Part 2 (1/2)

There she found Miss Sarah P Easte life, was teacher of history and director of domestic work Later, with her sister, Miss Julia A Eastman, she became one of the founders of Dana Hall, the preparatory school in Wellesley village An alumna of the class of '80 who evidently had dreaded this much-heralded domestic work, writes that Miss Eastman's personality robbed it of its horrors and”When, in her sweet and gracious manner, she asked, 'Hoould you like to be on the circle to scrape dinner dishes?' you straightway felt that no occupation could bethose mussy plates”

”All that day,” we are told, ”confusion was inevitable Mr Durant hovered about, excited, anxious, yet reassured by the enthusiaserness into the neorld

He superintended feeding the hungry, answered questions, and studied with great keenness the faces of the girls ere entering Wellesley College In the middle of the afternoon it had been discovered that no bell had been provided for waking the students, so ahelp of Mrs Horton (the mother of the professor of Greek), who proe brass dinnerbell At six o'clock the next h all the corridors, ringing the rising-bell,--an act, as Miss East to coirls” Thirty-nine years later, at the sound of a bell in the early , the household were to awake to duty for the last ti obedience, the proence, the unconscious selflessness hich they obeyed that summons in the dawn of March 17, 1914, witness to that ”inner awakening”

The early days of that first teriven over to examinations, and it was presently discovered that only thirty of the three hundred and fourteen would-be college students were really of college grade

The others were relegated to a preparatory department, of which Mr Durant was always intolerant, and which was finally discontinued in 1881, the year of his death

Mr Durant's ideals for the college were of the highest, and in many respects he was far in advance of his times in his attitude toward educational matters He meant Wellesley to be a university some day There is a pretty story, which cannot be told too often, of how he stood one kins, as professor of English Literature from 1877 to 1891, and looked out over the beautiful campus

”Do you see what I see?” he asked

”No,” was the quiet answer, for there were feould venture to say they saw the visions in his eyes

”Then I will tell you,” he said ”On that hill an Art School, down there a Musical Conservatory, on the elevation yonder a Scientific School, and just beyond that an Observatory, at the farthest right a Medical College, and just there in the center a new stone chapel, built as the college outgrew the old one

Yes,--this will all be sonificant that the able lawyer did not nus, and that although he gave to Wellesley his personal library, the gift did not include his law library Nevertheless, there are lawyers araduates, and one or two of distinction

Mr Durant's desire that the college should do thorough, original, first-hand work, cannot be too strongly emphasized Miss Conant tells us that, ”For all scientific work he planned laboratories where students ations, a very unusual step for those times” In 1878, when the Physics laboratory was started at Wellesley, under the direction of Professor Whiting, Harvard had no such laboratory for students In chemistry also, the Wellesley students had unusual opportunities for conducting their own experian the collection of scientific and literary periodicals containing the original papers of the great investigators, now so valuable to the college

”This sainal work led him to purchase for the library books for the study of Icelandic and allied languages, so that the English departs He wished students of Greek and Latin to illuraphy, and epigraphy

Such books as then existed on these subjects were accordingly procured In 1872 no handbooks of archeology had been prepared, and even in 1882 no university in America offered courses in that subject”

His e for the students was also an advance upon the general attitude of the tinon and her Grecian bend, could not hope to ed to row on the lake, to take long, brisk walks, to exercise in the gyland for a tennis set, as none could be procured in A many of the students to take such very violent exercise”

But despite these far-seeing plans, he was often, during his lifetiht to his task a large inexperience of the genus girl, a despotic habit of mind, and a temperamental tendency to play Providence

Theoretically, he wished to give the teachers and students of Wellesley an opportunity to shoomen, with the same educational facilities as their brothers and a free hand in directing their own academic life, could accomplish for civilization

Practically, they had to do as he said, as long as he lived The records in the diaries, letters, and reminiscences which have come down to us from those early days, are full of Mr Durant's commands and coercions

On one historic occasion he decides that the entire fresh to afternoon, in order that a convention of Massachusetts school superintendents,in Boston, may hear the Wellesley students recite their Greek, Latin, and Mathe treated like district school children; in vain do the teachers point out the injury to the college dignity; in vain do the superintendents evince an unflattering lack of interest in the scholarshi+p of Wellesley It must be done It is done

The president of the freshins The superintendents chatter and laugh discourteously a themselves But the president of the freshman class has her own ideas of classroom etiquette She pauses She waits, silent, until the room is hushed, then she resumes her recitation before the properly disciplined superintendents

In religious matters, Mr Durant was, of course, especially active

Like the Christian converts of an earlier day, he would have harried and hurried souls to Christ But Victorian girls were less docile than the medieval Franks and Goths They seem, many of the with a vigilance as determined as Mr Durant's own

But soive us such a vivid picture of this early Wellesley that it would be a pity not to let thesley, the novelist, as a student at Wellesley froraduated because of trouble with her eyes

Already in the daily record of the sixteen-year-old girl we find the little turns and twinkles of phrase which

VI

Wellesley College, September 18th, 1876 I haven't had time to write in this journal since I came There is so ed rooms and room-mates

I aon-shaped bedroom all to myself, and two room-mates, I W and JS