>n::nj.|!iiiiiii;ti|jij;i|!!!: ^ ^5^ I 'HW*BBBS?SB»^~-SS*BaSI3S ^^m mggp^i r^ ^»iMa aN A .0^^ ^•^ ^.^^ % -^ ,0o. ^0- >^ v-^' <■ , ' O , A ' , ■ \ '^ oS -7; c^. -O' * ' o ; W u Smith College 9 Even Vassal", the only existing college for women worthy of the name, was encumbered with a large preparatory department, and had not ordained such entrance requirements as obtained in the best col- leges for men. Probably there could not have been found in the length and breadth of the country a man better fitted for the development of this college than President Seelye. Born in Bethel, Connecticut, September 20, 1837, he was graduated from Union College when scarcely twenty. A period of study at Andover and in the universities of Berlin and Heidelberg followed; and then he settled down — having married Henrietta Sheldon Chapin, of Albany, New York — as pastor of the North Con- gregational Church, in Springfield, Massachusetts. Two years later, however, Mr. Seelye proceeded to a chair at Amherst College, where, from 1865 until his coming to Smith, he presided over the depart- ments of rhetoric and English literature. Birth, education, and experience had all combined, it will be observed, to make this head of Smith College exactly the kind of man the founder would have chosen for the place. College Hall, the first aca- demic building, was finished and dedicated July 14, 1875 ; and the president was then formally inaugu- rated into the office which he had practically filled 10 The College Girl of America for two years. At a quarter before nine, September 9, 1875, the college opened at morning prayers with four residing teachers and fourteen students. It required some strength of purpose for a woman to go to college in those days, and the girls who went to Smith at its opening were of extraordinary mental calibre, as well as the daughters of refined homes, where good breeding and high social ideals had been dominant. The same thing may be said about the girls who go to this college to-day. For the trustees have adhered with unwavering fidelity to the ideal they set at the beginning, and the high standard of scholarship and womanliness with which Smith began its life has never been lowered. The first thing that impresses the visitor to Northampton is the remarkable good looks of the Smith College girls, who practically own the town from September till the last of June. No particular type of beauty can be said to prevail, for the girls come, and always have come, from Maine to Cali- fornia and Oregon. But one reads on their fine open faces that the majority of them are here, not to follow a fashion nor to win a livelihood, but " to become intelligent women — better qualified for whatever time or eternity may bring." The rich and the poor are alike welcome, and while it is true that many wealthy girls go each year to Smith College, Smith College li it is likewise true that there are always dozens, not to say scores, of girls here who are earning their way, and exercising great self-denial for the sake of their education. No discrimination has ever been made at Smith socially or academically on account of money or its lack. There are, of course, expen- sive as well as moderate and meagre modes of liv- ing, for the college does not oblige a girl to be a resident of a dormitory. But none the less it re- mains true that Smith is democratic, just as its founder desired it should be. Latterly, too, there has been a tendency to bring all the students inside the college bounds, and to this end a number of new and very beautiful dormitories have recently been established. Still another noticeable and in- teresting change has been the trend from a majority of women teachers. About fifty per cent, of the faculty are now men. It was perhaps as a return compliment that the men among the trustees lately voted to admit women to the privileges of the gov- erning body. Three alumnae are accordingly mem- bers of the Board at the present time. At Smith, as at nearly every well-regulated woman's college, the health of the students is very carefully supervised. Almost all the girls take daily exercise, independent of favourable weather condi- tions. Long walks and mountain climbs, as well 12 The College Girl of America as boating on near-by Paradise, and early morning canters on horseback through the lovely meadows of the Connecticut Valley are favourite diversions. In gymnastic work and out-of-door games the in- terest is likewise keen. Aside from the required exercises, there are gymnastic electives for the junior and senior classes, and these are notably well attended. Yet always at Smith the line is drawn on the side of good taste. Consequently, there are no intercollegiate athletic contests here. " Valuable as such contests may be for men," Pres- ident Seelye has said, " they do not seem suitable for women, and no benefit is likely to come from them which would justify the risks." In its well-equipped gymnasium, however, class contests in basket-ball and other games are greatly enjoyed by the students. Hockey, too, first intro- duced into American colleges by Miss Constance Applebee, of England, has been very cordially re- ceived at Smith, and there is no pleasanter sight to be met with on the campus than that of two rival hockey teams, striving with all the strength and skill they can command to make their difficult goals. There was a time when Smith College girls played baseball, after supper, in trained dresses, but this was before the days when basket-ball was o < > 03 O a X H < w z > u o o z P4 Smith College 13 adopted. Now there is no college where this new and splendidly scientific sport for women is pursued more intelligently than at Smith. The enthusiasm culminates at the end of the winter term with the contest between the two lower class teams. Al- though the second class, with its year more of prac- tice, generally wins on this occasion, it is never safe to predict; and the audience which fills the running track of the gymnasium is always as full of interest and gay-coloured excitement as cheers and banners can express. The line-up, before this game, is one of the characteristic things at Smith, fanciful legends and curious banners being prominently dis- played by both sides,, as they patiently await, for hours, entrance to the scene of the contest. Once in, the game is to see which class shall get its mas- cot first on the floor. Similar enthusiasm is manifested over the tennis tournament held every spring. This event calls out friends from far and near, the back campus blos- soms with ribbons and gay gowns, and a general good time is always enjoyed. Each class has its champions, and these play scientifically and well. Moreover, the visitor rather enjoys being waved back into place by the coloured wand of a girl- beadle; and the rows of bright faces and flaring flags against the background of river and hills 14 The College Girl of America seldom fail to impress. At the apple-tree entrance twenty-five cents a head is demanded, the proceeds going to the treasury of the Athletic Association, a carefully governed body, which has a friendly oversight over the boating on Paradise, the tramp- ing and running and general athletic sports of the college. Every October, Smith has its Mountain Day, especially set apart that the students of the college may become very familiar in the course of their four years at Northampton with the famous beauty of that part of the Connecticut Valley. Tramps to Mt. Tom, Holyoke, Whately Glen, and Sugar Loaf are also indulged in as the months roll by, some groups of undergraduate enthusiasts often walking twenty miles in an afternoon. The college year at Smith opens with an im- promptu dance known as the Freshman Frolic. Then, in October, comes the reception given by the sophomores to welcome the entering class, — and incidentally to express womanly scorn of hazing. The new girl is escorted to this freshman festivity by an upper class partner, who, in addition to filling out her dancing-card and sending her flowers, sees that she meets the right person for each dance, entertains her during refreshments, and " sees her home." The seriousness with which the whole Smith College 15 affair is taken is almost comic. For the invitations are daintily engraved, and the girls " asked out " dress with the greatest possible care. The escort- ing sophomore, on the other hand, is scrupulously polite throughout the evening, obviously realizing the grave responsibility of her office. A dance of the same sort is given later by the juniors, as a farewell to the senior class. The scientific teas at Smith are immensely amus- ing and original. " Perhaps the card has read, ' A Chemico-physic Afternoon.' When one goes, one finds Lily Hall transformed by flowers. The ush- ers' wands are glass rods tied with ribbon; coffee and lemonade, filtered into Florence flasks, are served in beakers, and drunk through glass tubes; wafers are passed in crystallizing dishes. In the hall a white-frocked girl may be seen drawing a wedding-march from a harp of wooden reeds. Elec- tricity, meanwhile, does * stunts ' in the dark- room." ^ Another highly important annual affair at Smith is the Junior Prom, now held each year in the Students' Building, especially decorated for the oc- casion. During the afternoon of Prom Day, a con- cert is given on the back campus by the glee, banjo, * Harriett C. Seelye in Century Magazine. i6 The College Girl of America and mandolin clubs. But the dancing of the even- ing is the thing, — that and the driving next day, with one's " Prom man." Every horse within five miles of Northampton is booked months ahead for these day-after-prom drives. The high-water mark of social diversion is reached, however, in the senior dramatics which, each spring, usher in the college's Commencement festivities. For years it has been the custom to present a Shakespearian play at this time under the direction of a member of the faculty and of a pro- fessional coach. These plays have been given at the Academy of Music, Northampton, with every possi- ble theatrical advantage in the way of scenery and make-up. The costumes are usually designed by a member of the class, and for the colour scheme and scenery another senior is ordinarily responsible. After this elaborate fashion, valuable from the intellectual as well as the dramatic viewpoint, "Midsummer Night's Dream" was given in 1895; "As You Like It" in 1896; "Merchant of Ven- ice" in 1897; "Much Ado About Nothing" in 1898; "Winter's Tale" in 1899; "Twelfth Night" in 1900; "The Taming of the Shrew" in 1901 ; and "Romeo and Juliet" in 1902; and " Love's Labour's Lost " in 1903. The earnest spirit and serious effort that go into Smith College 17 these senior dramatics have never failed to produce imposing results. In last year's play not a little skill was shown in making the text fit our own times. Without discarding anything of the original, the satire was made to possess universal human appli- cation. The scenes were given practically in the order of the folio text, with suitable cuts, — the death of the father of the princess being retained, however. A very beautiful pageant at the close of the last act lent to the performance the charm Smith girls so well understand how to impart to their theatricals. For then Spring and Winter came on in chariots drawn by four graceful maidens clad consistently with the seasons. And while all the characters — soldiers, musicians, and so on — were grouped on the stage, Miss Frances McCarroll, of Brooklyn, New York, as Spring, and Miss Alice Butterfield, of Brattleboro, Vermont, as Winter, recited the charmmg lines which, so long as English literature survives, will stand as the most beautiful poetic characterizations of these seasons. How those hundreds of daintily-gowned girls in the audi- ence applauded the lines celebrating the month — " When daisies pied and violets blue And lady-smocks all silver white And cuckoo buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight ! " i8 The College Girl of America an exact description, as they one and all recognized, of the fields about Northampton at that very time. The senior play is the very biggest feature of a senior year, and the most noticeable of all Smith events to an outsider. To the girls themselves these theatricals are likewise of immense interest and im- portance, not only because of the careful training in voice culture, easy bearings and intelligent ap- preciation of Shakespeare they entail, but also be- cause of the delightful comradeship that must result from week after week of the necessary rehearsal. For the spring of 1904 a very interesting depar- ture was taken, for, instead of a Shakespearian play, the Hindoo drama '' Sakuntala," by Kalidasa, was given. This work, never before given on the American stage, is the masterpiece of India, and ranks high in the literature of all countries. It was first translated from the Sanskrit in 1791, and soon after was produced in Germany. It has been given once In England, and is being widely discussed at the present time by dramatic critics all over this country. The acting version, used at Northampton, was made by Miss Alice Morgan Wright, a senior, after carefully studying existing translations, and deciding that none of them would do. Smith girls, you see, accomplish things themselves when put to it. Last spring they erected upon the lower campus o u o as > w o z § o Smith College 19 a students' building which cost about $38,000. And for the house-warming — and to swell the fund — two of the largest societies of the college, the Alpha and the Phi Kappa Psi, presented '' She Stoops to Conquer." In this building are club- rooms and the editorial quarters of the Smith Col- lege Monthly, the excellent literary and news mag- azine of the college. Just here, because it gives a fair idea of the qual- ity of this magazine, as well as because it shows the admirable good sense of the representative Smith College girl, I want to quote a paragraph from an article contributed to the Monthly of May, 1903, by Fannie Stearns Davis, Smith, 1904. The contribution is called " Against the Flirtatious Short Story," and begins : " I desire to condemn the average sketch of a love-story produced by the average college girl. I desire to condemn those clever shapes of literary whipped creami and spun silk that represent the literary kisses of the college love-tales. ... I desire to condemn such love- stories from clever beginning to inevitable ending, for three very excellent but possibly personal rea- sons : first, because they bore me ; second, because I believe them to be perfectly untrue to a reasonable sort of life ; third, because, after due consideration, I cannot arrive at a sight of any benefit done by 20 The College Girl of America them to the person who spins the shiny cobweb of them, or to the one who tumbles through the thin- ness of them. . . . Why should a girl cheapen her self-respect by writing of the ignoble sides of things when the noble is perfectly attainable ? To demand solidity and sobriety of every smallest written word were a demand for a continual church attendance, and as unreasonable as that; but to ask for a thing not utterly transient, not threadbare of human truth^ not extolling what should be scorned; to ask an underlying nobility of motive in any imagination of the mind which is given any fixed abiding-place by means of ink and paper, is not too much tO' re- quire of the youngest and most merrily irresponsi- ble of human creatures." Now it is just that sincerity for which this under- graduate here earnestly pleads which seems to me to characterize the Smith College girl generally. My friend, Miss Elizabeth McCracken, in writing of this trait, has called it " sweet gravity." A stimulating sense that the college girl may and should do something fine with her life seems ever present in the minds of the girls here. This may very well be the result of the high Christian spirit in which the college was conceived and in which it has always been conducted. Attendance at chapel is by no means compulsory at Smith, but every Smith College 21 morning the large hall is well filled with worship- pers, and no visitor who has been privileged to share in the uplift of Sunday vespers ever forgets the experience. Wearing their best clothes and shining Sunday faces, the girls come to this service in groups of twos and threes, after an afternoon of writing home, and they listen to the exhortations of the president, and join in the singing of the hymns with an earnest reverence distinctly impres- sive. The Christian Association has a secretary of its own here at Smith, and in a quiet way much active Christian work is done during the years of a college course, — so much indeed that about twenty per cent, of the girls who may have entered college without definite Christian affiliations express themselves upon leaving as decidedly interested in one or another of the church bodies in Northampton. A very important department at Smith is the Students' Aid Society, which has now been estab- lished for over five years, and is of constantly in- creasing service to those who lack the means to continue their education. This society offers loans without interest to needy and worthy students of the three upper classes, allowing them three to five years for the payment. By means of its good of^ces many a girl, who must otherwise have left college, has been enabled to stay on and complete her edu- 22 The College Girl of America cation. There are more scholarships, too, at Smith than at many colleges of equal standing. Last year about seventy-five hundred dollars in sums of fifty dollars was available for help in this direction. Of Smith's fine buildings pages might easily be written. With its mtusic-hall, its art-gallery, its observatory, its plant house, its alumnae gymnasium (with swim- ming tank), and its fine library, it has, of course, every equipment for a modern and complete educa- tion. Its tuition, too, is low, — only one hundred dollars, — while the charge for board and a fur- nished room in any one of the fifteen or so college houses is but three hundred dollars a year. And even the rich girls, it is worth while to note, live in these three-hundred-a-year cottage homes. Not long ago a very handsome building, named Plymouth Hall, was erected just outside the campus. It was — and is — a pile of masonry as far as pos- sible removed in spirit from its good old Puritan name. " It conveys the impression,'' as a bright girl has said, " of having wandered to Northampton from New York's Fifth Avenue or Boston's Back Bay." It has to recommend it, however, all the modem conveniences, from steam heat and electric lights to an elevator presided over by a boy in buttons. There is even a tradition that the girls living here always wear evening gowns for dinner! Smith College 23 But Plymouth Hall is not succeeding as its promot- ers believed it would. The girls who could afford to live here soon came to realize that for all this paraphernalia of hotel existence they would b€ sac- rificing something very much more precious. And since no college girl wishes to get out of touch with the democratic spirit for which American colleges stand, Plymouth Hall bids fair to become an awk- ward white elephant on the hands of Northampton real estate men. The real Smith dormitories are wonderfully attractive and homelike, presenting more the appearance of a group of well-kept dwell- ings than of a seat of learning. The actual flavour of the place one can taste only by repeated visits to Northampton. Here we find the unique spectacle of a college woman's town. Smith has given to its students large personal lib- erty, and Northampton fully appreciates the reflex privilege this implies. On all sides, therefore, it makes ingenuous bids for student patronage. Even the upholsterer near the campus drops into poetry. As witness : " Halt ! you maidens, and attention bestow To this little shop of mine. If ever you find your furniture cracked, Or if you've got any that'll have to be packed, Why ! that is right in my line." 24 The College Girl of America A Smith girl might do ahnost anything in North- ampton, and the townspeople would smile indul- gently; but as a matter of fact she never does do anything in the least inconsiderate or discourteous or overbearing. Wearing a pretty white gown — even in winter — she comes often in the early evening to enjoy the good things one of the leading restaurants provides for her and for her sisters ; but she is never unpleasantly pervasive, even at Boy- den's. Not only does it seem to be true at North- ampton that a Smith girl can do no wrong, but also that a Smith girl does do no wrong. She enjoys the finest kind of liberty because she has shown that she knows how to enjoy it. In the same way there is at Smith nothing of the traditional antagonism between the students and their teachers. At the Academy of Music one even- ing this spring, I looked very hard and long at a body of Smith girls, to discover which of the group could be the chaperon. I did not find her. But I know she was there. In dress and bearing she was, however, just one of the girls for the time being, enjoying the play, as they were, with simple, de- lightful, well-bred enthusiasm. Smith's women in- structors are all like that, which may in a way account — don't you think? — for the fine, sane womanliness of the Smith girl. Smith College 25 No one ever accused a Smith girl of being dull, however. She, of all persons, knows thoroughly how to have a good time while living her under- graduate life. Naturally there are as many kinds of good times as there are girls. The Smith stu- dent may take part in bazaars, tableaux, and plays for churches and city charities ; she may do regular work in the Home Culture clubs (founded by George W. Cable) ; she may sing to forlorn old women in hospitals ; visit her friends in near-by towns; witness a performance by Nance O'Neil, Irving, the Ben Greet Company, or Mrs^^ Fiske, at the Academy; watch the football struggle between Harvard and Yale ; attend junior " proms " at neighbouring colleges; or just stay inside the Smith campus and study — as she pleases. Or she may work almost all night for the sake of attending college by day. One girl is noted for the stylish shirt-waists she makes; another for her clever newspaper articles. Many, very many, take excellent pictures, which they sell to their fellow students at astonishingly low prices ; two of whom I know teach dancing classes. One student has, throughout her course, earned her travelling ex- penses, and fat checks besides, by acting as the agent of a certain Western railroad, when Easter and Christmas vacations are being planned. What- 26 The College Girl of America ever honest means a college girl may adopt to help her to bear student expenses, she will not cease on that account to be respected by her college mates. A recent writer in one of the Chicago papers has spoken at some length of the " ignominy " suffered by a girl of limited means at college. If what the writer says were true, it would indicate a change for the worse in women's colleges within the past few years, — a change, however, which I feel sure has not come about. Says the article in question: "' The woman who would win her own way through college has something more to contend with than a man. First, she has the ignominy of it to suffer. Yes, the ignominy and the shame. For nine women out of ten in a college community, with loose purse-strings, look down with an air of contemptible patronage on her who has no purse-strings at all. Her plain clothes, her indefatigable industry, her poverty, all tend to ostracize her from the so-called * smart ' set, and to set her apart with only one or two friends, or no friends at all. She is not asked to join the fashionable clubs; she is never permitted to lead; she is rarely elected to office; she is looked upon as a nonentity, without position or prestige." It is, of course, barely possible that in the demo- cratic West " ignominy " must be endured by the Smith College 27 college girl of small means. Where fortunes are made in an hour, and a girl whose father was last year behind the counter in his own small shop, to- day flaunts an automobile and is styled a merchant prince, snobbery must be expected. In our Eastern colleges, however, quite a different spirit exists. Poverty of genial friendliness, poverty of warm- heartedness, poverty of brains, may be condemned, — pecuniary poverty, never. That nine women out of every ten in a college community with loose purse-strings look down with an air of contemptible patronage on her who has no purse-strings at all is utterly absurd. In the first place the " nine out of every ten " have them- selves " no purse-strings at all." Rich girls do not yet go to college in any great numbers, and the few who do show by the mere fact of their being there that better things than purse-strings or a lack of them are their concern. Smith is almost the only college w^here girls of large means are to be found at all, and the sweetness and generosity which is the attitude of mind of these girls toward those who are poorer than themselves is notorious. Very many actual cases could be pointed out where rich girls have quietly and unostentatiously given pe- cuniary aid to their fellow students of small means. " The so-called ' smart ' set ! " Let those who 28 The College Girl of America would bring that phrase into the vocabulary of college life be covered with confusion. Is it not bad enough to have a '' smart set " staring one impudently in the face from every page of modern journalism and from the ubiquitous '* society novel," without dragging it in where it has no right to exist and does not exist? " Plain clothes," we ven- ture to assert, never yet, in a New England college, ostracized a girl. As for " indefatigable industry ! " Well, — " that's another story," as Kipling would say. The " grind " is not popular among the girls of any college set, and since like seeks like, her friends are ordinarily " grinds " like herself, — creatures apart from any set. More and more every year are girls coming to realize that Newman's " Idea of a University " is the right one. The scholarly cardinal, it will be remembered, strenuously opposed the notion that a university is a professional school, and vigorously maintained that it should always be held a training-school for the development of the all-around student. When girls began to go to col- lege, they went very largely with a definite idea of fitting for the profession of teacher. This is not yet changed so much as it should be, but it is, never- theless, modified in some measure, so that nowadays there are comparatively few girls who graduate Smith College 29 from college without a considerable development in the way of intellectual breadth. Yet in any college having a share of the elective system, it will readily be seen that an omnivorous devourer of Greek, for instance, could pursue her thirst for abnormal development in that direction unhindered. She would desire to study, and she would be allowed to study. A " grind " is not very interesting, so- cially, and she generally is let alone. Not, how- ever, because she is poor would this come about. A rich " grind " is an anomaly, but not an impossi- bility. Poor " grinds " do not care for society, and society does not care for them. The one sin which college girls do not pardon is stupidity. By this is meant not simply a lack of pronounced brilliancy in scholarship, — many very popular girls, both rich and poor, have that, — but a lack of all the qualities which go to make up an interesting personality. A poor girl may be clever at theatricals, a pleasing singer, a brilliant student, an original talker, a fascinating beauty, or only a lovable, womanly young woman, and have friends galore, invitations galore, and hold office, too, in leading clubs. But just as exception has been taken to the phrase " smart set," I would protest against the use of the adjective " fashionable," in connection 30 The College Girl of America with a college club. Similarity of intellectual inter- ests, social interests, or human interests is the only reason for the existence of college clubs. When the snobbery of the society world exercises any potent influence upon the life of college girls, it will be time enough to talk of the ignominy of poverty. Such a day has not yet come, and, let us hope, it never will. The college girl who works her way through her alma mater always receives the respect due her from her better-conditioned sisters. If she has a personality which in outside life would win her social position and the affection of friends, she is, of course, popular in college — even in Smith College. i A WELLESLEV GIRL. WELLESLEY COLLEGE Wellesley, the " College Beautiful," is the ex- quisite product of a poet's lovely thought. To say that Wellesley is a poem were hardly to put the thing too strongly, founded as the institution was, in memory of a poet's dead child, as testimony to a poet's faith in a kind and gracious God. Just fifty years ago Henry Welles Smith, a rising young lawyer of Boston, — who was later to take the name of Henry Fowle Durant, because he was being constantly confounded with a neighbouring business man who bore his own name, — married Pauline Fowle, his cousin, and the daughter of a gallant soldier. The young couple lived for a time in Boston, but the year after their marriage pur- chased the Wellesley estate. Here, in a rambling farmhouse, it was the Durants' custom to spend the summers enjoying the delights of country life. And here, in 1855, their child was bom, a lovely boy, who was the pride and delight of both. Yet it was not ordained that this Henry Durant should grow to manhood, for when he was but eight 31 32 The College Girl of America he slipped away under a trying illness. While his little boy was hovering between life and death, and he did not yet know what would be the issue of the illness, the clever lawyer, his father, saw clearly that he had a duty to God which he had never fully discharged, and he resolved, whether his son were spared or not, to devote himself and all his posses- sions to the highest ends. The little heir was taken away, but in the keenness of his sorrow, Henry Durant accepted the loss in the higher sense of discipline and determined tO' put into a consecrated life the same earnestness which he had hitherto put into a worldly one. The secret of Mr. Durant's success at the bar had been a certain intensity which enabled him to influence others by giving his whole strength to any case he had undertaken. This intensity now spent itself in a different direction. It was devoted to the service of Christ. He became a lay preacher, and laboured the rest of his life to win to a religious state many who had been heretofore careless and indifferent toward heavenly things. How ardently his wife must have shared in the new interest that had come into his life can be appreciated more fully after we have traced some^ what the family of this surviving founder of Wellesley College. Her mother's family bore the Wellesley College 33 name of De Cazenove, honourably known in France for nearly one thousand years previous to the Huguenot persecution. Their rank was that of marquis, but when the men of the family emigrated to Geneva for religious liberty, and determined to enter upon a business career, they thought it fitting to drop titles. In the little republic of Geneva (then not one of the cantons of Switzerland) the Caze- noves soon distinguished themselves by their pro- bity, intelligence, and refinement, no less than by reason of their acuteness in the business of finance, which they elected to follow. But religious and political feeling ran high, and during the Jacobin revolution Mrs. Durant's grandfather was seized by the mob and thrown into prison. As soon as he was recognized, however, he was permitted by the revolutionary tribunal tO' return to his family, and two nights afterward, by the advice of his father, he and his brother made their escape from the country and emigrated for America by way of Hamburg. These gallant young Frenchmen landed in Phila- delphia in November, 1794. Here they soon met two beautiful sisters, whom they married. The lady who was to become Mrs. Durant's grandmother seems to have been possessed of remarkable learning and culture for her time, for she was a Latin and 34 The College Girl of America French scholar of parts. Her husband rapidly attained marked success in business. Associating himself with some gentlemen of kindred interests, he purchased a tract of land at the mouth of George's Creek, in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, where the partners founded the town of New Geneva, established stores, built mills, and set up glass-works. John Jacob Astor, perceiving young Cazenove's remarkable business ability, offered him a partnership in his great fur venture, but this the youth refused, preferring to try his fortunes in a shipping concern, for which purpose he removed to Alexandria, Virginia. Five sons and five daughters came in the course of years to the Cazenove household, and one of these, Pauline, while on a visit to Boston in the autumn of 1826, met Major Fowle of Watertown, at that time in the regular United States army. The Fowles of Watertown were of English descent, and as interesting a family in their own way as even the Cazenoves. The father. Captain John, had done good service in the war of the revo- lution, and he and his wife were reputed at the time of their marriage to be the handsomest bride and groom Newton had ever known. Their eight children, especially the daughters, were far-famed for their loveliness, and it is said that when the girls Wellesley College 35 were sewing or reading by the window at early- even their father would frequently steal out to shield his Three Graces from the glances of the youths of the place. Robert Treat Paine, apropos of these beauteous maids, composed a toast that was long famed in the countryside : " To the fair of every town And the Fowle of Watertown," and this was wont to be drunk reverently, all stand- ing, by the gallants of the period. Harriet, the most intellectual of these maids, married a young lawyer by the name of Smith, and went with her husband to live in Hanover, N. H. ; it was here, Feb. 20, 1822, that she gave birth to the child who was afterward to found Wellesley College, Henry Welles Smith, who changed his name to Henry Fowle Durant because his own patronymic was annoyingly like that of another man. The brother of the Three Graces, the soldier who won Pauline Cazenove as his bride, was not in his first youth at the time of this wedding, having reached indeed twoscore years when he met his beloved. He had served in the war of 18 12 in New York, and had taken part with that illustrious corps known as Scott's brigade in the Niagara campaign, 36 The College Girl of America remaining at the head of his company through the battle of Lundy's Lane, regardless of the wound he had received early in the action. Later he served in the Indian wars on the frontier. Major Fowle was a man of the greatest integrity, and was nicknamed Honest Jack in his regiment. So fine and high was his sense of responsibility for others that he abandoned card playing (which at home had been a favourite recreation of the family circle) because he had noticed the demoralizing effect of this practice on his men. As a lover, the major seems to have been ideal. A sister of his betrothed called him " the most thoughtful and considerate man for one in love I ever knew." And her friends agreed that " since the creation of the world no lover was ever half so attentive and agreeable as the major." The union of the major and his bride was cele- brated in May, 1831, and on June 13th of the follow- ing year, Pauline Fowle (Mrs. Durant) was born in Alexandria. Even while an infant she journeyed much with her parents from one army post to an- other. In the spring of 1833, we learn. Major Fowle was ordered to Fort Dearborn, Chicago, and from his evangelistic efforts in a not inappropriate carpenter shop there sprang what was afterward the first church in Chicago. An appointment as Wellesley College 37 instructor of tactics and as commandant of the corps of cadets at West Point soon followed, and in the fascinating army life of this military academy on the Hudson little Pauline passed five years of her early childhood. The little girl was early trained in all womanly arts, and when her father was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and ordered to the command of his regiment in the Seminole Indian wars, he car- ried with him a pretty hussy, laboriously fashioned by his daughter's childish fingers. This gift was the last one he ever received from Pauline. For, having placed his family temporarily in Alexandria, he embarked at Wheeling, Virginia, on the steam- boat Moselle, on which he lost his life April 25, 1838. The boat had been urged beyond her power, and at Cincinnati the boiler burst. In the river near Madison, Indiana, one hundred miles down-stream, the soldier's body was recovered May 13, 1838, and there he was buried with the honours of war. In remembrance of this, Mrs. Durant, a few years ago, gave the town a check of $5,000 for the benefit of the King's Daughters Hospital, now doing a very valuable service in that community. Naturally, the blow was a terrible one to Mrs. Fowle. Pauline, then only a child of six, was forced to attend to nearly everything, for her mother was utterly pros- 38 The College Girl of America trated by the shock of her husband's loss. The little girl was only eight years old when she first met her cousin Henry, then a student in Harvard. But she soon grew up, and while he was attending the law school, being admitted to the bar, and making his way as a young attorney, she was being carefully educated for the place she was later to fill so splen- didly. As has been said, young Durant was a poet. Dur- ing his courtship he penned many lines which showed his skill as a rhymester. Wellesley College was, however, to be the epic of his life. He had made a fortune in the law, and this he wished to surrender as a gift to God. From 1863 onward, therefore, he was considering how best it could be done. Finally, the thought took shape. " Wouldn't you like to consecrate these Wellesley grounds, this place that was to have been Harry's, to some special work for God?" he asked his wife, one day, and, receiving her joyful affirmative, the planning for Wellesley was begun. In a letter written to her in 1867, he said : " The great object we 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." In September, 1875, the original Wellesley build- ings, erected at a cost of $1,000,000, were opened Wellesley College 39 by the Durants in their beautiful park of three hun- dred acres, on the shore of Lake Waban. Years before, it is interesting here to note, a famous Boston physician, who had instituted careful research to ascertain the most healthful town in Massachusetts, decided in favour of Wellesley. When the main building was erected it was thought to be absurdly large, because it offered accommodations for three hundred students. Now there are nine hundred and seventy-eight girls in the college, with fourteen professors, twenty-three assistant professors, and fifty-four instructors. And from the main building with which the college started has sprung the large group of buildings now scattered about what was originally the Durant Park. Eleven dormitories — three halls and eight cottages — are this year in use, besides the recently erected Noanett House in the village, rented by the college for a student home, and the Wellesley Inn, incor- porated and conducted by Wellesley graduates, which likewise has its little family of students. All the cottages on the grounds are connected with College Hall by a telephone system, and nearly all are heated from the fine new heating plant for which Mr. Rockefeller contributed $150,000. Mention might as well be made here of the extremely low price of board and tuition at this institution. For 40 The College Girl of America the former two hundred and twenty-five dollars a year, and for the latter one hundred and seventy- five dollars is required. This prevails whether a girl lives in College Hall, as the majority of fresh- men do, or in one of the charming co.ttages, the cherished homes of upper class girls. College Hall, with its palm-filled rotunda, has been compared to an immense hotel. Three hun- dred people can be accommodated here, and there is a telegraph and telephone office, a book store, a library, and a natural history museum, as well as many executive offices under its huge roof, which, from end to end, covers an eighth of a mile. Noan- ett House, the latest of the dormitories, is named after the Indian king who was the friend of John Eliot, and is the second cottage to recognize in its distinctive title early American history. The first was Norumbega, so named in honour of Professor Horsford's historical city. The opening of Norumbega was very interesting, for Miss Freeman (the late Mrs. Alice Freeman Palmer), who was then president of the college, had asked the poet Whittier to be present on that occa- sion. In reply he sent a letter, now framed and hanging over the mantel of this charming students' home, enclosing the following poem entitled " Nor- umbega " : CO C Q ?Q W a w -J o u >-] 1/3 A Wellesley College 41 « Not on Penobscot's wooded bank the spires Of the sought city rose, nor yet beside The winding Charles, nor where the daily tide Of Naumkeag's haven rises and retires The vision tarried ; but somewhere we knew The beautiful gates must open to our quest, Somewhere that wondrous city of the West Would lift its towers and palace domes in view; And lo ! at last its mystery is made known, Its only dwellers maidens fair and young, Its princess such as England's laureate sung; And safe from capture, save by love alone. It lends its beauty to the lake's green shore And Norumbega is a myth no more." One of the first questions asked by people who are interested in the student Hfe of girls at any col- lege is, ''How are the young women governed? How much liberty do they have?" At Wellesley this query might be answered by saying that the girls are subjected only to such rules as would naturally govern the action of any well-bred girl. A student does not, of course, come to town in the evening, or go anywhere else where a chaperon would be required, without having some older person with her. But she can ask her friends out to Wellesley tO' play golf or tennis, or go boating, and she does it, too, whenever her studies and the general scheme of things make it possible. Very largely, nowadays, the students of Wellesley College are self-governing 42 The College Girl of America by virtue of an " agreement between the faculty and students," in which certain matters of every-day conduct are relegated entirely to the control of the girls themselves. It is, of course, by a college's graduates that its work is best known, and by them alone can it be fairly judged. Thus the quality of Wellesley Col- lege training may perhaps be best hinted at by citing two instances — not wholly apocryphal — of girls who needed its blessings. The stories I am about to relate were told me by a friend, who is not herself a college woman, in reply to a chance observation of mine that the best college is the one which a girl can attend without leaving home. " That may be true sometimes," my friend in- stantly replied. '^ But there are cases, many of them in America, where a mother does her whole duty to her child only when she sends her quite away from home. If the girl has been accustomed to luxury, the college life teaches the difference between real worth and mere ostentation. And if she has lacked at home the amenities many very good homes are wholly without, she will learn at college how tO' bear herself gently. What if the acquirement of better manners and higher home ideals on the part of the girl does make it hard for her to adjust herself, o o OS h- 1 a >< Wellesley College 43 when she comes back from her college life, and does create a breach between her mother and herself. There has got to be such a breach, hasn't there, in a country like this one, where the daughter of a shop- keeper in a small way may grace the White House — or the English peerage? " I was very forcibly struck, a few years ago," my friend went on, earnestly, " with the change Wellesley may work in three months in a girl's man- ners. We'll call the girl I am to tell you of Florence Gray, because that isn't in the least like her name. I myself prepared her for college. She had a good mind, but the worst manners I ever saw in any maiden of her years. She used to dine with me some- times. Such occasions were, however, so painful to my family that I really could not ask her often. She was horribly noisy, voraciously hungry, — a thing all waist and elbows and giggles. " But that was before she went to college. When she came home for her first Christmas vacation, she was so changed that I scarcely could believe my eyes ! Her voice was quiet, her manners deferen- tial, her elbows at her sides instead of on the table, and she had learned that a lady does not display, even if she possesses, the appetite of a tramp. I was proud of her metamorphosis, I can tell you. Now I'll grant that another girl might have gotten all 44 The College Girl of America this by observation, or as you please. But this girl would never have gotten it without college, for her home had lacked refinement, and she, being she, was incapable of picking it up easily, as a result of occasional visits to people who make a change in their dress for dinner, and eat their soup noiselessly. But intimate contact with good manners three times a day for three months, at a formative period of her life, served to rescue her from her heritage of vul- garity. " The second girl fell under my observation the same year. Her mother was a school friend of my own, her father a clever professional man, who had attained local success. Neither of the parents had ever gone much into society in a large city, and so were accustomed to the rather low tone of manners in their little community. They were not so much underbred as grossly careless, you see. Well, their one daughter grew up and fitted for college in the excellent academy of the town. She was still in the high light of her graduation halo, when her crudity burst full upon me. I then saw her for the first time in some years. The occasion was a church one. Half a dozen of the young people in the religious society to which my friends belonged had graduated in the same class with Gertrude — let us call her — and a reception was being given them on the evening of my Wellesley College 45 arrival in town. I went, accompanied by an elderly relative of mine, of whom Gertrude was really fond. " Imagine my emotions when, upon entering the church parlours, I saw the girls and boys for whom the reception had been arranged sitting in a rocking- chair circle in the middle of the room, laughing and chatting together, with their backs toward their guests. When their friends congratulated them, they still sat rocking, receiving the good wishes and pleasant words over their shoulders. To my relative, a woman of nearly seventy, Gertrude thrust out a hand without rising. I was so annoyed that I did not congratulate the young person at all. '' In a few days I saw the girl's mother and was taken into her confidence as to Gertrude's choice of college. ^ I think we'll send her where she can live at home,' my friend announced. ' Of course it isn't the money, — Gertrude is our only child, and we can get her everything, — but I like to have her with me, and so does her father. She's all we've got, you see.' *' I thought of the reception and determined to risk an injudicious criticism. * You've known me a good while, Fanny,' I began, slowly, * and you say you're fond of me. Will you forgive me, then, for telling you that I think Gertrude would be a great deal better off away from home, in some good col- 46 The College Girl of America lege like Wellesley or Smith, where she will be seen by eyes that are not partial, and helped to self-poise? Really, you know, she needs a little toning up in the matter of manners.' '' * What do I care for her manners if her mind is all right ? ' demanded my frank friend with some asperity. " And so obvious was it that she cared nothing, that I dropped the subject. " Gertrude is now a B. A. cum laude. But she still shakes hands with me without rising." The social life at Wellesley is a thing of rare beauty. Almost all the students are " Barn Swal- lows," and so cultivate good-fellowship and partici- pate in the biweekly dramatics and occasional dances which occur in the barn, a building near College Hall that has been well described as " a sublimated hay shed." The bam is lighted by electricity, heated by steam, and has a fine dancing-floor, upon which, however, none except students and their girl friends have ever trod a measure. Here many fair actresses have begun — and ended — their careers behind the footlights, have tried to stifle their laughter and preserve an impas- sioned tone while the crowded house giggled frankly at their love-making, have done the gallant to pretty Wellesley College 47 freshmen, and have served their neighbours and their class in many similar ways, self-sacrificing and yet delightful. One of the most select societies of the college is the Shakespeare Club, which holds meetings every Wednesday evening throughout the academic year in a beautiful little house which exactly reproduces in its exterior aspect Shakespeare's birthplace, and holds, on an inner view, much of charm. The Phi Sigma, the Zeta Alpha, the Alpha Kappa Chi and the Tau Zeta Epsilon are the Greek letter societies here, and the Agora is the debating club. It was Mr. Durant himself who founded the Shake- speare Society, and who later encouraged Wellesley girls to give the annual outdoor play which has since become so important a feature of the college life. Another distinctly Wellesley rite is the May-day hoop-rolling of the seniors. A curious enough sight it is, too, to see these tall, graceful girls, clad in aca- demic gown and mortar-board, rolling their hoops over the level carriage road in front of College Hall very early in the morning, and having far more trouble at the business, you may be sure, than they were wont to experience In those long ago days when simple problems in addition represented their high- est scholarly achievement. Even to this final frolic of college life there is, however, an impressive side 48 The College Girl of America when the members of the class, soon to be parted, make a circle with their hoops, and, so massed to- gether, lustily sing their dear class song. Tree Day, which comes later on, is a direct herit- age from Mr. Durant, who bade the earliest classes set aside one day in Maytime for an outdoor college revel, for the planting and cherishing of chosen trees, for song and ode and pageantry, and for recog- nition of the sympathy between life and its mother, Nature. Since the primitive celebration of 1877, there has been no break in the succession of Welles- ley's Tree Days; on the contrary, the evolution has been steadily in the direction of more graceful and picturesque ceremonies. Year by year the tone has been more consistently poetic, the costumes more dainty, the musical and dramatic elements more effective. More and more each year the ceremony in which the freshmen plant their tree, and the seniors bid farewell to theirs, takes the form of a beauteous sylvan masque. Sometimes green-robed dryads with leafy wands come dancing from the woodland, whence a blast of the huntsman's horn has called Robin Hood and his merry men; some- times wild-haired gipsies toss their tambourines; sometimes gnomes in earth-coloured garments troop by with spade on shoulder; sometimes the flowers of the field blend their petal hues ; sometimes Eng- MAY -DAY HOOP -ROLLING. TREE DAY. Wellesley College 49 lish maidens weave the circle about the ribboned May-pole : but always this unique festival redounds to and is inspired by the love of nature. This is a family party. No men are ever admitted for it. Not so Float Day. In that the world shares. Miss Katherine Lee Bates, herself a professor at Wellesley, as well as a gifted poet, has thus charm- ingly described one phase of a representative Float : " The spectators, numbered by thousands, were gathered by seven o'clock — daylight still, although a filmy half-moon peeped down from the quiet arch of blue, a surreptitious guest. The tall oaks on the steep slope of Pall Mall stood motionless, as if listening to the mirthful sounds from Lake Waban. Now it was the murmurous laughter of the great throng that, seated on shawls and cushions, filled the curving shore and reached out upon the spacious platform of the boathouse; now it was the sylvan note of a bugle, and now the chant of youthful voices, the treble gallantly reinforced by deeper tones. Sometimes came a sweet blithe strain from the Glee Club ; but in the main a fashion of miscel- laneous musical repartee prevailed, in which one class strove against another with sturdy diversion in favour of a third and fourth rival, — an occasionally ludicrous effect calling out derisive applause." Inasmuch as Float Day is the one festival of so The College Girl of America this girl's college concerning which the outside world knows almost as much as is to be known, I will not dwell upon it further than to say that if the moon and other weather conditions are right, it offers an exquisite memory to the store of whom- soever participates in it. Japanese lanterns glim- mering here and there, music on the water, pretty girls in pretty gowns, and, finally, the crews grouped together to form a beautiful star, are some of the items that contribute to this charming event, the logical but poetic climax of the crew-training, which is a feature of Wellesley's athletic life. Miss Lucille E. Hill, the physical director of the college, believes far more in athletics than in gymnastics. To be sure, Wellesley girls practise indoors, but this only as a means to an end, — and when out-of-door life is im- possible. Rowing, tennis, golf, basket-ball, cross- country running, and hockey, are particularly encouraged. Lately a new exercise, putting the shot, has been added to the list of organized sports, and bids fair to become very popular. The culmination to an individual of athletic life at Wellesley comes, of course, when a girl is elected to the crew. Once 125 girls applied and tried for places on the 'varsity eight. From the very start, the boat work on the lake has been encouraged, but in the beginning it was a white muslin indulgence, — Wellesley College 51 as witness the occasion when the girls rowed Long- fellow across the lake in the beauteous barque, Evangeline. Nowadays, however, the barges are very professional looking affairs, manned as they are by maidens in dark blouses and bloomers, using the Oxford stroke. Easy as it would be to ignore the subject of money, I propose in the case of Wellesley to give the actual cost of one student's life. To many girls, as I very well know, this point is vital. Here, then, is the account of a girl whose parents allowed her five hundred and fifty dollars a year : Received $55° College bills . $400 Books, stationery, etc 50 Travelling expenses, including trips into Bos- ton 24 Clothes bought at college, a hat, a pair of danc- ing slippers, etc 14 Furniture for my room, desk, bookcase, etc. . 10 Presents, Christmas, etc 25 Food for my tea-table ..... 5 Recreation • '3 Sundries • 9 Total $550 — $550 The girl who must earn part of her money her- self reduces her expenses by living in a cheaper boarding-house off the campus, perhaps paying her 52 The College Girl of America board by tutoring the landlady's children. The ways of earning money at college are countless. Tutoring proves a lucrative occupation, and I know a girl who, for two years, has met all her expenses with money thus earned. Other girls at Wellesley sell blue prints, darn stockings, make gym and fencing suits, or copy themes. It must not be thought that the student who works for her education is in any way handicapped or looked down upon. Except that she has less time at her disposal, she has an equal showing with the millionaire's daughter. At Wellesley more than one class president has belonged to the Cooperative Association. For it is character and personality which count here, not money. The social opportunities of Wellesley girls are many and varied. Distinguished visitors from over- seas are often entertained at the college. Last win- ter, when Yeats, the Irish poet, came to this country, he gave his first lecture, available to a Boston audi- ence, at Wellesley, and that the occasion might be the more widely interesting, President Caroline Hazard of the college invited the Boston Authors' Club, of which she is a member, to come out for the after- noon. Thus Wellesley girls had, that day, an oppor- tunity, not only to enjoy a marvellously interesting address by a well-known foreign author, but a Wellesley College 53 chance also to meet Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, and many other distinguished representatives of the best society America has produced. Four years in such surroundings as the College Beautiful supplies, with such a normal regimen of work and play as has been here mapped out, with such memories of self-sacrifice and aspiration as make the Wellesley background, and such generous opportunities for culture as give it its present atmos- phere, may well make the undergraduate here be- lieve the truth of the text expounded each Flower Sunday of the academic year, when Henry Durant's memory and Mrs. Durant's living interest are es- pecially celebrated in the college chapel. What is the text? What should it be but " God is Love." VASSAR COLLEGE Thousands who have heard of Vassar College know little or nothing of the man behind the work, but none of these thousands were educated at Poughkeepsie, it is safe to say, inasmuch as the natal day of its founder is one of the two or three great days in the Vassar College year. In his own time, Matthew Vassar was a very substantial figure, — one of the most successful business men, indeed, which this country has ever known. He was not American bom, however, for it was at East Dere- ham, Parish of Tuddenham, Norfolk, England, that he first saw the light of day. His father was a farmer, and his mother a farmer's daughter. But the Vassar family was of French descent, Mat- thew's great-grandfather having settled in Norfolk at a time when his name had the form of Le Vas- seur. His family cherished a tradition that the Therese whom Jean Jacques Rousseau made his wife was of their line. Very far removed from Rousseau in moral stamina and in religious sense were the Vassars 54 Vassar College 55 among whom Matthew grew up. It was, indeed, in order that they might secure greater rehgious freedom that James Vassar and his wife came to this country with his brother Thomas, in 1796. The boy Matthew was then a promising child of four. The httle family spent their first winter in America in New York. But early in the spring of 1797, the two brothers, having purchased a farm of one hun- dred and fifty acres in Dutchess County, near Pough- keepsie, they there took up residence. There it was that Thomas Vassar started the successful brewery enterprise upon which the family fortune — and incidentally, Vassar College — was builded. Suc- cess came quickly. For it was only a year or two after the first barley, purchased in England, had sprouted in the responsive Dutchess County soil, that little Matthew and his mother began to be seen very often driving away to Poughkeepsie in a farm- wagon, which had a barrel of ale standing up proudly behind the" seat. By 1801, the demand for the Vas- sar product became so great that the farm was sold and business begun on a much larger basis. Thus things went on until Matthew reached the age of fourteen. Then his father proposed to take him into the brewery as an assistant. But, rather oddly, the boy refused to listen to the proposition. Possibly this was a mere childish freak on his 56 The College Girl of America part. Certainly it cannot be ascribed to any Puri- tanic abhorrence for beer-making, inasmuch as, when older, and presumably wiser, Matthew Vassar quite contentedly carried on the lucrative business his father had begun. But he did not go into the work at fourteen. Threatened with a seven years' appren- ticeship to a tanner as an alternative, he appealed to his mother for help, which she, motherlike, gave generously. The tanner was to come on a specified morning, but when the hour arrived Matthew Vassar was nowhere to be found. The day before he and his mother had walked down to New Hamburg, eight miles below Poughkeepsie, the lad with an extra shirt and a pair of stockings tied up in a ban- danna handkerchief, the mother with tears in her eyes, but — one must believe — respect in her heart for her son's desire to make his own way in the world. At the ferry-landing the boy received a kiss and seventy-five cents. His mother watched the boat safely to the other shore of the Hudson, after which she walked back to Poughkeepsie. Meanwhile, young Matthew tramped down the western bank to Newburgh, where he secured a place as clerk in a store. Here he stayed four years, sav- ing his money the while, — as do all the successful men one reads about. At the end of this time, being eighteen years old, and having come to " sensi- Vassar College 57 ble " views of life, he returned to Poughkeepsie with one hundred and fifty dollars, and entered his father's establishment as bookkeeper and collector. A year later the brewery burned. This was Matthew Vassar's opportunity to show his remarkable business ability. He knew that money was to be made in brewing, and he was de- termined, even if fate had seemed fickle toward him, that Vassar wealth should be forthcoming as a result of Vassar brew. So he began making ale which he himself delivered about the town. In addition to his wholesale trade he turned an honest penny serving oysters and ale in a little basement-room of the Poughkeepsie court-house to those who cared to buy. Thus he so prospered that a little before his twenty-first birthday he was able to take unto him- self a wife. Later there was built a substantial new brewery with which the founder of Poughkeepsie' s college for women was personally associated for a term of years, almost up to the time of his death, indeed. But long before this, — in 1845, — M^- Vassar visited Europe and made an extended trip through Great Britain and on the Continent. Then it was, perhaps, that the idea of founding some great public institution first began to take definite shape in his mind. His college for women is said to have been the thought of a hard-working teacher, 58 The College Girl of America his niece, Lydia Booth. Certain it is that during the years following his return from the grand tour, the idea of an institution which should do for young women what such great schools as Yale and Harvard were doing for young men gradually developed in his mind, reaching full maturity about i860. As he himself said, in words which George William Curtis thought ought to be written in letters of gold on the front of Vassar College : " It occurred to me that woman, having received from her Creator the same intellectual constitution as man, has the same right as man to intellectual culture and development. It is my hope to be the instrument, in the hands of Providence, of founding an institution which shall accomplish for young women what our colleges are accomplishing for young men." Pursuant to this ideal, the charter for the Vassar Female College was obtained from the Legislature of New York, and on the fourth day of June, 1861, Mr. Vassar broke ground with a spade which is still preserved, for the Main Building, which is still in use. The site was two miles east of the city of Poughkeepsie, in a park which, from many points of view, offers an ideal background for student life. In September, 1865, the college was opened, with over three hundred students enrolled in the first class. Two years later the name was changed to Vassar Vassar College 59 College. For almost three years after this its devoted founder gave nearly all his time and the bulk of his strength to promoting the interests of the college. He died at the great institution he had created, in June, 1868, while delivering his annual address before its board of trustees. He left no children, but the three-quarters of a million dollars which he had bestowed upon Vassar College was later increased by his nephews, Matthew, junior, and John Guy, to considerably over a million and a quarter. Small wonder that the birthday of this generous friend is observed as a gala-day at Vassar, and that speakers of national reputation delight then to honour this really great self-made man. The first social function in the college year is the reception given to the freshmen by the Christian Association. Soon after this, as the girl is getting well into the swing of college life, comes the anni- versary of the Philalethean Society. Philaletheis is the mother of all the societies of the college, and as such is naturally ancient and honourable. She was born December 5, 1865. To her any student may belong. And because she has the four Hall Plays, which are another feature of Vassar life, every student early enrolls for membership. After that the Vassar girl looks about her and begins really to absorb the atmosphere of the college. Already, 6o The College Girl of America no doubt, she has fallen unconsciously into the life of the place and begun to view things from the Vas- sar angle; already all the little peculiarities which differentiate life here from life in other colleges have become to her intimate and almost necessary. So she comes into her heritage. Unlike many of the girls' colleges, Vassar has very little relationship with the life of the town in which it is situated. The college, indeed, forms a small town by itself. The girls live in dormitories on the campus, and confine themselves pretty closely from Monday to Friday night to strictly academic interests. One of the pleasantest things about Vassar is the fact that the dormitories are very near each other. The founder's first idea was, indeed, to have all Vassar students live under a single roof, as if they belonged to one large family, and it was with this in mind that Main was erected. The original large, long building, with a trans- verse wing at each end, with library and porte- cochere in the centre, is the special domain to-day of the seniors. And particularly given over to the girls in the highest class is the corridor, which is on the same floor with the chapel. Only seniors live here, and only seniors furnish and care for the par- lour at the south end of it. Small wonder, there- fore, that to be a senior at Vassar is the height Vassar College 6i of undergraduate aspiration. The seniors enjoy several special privileges for which the other classes have to wait. In the main dining-room, their tables occupy the entire length of the long apartment, stretching down the centre in parallel lines, a thing which brings the class together three times a day, and enables a girl really to know those who will be graduated with her. The height of senior happiness comes upon a girl's birthday. It is the custom for each senior table to celebrate the birthday of every member of the class sometime during the year, and a committee is early appointed to manage the matter. Thus the fortunate maiden whose day has arrived finds many queer-shaped bundles by her plate, and always a superb cake to be cut by her. While the other stu- dents look longingly on at the candle-lighted, flower- bestrewn tables, with their birthday cream and cake, the seniors sometimes have sung, tantalizingly : " Only Seniors have this privilege, Others watch with envious eye, Don't you care, you'll be here sometime, In the glorious by and by." Especially gay is the birthday party of the presi- dent of the senior class, for which the tables are usually massed together. When the feast is over, 62 The College Girl of America the toasts responded to, the flowers gathered up as mementos, and the guests of the evening come out to the hall, they find the girls of other classes massed by the dining-room doors. The undergraduates then cheer vociferously as the honoured senior of seniors makes her v^^ay, with her friends, to the senior parlour. The furniture in this parlour be- longs to individual members of the class. Thus it is that each year the room presents a different appear- ance, and reflects pretty exactly the class standard of taste. A senior may use the parlour at any time, but she is never supposed to study there. A great deal is said at Vassar about the " sister classes," by which is meant the seniors and sopho- mores, juniors and freshmen. After the spring vacation the mutual admiration of sorority is at its height, and every night between dinner and chapel, as the seniors withdraw to the steps of Rockefeller Hall and sing their class song, the sopho- mores sit below and adore. When chapel bell rings, however, they promptly line up and stand in deferen- tial fashion, while the seniors, four abreast, walk in to take their places of honour directly in front of President Taylor's desk. It is amusing to note that the juniors and freshmen on the steps of Strong Hall feebly emulate this bit of ritual. The height of sophomore devotion to the senior < >* < a: H oi I— • pq o I— I Vassar College 63 is attained on Class Day when the Daisy Chain attention comes to the fore. For nearly a day the entire sophomore class picks daisies, and for part of another day the Sophs work hard, making a long, thick rope out of the pretty field flowers. As a re- ward for this loving toil, fourteen of the prettiest sophomores are chosen to carry the chain over their shoulders as the graduating class moves out of the main building on Class Day. Standing two by two, they then make an aisle for the seniors, and, after the distinguished maidens are seated on the platform, the chain is wound around their chairs. Later it is placed about the Class Tree. The beauty of the surrounding country at Vassar is a constant incentive to out-of-door activity. The walks to Cedar Bridge, where bloodroot and anem- ones first come in the spring, the climb up the long slopes of Richmond Hill to the lone pine-tree which stands sentinel on top, the tramp to the top of Sun- rise Hill thence to view the Blue Catskills on the north and the bluer highlands on the south are things to quicken the Vassar girl's pulse in memory as they stirred her blood in achievement. One of the choicest memories that Vassar has implanted can be shared, however, only by those older alumnae who were at the college in Miss Mitchell's day, and so were privileged to attend her 64 The College Girl of America Dome Parties. On these occasions the hostess sat in state among her instruments, her cat and kittens helping her receive. The rhymes for the cards, which, of course, only astronomy students received, had always been written by Miss Mitchell herself, and were quaint and delightful. In every possible way, though, the old Vassar is linked with the new. A great deal used to be said about flapjack days. It is interesting to know that these still survive, griddle-cakes being regularly served twice a week in the big dining-room. The food at Vassar, though good, is fairly plain. Of course there could be nothing extravagant in a col- lege which costs only $400 a year, including tuition. The rooms, assigned at an annual drawing, by lot, are usually in a suite, two bedrooms and one study. The girls make their own beds, and, to some extent, see to their own rooms. The furniture is always simple, but sufficient. There are now about one hun- dred students in each hall on the campus, while Main accommodates five hundred in all. The Vassar girl does not wear cap and gown. Neither does she have much use for a hat. In cold weather she may often be seen on the campus with a thick coat, warm gloves and luxurious furs, per- haps, quite bareheaded. To be sure, there is a strict rule to the effect that she may never go in the cars o w u < o OS w a. Vassar College 65 or down-town " uncovered," to use Paul's parlance, but this troubles her little, inasmuch as she spends only a small part of her life in Poughkeepsie. Yet once the Opera House of Poughkeepsie saw her often and attained world-wide renown as a result. This was when the Vassar girls gave " Antigone " in the original Greek, on its stage. Chapel attendance is compulsory at Vassar, but it has never occurred to the girls to make a hardship out of this. Similarly, students are expected not to go away from the college much, except during va- cations. And when leaving town, they must, in every case, secure permission. In general, it will be seen, the life at Vassar is distinctly a campus one, with a far greater proportion of work than of play in it. Saturday, to be sure, is the free day, and then, as on Friday evening, social affairs may be held. But all through the week the ideal kept before the girl is that of work. To this the newcomer very quickly becomes ac- customed. She is roused in the morning by the seven o'clock bell, and she learns to be ready for breakfast in half an hour. When she leaves the din- ing-room she has until half-past eight before the recitation day begins, time enough to straighten her room, and even glance over a doubtful sentence in her translation. No freshman has more than three 66 The College Girl of America hours of recitation a day, — the first year is aho- gether " required " work, — so that she may easily spend a good proportion of time in out-of-door sport, or in " frivoHng." Three hours of exercise are required a week, though golf, tennis, swim- ming, basket-ball and hockey are accepted as ful- filling this requirement. Athletics are governed by an athletic association, and " gym " work is compul- sory. Yet so glad are the girls to make use of the complete equipment of baths and swimming-tank and apparatus which help to make exercise in their gymnasium inviting that they never stop to remem- ber the " must." For an atmosphere distinctively Vassar we must turn to the " Trig Ceremonies." These correspond to the burning of mathematical books customary at some colleges for men, and in them the sopho- mores celebrate their completion of the prescribed course in trigonometry. The play of the occasion, given on the stage of Philalethean Hall before an audience of students and faculty only, is almost in- variably an original and clever travesty on the terrors of this prescribed course in mathematics. One year trigonometry was represented in the form of a young professor who courted and wed a maiden typifying that particular class. Another time the girls presented a skit founded on the voyage of Vassar College 67 Columbus, in which the land of Trig was discovered and conquered. ** Whatever the form of the play, sophomores are extolled in it, freshmen kept under a steady fire of grinds, juniors receive back with * interest their grinds upon the younger sisters at the preceding ceremonies, seniors are flattered, and col- lege life in general taken off as often as possible." The Tree Ceremonies, like those of '' Trig," be- long to the sophomores. Whatever else they lack, they are supposed to have the fascination of mystery. On some auspicious night, at the time of the dedica- tion of the class-tree, the sophomores, in costume, meet by secret and march v/ith lanterns to the chosen spot where the solemn rites appertain- ing to the dedication of an elm, already chosen, are to take place. One year the girls will be darkies; another, animals going into the ark; again, vestal virgins in sheets and pillow-cases. The freshmen usually find out about the ceremonies and try to interfere. Afterward both parties get amicably together and enjoy the food part of the entertain- ment, careful preparations for which have usually been made well in advance. On one occasion a diversion was supplied by waxworks in which the various college dignitaries were imposingly repre- sented. Members of the faculty at Vassar can stand 68 The College Girl of America jokes at their own expense. Witness this in a recent Vassarionr. " None but professors may talk aloud in the library." The Junior Party was for years a Hudson River trip, to the accompaniment of music, on a steamer chartered for the occasion. Latterly, however, it has sometimes been a lawn party. One year it was a hay-making frolic, the guests raking hay by moon- light on the campus, and seeking in each pile of the sweet-savoured grass the dainty souvenirs and prizes hidden away by their hostesses. There is always fun, too, at Hallowe'en and on St. Valentine's Day. But perhaps the best times of all come as a result of the cosy private spreads, with their crack- ers, jelly, olives, and similar indigestibles. Many of these are held at the time of the Ice Carnival, a festi- val observed on the lake at night to an accompani- ment of bonfires and Chinese lanterns with bright costumes, fancy skating, and good music from the band. From all that has been said here about the various forms of pleasure and sport at Vassar, it must not be thought that the academic side of life is ever long lost sight of. Vassar girls are really hard students. One of their professors has been credited with say- ing, in whimsical criticism of them : " Young Vassar College 69 ladies are much pleasanter to teach, and they are not intellectually inferior to men in any way, but one thing they cannot learn — they do not know how to flunk; it seems utterly to unstring them if they fail in a recitation." From which it may be in- ferred that since Vassar girls are fairly happy and poised, they do not often " fail in recitations." Each subject taught at this college has its own special room, and almost all departments have their allied clubs. Thus there is the Shakespeare Club, the Contemporary Club, the Marshall Economic Club, and many others. Consumers' League en- deavour, it is interesting to note, is particularly active here. So, every day of every week is healthily filled with work and play. Sundays are times of quiet and peacefulness, with morning service conducted by divines of different denominations who come from all over the country to preach, and an evening Bible lecture and a prayer-meeting, led by the president of the college. The old chapel in Main, whose floor has been worn rough by three generations of Vassar girls, is this fall (1904) to be abandoned for a splendid new building, very imposing with its Gothic interior and its rose windows, its granite walls, and its well-proportioned dome. But the lowly and reverent spirit in which daily worship is 70 The College Girl of America conducted will be the same, and in the years to come, as in the past, these girls will say to themselves, " The graduate of this college dare not let her life be a failure; she is under bonds to do things in the world." A MT. HOLYOKE GIRL. MT. HOLYOKE COLLEGE " Mt. Holyoke College is the product, not of the Zeitgeist, not of any impersonal evolutionary in- fluence, not of merely cosmic forces ; but it is rather the vital personal embodiment of the thought, life, and love of a multitude of thinking, living, loving persons of whom Mary Lyon was first and chief." In this remarkable sentence of a recent Founder's Day oration, President Hopkins of Williams Col- lege summed up, as no one else has ever done, the explanation of the college at South Hadley. There is probably in all American history no other woman precisely like Mary Lyon ; and certainly there is in our country to-day no other institution which pos- sesses exactly the characteristic features of Mt. Holyoke. Further, these two truths are one. Mary Lyon never talked much of woman's rights ; she said very little, if anything, of woman's sphere. But she believed in, and loved to dwell on, the great work a woman may do in the world. And she was thoroughly convinced that to do that work well a girl must be educated. " Oh, how Immensely im- 71 72 The College Girl of America portant is the preparation of the daughters of the land to be good mothers ! " she used often to say. " If they are prepared for this situation, they will have the most important preparation which they can have for any other/' Repeatedly she asserted, with wisdom far in advance of that of her time, that it seemed to her much less of an evil that farmers and mechanics have scanty stores of knowledge, such as our common schools give, than that their wives, the mothers of their children, should be uneducated. With this splendid thought in her heart, she and her friends came together and laid the corner-stone of Mt. Holyoke Seminary, October 3, 1836, having secured by arduous and well-nigh heroic labours the nucleus of the fund necessary to the launching of her high enterprise. Yet, though her heart was fixed, her spirit was humble; we read that she stooped down and wrote upon the corner-stone: " The Lord hath remembered our low estate." After another year which represented such un- selfish devotion to her prospective school as may be read in the annals of no other educational institu- tion, the seminary was opened for the reception of pupils. Often then^ and later, Mary Lyon said of Mt. Holyoke, " Had I a thousand lives, I would sacrifice them all in suffering and hardship for its sake. Did I possess the greatest fortune, I could Mt. Holyoke College 73 readily relinquish it all and become poor, and more than poor, if its prosperity should demand it." From the very first, Mt. Holyoke has had in its make-up respect for household labour. It is interest- ing to observe that even in the beginning this was considered a great objection by many friends of the seminary. Miss Lyon, however, defended it warmly. She used to say that it was her desire, not to teach domestic duties, but rather to help girls to take, each one, a daughter's part in the household, and thus promote the happiness of the family. " All are to take part, not as a servile labour for which they are to receive a small weekly remuneration, but as a gratuitous service to the institution of which they are members, designed for its improvement and elevation. . . . An obliging disposition is of special importance in forming a lovely social and domestic character. Young ladies at school, with all the conveniences and comforts which they should have, and with all the benefits of study which they should enjoy, can have but little opportunity for self-denial. The domestic work done in the varied and mutual duties of the day furnishes many little chances for the manifestation of a generous, obliging, and self-denying spirit, the influence of which, we trust, will be felt through life. It also helps to give a sense of obligation. 74 The College Girl of America Domestic life is little else but a continued scene of conferring and receiving favours. And how much of happiness depends on their being conferred with the manifest evidence of a willing heart, and on their being received with suitable tokens of grati- tude! These two lovely traits go hand in hand, not often to be separated. The formation of a character that can he grateful is an object of special impor- tance in a lady's education." Tliat, even in Mary Lyon's time, however, there were other things at Mt. Holyoke beside study, prayer-meetings, and housework, one finds from this delicious bit of circus reminiscence supplied by Mrs. Amelia Stearns of the class of '49 : " We were admitted to the show at half-price, after having been especially advised by Miss Lyon to improve this opportunity to see the elephant and other rare specimens of animated nature. She made but one restriction. We were not to stay to witness the performance, but when we should see any teacher moving toward the exit we were to follow her at once. After viewing the animals we took seats while the elephants marched around the amphitheatre. One with a howdah on his back was halted near us, and the manager called for ladies to mount and ride. Two or three misses started forward and then drew back timidly, until a Mt. Holyoke College 75 young lady of the senior class, with head erect and fearless mien, walked to the front, climbed the ladder, and seated herself as if she were an Eastern princess accustomed to take her airing in this man- ner. There was a whispering among the juniors : ' What a bold, bad action for a missionary's daugh- ter ! How dare a senior set us such an example ? ' Some said she would surely be suspended, — perhaps expelled. Others thought she might be let off with a public reprimand if duly penitent. It was believed that the sentiment of the seminary would certainly demand some heroic measure. " The great beast went around with its burden, the senior descended safely and resumed her former seat, unabashed. Directly a tiger leaped from its cage and rolled over and over with its keeper in frightful play. The performance was well under way or ever we were aware, and we had seen no teachers moving. Bless their kind hearts! Was it that they in their innocence did not know when it was time to start, or were our eyes turned away from our chaperons and holden, that we should not see them? When all was over and we went out with the crowd, we spied a teacher standing near the gate, apparently watching for stragglers, but we passed by on the other side without a challenge. At supper- time all the lambs were secure in the fold, and not 76 The College Girl of America a wolf among them. We never heard that the auda- cious senior met with the sHghtest reproof nor lost caste for her rash exploit. Miss Lyon, wise as Solo- mon, knew when to keep silence and when to speak." For the second year of Mt. Holyoke Seminary, a hundred girls were admitted, while to several hun- dred Miss Lyon was obliged to say, " There is no more room." Every year since, the same thing has been repeated to large numbers of girls, and this in spite of the fact that there are many college houses, where in the beginning there was only one. The trustees feel that it is quite as well that Mt. Holyoke should not grow to be too large. To-day there are seven hundred students, and to develop high Christian character in seven hundred girls is, perhaps, all that may well be undertaken by one humble-minded institution in learning. Are you wondering why, with so many other colleges vainly bidding for students, Mt. Holyoke has to turn scores of girls away each year? It is a fair question. What is it, then, that this place of ancient and worthy name now offers the bright young girl who is deciding where she will spend the four years which are to give her an all-around education and a degree? At its inception, of course, Mt. Holyoke cher- ished three ideals, — first, to give the highest and Mt. Holyoke College 77 most thorough education possible; second, to com- bine with cultivation of the intellectual powers the no less careful cultivation of the spiritual life, basing such culture on the Bible, and teaching that all duties should seem holy, and that all things worth doing should be done thoroughly; third, to offer advantages at such a modest sum that girls of slender means need not be turned aside from seeking them by money considerations. Well, the Mt. Holyoke of to-day is dominated by the very same ideals. Two generations have witnessed, not a complete re-crea- tion, but a gradual expansion. The old Mt. Holyoke held all the possibilities of the new. The institution which Mary Lyon founded had within it the germ of to-day's splendid twentieth-century college. Mt. Holyoke of old was able, therefore, to expand with- out friction, without revolution, without upheaval, into the composite Mt. Holyoke of to-day. The seminary was built upon Christian ideals and self- abnegation. The college rests on exactly the same eternal things. Of course times have changed, and the piety of 1904 is by no means the same in its exterior aspect as the piety of 1840. But no one who has attended the morning service in the chapel has failed to understand the spirit of the place and to know it for the same spirit which Mary Lyon long ago im- 78 The College Girl of America planted in the hearts of Mt. Holyoke girls. When, to the deep, rich tones of one of the best organs in Massachusetts, the seniors, stately and reverend in their sombre symbols of academic rank, take their seats in the centre of the chapel, with the members of the faculty at the left, and the main part of the big room given over to the undergraduates, — and the sweet and beautiful president, in a rich academic gown, bows her head in silent prayer, one feels Mt. Holyoke to be the same to-day as yesterday, despite external changes. Thrilling indeed is it when the students rise and sing, with wonderful heartiness, the " Holy, Holy, Holy " hymn. Then there follows a collect or two, and then the stirring missionary anthem, " We March, We March to Victory." Responsive reading, a Gloria, a Scripture lesson, and an extemporaneous prayer referring to the Bible message of the day, come next. The short service closes with the Lord's Prayer, in which all share. After that the seniors file slowly out to the strains of an inspiring recessional. The beauty of this service, its peace, its sweetness, its strength, fill every visitor to Mt. Holyoke with reverent delight. A wonderful thing is it to begin day after day of a college year with such an exercise, in the chapel of the noble hall named after Mary Lyon. It was not from the stately morning service, how- Mt. Holyoke College 79 ever, but from something deliciously, almost ludi- crously, different, that I gained my own first im- pressions of Mt. Holyoke. I had just arrived at the college, and was being shown about, when my attention was riveted by a bulletin-board covered with the most extraordinary notices : " Five cents apiece for live frogs (body three inches or more), benefit library fund." " Shirt-waists made to fit for seventy-five cents — for Carnegie offer." *' Sham- pooing, thirty-five cents, including tar or castile soap. Others must be supplied." The meaning of these curious notices on the official bulletin-board of Porter Hall was soon explained by my guide. They had been inspired, it appeared, by the students' desire to raise the rather large sum which Mr. Carnegie had stipulated as a condition of his generous offer for a new library. Of course, with such a spirit as this to help it on, the necessary sum will be forth- coming. First, last, and always, the college at South Hadley is hospitable. This the freshman early learns, for as soon as she steps upon the Holyoke platform the opening day of the college year, she is cordially greeted by a member of the Christian Association's reception committee, helped with her suit-case, guided down the iron stairway to the street below, and, ere her new-found friend aban- So The College Girl of America dons her, comfortably settled in the car for South Hadley. When the car stops before Mary Lyon Chapel, some five miles out of Holyoke city, she is again greeted by a smiling upper-class girl, under whose tutelage she registers, receives her appoint- ment to house and room, and really begins her col- lege life. For the first week that life is a veritable whirl, with its wealth of new experiences, new impressions, new methods of work, new points of view. But gradually she finds her place. She has heard a great deal, of course, about the " housework " phase of life at Mt. Holyoke; possibly she has kicked against it rather vigorously. But she learns, when she comes to face the thing, that her duties are really of the lightest possible kind, and have been, so far as feasible, fitted to her individual capabilities. One student may have two tables to clear and two to lay ; another may have some post-ofiice service to perform; others have the care of the halls. But there is nothing which need occupy more than three- quarters of an hour a day at the outside. Every girl, therefore, has plenty of time at Mt. Holyoke for play, as well as for work, for sociability as well as for grind. And the slight housework makes it possible to-day, just as in Mary Lyon's time, for a hall accommodating seventy or a hundred girls to be Mt. Holyoke College 8i conducted quite comfortably with very few servants, — and hence at a minimum of expense. This is why a girl can go to Mt. Holyoke for three hundred dollars a year, a sum at least one hundred dollars less than the minimum expense in any other first- class Eastern college for women. One of the first fine facts which impresses itself upon the freshman is the realization that she is liv- ing, not in an oligarchy of faculty, — though, of course, the faculty have the final authority here, as elsewhere, — but in a democracy of students. For she is early told that the simple rules necessary for the regulation of life in such a large community are enforced by the undergraduates themselves, that the so-called students' league, whereof all students are members, has been given authority by the faculty in matters concerning chapel attendance, church- going, quiet hours, and the rule by which lights are out at ten o'clock. She discovers that the president of this body organized " to promote unity and loyalty in the college; good feeling between faculty and students; and to encourage personal responsi- bility " is always a senior, that its executive com- mittee is made up from all four classes, with one additional member chosen from among the recent graduates of the college, and that, through the inter- action of this committee and a committee of the 82 The College Girl of America faculty, students and professors find a direct means of communication. Each house has a chairman and proctors under the general league scheme, and through them and the rebukes they may be called upon to administer, when she and her fellow-class- men wax hilarious, the new girl comes to know what student government at Mt. Holyoke really means. Possibly she finds this out by a note reminding her that she has been habitually absent from chapel. She hears that after three such notes a girl may be put off the campus. She hears also that this measure has never needed to be enforced. The Class is at Mt. Holyoke the chiefest '' tie that binds." In forming the basis for athletic compe- titions, in presenting plays, in putting through much of the social life, and part of the literary enterprises of the college, it is a unit of great im- portance. It is particularly desirable, therefore, that a girl shall early come into close relations with the others who entered with her. The way in which this is often effected has been interestingly described by one Mt. Holyoke girl as follows : " Some even- ing in early fall, as the freshman is ' plugging ' over her ' math,' she hears the sound of distant cheering; coloured lights flash across the campus. At the house next her own a crowd of girls is gathered, a class cheer rings out clear and sweet on the night Mt. Holyoke College 83 air, coupled with two names lustily strung on at the end; another cheer, still another, and finally the freshman catches the sound of her own class numer- als, recognizes them with a sudden and joyous sense of proprietorship, drops the ' math ' books she is still holding, and dashes down the corridor to find an- other freshman. The two fling up a window, excitedly, and lean far out, squeezing each other's hands with an unwonted feeling of comradeship, as the merry, stumbling throng of seniors, juniors, or sophomores, out celebrating their class elections of the afternoon, hurry toward the broad veranda steps and again break into an improvised freshman cheer. Soon after, the freshman attends her first class-meeting, called by the junior president, and with that her love of class is fully established. True, she may not know more than five of her classmates even by name, and may be distinctly grateful to the enterprising young woman who suggests that the candidates for class chairman stand up, that the freshmen may find out who they are; but, never- theless, she feels already the passion for making 19 — admired in the college world. And chattering of this, she links her arm in that of a freshman she has never seen before, and hurries to make known to the campus the doings of her class." So diverse is the life at Mt. Holyoke, that almost 84 The College Girl of America every girl readily finds scope somewhere for her particular ability. If she is so fortunate as to have a good voice, she is early enrolled in the vested choir, becomes the proud possessor of a cotta, and inclines to boast a bit, in her letters home, of her part in that body of one hundred and eighty voices, the largest vested choir of women in the world. If golf, tennis, rowing, driving, or hockey be her favourite sport, she finds opportunity to distinguish herself along one of these lines, and — what is better still — is given credit by reason of her activity toward the four hours of exercise required each week. One of the earliest of the many festivals in which she shares is Mountain Day, in the fall, when the foliage is at its best and the fringed gentians glori- ously decorate the green. Peculiarly appropriate is it that Mt. Holyoke College, which is named after one of the superb peaks in the Green Mountain range in western Massachusetts, should, each year, speedily pay its respects to the everlasting hills. Tramping has ever been one of the favourite recreations at this college. The beauty of the region takes away all the monotony of just going out for exercise, for within fairly easy reach are a dozen attractive spots familiar to every Holyoke woman. Whether the Bluffs, the Larches, Titan's Pier, the THE TENNIS - COURTS. A PERFORMANCE OF "MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM." Mt. Holyoke College 85 Pass of Thermopylae, the Notch, the Ferry, Bitter Sweet Lane, or Mountain Pasture be selected, in- spiration will result. Included in the college grounds is Lake Nonotuck, well supplied with boats, which are in constant demand. The same lake is equally popular in winter as a skating ground, the slopes about it being used for coasting and for skeeying, a much-liked Norwegian sport. Of course there are at Mt. Holyoke, as at the other colleges, certain " set feasts," which come with each returning season. Founders' Day and Thanks- giving are especial times for receiving and enter- taining guests. A very pretty custom is that by which former students come back to their Alma Mater as to the old homestead for the November day of solemn thanks. All Hallowe'en is regularly celebrated by a masked ghost party, which affords scope for whatever originality the girls possess. The dining-halls are, for this occasion, made attract- ive with flowers and autumn fruits, the whole effect softened by candle-light. In one hall, perhaps, ghosts of departed days eat their dinners with appe- tites astoundingly unghostlike. Later, Mellen's Food babies, nuns, dryads, Quakers, and Canter- bury pilgrims hobnob noisily in the attic of one of the dormitories, while alcohol burns on salt to throw 86 The College Girl of America a weird light and to supply the proper amount of " atmosphere." A girl possessed of dramatic ability speedily comes into her own at Mt. Holyoke. The dramatic inter- ests of the college are mainly in the hands of the different classes, to each of which is allowed a certain number of performances a year. Thus the sopho- mores have one play, the juniors two, and the seniors two, annually. All the plays must, however, be ap- proved, before presentation, by a standing committee of the faculty, to see that in the matter of costume, and so forth, they are all that they should be. The plays are generally acted outdoors on Prospect Hill, or in the gymnasium, where there is a good stage; and though there is little professional training, the dramas offered afford universal enjoyment to the audiences, frequently revealing, too, not a little talent on the part of the performers. On May-day, for three years past, in the wooded amphitheatre of Prospect Hill, have been given old English plays and pastimes of no little literary im- portance. The Elizabethan audience, as well as actor-folk, here appear, games of the period also, contributing to the charm and colour of the occa- sion. A quaint spectacle, certainly, for these modern times, is presented by the procession which, on May-day morning, winds up Prospect Hill from MiilMiiiilllillll iMMhi».fcaM*«^.»aa.««»-..> MAY - DAY PROCESSION. MAY -POLE DANCE. Mt. Holyoke College 87 the gymnasium. Preceding the May queen are lordly heralds, and while Robin Hood and his merry men escort the damsel fair, Little John and Fair Maid Marian follow close behind. Beruffed and powdered ladies and gallants of Queen Elizabeth's court are also here, as are morris- men, milkmaids. May-pole dancers, and many other fanciful and grotesque characters. When the pro- cession reaches the Pepper Box, as the curious little lookout at the top of the hill is called, it halts and divides, forming into two lines, between which the May queen rides in state to the Box-steps, where she is helped by Robin Hood to dismount, and is sol- emnly crowned. Then follow the May-pole dances, performed by Britanny fisher maidens, to the shrill music of the hornpipe ; a Rainbow Dance, or the Daisy Dance, symbolic of the season, wdth twelve seniors gowned in yellow to represent the middle of the flower, twenty-four in white for the petals, and twelve in green for the stem. Music for this fan- tastic tripping- is usually furnished by the Mandolin Club. On one occasion, the quaint morality play, " Noah's Flood," was presented after the dancing, with an exact model of the old miracle stage, and with the unruly and boisterous Elizabethan audience duly in attendance. By six o'clock everybody has a good appetite for supper, served in picnic fashion 88 The College Girl of America on the green. Then the evening opens with Eliza- bethan lyrics, sung by the choir. These are, in turn, followed by another play. Sometimes this has been the Florizel and Perdita portion of " Winter's Tale," sometimes a scene or two from " Midsummer Night's Dream." This year the May celebrations were deferred until June, and the Ben Greet com- pany secured as performers. In accordance with the original plan which Mary Lyon's far-seeing wisdom devised, Mt. Holyoke has always been a family, as well as a school. It has a beautiful and really distinctive home atmos- phere. Mary Lyon believed in the democratic ideal, and there is still absolutely no favouritism at Mt. Holyoke. The rooms are distributed by lot, so that even the poorest girls have their chance to get into the most attractive residence hall, Mary Brigham, in which the president lives. Every girl has, like- wise, a perfectly equal opportunity to sit at the president's table, and meet the many distinguished people who come to Mt. Holyoke in the course of the year. Dinner at Mary Brigham is the function of the day. When the president enters, escorting the guest of honour, she finds each girl at her place, looking very fresh and attractive. All remain stand- ing until the blessing has been pronounced. Then girls who have been appointed quietly withdraw to Mt. Holyoke College 89 take their part in the domestic arrangement. The service at the tables is excellent, the plates being changed, the courses brought on, and the meal from soup to crackers and cheese conducted with admi- rable precision. Meanwhile good talk, college jokes, and sparkling repartee go on, Miss WooUey from her stately chair, presented in memory of President McKinley's visit to Mt. Holyoke, gently leading the conversation or listening appreciatively to a bright story which some one down at the end has volun- teered to tell. After dinner the girls frequently come in to the president's pleasant parlour for coffee and an informal chat before separating for their evening study. A great deal might be said of the admirable courses at Mt. Holyoke. But it seems feasible to discuss here only two or three of the more remark- able departments. Under this head should certainly be included the work carried on in the Dwight Art Building, under the able direction of Miss Jewett, who came to Mt. Holyoke a few years ago straight from advanced work with Benjamin Constant, Julien, and LeFevre in Paris. The building is on the site of the one hundred years' old Dwight homestead, and, if only because of its glorious view toward Beulahland and the Mt. Tom and Mt. Holyoke ranges, should inspire those who work in it to go The College Girl of America artistic appreciation. An especially attractive course given here is that in the history of art, with practice in drawing to help the girl to an appreciation of the masters studied. Many a girl who does not in the least know how to draw upon registering for this course comes through, as a result of careful teaching, with a de- cided sense of form, as well as with a serviceable knowledge of the masters and periods covered. Instead of an examination, there is, at the end of the year, an imaginary trip to the galleries of Europe, with a certain number of cities and a certain number of pictures covered. A satisfactory showing in this test implies ability to do original description, as well as such familiarity with the books read in the course of the year as enables a girl to cite a characteristic quotation from the critics. Thus the art work at Mt. Holyoke is all related to history and to life in a fashion at once fine and inspiring. Similarly, a debating society, more or less con- nected with an American history course, really dis- cusses current politics. What is more, a regular political campaign is carried on at Mt. Holyoke every four years! This custom was instituted at the time of Lincoln's election, and ever since it has excited much outside interest. The college repre- sents the nation, and each campus-house a State. Mt. Holyoke College gi Party organization is modelled directly on political lines; the national Republican and national Demo- cratic committees order the campaign; State con- ventions, regularly called, elect delegates to the national. Armed with badges and credentials, the delegates, often escorted by enthusiastic constituents, present themselves at these conventions held in the gymnasium, which is hung with flags and bunting for the occasion. The speeches then made are per- fectly serious, and reflect a remarkable familiarity on the students' part with political figures and party protestations. The last time the mock-con- vention was held, the New York delegation was especially prominent, each of the ten girls which made it up having the words New York arranged diagonally across their breasts. When the platform as adopted at the regular Republican convention was read, all listened patiently, duly applauding sound money, and loyally hissing democracy and free silver. Then this declaration with all its " planks " was promptly accepted; and, as the ten o'clock bell had sounded, the delegates scampered home to bed. Next day a ratification parade was enjoyed, the village bass drum, five transparencies, and fifty torch-bearers being in line. The captains of the evening wore red, white, and blue uniforms, while the other girls, who carried Japanese lanterns swing- 92 The College Girl of America ing on sticks, were in sailor suits. Stump speeches were made at intervals and red lemonade and pea- nut balls were served between the acts. The voting itself was done regularly later, ballots being printed, booths set up in Assembly Hall, and the specified hours observed. At Mt. Holyoke, as at Smith, the biggest event of each year is the " junior prom," the last function of the Washington's Birthday season, to which the juniors invite the senior class. The gymnasium, transformed for the night, by the decorator's art, into a hall of unusual and delicate beauty, is thronged by the two classes and their friends. But forlorn, indeed, as one may see from this " Junior's Lament," in a recent Llamarada, is the girl who lacks a man guest on this occasion : " My gown is spread out in all its glory, Just a frou-frou of ribbons and lace ; I've the newest of gloves and of slippers, Yet there's nothing but woe on my face. There's no joy to be found in my toilet, Though my hair has its prettiest curl, For to-night is the night of the Junior Prom, And I am a manless girl. " Through the first and last proms and the supper I must sit in my sadness alone, Ah, men are uncertain mortals, And mine has a heart of stone. Mt. Holyoke College 93 He ' regrets,' and has sent me roses And a dear little pin of pearl ; But what do I care for such trifles When I am a manless girl ? " I'd rather be called on in Ethics, Or make up my cuts in the gym. Or be flunked in my major subject And sat on by faculty grim ; 'Twere better to struggle with daily themes, Though they set my poor brain in a whirl, Than at the event of the season To appear as a manless girl." But of course it is in Commencement Week that g^aiety at Mt. Holyoke reaches its climax. Two fea- tures of this only will be described. But these, because peculiar to the college, are distinctly interest- ing. The first is the grove exercise on Monday morning, when the seniors, all in white, bearing ropes of laurel and bunches of forget-me-nots, make their way through the stately trees from Safford Hall to the quiet grave of the founder of Mt. Hol- yoke. With tribute of song and flowers, they place their wreaths upon the simple white monument which reads on one side: "MARY LYON " The founder of Mt. Holyoke Seminary, and for twelve years its principal; a teacher for thirty-five 94 The College Girl of America years, and of more than three thousand pupils. Born, February 28th, 1797. Died, March 5th, 1849." And on the other side : " There is nothing in the universe that I fear, but that I shall not know all my duty or shall fail to do it." The second annual feature is the step exercise. In the late afternoon before Commencement Day, the seniors gather upon the steps of Williston Hall, revered by college custom as their peculiar property, and there, in the presence of friends and under- graduates, make known their last will, duly attested and signed; sing again familiar college songs, and finally, at the last verse of the senior step-song, re- move the academic cap, the symbol of their seniority, and slowly and reluctantly resign the steps to the juniors. To the junior president the senior presi- dent, as she passes, gives cap and gown, receiving, in return, an armful of her own class flowers. Yet the pangs of the beginning of the end have really been experienced some time before in senior Mountain Day. For more than thirty years each class has held its farewell festivity at the Prospect House on top of the mountain from which the col- lege takes its name. Thither on an afternoon early in senior vacation, barges carry the whole class with its baggage. And then for a day and a night a good time is enjoyed. Toasts follow each meal, and Mt. Holyoke College 95 dancing and " stunts" (the latter comprising selec- tions from all the famous enterprises both of the class and of its individual members) occupy the evening, until the hour comes for the midnight class- meeting with its rapid review of college years. Next morning the typical Mt. Holyoke girl is up to see the sun rise. And it is the thought of this, her last glorious experience upon the mountain, that the senior carries off with her as the most precious of her college memories. RADCLIFFE COLLEGE The chief claim of Radcliffe College to the atten- tion of feminine America lies in the fact that it pro- vides for girls Harvard courses conducted by Harvard instructors. President Eliot himself has been pleased to call the work carried on at Fay House, Cambridge, " the most intelligently directed effort in the country " for the higher education of women. Thus, though in the nature of things Radcliffe girls must forego many of the pleasant social features that give decided charm tO' student life at other colleges for women, they have their reward. It is now more than twenty-five years since the first steps were taken toward opening the privileges of Harvard University to women. In the autumn of 1878 it was proposed that the instructors of Harvard University should unofficially give to women some opportunity for systematic study in courses par- allel to those of the university. Cambridge, like many other communities, had been feeling for some years the pulse of the movement toward the higher education for women, and in the decade preceding 96 A RADCLIFFE GIRL. Radcliffe College 97 1880 the pressure became considerable. This move- ment had made such rapid progress in other parts of the country as to throw open to girls the privileges of many a large men's college. But in New England its advocates were not able to force their convictions upon the trustees of colleges for men. And Har- vard was especially conservative in its attitude toward the subject. It is not easy to say who first dared suggest that women ought to be admitted to full Harvard privi- leges. We do know, however, that, before her marriage, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore sent in an appli- cation to the Harvard corporation for permission to study in the college. It goes without saying that her request was refused. None the less, efforts to break down the barriers were constantly repeated during the next forty years. Nothing definite was done, however, to smooth the path of the ambitious girl student until, in the year 1878, the admirable progress made by Miss Leach — who, after under- taking systematic work in Cambridge under certain Harvard professors, acquitted herself with such credit as soon to win the Greek chair at Vassar College — showed, with arresting clearness, that women could pursue Harvard courses successfully. This emboldened a group of ladies and gentleman, already interested in the subject, to try and arrange 98 The College Girl of America for women some systematic courses of Harvard in- struction. When President Eliot was consulted in the matter he not only did not discourage those ad- vocating this departure, but was even willing to give advice as to methods. Many Harvard professors, also, were ready and glad to repeat their courses to women. Thus the committee in charge was able to issue, Feb. 22, 1879, a preliminary circular, signed by Mrs. Louis Agassiz, Mrs. E. W. Gurney, Mrs. J. P. Cooke, Mrs. J. B. Greenough, Mrs. Arthur Gilman, Miss Alice M. Longfellow, and Miss Lilian Horford, — with Mr. Arthur Gilman as secretary, — which contained the following statement : " A number of professors and other instructors of Harvard College have consented to give private tuition to properly qualified young women who desire to pursue advanced courses of study in Cam- bridge. Other professors, whose occupations prevent them from giving such tuition, are willing to assist young women by advice and by lectures. No ifp- struction will he provided of a lower grade than that given in Harvard College.'* In the promise of this last sentence lies to-day, as at the beginning, Radcliffe's chief claim to the con- sideration of scholars. From the very first the faculty of the new institution — sO' soon to be known as the Harvard Annex, in spite of the fact Radcliffe College 99 that it was early provided with the imposing title, " The Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women " — comprised many of the best-known members of the Harvard faculty. And to-day there is scarcely any course offered at Harvard which cannot be had at Radcliffe, if desired by even a small number of young women. Harvard in- structors having thus agreed to give the teaching, the practical arrangements for the lectures were undertaken by several Cambridge ladies, under the lead of Mrs. Louis Agassiz, who, from that time to the present, has been the always-efficient head of this undertaking. As the Annex from the first was to depend for its success largely on the benevolence of Harvard instructors, it had to be located near the college. And as it had a very small sum of money, as well as few students at the start, it set up housekeeping in two rooms of an unpretending wooden residence in the Appian Way, Cambridge. The name of this thoroughfare is delightfully satiric, in that the short, narrow, scantily-shaded street bears no resemblance whatever to the classic Via Appia. But one advan- tage it certainly does have, it is within a stone's throw of that most important of Cambridge land- marks, the Washington Elm. And because its first LofC. 100 The College Girl of America home was in the Appian Way, Radchffe now owns one of the most valuable corners in Cambridge. Probably in all the history of colleges in America there could not be found a story so full of colour and interest as that of the beginning of this woman's college. The bathroom of the little wooden house w^as pressed into service as a laboratory for physics, students and instructors alike making the best of all inconveniences. Because the institution was housed with a private family, generous mothering was given to the girls when they needed it. And every hour of the working-day found the little rooms occupied. For though the classes were all small, — averaging only three or four members, — there were very many classes even at the first. In the early days each Annex student knew every other student by sight, if not personally, and the sociability that resulted from this necessarily close contact knit many an enduring bond of friendship. It was then practicable for any one of hospitable intent to entertain the whole body of students at once. " We all," Miss Helen Leah Reed has written,^ " have long-lingering remembrances of afternoon teas and other pleasant hospitality extended to the women by the ladies of the management, or by the wives of the professors. In this way the girls were "^New England Magazine » iRadcliffe College loi given many opportunities of meeting their instruct- ors socially, and of making the acquaintance of Cambridge people in general. No Commencement, however brilliant the future of Radcliffe College may be, will have for the older graduates the interest of that first Commencement, held in the beautiful house of those warm and ever-lamented friends of the Annex, Professor and Mrs. Gurney. Only second in interest was the later Commencement when Mrs. Agassiz threw open her house to students. And, in 1890, Miss Alice Longfellow, who had often before entertained Annex students within the charmed doors of Craigie House, gave the girls and their friends the pleasure of a Commencement in Long- fellow's home." It was not until the year 1894 that the Annex entered into a declared connection with the uni- versity. It had by this time become plain that the departure had passed the experimental stage, and was, therefore, entitled to some formal recognition. What shape this should take was, however, a ques- tion with many difficulties. No' one wanted to in- corporate the Annex bodily into the university, and mingle its students with the young men. It was plain that the girls must be separately cared for by a board composed in part, at least, of women. Furthermore, Harvard was unwilling to undertake 10^ The College Girl of America the care of another enterprise. Because of these considerations, a separate organization, formally independent, and bearing its own title, Radcliffe College, was finally evolved. The choice of this distinctive name came as the result of an interesting coincidence. In 1641 the colonists of Massachusetts sent to England a com- mittee, which, along with other business for the colony, sought contributions in aid of education. One member of this committee, the Rev. Thomas Weld, inscribed in his report, under the heading, " What I received for the College and for the Ad- vancement of Learning," this entry : " The lady Moulshan gave me for a scholarship £100, the rev- enue to be employed that way forever, for which I .entered covenant and am bound to have it per- formed." By a curious mistake, however, this money was paid into the treasury of the colony, and it was not until 17 13 that the college succeeded in securing entire control of it. Then the whole mat- ter slumbered, and the fund fell into desuetude until January 30, 1893, when, by vote of the president and fellows of Harvard College, the sum of $5,000 was put apart for the Lady Moulshan scholarship fund. The lady herself was identified about this time as the wife of Sir Thomas Moulshan, Lord Mayor of London, and her maiden name was found Radcliffe College 103 to be Ann Radcliffe. Both she and Sir Thomas, her husband, seem to have been remarkably benevo^ lent and worthy people. Sir Thomas had been born in the latter part of the sixteenth century at Har- grave, and had married Ann Radcliffe in 1600. Their one daughter, Mary, had died in infancy, and the couple, left as they were without children of their own, were filled with a great zeal for the advance- ment of the education of boys and girls. In 1624 Sir Thomas was chosen sheriff of London, and in 1627, having prospered in his business, he founded at Hargrave, his birthplace, a chapel and school. This school, " for the instruction of youth in gram- mar and virtue," is still in existence, and has been incorporated in the government school system of England. Lady Moulshan and her husband lived quietly in London from 1608 until 1638, and toward the end of this time (1634) the worthy lord mayor was knighted at Greenwich. In 1638 he died, leaving to his wife half of his fortune after his debts had been paid. Thus the wealthy widow could very well afford to give Thomas Weld the generous gift he bore back with him. But it is far more interest- ing that she wished to help Harvard, than that she was able to do so. By the original terms of the gift. Lady Moulshan was to have had a voice in the ap- 104 The College Girl of America pointment of the beneficiary, but, so far as known, she never took advantage of this right. She was buried Nov. i, 1661, beside her husband, in the vault of St. Christopher, within that square mile in Lon- don which may be said to dictate the finances of the world. A wise, prudent, and generous woman was Ann Radcliffe, and it is a fitting tribute to her mem- ory that two hundred and fifty years after her scholarship gift to Harvard, the first ever made to an American college by a woman, the Harvard Annex should have adopted for its title her maiden name. The seal of the girls' college, it is further interesting to note, bears a very close relationship to the Rad- cliffe arms. Provided with a name, and having already ob- tained a local habitation in beautiful Fay House, — purchased in 1886 when the hired rooms on Appian Way no longer sufficed for the growing classes, — the college was now ready really to fill the place for which it had amply qualified. It was inevitable that its social life should now expand and become con- stantly more gracious. For Fay House is exceed- ingly picturesque, and, though not colonial, has every appearance of so being. One room has an historic value even for Harvard students! For within its walls Rev. Samuel Gilman, while a guest of the house, composed, in 1836, the words of the Radcliffe College 105 song " Fair Harvard," which, set to an old Eng- hsh melody, was at once adopted as the Harvard College song. Of other treasured memories Fay- House has many. Edward Everett lived here for a time, and here the granddaughter of Chief Justice Dana, our first minister to Russia, kept a boarding and day school for young ladies, numbering among her pupils the sisters of James Russell Lowell and many another member of distinguished Cambridge families. Lowell himself and Edmund Dana at- tended here for a term as a special privilege. Sophia Dana was married in the house August 22, 1827, by the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes to Mr. George Ripley, with whom she afterward took an active part in the Brook Farm colony. Delightful reminiscences of Fay House have been furnished us by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who, as a boy, was often in and out of the place visiting his aunt, Mrs. Channing, who lived here with her son, William Henry Channing, the well- known antislavery orator. Here Higginson, as a youth, used to listen with keenest pleasure to the singing of his cousin, Lucy Channing, especially when the song she chose was *' The Mistletoe Hung in the Castle Hall," the story of a bride shut up in a chest. " I used firmly to believe," the genial colonel confessed one evening to Radcliffe girls, in io6 The College Girl of America reviving for us his memories of the house, " that there was a bride shut up in the wall of Fay House — and there may be to-day for all I know." Very happy times were those which the young Wentworth Higginson, then a college boy, living with his mother at Vaughan House (now one of the Radcliffe build- ings also), was privileged to share with Maria Fay and her friends. Who of us does not envy him the memory of that Christmas party in 1841, when there were gathered in Fay House, among others, Maria White, Lowell's beautiful fiancee; Levi Thaxter, afterward the husband of Celia Thaxter; Leverett Saltonstall, Mary Story, and William Story, the sculptor? How pleasant it must have been to join in the famous charades of that circle of talented young people, to partake of refreshments in the quaint dining-room, to dance the Virginia reel and galop in the beautiful oval parlour which then, as to-day, expressed ideally the acme of charming hos- pitality! ^ From among the present writer's own memories of pretty happenings in Fay House parlour, the fol- lowing is selected as typical of Radcliffe life: During one of Duse's tours of this country, the famous actress came out, as many a distinguished personage does, to drink a cup of tea with Mrs. » " The Romance of Old New England Roof-Trees." Radcliffe College 107 Agassiz in the stately old parlour, where Mrs. Whitman's famous portrait of the first president of Radcliffe College vies in attractiveness with the living reality, graciously presiding over the Wednes- day afternoon teacups. As it happened, there was scant attendance at the tea on this day of Duse's visit. She had not been expected. And so it fell out that some two or three girls who could speak French or Italian were privileged to do the honours of the occasion to the great actress whom they had long worshipped from afar. Duse was in one of her most charming moods, and she listened with marked attention to her hostesses' laboured explanations concerning the college and its historic home. From the enthusiastic girl-students' point of view, however, the best of it all came when the dark-eyed Italienne said farewell. For, as she entered her carriage — to which she had been escorted by this little group — she took from her belt a beautiful bouquet of roses, camellias, and violets, and, as the smart coachman flicked the impatient horses with his whip, threw the girls the precious flowers. Those who caught a camellia felt, of course, especially de- lighted, for it was as the Dame aux Camellias that Duse had been winning for weeks the plaudits of admiring Boston. My own share of the largesse consisted of a few fresh, sweet violets, which I still io8 The College Girl of America have tucked away somewhere, together with one of the great actress's photographs bearing the date of her visit to RadcHffe. With another distinguished foreign actress, no less a person than Bernhardt, my college memories are also very pleasurably connected. For it was dur- ing my sophomore year at Radcliffe that the wonder- ful Sarah, at the suggestion of the French depart- ment of the university, gave a special performance of Racine's " Phedre " for the Harvard men and Radcliffe girls who had just been reading the play in their French courses. Never have I shared in a more brilliant evening. To see a tragedy so sublime as is this one performed by the leading actress of the world, just at a time when every word of the text, every nuance of the author's meaning is familiar, implies such intellectual delight as comes to one but seldom in a lifetime. Something like the same exj>erience was vouchsafed to Radcliffe when " Athalie " was given at Sanders Theatre with the Mendelssohn music supplied by the Boston Sym- phony Orchestra. On this occasion, moreover, the girls' college had a very vital stake in the perform- ance, for two of the prominent parts were taken by Radcliffe undergraduates. Now it is because Radcliffe is always given a generous share of such splendid opportunities as C/3 a; w H U < Pi < u DC H O o Radcliffe College 109 these, — besides having her part in the work- aday aspect of Harvard's Hfe, — that the college is not in the least disposed to quarrel with the uni- versity. Some anxiety has been expressed by eager advocates of women's education because Harvard has never made a formal contract with Radcliffe, specifying in what way it will exercise its powers, enumerating the privileges it will give to women, or at least fixing a time during which it will surely abide by the present arrangement. But the want of definite articles of agreement is by no means a ground of apprehension to those who know the his- tory of the Annex, and appreciate how fully it is already a part of the university, through adoption by the faculty. When, some twelve months ago, Mrs. Louis Agassiz felt obliged, because of advancing years, to resign the active presidency of Radcliffe, — which office she had so graciously and ably filled, — it was the most natural thing in the world for Dean Le Baron Briggs of the Harvard faculty to be chosen President Briggs of Radcliffe College; nor was there any question whatever about his acceptance of the honour and responsibility. Though the cor- poration of Harvard College has never agreed to bestow the Harvard degree upon Radcliffe, the President of Harvard University is always present at Radcliffe Commencements, and the degree which no The College Girl of America is bestowed bears the Harvard, as well as the Rad- cliffe, seal. Moreover, President Eliot there certi- fies in formal Latin over his own signature not only that the student receiving this distinction is qualified to be admitted to the rights of a Bachelor of Arts, but that '' the degree is in all respects equivalent to the one to which, in like case, we admit our [Har- vard] students." In numerous ways the interests of the two colleges are clearly recognized as iden- tical. Examinations, exactly alike for both institu- tions, are held in the two colleges at the same time. The themes of Harvard men are sometimes read at Radcliffe, and on at least one occasion the theme of a Radcliffe girl was read to a class of Harvard men, and by them cheered to the echo. The Harvard Graduates^ Magadne gives large space to Radcliffe College affairs, and at the present time, because of peculiar circumstances, one Harvard College scholar- ship is actually being used for the education of a girl at Radcliffe. The social and academic life which Radcliffe shares with Harvard is but small, however, in com- parison with the student interests and diversions of the girls by themselves. The Idler Club, to which all Radcliffe girls belong, has theatricals every two weeks; the Emmanuel Gub presents one or two original plays a year on the stage of Fay House; Radcliffe College iii there are annual athletic meets in the fine new gym- nasium (equipped with a magnificent swimming- pool), and each Thursday afternoon there is a tea at Bertram Hall, the college's one hall of residence. Of hockey, tennis, and basket-ball, the college has its own good share. The spacious and imposing new Students' House, the college's memorial to Mrs. Agassiz, which is now approaching completion, will provide a lunch-room and ample accommodations for clubs, as well as a real theatre. This last acquisi- tion will seem strange indeed to those girls who, all through their undergraduate years, produced plays on the cramped Auditorium stage, where the problem of adequate setting, as well as of sufficient space in which to act, was an ever-present one. Still the very limitations of the old days resulted in aston- ishing exhibitions of resource. Once, when there was a woodland scene to be staged, and no sylvan scenery at hand, the girls on the Idler committee of the day went themselves to a neighbouring bit of forest, chopped down some evergreens, and rode triumphantly back to Cambridge in the express- wagon which bore their booty. Even when con- fronted with the necessity of providing the interior of a Chinese palace upon an allowance of $2.50, they were not nonplussed. The '* palace " was a success, which proves again that primitive conditions evoke 112 The College Girl of America their own acts of power. Class pride, scarcely less than necessity, is a mother of invention. In recent years a very interesting new depar- ture has been introduced into the Radcliffe social calendar in the form of an annual original operetta. The first of these musical productions, " The Orientals," was given in the spring of 1898, Jose- phine Sherwood, '99, having supplied the music and the lyrics, and Katherine Berry, '98, the librettO'. The second operetta, " The Princess Perfection," was written entirely by Josephine Sherwood, '99. The third operetta, " The Copper Complication," was written by Mabel Wheeler Daniels and Rebecca Lane Hooper, 1900, and this same excellent partner- ship was responsible, a year later, for another opera, " The Court of Hearts." The two last-named works have since been produced many times throughout the United States, Miss Daniels and Miss Hooper hav- ing quite accidentally hit, as has since been shown, upon an unworked field, — i. e., operetta suitable for amateur production. It was in the opera of 1902, however, — by Florence E. Heath and Grace Hollingsworth, then undergraduates, — that the high-water mark of achievement in stage business and effective acting was reached. Yet that there is far more work than play at Radclifife, is evident from the fact that the majority Radcliffe College 113 of the graduates take their degrees " with distinc- tion." Usually from thirty to forty per cent, are made bachelors of art, cum laude, ten per cent. magna cum laude, and one or two per cent, summa cum laude. Though it has not always been so-, more than half of the Radcliffe graduates nowadays en- gage in some form of work. Almost fifty per cent, of them are teachers, though a fair proportion are doing very good work along literary lines, and some few are engaged in secretarial and social occupations. It is worth noting that Radcliffe students, while they have never been subject to such restraining rules for personal conduct as prevail at many colleges, have always conducted themselves with quiet, lady- like dignity. No word of gossip or scandal from the outside world has ever been visited upon any member of the college. Though the girls live their life in a town swarming with men students, they have always been able to pursue their pleasures and their studies without any kind of annoyance or any undue restriction. There is this year (1904) graduating from Rad- cliffe a young woman who will probably do more to make the college known in history than all the other members of the alumnae combined. Miss Helen Keller, who, though blind, deaf, and dumb, has suc- cessfully pursued the courses leading to the degree 114 The College Girl of America of Bachelor of Arts, is, indeed, a graduate of whom RadcHffe may well be proud. In her senior year, as in one other undergraduate year. Miss Keller was elected vice-president of her class, a pretty tribute, though but a just one, to a girl who has obtained her liberal education only by overcoming almost in- surmountable barriers of circumstance. In this con- nection it is interesting to read one of Miss Keller s daily themes, written by her in the fall of 1900, and reprinted from the Radcliffe Magazine of March, 1901 : " There are disadvantages, I find, in going to college. The one I feel most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect — my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melody of the spirit which one hears only in leisure moments, when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that had been silent until then. But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts. One goes to college to learn, not to think, it seems. When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures — solitude, books, and imagination — outside with the whispering pines and the sunlit, odorous woods. I suppose I ought to find some comfort In the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment; but I am improvident enough Radcliffe College 115 to prefer present joy to hoarding treasures against a rainy day. It is impossible, I think, to read four or five different books in different languages, and treat- ing of widely different subjects, in one day, and not lose sight of the very ends for which one reads, — mental stimulus and enrichment. When one reads hurriedly and promiscuously, one's mind becomes encumbered with a lot of choice bric-a-brac for which there is very little use. Just now my mind is SO' full of heterogeneous matter that I almost despair of ever being able to put it in order. Whenever I enter the region that was the kingdom of my mind, I feel like the proverbial bull in the china closet. A thousand odds and ends of knowledge come crashing about my head like hailstones, and when I try to escape them, theme goblins and college-nixies of all sorts pursue me until I wish — oh, may I be forgiven the wicked wish ! — that I might smash the idols I came to worship." This theme, produced during Miss Keller's fresh- man days, doubtless very well expresses what many another freshman has felt during her first months of college life. But in Helen Keller's case, and, indisputably, in that of hundreds of other girls as well, four years at Radcliffe have provided opportunity second to none to " put the mind in order." ii6 The College Girl of America The one really gay and beautiful affair in Rad- cliffe's year is the Class Day Reception, which always takes the form of a garden-party. By the aid of perhaps a thousand Japanese lanterns strung along the fence, festooned across the canvas-carpeted lawn, and suspended from the trees, the appearance of pKDsitive spaciousness is given to the rather meagre campus. The soft glow of the lights, the individual tables spread under the stars, the good music by the College Glee Club on the balcony of the adjacent '' gym," or from a bandstand erected in the yard for the purpose, ideally combine to make a pleasant even- ing. Then for the first time, perhaps, the Harvard youths hear that characteristic tale of the Only Man : " Once on a time a Harvard man Got a card to a Radcliffe tea ; And, of course, he was, as all men are, As pleased as pleased could be. He was a man who had always said That nothing could make him quail. He said that a summons from the Dean Would not even turn him pale. " When the day arrived, he dressed himself In a way both fine and neat, And with a rose in his buttonhole He walked down Garden Street. But when he came in at the door He almost turned and ran. For there among four hundred girls He was the only man. Radcliffe College 117 " He had faced the Yale rush line; He'd been captain of the nine ; He was not afraid to dine Upon the new Memorial plan. But oh, he had to flee When, at a Radcliffe tea. He was the only only man." On Class Day the graduating girls receive in groups of twos and threes in the various lecture- halls, which, by the aid of cushions, draperies, light furniture and flowers, have been transformed for the nonce into quite wwacademic-looking rooms. On this one occasion, too, men are permitted to share the dancing privilege at Radcliffe. Formal Commencement exercises come three or four days later in Sanders Theatre. Then the presi- dents of Radcliffe and Harvard sit side by side on the platform; Radcliffe's Academic Board is escorted to the hall by Harvard faculty members, and Rad- cliffe's graduating class receives degrees which Har- vard's president has signed and stamped with Harvard's seal. BRYN MAWR COLLEGE It has often been said of Bryn Mawr that the place itself is so beautiful that merely to be there is an education. As a matter of fact it is the one woman's college in the country which is architecturally impres- sive. With the exception of the original adminis- tration building, — named Taylor Hall, after the col- lege's founder, — the various lecture and residence halls are all of Elizabethan architecture, and individ- ually, no less than as parts of a whole, have distinct nobility of form. The word Bryn Mawr means high hill, and the college was named after the town five miles west in the suburbs of Philadelphia, on the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Its site is four hundred and twenty feet above sea-level, in the midst of a beautiful rolling country, made easily accessible in every direction by good roads. The college grounds cover fifty-two acres, and include lawns, tennis-courts, a large athletic-field, and a skating-pond. If first seen on a quietly brooding spring day, when the ground is blue with violets, and the blue ii8 A BRYN MAWR GIRL. Bryn Mawr College 119 and white " fair weather " signal flags are flying from Dalton Hall, the beauty of Bryn Mawr is a thing never to be forgotten. Far off in the dis- tance, over the undulating hills, is a stately white marble residence with red tiled roof; in the middle distance is an attractive group of professors' houses ; somewhat nearer stands out " Low Buildings," where the members of the faculty have cozy apart- ments and live a very serene, happy life; directly before one are Merion, Radnor, Denbigh, and Pem- broke, the last-named an imposing structure of gray stone, with a central arch through which one views a very pleasant vista of shady green. The newest residence hall is Rockefeller, just completed this spring. It adjoins Pembroke Hall West, and its central tower, known as the Owl Gate, forms, for foot-passengers, the permanent entrance to the college. Bryn Mawr College was founded by Dr. Joseph W. Taylor, of Burlington, New Jersey, a man who, though a bachelor, had all his life taken a great inter- est in the education of women. He died January 18, 1880, leaving the greater portion of his estate for the establishment and maintenance of this in- stitution of advanced learning. It was his earnest desire that the college should be pervaded by the principles of Christianity held by Friends, which he 120 The College Girl of America believed to be the same in substance as those taught by the early Christians, and an endeavour has ac- cordingly been made to promote this end. In the social life of the college to-day interesting little traces of its Friend origin are discerned; there is never any dancing at Bryn Mawr, for instance. And its chapel has about it nothing that would dis- tinguish the room from an ordinary lecture-hall. Before actual work was begun at Bryn Mawr, the organization of Vassar, Smith, and Wellesley was carefully studied. To the Johns Hopkins Uni- versity, however, is due the academic system which was finally adopted, a scheme of major and minor electives in fixed combination, to which Bryn Mawr gave the name of the group system. In the spring of 1885 the first programme was issued, and that same autumn the college regularly opened for in- struction. From the start Bryn Mawr has main- tained distinctly high rank. No college women in the country are more thoroughly trained and have a more scholarly type of mind than those who take degrees here. Having said which, one may perhaps pass at once to the institution's social side, even though, in so doing, one does run the risk of not giving a large enough degree of prominence to the thing which, above all others, makes Bryn Mawr what it is, i. e., its really austere academic life. Bryn Mawr College 121 The only kind of hazing ever indulged in at Bryn Mawr comes early in the year, when the sophomores try to spirit away the new caps and gowns which the proud freshmen have just purchased. The game is for the freshmen to find their precious robes. When, therefore, they are able to come in to chapel dressed in their newly-attained habiliments, they are warmly congratulated by the president " upon hav- ing successfully matriculated." The girls never renew their caps and gowns, a senior being justly proud of a well-worn cap and a rusty gown. Even at Commencement the same old gowns are worn over fresh white duck skirts and white shirt-waists. A question very commonly addressed to the Bryn Mawr girl by a stranger at the college is, " Why do you have a lantern on your college pin?" Acquaintance with the customs and life of the place makes one concede, however, that the lantern is a singularly appropriate emblem to be so used. For almost the first association an entering student has is with lanterns. And the lantern is likewise linked with her final impressions of her Alma Mater. One of the oldest and most characteristic customs is the Presentation of the Lanterns.^ The ex-fresh- men then greet the incoming girls with a song, and present each one with a " lantern to light her steps * Susan G. Walker in the Century Magazine, 122 The College Girl of America through the unknown ways of college life," and especially through the mazes of the group system. Sometimes much sage advice is given with the light, and once the unfortunate freshmen won their lan- terns only after passing an impromptu oral exami- nation. The form of the affair differs with the character and resources of the class giving it ; but as preparations for it are begun in the freshmen year, the offering is usually both clever and original. The farewell lantern celebration is at the alumnae supper given on Commencement evening. Here a speech of welcome is made to the new alumnae, and at the close of the festivities the lights are turned low, and the lanterns, standing at each place, are lighted from one large lantern that has been burn- ing throughout the evening at the head of the table. Holding the lighted lanterns, the alumnae sing the old college song. Then they slowly go out, leaving their bright lights still burning on the deserted board. A very pretty old English custom has recently been revived at Bryn Mawr. Early on the morning of May-day the students search the woods and fields near the college for wild flowers, with which they fill dainty baskets that they deposit, a little later, at the doors of favoured friends. At one particular May-time, a few years ago, Bryn Mawr conducted Bryn Mawr College 123 festivities appropriate to the season upon a huge, though highly artistic, scale. There were then no less than four May-poles, as well as a number of plays to raise money for the students' building. And, following the old English May custom, every- body — except guests — was in costume, beggars, peddlers, fortune-tellers, and merry Maid Marians, chaffering gaily on the mossy greensward with all whom they encountered. The gowns were carefully thought out and were historically correct, a feeling for history so tempering the desire for fun that noth- ing anachronistic was permitted in the day's exer- cises. As a natural consequence this May-day is still remembered with pride by the friends of the college. Short as has been the life of Bryn Mawr, there is already connected with it a wealth of interest and tradition. Each class has a seal, a dolphin, a beaver, or some other animal, which every member wears in ring form, and in the use of the lanterns not a little originality and ingenuity have been displayed. The first lantern, pointed out to the visitor of to-day with impressive reverence by the undergraduate, was a plain little candlestick. From then up to the present time, every sort of lantern has been used. All the residence halls — except the newest one — bear the names of Welsh counties, a thing which 124 "^^^ College Girl of America of itself gives charm and atmosphere to Bryn Mawr. The views from these halls are in every case fine and inspiring. The students' rooms in the halls are many of them arranged in double suites, two bed- rooms and a common study. In Pembroke the suites are particularly attractive, as are also the par- lour and the reception-room. The dining-room at Pembroke is over the imposing central arch, and, finished as it is with dark wood and equipped with handsome high-backed chairs and dainty table fit- tings, it forcefully impresses one as quite all that such a room in a girls' college should be. At the end of the room are two fireplaces, one on each side. Over these are carved respectively the legends Ung ie Seruiray and Veritatem Dilexi. The table at Bryn Mawr is uniformly good, dinner being, of course, the meal of the day. This is a social occasion, and all the girls dress for it as carefully as if they were in their own homes. The college gown, which is the regular academic garb, is never worn then. This year, for the first time, the tuition fee is $200 for undergraduate students. Other expenses bring the price of a year at Bryn Mawr up to not less than $500 for undergraduates and $400 for graduate students. Here, however, as in many other of the leading educational institutions for women, there are ways of helping girls to help themselves. Some Bryn Mawr College 125 of these ways are exceedingly interesting. A lunch room in the gymnasium is conducted by students; there are electrical lieutenants in every building, whose duty it is to regulate the matter of lights; a college book-shop has students for clerks, and a captain of the fire-brigade directs drills for each residence hall. When old Denbigh was burned a few years ago, the girls had been so carefully trained in fire fighting that they manned the hose very effectively. This came as a result of con- stant drill, for at Bryn Mawr whenever the fire- bell rings, the girls must run to the room in danger, wearing on their faces towels which have been dipped into a basin of water. They then pass buckets and see to the hose in a thoroughly profes- sional fashion. As would be expected of a sane, broad college like Bryn Mawr, hampering boarding-school regula- tions are absent. The train service between the town and Philadelphia is excellent, and whenever an opera or a good play is to be seen, the girls are en- couraged to go in town for that purpose. If they are away for overnight, they register their address ; and, naturally, they do not go in town in the evening without a chaperon. But for the most, the girls are self-governing, and do the right and the proper thing because they wish to. Chapel, held every day at 126 The College Girl of America a quarter before nine, is voluntary, but the students go in large numbers. On Sundays the girls attend such churches in the neighbourhood as they may elect, and every other Wednesday evening there is a sermon at college by some distinguished clergy- man, the alternate Wednesdays being given over to a Christian Union service, conducted by the students themselves. Gymnasium attendance is required at Bryn Mawr, as are also four periods of exercise each week. One hour only of this is class drill, hov^ever, the rest of the time being divided between golf, riding, swim- ming, hockey, or basket-ball, all of which count as exercise. Interest in this last-named sport is very keen. A silver lantern was proudly pointed out to me as the trophy for which the basket-ball teams are now eagerly contending. I saw, too, a very pretty basket-ball game that same afternoon, — 1905, the devotees of the red, contesting with 1907, gay in green ribbons, for the honours. And a very charm- ing picture the girls made in their corduroy sailor suits with white collars and white belts, as they scrambled for the elusive ball! Their coach was a tall, and very pretty, girl, whose red coat stood out brilliantly against the vivid green of the spring verdure. Grouped around on the edge of the field wer^ dozens of enthusiastic maidens gowned all in Bryn Mawr College 127 white duck, lustily cheering when the 1907's made a goal, and becoming very excited when the other side scored. It had never occurred to me before that basket-ball was a picturesque game. Undergraduate work at Bryn Mawr is all over by four in the afternoon, so that there is a very fair margin of leisure for the girls to enjoy. This they do in fine weather by means of teas on the lawn, the wardens of the various halls being " at home " on different days to the student body. Singing on the steps of Taylor Hall (which belong to the seniors) is another favourite diversion, a thing not only delightful in itself, but useful, too, as practice for the garden-party occasion, which crowns the senior year, and for the farewell to the halls and the faculty which comes after the seniors' last lecture. Into the last week of the college year are crowded many gaieties. The first of these is the senior class supper, a distinctly impressive occasion when every- thing that has marked the career of the outgoing class is brought up and enjoyed, old jokes repeated, old stories retold, and every endeavour made to mitigate the sadness which must otherwise attend a farewell. At the end, the class, standing, sings its own song and gives its cheer. When the feast is all over, some of the fragments that remain are sent to the honorary members of the class, — those 128 The College Girl of America of the faculty who first came to Bryn Mawr the year that class entered college. At high noon, on the day before Commencement, a breakfast is given to the seniors by the other students. This is held in the gymnasium, decorated with daisies and boughs set off by the yellow and white of the class banners. The toasts are followed by chorus singing of college songs. Then, before college breaks up, the seniors hand over to the lower classes their duties and responsibilities, and make a tour of the buildings, which they serenade in turn. And on Commence- ment morning, as a last loving attention, the fresh- men make for their departing big sisters countless daisy chains, which are used to decorate the chapel and the hallways. For the Garden Party of Commencement Week, the most ornate festivity of the college year, the girls all have beautiful new gowns. Their friends from outside are invited out in large numbers, the buildings are illuminated, the trees hung with Japanese lanterns, and Bryn Mawr is for the nonce transformed into the gayest of fairy-lands. The evening always ends by singing on Taylor House steps, and the song which forms the last number on the programme is that called " Our Gracious Inspira- tion," written by Caroline Foulke, of the class of '96: Bryn Mawr College 129 " Our gracious inspiration, Our guiding star, Mistress and mother, All hail, Bryn Mawr ! " Goddess of wisdom, Thy torch divine Doth beacon thy votaries To thy shrine. " And we, thy daughters, Would thy vestals be, Thy torch to consecrate Eternally." BARNARD COLLEGE Commanding a glorious view of the Hudson, just across the street from the beautiful campus of Columbia College, and only a stone's throw from the stately white marble sarcophagus where the greatest general of our Civil War lies entombed, Barnard College may be held to have a truly splendid site, even if it does lie within the bounds of New York City. Not a few other advantages belong uniquely to this college. For, though it is in pos- session of a charter and of an administrative auton- omy of its own, from the beginning Barnard has had the advantage of a singularly close academic connection with Columbia. Its experience in rela- tion to the university has differed so widely from that of any other affiliated college, that to understand it one needs to trace somewhat at length the his- tory of the institution's rise. Fourteen years after the opening of Vassar, and six years after Girton began its life, the late Presi- dent Barnard of Columbia set forth in his annual report (1879) some reasons in favour of admitting 130 Barnard College 131 young women to the institution of which he was head. In his next report he remarked sadly that these reasons had " failed to attract the serious at- tention of the trustees." None the less, each year he followed up his first attack with fresh arguments, and, as women's education in other communities advanced by strides, he proceeded to challenge objectors to show cause why Columbia should not make her resources available to all the youth in her environment. What President Barnard wanted was uncompro- mising coeducation. He objected to isolated colleges for women because " they cannot, or at least in gen- eral will not, give instruction of equal value, though it may be the same in name, with that furnished to young men in the long-established and well-endowed "*tt colleges of highest repute in the country." And the affiliated college, of which Girton was at that time the best-known example, seemed to him " a cum- brous method of conveying by conduit a stream whose fountainhead should be free to all." Every year until 1883 he continued to represent to the trustees and to the public that Columbia was des- tined to become a university, and that a university merits its name, not merely by providing training for all human faculties, but by putting its resources as well at the disposal of all qualified persons. 132 The College Girl of America Yet not improbably even these strenuous efforts in behalf of women's education would have failed to bear fruit, had not several hundred citizens of New York and vicinity supported President Barnard by handing to the Columbia trustees — in 1883 — a memorial asking that women be admitted to Colum- bia College on the same terms as men. The result of this action was that, though the education side of the petition was refused, the board did so far unbend as to promise " suitable academic honours and dis- tinctions to any women who should prove that they were entitled to the same." Doubtless this result was highly unsatisfactory to those presenting the memorial; nor can it have been encouraging to the president. His ardent wish was to give young women an education ; " suitable academic honours " was quite another thing. What the trustees had said was in effect: We are not prepared to educate girls; if, however, they can contrive to educate themselves, we will certify to the fact. The president's next report contained no allusion to the question, and that for 1884 dealt with it only in a brief paragraph, stating that six women had availed themselves of the privilege offered in the " Collegiate Course for Women." The system thus inaugurated pleased no one, for the women found it extremely difficult to obtain, outside the college, Barnard College 133 such training as would enable them to pass the college examinations; and the college authorities became reluctant to confer, on the strength of ex- aminations only, degrees which commonly implied daily class-room training as well. So after these half a dozen women had succeeded in getting de- grees, the system was superseded. It then became plain to all interested that, unless they would drop below their ideals, it was necessary to provide for women an education identical with, or equivalent to, that provided by Columbia for men. With this pur- pose in view, Barnard College was organized in 1889. It is to be noticed that Barnard's relation to Co- lumbia has developed in opposite order to that cus- tomary in such cases. Girton and the other English colleges for women began by securing the benefit of instruction by members of the universities with which they were affiliated. The Harvard Annex in this country pursued the same policy. But while all these colleges are apparently as far as ever from obtaining the degrees of their universities, Barnard girls get Columbia recognition and reward. Co- lumbia had at the start gotten at the root of the whole matter by conceding the degrees to women who could earn them. And having once done this it naturally felt obliged to see to it that the value 134 The College Girl of America of its degrees should not be impaired. This feeling has been constantly operative in the college, to the end that women at Barnard are now receiving the liberal education for which the broad-minded Co- lumbia president, whose name the women's college bears, had long striven with so much persistence, chivalry, and logic. The first chairman of Barnard's trustees, and the man who, from the beginning until his death in 1895, was the chief spokesman for the college to the community, was the Rev. Dr. Arthur Brooks, whose talents and weight with people of many different ways of thinking gave at once a certain prestige to this work. He used to say at public meet- ings in Barnard's interest that in New York a woman could obtain the satisfaction of every want, wish, or whim, save one — she could not get an education if she wanted it. This was so true and so effective that funds for his project were soon forthcoming. To meet the first expenses of the college, a number of persons pledged themselves to the payment of small annual sums for four years, and with this very modest guarantee a house was rented, in 1889, at 343 Madison Avenue, seven instructors were selected from the Columbia faculty, and fourteen regular and twelve special students enrolled. The second Barnard College 135 year nine additional instructors were appointed, and the classes began to increase in numbers. At the end of the four years of experiment, the college found itself free from debt, with a graduating class of eight, with seven juniors, ten sophomores, twenty- seven freshmen, and thirty-three special students. By this time, however, one hundred thousand dollars had been received from Mrs. Van Wyck Brinckerhoff for a building fund, and the present site purchased. Before the autumn of 1897, two build- ings were completed, namely, Milbank Hall, the gift of Mrs. A. A. Anderson, and Brinckerhoff Hall, paid for chiefly with the fund already mentioned. In the following year Fiske Hall was added by the generosity of Mrs. Josiah M. Fiske. In October, 1898, the sum of one hundred thousand dollars was given to the college by an anonymous friend, and invested as an endowment fund. From time to time, too, scholarships have been founded, so that now some forty thousand dollars are available for this purpose. Numerically, Barnard's growth has quite kept pace with its financial prosperity; it has now five hun- dred students on its lists. Thus the Barnard contin- gent forms a very considerable fraction of the total number of undergraduates under the care of the Columbia instructors, — so large a number, indeed, 136 The College Girl of America that beginning with the fall of 1904 all the instruc- tion for women leading to the degree of Bachelor of Arts is to be given separately in Barnard College. Women who have taken their first degree will, how- ever, be accepted by Columbia on the same terms as men, as candidates for the degrees of Master of Arts, and Doctor of Philosophy, and the library of the university will continue to be open to all women students upon the same terms as men. For the rather complicated scheme of instruction which has worked so well at Barnard, Mrs. George Haven Putnam is very largely responsible. Mrs. Putnam, when Emily Jane Smith, was first dean of Barnard, and the system was planned out by her and by President Seth Low, Columbia's head at the time. The close and amicable relationship thus established between the President of Columbia and the Dean of Barnard still obtains. The present incumbent of this important place at the women's college Is Laura Drake Gill, A. M., whose academic training was received at Smith College and at foreign universities, and who has had since her student days a large and varied experience in executive work. Possessed of charming manners as well as of deep culture. Miss Gill is exceptionally well fitted to perform the deli- cate and difficult duties of dean in an " affiliated " institution. Barnard College 137 The social life of the two colleges as such is dis- tinctly separate. There are the men's clubs, and the women's clubs, each with their own officers and their own meetings. Barnard, like Columbia, has class organizations, literary bodies, fraterni- ties, and Greek letter societies. It gives, too, its plays, — to which no men are admitted, — and it has its own delightful college functions. Often, however, there are undergraduate teas with music and dancing until seven, to which the girls of the college invite the men as individuals, and every year the Barnard Junior Ball is given in Columbia's gymnasium, — with twenty-four numbers on the programme, fine music, an elaborate supper, and a wealth of blue and white decorations. For the most, however, the social life of the two colleges is admirably individual. Just at the present time, as Fiske Hall has been outgrown, the girls who do not live with their par- ents in or about New York are made comfortable in the dormitory of the Teachers' College, just across the street. The board here costs from seven dollars to twelve dollars a week, which, added to text book, matriculation, and tuition fees, makes the total neces- sary expenses for a student at Barnard average about fifteen dollars each week of the academic year. Chapel service, held in the college assembly-room on 138 The College Girl of America Tuesday and Friday of each week at half -past twelve, and conducted by Dean Gill, or by some clergyman of the city, is a beautiful academic function. It lasts twenty minutes and attendance is entirely vol- untary. Always, however, there are hundreds of worshippers present. Inasmuch as the large majority of the Barnard girls are day-students, the college must make pro- vision for studies and reading-rooms. One such study in Fiske Hall is charmingly furnished in green, and has been equipped by the alumnae as memorial to Miss Ella Weed, for many years the very able chairman of the college's academic com- mittee. In the basement of this same building is a well set up lunch room where excellently cooked and nicely served food is provided at a nominal cost. The little plays, the teas, the fudge parties, and the chafing-dish affairs, which make up the charm of college-girl life, are as prominent at Barnard as in other educational centres. Every class entertains the freshmen within a month or two of their entrance at college, and about Christmas time the incoming class returns the compliment. Once shadow pictures furnished the amusement on such an occasion, and at another time there was a cotillion. Of under- graduate plays, too, Barnard has its share. " The School for Scandal " is frequently presented, and. Barnard College 139 last year, on a special occasion, " The Manoeuvres of Jane " was given an almost professional pres- entation in the theatre of the college building. Though tennis and basket-ball have been enjoyed to some extent, the college has hitherto had no gymna- sium work. Now a new building is being erected, by means of which the ** sound body " will be kept carefully in mind. The flavour of life at Barnard can perhaps be best conveyed by some excerpts from The Mortar- hoard, the college annual. Here an undergraduate thus describes herself : " I am the very model of a perfect undergraduate, I never overcut, at recitations I am never late ; I always know my lessons and delight to answer readily The deep and puzzling questions which the others fail at steadily. I am present at all meetings where a quorum is or's meant to be, And remember to address the chair in language parliamentary. I read through every reference book that's given out in my course, And write neat commentaries on whatever facts I come across ; The questions that I ask are all indicative of intellect, I never leave the subject, or indulge in lengthy retrospect. I write a hand that's legible, I show a lot of common sense, And on committees do the work successfully at small expense. I show my college spirit by subscribing for the Bulletin. The Morningside and Lit are also things I put my money in. 140 The College Girl of America I always pay my dues and do it solely of my own accord, I laugh at all the jokes in that absurdity, the Mortarboard^ In view of which I'm sure you will not think it overbold to state That I 'm the very model of a perfect undergraduate." Further on in this same interesting class produc- tion, the Barnard girls thus cleverly feel their tem- peramental pulse : " However much our impression on undergraduate life may be worn smooth, it will be impossible to obliterate the marks of the college influence upon ourselves, even when formulae have become medley, and hypotheses have run aground upon fact. A four years' reaction of individual upon individual does not harden the college woman, as some antagonists to the * higher education ' are wont to assert. On the contrary, we have found that it tends to wear away prejudices and peculiarities, and to stimulate a healthy, sympathetic, human charity toward men and women. We have proved the proposition which our class genius considers an axiom : * The longer you know most people, the better you like them.' " That the Barnard girls are able to appreciate their individual as well as their sex peculiarities, is shown by some of the " grinds " in the class biography at the end of a Mortarboard. One of these reads : Barnard College 141 " Alas, Gulielma ! we would fain Thy pleasant friendship claim ; But no, it is impossible — We cannot speak thy name ! " A peppery maiden is thus gently ridiculed : "We love little Helen, her heart is so warm, And if you don't cross her she'll do you no harm; So don't contradict her, or else, if you do, Get under the table and wait till she's through." Every college girl who has ever speculated as to the authorship of a particularly clever daily theme, and has then had her curiosity gratified by an omnis- cient maiden who sits down front, will appreciate this " grind " : "'Who wrote the theme?' * I know,' said Adele, * I know very well Who wrote the theme.* * How do you know ? ' * I sit near and spy With my little eye, That's how I know.' " But to the Barnard girl, as to her sisters in other colleges, comes finally an end to the years of study and friendly fooling. On the last Friday of the spring term, the Class Day exercises for the girls 142 The College Girl of America are held in the theatre ; a salutatory is given by the president of the class, the roll called by the secre- tary, the class statistics presented, the class prophecy made, the class oration pronounced, the song '' To Barnard " sung, and the valedictory offered. The following Sunday, Barnard girls share with the other members of Columbia University the Bacca- laureate sermon in the university gymnasium, wear- ing their caps and gowns, and looking every inch the grave and reverend seniors that they are. On Wednesday the Commencement exercises for the whole university are held in Columbia gymnasium, and degrees are given to the graduates of all depart- ments of the university. This function comes in the morning, and the seniors march to it in stately procession. It is followed by a lunch at Barnard for the new graduates of that college, and the same afternoon the Association of Barnard College Alumnae gives a reception to the incoming class. When all this is over, the girls who were yes- terday undergraduates are full-fledged alumnae, with the duty and privilege of working for their col- lege. Often they do' this in highly original fashion. The class of 1903, for instance, gave this spring at Sherry's, for the benefit of the Barnard Reading- room, a very interesting entertainment called Advance Sheets. The Contents of the Sheets were u ai O a Q 3 p o U O H C Z X U < OS o CO Q Oi