![]() The agitation for these reforms came from the societies themselves, and they endured with Spartan determination the months of transitional misery and readjustment which their generous idealism brought upon their heads.Įnthusiasm for equality also enters into the students’ attitude toward “the academic”, and like most enthusiasts, from the French Revolution down, they are capable of confusing the issue. The second was the reorganization of the six societies on a more democratic and intellectual basis, to prevent “rushing”, favoritism, cliques, and all the ills that mutually exclusive clubs are heir to. The first result was the Barn Swallows, a social and dramatic society to which every student in college might belong if she wished. When the college grew so large that membership in the six societies took on the aspect of special privilege, restiveness was as marked among the privileged as among the unprivileged, and more outspoken. At Wellesley there has always been uneasiness at the hint of unequal opportunity. More money is spent, and more frivolously, than in the early days there are more girls, and more rich girls, to spend it yet the indifference to it except as a mechanical convenience, a medium of exchange and an opportunity for service, continues to be naively Utopian.īut money is not the only touchstone of democratic sensitiveness. There is no Gold Coast on the campus or in the village money carries no social prestige. Wellesley girls are in the best sense democratic. Yet it is true that certain recognizable qualities have developed and tend to persist among the students of Wellesley. Holyoke types, if the five were set up in a row, unlabeled, is a question. Whether or not it could be differentiated from the Smith, the Bryn Mawr, the Vassar, and the Mt. The safest general statement which can be made about Wellesley students of the first forty years of the college is that more than sixty per cent of them have come from outside New England, from the Middle West, the Far West, and the South. “For lovely is a mountain rosy-lit With dawn, or steeped in sunshine, azure-hot, But loveliest when shadows traverse it, And stain it not.” “Her mountain look, the candor of the snow, The strength of folded granite, and the calm Of choiring pines, whose swayed green branches strow A healing balm. “She comrades with the child, the bird, the fern, Poet and sage and rustic chimney-nook, But Pomp must be a pilgrim ere he earn Her mountain look. Her pure, majestic brows serenely wear The stars for crown. “A mountain soul, she shines in crystal air Above the smokes and clamors of the town. Her books and her active interest in industrial affairs, her noble attitude toward life, all have had their share in informing and directing and inspiring the college she loved. Miss Coman’s power as a teacher has been spoken of on an earlier page, but she will be remembered in the college and outside as more than a teacher. In January, 1915, while this story of Wellesley was being written, Katharine Coman, Professor Emeritus of Economics, went like a conqueror to the triumph of her death. But I do not think that I should gain anything by drinking the cup a little later.” “Yes,” said Socrates, “since they wished for delay. “For the sun,” said he, “is yet on the hills, and many a man has drunk the draught late.” After Miss Montague died, I turned to the book and found the place where the servant has brought the cup of poison, but Crito, unreconciled, wants to delay even a little: Miss Montague used to have a little class in Plato, and l have not forgotten how quietly we read together one day at the end of the Phaedo of the death of Socrates. She can have had no millstones about her neck to reckon with…. And so she was able to do us much good and no harm at all. Above all, I felt her a singularly honorable spirit, toward whom we always turned our best side, to whom we might never go with talk wanton or idle or unkind or critical, but always with our very precious thoughts on whatsoever things are eager, and honest and kindly and of good report. She was a figure of familiar friendliness, ready with sympathy and comprehension, but wholesome, sound and sane, without trace of sentimentality. She was a presence always heartily responsive, but never unwary, without the slightest reflection of her personality upon us, with never a word too much of praise or blame, of too much intimacy or of too much reserve. A gift from Miss Montague’s personality, l would rather have what she in a matter-of-fact way would take for granted, but what is harder for us who are beginners here to come by,–I mean her altogether fine and blameless relation to her girls outside the classroom.
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