, and be able to get another's point of view, this +college-trained citizen must know something of psychology and +the laws of the mind. Nor can he do all this to his own satisfaction +without 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 and +independently. But it will be urged that a college course of four +years is entirely too short for such a task. Perhaps, but what +the college cannot actually give, it can furnish the stimulus and +the power for obtaining later." + +But although Miss Pendleton's attitude toward college education +is characteristically practical, she is careful to make it clear +that the practical educator does not necessarily approve of +including vocational training in a college course. "I do not +propose to discuss the question in detail, but is it not fair to +ask why vocational subjects should be recognized in preparation +when the aim of the college is not to prepare for a vocation but +to develop personal efficiency?" + +And her vision includes the scholar, or the genius, as well as +the commonplace student. "The college is essentially a democratic +institution designed for the rank and file of youth qualified to +make use of the opportunities it offers. But the material equipment, +the curriculum, and the teaching force which are necessary to +develop personal efficiency in the ordinary student will have +failed in a part of their purpose if they do not produce a few +students with the ability and the desire to extend the field of +human knowledge. There will be but few, but fortunate the college, +and happy the instructor, that has these few. Such students have +claims, and the college is bound to satisfy them without losing +sight of its first great aim.... It is the task of the college to +give such a student as broad a foundation as possible, while +allowing him a more specialized course than is deemed wise for +the ordinary student. The college will have failed in part of +its function if it does not furnish such a student with the power +and the stimulus to continue his search for truth after graduation.... + +"Training for citizenship and the preparation of the scholar are +then the twofold function of the college. To furnish professional +training 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 to +be teachers or even wives and husbands, mothers and fathers. It +is rather its part to produce men and women with the power to think +clearly and independently, who recognize that teaching and +home-making are both fine arts worthy of careful and patient +cultivation, and not the necessary accompaniment of a college +diploma. College graduates ought to make, and I believe do make, +better teachers, more considerate husbands and wives, wiser fathers +and mothers, but the chief function of the college is larger than +this. The aim of the university and the great technical school is +to furnish preparation for some specific profession. The college +must produce men and women capable of using the opportunities +offered by the university, men and women with sound bodies, pure +hearts and clear minds, who are ready to obey the commandment, +'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all +thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind, and thy +neighbor as thyself.'" + +In this day of diverse and confused educational theories and ideals +it is refreshing to read words so discriminating and definite. + +The earliest events of importance in President Pendleton's +administration are connected, as might be expected, with the alumnae, +who were quickened to a more active and objective expression +of loyalty by this first election of a Wellesley alumna to the +presidential office. On June 21, 1911, the Graduate Council, to +be discussed in a later chapter, was established by the Alumnae +Association; and on October 5, 1911, the first number of the alumnae +edition of the College News was issued. In the academic year +1912-1913, the Monday holiday was abolished and the new schedule +with recitations from Monday morning until Saturday noon was +established. After the mid-year examinations in 1912, the students +were for the first time told their marks. In 1913, the Village +Improvement Association built and equipped, on the college grounds, +a kindergarten to be under the joint supervision of the Association +and the Department of Education. The building is used as a free +kindergarten for Wellesley children, and also as a practice school +for graduate students in the department. A campaign for an +endowment fund of one million dollars was also started by the +trustees and alumnae under the leadership and with the advice +of the new president. A committee of alumnae was appointed, with +Miss Candace C. Stimson, of the class of '92 as chairman, to +cooperate with the trustees in raising the money, and more than +four hundred thousand dollars had been promised when, in March, 1914, +occurred Wellesley's great catastrophe--which she was to translate +immediately into her great opportunity--the burning of old +College 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 visions +and dream in their dreams, it will be by the soaring, unconquerable +faith--and the prompt and selfless works--of the daughter who said +to a college in ruins, on that March morning, "The members of the +college will report for duty on the appointed date after the spring +vacation," 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, whether +for men or women, the faculty determine the general policy of the +college. The president, as chairman of the Academic Council, +is in a very real and democratic sense the representative of the +faculty, not the ruler. In Miss Freeman's day, the excellent +presidential habit of consulting with the heads of departments +was formed, and many of the changes instituted by the young president +were suggested and formulated by her older colleagues. In +Miss Shafer's day, habit had become precedent, and she would be +the first to point out that the "new curriculum" which will always +be associated with her name, was really the achievement of the +Academic Council and the departments, working through patient years +to adjust, develop, and balance the minutest details in their +composite plan. + +The initiative on the part of the faculty has been exerted chiefly +along academic lines, but in some instances it has necessitated +important emendations of the statutes; and that the trustees were +willing to alter the statutes on the request of the faculty would +indicate the friendly confidence felt toward the innovators. + +In the statutes of Wellesley College, as printed in 1885, we read +that "The College was founded for the glory of God and the service +of 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 every +Trustee, Teacher, and Officer, shall be a member of an Evangelical +church, and that the study of the Holy Scriptures shall be pursued +by every student throughout the entire College course under the +direction of the Faculty." + +In the early nineties, pressure from members of the faculty, +themselves members of Evangelical churches, induced the trustees +to alter the religious requirement for teachers; and the reorganization +of the Department of Bible Study a few years later resulted in +a drastic change in the requirements for students. + +As printed in 1898, the statutes read, "To realize this design it +is required that every Trustee shall be a member in good standing +of some Evangelical Church; that every teacher shall be of decided +Christian character and influence, and in manifest sympathy with +the religious spirit and aim with which the College was founded; +and that the study of the Sacred Scriptures by every student shall +extend over the first three years, with opportunities for elective +studies in the same during the fourth year." + +But it was found that freshmen were not mature enough to study +to the best advantage the new courses in Biblical Criticism, and +the statutes as printed in 1912 record still another amendment: +"And that the study of the Sacred Scriptures by every student +shall extend over the second and third years, with opportunities +for elective studies in the same during the fourth year." + +These changes are the more pleasantly significant, since all actual +power, at Wellesley as at most other colleges, resides with the +trustees if they choose to use it. They "have control of the college +and all its property, and of the investment and appropriation of +its funds, in conformity with the design of its establishment and +with the act of incorporation." They have "power to make and +execute such statutes and rules as they may consider needful for +the best administration of their trust, to appoint committees from +their own number, or of those not otherwise connected with the +college, and to prescribe their duties and powers." It is theirs +to appoint "all officers of government or instruction and all +employees needed for the administration of the institution whose +appointment is not otherwise provided for." They determine the +duties 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-perpetuating +body of directors, Wellesley is of course no worse off than the +majority of American colleges. But that a form of college government +so patently and unreasonably autocratic should have generated so +little friction during forty years, speaks volumes for the +broadmindedness, the generous tolerance, and the Christian +self-control of both faculty and trustees. If, in matters financial, +the trustees have been sometimes unwilling to consider the scruples +of groups of individuals on the faculty, along lines of economic +morals, they have nevertheless taken no official steps to suppress +the expression of such scruples. They have withstood any reactionary +pressure from individuals of their board, and have always allowed +the faculty entire academic freedom. In matters pertaining to +the college classes, they are usually content to ratify the +appointments on the faculty, and approve the alterations in the +curriculum presented to them by the president of the college; and +the president, in turn, leaves the professors and their associates +remarkably free to choose and regulate the personnel and the +courses in the departments. + +In this happy condition of affairs, the alumnae trustees undoubtedly +play a mediating part, for they understand the college from within +as no clergyman, financier, philanthropist,--no graduate of a +man's college--can hope to, be he never so enthusiastic and +well-meaning in the cause of woman's education. But so long as +the faculty are excluded from direct representation on the board, +the situation will continue to be anomalous. For it is not too +sweeping to assert that Wellesley's development and academic +standing are due to the cooperative wisdom and devoted scholarship +of her faculty. The initiative has been theirs. They have proved +that a college for women can be successfully taught and administered +by women. To them Wellesley owes her academic status. + +From the beginning, women have predominated on the Wellesley +faculty. The head of the Department of Music has always been a +man, but he had no seat upon the Academic Council until 1896. +In 1914-1915, of the twenty-eight heads of departments, three +were men, the professors of Music, of Education, and of French. +Of the thirty-nine professors and associate professors, not heads +of departments, five were men; of the fifty-nine instructors, ten +were men. It is interesting to note that there were no men in the +departments 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 upon +Wellesley's faculty, but her policy in this respect has been +deliberate. Every woman's college is making its own experiments, +and the results achieved at Wellesley indicate that a faculty made +up largely of women, with a woman at its head, in no way militates +against high academic standards, sound scholarship, and efficient +administration. That a more masculine faculty would also have +peculiar advantages, she does not deny. + +From the collegiate point of view, this feminine faculty is a very +well mixed body, for it includes representative graduates from the +other women's colleges, and from the more important coeducational +colleges and state universities, as well as men from Harvard and +Brown. The Wellesley women on the faculty are an able minority; +but it is the policy of the college to avoid academic in-breeding +and to keep the Wellesley influence a minority influence. Of the +twenty-eight heads of departments, five--the professors of English +Literature, Chemistry, Pure Mathematics, Biblical History, and +Physics--are Wellesley graduates, three of them from the celebrated +class of '80. Of the thirty-nine professors and associate professors, +in 1914-1915, ten were alumnae of Wellesley, and of the fifty-nine +instructors, seventeen. Since 1895, when Professor Stratton was +appointed dean to assist Mrs. Irvine, Wellesley has had five deans, +but only Miss Pendleton, who held the office under Miss Hazard +from 1901 to 1911, has been a graduate of Wellesley. Miss Coman, +who assisted Miss Hazard for one year only, and Miss Chapin, who +consented to fill the office after Miss Pendleton's appointment to +the presidency until a permanent dean could be chosen, were both +graduates of the University of Michigan. Dean Waite, who succeeded +to the office in 1913, is an alumna of Smith College, and has been +a member of the Department of English at Wellesley since 1896. + + +II. + +Only the women who have helped to promote and establish the higher +education of women can know how exciting and romantic it was to be +a professor in a woman's college during the last half-century. +To be a teacher was no new thing for a woman; the dame school +is an ancient institution; all down the centuries, in classic +villas, in the convents of the Middle Ages, in the salons of the +eighteenth century, learned ladies with a pedagogic instinct have +left their impress upon the intellectual life of their times. But +the possibility that women might be intellectually and physically +capable of sharing equally with men the burdens and the joys of +developing and directing the scholarship of the race had never been +seriously considered until the nineteenth century. The women who +came 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 never +women had been before. And they brought to that trial the heady +enthusiasm and radiant exhilaration and fiery persistence which +possess all those who rediscover learning and drink deep. They +knew the kind of selfless inspiration Wyclif knew when he was +translating 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 sciences +should every one be given a fair chance; to distinguish intelligently +between the advantages of the elective system and its disadvantages; +to decide, without prejudice, at what points the education of the +girl should differ or diverge from the education of the boy; to +try out the pedagogic methods of the men's colleges and discover +which were antiquated and should be abolished, which were susceptible +of reform, which were sound; to invent new methods,--these were +the romantic quests to which these enamored devotees were vowed, and +to 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 student +laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her +laboratory for work in experimental psychology, established by +Professor Calkins in 1891, was the first in any women's college +in the country, and one of the first in any college. In 1886, the +American School of Classical Studies at Athens invited Wellesley +to become one of the cooperating colleges to sustain this school +and 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 Quadrivium +at Oxford, Paris, Bologna, experienced no keener intellectual delights +than 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 women +of the nineteenth century were enthusiastic was distinctly an +education along scholarly and intellectual lines; this early and +original meaning of the term "higher education", this original and +distinguishing function of the woman's college, are in danger of +being blurred and lost sight of to-day by a generation that knew +not Joseph. The zeal with which the advocates of educational +and domestic training are trying to force into the curricula of +women's colleges courses on housekeeping, home-making, dressmaking, +dairy farming, to say nothing of stenography, typewriting, double +entry, and the musical glasses minus Shakespeare, is for the most +part unintelligible to the women who have given their lives to the +upbuilding of such colleges as Bryn Mawr, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, +Vassar, and Wellesley,--not because they minimize the civilizing +value of either homemakers or business women in a community, or +fail to recognize their needs, but simply because women's colleges +were never intended to meet those needs. + +When we go to the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts, we do not +complain because it lacks the characteristics of the Smithsonian +Institute, or of the Boston Horticultural Show. We are content +that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology should differ in +scope from Harvard University; yet some of us, college graduates +even, seem to have an uneasy feeling that Wellesley and Bryn Mawr +may not be ministering adequately to life, because they do not +add to their curricular activities the varied aims of an +Agricultural College, a Business College, a School of Philanthropy, +and a Cooking School, with required courses on the modifying of +milk for infants. Great institutions for vocational training, such +as Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and Simmons College in Boston, +have a dignity and a usefulness which no one disputes. Undoubtedly +America needs more of their kind. But to impair the dignity and +usefulness of the colleges dedicated to the higher education of +women by diluting their academic programs with courses on business +or domesticity will not meet that need. The unwillingness of +college faculties to admit vocational courses to the curriculum is +not due to academic conservatism and inability to march with +the times, but to an unclouded and accurate conception of the +meaning of the term "higher education." + +But definiteness of aim does not necessarily imply narrowness +of scope. The Wellesley Calendar for 1914-1915 contains a list +of three hundred and twelve courses on thirty-two subjects, exclusive +of the gymnasium practice, dancing, swimming, and games required +by the Department of Hygiene. Of these subjects, four are ancient +languages 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 and +spiritual evolution of the human race, Biblical and Secular History, +Economics, Education, Logic, Psychology, and Philosophy. Four +may be classified as arts: Archaeology, Art, including its history, +Music, and Reading and Speaking, which old-fashioned people still +call Elocution. + +From this wide range of subjects, the candidates for the B.A. +degree are required to take one course in Mathematics, the prescribed +freshman course; one course in English Composition, prescribed for +freshmen; courses in Biblical History and Hygiene; a modern +language, unless two modern languages have been presented for +admission; two natural sciences before the junior year, unless +one has already been offered for admission, in which case one is +required, and a course in Philosophy, which the student should +ordinarily take before her senior year. + +These required studies cover about twenty of the fifty-nine hours +prescribed for the degree; the remaining hours are elective; but +the student must group her electives intelligently, and to this end +she must complete either nine hours of work in each of two +departments, or twelve hours in one department and six in a +second; she must specialize within limits. + +It will be evident on examining this program that no work is +required in History, Economics, English Literature and Language, +Comparative Philology, Education, Archaeology, Art, Reading and +Speaking, and Music. All the courses in these departments are +free electives. Just what led to this legislation, only those who +were present at the decisive discussions of the Academic Council +can know. Possibly they have discovered by experience that young +women do not need to be coaxed or coerced into studying the arts; +that they gravitate naturally to those subjects which deal with +human society, such as History, Economics, and English Literature; +and that the specialist can be depended upon to elect, without +pressure, courses in Philology or Pedagogy. + +But little effort has been made at Wellesley, so far, to attract +graduate students. In this respect she differs from Bryn Mawr. +She offers very few courses planned exclusively for college +graduates, but opens her advanced courses in most departments to +both seniors and graduates. This does not mean, however, that +the graduate work is not on a sound basis. Wellesley has not yet +exercised her right to give the Doctor's degree, but expert +testimony, outside the college, has declared that some of the +Master's theses are of the doctorial grade in quality, if not in +quantity; and the work for the Master's degree is said to be more +difficult and more severely scrutinized than in some other colleges +where 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 yielding +an income of about one thousand dollars. The holder must be a +woman, a graduate of Wellesley or some other American college of +approved standing; she must be "not more than twenty-six years of +age at the time of her appointment, unmarried throughout the whole +of her tenure, and as free as possible from other responsibilities." +She may hold the fellowship for one year only, but "within three +years from entrance on the fellowship she must present to the +faculty a thesis embodying the results of the research carried on +during the period of tenure." + +Wellesley is proud of her Alice Freeman Palmer Fellows. Of the +eleven who have held the Fellowship between 1904 and 1915, four +are Wellesley graduates, Helen Dodd Cook, whose subject was +Philosophy; Isabelle Stone, working in Greek; Gertrude Schopperle, +in Comparative Literature; Laura Alandis Hibbard, in English +Literature. Two are from Radcliffe, and one each from Cornell, +Vassar, the University of Dakota, Ripon, and Goucher. The Fellow +is left free to study abroad, in an American college or university, +or to use the income for independent research. The list of +universities at which these young women have studied is as impressive +as it is long. It includes the American Schools for Classical +Studies 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 the +work of each one of Wellesley's academic departments. Any intelligent +person who turns the pages of the official calendar may easily +discover that the standard of admission and the requirements for +the degree of Bachelor of Arts place Wellesley in the first rank +among American colleges, whether for men or for women. But every +woman's college, besides conforming to the general standard, is +making its own contribution to the higher education of women. +At Wellesley, the methods in certain departments have gained a +deservedly high reputation. + +The Department of Art, under Professor Alice V.V. Brown, formerly +of the Slater Museum of Norwich, Connecticut, is doing a work in +the proper interpretation and history of art as unique as it is +valuable. The laboratory method is used, and all students are +required to recognize and indicate the characteristic qualities +and attributes of the great masters and the different schools of +paintings by sketching from photographs of the pictures studied. +These five and ten minute sketches by young girls, the majority of +whom have had no training in drawing, are remarkable for the +vivacity and accuracy with which they reproduce the salient +features of the great paintings. The students are of course given +the latest results of the modern school of art criticism. In +addition to the work with undergraduates, the department offers +courses to graduate students who wish to prepare themselves for +curatorships, or lectureships in art museums, and Wellesley women +occupy positions of trust in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, +in the Boston Art Museum, in museums in Chicago, Worcester, and +elsewhere. The "Short History of Italian Painting" by Professor +Brown and Mr. William Rankin is a standard authority. + +The Department of Music, working quite independently of the +Department of Art, has also adapted laboratory methods to its own +ends 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 developed +in connection with the courses in practical music. The first-year +class, meeting once a week, listens to an anonymous musical +selection played by one of its members, and must decide by internal +evidence--such as simple cadences, harmonic figuration as applied +to the accompaniment and other characteristics--upon the school +of the composer, and biographical data. The analysis of the +musical selection and the reasons for her decision are set down +in her notebook by the listening student. The second-year class +concerns itself with "the thematic and polyphonic melody, the +larger forms, harmony in its aesthetic bearings, the aesthetic +effects of the more complicated rhythms, comparative criticism +and the various schools of composition." + +These valuable contributions to method and scope in the study of +the History of Art and the History of Music are original with +Wellesley, and are distinctly a part of her history. + +Among the departments which carry prestige outside the college +walls are those of Philosophy and Psychology, English Literature, +and German. Wellesley's Department of English Literature is +unusually fortunate in having as interpreters of the great literature +of 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 Margaret +Sherwood are to the Wellesley of their day and ours. Working +together, with unfailing enthusiasm for their subjects, and keen +insight into the cultural needs of American girls, they have built +up their department on a sure foundation of accurate scholarship +and tested pedagogic method. At a time when the study of literature +threatened to become, almost universally, an exercise in the dry +rot of philological terms, in the cataloguing of sources, or the +analyzing of literary forms, the department at Wellesley continued +unswervingly 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 literary +masterpieces, the revelation of the soul of poet, dramatist, +essayist, novelist. No teaching of literature is less sentimental +than the teaching at Wellesley, and no teaching is more quickening +to 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 to +a living voice is justified of her teachers and her students. + +Indications of the reputation achieved by Wellesley's methods +of teaching German are found in the increasing numbers of students +who come to the college for the sake of the work in the German +Department, and in the fact that teachers' agencies not infrequently +ask candidates for positions if they are familiar with the Wellesley +methods. In an address before the New Hampshire State Teachers' +Association, in 1913, Professor Muller describes the aims and +ideals of her department as they took shape under the constructive +leadership of her predecessor, Professor Wenckebach, and as they +have been modified and developed in later years to meet the needs +of American students. + +"Cinderella became a princess and a ruler over night," says Professor +Muller, "that is, German suddenly took the position in our college +that it has held ever since. Such a result was due not merely to +methods, of course, but first of all to the strong and enthusiastic +personality that was identified with them, and that was the main +secret of the unusual effectiveness of Fraulein Wenckebach's teaching. + +"But this German professor had not only live methods and virile +personal qualities to help her along; she also had what a great +many of the foreign language teachers in this country must as yet +do without, that is, the absolute confidence, warm appreciation, +and financial support of an enlightened administration. President +Freeman and the trustees seem to have done practically everything +that their intrepid professor of German asked for. They not only +saw that all equipments needed... were provided, but they also +generously stipulated, at Fraulein Wenckebach's urgent request, +that all the elementary and intermediate classes in the foreign +language departments should be kept small, that is, that they +should not exceed fifteen. If Fraulein Wenckebach had been +obliged, as many modern language teachers still are, to teach +German to classes of from thirty to forty students; if she had +met in the administration of Wellesley College with as little +appreciation and understanding of the fine art and extreme difficulty +of foreign language work as high school teachers, for instance, +often encounter, her efforts could not possibly have been crowned +with success. + +"Another agent in enabling Fraulein Wenckebach to do such fine +constructive work with her Department was the general Wellesley +policy, still followed, I am happy to say, of centralizing all +power and responsibility regarding department affairs in the person +of the head of the Department. Centralization may not work well +in politics, but a foreign language department working with the +reformed methods could not develop the highest efficiency under +any other form of government. With a living organism, such as +a foreign language department should be, there ought to be one, +and only one, responsible person to keep her finger on the pulse +of things--otherwise disintegration and ineffectiveness of the +work as a whole is sure to follow." + +Professor Muller goes on to say, "Now JOY, genuine joy, in their +work, based on good, strong, mental exercise, is what we want +and what on the whole we get from our students. It was so in the +days of Fraulein Wenckebach and is so now, I am happy to say--and +not in the literature courses only, but in our elementary drill +work as well. + +"It may be of interest to note that our elementary work and also +the advanced work in grammar and idiom are at present taught by +Americans wholly. I have come to the conclusion that well-trained +Americans gifted with vivid personalities get better results along +those lines than the average teacher of foreign birth and breeding." + +Even in the elementary courses, only those texts are used which +illustrate German life, literature, and history; and the advanced +electives are carefully guarded, so that no student may elect +courses in modern German, the novel and the drama, who has not +already been well grounded in Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing. The +drastic thoroughness with which unpromising students are weeded +out of the courses in German enhances rather than defeats their +popularity among undergraduates. + +The learned women who direct Wellesley's work in Philosophy and +Psychology lend their own distinction to this department. Professor +Case, a graduate of the University of Michigan, has been connected +with the college since 1884, and her courses in Greek Philosophy +and the Philosophy of Religion make an appeal to thoughtful students +which 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 psychology +she has achieved results attained by no one else, and her work +has a Continental reputation. Professor Calkins, the head of the +Department, 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 was +the first woman to receive the degree of Litt.D. from Columbia +University, and the first woman to be elected to the presidency +of the American Psychological Association, succeeding William James +in that office. + +In the Department of Economics and Sociology, organized under +the leadership of Professor Katharine Coman, in 1901, Wellesley +has been fortunate in having as teachers two women of national +reputation whose interest in the human side of economic problems +has vitalized for their eager classes a subject which unless +sympathetically handled, lends itself all too easily to mechanical +interpretations of theory. Professor Coman's wide and intimate +knowledge of American economic conditions, as evidenced in her +books, the "Industrial History of the United States", and "Economic +Beginnings of the Far West", in her studies in Social Insurance +published in The Survey, and in her practical work for the College +Settlements Association and the Consumers' League, and as an +active member of the Strike Committee during the strike of the +Chicago Garment Workers in 1910-1911, lent to her teaching an +appeal which more cloistered theorists can never achieve. The +letters which came to her from alumnae, after her resignation +from the department in 1913, were of the sort that every teacher +cherishes. Since her death in January, 1915, some of these letters +have been printed in a memorial number of the Wellesley College +News. Nothing could better illustrate her influence as an intellectual +force 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 is +never too late to say how much I enjoyed my work with you in +college. It always seemed such grown-up work. Partly, I suppose, +because it was closely related to the things of life, and partly +because 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 value +your seminar in Statistics was to me; it gave me enough insight +into the principles and practice to encourage me to present my +work the first year out of college in statistical form. It was +approved. Without the incentive and the little experience I had +gained from you I might not have tried to do this. Since then, +in whatever field of social work I have been I have found this +ability valuable, and I developed enough skill at it to handle +the investigation into wages of the Massachusetts Minimum Wage +Commission without other training. I am very grateful to you for +this bit of technical training for which I would never have taken +the time later." + +Another says: "It is a pleasure to have an opportunity, after so +many years, to make some expression of the gratitude I owe you. +The course in Political Economy which I was so wise as to take +with 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 presented +to us the ideas, the concepts, which are now accepted principles +of men's thought as to the relation of class to class, of man to +man. And so I feel that it was to your enthusiasm, your power of +inspiring your pupils that I owe my own interest in economic and +sociological affairs." + +And still another: "I have had more real pleasure from my Economics +courses and Sociology courses than from any others of my college +course. Had it not been for yourself and Miss Balch, that work +would not have stood for so much. For your guidance and your +inspiration I am most grateful. I have tried to carry out your +ideals as far as possible in the Visiting Nurse work and the +Social Settlement in Omaha ever since leaving Wellesley." + +Professor Emily Greene Balch, who succeeded Miss Coman as head +of the Department of Economics, is herself an authority on questions +of immigration; her book, "Our Slavic Fellow Citizens", is an +important contribution to the history of the subject, and has been +cited in the German Reichstag as authoritative on Slavic immigration. +She has also served on more than one State commission in +Massachusetts,--among them the disinterested and competent City +Planning Board,--and the sanity and judicial balance of her opinions +are 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 critical +study of its main theories and political movements, open to juniors +and seniors who have already completed two other courses in +Economics; a course entitled "The Modern Labor Movement", in which +special attention is given to labor legislation, factory inspection, +and the organization of labor, with a study of methods of meeting +the difficulties of the modern industrial situation; and a course +in Immigration and the problems to which it gives rise in the +United States. + +The Wellesley fire did the college one good turn by bringing to +the notice of the general public the departments of Science. When +so many of the laboratories and so much of the equipment were +swept away, outsiders became aware of the excellent work which +was being done in those laboratories; of the modern work in Geology +and Geography carried on not only in Wellesley but for the teachers +of Boston by Professor Fisher who is so wisely developing the +department which Professor Niles set on its firm foundation; of +the work of Professor Robertson who is an authority on the bryozoa +fauna of the Pacific coast of North America and Japan; of the +authoritative work on the life history of Pinus, by Professor +Ferguson 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 work +at Wellesley is found in the ease and smoothness with which the +Department of Hygiene, formerly the Boston Normal School of +Gymnastics, has become a force in the Wellesley curriculum under +the direction of Miss Amy Morris Homans, who was also the head +of the school in Boston. By a gradual process of adjustment, +admission to the two years' course leading to a certificate in +the Department of Hygiene "will be limited to applicants who are +candidates for the B.A. degree at Wellesley College and to those +who already hold the Bachelor's degree either from Wellesley College +or from some other college." A five years' course is also offered, +by which students may obtain both the B.A. degree and the certificate +of the department. But all students, whether working for the +certificate or not, must take a one-hour course in Hygiene in +the freshman year, and two periods a week of practical gymnastic +work in the freshman and sophomore years. + +Like all American colleges, Wellesley makes heavy and constant +demands on the mere pedagogic power of its teachers. Their days +are pretty well filled with the classroom routine and the necessary +and incessant social intercourse with the eager crowd of youth. +It may be years before an American college for women can sustain +and foster creative scholarship for its own sake, after the example +of the European universities; but Wellesley is not ungenerous; +the Sabbatical Grant gives certain heads of departments an opportunity +for refreshment and personal work every seven years; and even those +who do not profit by this privilege manage to keep their minds +alive by outside work and contacts. + +Every two years the secretary to the president issues a list of +faculty publications, ranging from verse and short stories in the +best magazines to papers in learned reviews for esoteric consumption +only; from idyllic novels, such as Margaret Sherwood's "Daphne", +and sympathetic travel sketches like Katharine Lee Bates's "Spanish +Highways and Byways", to scholarly translations, such as Sophie +Jewett's "Pearl" and Vida D. Scudder's "Letters of St. Catherine of +Siena", and philosophical treatises, of which Mary Whiton Calkins's +"Persistent Problems of Philosophy", translated into several +languages, is a notable example. + +But the Wellesley faculty is a public-spirited body; its contribution +to the general life is not only abstract and literary; for many of +its members are identified with modern movements toward better +citizenship. Miss Balch, besides her work on municipal committees, +is connected with the Woman's Trade Union League, and is interested +in the great movement for peace. In the spring of 1915, she was +one of those who sailed with Miss Jane Addams to attend the Woman's +Peace Congress at the Hague, and she afterwards visited other +European countries on a mission of peace. Miss Bates is active +in promoting the interests of the International Institute in Spain. +The American College for Girls in Constantinople often looks to +Wellesley for teachers, and more than one Wellesley professor +has given a Sabbatical year to the schoolgirls in Constantinople. +During the absence of President Patrick, Professor Roxana Vivian +of Wellesley was acting president, and had the honor of bringing +the college safely through the perplexities and terrors of the +Young Turks' Revolution in 1908 and 1909. Professor Kendall, +of the Department of History, is Wellesley's most distinguished +traveler. Her book, "A Wayfarer in China", tells the story of +some of her travels, and she has received the rare honor, for +a woman, of being made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. +Miss Calkins is an officer of the Consumers' League. Miss Scudder +has been identified from its outset with the College Settlements +Movement, and of late years with the new service to Italian +immigrants inaugurated by Denison House. + +As a result of these varied interests, the intellectual fellowship +among the older women in the college community is of a peculiarly +stimulating quality, and the fact that it is almost exclusively a +feminine fellowship does not affect its intellectuality. The +Wellesley faculty, like the faculty of Harvard, is not a cloistered +body, and contact with the minds of "a world of men" through books +and the visitations of itinerant scholars is about as easy in the +one case as in the other. Every year Wellesley has her share of +distinguished visitors, American, European, and Oriental, scholars, +poets, scientists, statesmen, who enrich her life and enlarge +her spiritual vision. + + +III. + +One chapter of Wellesley's history it is too soon to write: the +story of the great names and great personalities, the spiritual +stuff of which every college is built. This is the chapter on +which the historians of men's colleges love best to dwell. But +the women's lips and pens are fountains sealed, for a reticent +hundred years--or possibly less, under pressure--with the seals +of academic reserve, and historic perspective, and traditional +modesty. Most of the women who had a hand in the making of +Wellesley's first forty years are still alive. There's the rub. +It would not hamper the journalist. But the historian has his +conventions. One hundred years from now, what names, living +to-day, will be written in Wellesley's golden book? Already they +are written in many prophetic hearts. However, women can keep +a secret. + +Even of those who have already finished their work on earth, it is +too soon to speak authoritatively; but gratitude and love will not +be silent, and no story of Wellesley's first half-century would +be complete that held no records of their devotion and continuing +influence. + +Among the pioneers, there was no more interesting and forceful +personality than Susan Maria Hallowell, who came to Wellesley as +Professor of Natural History in 1875, the friend of Agassiz and +Asa Gray. She was a Maine woman, and she had been teaching +twenty-two years, in Bangor and Portland, before she was called +to Wellesley. Her successor in the Department of Botany writes +in 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 went +from college to college, from university to university, studying +the scientific libraries and laboratories. At the close of this +investigation she announced to the founders of the college that +the task which they had assigned to her was too great for any +one individual to undertake. There must be several professorships +rather than one. Of those named she was given first choice, and +when, in 1876, she opened her laboratories and actually began her +teaching 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 several +courses 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 of +the work in her department have since been necessary.... She +organized and built up a botanical library which from the first +was second to that of no other college in the country, and is +to-day only surpassed by the botanical libraries of a few of our +great universities." + +Fortunately the botanical library and the laboratories were housed +in Stone Hall, and escaped devastation by the fire. + +Professor Hallowell was the first woman to be admitted to the +botanical lectures and laboratories of the University of Berlin. +She "was not a productive scholar", again we quote from Professor +Ferguson, "as that term is now used, and hence her gifts and her +achievements are but little known to the botanists of to-day. She +was preeminently a teacher and an organizer. Only those who knew +her in this double capacity can fully realize the richness of her +nature and the power of her personality." She retired from active +service at the college in February, 1902, when she was made +Professor Emeritus; but she lived in Wellesley village with her +friend, Miss Horton, the former professor of Greek, until her +death in 1911. Mrs. North gives us a charming glimpse of the +quaint and dignified little old lady. "When in recent years the +blossoming forth of academic dress made a pageant of our great +occasions, the badges of scholarship seemed to her foreign to the +simplicity of true learning, and she walked bravely in the +Commencement procession, wearing the little bonnet which henceforth +became a distinction." + +Another early member of the Department of Botany, Clara Eaton +Cummings, who came to Wellesley as a student in 1876 and kept her +connection 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 botanists +for Wellesley. + +With this pioneer group belongs also Professor Niles, who was +actively connected with the college from 1882 until his retirement +as Professor Emeritus in 1908. Wellesley shares with the +Massachusetts Institute of Technology her precious memories of +this devoted gentleman and scholar. His wise planning set the +Department of Geology and Geography on its present excellent +basis. At his death in 1910, a valuable legacy of geological +specimens came to Wellesley, only to be destroyed in 1914 by the +fire. But his greatest gifts to the college are those which no +fire can ever harm. + +Anne Eugenia Morgan, professor in the Department of Philosophy +from 1878 to 1900; Mary Adams Currier, enthusiastic head of the +Department of Elocution from 1875 to 1896, the founder of the +Monroe 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 alumnae +speak these names, their hearts glow with unchanging affection. + +But the most vivid of all these pioneers, and one of the most +widely known, was Carla Wenckebach. Of her, Wellesley has a picture +and a memory which will not fade, in the brilliant biography +[Carla Wenckebach, Pioneer (Ginn & Co. pub.).] by her colleague and +close friend, Margarethe Muller, who succeeded her in the Department +of German. As an interpretation of character and personality, +this book takes its place with Professor Palmer's "Life of Alice +Freeman Palmer", among literary biographies of the first rank. + +Professor Wenckebach came to Wellesley in 1883, and we have the +story of her coming, in her own letters, given us in translation +by Professor Muller. She was attending the Sauveur Summer School +of Languages at Amherst, and had been asked to take some classes +there, in elementary German, where her methods immediately attracted +attention; 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 Greek +lessons, the landlady brings in three visiting cards, remarking +that 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 at +Wellesley College (Wellesley, you must know, is the largest and +most magnificent of all the women's colleges in the United States). +I immediately comprehended that these were three lions (grosse +Tiere), and I began to have curious presentiments. Fortunately, +I was in correct dress, so that I could rush down into our elegant +reception room. Here I made a solemn bow, the three ladies +returning the compliment. The president, a lady who must be a +good deal younger than myself, a real Ph.D. (of Philosophy and +History), told me that she had heard of me and therefore wished +to see me in regard to a vacancy at Wellesley College, which, +according to the statutes, must not be filled by a man so long +as a woman could be procured. The woman she was looking for must +be able, she said, to give lectures on German Literature in German, +and to expound the works of German writers thoroughly; she would +engage me for this position, she added, if she found that I was +the right person for it. + +"I was dumfounded at the mere suggestion of this gift of Heaven +coming to me, for I had heard so many beautiful things about +Wellesley that the idea of possibly getting a position there +totally dazed me. Summoning up courage, however, I controlled +my wild joy, and pulling myself together with determination, I +gave the ladies the desired account of my studies, my journalistic +work, etc., whereupon the president informed me that she would +attend my class the next day." + +The ordeal was successfully passed, and the position of "head +teacher in the German Department at Wellesley" was immediately +offered her. "Now you think, I suppose, that I fell round the +necks of those angels of joy! I didn't though!" she blithely +writes. But she agreed to visit Wellesley, and her description +of this visit gives us old College Hall in a new light. + +"The place in itself is so beautiful that we could hardly realize +its being merely a school. The Royal Palace in Berlin is small +compared to the main building, which in length and stateliness +of appearance surpasses even the great Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. +The entrance hall is decorated with magnificent palms, with +valuable paintings, and choice statuary. The walls in all the +corridors are covered with fine engravings; there are carpets +everywhere and elegant pieces of furniture; there is gas, steam +heat, and a big elevator; everything, down to the bathrooms, +is princely." + +Professor Muller adds, "Of course, she was 'kind enough' to accept +the position offered, although it was not especially lucrative. +'But what is a high salary,' she exclaims, 'in comparison to the +ease and enthusiasm with which I can here plow a new field of work! +That, and the honor attached to the position, are worth more to +me than thousands of dollars. I am to be a regular grosses Tier +now myself,--what fun, after having been a beast of burden so long!'" + +From the first, Wellesley recognized her quality, and wisely gave +it freedom. In addition to her work in German, we owe to her the +beginnings of the Department of Education, through her lectures +on 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 yet +deepening quality in her work, that ease and grace and joy, that +mark the work of the elect only,--of those rare souls among us +who are 'near the shaping hand of the Creator.'" And Fraulein +Wenckebach herself said of her profession: "Every teacher, every +educator, should above all be a guide. Not one of those who, like +signposts, stretch their wooden arms with pedantic insistence in +a given direction, but one, rather, who, after the manner of the +heavenly bodies, diffusing warmth and light and cheer, draws the +young soul irresistibly to leave its dark jungles of prejudice and +ignorance for the promised land of wisdom and freedom." And her +students testify enthusiastically to her unusual success. One +of them writes: + +"To Fraulein Wenckebach as a teacher, I owe more than to any other +teacher I ever had. I cannot remember that she reproved any +student or that she ever directly urged us to do our best. She +made no efforts to make her lectures attractive by witticisms, +anecdotes, or entertaining illustrations. Yet her students worked +with eager faithfulness, and I, personally, have never been so +absorbed and inspired by any lectures as by hers. The secret of +her power was not merely that she was master of the art of teaching +and knew how to arouse interest and awaken the mind to independent +thought and inquiry, but that her own earnestness and high purpose +touched our lives and made anything less than the highest possible +degree of effort and attainment seem not worth while."--"We girls +used to say to each other that if we ever taught we should want +to be to our students what she was to us, and if they could feel +as we felt toward her and her work we should want no more. She +demanded the best of us, without demanding, and what she gave us +was beyond measure.--It was courses like hers that made us feel +that college work was the best part of college life." + +These are the things that teachers care most to hear, and in the +nineteen years of her service at Wellesley, there were many students +eager to tell her what she had been to them. She writes in 1886: +"What a privilege to pour into the receptive mind of young American +girls 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 college +a notable group of younger women, destined to play an important +part in Wellesley's life and to increase her academic reputation: +Mary Whiton Calkins, Margarethe Muller, Adeline B. Hawes, the able +head of the Department of Latin, Katharine M. Edwards, of the +Department of Greek, Sophie de Chantal Hart, of the Department +of English Composition, Vida D. Scudder, Margaret Sherwood, and +Sophie Jewett, of the Department of English Literature. In the +autumn of 1909, Sophie Jewett died, and never has the college been +stirred to more intimate and personal grief. So many poets, so +many scholars, are not lovable; but this scholar-poet quickened +every heart to love her. To live in her house, to sit at her +table, to listen to her "cadenced voice" in the classrooms, were +privileges which those who shared them will never forget. Her +colleague, Professor Scudder, speaking at the memorial service +in the College Chapel, said: + +"We shall long rejoice to dwell on the ministry of love that was +hers to exercise in so rare a measure, through her unerring and +reverent discernment of all finest aspects of beauty; on her +sensitive allegiance to truth; on the fine reticence of her +imaginative passion; on that heavenly sympathy and selflessness +of hers, a selflessness so deep that it bore no trace of effort or +resolute 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 of +intellectual and spiritual vision; for her swift ardor for all +high causes and great dreams; for that unbounded tenderness toward +youth, that firm and steady standard of scholarship, that central +hunger for truth, which gave high quality to her teaching, and +which during twenty years have been at the service of Wellesley +College 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 that +she has left are as few as they are precious, every one "a pearl." +Speaking of these poems, Miss Scudder says: "And in her own +verse,--do we not catch to a strange degree, hushed echoes of +heavenly music? These lyrics are not wholly of the earth: they +vibrate subtly with what I can only call the sense of the Eternal. +How beautiful, how consoling, that her last book should have been +that translation, such as only one who was at once true poet and +true scholar could have made, of the sweetest medieval elegy +'The Pearl'!" And Miss Bates, in her preface to the posthumous +volume of "Folk-Ballads of Southern Europe", illumines for us +the scholarship which went into these close and sympathetic +translations: + +"For the Roumanian ballads, although she pored over the originals, +she had to depend, in the main, upon French translation, which +was usually available, too, for the Gascon and Breton. Italian, +which she knew well, guided her through obscure dialects of Italy +and Sicily, but Castilian, Portuguese, and Catalan she puzzled out +for herself with such natural insight that the experts to whom +these translations have been submitted found hardly a word to +change. 'After all,' as she herself wrote, 'ballads are simple +things, and require, as a rule, but a limited vocabulary, though +a 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 children +and 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 of +the Department of French since 1905, died during the spring recess +after a three days' illness. Madame Colin had studied at the +University of Paris and the Sorbonne, and her ideals for her +department were high. + +Among Wellesley's own alumnae, only a very few who were officers +of the college during the first forty years have died. Of these +are Caroline Frances Pierce, of the class of 1891, who was librarian +from 1903 to 1910. To her wise planning we owe the conveniences +and comforts in the new library building which she did not live +to see completed. + +In 1914, the Department of Greek suffered a deep loss in Professor +Annie Sybil Montague, of the class of 1879. Besides being a +member of the first graduating class, Miss Montague was one of +the first to receive the degree of M.A. from Wellesley. In 1882, +the college conferred this degree for the first time, and Miss +Montague 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 a +conqueror to the triumph of her death. Miss Coman's power as +a teacher has been spoken of on an earlier page, but she will be +remembered in the college and outside as more than a teacher. Her +books and her active interest in industrial affairs, her noble +attitude toward life, all have had their share in informing and +directing 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 Wellesley +students of the first forty years of the college is that more than +sixty per cent of them have come from outside New England, from +the Middle West, the Far West, and the South. Possibly there is +a Wellesley type. Whether or not it could be differentiated from +the Smith, the Bryn Mawr, the Vassar, and the Mt. Holyoke types, +if the five were set up in a row, unlabeled, is a question. Yet +it is true that certain recognizable qualities have developed and +tend to persist among the students of Wellesley. + +Wellesley girls are in the best sense democratic. There is no +Gold Coast on the campus or in the village; money carries no +social prestige. More money is spent, and more frivolously, than +in the early days; there are more girls, and more rich girls, to +spend it; yet the indifference to it except as a mechanical +convenience, 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 of +unequal opportunity. When the college grew so large that membership +in the six societies took on the aspect of special privilege, +restiveness was as marked among the privileged as among the +unprivileged, and more outspoken. The first result was the Barn +Swallows, a social and dramatic society to which every student +in college might belong if she wished. The second was the +reorganization of the six societies on a more democratic and +intellectual basis, to prevent "rushing", favoritism, cliques, and +all the ills that mutually exclusive clubs are heir to. The +agitation for these reforms came from the societies themselves, +and they endured with Spartan determination the months of transitional +misery and readjustment which their generous idealism brought upon +their heads. + +Enthusiasm for equality also enters into the students' attitude +toward "the academic", and like most enthusiasts, from the French +Revolution down, they are capable of confusing the issue. In the +early days, they were not allowed to know their marks, lest the +knowledge should rouse an unworthy spirit of competition; and of +all the rules instituted by the founder, this is the one which +they have been most unwilling to see abolished. Silent Time they +relinquished with relief; Domestic Work they abandoned without +a pang; Bible Study shrank from four to three years and from three +to two, and then to one, almost without their noticing it. But +when, in 1901, the Honor Scholarships were established, a storm +of protest burst among the undergraduates, and thundered and +lightened for several weeks in the pages of College News. And +not the least vehement of these protestants were the "Honor girls" +themselves. To see their names posted in an alphabetical list +of twenty or more students who had achieved, all unwittingly, a +certain number of A's and B's throughout their course, seems to +have caused them a mortification more keen than that experienced +by St. Simeon Stylites on his pillar. But that the college ideal +should be "degraded" pained them most. + +There was something very touching and encouraging about this +wrong-headed, right-hearted outburst. After the usual Wellesley +fashion, freedom of speech prevailed; everybody spoke her mind. +In the end "sweetness and light" dispersed the mists of sentiment +which had assumed that to acknowledge inequality of achievement +was to abolish equality of opportunity, and burned away the ethical +haziness which had magnified mediocrity; the crusaders realized +that the pseudo-compassion which would conceal the idle and the +stupid, the industrious and the brilliant, in a common obscurity, +is impracticable, since the fool and the genius cannot long be +hid, and unfair, since the ant and the grasshopper would enjoy +a like reward, and no democracy has yet claimed that those who +do not work shall eat. When in 1912 the faculty at last decided +to inform the students as to all their marks, the news was received +with no protest and with an intelligent appreciation of the +intellectual and ethical value of the new privilege. + +The college was founded "for the glory of God and the service of +the Lord Jesus Christ, in and by the education and culture of women"; +and Wellesley girls are, in the best sense, religious. There has +been no time in the first forty years when the undergraduates +were not earnestly and genuinely preoccupied with religious +questions and religious living. One recognizes this not only by +the obvious and commonplace signs, such as the interest in the +Christian Association, the Student Volunteer Movement, the Missionary +Field, Silver Bay, manifested by the conventional Christian +students; it is evident also in the hunger and thirst of the sincere +rebels, in such signs as the "Heretics' Bible Class" a volunteer +group which existed for a year or two in the second decade of +the century, and which has had its prototypes at intervals throughout +the forty years. One sees it in the interest and enthusiasm of +the students who follow Professor Case's course in the Philosophy +of Hegel; in the reverence and love with which girls of all creeds +and of none speak of the Chapel services, and attend them. When +two thirds of the girls go voluntarily and as a matter of course to +an Ash Wednesday evening service, when Jew and Roman Catholic +alike testify eagerly to the value of the morning Chapel service +in their spiritual development, it is evident that the religious +life is genuine and healthy. And it finds its outlet in the +passion 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 Wellesley +girls who crowd by hundreds into the "matinee train" on Saturday +afternoon, but let us hope that she would be reassured to find +the voluntary Bible and Mission Study classes attended, and even +conducted, by many of these same girls. She might grieve over +the years of Bible Study lost to the curriculum, and over the +introduction of modern methods of Biblical Higher Criticism into +the classroom; but surely she would be comforted to see how the +students have arisen to the rescue of the devotional study of the +Scriptures, with their voluntary classes enthusiastically maintained. +It might even touch her sense of humor. + +As the college has grown larger, undoubtedly more and more girls +have come to Wellesley for other than intellectual reasons,--because +it is "the thing" to go to college, or for "the life." But it is +reassuring to find that the reactions of "the life" upon them +always quicken them to a deeper respect for intellectual values. +The "academic" holds first place in the Wellesley life, not +perfunctorily but vitally. The students themselves are swift to +recognize and rebuke, usually in the "Free Press" or the "Parliament +of Fools", of the College News, any signs of intellectual indifference +or laxity. Wellesley, like Harvard and other large colleges, has +its uninspiring level stretches of mediocrity; but it has its +little leaping hills, its soaring peaks as well. Every class has +its band of devoted students for whom the things of the mind +are supreme; every class has its scattering of youthful scholars +to give distinction to the academic landscape. + +It would be absurd and useless to deny that Wellesley girls have +their defects; they are of the sort that press for recognition; +defects of manner, and manners, which are not confined to the +students of any one college, or even to college students, but +are due in a measure to the general change in our attitude towards +women, and to the new freedom in which they all alike share. It +is true that, to a degree, the graces and reserves which give +charm and finish to daily living are sacrificed to the more pushing +claims of study and athletics, in college. It is true that the +unmodulated voice, the mushy enunciation, the unrestrained attitude, +the slouchy clothes, too often go unrebuked in classroom and +dormitory, 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 even +unheeded, at home or in the girls' camp, where it emphatically was +somebody's business to heed and rebuke. + +But it is the public which sees the worst of it, especially on +trains, where groups of young voices or extreme fashions in dress +become quite unintentionally conspicuous. Experienced from within, +the life, despite its many little roughnesses, its small lapses in +taste, is gracious and gentle, selfless in unobtrusive ways, and +genuinely kind. + +Religious, democratic, intellectually serious is our Wellesley +girl, and last but not least, she is a lover of beauty. How could +she fail to be? How many times, in early winter twilights, has +she come over the stile into the Stone Hall meadow, and stood +long moments, hushed, bespelled, by the tranquil pale loveliness +of the lake, the dusky, rimming hills, the bare, slim blackness +of twig and bough embroidering the silver sky,--the whole luminous +etching? How often, mid-morning in spring, has she sat with her +book in a green shade west of the library, and lifted her eyes +to see above the daffodil-bank of Longfellow's fountain the blue +lake waters laughing between the upspringing trunks of the tall +oak trees? Wherever there are Wellesley women, when spring is +waking,--in Switzerland, in Sicily, in Japan, in England,--they are +remembering the Wellesley spring, that pageant of young green +of lawns and hills and tenderest flushing rose in baby oak leaves +and baby maples, that twinkling dance of birches and of poplars, +that splendor of the youth of the year amid which young maidens +shone and blossomed, starring the campus among the other spring +flowers. And are there Wellesley women anywhere in the autumn +who do not think of Wellesley and four autumns? Of the long russet +vistas of the west woods? Of the army with banners, scarlet and +golden, and bronze and russet and rose, that marched and trumpeted +around Lake Waban's streaming Persian pattern of shadows? When +you speak to a Wellesley girl of her Alma Mater, her eyes widen +with the lover's look, and you know that she is seeing a vision of +pure beauty. + + +II. + +In 1876, the students, shocked and grieved by the discovery of +one of those cases of cheating with which every college has to deal +from time to time, met together, and made a very stringent rule +to 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 perpetual +law of the college that no student shall use a translation or key +in the study of any lesson or in any review, recitation, or +examination. Every student who may enter the college shall be +in honor bound to expose every violation of this law. If any +student shall be known to violate this law, she shall be warned +by a committee of the students and publicly exposed. If the +offense be repeated the students shall demand her immediate +expulsion 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, gave +the students opportunity to express their minds concerning matters +of college policy, we have no definite record of further steps +toward self-government on the part of the undergraduates. The +disciplinary methods of those early years are amusingly described +by Mary C. Wiggin, of the class of '85, who tells us that authority +was vested in four bodies, the president, the doctor, the corridor +teacher and the head of the Domestic Department. + +"The president was responsible for our going out and our coming +in. The 'office' might give permission to leave town, but all +tardiness in returning must be explained to the president. How +timidly four of us came to Miss Freeman in my sophomore year to +explain that the freshman's mother had kept us to supper after +our 'permitted' drive on Monday afternoon! What an occasion it +gave her to caution us as to sophomore influence over freshmen! + +"Very infrequent were our journeys to Boston in those days, theaters +were forbidden. Once during my four years I saw Booth in 'Macbeth' +during a Christmas vacation, salving my conscience with a liberal +interpretation of the phrase, 'while connected with the college', +trying to forget the parting injunction, 'Remember, girls, that +You are Wellesley College.'... + +"In the old days we were seated alphabetically in church and +chapel, where attendance was kept in each 'section' by one of +its members. A growing laxity permitted you to sit out of place +on Sunday evenings, provided that you reported to your section +girl. Otherwise you would be called to the office to explain your +absence.... + +"Very slowly did the idea dawn upon me that there was a faculty +back of all these very pleasant personal relations." + +But in the late '80's, the advance toward student self-government +begins to be traceable, slowly but surely. In the spring of 1887, +on the initiative of the faculty, the first formal conference +between representatives of faculty and students was called, to +consider questions of class organization. Other conferences took +place at irregular intervals during the next seven years, as +occasion arose, and these often led to new legislation. The +subjects discussed were, the Magazine, the Legenda, Athletics, +the Junior Prom. In the autumn of 1888, students were first +allowed to hand in excuses for absence from college classes; the +responsibility for giving a "true, valid and signed excuse" resting +with the individual student. In this same autumn the law forbidding +eating between meals was repealed, but students were still not +permitted to keep eatables in their rooms. + +Articles on college courtesy, quiet in the library, articles for +and against Domestic Work, begin to appear in the Courant and +the Prelude in 1888 and 1889. In May, 1890, we learn of a +Students' Association, which was the means of obtaining class +bulletin boards in the autumn of 1890. From this time also, +agitation on all topics of interest to the students is more openly +active. In September, 1891, the faculty consent to allow library +books to be taken out of the library on Saturday afternoon for +use over Sunday. In October, 1891, we find that the Students' +Association is to offer a medium for discussion and to foster a +scholarly spirit. In December, 1891, a plea appears in the Prelude +for occasional conferences between faculty and students on problems +of college policy. In 1892, we read that the individual students +are allowed to choose a church in the village and attend it on +Sundays, if they so desire, instead of attending the College +Chapel. In 1892 also, we have the agitation, in the Wellesley +Magazine, for the wearing of cap and gown, and in this year senior +privileges are extended, and the responsibility for absence from +class appointments rests with the student. In November, 1892, +the Magazine prints an article on Student Government by Professor +Case of the Department of Philosophy. And the cap and gown census +and discussion go gayly on. Early in 1893, there is a discussion +of Student Government. In the spring of this year, there is an +agitation for voluntary chapel. In September, the seniors begin +to wear the cap and gown throughout the year. The year 1894 sees +Silent Time abolished; and agitation,--always courteous and +friendly,--goes on for Student Government, for the opening of the +library on Sunday, for the abolition of Domestic Work. In 1893 +or 1894, Professor Burrell, as head of College Hall, introduces +the custom of having students sign for overtime when they wish +to study after ten o'clock at night. In 1894, excuses for absence +from chapel and classes are no longer required. In the spring +of 1894, at the request of undergraduates, a conference with the +faculty, in a series of meetings, considers matters of interest in +student life. Beginning with May, 1895, the library is opened +on Sundays. + +It is significant to note, in looking over these old files of +college magazines, that when the students' interest waned, the +faculty were always ready to administer the necessary prod. Not +all the articles in favor of Student Government are written by +students. President Shafer herself gave the strongest early +impetus to the movement, although not through the press. In 1899, +Professor Woolley, as head of College Hall, instituted a House +Organization, which as an experiment in Student Government among +the students then living in College Hall was a complete success. +In June, 1900, we find arrangements made for a Faculty-Student +Conference, to be held during the autumn months; and this body +met five times. Its establishment did a great deal in paving the +way to mutual understanding and trust when the definite question +of Student Government was approached. + +On March 6, 1901, at a mass meeting of the students, and after +a spirited discussion, it was voted that the Academic Council be +petitioned to give self-government to the students in all matters +not academic. This date is kept every year as the birthday of +Student Government. At another mass meeting, on April 9, Miss +Katharine Lord, the President of the Student Association of +Bryn Mawr, spoke to the college on Student Government, and on +April 23, there was still another mass meeting. The student +committee appointed to confer with the committee from the faculty +had for its chairman Mary Leavens, of the class of 1901, student +head of College Hall; Miss Pendleton, at that time secretary of +the college, was the chairman of the faculty committee. Student +Government found in her, from the beginning, a convinced and able +champion. In April, the constitution was submitted to the committee +of the faculty, and in May the constitution and the agreement, after +careful consideration, were submitted to the Executive Committee +of the Board of Trustees. On May 29, an all day election for +president was held, resulting in the choice of Frances L. Hughes, +1902, as first president of the Student Government Association of +Wellesley College. On June 6, the report was adopted and the +agreement was signed by the president and secretary of the Board +of Trustees and the president of the college. On June 7, in the +presence of the faculty and the whole student body, in chapel, the +agreement was read and signed on behalf of the faculty by the +secretary of the college. The ceremony was impressive and memorable +in its simplicity and solemnity. After Miss Pendleton had signed +her name, the students rose and remained standing while the agreement +was signed by Frances L. Hughes, President of the Association for +1901 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 Scripture +lesson was taken from I. Corinthians, "Other foundation can no +man lay than that is laid," and the recessional was, "How firm +a foundation." + +The Association is organized with a president and vice president, +chosen from the senior class, and a secretary and a treasurer from +the 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, the +house presidents and their proctors, and a representative from +each of the four classes, elected by the class. The government +is in all essentials democratic. The rules are made and executed +by the whole body of students; but all legislation of the students +is subject to approval by the college authorities, and if any +question arises as to whether or not a subject is within the +jurisdiction of the association, it is referred to a joint committee +of seven, made up of a standing committee of three appointed by +the faculty, a standing committee of three appointed by the +association, and the president of the college. + +In intrusting to the association the management of all matters +not strictly academic concerning the conduct of students in their +college life, the College authorities reserve the right to regulate +all athletic events and formal entertainments, all societies, clubs +and other organizations, all Society houses, and all publications, +all matters pertaining to public health and safety and to household +management and the use of college property. The students are +responsible for all matters of registration and absence from college, +for the regulation of travel, permission for Sunday callers, rules +governing chaperonage, the maintenance of quiet, the general +conduct of students on the campus and in the village. It is they +who have abolished the "ten-o'clock-bedtime rule"; it is they who +have decreed that students shall not go to Boston on Sundays, but +this rule is relaxed for seniors, who are allowed two Boston +Sundays, in which they may attend church or an afternoon sacred +concert in the city. If a student wishes to spend Sunday away +from college, she must go away on Saturday and remain until Monday. + +Questions of minor discipline, such as the enforcing of the rule +of quiet in the dormitories, are handled by the students; not yet, +it must be confessed, with complete success, as the quiet in the +dormitories--especially the freshman houses--falls short of that +holy calm which studious girls have a right to claim. Serious +misdemeanors are of course in the jurisdiction of the president +of the college and the faculty. One very important college duty, +the proctoring of examinations, which would seem to be an entirely +legitimate function of the Student Government Association, the +students themselves have not as yet been willing to assume. During +the years when the freshmen, sometimes as many as four hundred, +were housed in the village because of the crowded conditions on +the campus, the burden upon the Student Government Association, +and especially upon the vice president and her senior assistants +who had charge of the village work, was, in the opinion of many +alumnae and some members of the faculty, heavier than they should +have been expected to shoulder; for, when all is said, students do +come to college primarily to pursue the intellectual life, rather +than to be the monitors of undergraduate behavior. Fortunately, +with the endowment of the college and the building of new dormitories +on the campus, the village problem will be eliminated. The students +themselves are unanimously enthusiastic concerning Student Government, +and the history of the association since its establishment reveals +an earnest and increasingly intelligent acceptance of responsibility +on the part of the student body. From the beginning the ultimate +success of the movement has been almost unquestioned, and the +association is now as stable an institution, apparently, as the +Academic Council or the Board of Trustees. + + +III. + +The most important of the associations which bring Wellesley +students into touch with the outside world are the Christian +Association and the College Settlements Association. These two, +with the Consumers' League and the Equal Suffrage League--also +flourishing organizations--help to foster the spirit of service +which 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 was +formed, which gave "Missionary concerts" on Sunday evenings in +the chapel, and adopted as its college missionary, Gertrude Chandler +(Wyckoff) of the class of 1879, who went out to the mission field +in India in 1880. In the first decade also a Temperance Society +was formed, and noted speakers on temperance visited the college. +But in 1883, in order to unify the religious work, a Christian +Association was proposed. The initiative seems to have come from +the faculty, and this was natural, as the little group of teachers +from the University of Michigan--President Freeman, Professor +Chapin of the Department of Greek, Professor Coman of Economics, +Professor Case of Philosophy, Professor Chandler of Mathematics,--had +had a hand in developing the Young Women's Christian Association +at Ann Arbor. + +The first meeting of this Association was held in College Hall +Chapel, October 8, 1884, and we read that it was formed "for the +purpose of promoting Christian fellowship as a means of individual +growth in character, and of securing, by the union of the various +societies already existing, a more systematic arrangement of the +work to be done in college by officers and students, for the cause +of Christ." + +Those who joined the association pledged themselves to declare +their belief in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and to +dedicate their lives to His service. They promised to abide by +the laws of the association and seek its prosperity; ever to strive +to live a life consistent with its character as a Christian +Association, and, as far as in them lay, to engage in its activities; +to cultivate a Christian fellowship with its members, and as +opportunity offered, to endeavor to lead others to a Christian life. +Wellesley is rightly proud of the Christian simplicity and +inclusiveness of this pledge. + +The work of the association included Bible study, devotional +meetings, individual work, and the development of missionary +interest. Three hundred and seventy signed as charter members, +and Professor Stratton of the Department of Rhetoric was the first +president. The students held most of the offices, but it was not +until 1894 that a student president,--Cornelia Huntington of the +class of 1895--was elected. Since then, this office has always +been held by a student. From its inception the association received +the greatest help and inspiration from Mrs. Durant, for many years +the 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, besides +its foreign missionary, a home missionary, and later a city +missionary who worked in New York. An Indian committee was +formed, and Thanksgiving entertainments were given at the Woman's +Reformatory in Sherborn and the Dedham Asylum for released prisoners. +In this prison work, the college always had the fullest help and +sympathy of Mrs. Durant. The Wellesley Student Volunteer Band +was organized May 26, 1890, and in 1915 there were known to be +about one hundred Wellesley girls in the foreign field, and there +were probably others of whom the college was uninformed. It is +a noble and inspiring record. + +In 1905, after the union of many of the Young Women's Christian +Associations and the formation of the National Board, Wellesley +was urged to affiliate herself with the National Association, but +she was unwilling to narrow her own pledge, to meet the conditions +of the National Board. She felt that she better served the cause +of Christian Unity by admitting to her fellowship a wider range of +Christians, so-called, than the National Board was at that time +prepared to tolerate; and she was also more or less fearful of too +much dictation. It was not until 1913, at the Fourth Biennial +Convention of the Young Women's Christian Associations, held at +Richmond, Virginia, that Wellesley was received into the National +organization; and she came retaining her own pledge and her own +constitution. + +In the old days, the Christian Association was the stronghold of +the dying Evangelicalism, and was looked on with distaste by many +of the radical students; but of late years, its tone and its method +have changed to meet the needs of the modern girl, and it has +become a power throughout the college. The annual report for +1913-1914 shows a total membership of 1297. The association +carries on Mission Study Classes; Bible Classes which the students +teach, under the direction of volunteers from the faculty, in such +subjects as "The Social Teachings of Jesus", "The Ideals of Israel's +Leaders 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 Conventions +plays an important part in quickening the interest in Silver Bay, +and the one on "the College in Spain" presents the needs and +claims of the International Institute for Girls at Madrid. Besides +its regular meetings, the Christian Association now has charge +of the Lenten services, and this effort to deepen the devotional +life of the college has met with a swift response from the students. +During 1913-1914, in Lent, the chapel was open every afternoon +for meditation and prayer, and cards with selected prayers for each +day were furnished to all who cared to use them. Unquestionably, +Wellesley possesses no student organization more living and more +life-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 Settlement +idea. The movement, as is well known, originated in the late '80's +in America. At the same time that Jane Addams and Ellen Gates +Starr were starting Hull House in Chicago, a group of Smith College +alumnae, chief among whom were Vida D. Scudder, Clara French, +Helen Rand (Thayer), and Jean Fine (Spahr), was pressing for the +establishment of a house in the East. And the idea was understood +and fostered by Wellesley about as soon as by Smith, for it was +interpreted at Wellesley by Professor Scudder, who became a member +of the college faculty, as instructor in English Literature, in +the autumn of 1887. In 1889, the Courant printed an article on +College Settlements, and students of the later '80's and early '90's +will never forget the ardor and excitement of those days when +Wellesley was bearing her part in starting what was to be one +of the important movements for social service in the nineteenth +century. All her early traditions and activities made the college +swift to understand and welcome this new idea. + +From the beginning, the social impulse has been inherent in +Wellesley, and settlement work was native to her. Professor Whiting +tells us that there used to be a shoe factory in Wellesley Village, +about where the Eliot now stands; that the students became interested +in the girl operatives, most of whom lived in South Natick, and +that they started a factory girls' club which met every Saturday +evening for years, and was led by college girls. In Charles River +Village, also at that time a factory town, Mr. Durant held +evangelistic 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, work +among the maids in the college was set going by the Christian +Association. 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 Association +was 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 friend +Adaline Emerson (Thompson), a Wellesley graduate of the class +of '80, was the first president of the association. Wellesley women +have ever since taken a prominent part in the direction of the +association's policy and in the active life of the settlement houses +in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Wellesley has +given presidents, secretaries, and many electors to the association +itself, and head-workers and a continuous stream of efficient and +devoted residents, not only to the four College Settlements, but +to Social Settlement houses all over the country. The College +Chapter keeps a special interest in the work of the Boston +Settlement, Denison House; students give entertainments occasionally +for the settlement neighbors, and help in many ways at Christmas +time; but practical social service from undergraduates is not the +ideal nor the desire of the College Settlements Association. It +aims rather at the quickening of sympathy and intelligence on +social questions, and the moral and financial support which the +College Chapter can give its representatives out in the world. +Such by-products of the settlement interest as the Social Study +Circle, an informal group of undergraduates and teachers which +met for several years to study social questions, are worth much +more to the movement than the immature efforts of undergraduates +in directing settlement clubs and classes. + +Already the historic perspective is sufficiently clear for us to +realize that the College Settlement Movement is the unique, and +perhaps the most important organized contribution of the women's +colleges 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 conscience +exceeded, in this period, by few other agencies, religious, +philanthropic or industrial, if we except the Trade-union Movement +and Socialism, which emanate from the workers themselves. The +prominent part which Wellesley has played in it will doubtless be +increasingly understood and valued by her graduates. + + +IV. + +Let it be frankly acknowledged: the ordinary adult is usually +bored by the undergraduate periodical--even though he may, once +upon a time, have edited it himself. The shades of the prison-house +make a poor light for the Gothic print of adolescence. But the +historian, if we may trust allegory, bears a torch. For him no +chronicle, whether compiled by twelfth-century monk or twentieth-century +collegian, can be too remote, too dull, to reflect the gleam. And +some chronicles, like the Wellesley one, are more rewarding than +others. + +No one can turn over the pages of these fledgling journals, Courant, +Prelude, Magazine, News, without being impressed by the unconscious +clarity with which they reflect not merely the events in the college +community--although they are unusually faithful and accurate +recorders of events--but the college temper of mind, the range +of ideas, the reaction to interests beyond the campus, the general +trend of the intellectual and spiritual life. + +The interest in social questions is to the fore astonishingly +early. In Wellesley's first newspaper, the Courant, published in +the college year 1888-1889, we find articles on the Working Girls +of Boston, on the Single Tax, and notes of a prize essay on +Child Labor. And throughout the decade of the '90's, the dominant +note in the Prelude, 1889-1892, and its successor, the Wellesley +Magazine, 1892-1911, is the social note. Reports of college +events give prominent place to lectures on Woman Suffrage, Social +Settlements, Christian Socialism. In 1893, William Clarke of the +London Chronicle, a member of the Fabian Society, visiting America +as a delegate to the Labor Congress in Chicago, gave lectures at +Wellesley on "The Development of Socialism in England", "The +Government of London", "The London Working Classes." Matthew +Arnold's visit came too early to be recorded in the college paper, +but he was perhaps the first of a notable list of distinguished +Englishmen who have helped to quicken the interest of Wellesley +students along social lines. Graham Wallas, Lowes-Dickinson, +H. G. Wells, are a few of the names found in the pages of the +Magazine and the News. The young editors evidently welcomed +papers on social themes, such as "The Transition in the Industrial +Status of Women, by Professor Coman"; and the great strikes of +the decade, The Homestead Strike, the Pennsylvania Coal Strike, +the New Bedford Strike, are written up as a matter of course. It +is 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 reputation +for research work in the Labor Bureau at Washington. + +Political articles are only less prominent than social and industrial +material. 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 Colonial +Expansion of the Great European Powers", "The Italian Riots of +May, 1898", "The Philippine Question", "The Dreyfus Incident." +This preoccupation of young college women of the nineteenth century +with modern industrial and political history is significant when +we consider the part that woman has elected to play in politics +and reform since the beginning of the twentieth century. + +In the first years of that new century, the Magazine and the weekly +News begin to reflect the general revival of religious interest +among young people. The Student Volunteer Movement, the increased +activities in the Christian Associations for both men and women, +find their response in Wellesley students. Letters from missionaries +are given prominence; the conferences at Silver Bay are written +up enthusiastically and at great length. Social questions never +lapse, at Wellesley, but during the decade 1900 to 1910, the +dominant journalistic note is increasingly religious. Later, with +the activity of the Social Study Circle, an informal club for the +study of social questions, and its offspring the small but earnest +club for the study of Socialism, the social interests regained +their 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. Through +the "Free Press" columns of these papers, the didactic, critical, +and combative impulses, always so strong in the undergraduate +temperament, find a safe vent. Mentor and agitator alike are +welcomed in the "Free Press", and many college reforms have been +inaugurated, and many college grievances--real and imagined--have +been aired in these outspoken columns. And not the least readable +portions of the weeklies have been the "Waban Ripples" in the +Prelude, and the "Parliament of Fools" in the News. For Wellesley +has a merry wit and is especially good at laughing at herself,--yes, +even at that "Academic" of which she is so loyally proud. Witness +these naughty parodies of examination questions, which appeared +in a "Parliament of Fools" just before the mid-year examinations +of 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 a +skeptical public that college girls take their educational advantages +with sanity. + +As literary magazines, these Wellesley periodicals are only +sporadically successful. Now and again a true poet flashes through +their pages; less often a true story-teller, although the mechanical +excellence of most of the stories is unquestionable,--they go +through the motions quite as if they were the real thing. But +the appeals of the editors for poetry and literary prose; their +occasional sardonic comments upon the apathy of the college reading +public,--especially during the waning later years of the Magazine, +before it was absorbed into the monthly issue of the News,--would +seem to indicate that the pure, literary imagination is as rare at +Wellesley as it is in the world at large. Yet there are shining +pages in these chronicles, pages whose golden promise has been fulfilled. + +In 1911, the Alumnae Association discussed the advisability of +publishing an alumnae magazine, but it was decided that the time +was not yet ripe for the new enterprise, and instead an agreement +was entered into with the News, by which a certain number of +pages each month were to be at the disposal of the alumnae editor, +for articles and essays on college matters which should be of +interest to the alumnae. The new department has been marked +from the beginning by dignity and interest, and the papers contributed +have been unusually valuable, especially from the point of view +of college history. + +In 1889 Wellesley's Senior Annual, the Legenda, came into being. +In general it has followed the conventional lines of all college +annuals, 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, and +a biographical sketch of Mrs. Durant; in 1896, when it became +a storybook of college life. + +In October, 1912, The Wellesley College Press Board was organized +by Mrs. Helene Buhlert Magee, of the class of 1903. The board +is the outgrowth of an attempt by the college authorities, in 1911, +to regulate the work of its budding journalists. Up to this time +the newspapers had been supplied, more or less intermittently and +often unsatisfactorily, with items of college news by students +engaged by the newspapers and responsible only to them. The +college now appoints an official reporter from its own faculty, +who sends all Wellesley news to the newspapers and is consulted +by the regular reporters when they desire special information. +The Press Board, organized by this official reporter, consists of +seven students reporting for Boston papers and two for those in +New York. At the time of the Wellesley fire, this board proved +itself particularly efficient in disseminating accurate information. + + +V. + +But it is not the workaday Wellesley, tranquilly pursuing her +serious and semi-serious occupations, that the outsiders know +best. To them, she is wont to turn her holiday face. And no +college plays with more zest than Wellesley. Perhaps because +no college ever had such a perfect playground. Every hill and +grove and hollow of the beautiful campus holds its memories of +playdays and midsummer nights. + +Those were the nights when Rosalind and Orlando wandered out of +Arden into a New England moonlight; when flitting Ariel forsook +Prospero's isle to make his nest in Wellesley's bowering +rhododendrons--in blossom time he is always hovering there, a winged +bloom, for eyes that are not holden. Those were the nights when Puck +came dancing up from Tupelo with Titania's fairy rout a-twinkle at his +heels; when the great Hindu Raj floated from India in his canopied +barge across the moonlit waters of Lake Waban; when Tristram and +Iseult, on their way to the court of King Mark, all love distraught, +cast anchor in the little cove below Stone Hall and played their +passion out; when Nicolette kilted her skirts against the dew and +argued of love with Aucassin. Those were the nights when the +Countess Cathleen--loveliest of Yeats's Irish ladies--found Paradise +and the Heavenly Host awaiting her on a Wellesley hilltop when +she had sold her soul to feed her starving peasants. + +But the glamour of the sun is as potent as the glamour of the +moon at Wellesley. High noon is magical on Tree Day, for then +the mythic folk of ancient Greece, the hamadryads and Dian's nymphs, +Venus and Orpheus and Narcissus, and all the rest, come out and +dream a dance of old days on the great green billows of the lawn. +To see veiled Cupid, like a living flame, come streaming down +among the hillside trees, down, swift as fire, to the waiting +Psyche, is never to forget. No wood near Athens was ever so +vision-haunted as Wellesley with the dancing spirits of past +Tree Days. + +On that day in early June the whole college turns itself into a +pageant of spring. From the long hillside above which College Hall +once towered, the faculty and the alumnae watch their younger +sisters march in slow processional triumph around and about the +wide green campus. Like a moving flower garden the procession +winds upon itself; hundreds and hundreds of seniors and juniors +and sophomores and freshmen,--more than fourteen hundred of them +in 1914. Then it breaks ranks and plants itself in parterres +at the foot of the hill, masses of blue, and rose, and lavender, +and golden blossoming girls. Contrary Mistress Mary's garden was +nothing to it. And after the procession come the dances. Sometimes +a Breton Pardon wanders across the sea. The gods from Olympus +are very much at home in these groves of academe. Once King Arthur's +knight 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. And +in the fairy ring around Longfellow fountain, gnomes and fays and +freshmen play hide-and-seek with the water nixies. + +The first Tree Day was Mr. Durant's idea; no one was more awake +than he, in the old days, to Wellesley's poetic possibilities. +And the first trees were gifts from Mr. Hunnewell; two beautiful +exotics, Japanese golden evergreens--one for 1879 and one for +1880. The two trees were planted on May 16, 1877, the sophomore +tree by the library, the freshman tree by the dining room. An +early chronicler writes, "Then it was that the venerated spade +made 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 about +the same height as the spade, but by no means, as she modestly +suggested, of the same mental capacity, was so stricken with +astonishment when she had mounted the rostrum and this burly +instrument was propped up before her, that she nearly forgot her +speech.... And then it was there was introduced the more questionable +practice of planting class trees too delicate to bear the college +course. Although a foolish little bird built her nest and laid +her eggs in the golden-leaved evergreen of '79, and although a +much handsomer nest with a very much larger egg appeared immediately +in the Retinospora Precipera Aurea of '80, yet the rival 'nymphs +with golden hair' were both soon forced to forsake their withered +tenements; 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 handed +down from class to class, is recorded in Florence Morse Kingsley's +diary, where we learn how the "burly instrument" of 1877 was +succeeded by a less unwieldy and more ladylike utensil. Under +the 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 has +vanished, but the '81 elm stands in its "prominent" place, a tree +of ancient memories and visions ever young. + +It was not until 1889 that the pageant element began to take +a definite and conspicuous place in the Tree Day exercises. +The class of '89 in its senior year gave a masque in which tall +dryads, robed in green, played their dainty roles; and that same +year the freshmen, the class of 1892, gave the first Tree Day +dance: a very mild dance of pink and white English maidens around +a maypole--but the germ of all the Tree Day dances yet unborn. +In its senior year, 1892 celebrated the discovery of America by +a 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 the +Wellesley Campus. Every year the long procession across the green +grows longer, more beautiful, more elaborate; the dancing is more +exquisitely planned, more complex, more carefully rehearsed. In +the spring, Wellesley girls are twirling a-tiptoe in every moment +not spent in class; and in class their thoughts sometimes dance. +Indeed, the students of late years have begun to ask themselves +if it may not be possible to obtain quite as beautiful a result +with less expense of effort and time and money; for Tree Day, +the crowning delight of the year, would defeat its own end, which +is pure recreation, if its beauty became a tyrant. + +This multiplication of joys--and their attendant worries--is +something that Wellesley has to take measures to guard against, +and the faculty has worked out a scheme of biennial rotatory +festivities which since 1911-1912 has eased the pressure of revelry +in May and June, as well as throughout the winter months. + +Wellesley's list of societies and social clubs is not short, but +the conditions of membership are carefully guarded. As early +as the second year of the college, five societies came into +existence: of these, the Beethoven Society and the Microscopical--which +started with a membership of six and an exhibition under three +microscopes at its first meeting--seem to have been open to +any who cared to join; the other three--the Zeta Alpha and Phi +Sigma societies founded in November, 1876, and the Shakespeare +in January, 1877--were mutually exclusive. The two Greek letter +societies were literary in aim, and their early programs consisted +in literary papers and oral debates. The Shakespeare Society, +for many years a branch of the London Shakespeare Society, devoted +itself to the study and dramatic presentation of Shakespeare. Its +first open-air play was "As You Like It", given in 1889; and until +1912, 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 were +reorganized, and gradually their programs were extended to include +dramatic work, poetic plays, and masques. The Phi Sigma Society +gives its masque--sometimes an original one--on alternate years +just before the Christmas vacation; and Zeta Alpha alternates with +the Classical Society at Commencement. The Zeta Alpha Masque +of 1913, a charming dramatization in verse of an old Hindu legend +by Elizabeth McClellan of the class of 1913, was one of the notable +events of Commencement time, a pageant of poetic beauty and oriental +dignity; and in 1915 Florence Wilkinson Evans's adaptation of the +lovely old poem "Aucassin and Nicolette", was given for the +second time. + +In 1889, the Art Society--known since 1894 as Tau Zeta Epsilon--was +founded; and, alternating with the Shakespeare play, it gives +in the spring a "Studio Reception", at which pictures from the +old masters, with living models, are presented. The effects of +lighting and color are so carefully studied, and the compositions +of the originals are so closely followed that the illusion is +sometimes startling; it is as if real Titians, Rembrandts, and +Carpaccios 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 the +college, and its open debates, at which it has sometimes represented +the House of Commons, sometimes one or the other of the American +Chambers 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 Commencement +week, has surpassed both the senior play and the Shakespeare play +in dramatic rendering and careful study of the lines. Gilbert +Murray's translation of the "Medea", presented in 1914, was a +performance of which Wellesley was justly proud. Usually the +Wellesley plays are better as pageants than as dramatic productions, +but the Classical Society is setting a standard for the careful +literary interpretation and rendering of dramatic texts, which +should 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 dramatic +opportunity. If college theatricals have any excuse for being, it +is not found in attempts to compete with the commercial stage and +imitate the professional actor, but rather in dramatic revivals +such 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 afford +to 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 by +reading a list of her senior plays, among which are the "Countess +Cathleen", 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, and +all the college comes out to dance on the green and eat ice-cream +cones in the afternoon, is full of spontaneous jollity. Before the +burning of College Hall, the custom had arisen of cleaning house +on May Day, and six o'clock in the morning saw the seniors out +with pails and mops, scrubbing and decorating the many statues +which kept watch in the beloved old corridors. + +One of these statutes had become in some sort the genius of +College Hall. Of heroic size, a noble representation of womanly +force and tranquillity, Anne Whitney's statue of Harriet Martineau +had watched the stream of American girlhood flow through "the Center" +and surge around the palms for twenty-eight years. The statue +was 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 dispose +of, and, representing as it did her ideal modern woman, she gave +it 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 by +fond but familiar young nieces. No freshman was considered properly +matriculated until she had been dragged between the rungs of +Miss Martineau's great marble chair; May Day always saw "Aunt Harriet" +rise like Diana fresh from her bath, to be decked with more or less +becoming furbelows; and as the presiding genius in the lighter +columns of College News, her humor--an acquired characteristic--was +merrily appreciated. Of all the lost treasures of College Hall +she is perhaps the most widely mourned. + +The pretty little Society houses, dotted about the campus, also +give the students opportunity to entertain their guests, both +formally and informally, and during the months following the fire, +when Wellesley was cramped for space, they exercised a generous +hospitality which put all the college in their debt. + +As the membership in the Shakespeare and Greek letter societies +is limited to between forty and fifty members in each society, +the great majority of the students are without these social +privileges, but the Barn Swallows, founded in 1897, to which +every member of the college may belong if she wishes, gives +periodic entertainments in the "Barn" which go far to promote +general good feeling and social fellowship. The first president +of the Barn Swallows, Mary E. Haskell, '97, says that it arose +as an Everybody's Club, to give buried talents a chance. "Suddenly +we adjured the Trustees by Joy and Democracy to bless our charter, +to be gay once a week, and when they gave the Olympic nod we +begged 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,--thicker +near the stage end,--and opened the season with an impromptu +opera 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 of +department clubs, the Deutsche Verein, the Alliance Francaise, +the Philosophy Club, the Economics Club, and informal groups such +as the old Rhymesters' Club, which flourished in the late nineties, +the Scribblers' which seems to have taken its place and enlarged +its scope, the Social Study Circle, the little Socialist Club, and +others through which the students express their intellectual and +social interests. + +Of Wellesley's many festivities and playtimes it would take too +long to tell: of her Forensic Burnings, held when the last junior +forensic for the year is due; of her processional serenades, with +Chinese lanterns; of her singing on the chapel steps in the evenings +of May and June. These well-beloved customs have been establishing +themselves year by year more firmly in undergraduate hearts, but +it 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 seems +to have waked the campus echoes first in the spring of 1890, as +a result of a prize offered in November, 1889, although as far +back as 1880 there is mention of a cheer. The musical cheer has +so much beauty and dignity, both near at hand and at a distance, +that many of the early alumnae and the faculty wish it might some +time quite supersede the ugly barking sounds, imitated from the +men's colleges, with which the girls are fain to evince their +approval and celebrate their triumphs. They invariably end their +barking with the musical cheer, however, keeping the best for the +last, 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 early +years, the class crews used to row on the lake and sing at sunset, +in their heavy, broad-bottomed old tubs; and from these casual +summer evenings "Float" has been evolved--Wellesley's water +pageant--when Lake Waban is dotted with gay craft, and the crews +in their slim, modern, eight-oared shells, display their skill. +This is the festival which the public knows best, for unlike +Tree Day, to which outsiders have been admitted on only three +occasions, "Float" has always been open to friendly guests. Year +by year the festival grows more elaborate. Chinese junks, Indian +canoes, Venetian gondolas, flower boats from fairyland, glide over +the bright sunset waters, and the crews in their old traditional +star pattern anchor together and sing their merry songs. There +are new songs every spring, for each crew has its own song, but +there are two of the old songs which are heard at every Wellesley +Float, "Alma Mater", and the song of the lake, that Louise Manning +Hodgkins 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 crew +competition; and with the darkness, the fireworks begin to flash +up from the opposite shore of the lake. + +Besides the rowing clubs, in the first decade, there were tennis +clubs, and occasional outdoor "meets" for cross-country runs, but +apparently there was no regular organization combining in one +association all the separate clubs until 1896-1897, when we hear +of the formation of a "New Athletic Association." There is also +record of a Field Day on May 29, 1899. In 1902, we find the +"new athletics"--evidently a still newer variety than those of +1897--"recognized by the trustees"; and the first Field Day under +this newest regime occurred on November 3, 1902. All the later +Field Days have been held in the late autumn, at the end of the +sports season, which now includes a preliminary season in the +spring and a final season in the autumn. An accepted candidate +for an organized sport must hold herself ready to practice during +both seasons, unless disqualified by the physical examiner, and +must confine herself to the one sport which she has chosen. During +both seasons the members may be required to practice three times +a week. + +The Athletic Association, under its present constitution, dates +from March, 1908. All members of the college are eligible for +membership, all members of the organized sports are ipso facto +members of the association, and the Director of Physical Training +is a member ex officio. An annual contribution of one dollar is +solicited from each member of the association, and special funds +are raised by voluntary contribution. In the year 1914-1915, the +association included about twelve hundred members, not all of them +dues-paying, however. + +The president of the Athletic Association is always a senior; the +vice president, who is also chairman of the Field Day Committee, +and the treasurer are juniors; the secretary and custodian are +sophomores. The members of the Organized Sports elect their +respective heads, and each sport is governed by its own rules and +regulations and by such intersport legislation as is enacted by +the Executive Board, not in contravention to regulations by the +Department of Physical Training and Hygiene. In this way the +association 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. The +unorganized sports include walking, riding, swimming, fencing, +skating, and snowshoeing. Each sport has its instructor, or +instructors, from the Department of Physical Training. The members +are grouped in class squads governed by captains, and each class +squad furnishes a class team whose members are awarded numerals, +before a competitive class event, on the basis of records of +health, discipline, and skill. Honors, blue W's worn on the +sweaters, are awarded on a similar basis. Interclass competitions +for trophies are held on Field Day, and the association hopes, +with the development of outdoor baseball, to establish interhouse +competitions also. The gala days are, besides Field Day in the +autumn, the Indoor Meet in the spring at the end of the indoor +practice, "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 laid +out, 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 not +obligatory, more and more students are coming to appreciate the +work 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 is +one of the points at which they are content to diverge from the +policy of the men's colleges. Wellesley's sports are organized +to give recreation and healthful exercise to as many students as +are fit and willing to take part in them. Some students even +disapprove of interclass competitions, and it is thought that +the interhouse teams for baseball will serve as an antidote to +rivalry between the classes. + +The only intercollegiate event in which Wellesley takes part is +the intercollegiate debate. In this contest, Wellesley has been +twice beaten by Vassar, but in March, 1914, she won in the debate +against 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 the +Phi Beta Kappa Society, and the Wellesley Chapter,--installed +January 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 and +largest building on the Wellesley campus, was destroyed by fire. +No one knows how the fire originated; no one knows who first +discovered 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 thick +with fog, and the little wind "that heralds the dawn" was not strong +enough to disperse the heavy vapors, else havoc indeed might have +been wrought throughout the campus and the sleeping village. + +At about half past four o'clock, two students at the west end of +College Hall, on the fourth floor, were awakened and saw a fiery +glow reflected in their transom. Getting up to investigate, they +found the fire burning in the zoological laboratory across the +corridor, and one of them immediately set out to warn Miss Tufts, +the registrar, and Miss Davis, the Director of the Halls of +Residence, both of whom lived in the building; the other girl +hurried off to find the indoor watchman. At the same time, a +third girl rang the great Japanese bell in the third floor center. +In less than ten minutes after this, every student was out of +the building. + +The story of that brief ten minutes is packed with self-control +and selflessness; trained muscles and minds and souls responded +to the emergency with an automatic efficiency well-nigh unbelievable. +Miss Tufts sent the alarm to the president, and then went to the +rooms of the faculty on the third floor and to the officers of the +Domestic Department on the second floor. Miss Davis set a girl +to ringing the fast-fire alarm. And down the four long wooden +staircases the girls in kimonos and greatcoats came trooping, +each one on the staircase she had been drilled to use, after she +had left her room with its light burning and its corridor door shut. +In the first floor center the fire lieutenants called the roll of +the fire squads, and reported to Miss Davis, who, to make assurance +doubly sure, had the roll called a second time. No one said the +word "fire"--this would have been against the rules of the drill. +For a brief space there was no sound but "the ominous one of +falling heavy brands." When Miss Davis gave the order to go out, +the students walked quietly across the center, with embers and +sparks falling about them, and went out on the north side through +the 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 college +but had happened to spend the night in the Psychology office on +the fifth floor, had been one of the earliest to awake, had wakened +other members of the faculty and helped Professor Case and her +wheel-chair to the first floor, and also had sent a man with an ax +to break in Professor Irvine's door, which was locked. As it +happened, Professor Irvine was spending the night in Cambridge, +and her room was not occupied. Most of the members of the faculty +seem 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 to +save 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 line +which was soon lengthened by girls from other dormitories and +extended from the front of College Hall to the library. Very +few things above the first floor were saved, but many books, +pictures, and papers went down this long line of students to find +temporary shelter in the basement of the library. Associate +Professor Shackford, who wrote the account of the fire in the +College News, from which these details are taken, tells us how +Miss Pendleton, patrolling this busy fire line and questioning the +half-clad workers, was met with the immediate response, even from +those who were still barefooted, "I'm perfectly comfortable, +Miss Pendleton", "I'm perfectly all right, Miss Pendleton." Miss +Shackford adds: + +"At about five o'clock, a person coming from the hill saw +College Hall burning between the dining-room and Center, +apparently from the third floor up to the roof, in high, clear +flames with very little smoke. Suddenly the whole top seemed +to catch fire at once, and the blaze rushed downward and upward, +leaping in the dull gray atmosphere of a foggy morning. With +a terrific crash the roof fell in, and soon every window in the +front of College Hall was filled with roaring flames, surging +toward the east, framed in the dark red brick wall which served +to accentuate the lurid glow that had seized and held a building +almost 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 who +saw the irrepressible blaze consume everything but the brick walls. + +"The old library and the chapel were soon filled with great billows +of flame, which, finding more space for action, made a spectacle +of majestic but awful splendor. Eddies of fire crept along the +black-walnut bookcases, and all that dark framework of our beloved +old library. By great strides the blaze advanced, until innumerable +curling, writhing flames were rioting all through a spot always +hushed 'in the quiet and still air of delightful studies.' The +fire raged across the walls, in and around the sides and the +beautiful curving tops of the windows that for so many springs +and summers had framed spaces of green grass on which fitful +shadows had fallen, to be dreamed over by generations of students. +In the chapel, tremendous waves swelled and glowed, reaching +almost from floor to ceiling, as they erased the texts from the +walls, demolished the stained-glass windows, defaced, but did not +completely destroy the college motto graven over them, and, in +convulsive gusts swept from end to end of the chapel, pouring in +and out of the windows in brilliant light and color. Seen from +the campus below, the burning east end of the building loomed up +magnificent even in the havoc and desolation it was suffering." + +At half past eight o'clock, four hours after the first alarm was +sounded, there stood on the hill above the lake, bare, roofless +walls and sky-filled arches as august as any medieval castle +of Europe. Like Thomas the Rhymer, they had spent the night +in fairyland, and waked a thousand years old. Romance already +whispered through their dismantled, endless aisles. King Arthur's +castle of Camelot was not more remote from to-day than College Hall +from the twentieth-century March morning. Weeks, months, a little +while it stood there, vanishing--like old enchanted Merlin--into +the impenetrable prison of the air. There will be other houses +on that hilltop, but never one so permanent as the dear house +invisible; the double Latin cross, the ten granite columns, the +Center ever green with ageless palms, the "steadfast crosses, +ever pointing the heavenward way",--to eyes that see, these have +never disappeared. + +At half past eight o'clock, in the crowded college chapel, President +Pendleton was saying to her dazed and stricken flock, "We know +that all things work together for good to them that love God,--who +shall separate us from the love of Christ?" And when she had +given thanks, in prayer, for so many lives all blessedly safe, +there came the announcement, so quiet, so startling, that the +spring term would begin on April 7, the date already set in the +college calendar. This was the voice of one who actually believed +that faith would remove mountains. And it did. By the faith of +President Pendleton, Wellesley College is alive to-day. She did +literally and actually cast the mountain into the sea on that +seventeenth of March, 1914. St. Patrick himself never achieved +a 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 study +hall, had all been swept away. Yet, in a little less than three +weeks, there had sprung up on the campus a temporary building +containing twenty-nine lecture and recitation rooms, thirteen +department offices, fifteen administrative offices, three dressing +rooms, and a reception room. Plumbing, steam heat, electricity, +and telephone service had been installed. A week after college +opened for the spring term, classes were meeting in the new building. +During that first week, offices and classes had been scattered all +over the campus,--in the Society houses, in the basements of +dormitories, the Art Building, the Chemistry Building, the Gymnasium, +the basement of the Library, the Observatory, the Stone Hall Botany +Laboratories, Billings Hall; all had opened their doors wide. The +two hundred and sixteen residents of old College Hall had all been +housed on the campus; it meant doubling up in single rooms, but +the doublets persuaded themselves and the rest of the college +that 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. By +half past nine o'clock in the morning, the secretary of the dean +had written out from memory the long schedule of the June examinations, +to be posted at the beginning of the spring term. Members of +the faculty were conducting a systematic search for salvage among +the articles that had been dumped temporarily in the "Barn" and the +library; homes had been found for the houseless teachers, most +of whom had lost everything they possessed; several members of +the faculty had no permanent home but the college, and their worldly +goods were stored in the attic from which nothing could be saved. +It is said that when President Pendleton, in chapel, told the +students to go home as soon as they had collected their possessions, +"an unmistakable ripple of girlish laughter ran through the +dispossessed congregation." This was the Franciscan spirit in +which Wellesley women took their personal losses. For the general +losses, all mourned together, but with hope and courage. In the +Department of Physics, all the beautiful instruments which Professor +Whiting had been so wisely and lovingly procuring, since she first +began to equip her student-laboratory in 1878, were swept away; +Geology and Psychology suffered only less; but the most harrowing +losses were those in the Department of Zoology, where, besides +the destruction of laboratories and instruments, and the special +library presented to the department by Professor Emeritus Mary A. +Willcox, "the fruits of years of special research work which had +attracted international attention have been destroyed.... Professor +Marion Hubbard had devoted her energies for six years to research +in variation and heredity in beetles.... In view of the increasing +interest in eugenics, scientists awaited the results with keen +anticipation, but all the specimens, notes, and apparatus were +swept away." Professor Robertson, the head of the department, +who is an authority on certain deep-sea forms of life, had just +finished her report on the collections from the dredging expedition +of 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 roses +which the classes had planted year by year; these the fire had not +injured; and a slip from the great wistaria vine on the south side +of College Hall has proved to be alive and vigorous. The alumnae +gavel and the historic Tree Day spade were also unharmed. But +that no life was lost outweighs all the other losses, and this was +due to the fire drill which, in one form or another, has been +carried on at Wellesley since the earliest years of the college. +Doctor Edward Abbott, writing of Wellesley in Harper's Magazine +for August, 1876, says: + +"Whoever heard of a fire brigade manned by women? There is one at +Wellesley, for it is believed that however incombustible the +college building may be, the students should be taught to put out +fire,... and be trained to presence of mind and familiarity with +the thought of what ought to be done in case of fire." From time +to time the drill has been strengthened and changed in detail, but +in 1902, when Miss Olive Davis, Director of Houses of Residence, +was appointed by Miss Hazard to be responsible for an efficient +fire drill, the modern system was instituted. An article in +College News explains that "the organization of the present +fire-drill system is much like the old one. With the adoption of +Student Government, it was put into the hands of the students. +Each year a fire chief is elected from the student-body, by the +students. This girl is a senior. She is counted an officer of +the Student Government Association, and is responsible to Miss Davis. +Then at meetings held at the beginning of the fall term, each +dormitory elects one fire captain, who in turn appoints lieutenants +under 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 room +in her district and see that the directions have been complied +with and the inmates have gone downstairs. If the windows and +doors have not been shut, she must shut them. Then she goes +downstairs and calls her roll (some lieutenants memorize their +lists). When the lieutenants have finished, the captain calls +the roll of the lieutenants, asking for the number absent in each +district, and the number of windows and doors left open or lights +not lighted, if any. + +"The captains are required to hold two drills a month. At the +regular meetings of the organization at which the fire chief +presides and Miss Davis is often present, the captains report the +dates of their drills, the time of day they were held, the number +of absentees and their reasons, the time required to empty the +building, and the order observed by the girls. + +"Drills may be called by the captain at any time of the day or +night. Frequently there were drills at College Hall when it was +crowded with nonresident students, there for classes. In that +case no roll was called, but merely the time required and the +order reported. The penalty for non-attendance at fire drills +is a fine of fifty cents, and a serious error credited to the absentee. + +"There are devices such as blocking some of the staircases to train +the girls for an emergency. It was being planned, just about the +time College Hall burned, to have a fire drill there with artificial +smoke, to test the girls. The system is still being constantly +changed and improved. On Miss Davis's desk, the night of the +fire, was the rough draft of a plan by which property could be +better saved in case of fire, without more danger to life." + +A few weeks after the burning of College Hall, a small fire broke +out at the Zeta Alpha House, but was immediately quenched, and +Associate 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 Alpha +House fire. A few days before this, a special plea had been made +for good order and concentrated work in an overcrowded laboratory, +where forty-six students, two divisions, were obliged to meet at +the same time. On this morning, the professor looked up suddenly +at sounds of commotion outside. 'Why, there's a fire-engine going +back to the village!' she said. 'Oh, yes' responded a girl near +the window. 'We saw it come up some time ago, but you were busy +at the blackboard, so we didn't disturb you.' The professor looked +over her roomful of students quietly at work. 'Well,' she said, +'I've heard a good deal of boasting about various things the girls +were doing. Now I'm going to begin!'" + +And this self-control does not fail as the months pass. The +temporary administration building, which the students have dubbed +the Hencoop, tests the good temper of every member of the college. +Like Chaucer's wicker House of Rumors it is riddled with vagrant +noises, but as it does not whirl about upon its base, it lacks the +sanitary ventilating qualities of its dizzy prototype. On the +south it is exposed to the composite, unmuted discords of Music Hall; +on the north, the busy motors ply; within, nineteen of the twenty-six +academic departments of the college conduct their classes, between +walls so thin that every classroom may hear, if it will, the +recitations to right of it, recitations to left of it, recitations +across the corridor, volley and thunder. Though they all +conscientiously try to roar as gently as any sucking dove. The +effect upon the unconcentrated mind is something like--The cosine +of X plus the ewig weibliche makes the difference between the +message of Carlyle and that of Matthew Arnold antedate the Bergsonian +theory of the elan vital minus the sine of Y since Barbarians, +Philistines and Populace make up the eternal flux wo die citronen +bluhn--but fortunately the Wellesley mind does concentrate, and +uncomplainingly. The students are working in these murmurous +classrooms with a new seriousness and a devotion which disregard +all petty inconveniences and obstacles. + +And the fire has kindled a flame of friendliness between faculty +and students; it has burned away the artificial pedagogic barriers +and quickened human relations. The flames were not quenched +before the students had begun to plan to help in the crippled +courses of study. They put themselves at the disposal of the +faculty for all sorts of work; they offered their notes, their own +books; they drew maps; they mounted specimens on slides for the +Department of Zoology. In that crowded, noisy, one-story building +there are not merely the teachers and the taught, but a body of +tried 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 congratulate +ourselves upon the democratic character of our American system of +education. In the early days, neither poverty nor social position +was a bar to the child who loved his books. The daughter of the +hired man "spelled down" the farmer's son in the district school; +the poor country boy and girl earned their board and tuition at +the academy by doing chores; American colleges made no distinctions +between "gentlemen commoners" and common folk; and as our public +school system developed its kindergartens, its primary, grammar, and +high 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 in +democratic education had been spoken. + +But since the beginning of the twentieth century, two new voices +have begun to be heard; at first sotto voce, they have risen +through a murmurous pianissimo to a decorous non troppo forte, +and they continue crescendo,--the voice of the teacher and the +voice of the graduate. And the burden of their message is that +no educational system is genuinely democratic which may ignore +with impunity the criticisms and suggestions of the teacher who is +expected to carry out the system and the graduate who is asked to +finance it. + +The teachers' point of view is finding expression in the various +organizations 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 Association +of College Professors, started in the spring of 1913 by professors +of Columbia and Johns Hopkins. At a preliminary meeting at +Baltimore, in November, 1913, unofficial representatives from +Johns Hopkins, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, Clark, +and Wisconsin were present, and a committee of twenty-five was +appointed, with Professor Dewey of Columbia as chairman, "to arrange +a plan of organization and draw up a constitution." President +Schurman, in a report to the trustees of Cornell, makes the situation +clear when he says: + +"The university is an intellectual organization, composed essentially +of devotees of knowledge--some investigating, some communicating, +some acquiring--but all dedicated to the intellectual life.... The +Faculty is essentially the university; yet in the governing boards +of American universities the Faculty is without representation." +President Schurman has suggested that one third of the board +consist of faculty representatives. At Wellesley, since the +founder's death, the trustees have welcomed recommendations from +the faculty for departmental appointments and promotions, and this +practice now obtains at Yale and Princeton; the trustees of Princeton +have also voted voluntarily to confer on academic questions with +a committee elected by the faculty. + +An admirable exposition of the teachers' case is found in an +article on "Academic Freedom" by Professor Howard Crosby Warren +of the Department of Psychology at Princeton, in the Atlantic Monthly +for November, 1914. Professor Warren says that "In point of fact, +the teacher to-day is not a free, responsible agent. His career is +practically under the control of laymen. Fully three quarters +of our scholars occupy academic positions; and in America, at +least, the teaching investigator, whatever professional standing +he may have attained, is subject to the direction of some body of +men outside his own craft. As investigator he may be quite +untrammeled, but as teacher, it has been said, he is half tyrant +and half slave.... + +"The scholar is dependent for opportunity to practice his calling, +as well as for material advancement, on a governing board which +is generally controlled by clergymen, financiers, or representatives +of the state.... + +"The absence of true professional responsibility, coupled with +traditional accountability to a group of men devoid of technical +training, narrows the outlook of the average college professor and +dwarfs his ideals. Any serious departure from existing educational +practice, such as the reconstruction of a course or the adoption +of a new study, must be justified by a group of laymen and their +executive agent.... + +"In determining the professional standing of a scholar and the +soundness of his teachings, surely the profession itself should be +the 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 of +the colleges made the very practical discovery that it was the duty +and privilege of the alumnus to raise funds for the support of +his Alma Mater. It was but natural that the graduates who banded +together, usually at the instigation of trustees or directors and +always with their blessing, to secure the conditional gifts +proffered to universities and colleges by American multimillionaires, +should quickly become sensitive to the fact that they had no power +to direct the spending of the money which they had so efficiently +and laboriously collected. An individual alumnus with sufficient +wealth to endow a chair or to erect a building could usually give +his gift on his own terms; but alumni as a body had no way of +influencing the policy of the institutions which they were helping +to support. + +The result of this awakening has been what President Emeritus +William Jewett Tucker of Dartmouth has called the "Alumni Movement." +More than ten years ago, President Hadley of Yale was aware of +the stirrings of this movement, when he said, "The influence of +the public sentiment of the graduates is so overwhelming, that +wherever there is a chance for its organized cooperation, faculties +and students... are only too glad to follow it." + +It would be incorrect, however, to give the impression that graduates +had had absolutely no share in the government of their respective +colleges before the Alumni Movement assumed its present proportions. +Representatives of the alumni have had a voice in the affairs of +Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Self-perpetuating boards of trustees +have elected to their membership a certain number of mature alumni. +In some instances, as at Wellesley, the association of graduates +nominates the candidates for graduate vacancies on these boards. + +The benefits of alumnae representation on the Board of Trustees +seem to have occurred to the alumnae and the trustees of Wellesley +almost simultaneously. As early as June, 1888, the Alumnae +Association of Wellesley appointed a committee to present to +the trustees a request for alumnae representation on the Board; +but as the Association met but once a year, results could not +be achieved rapidly, and in June, 1889, the committee reported +that it had not presented the petition as it had been informed +unofficially that the possibility of alumnae representation was +already under consideration by the trustees. In fact, the trustees, +at a meeting held the day before the meeting of the Alumnae +Association, this very June of 1889, had elected Mrs. Marian +Pelton Guild, of the class of 1880, a life member of the Board. + +But the alumnae, although appreciating the honor done them by +the election of Mrs. Guild, still did not feel that the question +of representation had been adequately met, and in June, 1891, +a new committee was appointed with instructions to inform itself +thoroughly as to methods employed in other colleges to insure +the representation of the graduate body on governing boards, and +also to convey to the trustees the alumnae's strong desire for +representation of a specified character. And a second time the +trustees forestalled the committee and, in a letter addressed +to the Association and read at the annual meeting in June, 1892, +made known their desire "to avail themselves of the cooperation +of the Association" and to "cement more closely the bond" uniting +the alumnae to the college by granting them further representation +on the Board of Trustees. A committee from the Association was +then appointed to discuss methods with a committee from the Board, +and the results of their deliberations are given by Harriet Brewer +Sterling, Wellesley, '86, in an article in the Wellesley Magazine +for March, 1895. By the terms of a joint agreement between the +Board and the Association, the Association has the right to nominate +three members from its own number for membership on the Board. +These nominees must be graduates of seven years' standing, not +members of the college faculty. Graduates of less than three +years' standing are not qualified to vote for the nominees. The +nominations must be ratified by the Board of Trustees. The term +of service of these alumnae trustees is six years, but a nominee +is chosen every two years. In order to establish this method of +rotation, two of the three candidates first nominated served for +two and four years respectively, instead of six. The first election +was held in the spring of 1894, the nominations were confirmed +by the Board in November, and the three new trustees sat with +the Board for the first time at the February meeting of 1895. + +But as graduate organizations have increased in size, and membership +has been scattered over a wider geographical area, it has become +correspondingly difficult to get at the consensus of graduate opinion +on college matters and to make sure that alumni, or alumnae, +representatives actually do represent their constituents and carry +out their wishes. And the Alumni Movement has arisen to meet +the need for "greater unity of organization in alumni bodies." + +In an article on Graduate Councils, in the Wellesley College News +for April, 1914, Florence S. Marcy Crofut, Wellesley, '97, has +collected interesting evidence of the impetus and expansion of +this new factor in the college world. She writes, "More clearly +than generalization would show, proofs lie in actual organization +and accomplishments of the 'Alumni Movement' which has worked +itself out in what may be called the Graduate Council Movement.... +Since the organization of the Graduate Council of Princeton +University in January, 1905, the Secretary, Mr. H. G. Murray, +to whom Wellesley is deeply indebted, has received requests from +twenty-nine colleges for information in regard to the work of +Princeton's Council." + +Among these twenty-nine colleges was Wellesley, and the plan +for her Graduate Council, presented by the Executive Board of +the Alumnae Association to the business meeting of the Association +on June 21, 1911, and voted at that meeting, is a legitimate +outgrowth of the ideals which led to the formation of the Alumnae +Association in 1880. The preamble of the Association makes this +clear when it says: + +"Remembering the benefits we have received from our alma mater, +we desire to extend the helpful associations of student life, and +to maintain such relations to the college that we may efficiently +aid in her upbuilding and strengthening, to the end that her +usefulness may continually increase." + +In an article describing the formation of the Wellesley Graduate +Council, in the Wellesley College News for October 5, 1911, it +is explained that, "From the time since the 1910-12 Executive +Board (of the Alumnae Association) came into office, it has felt +that there was need for a bond between the alumnae and the college +administration; and it believes that this need will be met by a +small representative (i.e. geographical) definitely chosen graduate +body, which shall act as a clearing-house for the larger Alumnae +Association. The Executive Board recognized also as an additional +reason for organizing such a graduate body, that it was necessary +to do so if the Wellesley Alumnae Association is to keep abreast +of the activities in similar organizations." The purpose of the +Council, as stated in 1911, is a fitting expansion of the Association's +preamble of 1880: + +"That, as our alumnae are increasing in large numbers and are +scattered more and more widely, it will be of advantage to them +and to the college that an organized, accredited group of alumnae +shall be chosen from different parts of the country to confer with +the college authorities on matters affecting both alumnae and +undergraduate interests, as well as to furnish the college, by +this group, the means of testing the sentiment of Wellesley women +throughout the country on any matter." + +There are advantages in not being a pioneer, and Wellesley has +been able to profit by the experience of her predecessors in this +movement, particularly Princeton and Smith. Membership in the +Councils of Wellesley and Smith is essentially on the same +geographical basis, but Wellesley is unique among the Councils +in having a faculty representation. The relation between faculty +and alumnae at Wellesley has always been markedly cordial, and +in welcoming to the Council representatives of the faculty who +are not graduates of the college, the alumnae would seem to indicate +that their aims and ideals for their Alma Mater are at one with +those of the faculty. + +The membership of the Wellesley Graduate Council is composed +of the president and dean of the college, ex officio; ten members +of the Academic Council, chosen by that body, no more than two +of whom may be alumnae; the three alumnae trustees; the members +of the Executive Board of the Alumnae Association; and the councilors +from the Wellesley clubs. As there were more than fifty Wellesley +clubs already in existence in 1915, and every club of from twenty-five +to one hundred members is allowed one councilor, and every club of +more than one hundred members is allowed one councilor for each +additional hundred, while neighboring clubs of less than twenty-five +members may unite and be represented jointly by one councilor, +it will be seen that the Council is a large and constantly growing +body. Clubs such as the Boston Wellesley Club, and the New York +Wellesley Club, which already had a large membership, received +a tremendous impetus to increase their numbers after the formation +of the Council. All members of the Council, with the exception of +the president of the college and the dean, who are permanent, +serve for two years. + +The officers of the Graduate Council are the corresponding officers +of the Alumnae Association, and also serve for two years. The +Executive Committee of five members includes the president and +secretary of the Council, an alumna trustee chosen annually from +their own number by the three alumnae trustees, and two members +at large. + +The Council meets twice during the academic year, at the college; +in February, for a period of three days or less, following the +mid-year examinations, and in June, when the annual meeting is +held at some time previous to the annual meeting of the Alumnae +Association. In this respect the Wellesley Council again differs +from that of Smith, whose committee of five makes but one official +annual visit to the college,--in January. The "Vassar Provisional +Alumnae Council", like the Wellesley Graduate Council, must hold +at least two yearly meetings at the college, but unlike Wellesley, +it elects a chairman who may not be at the same time the President +of the Vassar Associate Alumnae. Bryn Mawr, we are told by +Miss Crofut, has no Graduate Council corresponding exactly to +the Councils of other colleges; but her academic committee of seven +members meets "at least once a year with the President of the College +and a committee of the faculty to discuss academic affairs." + +The possibilities which lie before the Wellesley Council may be +better understood if we enumerate a few of the activities undertaken +by the Councils of other colleges. At Princeton, since 1905, more +than two million five hundred thousand dollars has been raised +by the Council's efforts. The Preceptorial System has been +inaugurated and is being slowly developed. The university has been +brought more prominently before preparatory schools. All the +colleges are feeling the need of keeping in touch with the +preparatory schools, not for the sake of mere numbers, but to +secure the best students. Doctor Tucker has suggested that +Dartmouth alumni endow outright, "substantial scholarships in +high schools with which it is desirable to establish relations," +and the suggestion is well worth the consideration of Wellesley +women. The Yale Alumni Advisory Board has distributed to the +"so-called Yale Preparatory Schools" and to schoolboys in many +cities, a pamphlet on "Life at Yale." And Yale has also turned its +attention to tuition charges, "academic-Sheffield relations", the +future of the Yale Medical School, the Graduate Employment Bureau. + +All of these Councils are concerned with the intellectual and moral +tone of the undergraduates. Wellesley's Graduate Council has +a Publicity Committee, one of whose functions is to prevent wrong +reports of college matters from getting into the press. Mrs. Helene +Buhlert Magee, Wellesley, '03, who was made Chairman of the +Intercollegiate Committee on Press Bureaus, in 1914, and was at +that time also the Manager of the Wellesley Press Board, reminds +us that Wellesley is the only college trying to regulate its +publicity through its alumnae clubs in different parts of the +country, and gives us reason to hope that in time we shall have +publicity agents trained in good methods, "since the members of +each year's College Press Board, as they go forth, naturally become +the press representatives of their respective clubs." + +The Council has also a Committee on Undergraduate Activities, +whose duty it is to "obtain information regarding the interests +of the undergraduates and from time to time to make suggestions +concerning the conduct of the same as they affect the alumnae or +bring the college before the general public." This committee +proposes a Rally Day and a Freshman Forum, to be conducted each +year by a representative alumna equipped to set forth the ideals +and 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 find +their way to work other than teaching," and to "present a survey +of all the possibilities open to women in the field of industry +to-day," this committee welcomes the cooperation of Miss Florence +Jackson, a graduate of Smith and for some years a member of the +Department of Chemistry at Wellesley, who is now at the head of +the Appointment Bureau of the Women's Educational and Industrial +Union of Boston. Miss Jackson's practical knowledge of students, +her wide acquaintance with vocational opportunities other than +teaching, and her belief in the "value of the cultural course as +a sound general foundation most valuable for providing the sense +of proportion and vision necessary for the college woman who is +to be a useful citizen," make her an ideal director of this branch +of the Council's activities, and the college gladly promotes her +work among the students; the seniors especially welcome her +expert guidance. + +In framing a model constitution for the use of alumnae classes, +the Council has done a piece of work which should arouse the +gratitude of all future historians of Wellesley, for the model +constitution contains an article requiring each class to keep a +record which shall contain brief information as to the members of the +class and shall be published in the autumn following each reunion. +lf these records are accurately kept, and if copies are placed on +file in the College Library, accessible to investigators, the next +historian of Wellesley will be spared the baffling paucity of +information 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, the +relation between the faculty and the Graduate Council is intimate +and helpful to both, in the best sense. Relations with the +trustees, as a body, were slower in forming. President Pendleton, +at the Council's fifth session,--in the third year of its +existence,--reported the trustees as much interested in its formation. +At the sixth session of the Council, in June, 1914, when the campaign +for the Fire Fund was in full swing, Mr. Lewis Kennedy Morse, +the able and devoted treasurer of the college, and member of +the Board of Trustees, addressed the members upon "The Business +Side of College Administration",--a talk as interesting as it was +frank and friendly. In December, 1914, when the first of the new +buildings was already going up on the site of old College Hall, +the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees invited a joint +committee from the faculty and the alumnae to meet with them to +discuss the architectural plans and possibilities for the "new +Wellesley." The Alumnae Committee consisted of eleven members +and included representatives "from '83 to 1913, and from Colorado +on the west to Massachusetts on the east." Its chairman was +Candace C. Stimson, Wellesley, '92, whose name will always ring +through Wellesley history as the Chairman of the Alumnae Committee +for Restoration and Endowment,--the committee that conducted the +great nine months' campaign for the Fire Fund. The Faculty +Committee, of five members, chose as its chairman, Professor +Alice V.V. Brown, the head of the Department of Art. + +Miss Stimson's report to the Graduate Council of this meeting of +the joint committee with the Executive Board, indicates a "strong +sense of good understanding and a feeling of great harmony and +desire for cooperation on the part of Trustees toward the alumnae." +The Faculty Committee and Alumnae Committee were invited to continue +and to hold further conferences with the Trustees' Committee +"as occasion might offer." The episode is prophetic of the future +relations of these three bodies with one another. President Nichols +of Dartmouth is reported as saying that Dartmouth, founded as +the ideal of an individual and governed at first by one man, has +grown to the point where it is no longer to be controlled as +a monarchy or an empire, but as a republic. Such an utterance +does 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 members +are all those who have received the Baccalaureate degree from +Wellesley, and all those who have received the Master's degree and +have applied for membership. But only dues-paying members receive +notices of meetings and have the right to vote. Non-graduates who +pay the annual dues receive the Alumnae Register, and the notices +and publications of the alumnae, but do not vote. + +Authoritative statistics concerning the occupations of Wellesley +women are not available. About forty per cent of the alumnae +are married. The exact proportion of teachers is not known, but +it is of course large. The Wellesley College Christian Association +is of great assistance to the alumnae recorder in keeping in touch +with Wellesley missionaries, but even the Christian Association +disclaims infallibility in questions of numbers. An article in +the News for February, 1912, by Professor Kendrick, the head +of the Department of Bible Study, states that no record is kept +of missionaries at work in our own country, but there were then +missionaries from Wellesley in Mexico and Brazil, as well as those +who were doing city missionary work in the United States. The +missionary record for 1915 would seem to indicate that there were +then about one hundred Wellesley women at mission stations in +foreign 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 an +article on the occupations and professions of Wellesley graduates, +with incomplete lists of the names of those who are engaged in +Law, Medicine, Social Work, Journalism, Teaching, Business, and +all the other departments of life into which women are penetrating; +and from this all too meager material, the historian is able to +glean 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 the +National 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 preparatory +schools in Boston; Buffalo Seminary; Kent Place School, and a +coeducational school, both in Summit, New Jersey; Hosmer Hall, in +St. Louis; Ingleside School, Taconic School and the Catherine +Aiken 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 girls +in Germany, France, and Italy. This does not take into account +the many Wellesley graduates holding positions of importance in +colleges, in high schools, and in the grammar and primary schools +throughout the country. + +The tentative list of Wellesley women holding positions of importance +in social work, in 1914, is equally impressive. The head workers +at Denison House,--the Boston College Settlement,--at the Baltimore +Settlement, at Friendly House, Brooklyn, and Hartley House, New York, +are all graduates of Wellesley. Probation officers, settlement +residents, 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 many +Wellesley names among their numbers. A Wellesley woman is working +at the Hindman School in Kentucky, among the poor whites; another +is General Superintendent of the Massachusetts Commission for +the Blind; another is Associate Field Secretary of the New York +Charity 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 unusual +distinction in this field. Mary K. Conyngton, Wellesley, '94, +took part in the Federal investigation into the condition of woman +and child wage earners, ordered by Congress in 1907, and has +made a study of the relations between the occupations, and the +criminality, of women. Her book "How to Help", published by +The Macmillan Company, embodies the results of her experience +in organized charities, investigations for improved housing, and +other industrial and municipal reforms. In 1909, Miss Conyngton +received a permanent appointment in the Bureau of Labor at +Washington, D.C. + +Wellesley has her lawyers and doctors, her architects, her +journalists, her scholars; every year their tribes increase. +Among her many journalists are Caroline Maddocks, 1892, and +Agnes Edwards Rothery, 1909. + +Of her poets, novelists, short story writers, and essayists, the +names of Katharine Lee Bates, Estelle M. Hurll, Abbie Carter +Goodloe, 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 technical +publications of Gertrude Schopperle, Laura A. Hibbard, Eleanor +A. McC. Gamble, Lucy J. Freeman, Eloise Robinson, and Flora Isabel +McKinnon, 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 distinction +of a national reputation; it has been adopted as one of America's +own 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 Thomas +Y. Crowell Company, volumes on English and Spanish travel, on the +English Religious Drama, a Chaucer for children, an edition of +the works of Hawthorne, and a forthcoming edition of the Elizabethan +dramatist, Heywood. Since her undergraduate days, when she wrote +the poems for Wellesley's earliest festivals, down all the years +in which she has been building up her Department of English +Literature, this loyal daughter has given herself without stint to +her Alma Mater. In Wellesley's roll call of alumnae, there is no +name 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 attitude +of the alumnae between March 17, 1914, and January 1, 1915, the +nine months and a half during which the campaign was being carried +on to raise the fund for restoration and endowment, after the fire. +And they did more than listen; they shook the trees on which the +dollars grew, and as the dollars fell, caught them with nimble +fingers. They fell "thick as leaves in Vallombrosa." + +Between June, 1913, and June, 1915, $1,267,230.53 was raised by +and through Wellesley women. + +In 1913, a campaign for a Million Dollar Endowment Fund had been +started, to provide means for increasing the salaries of the +teachers. Salaries at Wellesley were at that time lower than +those paid in every other woman's college, but one, in New England. +The fund had been started with an anonymous gift of one hundred +thousand dollars, and the committee, with Candace C. Stimson as +chairman, planned to secure the one million dollars in two years. +By March, 1914, a second anonymous gift of one hundred thousand +dollars had been received, the General Education Board had pledged +two hundred thousand dollars conditioned on the raising of the +whole amount, Wellesley women had given fifteen thousand dollars, +and there had been a few other gifts from outsiders. The amount +still to be raised on the Million Dollar Fund at the time of the +fire was five hundred and seventy thousand dollars. + +President Pendleton, in a letter to Wellesley friends, printed +in the News on March 28, 1914, ten days after the fire, writes: +"Our Campaign for the Million Dollar Endowment Fund must not be +dropped... we have between five and six hundred thousand dollars +still to raise. All the new buildings must be equipped and +maintained. The sum that our Alma Mater requires for immediate +needs is two million dollars. But this is not all. Another million +will soon be needed, properly to house our departments of Botany +and Chemistry, and to provide a Student-Alumnae building, and +sufficient dormitories to house on the campus the more than five +hundred students now living in the village. We are facing a +great crisis in the history of the College. The future of our +Alma Mater is in our hands. Crippled by this loss, Wellesley +cannot continue to hold in the future its place in the front rank +of colleges, unless the response is generous and immediate. + +"To sum up, Alma Mater needs three million dollars, two million +of which must be raised immediately. Shall we be daunted by +this sum? We are justly proud of the courage and self-control +of those dwellers in College Hall, both Faculty and Students. +Shall we be outdone by them in facing a crisis? Shall we be less +courageous, less resourceful? The public press has described +the fire as a triumph, not a disaster. Shall we continue the +triumph, and make our College in equipment what it has proved +itself in spirit--The College Beautiful? We can and we must." + +The response of the alumnae to this stirring appeal was instant +and ardent. The committee for the Million Dollar Endowment Fund, +with its valiant chairman, Miss Stimson, shouldered the new +responsibility. "It is a big contract," they said, "it comes at +a season of business depression, and the daughters of Wellesley +are 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 and +loyalty respond." + +Then came the offer of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars +by the Rockefeller Foundation, if the college would raise an +additional million and a quarter by January 1, 1915. The intrepid +Committee of Alumnae added to its numbers, merged the two funds, +and adopted the new name of Alumnae Committee for Restoration +and 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 both +graduate and non-graduate members, a chairman for each club was +appointed, and made responsible for reaching all the Wellesley women +in her geographical section, whether they were members of the club +or not. In states where there were no clubs, state committees +rounded up the scattered alumnae and non-graduates. Fifty-three +clubs appear in the report, twenty-four state committees, and eight +foreign countries,--Canada, Mexico, Porto Rico, South America, +Europe, Turkey, India, and Persia. Every state in the Union was +heard from, and contributions also came from clubs in Japan and +China. The campaign actually circled the globe. By June, 1914, +Miss Jenkins tells us, the appeals to the clubs and state committees +had been sent out, and many had been heard from, but in order +to make sure that no one escaped, the work was now taken up through +committees from the thirty-six classes, from 1879 to 1914. In +March, 1915, when Miss Jenkins's report was printed in the News, +3823 of Wellesley's daughters had contributed, and belated +contributions were still coming in. In June, 1915, 3903, out of +4840, 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 direct +contributions from alumnae, and from social members who did not +graduate with the class, but gifts which alumnae and former students +have secured from interested friends. Of the remaining classes, +five show a contributing list of more than ninety per cent of the +members; eleven show between eighty and ninety per cent; and +fifteen between seventy and eighty per cent. Besides the alumnae, +1119 non-graduates had contributed. None of Wellesley's daughters +have been more loyal and more helpful than the non-graduates. + +An analysis of the amount, $1,267,230.53, given by and through +Wellesley women between June, 1913, and June, 1915, shows four +gifts of fifty thousand dollars and over, all of which came through +Wellesley women, thirty gifts of from two thousand dollars to +twenty-five thousand dollars, three quarters of which came from +Wellesley women, and many gifts of less than two thousand dollars, +"only a negligible quantity of which came from any one but alumnae +and former students." + +Throughout the nine months of the campaign, the Alumnae Committee +and the trustees were working in close touch with each other. +Doctor George Herbert Palmer, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at +Harvard, was the chairman of the committee from the trustees, and +he describes himself as chaperoned by alumnae at every point of +the tour which he so successfully undertook in order to interview +possible contributors. To him, to Bishop Lawrence, the President +of the Board of Trustees, and to Mr. Lewis Kennedy Morse, the +treasurer, the college owes a debt of gratitude which it can never +repay. No knight of old ever succored distressed damsel more +valiantly, more selflessly, than these three twentieth-century +gentlemen succored and served the beggar maid, Wellesley, in the +cause of higher education. Through the activities of the trustees +were secured the provisional gifts of seven hundred and fifty +thousand dollars from the Rockefeller Foundation, and two hundred +thousand dollars from the General Education Board, Mr. Andrew +Carnegie's $95,446.27, to be applied to the extension of the library, +and gifts from Mrs. Russell Sage, Mrs. David P. Kimball, and many +others. Mrs. Lilian Horsford Farlow, a trustee, and the daughter +of Prof. Eben N. Horsford, to whom Wellesley is already deeply +indebted, gave ten thousand dollars toward the Fire Fund; and +through Mrs. Louise McCoy North, trustee and alumna, an unknown +benefactor has given the new building which stands on the hill +above the lake. Because of the modesty of donors, it has been +impossible to make public a complete list of the gifts. + +From the four undergraduate classes, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, and +from general undergraduate gifts and activities, came $60,572.04, +raised in all sorts of ways,--from the presentation of "Beau +Brummel" before a Boston audience, to the polishing of shoes +at ten cents a shine. One 1917 girl earned ten dollars during +the summer vacation by laughing at all her father's jokes, whether +old or new, during that period of recreation. Other enterprising +sophomores "swatted" flies at the rate of one cent for two, darned +stockings for five cents a hole, shampooed, mended, raked leaves. +Members of the class of 1916 sold lead pencils and jelly, scrubbed +floors, baked angel cake, counted knot holes in the roof of a +summer camp. Besides "Beau Brummel", 1915 gave dancing lessons +and sold vacuum cleaners. One student who was living in College Hall +at the time of the fire is said to have made ten dollars by charging +ten cents for every time that she told of her escape from the +building. The class of 1918, entering as freshmen in September, +after the fire, raised $5,540.60 for the fund when they had been +organized only a few weeks. + +The methods of the alumnae were no less varied and amusing. +The Southern California Club started a College Hall Fund, and +notices were sent out all over the country requesting every alumna +to 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 was +the most important, operettas, masques, garden parties, costume +parties, salad demonstrations, candy sales, bridge parties; a +moving-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 subscriptions +to magazines, with a profit of $175.75 for the fund. She comments +on Wellesley taste in magazines by revealing the fact that the +Atlantic Monthly "received by far the largest number of subscriptions." +One girl in Colorado baked bread, "but forsook it to give dancing +lessons, as paying even better!" In New York, Chicago, and other +cities, the tickets for theatrical performances were bought up +and sold again at advanced prices. A book of Wellesley recipes +was compiled and sold. An alumna of '92 made a charming etching +of 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 three +Saturdays in May, 1914, and netted somewhat over seventy-five +dollars a day for the three days. One Wellesley club charged ten +cents for the privilege of shaking hands with its "fire-heroine." + +On Easter Monday, 1914, when the college had just come back to +work, after the fire, the "Freeman Fowls" arranged an egg hunt, +with egg-shaped tickets at ten cents, for the fund. The students +from Freeman Cottage, dressed as roosters, very scarlet as to +topknot and wattles, very feather dustery as to tail, waylaid +the unwary on campus paths and lured them to buy these tickets +and to hunt for the hundreds of brightly colored eggs which these +commercially canny fowls had hidden on the Art Building Hill. +After the hunt was successfully over, the hunters came down to +the front of the new, very new, administration building, already +called the Wellesley Hencoop, where they were greeted by the +ghosts and wraiths and other astral presentments of the vanished +statues of College Hall, and where the roosters burst into an +antiphonal 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 and +doors were already wreathed in vines and crimson (paper) roses +which had sprung up and blossomed over night, the college now +hastened to the top of College Hall Hill, whence, at the crowing +of Chanticleer, the egg-rolling began. The Nest Egg for the fund, +achieved by these enterprising "Freeman Fowls", was about +fifty-two dollars. + +Far off in Honolulu there were "College Capers" in which eight +Wellesley 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 revelation +of feeling witnesses to the loyalty and love of the Wellesley +alumnae. One writes: + +"A month ago, because of obligations and a very small salary, +I thought I could give nothing to the Endowment Plan. By Saturday +morning (after the fire) I had decided I must give a dollar a month. +By night I had received a slight increase in salary, therefore l +shall send two dollars a month as long as I am able. I wish it +were millions, my admiration and sympathy are so unbounded." + +Another says: "Perhaps you may know that when I was a Senior +I received a scholarship of (I think) $350. It has long been my +wish and dream to return that money with large interest, in return +for all I received from my Alma Mater, and in acknowledgment of +the success I have since had in my work because of her. I have +never been able to lay aside the sum I had wished to give, but +now that the need has come I can wait no longer, I am therefore +sending you my check for $500, hoping that even this sum, so small +in the face of the immense loss, may aid a little because it comes +at the right moment. It goes with the wish that it were many, +many times the amount, and with the sincerest acknowledgment of +my indebtedness to Wellesley." + +From China came the message: "In an indefinite way I had intended +to send five or ten dollars some time this year (to the Endowment +Fund), but the loss of College Hall makes me realize afresh what +Wellesley 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 you +five dollars a month for ten months." + +From nearer home: "My sister and I intend to go without spring +suits this year in order to give twenty-five dollars each toward +the 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, who +did not shed a tear as College Hall burned--I could not speak, +my voice was so choked with tears, and that night I went supperless +to bed. But though it seems impossible to believe that College Hall +is a thing of the past, yet one cannot but feel that from this +so great calamity great good will come--a broader, higher spirit +will be manifested; we shall cease to think in classes, but all +unite in great loving thought for the good and the upbuilding--in +more senses than one--of our Alma Mater." + +And the messages and money from friends of the college were no +less touching. The children of the Wellesley Kindergarten, which +is connected with the Department of Education in the college, +held a sale of their own little handicrafts and made fifty dollars +for 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 American +education. 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 to +ride by in the train without contributing this mite to your +Rebuilding Fund." + +A woman in Tasmania sent a dollar, "for you are setting a great +ideal for the broad education of women.... We (in Australia) have +much to thank the higher democratic education of America for." + +From many little children money came: from little girls who hoped +to come to Wellesley some day, and from the sons and daughters +of Wellesley students. + +The business men of Wellesley town subscribed generously. Many +men as well as women have expressed their admiration of the college +in a tangible way. + +And from Vassar, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Mt. Holyoke, Radcliffe, Barnard, +Wells, Simmons, and Sweet Briar, contributions came pouring in +unsolicited. Harvard, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, the +Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts, and others had +already loaned equipment and material for the impoverished +laboratories, and direct contributions to the fund came from the +University of Idaho, the Musical Clubs of Dartmouth and the +Institute of Technology; from Hobart College, in cooperation with +Wellesley alumnae, in Geneva, New York; from the Emerson College +of Oratory, the College Club of Tucson, Arizona, the Boston and +Connecticut branches of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, +the Fitchburg Smith College Club, and the Cornell Woman's Club +of New York City. To Smith College, which had so lately raised +its million, Wellesley was also indebted for helpful suggestions +in planning the campaign. + +When the great war broke out in August, 1914, wise unbelievers +shook their heads and commiserated Wellesley; but the dauntless +Chairman of the Alumnae Restoration and Endowment Committee +continued to press on with her campaign--to draw dilatory clubs +into line, to prod sluggish classes into activity, to remind +individuals of their opportunity. + +The pledges for the last forty thousand dollars of the fund came +snowing in during Christmas week, and eleven o'clock of the evening +of December 31, 1914, found Miss Stimson's committee in New York +counting at top speed the sheaves of checks and pledges which had +been arriving all day. The remarkable thing about the campaign was +the great number of small amounts which came in, and the number +of alumnae--not the wealthy ones--who doubled their pledges at +the last minute. It was the one dollar and the five-dollar pledges +which really saved the day and made it possible for the college +to 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 in +those flames. Yet already the Wellesley that looks back upon +her old self is a different Wellesley. All her repressed desires, +spiritual, intellectual, aesthetic, are suddenly set free. Her +lovers and her daughters feel the very campus kindle and quicken +beneath 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 of +taste, that the old Wellesley, on the far side of the fire, strove +after but never knew; prophetic of a pinnacled and aspiring +scholarship whose solid foundations were laid forty years deep +in Christian trust and patience; prophetic of a questing spirit +freed from the old reproach of provincialism; of a ministering +spirit in which the virtue of true courtesy is fulfilled. + +The end of her first half century will see the campus flowering +with the outward and visible signs of the new Wellesley; and even +as 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. + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Story of Wellesley, by Florence Converse + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF WELLESLEY *** + +***** This file should be named 2362.txt or 2362.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/3/6/2362/ + +Produced by Stephanie L. 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Johnson (Wellesley '91) +sljhnsn@ma.ultranet.com + + + + + +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 a +Boston paper came out to the college by appointment to interview +a group of Wellesley women, alumnae and teachers, grief-stricken +by the catastrophe which had befallen them. He came impetuously, +with that light-hearted breathlessness so characteristic of young +reporters in the plays of Bernard Shaw and Arnold Bennett. He +was charmingly in character, and he sent his voice out on the run +to 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 it +set down in the courteous and sympathetic report which he afterwards +wrote for his paper. + +And readers who come to this story of Wellesley for pranks will +be disappointed likewise. Not that the lighter side of the +Wellesley life is omitted; play-days and pageants, all the bright +revelry of the college year, belong to the story. Wellesley would +not be Wellesley if they were left out. But her alumnae, her +faculty, and her undergraduates all agree that the college was +not founded primarily for the sake of Tree Day, and that the +Senior Play is not the goal of the year's endeavor. + +It is the story of the Wellesley her daughters and lovers know +that 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 kindly +read certain parts of the manuscript, to Professor Katharine Lee +Bates, Professor Vida D. Scudder, and Mrs. Marian Pelton Guild; +for historical material, to Miss Charlotte Howard Conant's "Address +Delivered in Memory of Henry Fowle Durant in Wellesley College +Chapel", February 18, 1906, to Mrs. Louise McCoy North's Historical +Address, 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 Margarethe +Muller'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 Endowment +Committee, and to the many others among alumnae and faculty, whose +letters and articles I quote. Last but not least in my grateful +memory are all those painstaking and accurate chroniclers, the +editors of the Wellesley Courant, Prelude, Magazine, News, and +Legenda, whose labors went so far to lighten mine. + +F.C. + + + +CONTENTS + + +I. PREFACE + + +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 essentially +romantic quality of its great adventures is confirmed by the +"beauty touched with strangeness" which illumines their true +perspective, we are discovering, what the adventurers themselves +always knew, that the movement for the higher education of women +was 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 of +his sisters and his daughters--or more probably other men's +daughters--to prove that the intellectual heritage must be a common +heritage if Democracy was to be a working theory, missed the beauty +of the picture. He saw the slim beginning of a procession of +young women, whose obstinate, dreaming eyes beheld the visions +hitherto relegated by scriptural prerogative and masculine commentary +to their brothers; inevitably his outraged conservatism missed +the beauty; and the strangeness he called queer. That he should +have missed the democratic significance of the movement is less +to his credit. But he did miss it, fifty years ago and for several +years thereafter, even as he is still missing the democratic +significance of other movements to-day. Processions still pass +him by,--for peace, for universal suffrage, May Day, Labor Day, +and those black days when the nations mobilize for war, they pass +him by,--and the last thing he seems to discover about them is +their democratic significance. But after a long while the meaning +of it all has begun to penetrate. To-day, his daughters go to +college as a matter of course, and he has forgotten that he ever +grudged them the opportunity. + +They remind him of it, sometimes, with filial indirection, by +celebrating the benevolence, the intellectual acumen, the idealism +of the few men, exceptional in their day, who saw eye to eye with +Mary Lyon and her kind; the men who welcomed women to Oberlin +and Michigan, who founded Vassar and Wellesley and Bryn Mawr, +and so helped to organize the procession. Their reminders are even +beginning to take form as records of achievement; annals very far +from meager, for achievement piles up faster since Democracy set +the gate of opportunity on the crack, and we pack more into a half +century 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 above +all, 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 statistics +concerning 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 fullness +of life that they connote to American women, middle-aged and +young,--blotted out; coeducational institutions harassed by numbers +and inventing drastic legislation to keep out the women; man still +the almoner of education, and woman his dependent. From all these +hampering probabilities the women's colleges save us to-day. This +is what constitutes their negative value to education. + +Their positive contribution cannot be summarized so briefly; its +scattered chronicle must be sought in the minutes of trustees' +meetings, where it modestly evades the public eye, in the academic +formalities of presidents' reports and the journalistic naivete of +college periodicals; in the diaries of early graduates; in newspaper +clippings and magazine "write-ups"; in historical sketches to +commemorate the decennial or the quarter-century; and from the +lips of the pioneers,--teacher and student. For, in the words of +the graduate thesis, "we are still in the period of the sources." +The would-be historian of a woman's college to-day is in much +the same relation to her material as the Venerable Bede was to +his when he set out to write his Ecclesiastical History. The thought +brings us its own inspiration. If we sift our miracles with as +much discrimination as he sifted his, we shall be doing well. We +shall discover, among other things, that in addition to the composite +influence which these colleges all together exert, each one also +brings to bear upon our educational problems her individual +experience and ideals. Wellesley, for example, with her +women-presidents, and the heads of her departments all women +but three,--the professors of Music, Education, and French,--has +her peculiar testimony to offer concerning the administrative and +executive powers of women as educators, their capacity for initiative +and organization. + +This is why a general history of the movement for the higher +education of women, although of value, cannot tell us all we need +to know, since of necessity it approaches the subject from the +outside. The women's colleges must speak as individuals; each one +must tell her own story, and tell it soon. The bright, experimental +days are definitely past--except in the sense in which all education, +alike for men and women, is perennially an experiment--and if +the romance of those days is to quicken the imaginations of college +girls one hundred, two hundred, five hundred years hence, the women +who were the experiment and who lived the romance must write it down. + +For Wellesley in particular this consciousness of standing at +the threshold of a new epoch is especially poignant. Inevitably +those forty years before the fire of 1914 will go down in her +history as a period apart. Already for her freshmen the old college +hall is a mythical labyrinth of memory and custom to which they +have no clue. New happiness will come to the hill above the lake, +new beauty will crown it, new memories will hallow it, but--they +will all be new. And if the coming generations of students are +to realize that the new Wellesley is what she is because her +ideals, though purged as by fire, are still the old ideals; if they +are to understand the continuity of Wellesley's tradition, we who +have come through the fire must tell them the story. + + +II. + +On Wednesday, November 25, 1914, the workmen who were digging +among the fire-scarred ruins at the extreme northeast corner of +old College Hall unearthed a buried treasure. To the ordinary +treasure seeker it would have been a thing of little worth,--a rough +bowlder of irregular shape and commonplace proportions,--but +Wellesley eyes saw the symbol. It was the first stone laid in +the foundations of Wellesley College. There was no ceremony when +it was laid, and there were no guests. Mr. and Mrs. Henry Fowle +Durant 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, I871, +the corner stone was laid, by Mrs. Durant, at the northwest corner +of the building, under the dining-room wing; it is significant that +from the foundations up through the growth and expansion of all +the years, women have had a hand in the making of Wellesley. +In September, as in August, there were no guests invited, but at +the laying of the corner stone there was a simple ceremony; each +workman was given a Bible, by Mr. Durant, and a Bible was placed +in 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 Christmas +vacation, only a little group of people gathered about the place +where, forty-three years before, Mrs. Durant had laid the stone. +Mrs. Durant was too ill to be present, but her cousin, Miss Fannie +Massie, lifted the tin box out of its hollow and handed it to +President Pendleton who opened the Bible and read aloud the +inscription: + + "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 passages +from the Scriptures: II Chronicles, 29: 11-16, and the phrase +from the one hundred twenty-seventh Psalm: "Except the Lord +build the house they labor in vain that build it." + + +This stone is now the corner stone of the new building which rises +on College Hill, and another, the keystone of the arch above the +north door of old College Hall, will be set above the doorway of +the new administration building, where its deep-graven I.H.S. +will daily remind those who pass beneath it of Wellesley's unbroken +tradition of Christian scholarship and service. + +But we must go back to the days before one stone was laid upon +another, if we are to begin at the beginning of Wellesley's story. +It was in 1855, the year after his marriage, that Mr. Durant bought +land in Wellesley village, then a part of Needham, and planned +to make the place his summer home. Every one who knew him speaks +of his passion for beauty, and he gave that passion free play when +he chose, all unwittingly, the future site for his college. There +is no fairer region around Boston than this wooded, hilly country +near Natick--"the place of hills"--with its little lakes, its +tranquil, winding river, its hallowed memories of John Eliot and +his Christian Indian chieftains, Waban and Pegan, its treasured +literary associations with Harriet Beecher Stowe. Chief Waban +gave his name, "Wind" or "Breath", to the college lake; on +Pegan Hill, from which so many Wellesley girls have looked out +over the blue distances of Massachusetts, Chief Pegan's efficient +and time-saving squaw used to knit his stockings without heels, +because "He handsome foot, and he shapes it hisself"; and Natick +is the Old Town of Mrs. Stowe's "Old Town Folks." + +In those first years after they began to spend their summers at +Wellesley, the family lived in a brown house near what is now the +college greenhouse, but Mr. Durant meant to build his new house +on the hill above the lake, or on the site of Stone Hall, and +to found a great estate for his little son. From time to time +he bought more land; he laid out avenues and planted them with +trees; and then, the little boy for whom all this joy and beauty +were destined fell ill of diphtheria and died, July 3, 1863, +after a short illness. + +The effect upon the grief-stricken father was startling, and to +many 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 had +been of a conventional type. During the child's illness he +underwent an old-fashioned religious conversion. The miracle +has happened before, to greater men, and the world has always +looked 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 described +as having "a powerful head, chiseled features, black hair, which +he wore rather long, an olive complexion, and eyes which flashed +the lightnings of wrath and scorn and irony; then suddenly the +soft rays of sweetness and persuasion for the jury. He could +coax, intimidate, terrify; and his questions cut like knives." +The author of "Bench and Bar in Massachusetts", who was in college +with him, says of him: "During the five years of his practice +at the Middlesex Bar he underwent such an initiation into the +profession as no other county could furnish. Shrewdness, energy, +resource, strong nerves and mental muscles were needed to ward +off the blows which the trained gladiators of this bar were +accustomed to inflict. With the lessons learned at the Middlesex Bar +he removed to Boston in 1847, where he became associated with +the Honorable Joseph Bell, the brother-in-law of Rufus Choate, +and began a career almost phenomenal in its success. His management +of cases in court was artistic. So well taken were the preliminary +steps, so deeply laid was the foundation, so complete and +comprehensive was the preparation of evidence and so adroitly +was it brought out, so carefully studied and understood were the +characters of jurors,--with their whims and fancies and +prejudices,--that he won verdict after verdict in the face of +the ablest opponents and placed himself by general consent at +the head of the jury lawyers of the Suffolk Bar." Adjectives less +ambiguous and more uncomplimentary than "shrewd" were also applied +to him, and his manner of dominating his juries did not always +call forth praise from his contemporaries. In one of the newspaper +obituaries at the time of his death it is admitted that he had +been "charged with resorting to tricks unbecoming the dignity of +a lawyer," but the writer adds that it is an open question if +some, or indeed all of them were not legitimate enough, and might +not have been paralleled by the practices of some of the ablest +of British and Irish barristers. Both in law and in business--for +he had important commercial interests--he had prospered. He was +rich and a man of the world. Boston, although critical, had not +found it unnatural that he should make himself talked about in +his conduct of jury trials; but the conspicuousness of his conversion +was of another sort: it offended against good taste, and incurred +for him the suspicion of hypocrisy. + +For, with that ardor and impetuosity which seem always to have +made half measures impossible to him, Mr. Durant declared that +so far as he was concerned, the Law and the Gospel were +irreconcilable, and gave up his legal practice. A case which +he had already undertaken for Edward Everett, and from which +Mr. Everett was unwilling to release him, is said to be the last +one he conducted; and he pleaded in public for the last time +in a hearing at the State House in Boston, some years later, when +he won for the college the right to confer degrees, a privilege +which had not been specifically included in the original charter. + +His zeal in conducting religious meetings also offended conventional +people. It was unusual, and therefore unsuitable, for a layman +to preach sermons in public. St. Francis and his preaching friars +had established no precedent in Boston of the 'sixties and +'seventies, and indeed Mr. Durant's evangelical protestantism +might not have relished the parallel. Boston seems, for the most +part, to have averted its eyes from the spectacle of the brilliant, +possibly unscrupulous, some said tricky, lawyer bringing souls +to Christ. But he did bring them. We are told that "The halls +and churches where he spoke were crowded. The training and +experience which had made him so successful a pleader before +judge and jury, now, when he was fired with zeal for Christ's +cause, made him almost irresistible as a preacher. Very many +were led by him to confess the Christian faith. Henry Wilson, +then senator, afterwards vice president, was among them. The +influence of the meetings was wonderful and far-reaching." We +are assured that he "would go nowhere unless the Evangelical +Christians of the place united in an invitation and the ministers +were ready to cooperate." But the whole affair was of course +intensely distasteful to unemotional people; the very fact that +a man could be converted argued his instability; and it is +unquestionably true that Boston's attitude toward Mr. Durant was +reflected for many years in her attitude toward the college which +he founded. + +But over against this picture we can set another, more intimate, +more pleasing, although possibly not more discriminating. When +the early graduates of Wellesley and the early teachers write of +Mr. Durant, they dip their pens in honey and sunshine. The result +is radiant, fiery even, but unconvincingly archangelic. We see +him, "a slight, well-knit figure of medium height in a suit of +gray, with a gray felt hat, the brim slightly turned down; beneath +one could see the beautiful gray hair slightly curling at the ends; +the fine, clear-cut features, the piercing dark eyes, the mouth +that could smile or be stern as occasion might demand. He seemed +to have the working power of half a dozen ordinary persons and +everything received his attention. He took the greatest pride +and delight in making things as beautiful as possible." Or he +is described as "A slight man--with eyes keen as a lawyer's should +be, but gentle and wise as a good man's are, and with a halo of +wavy silver hair. His step was alert, his whole form illuminate +with life." He is sketched for us addressing the college, in +chapel, one September morning of 1876, on the supremacy of Greek +literature, "urging in conclusion all who would venture upon +Hadley's Grammar as the first thorny stretch toward that celestial +mountain 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, was +the first upon her feet, pulling me after her by a tug at my +sleeve, coupled with a moral tug more efficacious still. Perhaps +a dozen of us freshmen, all told, filed into Professor Horton's +recitation room that morning." And again, "His prompt and vigorous +method of introducing a fresh subject to college notice was the +making it a required study for the senior class of the year. +'79 grappled with biology, '80 had a senior diet of geology and +astronomy." To these young women, as to his juries in earlier +days, he could use words "that burned and cut like the lash of +a scourge," and it is evident that they feared "the somber +lightnings 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 of +scholarship, and despite his imperious desire to bring their souls +to Christ. They remember lovingly his little jokes. They tell of +how he came into College Hall one evening, and said that a mother +and daughter had just arrived, and he was perplexed to know where +to put them, but he thought they might stay under the staircase +leading up from the center. And students and teachers, puzzled +by this inhospitality but suspecting a joke somewhere, came out +into the center to find the great cast of Niobe and her daughter +under the stairway at the left, where it stayed through all the +years 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 many +years 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." They +saw him ardent in friendship as in all else. His devoted friend, +and Wellesley's, Professor Eben N. Horsford, has given us a picture +of him which it would be a pity to miss. The two men are standing +on 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 munificence +of Valeria Stone. There in the shadow of the evergreens we lay +down on the carpet of pine foliage and talked,--I remember it +well,--talked long of the problems of life, of things worth +living for; of the hidden ways of Providence as well as of the +subtle ways of men; of the few who rule and are not always +recognized; of the many who are led and are not always conscious +of it; of the survival of the fittest in the battle of life, and +of the constant presence of the Infinite Pity; of the difficulties, +the resolution, the struggle, the conquest that make up the history +of every worthy achievement. I arose with the feeling that I had +been taken into the confidence of one of the most gifted of all +the men it had been my privilege to know. We had not talked of +friendship; we had been unconsciously sowing its seed. He loved +to illustrate its strength and its steadfastness to me; l have +lived to appreciate and reverence the grandeur of the work which +he accomplished here." + + +III. + +If we set them over against each other, the hearsay that besmirches +and the reminiscence that canonizes, we evoke a very human, living +personality: a man of keen intellect, of ardent and emotional +temperament, autocratic, fanatical, fastidious, and beauty-loving; +a loyal friend; an unpleasant enemy. "He saw black black and +white white, for him there was no gray." He was impatient of +mediocrity. "He could not suffer fools gladly." + +No archangel this, but unquestionably a man of genius, consecrated +to the fulfillment of a great vision. It is no wonder that the +early graduates living in the very presence of his high purpose, +his pure intention, his spendthrift selflessness, remember these +things best when they recall old days. After all, these are the +things most worth remembering. + +The best and most carefully balanced study of him which we have +is by Miss Charlotte Howard Conant of the class of '84, in an +address delivered by her in the College Chapel, February 18, 1906, +to commemorate Mr. Durant's birthday. Miss Conant's use of the +biographical material available, and her careful and restrained +estimate of Mr. Durant's character cannot be bettered, and it is +a 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 his +boyhood, was born February 20, 1822, in Hanover, New Hampshire. +His father, William Smith, "was a lawyer of limited means, but +versatile mind and genial disposition." His mother, Harriet Fowle +Smith of Watertown, Massachusetts, was one of five sisters renowned +for their beauty and amiability; she was, we are told, intelligent +as well as beautiful, "a great reader, and a devoted Christian +all 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. and +Mrs. Samuel Ripley in Waltham, to complete his preparation for +Harvard. Miss Conant writes: "Mr. Ripley was pastor of the +Unitarian Church there (in Waltham) from 1809 to 1846, and during +most of that time supplemented the small salary of a country minister +by receiving twelve or fourteen boys into his family to fit for +college. From time to time youths rusticated from Harvard were +also 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 intellectual +ability, and before she was seventeen she had become a fine Latin +scholar and had read also all the Odyssey in the original." Her +life-long friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, writes in praise of her: +"The rare accomplishments and singular loveliness of her character +endeared her to all. . . . She became one of the best Greek +scholars in the country, and continued in her latest years the +habit of reading Homer, the tragedians, and Plato. But her studies +took a wide range in mathematics, natural philosophy, psychology, +theology, and ancient and modern literature. Her keen ear was +open to whatever new facts astronomy, chemistry, or the theories +of light and heat had to furnish. Absolutely without pedantry, +she had no desire to shine. She was faithful to all the duties +of wife and mother in a well-ordered and eminently hospitable +household wherein she was dearly loved. She was without appetite +for luxury or display or praise or influence, with entire +indifference to triffles. . . . As she advanced in life her +personal beauty, not remarked in youth, drew the notice of all." + +There could have been no nobler, saner influence for an intellectual +boy than the companionship of this unusual woman, and if we are +to begin at the beginning of Wellesley's story, we must begin with +Mrs. Ripley, for Mr. Durant often said that she had great influence +in inclining his mind in later life to the higher education of women. + +From Waltham the young man went in 1837 to Harvard, where we hear +of him as "not specially studious, and possessing refined and +luxurious tastes which interfered somewhat with his pursuit of +the regular studies of the college." But evidently he was no +ordinary idler, for he haunted the Harvard Library, and we know +that all his life he was a lover of books. In 1841 he was graduated +from Harvard, and went home to Lowell to read law in his father's +office, where Benjamin F. Butler was at that time a partner. +The dilettante attitude which characterized his college years is +now no longer in evidence. He writes to a friend, "I shall study +law for the present to oblige father; he is in some trouble, and +I wish to make him as happy as possible. The future course of +my life is undetermined, except that all shall yield to holy poetry. +Indeed it is a sacred duty. I have begun studying law; don't be +afraid, however, that I intend to give up poetry. I shall always +be a worshiper of that divinity, and l hope in a few years to be +able to give up everything and be a priest in her temple." After +a year he writes, "I have not written any poetry this whole summer. +Old Mrs. Themis says that I shall not visit any more at the +Miss Muses. I'll see the old catamaran hanged, though, but what +I will, and I'll write a sonnet to my old shoe directly, out of +mere 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 junior +counsel in trying cases and all the drudgery of a lawyer's life. +One end of my labor has been happily attained, for about three +weeks ago I arrived at the age of twenty-one, and last week I +mustered courage to stand an examination of my qualifications +for an attorney, and the result (unlike that of some examinations +during my college life) was fortunate, with compliments from the +judge. I feel a certain vanity (not unmixed, by the way, with +self-contempt) at my success, for I well remember l and a dear +friend of mine used to mourn over the impossibility of our ever +becoming business men, and lo, I am a lawyer.-- I have a right +to bestow my tediousness on any court of the Commonwealth, and +they are bound to hear me." + +From 1843 to 1847 he practiced at the Middlesex Bar, and from +1847, when he went to live in Boston, until 1863, he was a member +of the Suffolk Bar. On November 25, 1851, he had his name changed +by act of the Legislature. There were eleven other lawyers by +the name of Smith, practicing in Boston, and two of them were +Henry Smiths. To avoid the inevitable confusion, Henry Welles Smith +became Henry Fowle Durant, both Fowle and Durant being family names. + +In 1852 Mr. Durant was a member of the Boston City Council, but +did not again hold political office. On May 28, 1854, he married +his cousin, Pauline Adeline Fowle, of Virginia, daughter of the +late Lieutenant-colonel John Fowle of the United States Army and +Paulina Cazenove. On March 2, 1855, the little boy, Henry Fowle +Durant, Jr., was born, and on October 10, 1857, a little girl, +Pauline Cazenove Durant, who lived less than two months. On +June 21, 1862, we find the Boston Evening Courier saying of the +prominent lawyer: "What the future has in store for Mr. Durant +can of course be only predicted, but his past is secure, and if +he never rises higher, he can rest in the consciousness that no +man ever rose more rapidly at the Suffolk Bar than he has." And +within a year he had put it all behind him,--a sinful and unworthy +life,--and had set out to be a new man. That there was sin and +unworthiness 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 own +severest critic. + +Miss Conant's characterization of Mr. Durant, in his own words +describing James Otis, is particularly illuminating in its revelation +of his temperament. In February, 1860, he said of James Otis, +in an address delivered in the Boston Mercantile Library Lecture +course: + +"One cannot study his writings and history and escape the conviction +that there were two natures in this great man. There was the +trained lawyer, man of action, prompt and brave in every emergency. +But there was in him another nature higher than this. In all times +men have entertained angels unawares, ministering spirits, whose +missions are not wholly known to themselves even, men living beyond +and in advance of their age. + +"We call them prophets, inspired seers,--in the widest and largest +sense poets, for they come to create new empires of thought, new +realms in the history of the mind. . . . But more ample traditions +remain of his powers as an orator and of the astonishing effects +of his eloquence. He was eminently an orator of action in its +finest sense; his contemporaries speak of him as a flame of fire +and repeat the phrase as if it were the only one which could express +the intense passion of his eloquence, the electric flames which +his genius kindled, the magical power which swayed the great +assemblies with the irresistible sweep of the whirlwind." + +Mr. Durant's attitude toward education is also elucidated for us +by Miss Conant in her apt quotations from his address on the +American 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 enduring +foundation in the intelligence and integrity of the whole people. +It is our faith that our institutions approach perfection only when +every child can be educated and elevated to the station of a free +and intelligent citizen, and we mourn for each one who goes astray +as a loss to the country that cannot be repaired. . . . From this +fundamental truth that the end of our Republic is to educate and +elevate all our people, you can deduce the future of the American +scholar. + +"The great dangers in the future of America which we have to fear +are from our own neglect of our duty. Foes from within are the +most deadly enemies, and suicide is the great danger of our +Republic. With the increase of wealth and commerce comes the +growing power of gold, and it is a fearful truth for states as +well 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 elevate +and educate the poor. Ignorance is the modern devil, and the +inkstand that Martin Luther hurled at his head in the Castle of +Wartburg is the true weapon to fight him with." + +This helps us to understand his desire that Wellesley should +welcome poor girls and should give them every opportunity for +study. Despite his aristocratic tastes he was a true son of +democracy; the following, from an address on "The Influences of +Rural Life", delivered by him before the Norfolk Agricultural +Society, in September, 1859, might have been written in the +twentieth 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 of +labor, and that phrase is anything but an idle and unmeaning one. +It is a true gospel to the man who takes its full meaning; the +nation that understands it is free and independent and great. + +"The dignity of labor is but another name for liberty. The chivalry +of labor is now the battle cry of the old world and the new. Ask +your cornfields to what mysterious power they do homage and pay +tribute, and they will answer--to labor. In a thousand forms +nature repeats the truth, that the laborer alone is what is called +respectable, 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 and +consecration of our country place and other property to the +service of the Lord Jesus Christ, by erecting a seminary on the +plan (modified by circumstances) of South Hadley, and by having +an Orphan Asylum, not only for orphans, but for those who are +more forlorn than orphans in having wicked parents. Did our +property suffice I would prefer both, as the care (Christian and +charitable) of the children would be blessed work for the pupils +of the seminary." The orphanage was, indeed, their first idea, +and was, obviously, the more natural and conventional memorial +for a little eight-year-old lad, but the idea of the seminary +gradually superseded it as Mr. and Mrs. Durant came to take a +greater and greater interest in educational problems as distinguished +from mere philanthropy. Miss Conant wisely reminds us that, +"Just at this time new conditions confronted the common schools +of the country. The effects of the Civil War were felt in education +as in everything else. During the war the business of teaching +had fallen into women's hands, and the close of the war found +a great multitude of new and often very incompetent women teachers +filling positions previously held by men. The opportunities for +the higher education of women were entirely inadequate. Mt. Holyoke +was turning away hundreds of girls every year, and there were few +or no other advanced schools for girls of limited means." + +In 1867 Mr. Durant was elected a trustee of Mt. Holyoke. In 1868 +Mrs. Durant gave to Mt. Holyoke ten thousand dollars, which enabled +the seminary to build its first library building. We are told that +Mr. and Mrs. Durant used to say that there could not be too many +Mt. Holyokes. And in 1870, on March 17, the charter of Wellesley +Female Seminary was signed by Governor William Claflin. + +On April 16, 1870, the first meeting of the Board of Trustees was +held, at Mr. Durant's Marlborough Street house in Boston, and the +Reverend Edward N. Kirk, pastor of the Mt. Vernon Church in Boston, +was elected president of the board. Mr. Durant arranged that both +men and women should constitute the Board of Trustees, but that +women should constitute the faculty; and by his choice the first +and second presidents of the college were women. The continuance +of this tradition by the trustees has in every respect justified +the ideal and the vision of the founder. The trustees were to be +members of Evangelical churches, but no denomination was to have +a majority upon the board. On March 7, 1873, the name of the +institution 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 making +their own plans. + +And meanwhile, since the summer of 1871, the great house on the +hill above Lake Waban had been rising, story on story. + +Miss Martha Hale Shackford, Wellesley, 1896, in her valuable +little pamphlet, "College Hall", written immediately after the fire, +to preserve for future generations of Wellesley women the traditions +of the vanished building, tells us with what intentness Mr. Durant +studied other colleges, and how, working with the architect, +Mr. Hammatt Billings of Boston, "details of line and contour +were determined before ground was broken, and the symmetry of +the 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 this +experiment. From Natick came many high-school girls, on Saturday +afternoons, to watch the work and to make plans for attending the +college. As the brick-work advanced and the scaffolding rose +higher and higher, the building assumed gigantic proportions, +impressive in the extreme. The bricks were brought from Cambridge +in small cars, which ran as far as the north lodge and were then +drawn, on a roughly laid switch track, to the side of the building +by a team of eight mules. Other building materials were unloaded +in the meadow and then transferred by cars. As eighteen loads +of bricks arrived daily the pre-academic aspect of the campus was +one of noise and excitement. At certain periods during the +finishing of the interior, there were almost three hundred workmen." +A pretty story has come down to us of one of these workmen who +fell 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 brick +in its place. + +Mr. Durant's eye was upon every detail. He was at hand every day +and sometimes all day, for he often took his lunch up to the campus +with him, and ate it with the workmen in their noon hour. In 1874 +he writes: "The work is very hard and I get very tired. I do +feel thankful for the privilege of trying to do something in +the cause of Christ. I feel daily that I am not worthy of such +a privilege, and I do wish to be a faithful servant to my Master. +Yet this does not prevent me from being very weary and sorely +discouraged at times. To-night I am so tired I can hardly sit up +to write." + +And from one who, as a young girl, was visiting at his country +house when the house was building, we have this vivid reminiscence: +"My first impression of Mr. Durant was, 'Here is the quickest +thinker'--my next--'and the keenest wit I have ever met.' Then +came the day when under the long walls that stood roofed but bare +in the solitude above Lake Waban, I sat upon a pile of plank, now +the flooring of Wellesley College, and listened to Mr. Durant. +I could not repeat a word he said. I only knew as he spoke and +I listened, the door between the seen and the unseen opened and +I saw a great soul and its quest, God's glory. I came back to +earth to find this seer, with his vision of the wonder that should +be, a master of detail and the most tireless worker. The same day +as this apocalypse, or soon after, I went with Mr. Durant up a +skeleton stairway to see the view from an upper window. The +workmen were all gone but one man, who stood resting a grimy hand +on the fair newly finished wall. For one second I feared to see +a blow follow the flash of Mr. Durant's eye, but he lowered rather +than raised his voice, as after an impressive silence he showed +the scared man the mark left on the wall and his enormity. . . . +Life was keyed high in Mr. Durant's home, and the keynote was +Wellesley College. While the walls were rising he kept workman's +hours. Long before the family breakfast he was with the builders. +At prayers I learned to listen night and morning for the prayer +for Wellesley--sometimes simply an earnest 'Bless Thy college.' +We sat on chairs wonderful in their variety, but all on trial for +the ease and rest of Wellesley, and who can count the stairways +Mrs. Durant went up, not that she might know how steep the stairs +of another, but to find the least toilsome steps for Wellesley feet. + +"Night did not bring rest, only a change of work. Letters came and +went like the correspondence of a secretary of state. Devotion +and consecration I had seen before, and sacrifice and self-forgetting, +but never anything like the relentless toil of those two who toiled +not for themselves. If genius and infinite patience met for +the making of Wellesley, side by side with them went the angels +of work and prayer; the twin angels were to have their shrine +in the college." + + +V. + +On September 8, I875, the college opened its doors to three hundred +and fourteen students. More than two hundred other applicants +for admission had been refused for lack of room. We can imagine +the excitement of the fortunate three hundred and fourteen, driving +up 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 little +Gothic Lodge, and up the avenue between the rows of young elms +and purple beeches. There was a herd of Jersey cows grazing in +the meadow that day, and there is a tradition that the first student +entered the college by walking over a narrow plank, as the steps +up to the front door were not yet in place; but the story, though +pleasantly symbolical, does not square with the well-known energy +and 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 shown +to their rooms by teachers. The majority of the rooms were in +suites, a study and bedroom or bedrooms for two, three, and in +a few suites, four girls. There were almost no single rooms in +those days, even for the teachers. With a few exceptions, every +bedroom 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 alumna +writes: "The wooden bedsteads with their wooden slats, of vivid +memory, the wardrobes, so much more hospitable than the two hooks +on 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 straining +endeavors 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 the +president's office, but later became the office of the registrar. +There she found Miss Sarah P. Eastman, who, for the first six +years of the college life, was teacher of history and director of +domestic work. Later, with her sister, Miss Julia A. Eastman, she +became one of the founders of Dana Hall, the preparatory school +in Wellesley village. An alumna of the class of '80 who evidently +had dreaded this much-heralded domestic work, writes that Miss +Eastman's personality robbed it of its horrors and made it seem +a noble and womanly thing. "When, in her sweet and gracious +manner, she asked, 'How would you like to be on the circle to +scrape dinner dishes?' you straightway felt that no occupation +could be more noble than scraping those mussy plates." + +"All that day," we are told, "confusion was inevitable. Mr. Durant +hovered about, excited, anxious, yet reassured by the enthusiasm +of the students, who entered with eagerness into the new world. +He superintended feeding the hungry, answered questions, and +studied with great keenness the faces of the girls who were entering +Wellesley College. In the middle of the afternoon it had been +discovered 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 provided +a large brass dinnerbell. At six o'clock the next morning two +students, side by side, walked through all the corridors, ringing +the rising-bell,--an act, as Miss Eastman says, symbolic of the +inner awakening to come to all those girls." Thirty-nine years +later, at the sound of a bell in the early morning, the household +were to awake to duty for the last time in the great building. +The unquestioning obedience, the prompt intelligence, the unconscious +selflessness with which they obeyed that summons in the dawn of +March 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 hundred +and fourteen would-be college students were really of college grade. +The others were relegated to a preparatory department, of which +Mr. Durant was always intolerant, and which was finally discontinued +in 1881, the year of his death. + +Mr. Durant's ideals for the college were of the highest, and in +many respects he was far in advance of his times in his attitude +toward educational matters. He meant Wellesley to be a university +some 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, and +looked out over the beautiful campus. + +"Do you see what l see?" he asked. + +"No," was the quiet answer, for there were few who would venture +to 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 a +Scientific School, and just beyond that an Observatory, at the +farthest right a Medical College, and just there in the center a +new 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 school +among his university buildings, and that although he gave to +Wellesley his personal library, the gift did not include his law +library. Nevertheless, there are lawyers among the Wellesley +graduates, 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 Conant +tells us that, "For all scientific work he planned laboratories +where students might make their own investigations, a very unusual +step for those times." In 1878, when the Physics laboratory was +started 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 conducting +their own experimental work. Mr. Durant also began the collection +of scientific and literary periodicals containing the original +papers of the great investigators, now so valuable to the college. +"This same idea of original work led him to purchase for the +library books for the study of Icelandic and allied languages, so +that the English department might also begin its work at the root +of things. He wished students of Greek and Latin to illuminate +their work by the light of archeology, topography, and epigraphy. +Such books as then existed on these subjects were accordingly +procured. In 1872 no handbooks of archeology had been prepared, +and even in 1882 no university in America offered courses in +that subject." + +His emphasis on physical training for the students was also an +advance upon the general attitude of the time. He realized that +the Victorian young lady, with her chignon and her Grecian bend, +could not hope to make a strong student. The girls were encouraged +to row on the lake, to take long, brisk walks, to exercise in the +gymnasium. Mr. Durant sent to England for a tennis set, as none +could be procured in America, "but had some difficulty in persuading +many of the students to take such very violent exercise." + +But despite these far-seeing plans, he was often, during his +lifetime, his own greatest obstacle to their achievement. He brought +to his task a large inexperience of the genus girl, a despotic +habit of mind, and a temperamental tendency to play Providence. +Theoretically, he wished to give the teachers and students of +Wellesley an opportunity to show what women, with the same +educational facilities as their brothers and a free hand in directing +their own academic life, could accomplish for civilization. +Practically, they had to do as he said, as long as he lived. The +records in the diaries, letters, and reminiscences which have come +down to us from those early days, are full of Mr. Durant's commands +and coercions. + +On one historic occasion he decides that the entire freshman +schedule 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 their +Greek, Latin, and Mathematics. In vain do the students protest +at being treated like district school children; in vain do the +teachers point out the injury to the college dignity; in vain do +the superintendents evince an unflattering lack of interest in +the scholarship of Wellesley. It must be done. It is done. +The president of the freshman class is called upon to recite her +Greek lesson. She begins. The superintendents chatter and laugh +discourteously among themselves. But the president of the freshman +class has her own ideas of classroom etiquette. She pauses. She +waits, silent, until the room is hushed, then she resumes her +recitation 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 harried +and hurried souls to Christ. But Victorian girls were less docile +than the medieval Franks and Goths. They seem, many of them, +to have eluded or withstood this forceful shepherding with a +vigilance as determined as Mr. Durant's own. + +But some of the letters and diaries give us such a vivid picture +of this early Wellesley that it would be a pity not to let them +speak. 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 find +the little turns and twinkles of phrase which make Mrs. Kingsley's +books 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, l 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 l passed all my mathematics. + But l 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 l 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. l 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 l was frightened, + for he laughed a little and said, "Oh ho, you've had an + accident, l 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 l laughed right out. "l 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 l had a trail. + + + +To complete this picture of the college woman in 1876 we need +the description of the college president, by a member of the class +of '80: "Miss Howard with her young face, pink cheeks, blue eyes, +and puffs of snow-white hair, wearing always a long trailing gown +of black silk, cut low at the throat and finished with folds of +snowy tulle." None of these writers gives the date at which the +trail disappeared from the classroom. + +The following letters are from Mary Elizabeth Stilwell, a member +of that same class of '79 which wore the trails. She, like +Florence Morse, left college on account of her health. The letters +are printed by the courtesy of her daughter, Ruth Eleanor McKibben, +a graduate of Denison College and a graduate student at Wellesley +during 1914 and 1915. Elizabeth Stilwell was older and more mature +than Florence Morse, and her letters give us the old Wellesley +from 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. l 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 l 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. l 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, as +youth is always intolerant, and that she was writing only one month +after the college had opened. It is not to be expected that she +could understand the creative excitement under which the founder +was laboring in those first years. We, who look back, can appreciate +what it must have meant to a man of his imagination and intensity, +to see his ideal coming true; naturally, he could not keep his +hands off. And we must remember also that until his death Mr. Durant +met the yearly deficit of the college. This gave him a peculiar +claim to have his wishes carried out, whether in the classroom or +in 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 l 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 l 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 l have succeeded in controlling myself this far. + + + +On December 31, we find her writing: "My Greek is the only pleasant +thing to which I can look forward, and I am quite sure good +instruction awaits me there." + +In 1876 she cheers up a bit, and on September 17, writes: "I am +going to like Miss Lord (professor of Latin) very much indeed +and shall derive a great deal of profit from her teaching." And +on October 8, + +"Having already had so much Greek, I think I could take the classical +course for Honors right through, even though I did not begin German +until another year, and as I am quite anxious to study Chemistry +and have the laboratory practice perhaps I had best take Chemistry +now and leave German for another year. It is indeed a problem and +a profound one as to what I am to do with my education and I am +very anxious to hear from father in answer to my letter and get +his thoughts on the matter. I have the utmost confidence in +Miss Horton's judgment (professor of Greek) and I think I shall +talk the matter over with her in a day or two." + +Evidently the "experiments" which had taken so much of her time +in 1875 had now been eliminated, and she was able to respect +the work which she was doing. Her Sunday schedule, which she +sends her mother on October 15, 1876, will be of interest to the +modern 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 student +has arranged a course of reading for herself: + + + + During the last week l 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 l 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 l 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 l 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 + l 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 its +modest fountainhead. + +Elizabeth Stilwell left her Alma Mater in 1877, but so cherished +were 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 happy +girlhood 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 plan +have been changed and modified to meet conditions which he could +not foresee. But his "five great essentials for education at +Wellesley 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 accordance +with 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 noblest +womanhood demands; viz. the supreme development and unfolding +of every power and faculty, of the Kingly reason, the beautiful +imagination, the sensitive emotional nature, and the religious +aspirations. The ideal is of the highest learning in full harmony +with the noblest soul, grand by every charm of culture, useful +and beautiful because useful; feminine purity and delicacy and +refinement giving their luster and their power to the most absolute +science--woman learned without infidelity and wise without conceit, +the crowned queen of the world by right of that Knowledge which +is Power and that Beauty which is Truth." + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE PRESIDENTS AND THEIR ACHIEVEMENT + + +Wellesley's career differs in at least one obvious and important +particular from the careers of her sister colleges, Smith, Vassar, +and Bryn Mawr,--in the swift succession of her presidents during +her formative years. Smith College, opening in the same year as +Wellesley, 1875, remained under President Seelye's wise guidance +for thirty-five years. Vassar, between 1886 and 1914, had but +one president. Bryn Mawr, in 1914, still followed the lead of +Miss Thomas, first dean and then president. In 1911, Wellesley's +sixth president was inaugurated. Of the five who preceded President +Pendleton, only Miss Hazard served more than six years, and even +Miss Hazard's term of eleven years was broken by more than one +long absence because of illness. + +It is useless to deny that this lack of administrative continuity +had its disadvantages, yet no one who watched the growth and +development of Wellesley during her first forty years could fail +to mark the genuine progression of her scholarly ideal. Despite +an increasingly hampering lack of funds--poverty is not too strong +a word--and the disconcerting breaks and changes in her presidential +policy, she never took a backward step, and she never stood still. +The Wellesley that Miss Freeman inherited was already straining +at its leading strings and impatient of its boarding-school horizons; +the Wellesley that Miss Shafer left was a college in every modern +acceptation of the term, and its academic prestige has been confirmed +and enhanced by each successive president. + +Of these six women who were called to direct the affairs of Wellesley +in her first half century, Miss Ada L. Howard seems to have been +the least forceful; but her position was one of peculiar difficulty, +and she apparently took pains to adjust herself with tact and +dignity to conditions which her more spirited successors would +have found unbearably galling. Professor George Herbert Palmer, +in his biography of his wife, epitomizes the early situation when +he says that Mr. Durant "had, it is true, appointed Miss Ada L. Howard +president; but her duties as an executive officer were nominal +rather than real; neither his disposition, her health, nor her +previous training allowing her much power." + +Miss Howard was a New Hampshire woman, the daughter of William +Hawkins Howard and Adaline Cowden Howard. Three of her great +grandfathers were officers in the War of the Revolution. Her father +is said to have been a good scholar and an able teacher as well +as a scientific agriculturist, and her mother was "a gentlewoman +of sweetness, strength and high womanhood." When their daughter +was born, the father and mother were living in Temple, a village of +Southern New Hampshire not very far from Jaffrey. The little girl +was taught by her father, and was later sent to the academy at +New lpswich, New Hampshire, to the high school at Lowell, and to +Mt. Holyoke Seminary, where she was graduated. After leaving +Mt. Holyoke, she taught at Oxford, Ohio, and she was at one time +the principal of the Woman's Department of Knox College, Illinois. +In the early '70's this was a career of some distinction, for a +woman, and Mr. Durant was justified in thinking that he had found +the suitable executive head for his college. We hear of his saying, +"I have been four years looking for a president. She will be a +target to be shot at, and for the present the position will be one +of severe trials." + +Miss Howard came to Wellesley in 1875, giving up a private school +of her own, Ivy Hall, in Bridgeton, New Jersey, in order to become +a college president. No far-seeing policies can be traced to her, +however; she seems to have been content to press her somewhat +narrow and rigid conception of discipline upon a more or less +restive student body, and to follow Mr. Durant's lead in all matters +pertaining to scholarship and academic expansion. + +We can trace that expansion from year to year through this first +administration. In 1877 the Board of Visitors was established, +and eminent educators and clergymen were invited to visit the +college at stated intervals and stimulate by their criticism the +college routine. In 1878 the Students' Aid Society was founded +to 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 wise +generosity of Mrs. Durant and a group of Boston women, the society +was set upon its feet, and its long career of blessed usefulness +was begun. This is only one of the many gifts which Wellesley +owes to Mrs. Durant. As Professor Katharine Lee Bates has said +in her charming sketch of Mrs. Durant in the Wellesley Legenda +for 1894: "Her specific gifts to Wellesley it is impossible to +completely enumerate. She has forgotten, and no one else ever +knew. So long as Mr. Durant was living, husband and wife were +one and inseparable in service and donation. But since his death, +while it has been obvious that she spends herself unsparingly in +college cares, adding many of his functions to her own, a +continuous flow of benefits, almost unperceived, has come to +Wellesley 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 of +registration by which those students who expected to teach might +bring their names and qualifications before the schools of the +country. But the most important academic events of this year, +and those which reacted directly upon the intellectual life of +the college, were the establishment of the Physics laboratory, +under the careful supervision of Professor Whiting, and the +endowment of the Library by Professor Eben N. Horsford of Cambridge. +This endowment provided a fund for the purchase of new books and +for various expenses of maintenance, and was only one of the many +gifts which Wellesley was to receive from this generous benefactor. +Another gift, of this year, was the pipe organ, presented by +Mr. William H. Groves, for the College Hall Chapel. Later, when +the new Memorial Chapel was built, this organ was removed to +Billings 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 Reverend +Richard 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, the +second building on the college campus. It was the gift of Mrs. +Valeria G. Stone, and was intended, in the beginning, as a dormitory +for the "teacher specials." Doctor William A. Willcox of Malden, +a devoted trustee of Wellesley from 1878 to 1904, and a relative +of Mrs. Stone, was influential in securing this gift for the college, +and it was he who first turned the attention of Mr. and Mrs. Durant +to the needs of the women who had already been engaged in teaching, +but who wished to fit themselves for higher positions by advanced +work in one or more particular directions. At first, there were +a good many of them, and even as late as 1889 and 1890 there were +a few still in evidence; but gradually, as the number of regular +students increased, and accommodations became more limited, and +as 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 in +regular standing. + +On June 10, 1880, the corner stone of Music Hall was laid; the +inscription in the stone reads: "The College of Music is dedicated +to 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 everlasting +strength." 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's +preparatory department, another intellectual advance. In June +also, on the tenth, the corner stone of Simpson Cottage was laid. +The building was the gift of Mr. Michael Simpson, and has been +used since 1908 as the college hospital. In the autumn of 1881, +Stone Hall and Waban Cottage--the latter another gift from the +founders were opened for students. + +On October 3, 1881, Mr. Durant died, and shortly afterwards +Miss Howard resigned. After leaving Wellesley, she lived in +Methuen, Massachusetts, and in Brooklyn, New York, where she +died, March 3, 1907. Mrs. Marion Pelton Guild, of the class of +'80, says of Miss Howard, in an article on Wellesley written for +the New England Magazine, October, 1914, that "she was in the +difficult position of the nominal captain, who is in fact only a +lieutenant. Yet she held it with a true self-respect, honoring +the fiery genius of her leader, if she could not always follow +its more startling fights; and not hesitating to withstand him in +his most positive plans, if her long practical experience suggested +that it was necessary." From Mt. Holyoke, her Alma Mater, +Miss Howard received, in the latter part of her life, the honorary +degree 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 continued +and successful efforts during her administration to bring Wellesley +out of its obscurity and into the public eye, her extended activity +in educational matters after her marriage, gave her a prominence +throughout the country which was surpassed by very few women of +her generation. And her husband's reverent and poetical +interpretation of her character has secured for her reputation a +literary permanence unusual to the woman of affairs who "wrote +no books and published only half a dozen articles", and whose many +public addresses were never written. + +It is from Professor Palmer's "Life of Alice Freeman Palmer", +published by the Houghton Mifflin Co., that the biographical +material 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 daughter +as her mother was before her. James Warren Freeman, the father, +was of Scottish blood. His mother was a Knox, and his maternal +grandfather was James Knox of Washington's Life Guard. James Freeman +was, as we should expect, an elder of the Presbyterian church. +The mother, Elizabeth Josephine Higley, "had unusual executive +ability and a strong disposition to improve social conditions +around her. She interested herself in temperance, and in legislation +for the better protection of women and children." Their little +daughter Alice, the eldest of four children, taught herself to +read when she was three years old, and we find her going to school +at the age of four. When she was seven, her father, urged by his +wife, decided to be a physician, and during his two years' absence +at the Albany medical school, Mrs. Freeman supported him and the +four little children. The incident helps us to understand the +ambition and determination of the seventeen-year-old daughter +when she declared in the face of her parents' opposition, "that +she meant to have a college degree if it took her till she was +fifty to get it. If her parents could help her, even partially, +she would promise never to marry until she had herself put her +brother through college and given to each of her sisters whatever +education they might wish--a promise subsequently performed." + +And the girl had her own ideas about the kind of college she meant +to attend. It must be a real college. Mt. Holyoke she rejected +because it was a young ladies' seminary, and Elmira and Vassar +fell under the same suspicion, in her mind, although they were +nominally colleges. She chose Michigan, the strongest of the +coeducational colleges, and she entered only two years after its +doors 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 became +a physician, was good at supplying "general knowledge" but "poorly +equipped for preparing pupils for college", and Doctor Freeman's +daughter failed to pass her entrance examinations for Michigan +University. 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 her +studies in the little academy at Windsor. Her teacher regarded +her as a child of much promise, precocious, possessed of a bright, +alert mind, of great industry, of quick sympathies, and of an +instinctive desire to be helpful to others. Her preparation for +college had been meager, and both she and her father were doubtful +of her ability to pass the required examinations. The doubts were +not without foundation. The examiners, on inspecting her work, +were inclined to decide that she ought to do more preparatory work +before they could accept her. Meantime I had had not a little +conversation with her and her father, and had been impressed with +her high intelligence. At my request the examiners decided to +allow her to enter on a trial of six weeks. I was confident she +would demonstrate her capacity to go on with her class. l need +hardly add that it was soon apparent to her instructors that my +confidence was fully justified. She speedily gained and constantly +held an excellent position as a scholar." + +President Angell is of course using the term "scholar" in its +undergraduate connotation for, as Professor Palmer has been careful +to state, "In no field of scholarship was she eminent." Despite +her eagerness for knowledge, her bent was for people rather than +for books; for what we call the active and objective life, rather +than for the life of thought. Wellesley has had her scholar +presidents, but Miss Freeman was not one of them. This friendly, +human temper showed itself early in her college days. To quote +again from President Angell: "One of her most striking characteristics +in college was her warm and demonstrative sympathy with her circle +of friends.... Without assuming or striving for leadership, she +could not but be to a certain degree a leader among these, some +of whom have since attained positions only less conspicuous for +usefulness than her own.... No girl of her time on withdrawing +from college would have been more missed than she." + +It is for this eagerness in friendship, this sympathetic and +helpful interest in the lives of others that Mrs. Palmer is especially +remembered at Wellesley. Her own college days made her quick +to understand the struggles and ambitions of other girls who were +hampered by inadequate preparation, or by poverty. Her husband +tells us that, "When a girl had once been spoken to, however +briefly, her face and name were fixed on a memory where each +incident of her subsequent career found its place beside the +original record." And he gives the following incident as told +by a superintendent of education. + +"Once after she had been speaking in my city, she asked me to stand +beside her at a reception. As the Wellesley graduates came forward +to greet her--there were about eighty of them--she said something +to each which showed that she knew her. Some she called by their +first names; others she asked about their work, their families, +or whether they had succeeded in plans about which they had +evidently consulted her. The looks of pleased surprise which +flashed over the faces of those girls I cannot forget. They +revealed to me something of Miss Freeman's rich and radiant life. +For though she seemed unconscious of doing anything unusual, and +for her l suppose it was usual, her own face reflected the happiness +of the girls and showed a serene joy in creating that happiness." + +Her husband, in his analysis of her character, has a remarkable +passage concerning this very quality of disinterestedness. He says: + +"Her moral nature was grounded in sympathy. Beginning early, the +identification of herself with others grew into a constant habit, +of unusual range and delicacy.... Most persons will agree that +sympathy is the predominantly feminine virtue, and that she who +lacks it cannot make its absence good by any collection of other +worthy qualities. In a true woman sympathy directs all else. To +find a virtue equally central in a man we must turn to truthfulness +or courage. These also a woman should possess, as a man too +should be sympathetic; but in her they take a subordinate place, +subservient to omnipresent sympathy. Within these limits the +ampler they are, the nobler the woman. + +"I believe Mrs. Palmer had a full share of both these manly +excellences, 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 of +veracity. But in narrative of hers one got much besides plain +realities. These had their significance heightened by her eager +emotion, and their picturesqueness by her happy artistry.... Of +course the warmth of her sympathy cut off all inclination to +falsehood for its usual selfish purpose. But against generous +untruth she was not so well guarded. Kindness was the first +thing.... Tact too, once become a habit, made adaptation to the +mind addressed a constant concern. She had extraordinary skill +in stuffing kindness with truth; and into a resisting mind could +without irritation convey a larger bulk of unwelcome fact than +any one I have known. But that insistence on colorless statement +which in our time the needs of trade and science have made current +among men, she did not feel. Lapses from exactitude which do not +separate person from person she easily condoned." + +Surely the manly virtues of truthfulness and courage could be no +better exemplified than in the writing of this passage. Whether +his readers, especially the women, will agree with Professor Palmer +that, 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 when +she went to Wellesley, Miss Freeman taught with marked success, +first at a seminary in the town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where +she had charge of the Greek and Latin; and later as assistant +principal of the high school at Saginaw in Northern Michigan. Here +she was especially successful in keeping order among unruly pupils. +The summer of 1877 she spent in Ann Arbor, studying for a higher +degree, and although she never completed the thesis for this work, +the university conferred upon her the degree of Ph.D. in 1882, the +first 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. Durant +offered her an instructorship in Mathematics, which she declined. +In 1878 she was again invited, this time to teach Greek, but her +sister Stella was dying, and Miss Freeman, who had now settled +her entire family at Saginaw, would not leave them. In June, 1879, +the sister died, and in July Miss Freeman became the head of the +Department of History at Wellesley, at the age of twenty-four. + +Mr. Durant's attention had first been drawn to her by her good +friend President Angell, and he had evidently followed her career +as a teacher with interest. There seems to have been no abatement +in his approval after she went to Wellesley. We are told that they +did not always agree, but this does not seem to have affected +their mutual esteem. In her first year, Mr. Durant is said to have +remarked to one of the trustees, "You see that little dark-eyed +girl? She will be the next president of Wellesley." And before +he died, he made his wishes definitely known to the board. + +At a meeting of the trustees, on November 15, 1881, Miss Freeman +was appointed vice president of the college and acting president +for the year. She was then twenty-six years of age and the youngest +professor in the college. In 1882 she became president. + +During the next six years, Wellesley's growth was as normal as +it was rapid. This is a period of internal organization which +achieved its most important result in the evolution of the Academic +Council. "In earlier days," we are told by Professor Palmer, +"teachers of every rank met in the not very important faculty +meetings, to discuss such details of government or instruction as +were not already settled by Mr. Durant." But even then the faculty +was built up out of departmental groups, that is, "all teachers +dealing with a common subject were banded together under a head +professor and constituted a single unit," and, as Mrs. Guild tells +us, Miss Freeman "naturally fell to consulting the heads of +departments as the abler and more responsible members of the +faculty," instead of laying her plans before the whole faculty at +its more or less cumbersome weekly meetings. From this inner +circle of heads of departments the Academic Council was gradually +evolved. It now includes the president, the dean, professors, +associate professors (unless exempted by a special tenure of +office), and such other officers of instruction and administration +as may be given this responsibility by vote of the trustees. + +Miss Freeman also "began the formation of standing committees +of 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 and +virtues of the true pioneer: courage, patience, originality, +resourcefulness, and vision. There were strong groups from +Ann Arbor and Oberlin and Mt. Holyoke, and there was a fourth +group of "pioneer scholars, not wholly college bred, but enriched +with whatever amount of academic training they could wring or charm +from a reluctant world, whom Wellesley will long honor and revere." + +With the organization of the faculty came also the organization +of the college work. Entrance examinations were made more severe. +Greek had been first required for entrance in 1881. A certificate +of admission was drawn up, stating exactly what the candidate had +accomplished in preparation for college. Courses of study were +standardized and simplified. In 1882, the methods of Bible study +were reorganized, and instead of the daily classes, to which no +serious study had been given, two hours a week of "examinable +instruction" were substituted. In this year also the gymnasium +was refitted under the supervision of Doctor D. A. Sargent of Harvard. + +Miss Freeman's policy of establishing preparatory schools which +should be "feeders" for Wellesley was of the greatest importance +to the college at this time, as "in only a few high schools were +the girls allowed to join classes which fitted boys for college." +When Miss Freeman became president, Dana Hall was the only Wellesley +preparatory school in existence; but in 1884, through her efforts, +an important school was opened in Philadelphia, and before the end +of her presidency, she had been instrumental in furthering the +organization of fifteen other schools in different parts of the +country, officered for the most part by Wellesley graduates. + +In this same year the Christian Association was organized. Its +history, bound up as it is with the student life, will be given +more fully in a later chapter, but we must not forget that Miss +Freeman gave the association its initial impulse and established +its broad type. + +In 1884 also, we find Wellesley petitioning before the committee +on education at the State House in Boston, to extend its holdings +from six hundred thousand dollars to five million dollars, and +gaining the petition. + +On June 22, 1885, the corner stone of the Decennial Cottage, +afterwards called Norumbega, was laid. The building was given +by the alumnae, aided by Professor Horsford, Mr. E. A. Goodenow +and Mr. Elisha S. Converse of the Board of Trustees. Norumbega +was for many years known as the President's House, for here +Miss Freeman, Miss Shafer, and Mrs. Irvine lived. In the academic +year 1901-02, when Miss Hazard built the house for herself and +her successors, the president's modest suite in Norumbega was +set free for other purposes. + +In 1886, Norumbega was opened, and in June of that year, the +Library Festival was held to celebrate Professor Horsford's many +benefactions to the college. These included the endowment of the +Library, an appropriation for scientific apparatus, and a system +of pensions. + +In a letter to the trustees, dated January 1, 1886, the donor +explains that the annual appropriation for the library shall be +for the salaries of the librarian and assistants, for books for +the library, and for binding and repairs. That the appropriation +for scientific apparatus shall go toward meeting the needs of the +departments of Physics, Chemistry, Botany, and Biology. And that +the System of Pensions shall include a Sabbatical Grant, and a +"Salary Augment and Pension." By the Sabbatical Grant, the heads +of certain departments are able to take a year of travel and +residence abroad every seventh year on half salary. The donor +stipulated, however, that "the offices contemplated in the grants +and pensions must be held by ladies." + +In his memorable address on this occasion, Professor Horsford +outlines his ideal for the library which he generously endowed: + +"But the uses of books at a seat of learning reach beyond the wants +of the undergraduates. The faculty need supplies from the daily +widening field of literature. They should have access to the +periodical issues of contemporary research and criticism in the +various branches of knowledge pertaining to their individual +departments. In addition to these, the progressive culture of an +established college demands a share in whatever adorns and ennobles +scholarly life, and principally the opportunity to know something +of the best of all the past,--the writers of choice and rare books. +To meet this demand there will continue to grow the collections in +specialties for bibliographical research, which starting like the +suite of periodicals with the founder, have been nursed, as they +will continue to be cherished, under the wise direction of the +Library Council. Some of these will be gathered in concert, it +may be hoped, with neighboring and venerable and hospitable +institutions, that costly duplicates may be avoided; some will be +exclusively our own. + +"To these collections of specialties may come, as to a joint +estate in the republic of letters, not alone the faculty of the +college, but such other persons of culture engaged in literary +labor as may not have found facilities for conducting their +researches elsewhere, and to whom the trustees may extend invitation +to avail themselves of the resources of our library." + +These ideals of scholarship and hospitality the Wellesley College +Library never forgets. Her Plimpton collection of Italian manuscripts +is a treasure-house for students of the Italy of the Middle Ages +and Renaissance; and her alumnae, as well as scholars from other +colleges 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. Durant +and Mr. H. H. Hunnewell. Originally the Eliot had been used as +a boarding-house for the young women working in a shoe factory +at that time running in Wellesley village, but after Mrs. Durant +had enlarged and refurnished it, students who wished to pay a part +of their expenses by working their way through college were boarded +there. Some years later it was again enlarged, and used as a +village-house for freshmen. + +In December, 1887, Miss Freeman resigned from Wellesley to marry +Professor George Herbert Palmer of Harvard; but her interest in +the college did not flag, and during her lifetime she continued +to be a member of the Board of Trustees. From 1892 to 1895 she +held the office of Dean of Women of the University of Chicago; and +Radcliffe, Bradford Academy, and the International Institute for +Girls, in Spain, can all claim a share in her fostering interest. +From 1889 until the end of her life, she was a member of the +Massachusetts Board of Education, having been appointed by +Governor Ames and reappointed by Governor Greenhalge and Governor +Crane. + +In addition to the degree of Ph.D. received from Michigan in 1882, +Miss Freeman received the honorary degree of Litt.D. from Columbia +in 1887, and in 1895 the honorary degree of LL.D., from Union +University. + +What she meant to the women who were her comrades at Wellesley +in those early days--the women who held up her hands--is expressed +in an address by Professor Whiting at the memorial service held +in 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 the +correspondence, seeing individual girls on academic and social +matters, setting them right in cases of discipline, interviewing +members of the faculty on necessary plans. The work was overwhelming +and sometimes her one assistant would urge her, late in the +evening, to nibble a bite from a tray which, to save time, had +been sent in to her room at the dinner hour, only to remain +untouched.... No wonder that professors often left their lectures +to be written in the wee small hours, to help in uncongenial +administrative work, which was not in the scope of their recognized +duties." + +The pathos of her death in Paris, in December, 1902, came as a +shock to hundreds of people whose lives had been brightened by +her eager kindliness; and her memory will always be especially +cherished by the college to which she gave her youth. The beautiful +memorial in the college chapel will speak to generations of +Wellesley girls of this lovable and ardent pioneer. + + +III. + +Wellesley's debt to her third president, Helen A. Shafer, is +nowhere 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. Miss +Breckenridge 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 the +administrator were united in her personality, but the scholar +led. The crowning achievement of her administration was what was +then called "the new curriculum." + +In the college calendars from 1876 to 1879, we find as many as +seven courses of study outlined. There was a General Course for +which the degree of B.A. was granted, with summa cum laude for +special distinction in scholarship. There were the courses for +Honors, in Classics, Mathematics, Modern Languages, and Science; +and students doing suitable work in them could be recommended for +the degree. These elective courses made a good showing on paper; +but it seems to have been possible to complete them by a minimum +of study. There were also courses in Music and Art, extending +over a period of five years instead of the ordinary four allotted +to the General Course. Under Miss Freeman, the courses for Honors +disappeared, and instead of the General Course there were substituted +the Classical Course, with Greek as an entrance requirement and +the degree of B.A. as its goal; and the Scientific Course, in which +knowledge of French or German was substituted for Greek at entrance, +and Mathematics was required through the sophomore year. The +student who completed this course received the degree of B.S. + +The "new curriculum" substituted for the two courses, Classical +and Scientific, hitherto offered, a single course leading to the +degree of B.A. As Miss Shafer explains in her report to the +trustees for the year 1892-1893: "Thus we cease to confer the +B.S. for a course not essentially scientific, and incapable of +becoming scientific under existing circumstances, and we offer +a course broad and strong, containing, as we believe, all the +elements, educational and disciplinary, which should pertain to +a course in liberal arts." + +Further modifications of the elective system were introduced +in a later administration, but the "new curriculum" continues to +be 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 correspond +with the new system, and the Academic Council spent three years +in perfecting the curriculum in its new form. + +Miss Shafer's own department, Mathematics, had already been brought +up to a very high standard, and at one time the requirements for +admission to Wellesley were higher in Mathematics than those for +Harvard. Under Miss Shafer also, the work in English Composition +was placed on a new basis; elective courses were offered to seniors +and juniors in the Bible Department; a course in Pedagogy, begun +toward the end of Miss Freeman's residency, was encouraged and +increased; the laboratory of Physiological Psychology, the first +in a woman's college and one of the earliest in any college, was +opened in 1891 with Professor Calkins at its head. In all, +sixty-seven new courses were opened to the students in these five +years. The Academic Council, besides revising the undergraduate +curriculum, also revised its rules governing the work of candidates +for the Master's degree. + +But the "new curriculum" is not the only achievement for which +Wellesley honors Miss Shafer. In June, 1892, she recommended +to 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 colleague +in the Department of Mathematics, says: + +"From the first she felt a genuine interest in all sides of the +social life of the students, sympathized with their ambitions and +understood the bearing of them on the development of the right +spirit in the college." And the members of the Greek letter +societies bear her in especial remembrance, for it was she who +aided in the reestablishing in 1889 of the societies Phi Sigma +and Zeta Alpha, which had been suppressed in 1880, under Miss Howard. +In 1889 also the Art Society, later known as Tau Zeta Epsilon, was +founded; in 1891, the Agora, the political society, came into +being, and 1892 saw the beginnings of Alpha Kappa Chi, the classical +society. Miss Shafer also approved and fostered the department +clubs which began to be formed at this time. And to her wise and +sympathetic assistance we owe the beginnings of the college +periodicals,--the old Courant, of 1888, the Prelude, which began +in 1889, and the first senior annual, the Legenda of 1889. + +The old boarding-school type of discipline which had flourished +under Miss Howard, and lingered fitfully under Miss Freeman, gave +place in Miss Shafer's day to a system of cuts and excuses which +although very far from the self-government of the present day, +still fostered and respected the dignity of the students. At the +beginning of the academic year 1890-1891, attendance at prayers +in 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 own +discretion, whenever such absence did not take them from their +college duties." On September 12, 1893, the seniors began to +wear the cap and gown throughout the year. + +Other notable events of these five years were the opening of the +Faculty Parlor on Monday, September 24, 1888, another of the gifts +of Professor Horsford, its gold and garlands now vanished never +to return; the dedication of the Farnsworth Art Building on +October 3, 1889, the gift of Mr. Isaac D. Farnsworth, a friend of +Mr. Durant; the presentation in this same year, by Mr. Stetson, +of the Amos W. Stetson collection of paintings; the opening, also +in 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. We +learn, through the president's report for 1892-1893, that during +this year four professors and one instructor were called to fill +professorships in other colleges and universities, with double the +salary which they were then receiving, but all preferred to remain +at Wellesley. + +This custom of printing an annual report to the trustees may also +be said to have been inaugurated by Miss Shafer. It is true that +Miss Freeman had printed one such report at the close of her first +year, but not again. Miss Shafer's clear and dignified presentations +of events and conditions are models of their kind; they set the +standard which her successors have followed. + +Of Miss Shafer's early preparation for her work we have but few +details. She was born in Newark, New Jersey, on September 23, 1839, +and her father was a clergyman of the Congregational church, of +mingled Scotch and German descent. Her parents moved out to +Oberlin when she was still a young girl, and she entered the college +and was graduated in 1863. The Reverend Frederick D. Allen of +Boston, who was a classmate of Miss Shafer's, tells us that there +were two courses at Oberlin in that day, the regular college course +and a parallel, four years' course for young women. It seems that +women were also admitted to the college course, but only a few +availed themselves of the privilege, and Miss Shafer was not one +of 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 teacher +of higher mathematics." Doctor William T. Harris, then superintendent +of public schools in St. Louis, and afterwards United States +Commissioner of Education, commended her very highly; and her +old students at Wellesley witness with enthusiasm to her remarkable +powers as a teacher. President Pendleton, who was one of those +old students, says: + +"Doubtless there was no one of these who did not receive the news +of her appointment as president with something of regret. No one +probably doubted the wisdom of the choice, but all were unwilling +that the inspiration of Miss Shafer's teaching should be lost to +the future Wellesley students. Her record as president leaves +unquestioned 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 students +who, during the last two years of their college life (1884-1886) +elected Miss Shafer's course in Mathematics. It is difficult to +give adequate expression to the impression which Miss Shafer made +as a teacher. There was a friendly graciousness in her manner of +meeting a class which established at once a feeling of sympathy +between student and teacher.... She taught us to aim at clearness +of thought and elegance of method; in short, to attempt to give +to our work a certain finish which belongs only to the scholar.... +I believe that it has often been the experience of a Wellesley +girl, that once on her feet in Miss Shafer's classroom, she has +surprised herself by treating a subject more clearly than she +would have thought possible before the recitation. The explanation +of this, I think, lay in the fact that Miss Shafer inspired her +students with her own confidence in their intellectual powers." + +When we realize that during the last ten years of her life she +was fighting tuberculosis, and in a state of health which, for +the 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 some +months in Thomasville, Georgia, and in her absence the duties of +her office devolved upon Professor Frances E. Lord, the head +of the Department of Latin, whose sympathetic understanding of +Miss Shafer's ideals enabled her to carry through the difficult +year with signal success. Miss Shafer rallied in the mild climate, +and probably her life would have been prolonged if she had chosen +to retire from the college; but her whole heart was in her work, +and undoubtedly if she had known that her coming back to Wellesley +meant only two more years of life on earth, she would still have +chosen to return. + +Miss Shafer had no surface qualities, although her friends knew +well the keen sense of humor which hid beneath that grave and +rather awkward exterior. But when the alumnae who knew her speak +of her, the words that rise to their lips are justice, integrity, +sympathy. She was an honorary member of the class of 1891, and +on December 8, 1902, her portrait, painted by Kenyon Cox, was +presented to the college by the Alumnae Association. + +Miss Shafer's academic degrees were from Oberlin, the M.A. in 1877 +and the LL.D. in 1893. + +Mrs. Caroline Williamson Montgomery (Wellesley, '89), in a memorial +sketch written for the '94 Legenda says: "I have yet to find the +Wellesley student who could not and would not say, 'I can always +feel sure of the fairness of Miss Shafer's decision.' Again and +again 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 when +students, were spurred to do their best, were filled with loyalty +for their alma mater.... If I should try to formulate an expression +of that life in brief, I should say that in her relation to the +students 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 the +college as head of the Department of Mathematics, to January 20, +1894, when she died, its president, she served Wellesley with all +her strength, and the college remains forever indebted to her +high standards and wise leadership. + + +IV. + +In choosing Mrs. Irvine to succeed Miss Shafer as president of +Wellesley, the trustees abandoned the policy which had governed +their earlier choices. Miss Freeman and Miss Shafer had been +connected with the college almost from the beginning. They had +known its problems only from the inside. Mrs. Irvine was, by +comparison, a newcomer; she had entered the Department of Greek +as junior professor in 1890. But almost at once her unusual +personality made its impression, and in the four years preceding +her election to the presidency, she had arisen, as it were in spite +of herself, to a position of power both in the classroom and in +the Academic Council. As an outsider, her criticism, both constructive +and destructive, was peculiarly stimulating and valuable; and even +those who resented her intrusion could not but recognize the noble +disinterestedness of her ideal for Wellesley. + +The trustees were quick to perceive the value to the college of +this unusual combination of devotion and clearsightedness, detachment +and loving service. They also realized that the junior professor +of Greek was especially well fitted to complete and perfect the +curriculum which Miss Shafer had so ably inaugurated. For Mrs. Irvine +was before all else a scholar, with a scholar's passion for +rectitude and high excellence in intellectual standards. + +Julia Josephine (Thomas) Irvine, the daughter of Owen Thomas and +Mary Frame (Myers) Thomas, was born at Salem, Ohio, November 9, +1848. Her grandparents, strong abolitionists, are said to have +moved to the middle west from the south because they became +unwilling to live in a slave state. Mrs. Irvine's mother was the +first woman physician west of the Alleghenies, and her mother's +sister also studied medicine. Mrs. Irvine's student life began at +Antioch College, Ohio, but later she entered Cornell University, +receiving her bachelor's degree in 1875. In the same rear she +was married to Charles James Irvine. In 1876, Cornell gave her +the degree of Master of Arts. After her husband's death in 1886, +Mrs. Irvine entered upon her career as a teacher, and in 1890 came +to Wellesley, where her success in the classroom was immediate. +Students of those days will never forget the vitality of her +teaching, the enthusiasm for study which pervaded her classes. +Wellesley has had her share of inspiring teachers, and among these +Mrs. Irvine was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant. + +The new president assumed her office reluctantly, and with the +understanding that she should be allowed to retire after a brief +term of years, when "the exigencies which suggested her appointment +had ceased to exist." She knew the college, and she knew herself. +With certain aspects of the Wellesley life she could never be +entirely in accord. She was a Hicksite Quaker. The Wellesley +of the decade 1890-1900 had moved a long way from the evangelical +revivalism which had been Mr. Durant's idea of religion, but it was +not until 1912 that the Quaker students first began to hold their +weekly meetings in the Observatory. About this time also, through +the kind offices of the Wellesley College Christian Association, +a list of the Roman Catholic students then in college was given +to the Roman Catholic parish priest. That the trustees in 1895 +were willing to trust the leadership of the college to a woman +whose religious convictions differed so widely from those of the +founder indicates that even then Wellesley was beginning to outgrow +her religious provincialism, and to recognize that a wise tolerance +is 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 and +distinction. An alumna of 1897 writes: "That commanding figure +behind the reading-desk of the old chapel in College Hall made +every one, in those days, rejoice when she was to lead the morning +service." But the trustees, anxious to set her free for the academic +side of her work, which now demanded the whole of her time, +appointed a dean to relieve her of such other duties as she desired +to delegate to another. This action was made possible by amendment +of the statutes, adopted November 1, 1894, and in 1895, Miss +Margaret E. Stratton, professor of the Department of Rhetoric, as +it was then called, was appointed the first dean of the college. + +The trustees did not define the precise nature of the relation +between the president and the dean, but left these officers to +make such division of work as should seem to them best, and we +read in Mrs. Irvine's report for 1895 that, "For the present the +Dean remains in charge of all that relates to the public devotional +exercises of the college, and is chairman of the committee in +charge of stated religious services. She is the authority referred +to in all cases of ordinary discipline, and is the chairman of +the committee which includes heads of houses and permission +officers, all these officers are directly responsible to her." + +Regarded from an intellectual and academic point of view, the +administrations of Miss Shafer and Mrs. Irvine are a unit. +Mrs. Irvine developed and perfected the policy which Miss Shafer +had initiated and outlined. By 1895, all students were working +under the new curriculum, and in the succeeding years the details +of readjustment were finally completed. To carry out the necessary +changes in the courses of study, certain other changes were also +necessary; methods of teaching which were advanced for the '70's +and '80's had been superseded in the '90's, and must be modified +or abandoned for Wellesley's best good. To all that was involved +in this ungrateful task, Mrs. Irvine addressed herself with a +courage and determination not fully appreciated at the time. She +had not Mrs. Palmer's skill in conveying unwelcome fact into a +resisting mind without irritation; neither had she Miss Shafer's +self-effacing, sympathetic patience. Her handling of situations +and individuals was what we are accustomed to call masculine; it +had, as the French say, the defects of its qualities; but the +general result was tonic, and Wellesley's gratitude to this firm +and far-seeing administrator increases with the passing of years. + +In November, 1895, the Board of Trustees appointed a special +committee on the schools of Music and Art, in order to reorganize +the instruction in these subjects, and as a result the fine arts +and music were put upon the same footing and made regular electives +in the academic course, counting for a degree. The heads of these +departments were made members of the Academic Council and the terms +School of Music and School of Art were dropped from the calendar. +In 1896, the title Director of School of Music was changed to +Professor of Music. These changes are the more significant, coming +at this time, in the witness which they bear to the breadth and +elasticity of Mrs. lrvine's academic ideal. A narrower scholasticism +would not have tolerated them, much less pressed for their adoption. +Wellesley is one of the earliest of the colleges to place the fine arts +and music on her list of electives counting for an academic degree. + +During the year 1895-1896, the Academic Council reviewed its rules +of procedure relating to the maintenance of scholarship throughout +the course, with the result that, "In order to be recommended +for the degree of B.A. a student must pass with credit in at least +one half of her college work and in at least one half of the +work of the senior year." This did not involve raising the actual +standard of graduation as reached by the majority of recent +graduates, but relieved the college of the obligation of giving +its degree to a student whose work throughout a large part of +her course did not rise above a mere passing grade. + +In Mrs. Irvine's report for 1894-1895, we read that, "Modifications +have been made in the general regulations of the college by which +the observation of a set period of silent time for all persons is no +longer required." In the beginning, Mr. Durant had established +two daily periods of twenty minutes each, during which students +were required to be in their rooms, silent, in order that those +who so desired might give themselves to meditation, prayer, and +the reading of the Scriptures. Morning and evening, for fifteen +years, the "Silent Bell" rang, and the college houses were hushed +in literal silence. In 189 or 1890, the morning interval was +discontinued, but evening "silent time" was not done away with +until 1894, nineteen years after its establishment, and there are +many who regret its passing, and who realize that it was one of +the wisest and, in a certain sense, most advanced measures +instituted by Mr. Durant. But it was a despotic measure, and +therefore better allowed to lapse; for to the student mind, +especially of the late '80's and early '90's it was an attempt +to fetter thought, to force religion upon free individuals, to +prescribe times and seasons for spiritual exercises in which the +founder of the college had no right to concern himself. As +Wellesley's understanding of democracy developed, the faculty +realized that a rule of this kind, however wise in itself, cannot +be impressed from without; the demand for it must come from the +students themselves. Whether that demand will ever be made is +a question; but undoubtedly there is an increasing realization in +the college world of the need of systematized daily respite of +some sort from the pressure of unmitigated external activity; the +need of freedom for spiritual recollection in the midst of academic +and social business. It is a matter in which the Student Government +Association would have entire freedom of jurisdiction. + +In 1896, Domestic Work was discontinued. This was a revolutionary +change, for Mr. Durant had believed strongly in the value of this +one hour a day of housework to promote democratic feeling among +students of differing grades of wealth; and he had also felt that +it made the college course cheaper, and therefore put its advantages +within the reach of the "calico girls" as he was so fond of calling +the 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 of +corridors. Every department had its domestic girls, whose duties +ranged from those of incipient secretary to general chore girl. +The experience in setting college dinner tables or sweeping college +recitation rooms counted for next to nothing in equipping a student +to care for her own home; and the benefit to the "calico girls" +was no longer obvious, as the price of tuition had now been raised +several times. In May, 1894, the Academic Council voted "that +the council respectfully make known to the trustees that in their +opinion domestic work is a serious hindrance to the progress of +the college, and should as soon as possible be done away." But +it was not until the trustees found that the fees for 1896-1897 +must be raised, that they decided to abolish domestic work. + +Miss Shackford, in her pamphlet on College Hall, describes, "for +the benefit of those unfamiliar with the old regime," the system +of domestic work as it obtained during the first twenty years of +Wellesley's life. She tells us that it "brought all students into +close 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 were +the favorite employments, although it is said the students always +showed great generosity in allowing the girls less strong to have +the lighter tasks. Sweeping the matting in the center of the +corridor before breakfast, or sweeping the bare 'sides' of this +matting after breakfast, were tasks that developed into sinecures. +The girl who went with long-handled feather duster to dust the +statuary enjoyed a distinction equal to Don Quixote's in tilting +at windmills. Filling the student-lamps, serving in a department +where clerical work was to be done, or, as in science, where +materials and specimens had to be prepared, were on the list +of possibilities. Sophomores in long aprons washed beakers and +slides, seniors in cap and gown acted as guides to guests. A +group of girls from each table changed the courses at meals. +Upon one devolved the task of washing whatever silver was required +for the next course. Another went out through the passage into the +room where heaters kept the meat and vegetables warm in their +several dishes. Perhaps another went further on to the bread-room, +where she might even be permitted to cut bread with the bread-cutting +machine. Dessert was always kept in the remote apartment where +Dominick Duckett presided, strumming a guitar, while his black +face had a portentous gravity as he assigned the desserts for +each table. What an ordeal it was for shy freshmen to rise and +walk the length of the dining-room! How many tables were kept +waiting for the next course while errant students surveyed the +sunset through the kitchen windows! Some of us remember the +tragic 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 prepare +them for the table." + +Other important changes in the college regulations were the opening +of the college library on Sunday as a reading-room, and the removal +of the ban upon the theater and the opera; both these changes took +place in 1895. On February 6, 1896, the clause of the statutes +concerning attendance at Sunday service in chapel was amended +to read, "All students are expected to attend this or some other +public religious service." + +In 1896-1897, Bible Study was organized into a definite Department +of Biblical History, Literature, and Interpretation; and in the +same year voluntary classes for Bible Study were inaugurated by +the Christian Association and taught by the students. + +The first step toward informing the students concerning their marks +and academic standing was taken in 1897, when the so-called +"credit-notes" were instituted, in which students were told whether +or not they had achieved Credit, grade C, in their individual +studies. Mr. Durant had feared that a knowledge of the marks +would arouse unworthy competition, but his fears have proved +unfounded. + +In this administration also the financial methods of the college +were revised. Mrs. Irvine, we are reminded by Florence S. Marcy +Crofut, of the class of 1897, "established a system of management +and purchasing into which all the halls of residence were brought, +and this remains almost without change to the present day." On +March 27, 1895, Mrs. Durant resigned the treasurership of the +college, which she had held since her husband's death, and upon +her nomination, Mr. Alpheus H. Hardy was elected to the office. +In 1896, the trustees issued a report in which they informed the +friends of Wellesley that although Mr. Durant, in his will, had +made the college his residuary legatee, subject to a life tenancy, +the personal estate had suffered such depreciation and loss "as to +render this prospective endowment of too slight consequence to be +reckoned on in any plans for the development and maintenance of +the college." At this time, Wellesley was in debt to the amount +of $103,048.14. During the next nineteen years, trustees and +alumnae were to labor incessantly to pay the expenses of the +college and to secure an endowment fund. What Wellesley owes +to the unstinted devotion of Mr. Hardy during these lean years +can never be adequately expressed. + +The buildings erected during Mrs. Irvine's tenure of office were +few. Fiske Cottage was opened in September, 1894, for the use +of students who wished to work their way through college. The +"cottage" had been originally the village grammar school, but when +Mr. Hunnewell gave a new schoolhouse to the village, the college +was able, through the generosity of Mrs. Joseph M. Fiske, +Mr. William S. Houghton, Mr. Elisha S. Converse, and a few other +friends, to move the old schoolhouse to the campus and remodel it +as a dormitory. In February, 1894, a chemical laboratory was built +under Norumbega hill,--an ugly wooden building, a distress to +all who care for Wellesley's beauty, and an unmistakable witness +to her poverty. + +On November 22, 1897, the corner stone of the Houghton Memorial +Chapel was laid, a building destined to be one of the most +satisfactory and beautiful on the campus. It was given by +Miss Elizabeth G. Houghton and Mr. Clement S. Houghton of Cambridge +as a memorial of their father, Mr. William S. Houghton, for many +years a trustee of the college. + +In 1898 Mrs. John C. Whitin, a trustee, gave to the college an +astronomical observatory and telescope. The building was completed +in 1900. Another gift of 1898, fifty thousand dollars, came from +the estate of the late Charles T. Wilder, and was used to build +Wilder 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 of +Trustees a review of the history of the college under the new +curriculum, and a statement of urgent needs which had arisen. +She closed with a recommendation that her term of office should +end in June, 1898, as she believed that the necessities which had +led to her appointment no longer existed, and she recognized that +new demands pressed, which she was not fitted to meet. As Mrs. Irvine +had stated verbally, both to the Board of Trustees and to a committee +appointed by them to consider her recommendation, that she would +not serve under a permanent appointment, the committee "was limited +to the consideration of the time at which that recommendation +should become operative." They asked the president to change her +time of withdrawal to June, 1899, and she consented to do this, +with the provision that she was to be released from her duties +before the end of the year, if her successor were ready to assume +the duties of the office before June, 1899. + +After her retirement from Wellesley, Mrs. Irvine made her home in +the south of France, but she returned to America in 1912 to be +present at the inauguration of President Pendleton. And in the +year 1913-1914, after the death of Madame Colin, she performed +a signal service for the college in temporarily assuming the +direction of the Department of French. Through her good offices, +the department was reorganized, but the New England winter had +proved too severe for her after her long sojourn in a milder +climate, and in 1914, Mrs. Irvine returned again to her home in +Southern France, bearing with her the love and gratitude of +Wellesley for her years of efficient and unselfish service. +During the war of 1914-1915, she had charge of the linen room +in the military hospital at Aix-les-Bains. + + +V. + +On March 8, 1899, the trustees announced their election of Wellesley's +fifth 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 no +technical academic training, and no experience as a teacher. Born +at Peacedale, Rhode Island, June 10, 1856, the daughter of Rowland +and Margaret (Rood) Hazard, and the descendant of Thomas Hazard, +the founder of Rhode Island, she had been educated by tutors and +in a private school in Providence, and later had carried on her +studies abroad. Before coming to Wellesley, she had already won +her own place in the annals of Rhode Island, as editor, by her +edition 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 eighteenth +century, entitled "Thomas Hazard, Son of Robert, called College Tom", +and as poet, in a volume of Narragansett ballads and a number of +religious sonnets, followed during her Wellesley years by "A Scallop +Shell of Quiet", verses of delicate charm and dignity. + +Mrs. Guild has said that Miss Hazard came, "bringing the ease and +breadth of the cultivated woman of the world, who is yet an idealist +and a Christian, into an atmosphere perhaps too strictly scholastic." +But she also brought unusual executive ability and training in +administrative affairs, both academic and commercial, for her +father, aside from his manufacturing interests, was a member of +the corporation of Brown University. Hers is the type of intelligence +and power seen often in England, where women of her social position +have an interest in large issues and an instinct for affairs, +which American women of the same class have not evinced in +any arresting degree. + +Miss Hazard's inauguration took place on October 3, 1899, in the +new Houghton Memorial Chapel, which had been dedicated on June 1 +of that year. This was Wellesley's first formal ceremony of +inauguration, and the brilliant academic procession, moving among +the autumn trees between old College Hall and the Chapel, marked +the beginning of a new era of dignity and beauty for the college. +In the next ten years, under the winning encouragement of her +new president, Wellesley blossomed in courtesy and in all those +social graces and pleasant amenities of life which in earlier years +she had not always cultivated with sufficient zest. All of +Miss Hazard's influence went out to the dignifying and beautifying +of the life in which she had come to bear a part. + +It is to her that Wellesley owes the tranquil beauty of the morning +chapel service. The vested choir of students, the order of +service, are her ideas, as are the musical vesper services and +festival 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 Billings +estate, and in December, 1903, Mr. Thomas Minns, the surviving +executor of the estate, presented the college with an additional +fifteen thousand dollars, of which two thousand dollars were set +aside as a permanent fund for the establishment of the Billings +prize, to be awarded by the president for excellence in music, +--including its theory and practice,--and the remainder was used +toward the erection of Billings Hall, a second music building +containing a much-needed concert hall and classrooms, completed +in 1904. + +Miss Hazard's love of simple, poetical ceremonial did much to +increase the charm of the Wellesley life. Of the several hearth +fires which she kindled during the years when she kept Wellesley's +fires alight, the Observatory hearth-warming was perhaps the +most charming. The beautiful little building, given and equipped +by Mrs. Whitin, a trustee of the college, was formally opened +October 8, 1900, with addresses by Miss Hazard, Professor Pickering +of Harvard, and Professor Todd of Amherst. In the morning, +Miss Hazard had gone out into the college woods and plucked bright +autumn leaves to bind into a torch of life to light the fire on the +new hearth. Digitalis, sarsaparilla, eupatorium, she had chosen, +for the health of the body; a fern leaf for grace and beauty; the +oak and the elm for peace and the civic virtues; evergreen, pine, +and hemlock for the aspiring life of the mind and the eternity +of thought; rosemary for remembrance, and pansies for thoughts. +Firing the torch, she said, "With these holy associations we light +this fire, that from this building in which the sun and stars are +to be observed, true life may ever aspire with the flame to the +Author 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 had +written for the occasion, and which was later burned in the wooden +panel 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 requested +the trustees to make "a division of administrative duties somewhat +different from that before existing," as the technical knowledge +of courses of study and the wisdom to advise students as to such +courses required a special training and preparation which she did +not possess. It was therefore arranged that the dean should take +in charge the more strictly academic work, leaving Miss Hazard +free for "the general supervision of affairs, the external relations +of the college, and the home administration," and Professor Coman +of the Department of History and Economics consented to assume +the duties of dean for a year. At the end of the year, however, +Miss Hazard having now become thoroughly familiar with the financial +condition of the college, felt that retrenchments were necessary, +and asked the trustees to omit the appointment of a dean for the +year 1900-1901. The academic duties of the dean were temporarily +assumed in the president's office by the secretary of the college, +Miss Ellen F. Pendleton, and Professor Coman returned to her +teaching as head of the new Department of Economics, an office +which she held with distinction until her retirement as Professor +Emeritus in 1913. + +Mrs. Guild reminds us that "the pressing problem which confronted +Miss Hazard was monetary. The financial history of Wellesley +College would be a volume in itself, as those familiar with the +struggles of unendowed institutions of like order can well realize.... +The appointment during Mrs. Irvine's administration of a professional +treasurer, and the gradual accumulation of small endowments, were +helps in the right direction. The alumnae had early begun a series +of concerted efforts to aid their Alma Mater in solving her ever +present financial problem. Miss Hazard, in generous cooperation +with them and with the trustees, did especially valiant work in +clearing the college from its burden of debt; and during her +administration the treasurer's report shows an increase in the +college funds of $830,000." In round numbers, the gifts for +endowments and buildings during the period amounted to one million +three hundred six thousand dollars. Eleven buildings were erected +between 1900 and 1909: Wilder Hall and the Observatory were +completed in 1900; the President's House, Miss Hazard's gift, in +1902; Pomeroy and Billings Hall in 1904; Cazenove in 1905; the +Observatory 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 partially +endowed. The Chair of Economics in 1903; the Chair of Biblical +History, by Helen Miller Gould, in December, 1900, to be called +after her mother, the Helen Day Gould Professorship; the Chair of +Art, under the name of the Clara Bertram Kimball Professorship +of Art; the Chair of Music, from the Billings estate; the Chair +of Botany, by Mr. H.H. Hunnewell, January, 1901. And in 1908 +and 1909, the arrangements with the Boston Normal School of +Gymnastics were completed, by which that school,--with an endowment +of one hundred thousand dollars and a gymnasium erected on the +Wellesley campus through the efforts of Miss Amy Morris Homans, +the director, and Wellesley friends,--became a part of Wellesley +College: the Department of Hygiene and Physical Education. + +Among the notable gifts were the Alexandra Garden in the West +Quadrangle, given by an alumna in memory of her little daughter; +the beautiful antique marbles, presented by Miss Hannah Parker +Kimball to the Department of Art, in memory of her brother, M. Day +Kimball; and the Plimpton collection of Italian manuscripts and +early editions, given by George A. Plimpton in memory of his wife, +Frances Taylor Pearsons Plimpton, of the class of '84. Of romances +of chivalry, "those poems of adventure, the sources from which +Boiardo and Ariosto borrowed character and episodes for their real +poems," we have, according to Professor Margaret Jackson, their +curator, perhaps the largest collection in this country, and one of +the largest in the world. Many of these books are in rare or +unique 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 the +frate writing in his cell. Bembo's "Asolini" a first edition, +contains autograph corrections. In 1912, Wellesley had the unusual +opportunity, which she unselfishly embraced, to return to the +National Library at Florence, Italy, a very precious Florentine +manuscript of the fourteenth century, containing the only known +copy of the Sirventes and other important historical verses of +Antonio Pucci. + +The most important change in the college life at this time was +undoubtedly the establishment of the System of Student Government, +in 1901. As a student movement, this is discussed at length in +a later chapter, but Miss Hazard's cordial sympathy with all that +the change implied should be recorded here. + +Among academic changes, the institution of the Honor Scholarships +is the most noteworthy. In 1901, two classes of honors for juniors +and seniors were established, the Durant Scholarship and the +Wellesley 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 honors +are non-competitive, and depend upon an absolute standard of +scholarship. At about the same time, honorary mention for freshmen +was also instituted. + +On June 30, 1906, Miss Hazard sailed for Genoa, to take a well-earned +vacation. This was the first time that a president of Wellesley +had taken a Sabbatical year; the first time that any presidential +term had extended beyond six years. During Miss Hazard's absence, +Miss Pendleton, who had been appointed dean in 1901, conducted the +affairs of the college. On her return, May 20, 1907, Miss Hazard +was met at the Wellesley station by the dean and the senior class, +about two hundred and fifty students, and was escorted to the +campus by the presidents of the Student Government Association +and the senior class. The whole college had assembled to welcome +her, lining the avenue from the East Lodge to Simpson, and waving +their 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 was +obliged to be absent, because of ill health, and again for a part +of 1910. In July, 1910, the trustees announced her resignation to +the faculty. No one has expressed more happily Miss Hazard's +service to the college than her successor in office, the friend +who was her dean and comrade in work during almost her entire +administration. In the dean's report for 1910 are these very +human and loving words: + +"President Hazard's great service to the college during her eleven +years of office are evident to all in the way of increased endowment, +new buildings, additional departments and officers, advanced +salaries, improved organization and equipment; but those who have +had the privilege of working with her know that even these gains, +to which her personal generosity so largely contributed, are less +than the gifts of character which have brought into the midst of +our busy routine the graces of home and a far-pervading spirit of +loving kindness. + +"Miss Hazard came to us a stranger, but by her gracious bearing +and charming hospitality, by her sympathetic interest and eagerness +to aid in the work of every department, together with a scrupulous +respect for what she was pleased to call the expert judgment of +those in charge, by the touches of beauty and gentleness accompanying +all that she did, from the enrichment of our chapel service to the +planting of our campus with daffodils, and by the essential +consecration of her life, she has so endeared herself to her faculty +that her resignation means to us not only the loss of an honored +president, but the absence of a friend." + +Miss Hazard's honorary degrees are the A.M. from Michigan and +the Litt.D. from Brown University. She is also an honorary member +of the Eta chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, which was installed at +Wellesley on January 17, 1905. + + +VI. + +On Thursday, October 19, 1911, Ellen Fitz Pendleton was inaugurated +president of Wellesley College in Houghton Memorial Chapel. + +Professor Calkins, writing in the College News in regard to this +wise choice of the trustees, says: "There has been some discussion +of the wisdom of appointing a woman as college president. I may +frankly avow myself as one of those who have been little concerned +for the appointment of a woman as such. On general principles, +I would welcome the appointment of a man as the next president of +Bryn Mawr or Wellesley; and, similarly, I would as soon see a woman +at the head of Vassar or of Smith. But if our trustees, when +looking last year for a successor to Miss Hazard in her eminently +successful administration, had rejected the ideally endowed +candidate, solely because she was a woman, they would have indicated +their 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 possibly +take the ground that 'any man' is to be preferred to the rightly +equipped woman; to quote from The Nation, in its issue of June 22, +1911, 'lf Wellesley, after its long tradition of women presidents, +and able women presidents, had turned from the appointment of a +woman, especially when a highly capable successor was at hand, +the decision would have meant... the adoption of the principle +of the ineligibility of women for the college presidency.... It is +an anomaly that women should be permitted to enter upon an +intellectual career and should not be permitted to look forward +to the natural rewards of successful labor.'" + +Professor Calkins's personal tribute to Miss Pendleton's power +and 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 the +history, the specific excellences, and the definite needs of +Wellesley College, with openness of mind, breadth of outlook and +the endowment for constructive leadership. No college procedure +seems to her to be justified by precedent merely; no curriculum +or legislation is, in her view, too sacred to be subject to revision. +Her wide acquaintance with the policies of other colleges and +with modern tendencies in education prompts her to constant +enlargement and modification, while her accurate knowledge of +Wellesley's conditions and her large patience are a check on the +too exuberant spirit of innovation. With Miss Pendleton as +president, the college is sure to advance with dignity and with +safety. She will do better than 'build up' the college, for she +will quicken and guide its growth from within. + +"Fundamental to the professional is the personal equipment for +office. Miss Pendleton is unswervingly just, undauntedly generous, +and completely devoted to the college. Not every one realizes +that her reserve hides a sympathy as keen as it is deep, though +no one doubts this who has ever appealed to her for help. Finally, +all those who really know her are well aware that she is utterly +self-forgetful, or rather, that it does not occur to her to consider +any 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 college +president not as that of absolute monarch but as that of constitutional +ruler; not as that of master, but as that of leader. Readers of +the dean's report for the Sabbatical year of Miss Hazard's absence, +in which Miss Pendleton was acting president, will not have failed +to notice the spontaneous expression of this sense of comradeship +in Miss Pendleton's reference to the faculty." + +Rhode Island has twice given a president to Wellesley, for Ellen +Fitz Pendleton was born at Westerly, on August 7, 1864, the daughter +of Enoch Burrowes Pendleton and Mary Ette (Chapman) Pendleton. +In 1882, she entered Wellesley College as a freshman, and since +that 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 on +the Tree Day program as delivering an essay on the fern beech; +and she was later invited into the Shakespeare Society, at that +time Wellesley's one and only literary society. In 1886, Miss +Pendleton was graduated with the degree of B.A., and entered the +Department of Mathematics in the autumn of that year as tutor; +in 1888, she was promoted to an instructorship which she held +until 1901, with a leave of absence in 1889 and 1890 for study +at Newnham College, Cambridge, England. In 1891, she received +the degree of M.A. from Wellesley. Her honorary degrees are the +Litt.D. from Brown University in 1911, and the LL.D. from Mt. Holyoke +in 1912. In 1895, she was made Schedule Officer, in charge of +the intricate work involved in arranging and simplifying the +complicated yearly schedule of college class appointments. In +1897, she became secretary of the college and held this position +until 1901, when she was made dean and associate professor of +Mathematics. During Miss Hazard's absences and after Miss Hazard's +resignation in 1910, she served the college as acting president. + +The announcement of her election to the presidency was made to +the college on June 9, 1911, by the president of the Board of +Trustees, and the joy with which it was received by faculty, alumna, +and students was as outspoken as it was genuine. And at her +inauguration, many who listened to her clear and simple exposition +of her conception of the function of a college must have rejoiced +anew to feel that Wellesley's ideals of scholarship were committed +to so safe and wise a guardian. Miss Pendleton's ideal cannot +be 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 not +essentially different from that of a college for women." + +Of the twofold function of the college, the training for citizenship +and the preparation of the scholar, she says: "What are the +characteristics of the ideal citizen, and how may they be developed? +He must have learned the important lesson of viewing every question +not only from his own standpoint but from that of the community; he +must be willing to pay his share of the public tax not only in +money but also in time and thought for the service of his town and +state; he must have, above all, enthusiasm and capacity for working +hard in whatever kind of endeavor his lot may be cast. It is +evident, therefore, that the college must furnish him opportunity +for acquiring a knowledge of history, of the theory of government, +of the relations between capital and labor, of the laws of +mathematics, chemistry, physics, which underlie our great industries, +and if he is to have an intelligent and sympathetic interest in +his neighbors, and be able to get another's point of view, this +college-trained citizen must know something of psychology and +the laws of the mind. Nor can he do all this to his own satisfaction +without 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 and +independently. But it will be urged that a college course of four +years is entirely too short for such a task. Perhaps, but what +the college cannot actually give, it can furnish the stimulus and +the power for obtaining later." + +But although Miss Pendleton's attitude toward college education +is characteristically practical, she is careful to make it clear +that the practical educator does not necessarily approve of +including vocational training in a college course. "I do not +propose to discuss the question in detail, but is it not fair to +ask why vocational subjects should be recognized in preparation +when the aim of the college is not to prepare for a vocation but +to develop personal efficiency?" + +And her vision includes the scholar, or the genius, as well as +the commonplace student. "The college is essentially a democratic +institution designed for the rank and file of youth qualified to +make use of the opportunities it offers. But the material equipment, +the curriculum, and the teaching force which are necessary to +develop personal efficiency in the ordinary student will have +failed in a part of their purpose if they do not produce a few +students with the ability and the desire to extend the field of +human knowledge. There will be but few, but fortunate the college, +and happy the instructor, that has these few. Such students have +claims, and the college is bound to satisfy them without losing +sight of its first great aim.... It is the task of the college to +give such a student as broad a foundation as possible, while +allowing him a more specialized course than is deemed wise for +the ordinary student. The college will have failed in part of +its function if it does not furnish such a student with the power +and the stimulus to continue his search for truth after graduation.... + +"Training for citizenship and the preparation of the scholar are +then the twofold function of the college. To furnish professional +training 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 to +be teachers or even wives and husbands, mothers and fathers. It +is rather its part to produce men and women with the power to think +clearly and independently, who recognize that teaching and +home-making are both fine arts worthy of careful and patient +cultivation, and not the necessary accompaniment of a college +diploma. College graduates ought to make, and I believe do make, +better teachers, more considerate husbands and wives, wiser fathers +and mothers, but the chief function of the college is larger than +this. The aim of the university and the great technical school is +to furnish preparation for some specific profession. The college +must produce men and women capable of using the opportunities +offered by the university, men and women with sound bodies, pure +hearts and clear minds, who are ready to obey the commandment, +'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all +thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind, and thy +neighbor as thyself.'" + +In this day of diverse and confused educational theories and ideals +it is refreshing to read words so discriminating and definite. + +The earliest events of importance in President Pendleton's +administration are connected, as might be expected, with the alumnae, +who were quickened to a more active and objective expression +of loyalty by this first election of a Wellesley alumna to the +presidential office. On June 21, 1911, the Graduate Council, to +be discussed in a later chapter, was established by the Alumnae +Association; and on October 5, 1911, the first number of the alumnae +edition of the College News was issued. In the academic year +1912-1913, the Monday holiday was abolished and the new schedule +with recitations from Monday morning until Saturday noon was +established. After the mid-year examinations in 1912, the students +were for the first time told their marks. In 1913, the Village +Improvement Association built and equipped, on the college grounds, +a kindergarten to be under the joint supervision of the Association +and the Department of Education. The building is used as a free +kindergarten for Wellesley children, and also as a practice school +for graduate students in the department. A campaign for an +endowment fund of one million dollars was also started by the +trustees and alumnae under the leadership and with the advice +of the new president. A committee of alumnae was appointed, with +Miss Candace C. Stimson, of the class of '92 as chairman, to +cooperate with the trustees in raising the money, and more than +four hundred thousand dollars had been promised when, in March, 1914, +occurred Wellesley's great catastrophe--which she was to translate +immediately into her great opportunity--the burning of old +College 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 visions +and dream in their dreams, it will be by the soaring, unconquerable +faith--and the prompt and selfless works--of the daughter who said +to a college in ruins, on that March morning, "The members of the +college will report for duty on the appointed date after the spring +vacation," 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, whether +for men or women, the faculty determine the general policy of the +college. The president, as chairman of the Academic Council, +is in a very real and democratic sense the representative of the +faculty, not the ruler. In Miss Freeman's day, the excellent +presidential habit of consulting with the heads of departments +was formed, and many of the changes instituted by the young president +were suggested and formulated by her older colleagues. In +Miss Shafer's day, habit had become precedent, and she would be +the first to point out that the "new curriculum" which will always +be associated with her name, was really the achievement of the +Academic Council and the departments, working through patient years +to adjust, develop, and balance the minutest details in their +composite plan. + +The initiative on the part of the faculty has been exerted chiefly +along academic lines, but in some instances it has necessitated +important emendations of the statutes; and that the trustees were +willing to alter the statutes on the request of the faculty would +indicate the friendly confidence felt toward the innovators. + +In the statutes of Wellesley College, as printed in 1885, we read +that "The College was founded for the glory of God and the service +of 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 every +Trustee, Teacher, and Officer, shall be a member of an Evangelical +church, and that the study of the Holy Scriptures shall be pursued +by every student throughout the entire College course under the +direction of the Faculty." + +In the early nineties, pressure from members of the faculty, +themselves members of Evangelical churches, induced the trustees +to alter the religious requirement for teachers; and the reorganization +of the Department of Bible Study a few years later resulted in +a drastic change in the requirements for students. + +As printed in 1898, the statutes read, "To realize this design it +is required that every Trustee shall be a member in good standing +of some Evangelical Church; that every teacher shall be of decided +Christian character and influence, and in manifest sympathy with +the religious spirit and aim with which the College was founded; +and that the study of the Sacred Scriptures by every student shall +extend over the first three years, with opportunities for elective +studies in the same during the fourth year." + +But it was found that freshmen were not mature enough to study +to the best advantage the new courses in Biblical Criticism, and +the statutes as printed in 1912 record still another amendment: +"And that the study of the Sacred Scriptures by every student +shall extend over the second and third years, with opportunities +for elective studies in the same during the fourth year." + +These changes are the more pleasantly significant, since all actual +power, at Wellesley as at most other colleges, resides with the +trustees if they choose to use it. They "have control of the college +and all its property, and of the investment and appropriation of +its funds, in conformity with the design of its establishment and +with the act of incorporation." They have "power to make and +execute such statutes and rules as they may consider needful for +the best administration of their trust, to appoint committees from +their own number, or of those not otherwise connected with the +college, and to prescribe their duties and powers." It is theirs +to appoint "all officers of government or instruction and all +employees needed for the administration of the institution whose +appointment is not otherwise provided for." They determine the +duties 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-perpetuating +body of directors, Wellesley is of course no worse off than the +majority of American colleges. But that a form of college government +so patently and unreasonably autocratic should have generated so +little friction during forty years, speaks volumes for the +broadmindedness, the generous tolerance, and the Christian +self-control of both faculty and trustees. If, in matters financial, +the trustees have been sometimes unwilling to consider the scruples +of groups of individuals on the faculty, along lines of economic +morals, they have nevertheless taken no official steps to suppress +the expression of such scruples. They have withstood any reactionary +pressure from individuals of their board, and have always allowed +the faculty entire academic freedom. In matters pertaining to +the college classes, they are usually content to ratify the +appointments on the faculty, and approve the alterations in the +curriculum presented to them by the president of the college; and +the president, in turn, leaves the professors and their associates +remarkably free to choose and regulate the personnel and the +courses in the departments. + +In this happy condition of affairs, the alumnae trustees undoubtedly +play a mediating part, for they understand the college from within +as no clergyman, financier, philanthropist,--no graduate of a +man's college--can hope to, be he never so enthusiastic and +well-meaning in the cause of woman's education. But so long as +the faculty are excluded from direct representation on the board, +the situation will continue to be anomalous. For it is not too +sweeping to assert that Wellesley's development and academic +standing are due to the cooperative wisdom and devoted scholarship +of her faculty. The initiative has been theirs. They have proved +that a college for women can be successfully taught and administered +by women. To them Wellesley owes her academic status. + +From the beginning, women have predominated on the Wellesley +faculty. The head of the Department of Music has always been a +man, but he had no seat upon the Academic Council until 1896. +In 1914-1915, of the twenty-eight heads of departments, three +were men, the professors of Music, of Education, and of French. +Of the thirty-nine professors and associate professors, not heads +of departments, five were men; of the fifty-nine instructors, ten +were men. It is interesting to note that there were no men in the +departments 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 upon +Wellesley's faculty, but her policy in this respect has been +deliberate. Every woman's college is making its own experiments, +and the results achieved at Wellesley indicate that a faculty made +up largely of women, with a woman at its head, in no way militates +against high academic standards, sound scholarship, and efficient +administration. That a more masculine faculty would also have +peculiar advantages, she does not deny. + +From the collegiate point of view, this feminine faculty is a very +well mixed body, for it includes representative graduates from the +other women's colleges, and from the more important coeducational +colleges and state universities, as well as men from Harvard and +Brown. The Wellesley women on the faculty are an able minority; +but it is the policy of the college to avoid academic in-breeding +and to keep the Wellesley influence a minority influence. Of the +twenty-eight heads of departments, five--the professors of English +Literature, Chemistry, Pure Mathematics, Biblical History, and +Physics--are Wellesley graduates, three of them from the celebrated +class of '80. Of the thirty-nine professors and associate professors, +in 1914-1915, ten were alumnae of Wellesley, and of the fifty-nine +instructors, seventeen. Since 1895, when Professor Stratton was +appointed dean to assist Mrs. Irvine, Wellesley has had five deans, +but only Miss Pendleton, who held the office under Miss Hazard +from 1901 to 1911, has been a graduate of Wellesley. Miss Coman, +who assisted Miss Hazard for one year only, and Miss Chapin, who +consented to fill the office after Miss Pendleton's appointment to +the presidency until a permanent dean could be chosen, were both +graduates of the University of Michigan. Dean Waite, who succeeded +to the office in 1913, is an alumna of Smith College, and has been +a member of the Department of English at Wellesley since 1896. + + +II. + +Only the women who have helped to promote and establish the higher +education of women can know how exciting and romantic it was to be +a professor in a woman's college during the last half-century. +To be a teacher was no new thing for a woman; the dame school +is an ancient institution; all down the centuries, in classic +villas, in the convents of the Middle Ages, in the salons of the +eighteenth century, learned ladies with a pedagogic instinct have +left their impress upon the intellectual life of their times. But +the possibility that women might be intellectually and physically +capable of sharing equally with men the burdens and the joys of +developing and directing the scholarship of the race had never been +seriously considered until the nineteenth century. The women who +came 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 never +women had been before. And they brought to that trial the heady +enthusiasm and radiant exhilaration and fiery persistence which +possess all those who rediscover learning and drink deep. They +knew the kind of selfless inspiration Wyclif knew when he was +translating 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 sciences +should every one be given a fair chance; to distinguish intelligently +between the advantages of the elective system and its disadvantages; +to decide, without prejudice, at what points the education of the +girl should differ or diverge from the education of the boy; to +try out the pedagogic methods of the men's colleges and discover +which were antiquated and should be abolished, which were susceptible +of reform, which were sound; to invent new methods,--these were +the romantic quests to which these enamored devotees were vowed, and +to 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 student +laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her +laboratory for work in experimental psychology, established by +Professor Calkins in 1891, was the first in any women's college +in the country, and one of the first in any college. In 1886, the +American School of Classical Studies at Athens invited Wellesley +to become one of the cooperating colleges to sustain this school +and 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 Quadrivium +at Oxford, Paris, Bologna, experienced no keener intellectual delights +than 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 women +of the nineteenth century were enthusiastic was distinctly an +education along scholarly and intellectual lines; this early and +original meaning of the term "higher education", this original and +distinguishing function of the woman's college, are in danger of +being blurred and lost sight of to-day by a generation that knew +not Joseph. The zeal with which the advocates of educational +and domestic training are trying to force into the curricula of +women's colleges courses on housekeeping, home-making, dressmaking, +dairy farming, to say nothing of stenography, typewriting, double +entry, and the musical glasses minus Shakespeare, is for the most +part unintelligible to the women who have given their lives to the +upbuilding of such colleges as Bryn Mawr, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, +Vassar, and Wellesley,--not because they minimize the civilizing +value of either homemakers or business women in a community, or +fail to recognize their needs, but simply because women's colleges +were never intended to meet those needs. + +When we go to the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts, we do not +complain because it lacks the characteristics of the Smithsonian +Institute, or of the Boston Horticultural Show. We are content +that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology should differ in +scope from Harvard University; yet some of us, college graduates +even, seem to have an uneasy feeling that Wellesley and Bryn Mawr +may not be ministering adequately to life, because they do not +add to their curricular activities the varied aims of an +Agricultural College, a Business College, a School of Philanthropy, +and a Cooking School, with required courses on the modifying of +milk for infants. Great institutions for vocational training, such +as Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and Simmons College in Boston, +have a dignity and a usefulness which no one disputes. Undoubtedly +America needs more of their kind. But to impair the dignity and +usefulness of the colleges dedicated to the higher education of +women by diluting their academic programs with courses on business +or domesticity will not meet that need. The unwillingness of +college faculties to admit vocational courses to the curriculum is +not due to academic conservatism and inability to march with +the times, but to an unclouded and accurate conception of the +meaning of the term "higher education." + +But definiteness of aim does not necessarily imply narrowness +of scope. The Wellesley Calendar for 1914-1915 contains a list +of three hundred and twelve courses on thirty-two subjects, exclusive +of the gymnasium practice, dancing, swimming, and games required +by the Department of Hygiene. Of these subjects, four are ancient +languages 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 and +spiritual evolution of the human race, Biblical and Secular History, +Economics, Education, Logic, Psychology, and Philosophy. Four +may be classified as arts: Archaeology, Art, including its history, +Music, and Reading and Speaking, which old-fashioned people still +call Elocution. + +From this wide range of subjects, the candidates for the B.A. +degree are required to take one course in Mathematics, the prescribed +freshman course; one course in English Composition, prescribed for +freshmen; courses in Biblical History and Hygiene; a modern +language, unless two modern languages have been presented for +admission; two natural sciences before the junior year, unless +one has already been offered for admission, in which case one is +required, and a course in Philosophy, which the student should +ordinarily take before her senior year. + +These required studies cover about twenty of the fifty-nine hours +prescribed for the degree; the remaining hours are elective; but +the student must group her electives intelligently, and to this end +she must complete either nine hours of work in each of two +departments, or twelve hours in one department and six in a +second; she must specialize within limits. + +It will be evident on examining this program that no work is +required in History, Economics, English Literature and Language, +Comparative Philology, Education, Archaeology, Art, Reading and +Speaking, and Music. All the courses in these departments are +free electives. Just what led to this legislation, only those who +were present at the decisive discussions of the Academic Council +can know. Possibly they have discovered by experience that young +women do not need to be coaxed or coerced into studying the arts; +that they gravitate naturally to those subjects which deal with +human society, such as History, Economics, and English Literature; +and that the specialist can be depended upon to elect, without +pressure, courses in Philology or Pedagogy. + +But little effort has been made at Wellesley, so far, to attract +graduate students. In this respect she differs from Bryn Mawr. +She offers very few courses planned exclusively for college +graduates, but opens her advanced courses in most departments to +both seniors and graduates. This does not mean, however, that +the graduate work is not on a sound basis. Wellesley has not yet +exercised her right to give the Doctor's degree, but expert +testimony, outside the college, has declared that some of the +Master's theses are of the doctorial grade in quality, if not in +quantity; and the work for the Master's degree is said to be more +difficult and more severely scrutinized than in some other colleges +where 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 yielding +an income of about one thousand dollars. The holder must be a +woman, a graduate of Wellesley or some other American college of +approved standing; she must be "not more than twenty-six years of +age at the time of her appointment, unmarried throughout the whole +of her tenure, and as free as possible from other responsibilities." +She may hold the fellowship for one year only, but "within three +years from entrance on the fellowship she must present to the +faculty a thesis embodying the results of the research carried on +during the period of tenure." + +Wellesley is proud of her Alice Freeman Palmer Fellows. Of the +eleven who have held the Fellowship between 1904 and 1915, four +are Wellesley graduates, Helen Dodd Cook, whose subject was +Philosophy; Isabelle Stone, working in Greek; Gertrude Schopperle, +in Comparative Literature; Laura Alandis Hibbard, in English +Literature. Two are from Radcliffe, and one each from Cornell, +Vassar, the University of Dakota, Ripon, and Goucher. The Fellow +is left free to study abroad, in an American college or university, +or to use the income for independent research. The list of +universities at which these young women have studied is as impressive +as it is long. It includes the American Schools for Classical +Studies 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 the +work of each one of Wellesley's academic departments. Any intelligent +person who turns the pages of the official calendar may easily +discover that the standard of admission and the requirements for +the degree of Bachelor of Arts place Wellesley in the first rank +among American colleges, whether for men or for women. But every +woman's college, besides conforming to the general standard, is +making its own contribution to the higher education of women. +At Wellesley, the methods in certain departments have gained a +deservedly high reputation. + +The Department of Art, under Professor Alice V.V. Brown, formerly +of the Slater Museum of Norwich, Connecticut, is doing a work in +the proper interpretation and history of art as unique as it is +valuable. The laboratory method is used, and all students are +required to recognize and indicate the characteristic qualities +and attributes of the great masters and the different schools of +paintings by sketching from photographs of the pictures studied. +These five and ten minute sketches by young girls, the majority of +whom have had no training in drawing, are remarkable for the +vivacity and accuracy with which they reproduce the salient +features of the great paintings. The students are of course given +the latest results of the modern school of art criticism. In +addition to the work with undergraduates, the department offers +courses to graduate students who wish to prepare themselves for +curatorships, or lectureships in art museums, and Wellesley women +occupy positions of trust in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, +in the Boston Art Museum, in museums in Chicago, Worcester, and +elsewhere. The "Short History of Italian Painting" by Professor +Brown and Mr. William Rankin is a standard authority. + +The Department of Music, working quite independently of the +Department of Art, has also adapted laboratory methods to its own +ends 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 developed +in connection with the courses in practical music. The first-year +class, meeting once a week, listens to an anonymous musical +selection played by one of its members, and must decide by internal +evidence--such as simple cadences, harmonic figuration as applied +to the accompaniment and other characteristics--upon the school +of the composer, and biographical data. The analysis of the +musical selection and the reasons for her decision are set down +in her notebook by the listening student. The second-year class +concerns itself with "the thematic and polyphonic melody, the +larger forms, harmony in its aesthetic bearings, the aesthetic +effects of the more complicated rhythms, comparative criticism +and the various schools of composition." + +These valuable contributions to method and scope in the study of +the History of Art and the History of Music are original with +Wellesley, and are distinctly a part of her history. + +Among the departments which carry prestige outside the college +walls are those of Philosophy and Psychology, English Literature, +and German. Wellesley's Department of English Literature is +unusually fortunate in having as interpreters of the great literature +of 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 Margaret +Sherwood are to the Wellesley of their day and ours. Working +together, with unfailing enthusiasm for their subjects, and keen +insight into the cultural needs of American girls, they have built +up their department on a sure foundation of accurate scholarship +and tested pedagogic method. At a time when the study of literature +threatened to become, almost universally, an exercise in the dry +rot of philological terms, in the cataloguing of sources, or the +analyzing of literary forms, the department at Wellesley continued +unswervingly 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 literary +masterpieces, the revelation of the soul of poet, dramatist, +essayist, novelist. No teaching of literature is less sentimental +than the teaching at Wellesley, and no teaching is more quickening +to 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 to +a living voice is justified of her teachers and her students. + +Indications of the reputation achieved by Wellesley's methods +of teaching German are found in the increasing numbers of students +who come to the college for the sake of the work in the German +Department, and in the fact that teachers' agencies not infrequently +ask candidates for positions if they are familiar with the Wellesley +methods. In an address before the New Hampshire State Teachers' +Association, in 1913, Professor Muller describes the aims and +ideals of her department as they took shape under the constructive +leadership of her predecessor, Professor Wenckebach, and as they +have been modified and developed in later years to meet the needs +of American students. + +"Cinderella became a princess and a ruler over night," says Professor +Muller, "that is, German suddenly took the position in our college +that it has held ever since. Such a result was due not merely to +methods, of course, but first of all to the strong and enthusiastic +personality that was identified with them, and that was the main +secret of the unusual effectiveness of Fraulein Wenckebach's teaching. + +"But this German professor had not only live methods and virile +personal qualities to help her along; she also had what a great +many of the foreign language teachers in this country must as yet +do without, that is, the absolute confidence, warm appreciation, +and financial support of an enlightened administration. President +Freeman and the trustees seem to have done practically everything +that their intrepid professor of German asked for. They not only +saw that all equipments needed... were provided, but they also +generously stipulated, at Fraulein Wenckebach's urgent request, +that all the elementary and intermediate classes in the foreign +language departments should be kept small, that is, that they +should not exceed fifteen. If Fraulein Wenckebach had been +obliged, as many modern language teachers still are, to teach +German to classes of from thirty to forty students; if she had +met in the administration of Wellesley College with as little +appreciation and understanding of the fine art and extreme difficulty +of foreign language work as high school teachers, for instance, +often encounter, her efforts could not possibly have been crowned +with success. + +"Another agent in enabling Fraulein Wenckebach to do such fine +constructive work with her Department was the general Wellesley +policy, still followed, I am happy to say, of centralizing all +power and responsibility regarding department affairs in the person +of the head of the Department. Centralization may not work well +in politics, but a foreign language department working with the +reformed methods could not develop the highest efficiency under +any other form of government. With a living organism, such as +a foreign language department should be, there ought to be one, +and only one, responsible person to keep her finger on the pulse +of things--otherwise disintegration and ineffectiveness of the +work as a whole is sure to follow." + +Professor Muller goes on to say, "Now JOY, genuine joy, in their +work, based on good, strong, mental exercise, is what we want +and what on the whole we get from our students. It was so in the +days of Fraulein Wenckebach and is so now, I am happy to say--and +not in the literature courses only, but in our elementary drill +work as well. + +"It may be of interest to note that our elementary work and also +the advanced work in grammar and idiom are at present taught by +Americans wholly. I have come to the conclusion that well-trained +Americans gifted with vivid personalities get better results along +those lines than the average teacher of foreign birth and breeding." + +Even in the elementary courses, only those texts are used which +illustrate German life, literature, and history; and the advanced +electives are carefully guarded, so that no student may elect +courses in modern German, the novel and the drama, who has not +already been well grounded in Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing. The +drastic thoroughness with which unpromising students are weeded +out of the courses in German enhances rather than defeats their +popularity among undergraduates. + +The learned women who direct Wellesley's work in Philosophy and +Psychology lend their own distinction to this department. Professor +Case, a graduate of the University of Michigan, has been connected +with the college since 1884, and her courses in Greek Philosophy +and the Philosophy of Religion make an appeal to thoughtful students +which 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 psychology +she has achieved results attained by no one else, and her work +has a Continental reputation. Professor Calkins, the head of the +Department, 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 was +the first woman to receive the degree of Litt.D. from Columbia +University, and the first woman to be elected to the presidency +of the American Psychological Association, succeeding William James +in that office. + +In the Department of Economics and Sociology, organized under +the leadership of Professor Katharine Coman, in 1901, Wellesley +has been fortunate in having as teachers two women of national +reputation whose interest in the human side of economic problems +has vitalized for their eager classes a subject which unless +sympathetically handled, lends itself all too easily to mechanical +interpretations of theory. Professor Coman's wide and intimate +knowledge of American economic conditions, as evidenced in her +books, the "Industrial History of the United States", and "Economic +Beginnings of the Far West", in her studies in Social Insurance +published in The Survey, and in her practical work for the College +Settlements Association and the Consumers' League, and as an +active member of the Strike Committee during the strike of the +Chicago Garment Workers in 1910-1911, lent to her teaching an +appeal which more cloistered theorists can never achieve. The +letters which came to her from alumnae, after her resignation +from the department in 1913, were of the sort that every teacher +cherishes. Since her death in January, 1915, some of these letters +have been printed in a memorial number of the Wellesley College +News. Nothing could better illustrate her influence as an intellectual +force 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 is +never too late to say how much I enjoyed my work with you in +college. It always seemed such grown-up work. Partly, l suppose, +because it was closely related to the things of life, and partly +because 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 value +your seminar in Statistics was to me; it gave me enough insight +into the principles and practice to encourage me to present my +work the first year out of college in statistical form. It was +approved. Without the incentive and the little experience I had +gained from you I might not have tried to do this. Since then, +in whatever field of social work I have been I have found this +ability valuable, and I developed enough skill at it to handle +the investigation into wages of the Massachusetts Minimum Wage +Commission without other training. I am very grateful to you for +this bit of technical training for which I would never have taken +the time later." + +Another says: "It is a pleasure to have an opportunity, after so +many years, to make some expression of the gratitude I owe you. +The course in Political Economy which I was so wise as to take +with you has proved of vital importance to me. That was in 1887-1888, +but as I look back l see that in your teaching then, you presented +to us the ideas, the concepts, which are now accepted principles +of men's thought as to the relation of class to class, of man to +man. And so I feel that it was to your enthusiasm, your power of +inspiring your pupils that I owe my own interest in economic and +sociological affairs." + +And still another: "I have had more real pleasure from my Economics +courses and Sociology courses than from any others of my college +course. Had it not been for yourself and Miss Balch, that work +would not have stood for so much. For your guidance and your +inspiration l am most grateful. l have tried to carry out your +ideals as far as possible in the Visiting Nurse work and the +Social Settlement in Omaha ever since leaving Wellesley." + +Professor Emily Greene Balch, who succeeded Miss Coman as head +of the Department of Economics, is herself an authority on questions +of immigration; her book, "Our Slavic Fellow Citizens", is an +important contribution to the history of the subject, and has been +cited in the German Reichstag as authoritative on Slavic immigration. +She has also served on more than one State commission in +Massachusetts,--among them the disinterested and competent City +Planning Board,--and the sanity and judicial balance of her opinions +are 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 critical +study of its main theories and political movements, open to juniors +and seniors who have already completed two other courses in +Economics; a course entitled "The Modern Labor Movement", in which +special attention is given to labor legislation, factory inspection, +and the organization of labor, with a study of methods of meeting +the difficulties of the modern industrial situation; and a course +in Immigration and the problems to which it gives rise in the +United States. + +The Wellesley fire did the college one good turn by bringing to +the notice of the general public the departments of Science. When +so many of the laboratories and so much of the equipment were +swept away, outsiders became aware of the excellent work which +was being done in those laboratories; of the modern work in Geology +and Geography carried on not only in Wellesley but for the teachers +of Boston by Professor Fisher who is so wisely developing the +department which Professor Niles set on its firm foundation; of +the work of Professor Robertson who is an authority on the bryozoa +fauna of the Pacific coast of North America and Japan; of the +authoritative work on the life history of Pinus, by Professor +Ferguson 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 work +at Wellesley is found in the ease and smoothness with which the +Department of Hygiene, formerly the Boston Normal School of +Gymnastics, has become a force in the Wellesley curriculum under +the direction of Miss Amy Morris Homans, who was also the head +of the school in Boston. By a gradual process of adjustment, +admission to the two years' course leading to a certificate in +the Department of Hygiene "will be limited to applicants who are +candidates for the B.A. degree at Wellesley College and to those +who already hold the Bachelor's degree either from Wellesley College +or from some other college." A five years' course is also offered, +by which students may obtain both the B.A. degree and the certificate +of the department. But all students, whether working for the +certificate or not, must take a one-hour course in Hygiene in +the freshman year, and two periods a week of practical gymnastic +work in the freshman and sophomore years. + +Like all American colleges, Wellesley makes heavy and constant +demands on the mere pedagogic power of its teachers. Their days +are pretty well filled with the classroom routine and the necessary +and incessant social intercourse with the eager crowd of youth. +It may be years before an American college for women can sustain +and foster creative scholarship for its own sake, after the example +of the European universities; but Wellesley is not ungenerous; +the Sabbatical Grant gives certain heads of departments an opportunity +for refreshment and personal work every seven years; and even those +who do not profit by this privilege manage to keep their minds +alive by outside work and contacts. + +Every two years the secretary to the president issues a list of +faculty publications, ranging from verse and short stories in the +best magazines to papers in learned reviews for esoteric consumption +only; from idyllic novels, such as Margaret Sherwood's "Daphne", +and sympathetic travel sketches like Katharine Lee Bates's "Spanish +Highways and Byways", to scholarly translations, such as Sophie +Jewett's "Pearl" and Vida D. Scudder's "Letters of St. Catherine of +Siena", and philosophical treatises, of which Mary Whiton Calkins's +"Persistent Problems of Philosophy", translated into several +languages, is a notable example. + +But the Wellesley faculty is a public-spirited body; its contribution +to the general life is not only abstract and literary; for many of +its members are identified with modern movements toward better +citizenship. Miss Balch, besides her work on municipal committees, +is connected with the Woman's Trade Union League, and is interested +in the great movement for peace. In the spring of 1915, she was +one of those who sailed with Miss Jane Addams to attend the Woman's +Peace Congress at the Hague, and she afterwards visited other +European countries on a mission of peace. Miss Bates is active +in promoting the interests of the International Institute in Spain. +The American College for Girls in Constantinople often looks to +Wellesley for teachers, and more than one Wellesley professor +has given a Sabbatical year to the schoolgirls in Constantinople. +During the absence of President Patrick, Professor Roxana Vivian +of Wellesley was acting president, and had the honor of bringing +the college safely through the perplexities and terrors of the +Young Turks' Revolution in 1908 and 1909. Professor Kendall, +of the Department of History, is Wellesley's most distinguished +traveler. Her book, "A Wayfarer in China", tells the story of +some of her travels, and she has received the rare honor, for +a woman, of being made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. +Miss Calkins is an officer of the Consumers' League. Miss Scudder +has been identified from its outset with the College Settlements +Movement, and of late years with the new service to Italian +immigrants inaugurated by Denison House. + +As a result of these varied interests, the intellectual fellowship +among the older women in the college community is of a peculiarly +stimulating quality, and the fact that it is almost exclusively a +feminine fellowship does not affect its intellectuality. The +Wellesley faculty, like the faculty of Harvard, is not a cloistered +body, and contact with the minds of "a world of men" through books +and the visitations of itinerant scholars is about as easy in the +one case as in the other. Every year Wellesley has her share of +distinguished visitors, American, European, and Oriental, scholars, +poets, scientists, statesmen, who enrich her life and enlarge +her spiritual vision. + + +III. + +One chapter of Wellesley's history it is too soon to write: the +story of the great names and great personalities, the spiritual +stuff of which every college is built. This is the chapter on +which the historians of men's colleges love best to dwell. But +the women's lips and pens are fountains sealed, for a reticent +hundred years--or possibly less, under pressure--with the seals +of academic reserve, and historic perspective, and traditional +modesty. Most of the women who had a hand in the making of +Wellesley's first forty years are still alive. There's the rub. +It would not hamper the journalist. But the historian has his +conventions. One hundred years from now, what names, living +to-day, will be written in Wellesley's golden book? Already they +are written in many prophetic hearts. However, women can keep +a secret. + +Even of those who have already finished their work on earth, it is +too soon to speak authoritatively; but gratitude and love will not +be silent, and no story of Wellesley's first half-century would +be complete that held no records of their devotion and continuing +influence. + +Among the pioneers, there was no more interesting and forceful +personality than Susan Maria Hallowell, who came to Wellesley as +Professor of Natural History in 1875, the friend of Agassiz and +Asa Gray. She was a Maine woman, and she had been teaching +twenty-two years, in Bangor and Portland, before she was called +to Wellesley. Her successor in the Department of Botany writes +in 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 went +from college to college, from university to university, studying +the scientific libraries and laboratories. At the close of this +investigation she announced to the founders of the college that +the task which they had assigned to her was too great for any +one individual to undertake. There must be several professorships +rather than one. Of those named she was given first choice, and +when, in 1876, she opened her laboratories and actually began her +teaching 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 several +courses 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 of +the work in her department have since been necessary.... She +organized and built up a botanical library which from the first +was second to that of no other college in the country, and is +to-day only surpassed by the botanical libraries of a few of our +great universities." + +Fortunately the botanical library and the laboratories were housed +in Stone Hall, and escaped devastation by the fire. + +Professor Hallowell was the first woman to be admitted to the +botanical lectures and laboratories of the University of Berlin. +She "was not a productive scholar", again we quote from Professor +Ferguson, "as that term is now used, and hence her gifts and her +achievements are but little known to the botanists of to-day. She +was preeminently a teacher and an organizer. Only those who knew +her in this double capacity can fully realize the richness of her +nature and the power of her personality." She retired from active +service at the college in February, 1902, when she was made +Professor Emeritus; but she lived in Wellesley village with her +friend, Miss Horton, the former professor of Greek, until her +death in 1911. Mrs. North gives us a charming glimpse of the +quaint and dignified little old lady. "When in recent years the +blossoming forth of academic dress made a pageant of our great +occasions, the badges of scholarship seemed to her foreign to the +simplicity of true learning, and she walked bravely in the +Commencement procession, wearing the little bonnet which henceforth +became a distinction." + +Another early member of the Department of Botany, Clara Eaton +Cummings, who came to Wellesley as a student in 1876 and kept her +connection 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 botanists +for Wellesley. + +With this pioneer group belongs also Professor Niles, who was +actively connected with the college from 1882 until his retirement +as Professor Emeritus in 1908. Wellesley shares with the +Massachusetts Institute of Technology her precious memories of +this devoted gentleman and scholar. His wise planning set the +Department of Geology and Geography on its present excellent +basis. At his death in 1910, a valuable legacy of geological +specimens came to Wellesley, only to be destroyed in 1914 by the +fire. But his greatest gifts to the college are those which no +fire can ever harm. + +Anne Eugenia Morgan, professor in the Department of Philosophy +from 1878 to 1900; Mary Adams Currier, enthusiastic head of the +Department of Elocution from 1875 to 1896, the founder of the +Monroe 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 alumnae +speak these names, their hearts glow with unchanging affection. + +But the most vivid of all these pioneers, and one of the most +widely known, was Carla Wenckebach. Of her, Wellesley has a picture +and a memory which will not fade, in the brilliant biography +[Carla Wenckebach, Pioneer (Ginn & Co. pub.).] by her colleague and +close friend, Margarethe Muller, who succeeded her in the Department +of German. As an interpretation of character and personality, +this book takes its place with Professor Palmer's "Life of Alice +Freeman Palmer", among literary biographies of the first rank. + +Professor Wenckebach came to Wellesley in 1883, and we have the +story of her coming, in her own letters, given us in translation +by Professor Muller. She was attending the Sauveur Summer School +of Languages at Amherst, and had been asked to take some classes +there, in elementary German, where her methods immediately attracted +attention; 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 Greek +lessons, the landlady brings in three visiting cards, remarking +that 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 at +Wellesley College (Wellesley, you must know, is the largest and +most magnificent of all the women's colleges in the United States). +I immediately comprehended that these were three lions (grosse +Tiere), and I began to have curious presentiments. Fortunately, +l was in correct dress, so that I could rush down into our elegant +reception room. Here I made a solemn bow, the three ladies +returning the compliment. The president, a lady who must be a +good deal younger than myself, a real Ph.D. (of Philosophy and +History), told me that she had heard of me and therefore wished +to see me in regard to a vacancy at Wellesley College, which, +according to the statutes, must not be filled by a man so long +as a woman could be procured. The woman she was looking for must +be able, she said, to give lectures on German Literature in German, +and to expound the works of German writers thoroughly; she would +engage me for this position, she added, if she found that I was +the right person for it. + +"I was dumfounded at the mere suggestion of this gift of Heaven +coming to me, for l had heard so many beautiful things about +Wellesley that the idea of possibly getting a position there +totally dazed me. Summoning up courage, however, I controlled +my wild joy, and pulling myself together with determination, I +gave the ladies the desired account of my studies, my journalistic +work, etc., whereupon the president informed me that she would +attend my class the next day." + +The ordeal was successfully passed, and the position of "head +teacher in the German Department at Wellesley" was immediately +offered her. "Now you think, I suppose, that I fell round the +necks of those angels of joy! l didn't though!" she blithely +writes. But she agreed to visit Wellesley, and her description +of this visit gives us old College Hall in a new light. + +"The place in itself is so beautiful that we could hardly realize +its being merely a school. The Royal Palace in Berlin is small +compared to the main building, which in length and stateliness +of appearance surpasses even the great Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. +The entrance hall is decorated with magnificent palms, with +valuable paintings, and choice statuary. The walls in all the +corridors are covered with fine engravings; there are carpets +everywhere and elegant pieces of furniture; there is gas, steam +heat, and a big elevator; everything, down to the bathrooms, +is princely." + +Professor Muller adds, "Of course, she was 'kind enough' to accept +the position offered, although it was not especially lucrative. +'But what is a high salary,' she exclaims, 'in comparison to the +ease and enthusiasm with which I can here plow a new field of work! +That, and the honor attached to the position, are worth more to +me than thousands of dollars. I am to be a regular grosses Tier +now myself,--what fun, after having been a beast of burden so long!'" + +From the first, Wellesley recognized her quality, and wisely gave +it freedom. In addition to her work in German, we owe to her the +beginnings of the Department of Education, through her lectures +on 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 yet +deepening quality in her work, that ease and grace and joy, that +mark the work of the elect only,--of those rare souls among us +who are 'near the shaping hand of the Creator.'" And Fraulein +Wenckebach herself said of her profession: "Every teacher, every +educator, should above all be a guide. Not one of those who, like +signposts, stretch their wooden arms with pedantic insistence in +a given direction, but one, rather, who, after the manner of the +heavenly bodies, diffusing warmth and light and cheer, draws the +young soul irresistibly to leave its dark jungles of prejudice and +ignorance for the promised land of wisdom and freedom." And her +students testify enthusiastically to her unusual success. One +of them writes: + +"To Fraulein Wenckebach as a teacher, I owe more than to any other +teacher I ever had. I cannot remember that she reproved any +student or that she ever directly urged us to do our best. She +made no efforts to make her lectures attractive by witticisms, +anecdotes, or entertaining illustrations. Yet her students worked +with eager faithfulness, and I, personally, have never been so +absorbed and inspired by any lectures as by hers. The secret of +her power was not merely that she was master of the art of teaching +and knew how to arouse interest and awaken the mind to independent +thought and inquiry, but that her own earnestness and high purpose +touched our lives and made anything less than the highest possible +degree of effort and attainment seem not worth while."--"We girls +used to say to each other that if we ever taught we should want +to be to our students what she was to us, and if they could feel +as we felt toward her and her work we should want no more. She +demanded the best of us, without demanding, and what she gave us +was beyond measure.--It was courses like hers that made us feel +that college work was the best part of college life." + +These are the things that teachers care most to hear, and in the +nineteen years of her service at Wellesley, there were many students +eager to tell her what she had been to them. She writes in 1886: +"What a privilege to pour into the receptive mind of young American +girls 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 college +a notable group of younger women, destined to play an important +part in Wellesley's life and to increase her academic reputation: +Mary Whiton Calkins, Margarethe Muller, Adeline B. Hawes, the able +head of the Department of Latin, Katharine M. Edwards, of the +Department of Greek, Sophie de Chantal Hart, of the Department +of English Composition, Vida D. Scudder, Margaret Sherwood, and +Sophie Jewett, of the Department of English Literature. In the +autumn of 1909, Sophie Jewett died, and never has the college been +stirred to more intimate and personal grief. So many poets, so +many scholars, are not lovable; but this scholar-poet quickened +every heart to love her. To live in her house, to sit at her +table, to listen to her "cadenced voice" in the classrooms, were +privileges which those who shared them will never forget. Her +colleague, Professor Scudder, speaking at the memorial service +in the College Chapel, said: + +"We shall long rejoice to dwell on the ministry of love that was +hers to exercise in so rare a measure, through her unerring and +reverent discernment of all finest aspects of beauty; on her +sensitive allegiance to truth; on the fine reticence of her +imaginative passion; on that heavenly sympathy and selflessness +of hers, a selflessness so deep that it bore no trace of effort or +resolute 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 of +intellectual and spiritual vision; for her swift ardor for all +high causes and great dreams; for that unbounded tenderness toward +youth, that firm and steady standard of scholarship, that central +hunger for truth, which gave high quality to her teaching, and +which during twenty years have been at the service of Wellesley +College 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 that +she has left are as few as they are precious, every one "a pearl." +Speaking of these poems, Miss Scudder says: "And in her own +verse,--do we not catch to a strange degree, hushed echoes of +heavenly music? These lyrics are not wholly of the earth: they +vibrate subtly with what I can only call the sense of the Eternal. +How beautiful, how consoling, that her last book should have been +that translation, such as only one who was at once true poet and +true scholar could have made, of the sweetest medieval elegy +'The Pearl'!" And Miss Bates, in her preface to the posthumous +volume of "Folk-Ballads of Southern Europe", illumines for us +the scholarship which went into these close and sympathetic +translations: + +"For the Roumanian ballads, although she pored over the originals, +she had to depend, in the main, upon French translation, which +was usually available, too, for the Gascon and Breton. Italian, +which she knew well, guided her through obscure dialects of Italy +and Sicily, but Castilian, Portuguese, and Catalan she puzzled out +for herself with such natural insight that the experts to whom +these translations have been submitted found hardly a word to +change. 'After all,' as she herself wrote, 'ballads are simple +things, and require, as a rule, but a limited vocabulary, though +a 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 children +and 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 of +the Department of French since 1905, died during the spring recess +after a three days' illness. Madame Colin had studied at the +University of Paris and the Sorbonne, and her ideals for her +department were high. + +Among Wellesley's own alumnae, only a very few who were officers +of the college during the first forty years have died. Of these +are Caroline Frances Pierce, of the class of 1891, who was librarian +from 1903 to 1910. To her wise planning we owe the conveniences +and comforts in the new library building which she did not live +to see completed. + +In 1914, the Department of Greek suffered a deep loss in Professor +Annie Sybil Montague, of the class of 1879. Besides being a +member of the first graduating class, Miss Montague was one of +the first to receive the degree of M.A. from Wellesley. In 1882, +the college conferred this degree for the first time, and Miss +Montague 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 l 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, l 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 l 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 a +conqueror to the triumph of her death. Miss Coman's power as +a teacher has been spoken of on an earlier page, but she will be +remembered in the college and outside as more than a teacher. Her +books and her active interest in industrial affairs, her noble +attitude toward life, all have had their share in informing and +directing 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 Wellesley +students of the first forty years of the college is that more than +sixty per cent of them have come from outside New England, from +the Middle West, the Far West, and the South. Possibly there is +a Wellesley type. Whether or not it could be differentiated from +the Smith, the Bryn Mawr, the Vassar, and the Mt. Holyoke types, +if the five were set up in a row, unlabeled, is a question. Yet +it is true that certain recognizable qualities have developed and +tend to persist among the students of Wellesley. + +Wellesley girls are in the best sense democratic. There is no +Gold Coast on the campus or in the village; money carries no +social prestige. More money is spent, and more frivolously, than +in the early days; there are more girls, and more rich girls, to +spend it; yet the indifference to it except as a mechanical +convenience, 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 of +unequal opportunity. When the college grew so large that membership +in the six societies took on the aspect of special privilege, +restiveness was as marked among the privileged as among the +unprivileged, and more outspoken. The first result was the Barn +Swallows, a social and dramatic society to which every student +in college might belong if she wished. The second was the +reorganization of the six societies on a more democratic and +intellectual basis, to prevent "rushing", favoritism, cliques, and +all the ills that mutually exclusive clubs are heir to. The +agitation for these reforms came from the societies themselves, +and they endured with Spartan determination the months of transitional +misery and readjustment which their generous idealism brought upon +their heads. + +Enthusiasm for equality also enters into the students' attitude +toward "the academic", and like most enthusiasts, from the French +Revolution down, they are capable of confusing the issue. In the +early days, they were not allowed to know their marks, lest the +knowledge should rouse an unworthy spirit of competition; and of +all the rules instituted by the founder, this is the one which +they have been most unwilling to see abolished. Silent Time they +relinquished with relief; Domestic Work they abandoned without +a pang; Bible Study shrank from four to three years and from three +to two, and then to one, almost without their noticing it. But +when, in 1901, the Honor Scholarships were established, a storm +of protest burst among the undergraduates, and thundered and +lightened for several weeks in the pages of College News. And +not the least vehement of these protestants were the "Honor girls" +themselves. To see their names posted in an alphabetical list +of twenty or more students who had achieved, all unwittingly, a +certain number of A's and B's throughout their course, seems to +have caused them a mortification more keen than that experienced +by St. Simeon Stylites on his pillar. But that the college ideal +should be "degraded" pained them most. + +There was something very touching and encouraging about this +wrong-headed, right-hearted outburst. After the usual Wellesley +fashion, freedom of speech prevailed; everybody spoke her mind. +In the end "sweetness and light" dispersed the mists of sentiment +which had assumed that to acknowledge inequality of achievement +was to abolish equality of opportunity, and burned away the ethical +haziness which had magnified mediocrity; the crusaders realized +that the pseudo-compassion which would conceal the idle and the +stupid, the industrious and the brilliant, in a common obscurity, +is impracticable, since the fool and the genius cannot long be +hid, and unfair, since the ant and the grasshopper would enjoy +a like reward, and no democracy has yet claimed that those who +do not work shall eat. When in 1912 the faculty at last decided +to inform the students as to all their marks, the news was received +with no protest and with an intelligent appreciation of the +intellectual and ethical value of the new privilege. + +The college was founded "for the glory of God and the service of +the Lord Jesus Christ, in and by the education and culture of women"; +and Wellesley girls are, in the best sense, religious. There has +been no time in the first forty years when the undergraduates +were not earnestly and genuinely preoccupied with religious +questions and religious living. One recognizes this not only by +the obvious and commonplace signs, such as the interest in the +Christian Association, the Student Volunteer Movement, the Missionary +Field, Silver Bay, manifested by the conventional Christian +students; it is evident also in the hunger and thirst of the sincere +rebels, in such signs as the "Heretics' Bible Class" a volunteer +group which existed for a year or two in the second decade of +the century, and which has had its prototypes at intervals throughout +the forty years. One sees it in the interest and enthusiasm of +the students who follow Professor Case's course in the Philosophy +of Hegel; in the reverence and love with which girls of all creeds +and of none speak of the Chapel services, and attend them. When +two thirds of the girls go voluntarily and as a matter of course to +an Ash Wednesday evening service, when Jew and Roman Catholic +alike testify eagerly to the value of the morning Chapel service +in their spiritual development, it is evident that the religious +life is genuine and healthy. And it finds its outlet in the +passion 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 Wellesley +girls who crowd by hundreds into the "matinee train" on Saturday +afternoon, but let us hope that she would be reassured to find +the voluntary Bible and Mission Study classes attended, and even +conducted, by many of these same girls. She might grieve over +the years of Bible Study lost to the curriculum, and over the +introduction of modern methods of Biblical Higher Criticism into +the classroom; but surely she would be comforted to see how the +students have arisen to the rescue of the devotional study of the +Scriptures, with their voluntary classes enthusiastically maintained. +It might even touch her sense of humor. + +As the college has grown larger, undoubtedly more and more girls +have come to Wellesley for other than intellectual reasons,--because +it is "the thing" to go to college, or for "the life." But it is +reassuring to find that the reactions of "the life" upon them +always quicken them to a deeper respect for intellectual values. +The "academic" holds first place in the Wellesley life, not +perfunctorily but vitally. The students themselves are swift to +recognize and rebuke, usually in the "Free Press" or the "Parliament +of Fools", of the College News, any signs of intellectual indifference +or laxity. Wellesley, like Harvard and other large colleges, has +its uninspiring level stretches of mediocrity; but it has its +little leaping hills, its soaring peaks as well. Every class has +its band of devoted students for whom the things of the mind +are supreme; every class has its scattering of youthful scholars +to give distinction to the academic landscape. + +It would be absurd and useless to deny that Wellesley girls have +their defects; they are of the sort that press for recognition; +defects of manner, and manners, which are not confined to the +students of any one college, or even to college students, but +are due in a measure to the general change in our attitude towards +women, and to the new freedom in which they all alike share. It +is true that, to a degree, the graces and reserves which give +charm and finish to daily living are sacrificed to the more pushing +claims of study and athletics, in college. It is true that the +unmodulated voice, the mushy enunciation, the unrestrained attitude, +the slouchy clothes, too often go unrebuked in classroom and +dormitory, 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 even +unheeded, at home or in the girls' camp, where it emphatically was +somebody's business to heed and rebuke. + +But it is the public which sees the worst of it, especially on +trains, where groups of young voices or extreme fashions in dress +become quite unintentionally conspicuous. Experienced from within, +the life, despite its many little roughnesses, its small lapses in +taste, is gracious and gentle, selfless in unobtrusive ways, and +genuinely kind. + +Religious, democratic, intellectually serious is our Wellesley +girl, and last but not least, she is a lover of beauty. How could +she fail to be? How many times, in early winter twilights, has +she come over the stile into the Stone Hall meadow, and stood +long moments, hushed, bespelled, by the tranquil pale loveliness +of the lake, the dusky, rimming hills, the bare, slim blackness +of twig and bough embroidering the silver sky,--the whole luminous +etching? How often, mid-morning in spring, has she sat with her +book in a green shade west of the library, and lifted her eyes +to see above the daffodil-bank of Longfellow's fountain the blue +lake waters laughing between the upspringing trunks of the tall +oak trees? Wherever there are Wellesley women, when spring is +waking,--in Switzerland, in Sicily, in Japan, in England,--they are +remembering the Wellesley spring, that pageant of young green +of lawns and hills and tenderest flushing rose in baby oak leaves +and baby maples, that twinkling dance of birches and of poplars, +that splendor of the youth of the year amid which young maidens +shone and blossomed, starring the campus among the other spring +flowers. And are there Wellesley women anywhere in the autumn +who do not think of Wellesley and four autumns? Of the long russet +vistas of the west woods? Of the army with banners, scarlet and +golden, and bronze and russet and rose, that marched and trumpeted +around Lake Waban's streaming Persian pattern of shadows? When +you speak to a Wellesley girl of her Alma Mater, her eyes widen +with the lover's look, and you know that she is seeing a vision of +pure beauty. + + +II. + +In 1876, the students, shocked and grieved by the discovery of +one of those cases of cheating with which every college has to deal +from time to time, met together, and made a very stringent rule +to 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 perpetual +law of the college that no student shall use a translation or key +in the study of any lesson or in any review, recitation, or +examination. Every student who may enter the college shall be +in honor bound to expose every violation of this law. If any +student shall be known to violate this law, she shall be warned +by a committee of the students and publicly exposed. If the +offense be repeated the students shall demand her immediate +expulsion 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, gave +the students opportunity to express their minds concerning matters +of college policy, we have no definite record of further steps +toward self-government on the part of the undergraduates. The +disciplinary methods of those early years are amusingly described +by Mary C. Wiggin, of the class of '85, who tells us that authority +was vested in four bodies, the president, the doctor, the corridor +teacher and the head of the Domestic Department. + +"The president was responsible for our going out and our coming +in. The 'office' might give permission to leave town, but all +tardiness in returning must be explained to the president. How +timidly four of us came to Miss Freeman in my sophomore year to +explain that the freshman's mother had kept us to supper after +our 'permitted' drive on Monday afternoon! What an occasion it +gave her to caution us as to sophomore influence over freshmen! + +"Very infrequent were our journeys to Boston in those days, theaters +were forbidden. Once during my four years I saw Booth in 'Macbeth' +during a Christmas vacation, salving my conscience with a liberal +interpretation of the phrase, 'while connected with the college', +trying to forget the parting injunction, 'Remember, girls, that +You are Wellesley College.'... + +"In the old days we were seated alphabetically in church and +chapel, where attendance was kept in each 'section' by one of +its members. A growing laxity permitted you to sit out of place +on Sunday evenings, provided that you reported to your section +girl. Otherwise you would be called to the office to explain your +absence.... + +"Very slowly did the idea dawn upon me that there was a faculty +back of all these very pleasant personal relations." + +But in the late '80's, the advance toward student self-government +begins to be traceable, slowly but surely. In the spring of 1887, +on the initiative of the faculty, the first formal conference +between representatives of faculty and students was called, to +consider questions of class organization. Other conferences took +place at irregular intervals during the next seven years, as +occasion arose, and these often led to new legislation. The +subjects discussed were, the Magazine, the Legenda, Athletics, +the Junior Prom. In the autumn of 1888, students were first +allowed to hand in excuses for absence from college classes; the +responsibility for giving a "true, valid and signed excuse" resting +with the individual student. In this same autumn the law forbidding +eating between meals was repealed, but students were still not +permitted to keep eatables in their rooms. + +Articles on college courtesy, quiet in the library, articles for +and against Domestic Work, begin to appear in the Courant and +the Prelude in 1888 and 1889. In May, 1890, we learn of a +Students' Association, which was the means of obtaining class +bulletin boards in the autumn of 1890. From this time also, +agitation on all topics of interest to the students is more openly +active. In September, 1891, the faculty consent to allow library +books to be taken out of the library on Saturday afternoon for +use over Sunday. In October, 1891, we find that the Students' +Association is to offer a medium for discussion and to foster a +scholarly spirit. In December, 1891, a plea appears in the Prelude +for occasional conferences between faculty and students on problems +of college policy. In 1892, we read that the individual students +are allowed to choose a church in the village and attend it on +Sundays, if they so desire, instead of attending the College +Chapel. In 1892 also, we have the agitation, in the Wellesley +Magazine, for the wearing of cap and gown, and in this year senior +privileges are extended, and the responsibility for absence from +class appointments rests with the student. In November, 1892, +the Magazine prints an article on Student Government by Professor +Case of the Department of Philosophy. And the cap and gown census +and discussion go gayly on. Early in 1893, there is a discussion +of Student Government. In the spring of this year, there is an +agitation for voluntary chapel. In September, the seniors begin +to wear the cap and gown throughout the year. The year 1894 sees +Silent Time abolished; and agitation,--always courteous and +friendly,--goes on for Student Government, for the opening of the +library on Sunday, for the abolition of Domestic Work. In 1893 +or 1894, Professor Burrell, as head of College Hall, introduces +the custom of having students sign for overtime when they wish +to study after ten o'clock at night. In 1894, excuses for absence +from chapel and classes are no longer required. In the spring +of 1894, at the request of undergraduates, a conference with the +faculty, in a series of meetings, considers matters of interest in +student life. Beginning with May, 1895, the library is opened +on Sundays. + +It is significant to note, in looking over these old files of +college magazines, that when the students' interest waned, the +faculty were always ready to administer the necessary prod. Not +all the articles in favor of Student Government are written by +students. President Shafer herself gave the strongest early +impetus to the movement, although not through the press. In 1899, +Professor Woolley, as head of College Hall, instituted a House +Organization, which as an experiment in Student Government among +the students then living in College Hall was a complete success. +In June, 1900, we find arrangements made for a Faculty-Student +Conference, to be held during the autumn months; and this body +met five times. Its establishment did a great deal in paving the +way to mutual understanding and trust when the definite question +of Student Government was approached. + +On March 6, 1901, at a mass meeting of the students, and after +a spirited discussion, it was voted that the Academic Council be +petitioned to give self-government to the students in all matters +not academic. This date is kept every year as the birthday of +Student Government. At another mass meeting, on April 9, Miss +Katharine Lord, the President of the Student Association of +Bryn Mawr, spoke to the college on Student Government, and on +April 23, there was still another mass meeting. The student +committee appointed to confer with the committee from the faculty +had for its chairman Mary Leavens, of the class of 1901, student +head of College Hall; Miss Pendleton, at that time secretary of +the college, was the chairman of the faculty committee. Student +Government found in her, from the beginning, a convinced and able +champion. In April, the constitution was submitted to the committee +of the faculty, and in May the constitution and the agreement, after +careful consideration, were submitted to the Executive Committee +of the Board of Trustees. On May 29, an all day election for +president was held, resulting in the choice of Frances L. Hughes, +1902, as first president of the Student Government Association of +Wellesley College. On June 6, the report was adopted and the +agreement was signed by the president and secretary of the Board +of Trustees and the president of the college. On June 7, in the +presence of the faculty and the whole student body, in chapel, the +agreement was read and signed on behalf of the faculty by the +secretary of the college. The ceremony was impressive and memorable +in its simplicity and solemnity. After Miss Pendleton had signed +her name, the students rose and remained standing while the agreement +was signed by Frances L. Hughes, President of the Association for +1901 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 Scripture +lesson was taken from I. Corinthians, "Other foundation can no +man lay than that is laid," and the recessional was, "How firm +a foundation." + +The Association is organized with a president and vice president, +chosen from the senior class, and a secretary and a treasurer from +the 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, the +house presidents and their proctors, and a representative from +each of the four classes, elected by the class. The government +is in all essentials democratic. The rules are made and executed +by the whole body of students; but all legislation of the students +is subject to approval by the college authorities, and if any +question arises as to whether or not a subject is within the +jurisdiction of the association, it is referred to a joint committee +of seven, made up of a standing committee of three appointed by +the faculty, a standing committee of three appointed by the +association, and the president of the college. + +In intrusting to the association the management of all matters +not strictly academic concerning the conduct of students in their +college life, the College authorities reserve the right to regulate +all athletic events and formal entertainments, all societies, clubs +and other organizations, all Society houses, and all publications, +all matters pertaining to public health and safety and to household +management and the use of college property. The students are +responsible for all matters of registration and absence from college, +for the regulation of travel, permission for Sunday callers, rules +governing chaperonage, the maintenance of quiet, the general +conduct of students on the campus and in the village. It is they +who have abolished the "ten-o'clock-bedtime rule"; it is they who +have decreed that students shall not go to Boston on Sundays, but +this rule is relaxed for seniors, who are allowed two Boston +Sundays, in which they may attend church or an afternoon sacred +concert in the city. If a student wishes to spend Sunday away +from college, she must go away on Saturday and remain until Monday. + +Questions of minor discipline, such as the enforcing of the rule +of quiet in the dormitories, are handled by the students; not yet, +it must be confessed, with complete success, as the quiet in the +dormitories--especially the freshman houses--falls short of that +holy calm which studious girls have a right to claim. Serious +misdemeanors are of course in the jurisdiction of the president +of the college and the faculty. One very important college duty, +the proctoring of examinations, which would seem to be an entirely +legitimate function of the Student Government Association, the +students themselves have not as yet been willing to assume. During +the years when the freshmen, sometimes as many as four hundred, +were housed in the village because of the crowded conditions on +the campus, the burden upon the Student Government Association, +and especially upon the vice president and her senior assistants +who had charge of the village work, was, in the opinion of many +alumnae and some members of the faculty, heavier than they should +have been expected to shoulder; for, when all is said, students do +come to college primarily to pursue the intellectual life, rather +than to be the monitors of undergraduate behavior. Fortunately, +with the endowment of the college and the building of new dormitories +on the campus, the village problem will be eliminated. The students +themselves are unanimously enthusiastic concerning Student Government, +and the history of the association since its establishment reveals +an earnest and increasingly intelligent acceptance of responsibility +on the part of the student body. From the beginning the ultimate +success of the movement has been almost unquestioned, and the +association is now as stable an institution, apparently, as the +Academic Council or the Board of Trustees. + + +III. + +The most important of the associations which bring Wellesley +students into touch with the outside world are the Christian +Association and the College Settlements Association. These two, +with the Consumers' League and the Equal Suffrage League--also +flourishing organizations--help to foster the spirit of service +which 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 was +formed, which gave "Missionary concerts" on Sunday evenings in +the chapel, and adopted as its college missionary, Gertrude Chandler +(Wyckoff) of the class of 1879, who went out to the mission field +in India in 1880. In the first decade also a Temperance Society +was formed, and noted speakers on temperance visited the college. +But in 1883, in order to unify the religious work, a Christian +Association was proposed. The initiative seems to have come from +the faculty, and this was natural, as the little group of teachers +from the University of Michigan--President Freeman, Professor +Chapin of the Department of Greek, Professor Coman of Economics, +Professor Case of Philosophy, Professor Chandler of Mathematics,-- +had had a hand in developing the Young Women's Christian Association +at Ann Arbor. + +The first meeting of this Association was held in College Hall +Chapel, October 8, 1884, and we read that it was formed "for the +purpose of promoting Christian fellowship as a means of individual +growth in character, and of securing, by the union of the various +societies already existing, a more systematic arrangement of the +work to be done in college by officers and students, for the cause +of Christ." + +Those who joined the association pledged themselves to declare +their belief in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and to +dedicate their lives to His service. They promised to abide by +the laws of the association and seek its prosperity; ever to strive +to live a life consistent with its character as a Christian +Association, and, as far as in them lay, to engage in its activities; +to cultivate a Christian fellowship with its members, and as +opportunity offered, to endeavor to lead others to a Christian life. +Wellesley is rightly proud of the Christian simplicity and +inclusiveness of this pledge. + +The work of the association included Bible study, devotional +meetings, individual work, and the development of missionary +interest. Three hundred and seventy signed as charter members, +and Professor Stratton of the Department of Rhetoric was the first +president. The students held most of the offices, but it was not +until 1894 that a student president,--Cornelia Huntington of the +class of 1895--was elected. Since then, this office has always +been held by a student. From its inception the association received +the greatest help and inspiration from Mrs. Durant, for many years +the 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, besides +its foreign missionary, a home missionary, and later a city +missionary who worked in New York. An Indian committee was +formed, and Thanksgiving entertainments were given at the Woman's +Reformatory in Sherborn and the Dedham Asylum for released prisoners. +In this prison work, the college always had the fullest help and +sympathy of Mrs. Durant. The Wellesley Student Volunteer Band +was organized May 26, 1890, and in 1915 there were known to be +about one hundred Wellesley girls in the foreign field, and there +were probably others of whom the college was uninformed. It is +a noble and inspiring record. + +In 1905, after the union of many of the Young Women's Christian +Associations and the formation of the National Board, Wellesley +was urged to affiliate herself with the National Association, but +she was unwilling to narrow her own pledge, to meet the conditions +of the National Board. She felt that she better served the cause +of Christian Unity by admitting to her fellowship a wider range of +Christians, so-called, than the National Board was at that time +prepared to tolerate; and she was also more or less fearful of too +much dictation. It was not until 1913, at the Fourth Biennial +Convention of the Young Women's Christian Associations, held at +Richmond, Virginia, that Wellesley was received into the National +organization; and she came retaining her own pledge and her own +constitution. + +In the old days, the Christian Association was the stronghold of +the dying Evangelicalism, and was looked on with distaste by many +of the radical students; but of late years, its tone and its method +have changed to meet the needs of the modern girl, and it has +become a power throughout the college. The annual report for +1913-1914 shows a total membership of 1297. The association +carries on Mission Study Classes; Bible Classes which the students +teach, under the direction of volunteers from the faculty, in such +subjects as "The Social Teachings of Jesus", "The Ideals of Israel's +Leaders 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 Conventions +plays an important part in quickening the interest in Silver Bay, +and the one on "the College in Spain" presents the needs and +claims of the International Institute for Girls at Madrid. Besides +its regular meetings, the Christian Association now has charge +of the Lenten services, and this effort to deepen the devotional +life of the college has met with a swift response from the students. +During 1913-1914, in Lent, the chapel was open every afternoon +for meditation and prayer, and cards with selected prayers for each +day were furnished to all who cared to use them. Unquestionably, +Wellesley possesses no student organization more living and more +life-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 Settlement +idea. The movement, as is well known, originated in the late '80's +in America. At the same time that Jane Addams and Ellen Gates +Starr were starting Hull House in Chicago, a group of Smith College +alumnae, chief among whom were Vida D. Scudder, Clara French, +Helen Rand (Thayer), and Jean Fine (Spahr), was pressing for the +establishment of a house in the East. And the idea was understood +and fostered by Wellesley about as soon as by Smith, for it was +interpreted at Wellesley by Professor Scudder, who became a member +of the college faculty, as instructor in English Literature, in +the autumn of 1887. In 1889, the Courant printed an article on +College Settlements, and students of the later '80's and early '90's +will never forget the ardor and excitement of those days when +Wellesley was bearing her part in starting what was to be one +of the important movements for social service in the nineteenth +century. All her early traditions and activities made the college +swift to understand and welcome this new idea. + +From the beginning, the social impulse has been inherent in +Wellesley, and settlement work was native to her. Professor Whiting +tells us that there used to be a shoe factory in Wellesley Village, +about where the Eliot now stands; that the students became interested +in the girl operatives, most of whom lived in South Natick, and +that they started a factory girls' club which met every Saturday +evening for years, and was led by college girls. In Charles River +Village, also at that time a factory town, Mr. Durant held +evangelistic 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, work +among the maids in the college was set going by the Christian +Association. 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 Association +was 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 friend +Adaline Emerson (Thompson), a Wellesley graduate of the class +of '80, was the first president of the association. Wellesley women +have ever since taken a prominent part in the direction of the +association's policy and in the active life of the settlement houses +in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Wellesley has +given presidents, secretaries, and many electors to the association +itself, and head-workers and a continuous stream of efficient and +devoted residents, not only to the four College Settlements, but +to Social Settlement houses all over the country. The College +Chapter keeps a special interest in the work of the Boston +Settlement, Denison House; students give entertainments occasionally +for the settlement neighbors, and help in many ways at Christmas +time; but practical social service from undergraduates is not the +ideal nor the desire of the College Settlements Association. It +aims rather at the quickening of sympathy and intelligence on +social questions, and the moral and financial support which the +College Chapter can give its representatives out in the world. +Such by-products of the settlement interest as the Social Study +Circle, an informal group of undergraduates and teachers which +met for several years to study social questions, are worth much +more to the movement than the immature efforts of undergraduates +in directing settlement clubs and classes. + +Already the historic perspective is sufficiently clear for us to +realize that the College Settlement Movement is the unique, and +perhaps the most important organized contribution of the women's +colleges 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 conscience +exceeded, in this period, by few other agencies, religious, +philanthropic or industrial, if we except the Trade-union Movement +and Socialism, which emanate from the workers themselves. The +prominent part which Wellesley has played in it will doubtless be +increasingly understood and valued by her graduates. + + +IV. + +Let it be frankly acknowledged: the ordinary adult is usually +bored by the undergraduate periodical--even though he may, once +upon a time, have edited it himself. The shades of the prison-house +make a poor light for the Gothic print of adolescence. But the +historian, if we may trust allegory, bears a torch. For him no +chronicle, whether compiled by twelfth-century monk or twentieth-century +collegian, can be too remote, too dull, to reflect the gleam. And +some chronicles, like the Wellesley one, are more rewarding than +others. + +No one can turn over the pages of these fledgling journals, Courant, +Prelude, Magazine, News, without being impressed by the unconscious +clarity with which they reflect not merely the events in the college +community--although they are unusually faithful and accurate +recorders of events--but the college temper of mind, the range +of ideas, the reaction to interests beyond the campus, the general +trend of the intellectual and spiritual life. + +The interest in social questions is to the fore astonishingly +early. In Wellesley's first newspaper, the Courant, published in +the college year 1888-1889, we find articles on the Working Girls +of Boston, on the Single Tax, and notes of a prize essay on +Child Labor. And throughout the decade of the '90's, the dominant +note in the Prelude, 1889-1892, and its successor, the Wellesley +Magazine, 1892-1911, is the social note. Reports of college +events give prominent place to lectures on Woman Suffrage, Social +Settlements, Christian Socialism. In 1893, William Clarke of the +London Chronicle, a member of the Fabian Society, visiting America +as a delegate to the Labor Congress in Chicago, gave lectures at +Wellesley on "The Development of Socialism in England", "The +Government of London", "The London Working Classes." Matthew +Arnold's visit came too early to be recorded in the college paper, +but he was perhaps the first of a notable list of distinguished +Englishmen who have helped to quicken the interest of Wellesley +students along social lines. Graham Wallas, Lowes-Dickinson, +H. G. Wells, are a few of the names found in the pages of the +Magazine and the News. The young editors evidently welcomed +papers on social themes, such as "The Transition in the Industrial +Status of Women, by Professor Coman"; and the great strikes of +the decade, The Homestead Strike, the Pennsylvania Coal Strike, +the New Bedford Strike, are written up as a matter of course. It +is 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 reputation +for research work in the Labor Bureau at Washington. + +Political articles are only less prominent than social and industrial +material. 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 Colonial +Expansion of the Great European Powers", "The Italian Riots of +May, 1898", "The Philippine Question", "The Dreyfus Incident." +This preoccupation of young college women of the nineteenth century +with modern industrial and political history is significant when +we consider the part that woman has elected to play in politics +and reform since the beginning of the twentieth century. + +In the first years of that new century, the Magazine and the weekly +News begin to reflect the general revival of religious interest +among young people. The Student Volunteer Movement, the increased +activities in the Christian Associations for both men and women, +find their response in Wellesley students. Letters from missionaries +are given prominence; the conferences at Silver Bay are written +up enthusiastically and at great length. Social questions never +lapse, at Wellesley, but during the decade 1900 to 1910, the +dominant journalistic note is increasingly religious. Later, with +the activity of the Social Study Circle, an informal club for the +study of social questions, and its offspring the small but earnest +club for the study of Socialism, the social interests regained +their 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. Through +the "Free Press" columns of these papers, the didactic, critical, +and combative impulses, always so strong in the undergraduate +temperament, find a safe vent. Mentor and agitator alike are +welcomed in the "Free Press", and many college reforms have been +inaugurated, and many college grievances--real and imagined--have +been aired in these outspoken columns. And not the least readable +portions of the weeklies have been the "Waban Ripples" in the +Prelude, and the "Parliament of Fools" in the News. For Wellesley +has a merry wit and is especially good at laughing at herself,-- yes, +even at that "Academic" of which she is so loyally proud. Witness +these naughty parodies of examination questions, which appeared +in a "Parliament of Fools" just before the mid-year examinations +of 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 a +skeptical public that college girls take their educational advantages +with sanity. + +As literary magazines, these Wellesley periodicals are only +sporadically successful. Now and again a true poet flashes through +their pages; less often a true story-teller, although the mechanical +excellence of most of the stories is unquestionable,--they go +through the motions quite as if they were the real thing. But +the appeals of the editors for poetry and literary prose; their +occasional sardonic comments upon the apathy of the college reading +public,--especially during the waning later years of the Magazine, +before it was absorbed into the monthly issue of the News,--would +seem to indicate that the pure, literary imagination is as rare at +Wellesley as it is in the world at large. Yet there are shining +pages in these chronicles, pages whose golden promise has been fulfilled. + +In 1911, the Alumnae Association discussed the advisability of +publishing an alumnae magazine, but it was decided that the time +was not yet ripe for the new enterprise, and instead an agreement +was entered into with the News, by which a certain number of +pages each month were to be at the disposal of the alumnae editor, +for articles and essays on college matters which should be of +interest to the alumnae. The new department has been marked +from the beginning by dignity and interest, and the papers contributed +have been unusually valuable, especially from the point of view +of college history. + +In 1889 Wellesley's Senior Annual, the Legenda, came into being. +In general it has followed the conventional lines of all college +annuals, 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, and +a biographical sketch of Mrs. Durant; in 1896, when it became +a storybook of college life. + +In October, 1912, The Wellesley College Press Board was organized +by Mrs. Helene Buhlert Magee, of the class of 1903. The board +is the outgrowth of an attempt by the college authorities, in 1911, +to regulate the work of its budding journalists. Up to this time +the newspapers had been supplied, more or less intermittently and +often unsatisfactorily, with items of college news by students +engaged by the newspapers and responsible only to them. The +college now appoints an official reporter from its own faculty, +who sends all Wellesley news to the newspapers and is consulted +by the regular reporters when they desire special information. +The Press Board, organized by this official reporter, consists of +seven students reporting for Boston papers and two for those in +New York. At the time of the Wellesley fire, this board proved +itself particularly efficient in disseminating accurate information. + + +V. + +But it is not the workaday Wellesley, tranquilly pursuing her +serious and semi-serious occupations, that the outsiders know +best. To them, she is wont to turn her holiday face. And no +college plays with more zest than Wellesley. Perhaps because +no college ever had such a perfect playground. Every hill and +grove and hollow of the beautiful campus holds its memories of +playdays and midsummer nights. + +Those were the nights when Rosalind and Orlando wandered out of +Arden into a New England moonlight; when flitting Ariel forsook +Prospero's isle to make his nest in Wellesley's bowering rhododendrons +--in blossom time he is always hovering there, a winged bloom, +for eyes that are not holden. Those were the nights when Puck came +dancing up from Tupelo with Titania's fairy rout a-twinkle at his +heels; when the great Hindu Raj floated from India in his canopied +barge across the moonlit waters of Lake Waban; when Tristram and +Iseult, on their way to the court of King Mark, all love distraught, +cast anchor in the little cove below Stone Hall and played their +passion out; when Nicolette kilted her skirts against the dew and +argued of love with Aucassin. Those were the nights when the +Countess Cathleen--loveliest of Yeats's Irish ladies--found Paradise +and the Heavenly Host awaiting her on a Wellesley hilltop when +she had sold her soul to feed her starving peasants. + +But the glamour of the sun is as potent as the glamour of the +moon at Wellesley. High noon is magical on Tree Day, for then +the mythic folk of ancient Greece, the hamadryads and Dian's nymphs, +Venus and Orpheus and Narcissus, and all the rest, come out and +dream a dance of old days on the great green billows of the lawn. +To see veiled Cupid, like a living flame, come streaming down +among the hillside trees, down, swift as fire, to the waiting +Psyche, is never to forget. No wood near Athens was ever so +vision-haunted as Wellesley with the dancing spirits of past +Tree Days. + +On that day in early June the whole college turns itself into a +pageant of spring. From the long hillside above which College Hall +once towered, the faculty and the alumnae watch their younger +sisters march in slow processional triumph around and about the +wide green campus. Like a moving flower garden the procession +winds upon itself; hundreds and hundreds of seniors and juniors +and sophomores and freshmen,--more than fourteen hundred of them +in 1914. Then it breaks ranks and plants itself in parterres +at the foot of the hill, masses of blue, and rose, and lavender, +and golden blossoming girls. Contrary Mistress Mary's garden was +nothing to it. And after the procession come the dances. Sometimes +a Breton Pardon wanders across the sea. The gods from Olympus +are very much at home in these groves of academe. Once King Arthur's +knight 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. And +in the fairy ring around Longfellow fountain, gnomes and fays and +freshmen play hide-and-seek with the water nixies. + +The first Tree Day was Mr. Durant's idea; no one was more awake +than he, in the old days, to Wellesley's poetic possibilities. +And the first trees were gifts from Mr. Hunnewell; two beautiful +exotics, Japanese golden evergreens--one for 1879 and one for +1880. The two trees were planted on May 16, 1877, the sophomore +tree by the library, the freshman tree by the dining room. An +early chronicler writes, "Then it was that the venerated spade +made 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 about +the same height as the spade, but by no means, as she modestly +suggested, of the same mental capacity, was so stricken with +astonishment when she had mounted the rostrum and this burly +instrument was propped up before her, that she nearly forgot her +speech.... And then it was there was introduced the more questionable +practice of planting class trees too delicate to bear the college +course. Although a foolish little bird built her nest and laid +her eggs in the golden-leaved evergreen of '79, and although a +much handsomer nest with a very much larger egg appeared immediately +in the Retinospora Precipera Aurea of '80, yet the rival 'nymphs +with golden hair' were both soon forced to forsake their withered +tenements; 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 handed +down from class to class, is recorded in Florence Morse Kingsley's +diary, where we learn how the "burly instrument" of 1877 was +succeeded by a less unwieldy and more ladylike utensil. Under +the 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 l 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 l was + nominated. "You know him better than we do," they all said, + so l 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 l 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?" + + l 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, l 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 l told him "no," but Alice and l 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 has +vanished, but the '81 elm stands in its "prominent" place, a tree +of ancient memories and visions ever young. + +It was not until 1889 that the pageant element began to take +a definite and conspicuous place in the Tree Day exercises. +The class of '89 in its senior year gave a masque in which tall +dryads, robed in green, played their dainty roles; and that same +year the freshmen, the class of 1892, gave the first Tree Day +dance: a very mild dance of pink and white English maidens around +a maypole--but the germ of all the Tree Day dances yet unborn. +In its senior year, 1892 celebrated the discovery of America by +a 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 the +Wellesley Campus. Every year the long procession across the green +grows longer, more beautiful, more elaborate; the dancing is more +exquisitely planned, more complex, more carefully rehearsed. In +the spring, Wellesley girls are twirling a-tiptoe in every moment +not spent in class; and in class their thoughts sometimes dance. +Indeed, the students of late years have begun to ask themselves +if it may not be possible to obtain quite as beautiful a result +with less expense of effort and time and money; for Tree Day, +the crowning delight of the year, would defeat its own end, which +is pure recreation, if its beauty became a tyrant. + +This multiplication of joys--and their attendant worries--is +something that Wellesley has to take measures to guard against, +and the faculty has worked out a scheme of biennial rotatory +festivities which since 1911-1912 has eased the pressure of revelry +in May and June, as well as throughout the winter months. + +Wellesley's list of societies and social clubs is not short, but +the conditions of membership are carefully guarded. As early +as the second year of the college, five societies came into +existence: of these, the Beethoven Society and the Microscopical +--which started with a membership of six and an exhibition under +three microscopes at its first meeting--seem to have been open +to any who cared to join; the other three--the Zeta Alpha and +Phi Sigma societies founded in November, 1876, and the Shakespeare +in January, 1877--were mutually exclusive. The two Greek letter +societies were literary in aim, and their early programs consisted +in literary papers and oral debates. The Shakespeare Society, +for many years a branch of the London Shakespeare Society, devoted +itself to the study and dramatic presentation of Shakespeare. Its +first open-air play was "As You Like It", given in 1889; and until +1912, 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 were +reorganized, and gradually their programs were extended to include +dramatic work, poetic plays, and masques. The Phi Sigma Society +gives its masque--sometimes an original one--on alternate years +just before the Christmas vacation; and Zeta Alpha alternates with +the Classical Society at Commencement. The Zeta Alpha Masque +of 1913, a charming dramatization in verse of an old Hindu legend +by Elizabeth McClellan of the class of 1913, was one of the notable +events of Commencement time, a pageant of poetic beauty and oriental +dignity; and in 1915 Florence Wilkinson Evans's adaptation of the +lovely old poem "Aucassin and Nicolette", was given for the +second time. + +In 1889, the Art Society--known since 1894 as Tau Zeta Epsilon-- +was founded; and, alternating with the Shakespeare play, it gives +in the spring a "Studio Reception", at which pictures from the +old masters, with living models, are presented. The effects of +lighting and color are so carefully studied, and the compositions +of the originals are so closely followed that the illusion is +sometimes startling; it is as if real Titians, Rembrandts, and +Carpaccios 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 the +college, and its open debates, at which it has sometimes represented +the House of Commons, sometimes one or the other of the American +Chambers 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 Commencement +week, has surpassed both the senior play and the Shakespeare play +in dramatic rendering and careful study of the lines. Gilbert +Murray's translation of the "Medea", presented in 1914, was a +performance of which Wellesley was justly proud. Usually the +Wellesley plays are better as pageants than as dramatic productions, +but the Classical Society is setting a standard for the careful +literary interpretation and rendering of dramatic texts, which +should 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 dramatic +opportunity. If college theatricals have any excuse for being, it +is not found in attempts to compete with the commercial stage and +imitate the professional actor, but rather in dramatic revivals +such 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 afford +to 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 by +reading a list of her senior plays, among which are the "Countess +Cathleen", 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, and +all the college comes out to dance on the green and eat ice-cream +cones in the afternoon, is full of spontaneous jollity. Before the +burning of College Hall, the custom had arisen of cleaning house +on May Day, and six o'clock in the morning saw the seniors out +with pails and mops, scrubbing and decorating the many statues +which kept watch in the beloved old corridors. + +One of these statutes had become in some sort the genius of +College Hall. Of heroic size, a noble representation of womanly +force and tranquillity, Anne Whitney's statue of Harriet Martineau +had watched the stream of American girlhood flow through "the Center" +and surge around the palms for twenty-eight years. The statue +was 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 dispose +of, and, representing as it did her ideal modern woman, she gave +it 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 by +fond but familiar young nieces. No freshman was considered properly +matriculated until she had been dragged between the rungs of +Miss Martineau's great marble chair; May Day always saw "Aunt Harriet" +rise like Diana fresh from her bath, to be decked with more or less +becoming furbelows; and as the presiding genius in the lighter +columns of College News, her humor--an acquired characteristic-- +was merrily appreciated. Of all the lost treasures of College Hall +she is perhaps the most widely mourned. + +The pretty little Society houses, dotted about the campus, also +give the students opportunity to entertain their guests, both +formally and informally, and during the months following the fire, +when Wellesley was cramped for space, they exercised a generous +hospitality which put all the college in their debt. + +As the membership in the Shakespeare and Greek letter societies +is limited to between forty and fifty members in each society, +the great majority of the students are without these social +privileges, but the Barn Swallows, founded in 1897, to which +every member of the college may belong if she wishes, gives +periodic entertainments in the "Barn" which go far to promote +general good feeling and social fellowship. The first president +of the Barn Swallows, Mary E. Haskell, '97, says that it arose +as an Everybody's Club, to give buried talents a chance. "Suddenly +we adjured the Trustees by Joy and Democracy to bless our charter, +to be gay once a week, and when they gave the Olympic nod we +begged 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,--thicker +near the stage end,--and opened the season with an impromptu +opera 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 of +department clubs, the Deutsche Verein, the Alliance Francaise, +the Philosophy Club, the Economics Club, and informal groups such +as the old Rhymesters' Club, which flourished in the late nineties, +the Scribblers' which seems to have taken its place and enlarged +its scope, the Social Study Circle, the little Socialist Club, and +others through which the students express their intellectual and +social interests. + +Of Wellesley's many festivities and playtimes it would take too +long to tell: of her Forensic Burnings, held when the last junior +forensic for the year is due; of her processional serenades, with +Chinese lanterns; of her singing on the chapel steps in the evenings +of May and June. These well-beloved customs have been establishing +themselves year by year more firmly in undergraduate hearts, but +it 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 seems +to have waked the campus echoes first in the spring of 1890, as +a result of a prize offered in November, 1889, although as far +back as 1880 there is mention of a cheer. The musical cheer has +so much beauty and dignity, both near at hand and at a distance, +that many of the early alumnae and the faculty wish it might some +time quite supersede the ugly barking sounds, imitated from the +men's colleges, with which the girls are fain to evince their +approval and celebrate their triumphs. They invariably end their +barking with the musical cheer, however, keeping the best for the +last, 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 early +years, the class crews used to row on the lake and sing at sunset, +in their heavy, broad-bottomed old tubs; and from these casual +summer evenings "Float" has been evolved--Wellesley's water +pageant--when Lake Waban is dotted with gay craft, and the crews +in their slim, modern, eight-oared shells, display their skill. +This is the festival which the public knows best, for unlike +Tree Day, to which outsiders have been admitted on only three +occasions, "Float" has always been open to friendly guests. Year +by year the festival grows more elaborate. Chinese junks, Indian +canoes, Venetian gondolas, flower boats from fairyland, glide over +the bright sunset waters, and the crews in their old traditional +star pattern anchor together and sing their merry songs. There +are new songs every spring, for each crew has its own song, but +there are two of the old songs which are heard at every Wellesley +Float, "Alma Mater", and the song of the lake, that Louise Manning +Hodgkins 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 crew +competition; and with the darkness, the fireworks begin to flash +up from the opposite shore of the lake. + +Besides the rowing clubs, in the first decade, there were tennis +clubs, and occasional outdoor "meets" for cross-country runs, but +apparently there was no regular organization combining in one +association all the separate clubs until 1896-1897, when we hear +of the formation of a "New Athletic Association." There is also +record of a Field Day on May 29, 1899. In 1902, we find the +"new athletics"--evidently a still newer variety than those of +1897--"recognized by the trustees"; and the first Field Day under +this newest regime occurred on November 3, 1902. All the later +Field Days have been held in the late autumn, at the end of the +sports season, which now includes a preliminary season in the +spring and a final season in the autumn. An accepted candidate +for an organized sport must hold herself ready to practice during +both seasons, unless disqualified by the physical examiner, and +must confine herself to the one sport which she has chosen. During +both seasons the members may be required to practice three times +a week. + +The Athletic Association, under its present constitution, dates +from March, 1908. All members of the college are eligible for +membership, all members of the organized sports are ipso facto +members of the association, and the Director of Physical Training +is a member ex officio. An annual contribution of one dollar is +solicited from each member of the association, and special funds +are raised by voluntary contribution. In the year 1914-1915, the +association included about twelve hundred members, not all of them +dues-paying, however. + +The president of the Athletic Association is always a senior; the +vice president, who is also chairman of the Field Day Committee, +and the treasurer are juniors; the secretary and custodian are +sophomores. The members of the Organized Sports elect their +respective heads, and each sport is governed by its own rules and +regulations and by such intersport legislation as is enacted by +the Executive Board, not in contravention to regulations by the +Department of Physical Training and Hygiene. In this way the +association 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. The +unorganized sports include walking, riding, swimming, fencing, +skating, and snowshoeing. Each sport has its instructor, or +instructors, from the Department of Physical Training. The members +are grouped in class squads governed by captains, and each class +squad furnishes a class team whose members are awarded numerals, +before a competitive class event, on the basis of records of +health, discipline, and skill. Honors, blue W's worn on the +sweaters, are awarded on a similar basis. Interclass competitions +for trophies are held on Field Day, and the association hopes, +with the development of outdoor baseball, to establish interhouse +competitions also. The gala days are, besides Field Day in the +autumn, the Indoor Meet in the spring at the end of the indoor +practice, "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 laid +out, 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 not +obligatory, more and more students are coming to appreciate the +work 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 is +one of the points at which they are content to diverge from the +policy of the men's colleges. Wellesley's sports are organized +to give recreation and healthful exercise to as many students as +are fit and willing to take part in them. Some students even +disapprove of interclass competitions, and it is thought that +the interhouse teams for baseball will serve as an antidote to +rivalry between the classes. + +The only intercollegiate event in which Wellesley takes part is +the intercollegiate debate. In this contest, Wellesley has been +twice beaten by Vassar, but in March, 1914, she won in the debate +against 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 the +Phi Beta Kappa Society, and the Wellesley Chapter,--installed +January 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 and +largest building on the Wellesley campus, was destroyed by fire. +No one knows how the fire originated; no one knows who first +discovered 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 thick +with fog, and the little wind "that heralds the dawn" was not strong +enough to disperse the heavy vapors, else havoc indeed might have +been wrought throughout the campus and the sleeping village. + +At about half past four o'clock, two students at the west end of +College Hall, on the fourth floor, were awakened and saw a fiery +glow reflected in their transom. Getting up to investigate, they +found the fire burning in the zoological laboratory across the +corridor, and one of them immediately set out to warn Miss Tufts, +the registrar, and Miss Davis, the Director of the Halls of +Residence, both of whom lived in the building; the other girl +hurried off to find the indoor watchman. At the same time, a +third girl rang the great Japanese bell in the third floor center. +In less than ten minutes after this, every student was out of +the building. + +The story of that brief ten minutes is packed with self-control +and selflessness; trained muscles and minds and souls responded +to the emergency with an automatic efficiency well-nigh unbelievable. +Miss Tufts sent the alarm to the president, and then went to the +rooms of the faculty on the third floor and to the officers of the +Domestic Department on the second floor. Miss Davis set a girl +to ringing the fast-fire alarm. And down the four long wooden +staircases the girls in kimonos and greatcoats came trooping, +each one on the staircase she had been drilled to use, after she +had left her room with its light burning and its corridor door shut. +In the first floor center the fire lieutenants called the roll of +the fire squads, and reported to Miss Davis, who, to make assurance +doubly sure, had the roll called a second time. No one said the +word "fire"--this would have been against the rules of the drill. +For a brief space there was no sound but "the ominous one of +falling heavy brands." When Miss Davis gave the order to go out, +the students walked quietly across the center, with embers and +sparks falling about them, and went out on the north side through +the 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 college +but had happened to spend the night in the Psychology office on +the fifth floor, had been one of the earliest to awake, had wakened +other members of the faculty and helped Professor Case and her +wheel-chair to the first floor, and also had sent a man with an ax +to break in Professor Irvine's door, which was locked. As it +happened, Professor Irvine was spending the night in Cambridge, +and her room was not occupied. Most of the members of the faculty +seem 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 to +save 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 line +which was soon lengthened by girls from other dormitories and +extended from the front of College Hall to the library. Very +few things above the first floor were saved, but many books, +pictures, and papers went down this long line of students to find +temporary shelter in the basement of the library. Associate +Professor Shackford, who wrote the account of the fire in the +College News, from which these details are taken, tells us how +Miss Pendleton, patrolling this busy fire line and questioning the +half-clad workers, was met with the immediate response, even from +those who were still barefooted, "l'm perfectly comfortable, +Miss Pendleton", "l'm perfectly all right, Miss Pendleton." Miss +Shackford adds: + +"At about five o'clock, a person coming from the hill saw +College Hall burning between the dining-room and Center, +apparently from the third floor up to the roof, in high, clear +flames with very little smoke. Suddenly the whole top seemed +to catch fire at once, and the blaze rushed downward and upward, +leaping in the dull gray atmosphere of a foggy morning. With +a terrific crash the roof fell in, and soon every window in the +front of College Hall was filled with roaring flames, surging +toward the east, framed in the dark red brick wall which served +to accentuate the lurid glow that had seized and held a building +almost 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 who +saw the irrepressible blaze consume everything but the brick walls. + +"The old library and the chapel were soon filled with great billows +of flame, which, finding more space for action, made a spectacle +of majestic but awful splendor. Eddies of fire crept along the +black-walnut bookcases, and all that dark framework of our beloved +old library. By great strides the blaze advanced, until innumerable +curling, writhing flames were rioting all through a spot always +hushed 'in the quiet and still air of delightful studies.' The +fire raged across the walls, in and around the sides and the +beautiful curving tops of the windows that for so many springs +and summers had framed spaces of green grass on which fitful +shadows had fallen, to be dreamed over by generations of students. +In the chapel, tremendous waves swelled and glowed, reaching +almost from floor to ceiling, as they erased the texts from the +walls, demolished the stained-glass windows, defaced, but did not +completely destroy the college motto graven over them, and, in +convulsive gusts swept from end to end of the chapel, pouring in +and out of the windows in brilliant light and color. Seen from +the campus below, the burning east end of the building loomed up +magnificent even in the havoc and desolation it was suffering." + +At half past eight o'clock, four hours after the first alarm was +sounded, there stood on the hill above the lake, bare, roofless +walls and sky-filled arches as august as any medieval castle +of Europe. Like Thomas the Rhymer, they had spent the night +in fairyland, and waked a thousand years old. Romance already +whispered through their dismantled, endless aisles. King Arthur's +castle of Camelot was not more remote from to-day than College Hall +from the twentieth-century March morning. Weeks, months, a little +while it stood there, vanishing--like old enchanted Merlin--into +the impenetrable prison of the air. There will be other houses +on that hilltop, but never one so permanent as the dear house +invisible; the double Latin cross, the ten granite columns, the +Center ever green with ageless palms, the "steadfast crosses, +ever pointing the heavenward way",--to eyes that see, these have +never disappeared. + +At half past eight o'clock, in the crowded college chapel, President +Pendleton was saying to her dazed and stricken flock, "We know +that all things work together for good to them that love God,--who +shall separate us from the love of Christ?" And when she had +given thanks, in prayer, for so many lives all blessedly safe, +there came the announcement, so quiet, so startling, that the +spring term would begin on April 7, the date already set in the +college calendar. This was the voice of one who actually believed +that faith would remove mountains. And it did. By the faith of +President Pendleton, Wellesley College is alive to-day. She did +literally and actually cast the mountain into the sea on that +seventeenth of March, 1914. St. Patrick himself never achieved +a 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 study +hall, had all been swept away. Yet, in a little less than three +weeks, there had sprung up on the campus a temporary building +containing twenty-nine lecture and recitation rooms, thirteen +department offices, fifteen administrative offices, three dressing +rooms, and a reception room. Plumbing, steam heat, electricity, +and telephone service had been installed. A week after college +opened for the spring term, classes were meeting in the new building. +During that first week, offices and classes had been scattered all +over the campus,--in the Society houses, in the basements of +dormitories, the Art Building, the Chemistry Building, the Gymnasium, +the basement of the Library, the Observatory, the Stone Hall Botany +Laboratories, Billings Hall; all had opened their doors wide. The +two hundred and sixteen residents of old College Hall had all been +housed on the campus; it meant doubling up in single rooms, but +the doublets persuaded themselves and the rest of the college +that 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. By +half past nine o'clock in the morning, the secretary of the dean +had written out from memory the long schedule of the June examinations, +to be posted at the beginning of the spring term. Members of +the faculty were conducting a systematic search for salvage among +the articles that had been dumped temporarily in the "Barn" and the +library; homes had been found for the houseless teachers, most +of whom had lost everything they possessed; several members of +the faculty had no permanent home but the college, and their worldly +goods were stored in the attic from which nothing could be saved. +It is said that when President Pendleton, in chapel, told the +students to go home as soon as they had collected their possessions, +"an unmistakable ripple of girlish laughter ran through the +dispossessed congregation." This was the Franciscan spirit in +which Wellesley women took their personal losses. For the general +losses, all mourned together, but with hope and courage. In the +Department of Physics, all the beautiful instruments which Professor +Whiting had been so wisely and lovingly procuring, since she first +began to equip her student-laboratory in 1878, were swept away; +Geology and Psychology suffered only less; but the most harrowing +losses were those in the Department of Zoology, where, besides +the destruction of laboratories and instruments, and the special +library presented to the department by Professor Emeritus Mary A. +Willcox, "the fruits of years of special research work which had +attracted international attention have been destroyed.... Professor +Marion Hubbard had devoted her energies for six years to research +in variation and heredity in beetles.... In view of the increasing +interest in eugenics, scientists awaited the results with keen +anticipation, but all the specimens, notes, and apparatus were +swept away." Professor Robertson, the head of the department, +who is an authority on certain deep-sea forms of life, had just +finished her report on the collections from the dredging expedition +of 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 roses +which the classes had planted year by year; these the fire had not +injured; and a slip from the great wistaria vine on the south side +of College Hall has proved to be alive and vigorous. The alumnae +gavel and the historic Tree Day spade were also unharmed. But +that no life was lost outweighs all the other losses, and this was +due to the fire drill which, in one form or another, has been +carried on at Wellesley since the earliest years of the college. +Doctor Edward Abbott, writing of Wellesley in Harper's Magazine +for August, 1876, says: + +"Whoever heard of a fire brigade manned by women? There is one at +Wellesley, for it is believed that however incombustible the +college building may be, the students should be taught to put out +fire,... and be trained to presence of mind and familiarity with +the thought of what ought to be done in case of fire." From time +to time the drill has been strengthened and changed in detail, but +in 1902, when Miss Olive Davis, Director of Houses of Residence, +was appointed by Miss Hazard to be responsible for an efficient +fire drill, the modern system was instituted. An article in +College News explains that "the organization of the present +fire-drill system is much like the old one. With the adoption of +Student Government, it was put into the hands of the students. +Each year a fire chief is elected from the student-body, by the +students. This girl is a senior. She is counted an officer of +the Student Government Association, and is responsible to Miss Davis. +Then at meetings held at the beginning of the fall term, each +dormitory elects one fire captain, who in turn appoints lieutenants +under 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 room +in her district and see that the directions have been complied +with and the inmates have gone downstairs. If the windows and +doors have not been shut, she must shut them. Then she goes +downstairs and calls her roll (some lieutenants memorize their +lists). When the lieutenants have finished, the captain calls +the roll of the lieutenants, asking for the number absent in each +district, and the number of windows and doors left open or lights +not lighted, if any. + +"The captains are required to hold two drills a month. At the +regular meetings of the organization at which the fire chief +presides and Miss Davis is often present, the captains report the +dates of their drills, the time of day they were held, the number +of absentees and their reasons, the time required to empty the +building, and the order observed by the girls. + +"Drills may be called by the captain at any time of the day or +night. Frequently there were drills at College Hall when it was +crowded with nonresident students, there for classes. In that +case no roll was called, but merely the time required and the +order reported. The penalty for non-attendance at fire drills +is a fine of fifty cents, and a serious error credited to the absentee. + +"There are devices such as blocking some of the staircases to train +the girls for an emergency. It was being planned, just about the +time College Hall burned, to have a fire drill there with artificial +smoke, to test the girls. The system is still being constantly +changed and improved. On Miss Davis's desk, the night of the +fire, was the rough draft of a plan by which property could be +better saved in case of fire, without more danger to life." + +A few weeks after the burning of College Hall, a small fire broke +out at the Zeta Alpha House, but was immediately quenched, and +Associate 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 Alpha +House fire. A few days before this, a special plea had been made +for good order and concentrated work in an overcrowded laboratory, +where forty-six students, two divisions, were obliged to meet at +the same time. On this morning, the professor looked up suddenly +at sounds of commotion outside. 'Why, there's a fire-engine going +back to the village!' she said. 'Oh, yes' responded a girl near +the window. 'We saw it come up some time ago, but you were busy +at the blackboard, so we didn't disturb you.' The professor looked +over her roomful of students quietly at work. 'Well,' she said, +'I've heard a good deal of boasting about various things the girls +were doing. Now I'm going to begin!'" + +And this self-control does not fail as the months pass. The +temporary administration building, which the students have dubbed +the Hencoop, tests the good temper of every member of the college. +Like Chaucer's wicker House of Rumors it is riddled with vagrant +noises, but as it does not whirl about upon its base, it lacks the +sanitary ventilating qualities of its dizzy prototype. On the +south it is exposed to the composite, unmuted discords of Music Hall; +on the north, the busy motors ply; within, nineteen of the twenty-six +academic departments of the college conduct their classes, between +walls so thin that every classroom may hear, if it will, the +recitations to right of it, recitations to left of it, recitations +across the corridor, volley and thunder. Though they all +conscientiously try to roar as gently as any sucking dove. The +effect upon the unconcentrated mind is something like--The cosine +of X plus the ewig weibliche makes the difference between the +message of Carlyle and that of Matthew Arnold antedate the Bergsonian +theory of the elan vital minus the sine of Y since Barbarians, +Philistines and Populace make up the eternal flux wo die citronen +bluhn--but fortunately the Wellesley mind does concentrate, and +uncomplainingly. The students are working in these murmurous +classrooms with a new seriousness and a devotion which disregard +all petty inconveniences and obstacles. + +And the fire has kindled a flame of friendliness between faculty +and students; it has burned away the artificial pedagogic barriers +and quickened human relations. The flames were not quenched +before the students had begun to plan to help in the crippled +courses of study. They put themselves at the disposal of the +faculty for all sorts of work; they offered their notes, their own +books; they drew maps; they mounted specimens on slides for the +Department of Zoology. In that crowded, noisy, one-story building +there are not merely the teachers and the taught, but a body of +tried 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 congratulate +ourselves upon the democratic character of our American system of +education. In the early days, neither poverty nor social position +was a bar to the child who loved his books. The daughter of the +hired man "spelled down" the farmer's son in the district school; +the poor country boy and girl earned their board and tuition at +the academy by doing chores; American colleges made no distinctions +between "gentlemen commoners" and common folk; and as our public +school system developed its kindergartens, its primary, grammar, and +high 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 in +democratic education had been spoken. + +But since the beginning of the twentieth century, two new voices +have begun to be heard; at first sotto voce, they have risen +through a murmurous pianissimo to a decorous non troppo forte, +and they continue crescendo,--the voice of the teacher and the +voice of the graduate. And the burden of their message is that +no educational system is genuinely democratic which may ignore +with impunity the criticisms and suggestions of the teacher who is +expected to carry out the system and the graduate who is asked to +finance it. + +The teachers' point of view is finding expression in the various +organizations 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 Association +of College Professors, started in the spring of 1913 by professors +of Columbia and Johns Hopkins. At a preliminary meeting at +Baltimore, in November, 1913, unofficial representatives from +Johns Hopkins, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, Clark, +and Wisconsin were present, and a committee of twenty-five was +appointed, with Professor Dewey of Columbia as chairman, "to arrange +a plan of organization and draw up a constitution." President +Schurman, in a report to the trustees of Cornell, makes the situation +clear when he says: + +"The university is an intellectual organization, composed essentially +of devotees of knowledge--some investigating, some communicating, +some acquiring--but all dedicated to the intellectual life.... The +Faculty is essentially the university; yet in the governing boards +of American universities the Faculty is without representation." +President Schurman has suggested that one third of the board +consist of faculty representatives. At Wellesley, since the +founder's death, the trustees have welcomed recommendations from +the faculty for departmental appointments and promotions, and this +practice now obtains at Yale and Princeton; the trustees of Princeton +have also voted voluntarily to confer on academic questions with +a committee elected by the faculty. + +An admirable exposition of the teachers' case is found in an +article on "Academic Freedom" by Professor Howard Crosby Warren +of the Department of Psychology at Princeton, in the Atlantic Monthly +for November, 1914. Professor Warren says that "In point of fact, +the teacher to-day is not a free, responsible agent. His career is +practically under the control of laymen. Fully three quarters +of our scholars occupy academic positions; and in America, at +least, the teaching investigator, whatever professional standing +he may have attained, is subject to the direction of some body of +men outside his own craft. As investigator he may be quite +untrammeled, but as teacher, it has been said, he is half tyrant +and half slave.... + +"The scholar is dependent for opportunity to practice his calling, +as well as for material advancement, on a governing board which +is generally controlled by clergymen, financiers, or representatives +of the state.... + +"The absence of true professional responsibility, coupled with +traditional accountability to a group of men devoid of technical +training, narrows the outlook of the average college professor and +dwarfs his ideals. Any serious departure from existing educational +practice, such as the reconstruction of a course or the adoption +of a new study, must be justified by a group of laymen and their +executive agent.... + +"In determining the professional standing of a scholar and the +soundness of his teachings, surely the profession itself should be +the 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 of +the colleges made the very practical discovery that it was the duty +and privilege of the alumnus to raise funds for the support of +his Alma Mater. It was but natural that the graduates who banded +together, usually at the instigation of trustees or directors and +always with their blessing, to secure the conditional gifts +proffered to universities and colleges by American multimillionaires, +should quickly become sensitive to the fact that they had no power +to direct the spending of the money which they had so efficiently +and laboriously collected. An individual alumnus with sufficient +wealth to endow a chair or to erect a building could usually give +his gift on his own terms; but alumni as a body had no way of +influencing the policy of the institutions which they were helping +to support. + +The result of this awakening has been what President Emeritus +William Jewett Tucker of Dartmouth has called the "Alumni Movement." +More than ten years ago, President Hadley of Yale was aware of +the stirrings of this movement, when he said, "The influence of +the public sentiment of the graduates is so overwhelming, that +wherever there is a chance for its organized cooperation, faculties +and students... are only too glad to follow it." + +It would be incorrect, however, to give the impression that graduates +had had absolutely no share in the government of their respective +colleges before the Alumni Movement assumed its present proportions. +Representatives of the alumni have had a voice in the affairs of +Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Self-perpetuating boards of trustees +have elected to their membership a certain number of mature alumni. +In some instances, as at Wellesley, the association of graduates +nominates the candidates for graduate vacancies on these boards. + +The benefits of alumnae representation on the Board of Trustees +seem to have occurred to the alumnae and the trustees of Wellesley +almost simultaneously. As early as June, 1888, the Alumnae +Association of Wellesley appointed a committee to present to +the trustees a request for alumnae representation on the Board; +but as the Association met but once a year, results could not +be achieved rapidly, and in June, 1889, the committee reported +that it had not presented the petition as it had been informed +unofficially that the possibility of alumnae representation was +already under consideration by the trustees. In fact, the trustees, +at a meeting held the day before the meeting of the Alumnae +Association, this very June of 1889, had elected Mrs. Marian +Pelton Guild, of the class of 1880, a life member of the Board. + +But the alumnae, although appreciating the honor done them by +the election of Mrs. Guild, still did not feel that the question +of representation had been adequately met, and in June, 1891, +a new committee was appointed with instructions to inform itself +thoroughly as to methods employed in other colleges to insure +the representation of the graduate body on governing boards, and +also to convey to the trustees the alumnae's strong desire for +representation of a specified character. And a second time the +trustees forestalled the committee and, in a letter addressed +to the Association and read at the annual meeting in June, 1892, +made known their desire "to avail themselves of the cooperation +of the Association" and to "cement more closely the bond" uniting +the alumnae to the college by granting them further representation +on the Board of Trustees. A committee from the Association was +then appointed to discuss methods with a committee from the Board, +and the results of their deliberations are given by Harriet Brewer +Sterling, Wellesley, '86, in an article in the Wellesley Magazine +for March, 1895. By the terms of a joint agreement between the +Board and the Association, the Association has the right to nominate +three members from its own number for membership on the Board. +These nominees must be graduates of seven years' standing, not +members of the college faculty. Graduates of less than three +years' standing are not qualified to vote for the nominees. The +nominations must be ratified by the Board of Trustees. The term +of service of these alumnae trustees is six years, but a nominee +is chosen every two years. In order to establish this method of +rotation, two of the three candidates first nominated served for +two and four years respectively, instead of six. The first election +was held in the spring of 1894, the nominations were confirmed +by the Board in November, and the three new trustees sat with +the Board for the first time at the February meeting of 1895. + +But as graduate organizations have increased in size, and membership +has been scattered over a wider geographical area, it has become +correspondingly difficult to get at the consensus of graduate opinion +on college matters and to make sure that alumni, or alumnae, +representatives actually do represent their constituents and carry +out their wishes. And the Alumni Movement has arisen to meet +the need for "greater unity of organization in alumni bodies." + +In an article on Graduate Councils, in the Wellesley College News +for April, 1914, Florence S. Marcy Crofut, Wellesley, '97, has +collected interesting evidence of the impetus and expansion of +this new factor in the college world. She writes, "More clearly +than generalization would show, proofs lie in actual organization +and accomplishments of the 'Alumni Movement' which has worked +itself out in what may be called the Graduate Council Movement.... +Since the organization of the Graduate Council of Princeton +University in January, 1905, the Secretary, Mr. H. G. Murray, +to whom Wellesley is deeply indebted, has received requests from +twenty-nine colleges for information in regard to the work of +Princeton's Council." + +Among these twenty-nine colleges was Wellesley, and the plan +for her Graduate Council, presented by the Executive Board of +the Alumnae Association to the business meeting of the Association +on June 21, 1911, and voted at that meeting, is a legitimate +outgrowth of the ideals which led to the formation of the Alumnae +Association in 1880. The preamble of the Association makes this +clear when it says: + +"Remembering the benefits we have received from our alma mater, +we desire to extend the helpful associations of student life, and +to maintain such relations to the college that we may efficiently +aid in her upbuilding and strengthening, to the end that her +usefulness may continually increase." + +In an article describing the formation of the Wellesley Graduate +Council, in the Wellesley College News for October 5, 1911, it +is explained that, "From the time since the 1910-12 Executive +Board (of the Alumnae Association) came into office, it has felt +that there was need for a bond between the alumnae and the college +administration; and it believes that this need will be met by a +small representative (i.e. geographical) definitely chosen graduate +body, which shall act as a clearing-house for the larger Alumnae +Association. The Executive Board recognized also as an additional +reason for organizing such a graduate body, that it was necessary +to do so if the Wellesley Alumnae Association is to keep abreast +of the activities in similar organizations." The purpose of the +Council, as stated in 1911, is a fitting expansion of the Association's +preamble of 1880: + +"That, as our alumnae are increasing in large numbers and are +scattered more and more widely, it will be of advantage to them +and to the college that an organized, accredited group of alumnae +shall be chosen from different parts of the country to confer with +the college authorities on matters affecting both alumnae and +undergraduate interests, as well as to furnish the college, by +this group, the means of testing the sentiment of Wellesley women +throughout the country on any matter." + +There are advantages in not being a pioneer, and Wellesley has +been able to profit by the experience of her predecessors in this +movement, particularly Princeton and Smith. Membership in the +Councils of Wellesley and Smith is essentially on the same +geographical basis, but Wellesley is unique among the Councils +in having a faculty representation. The relation between faculty +and alumnae at Wellesley has always been markedly cordial, and +in welcoming to the Council representatives of the faculty who +are not graduates of the college, the alumnae would seem to indicate +that their aims and ideals for their Alma Mater are at one with +those of the faculty. + +The membership of the Wellesley Graduate Council is composed +of the president and dean of the college, ex officio; ten members +of the Academic Council, chosen by that body, no more than two +of whom may be alumnae; the three alumnae trustees; the members +of the Executive Board of the Alumnae Association; and the councilors +from the Wellesley clubs. As there were more than fifty Wellesley +clubs already in existence in 1915, and every club of from twenty-five +to one hundred members is allowed one councilor, and every club of +more than one hundred members is allowed one councilor for each +additional hundred, while neighboring clubs of less than twenty-five +members may unite and be represented jointly by one councilor, +it will be seen that the Council is a large and constantly growing +body. Clubs such as the Boston Wellesley Club, and the New York +Wellesley Club, which already had a large membership, received +a tremendous impetus to increase their numbers after the formation +of the Council. All members of the Council, with the exception of +the president of the college and the dean, who are permanent, +serve for two years. + +The officers of the Graduate Council are the corresponding officers +of the Alumnae Association, and also serve for two years. The +Executive Committee of five members includes the president and +secretary of the Council, an alumna trustee chosen annually from +their own number by the three alumnae trustees, and two members +at large. + +The Council meets twice during the academic year, at the college; +in February, for a period of three days or less, following the +mid-year examinations, and in June, when the annual meeting is +held at some time previous to the annual meeting of the Alumnae +Association. In this respect the Wellesley Council again differs +from that of Smith, whose committee of five makes but one official +annual visit to the college,--in January. The "Vassar Provisional +Alumnae Council", like the Wellesley Graduate Council, must hold +at least two yearly meetings at the college, but unlike Wellesley, +it elects a chairman who may not be at the same time the President +of the Vassar Associate Alumnae. Bryn Mawr, we are told by +Miss Crofut, has no Graduate Council corresponding exactly to +the Councils of other colleges; but her academic committee of seven +members meets "at least once a year with the President of the College +and a committee of the faculty to discuss academic affairs." + +The possibilities which lie before the Wellesley Council may be +better understood if we enumerate a few of the activities undertaken +by the Councils of other colleges. At Princeton, since 1905, more +than two million five hundred thousand dollars has been raised +by the Council's efforts. The Preceptorial System has been +inaugurated and is being slowly developed. The university has been +brought more prominently before preparatory schools. All the +colleges are feeling the need of keeping in touch with the +preparatory schools, not for the sake of mere numbers, but to +secure the best students. Doctor Tucker has suggested that +Dartmouth alumni endow outright, "substantial scholarships in +high schools with which it is desirable to establish relations," +and the suggestion is well worth the consideration of Wellesley +women. The Yale Alumni Advisory Board has distributed to the +"so-called Yale Preparatory Schools" and to schoolboys in many +cities, a pamphlet on "Life at Yale." And Yale has also turned its +attention to tuition charges, "academic-Sheffield relations", the +future of the Yale Medical School, the Graduate Employment Bureau. + +All of these Councils are concerned with the intellectual and moral +tone of the undergraduates. Wellesley's Graduate Council has +a Publicity Committee, one of whose functions is to prevent wrong +reports of college matters from getting into the press. Mrs. Helene +Buhlert Magee, Wellesley, '03, who was made Chairman of the +Intercollegiate Committee on Press Bureaus, in 1914, and was at +that time also the Manager of the Wellesley Press Board, reminds +us that Wellesley is the only college trying to regulate its +publicity through its alumnae clubs in different parts of the +country, and gives us reason to hope that in time we shall have +publicity agents trained in good methods, "since the members of +each year's College Press Board, as they go forth, naturally become +the press representatives of their respective clubs." + +The Council has also a Committee on Undergraduate Activities, +whose duty it is to "obtain information regarding the interests +of the undergraduates and from time to time to make suggestions +concerning the conduct of the same as they affect the alumnae or +bring the college before the general public." This committee +proposes a Rally Day and a Freshman Forum, to be conducted each +year by a representative alumna equipped to set forth the ideals +and 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 find +their way to work other than teaching," and to "present a survey +of all the possibilities open to women in the field of industry +to-day," this committee welcomes the cooperation of Miss Florence +Jackson, a graduate of Smith and for some years a member of the +Department of Chemistry at Wellesley, who is now at the head of +the Appointment Bureau of the Women's Educational and Industrial +Union of Boston. Miss Jackson's practical knowledge of students, +her wide acquaintance with vocational opportunities other than +teaching, and her belief in the "value of the cultural course as +a sound general foundation most valuable for providing the sense +of proportion and vision necessary for the college woman who is +to be a useful citizen," make her an ideal director of this branch +of the Council's activities, and the college gladly promotes her +work among the students; the seniors especially welcome her +expert guidance. + +In framing a model constitution for the use of alumnae classes, +the Council has done a piece of work which should arouse the +gratitude of all future historians of Wellesley, for the model +constitution contains an article requiring each class to keep a +record which shall contain brief information as to the members of the +class and shall be published in the autumn following each reunion. +lf these records are accurately kept, and if copies are placed on +file in the College Library, accessible to investigators, the next +historian of Wellesley will be spared the baffling paucity of +information 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, the +relation between the faculty and the Graduate Council is intimate +and helpful to both, in the best sense. Relations with the +trustees, as a body, were slower in forming. President Pendleton, +at the Council's fifth session,--in the third year of its existence,-- +reported the trustees as much interested in its formation. At +the sixth session of the Council, in June, 1914, when the campaign +for the Fire Fund was in full swing, Mr. Lewis Kennedy Morse, +the able and devoted treasurer of the college, and member of +the Board of Trustees, addressed the members upon "The Business +Side of College Administration",--a talk as interesting as it was +frank and friendly. In December, 1914, when the first of the new +buildings was already going up on the site of old College Hall, +the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees invited a joint +committee from the faculty and the alumnae to meet with them to +discuss the architectural plans and possibilities for the "new +Wellesley." The Alumnae Committee consisted of eleven members +and included representatives "from '83 to 1913, and from Colorado +on the west to Massachusetts on the east." Its chairman was +Candace C. Stimson, Wellesley, '92, whose name will always ring +through Wellesley history as the Chairman of the Alumnae Committee +for Restoration and Endowment,--the committee that conducted the +great nine months' campaign for the Fire Fund. The Faculty +Committee, of five members, chose as its chairman, Professor +Alice V.V. Brown, the head of the Department of Art. + +Miss Stimson's report to the Graduate Council of this meeting of +the joint committee with the Executive Board, indicates a "strong +sense of good understanding and a feeling of great harmony and +desire for cooperation on the part of Trustees toward the alumnae." +The Faculty Committee and Alumnae Committee were invited to continue +and to hold further conferences with the Trustees' Committee +"as occasion might offer." The episode is prophetic of the future +relations of these three bodies with one another. President Nichols +of Dartmouth is reported as saying that Dartmouth, founded as +the ideal of an individual and governed at first by one man, has +grown to the point where it is no longer to be controlled as +a monarchy or an empire, but as a republic. Such an utterance +does 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 members +are all those who have received the Baccalaureate degree from +Wellesley, and all those who have received the Master's degree and +have applied for membership. But only dues-paying members receive +notices of meetings and have the right to vote. Non-graduates who +pay the annual dues receive the Alumnae Register, and the notices +and publications of the alumnae, but do not vote. + +Authoritative statistics concerning the occupations of Wellesley +women are not available. About forty per cent of the alumnae +are married. The exact proportion of teachers is not known, but +it is of course large. The Wellesley College Christian Association +is of great assistance to the alumnae recorder in keeping in touch +with Wellesley missionaries, but even the Christian Association +disclaims infallibility in questions of numbers. An article in +the News for February, 1912, by Professor Kendrick, the head +of the Department of Bible Study, states that no record is kept +of missionaries at work in our own country, but there were then +missionaries from Wellesley in Mexico and Brazil, as well as those +who were doing city missionary work in the United States. The +missionary record for 1915 would seem to indicate that there were +then about one hundred Wellesley women at mission stations in +foreign 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 an +article on the occupations and professions of Wellesley graduates, +with incomplete lists of the names of those who are engaged in +Law, Medicine, Social Work, Journalism, Teaching, Business, and +all the other departments of life into which women are penetrating; +and from this all too meager material, the historian is able to +glean 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 the +National 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 preparatory +schools in Boston; Buffalo Seminary; Kent Place School, and a +coeducational school, both in Summit, New Jersey; Hosmer Hall, in +St. Louis; Ingleside School, Taconic School and the Catherine +Aiken 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 girls +in Germany, France, and Italy. This does not take into account +the many Wellesley graduates holding positions of importance in +colleges, in high schools, and in the grammar and primary schools +throughout the country. + +The tentative list of Wellesley women holding positions of importance +in social work, in 1914, is equally impressive. The head workers +at Denison House,--the Boston College Settlement,--at the Baltimore +Settlement, at Friendly House, Brooklyn, and Hartley House, New York, +are all graduates of Wellesley. Probation officers, settlement +residents, 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 many +Wellesley names among their numbers. A Wellesley woman is working +at the Hindman School in Kentucky, among the poor whites; another +is General Superintendent of the Massachusetts Commission for +the Blind; another is Associate Field Secretary of the New York +Charity 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 unusual +distinction in this field. Mary K. Conyngton, Wellesley, '94, +took part in the Federal investigation into the condition of woman +and child wage earners, ordered by Congress in 1907, and has +made a study of the relations between the occupations, and the +criminality, of women. Her book "How to Help", published by +The Macmillan Company, embodies the results of her experience +in organized charities, investigations for improved housing, and +other industrial and municipal reforms. In 1909, Miss Conyngton +received a permanent appointment in the Bureau of Labor at +Washington, D.C. + +Wellesley has her lawyers and doctors, her architects, her +journalists, her scholars; every year their tribes increase. +Among her many journalists are Caroline Maddocks, 1892, and +Agnes Edwards Rothery, 1909. + +Of her poets, novelists, short story writers, and essayists, the +names of Katharine Lee Bates, Estelle M. Hurll, Abbie Carter +Goodloe, 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 technical +publications of Gertrude Schopperle, Laura A. Hibbard, Eleanor +A. McC. Gamble, Lucy J. Freeman, Eloise Robinson, and Flora Isabel +McKinnon, 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 distinction +of a national reputation; it has been adopted as one of America's +own 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 Thomas +Y. Crowell Company, volumes on English and Spanish travel, on the +English Religious Drama, a Chaucer for children, an edition of +the works of Hawthorne, and a forthcoming edition of the Elizabethan +dramatist, Heywood. Since her undergraduate days, when she wrote +the poems for Wellesley's earliest festivals, down all the years +in which she has been building up her Department of English +Literature, this loyal daughter has given herself without stint to +her Alma Mater. In Wellesley's roll call of alumnae, there is no +name 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 attitude +of the alumnae between March 17, 1914, and January 1, 1915, the +nine months and a half during which the campaign was being carried +on to raise the fund for restoration and endowment, after the fire. +And they did more than listen; they shook the trees on which the +dollars grew, and as the dollars fell, caught them with nimble +fingers. They fell "thick as leaves in Vallombrosa." + +Between June, 1913, and June, 1915, $1,267,230.53 was raised by +and through Wellesley women. + +In 1913, a campaign for a Million Dollar Endowment Fund had been +started, to provide means for increasing the salaries of the +teachers. Salaries at Wellesley were at that time lower than +those paid in every other woman's college, but one, in New England. +The fund had been started with an anonymous gift of one hundred +thousand dollars, and the committee, with Candace C. Stimson as +chairman, planned to secure the one million dollars in two years. +By March, 1914, a second anonymous gift of one hundred thousand +dollars had been received, the General Education Board had pledged +two hundred thousand dollars conditioned on the raising of the +whole amount, Wellesley women had given fifteen thousand dollars, +and there had been a few other gifts from outsiders. The amount +still to be raised on the Million Dollar Fund at the time of the +fire was five hundred and seventy thousand dollars. + +President Pendleton, in a letter to Wellesley friends, printed +in the News on March 28, 1914, ten days after the fire, writes: +"Our Campaign for the Million Dollar Endowment Fund must not be +dropped... we have between five and six hundred thousand dollars +still to raise. All the new buildings must be equipped and +maintained. The sum that our Alma Mater requires for immediate +needs is two million dollars. But this is not all. Another million +will soon be needed, properly to house our departments of Botany +and Chemistry, and to provide a Student-Alumnae building, and +sufficient dormitories to house on the campus the more than five +hundred students now living in the village. We are facing a +great crisis in the history of the College. The future of our +Alma Mater is in our hands. Crippled by this loss, Wellesley +cannot continue to hold in the future its place in the front rank +of colleges, unless the response is generous and immediate. + +"To sum up, Alma Mater needs three million dollars, two million +of which must be raised immediately. Shall we be daunted by +this sum? We are justly proud of the courage and self-control +of those dwellers in College Hall, both Faculty and Students. +Shall we be outdone by them in facing a crisis? Shall we be less +courageous, less resourceful? The public press has described +the fire as a triumph, not a disaster. Shall we continue the +triumph, and make our College in equipment what it has proved +itself in spirit--The College Beautiful? We can and we must." + +The response of the alumnae to this stirring appeal was instant +and ardent. The committee for the Million Dollar Endowment Fund, +with its valiant chairman, Miss Stimson, shouldered the new +responsibility. "It is a big contract," they said, "it comes at +a season of business depression, and the daughters of Wellesley +are 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 and +loyalty respond." + +Then came the offer of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars +by the Rockefeller Foundation, if the college would raise an +additional million and a quarter by January 1, 1915. The intrepid +Committee of Alumnae added to its numbers, merged the two funds, +and adopted the new name of Alumnae Committee for Restoration +and 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 both +graduate and non-graduate members, a chairman for each club was +appointed, and made responsible for reaching all the Wellesley women +in her geographical section, whether they were members of the club +or not. In states where there were no clubs, state committees +rounded up the scattered alumnae and non-graduates. Fifty-three +clubs appear in the report, twenty-four state committees, and eight +foreign countries,--Canada, Mexico, Porto Rico, South America, +Europe, Turkey, India, and Persia. Every state in the Union was +heard from, and contributions also came from clubs in Japan and +China. The campaign actually circled the globe. By June, 1914, +Miss Jenkins tells us, the appeals to the clubs and state committees +had been sent out, and many had been heard from, but in order +to make sure that no one escaped, the work was now taken up through +committees from the thirty-six classes, from 1879 to 1914. In +March, 1915, when Miss Jenkins's report was printed in the News, +3823 of Wellesley's daughters had contributed, and belated +contributions were still coming in. In June, 1915, 3903, out of +4840, 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 direct +contributions from alumnae, and from social members who did not +graduate with the class, but gifts which alumnae and former students +have secured from interested friends. Of the remaining classes, +five show a contributing list of more than ninety per cent of the +members; eleven show between eighty and ninety per cent; and +fifteen between seventy and eighty per cent. Besides the alumnae, +1119 non-graduates had contributed. None of Wellesley's daughters +have been more loyal and more helpful than the non-graduates. + +An analysis of the amount, $1,267,230.53, given by and through +Wellesley women between June, 1913, and June, 1915, shows four +gifts of fifty thousand dollars and over, all of which came through +Wellesley women, thirty gifts of from two thousand dollars to +twenty-five thousand dollars, three quarters of which came from +Wellesley women, and many gifts of less than two thousand dollars, +"only a negligible quantity of which came from any one but alumnae +and former students." + +Throughout the nine months of the campaign, the Alumnae Committee +and the trustees were working in close touch with each other. +Doctor George Herbert Palmer, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at +Harvard, was the chairman of the committee from the trustees, and +he describes himself as chaperoned by alumnae at every point of +the tour which he so successfully undertook in order to interview +possible contributors. To him, to Bishop Lawrence, the President +of the Board of Trustees, and to Mr. Lewis Kennedy Morse, the +treasurer, the college owes a debt of gratitude which it can never +repay. No knight of old ever succored distressed damsel more +valiantly, more selflessly, than these three twentieth-century +gentlemen succored and served the beggar maid, Wellesley, in the +cause of higher education. Through the activities of the trustees +were secured the provisional gifts of seven hundred and fifty +thousand dollars from the Rockefeller Foundation, and two hundred +thousand dollars from the General Education Board, Mr. Andrew +Carnegie's $95,446.27, to be applied to the extension of the library, +and gifts from Mrs. Russell Sage, Mrs. David P. Kimball, and many +others. Mrs. Lilian Horsford Farlow, a trustee, and the daughter +of Prof. Eben N. Horsford, to whom Wellesley is already deeply +indebted, gave ten thousand dollars toward the Fire Fund; and +through Mrs. Louise McCoy North, trustee and alumna, an unknown +benefactor has given the new building which stands on the hill +above the lake. Because of the modesty of donors, it has been +impossible to make public a complete list of the gifts. + +From the four undergraduate classes, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, and +from general undergraduate gifts and activities, came $60,572.04, +raised in all sorts of ways,--from the presentation of "Beau +Brummel" before a Boston audience, to the polishing of shoes +at ten cents a shine. One 1917 girl earned ten dollars during +the summer vacation by laughing at all her father's jokes, whether +old or new, during that period of recreation. Other enterprising +sophomores "swatted" flies at the rate of one cent for two, darned +stockings for five cents a hole, shampooed, mended, raked leaves. +Members of the class of 1916 sold lead pencils and jelly, scrubbed +floors, baked angel cake, counted knot holes in the roof of a +summer camp. Besides "Beau Brummel", 1915 gave dancing lessons +and sold vacuum cleaners. One student who was living in College Hall +at the time of the fire is said to have made ten dollars by charging +ten cents for every time that she told of her escape from the +building. The class of 1918, entering as freshmen in September, +after the fire, raised $5,540.60 for the fund when they had been +organized only a few weeks. + +The methods of the alumnae were no less varied and amusing. +The Southern California Club started a College Hall Fund, and +notices were sent out all over the country requesting every alumna +to 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 was +the most important, operettas, masques, garden parties, costume +parties, salad demonstrations, candy sales, bridge parties; a +moving-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 subscriptions +to magazines, with a profit of $175.75 for the fund. She comments +on Wellesley taste in magazines by revealing the fact that the +Atlantic Monthly "received by far the largest number of subscriptions." +One girl in Colorado baked bread, "but forsook it to give dancing +lessons, as paying even better!" In New York, Chicago, and other +cities, the tickets for theatrical performances were bought up +and sold again at advanced prices. A book of Wellesley recipes +was compiled and sold. An alumna of '92 made a charming etching +of 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 three +Saturdays in May, 1914, and netted somewhat over seventy-five +dollars a day for the three days. One Wellesley club charged ten +cents for the privilege of shaking hands with its "fire-heroine." + +On Easter Monday, 1914, when the college had just come back to +work, after the fire, the "Freeman Fowls" arranged an egg hunt, +with egg-shaped tickets at ten cents, for the fund. The students +from Freeman Cottage, dressed as roosters, very scarlet as to +topknot and wattles, very feather dustery as to tail, waylaid +the unwary on campus paths and lured them to buy these tickets +and to hunt for the hundreds of brightly colored eggs which these +commercially canny fowls had hidden on the Art Building Hill. +After the hunt was successfully over, the hunters came down to +the front of the new, very new, administration building, already +called the Wellesley Hencoop, where they were greeted by the +ghosts and wraiths and other astral presentments of the vanished +statues of College Hall, and where the roosters burst into an +antiphonal 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 and +doors were already wreathed in vines and crimson (paper) roses +which had sprung up and blossomed over night, the college now +hastened to the top of College Hall Hill, whence, at the crowing +of Chanticleer, the egg-rolling began. The Nest Egg for the fund, +achieved by these enterprising "Freeman Fowls", was about +fifty-two dollars. + +Far off in Honolulu there were "College Capers" in which eight +Wellesley 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 revelation +of feeling witnesses to the loyalty and love of the Wellesley +alumnae. One writes: + +"A month ago, because of obligations and a very small salary, +I thought I could give nothing to the Endowment Plan. By Saturday +morning (after the fire) l had decided l must give a dollar a month. +By night I had received a slight increase in salary, therefore l +shall send two dollars a month as long as I am able. I wish it +were millions, my admiration and sympathy are so unbounded." + +Another says: "Perhaps you may know that when I was a Senior +I received a scholarship of (I think) $350. It has long been my +wish and dream to return that money with large interest, in return +for all I received from my Alma Mater, and in acknowledgment of +the success I have since had in my work because of her. I have +never been able to lay aside the sum I had wished to give, but +now that the need has come l can wait no longer, I am therefore +sending you my check for $500, hoping that even this sum, so small +in the face of the immense loss, may aid a little because it comes +at the right moment. It goes with the wish that it were many, +many times the amount, and with the sincerest acknowledgment of +my indebtedness to Wellesley." + +From China came the message: "In an indefinite way I had intended +to send five or ten dollars some time this year (to the Endowment +Fund), but the loss of College Hall makes me realize afresh what +Wellesley has meant to me, and I want to give till l feel the pinch. +I am writing (the treasurer of the Mission Board) to send you +five dollars a month for ten months." + +From nearer home: "My sister and I intend to go without spring +suits this year in order to give twenty-five dollars each toward +the 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, who +did not shed a tear as College Hall burned--I could not speak, +my voice was so choked with tears, and that night I went supperless +to bed. But though it seems impossible to believe that College Hall +is a thing of the past, yet one cannot but feel that from this +so great calamity great good will come--a broader, higher spirit +will be manifested; we shall cease to think in classes, but all +unite in great loving thought for the good and the upbuilding--in +more senses than one--of our Alma Mater." + +And the messages and money from friends of the college were no +less touching. The children of the Wellesley Kindergarten, which +is connected with the Department of Education in the college, +held a sale of their own little handicrafts and made fifty dollars +for 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 American +education. 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 to +ride by in the train without contributing this mite to your +Rebuilding Fund." + +A woman in Tasmania sent a dollar, "for you are setting a great +ideal for the broad education of women.... We (in Australia) have +much to thank the higher democratic education of America for." + +From many little children money came: from little girls who hoped +to come to Wellesley some day, and from the sons and daughters +of Wellesley students. + +The business men of Wellesley town subscribed generously. Many +men as well as women have expressed their admiration of the college +in a tangible way. + +And from Vassar, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Mt. Holyoke, Radcliffe, Barnard, +Wells, Simmons, and Sweet Briar, contributions came pouring in +unsolicited. Harvard, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, the +Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts, and others had +already loaned equipment and material for the impoverished +laboratories, and direct contributions to the fund came from the +University of Idaho, the Musical Clubs of Dartmouth and the +Institute of Technology; from Hobart College, in cooperation with +Wellesley alumnae, in Geneva, New York; from the Emerson College +of Oratory, the College Club of Tucson, Arizona, the Boston and +Connecticut branches of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, +the Fitchburg Smith College Club, and the Cornell Woman's Club +of New York City. To Smith College, which had so lately raised +its million, Wellesley was also indebted for helpful suggestions +in planning the campaign. + +When the great war broke out in August, 1914, wise unbelievers +shook their heads and commiserated Wellesley; but the dauntless +Chairman of the Alumnae Restoration and Endowment Committee +continued to press on with her campaign--to draw dilatory clubs +into line, to prod sluggish classes into activity, to remind +individuals of their opportunity. + +The pledges for the last forty thousand dollars of the fund came +snowing in during Christmas week, and eleven o'clock of the evening +of December 31, 1914, found Miss Stimson's committee in New York +counting at top speed the sheaves of checks and pledges which had +been arriving all day. The remarkable thing about the campaign was +the great number of small amounts which came in, and the number +of alumnae--not the wealthy ones--who doubled their pledges at +the last minute. It was the one dollar and the five-dollar pledges +which really saved the day and made it possible for the college +to 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 in +those flames. Yet already the Wellesley that looks back upon +her old self is a different Wellesley. All her repressed desires, +spiritual, intellectual, aesthetic, are suddenly set free. Her +lovers and her daughters feel the very campus kindle and quicken +beneath 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 of +taste, that the old Wellesley, on the far side of the fire, strove +after but never knew; prophetic of a pinnacled and aspiring +scholarship whose solid foundations were laid forty years deep +in Christian trust and patience; prophetic of a questing spirit +freed from the old reproach of provincialism; of a ministering +spirit in which the virtue of true courtesy is fulfilled. + +The end of her first half century will see the campus flowering +with the outward and visible signs of the new Wellesley; and even +as 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. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext Story of Wellesley, by Florence Converse + diff --git a/old/wlsly10.zip b/old/wlsly10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..919b578 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/wlsly10.zip |