Part 3 (2/2)
Miss Howard ca up a private school of her own, Ivy Hall, in Bridgeton, New Jersey, in order to beco policies can be traced to her, however; she seeid conception of discipline upon a more or less restive student body, and to follow Mr Durant's lead in allto scholarshi+p and academic expansion
We can trace that expansion froh this first administration In 1877 the Board of Visitors was established, and eye at stated intervals and stie routine In 1878 the Students' Aid Society was founded to help the , but who could not afford to pay their oay Through the wise generosity of Mrs Durant and a group of Boston wo career of blessed usefulness was begun This is only one of the ifts which Wellesley owes to Mrs Durant As Professor Katharine Lee Bates has said in her charenda for 1894: ”Her specific gifts to Wellesley it is iotten, and no one else ever knew So long as Mr Durant was living, husband and ere one and inseparable in service and donation But since his death, while it has been obvious that she spends herself unsparingly in college cares, adding many of his functions to her own, a continuous flow of benefits, almost unperceived, has co as her health permitted, she lavished ”her very life in labor of hand and brain for Wellesley, even as her husband lavished his”
In 1878 the Teachers' Registry was also established, a istration by which those students who expected to teachtheir names and qualifications before the schools of the country But the most important academic events of this year, and those which reacted directly upon the intellectual life of the college, were the establishment of the Physics laboratory, under the careful supervision of Professor Whiting, and the endowe
This endowment provided a fund for the purchase of new books and for various expenses of ifts which Wellesley was to receive froift, of this year, was the pipe organ, presented by Mr Williae Hall Chapel Later, when the new Mes Hall, the concert room of the Department of Music
On June 24, 1879, Wellesley held her first Cohteen and an address by the Reverend Richard S Storrs, DD, on the ”Influence of Woman in the Future”
In 1880, on May 27, the corner stone of Stone Hall was laid, the second building on the college caift of Mrs
Valeria G Stone, and was intended, in the beginning, as a dormitory for the ”teacher specials” Doctor William A Willcox of Malden, a devoted trustee of Wellesley from 1878 to 1904, and a relative of Mrs Stone, was influential in securing this gift for the college, and it was he who first turned the attention of Mr and Mrs Durant to the needs of the wo, but ished to fit theher positions by advanced work in one or ood many of them, and even as late as 1889 and 1890 there were a few still in evidence; but gradually, as the nuular students increased, and accome training multiplied, these ”T Specs”
as they were irreverently dubbed by the undergraduates, disappeared, and Stone Hall has for
On June 10, 1880, the corner stone of Music Hall was laid; the inscription in the stone reads: ”The College of Music is dedicated to Alhty God with the hope that it will be used in his service”
There are added the following passages from the Bible:
”Trust ye in the Lord forever: for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength” Isaiah, 26: 4
”Sing praises to God, sing praises: Sing praises unto our King, sing praises
For God is the King of all the earth” Psaliven by the founders
The year 1881 is , in June, of Wellesley's preparatory department, another intellectual advance In June also, on the tenth, the corner stone of Siift of Mr Michael Sie hospital In the autuift from the founders were opened for students
On October 3, 1881, Mr Durant died, and shortly afterwards Miss Howard resigned After leaving Wellesley, she lived in Methuen, Massachusetts, and in Brooklyn, New York, where she died, March 3, 1907 Mrs Marion Pelton Guild, of the class of '80, says of Miss Howard, in an article on Wellesley written for the New England Magazine, October, 1914, that ”she was in the difficult position of the nominal captain, who is in fact only a lieutenant Yet she held it with a true self-respect, honoring the fiery genius of her leader, if she could not always follow itsto withstand hi practical experience suggested that it was necessary” From Mt Holyoke, her Alma Mater, Miss Howard received, in the latter part of her life, the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters
II
Wellesley's second president, Alice E Freenetic personality, her continued and successful efforts during her ad Wellesley out of its obscurity and into the public eye, her extended activity in educational hout the country which was surpassed by very feoeneration And her husband's reverent and poetical interpretation of her character has secured for her reputation a literary permanence unusual to the woman of affairs rote no books and published only half a dozen articles”, and whose many public addresses were never written
It is from Professor Palhton Mifflin Co, that the biographicalis derived
Alice Elvira Freeman was born at Colesville, Broome County, New York, on February 21, 1855 She was a country child, a farhter as her mother was before her James Warren Freeman, the father, was of Scottish blood His randfather was Jaton's Life Guard James Freeman was, as we should expect, an elder of the Presbyterian church
The ley, ”had unusual executive ability and a strong disposition to improve social conditions around her She interested herself in teislation for the better protection of wohter Alice, the eldest of four children, taught herself to read when she was three years old, and we find her going to school at the age of four When she was seven, her father, urged by his wife, decided to be a physician, and during his two years' absence at the Albany medical school, Mrs Freeman supported him and the four little children The incident helps us to understand the ahter when she declared in the face of her parents' opposition, ”that she ree if it took her till she was fifty to get it If her parents could help her, even partially, she would promise never to e and given to each of her sisters whatever education they irl had her own ideas about the kind of college she e Mt Holyoke she rejected because it was a young ladies' seminary, and Elmira and Vassar fell under the saes She chose Michigan, the strongest of the coeducational colleges, and she entered only two years after its doors were opened to women
She did not enter in triumph, however; the acadeone to school after her father becae” but ”poorly equipped for preparing pupils for college”, and Doctor Freehter failed to pass her entrance exaell tells the story sympathetically in ”The Life”, as follows:
”In 1872, when Alice Freeman presented herself at my office, accompanied by her father, to apply for adirl of seventeen She had pursued her studies in the little acadearded her as a child of ht, alert reat industry, of quick sympathies, and of an instinctive desire to be helpful to others Her preparation for college had been er, and both she and her father were doubtful of her ability to pass the required examinations The doubts were not without foundation The exa her work, were inclined to decide that she ought to do more preparatory work before they could accept her Meantime I had had not a little conversation with her and her father, and had been ience At my request the examiners decided to allow her to enter on a trial of six weeks I was confident she would deo on with her class I need hardly add that it was soon apparent to her instructors that ained and constantly held an excellent position as a scholar”
President Angell is of course using the terraduate connotation for, as Professor Palmer has been careful to state, ”In no field of scholarshi+p was she ee, her bent was for people rather than for books; for e call the active and objective life, rather than for the life of thought Wellesley has had her scholar presidents, but Miss Freeman was not one of them This friendly, hue days To quote again fro characteristics in college was her warm and demonstrative sy or striving for leadershi+p, she could not but be to a certain degree a leader a these, some of whom have since attained positions only less conspicuous for usefulness than her own No girl of her tie would have been more missed than she”