VOL. LII

T

HE memorable fire of last March, which destroyed College Hall at Wellesley, is still fresh in the public mind. In four hours it reduced to a roofless and desolate shell the great building which a small army of workmen had been four years in completing. Yet, against that background of sweeping flames, the value of disciplined and educated womanhood stood revealed as never before. The fire quickened more. than it devoured. The new and greater Wellesley College is already begun. To those who loved the old, or who care to learn from what the new has sprung, the following simple sketch may not be unwelcome.

Wellesley College, like Christianity, began its history with a family group. Hence there still lingers about it, despite its thirtynine years of academic life, and for all its rapid development of system and organization, a warmth, a humanness of interest and appeal, such as cannot be felt in institutions of more purely formal origin. It was founded by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Fowle Durant of Boston, who dedicated to its use their noble country estate at Wellesley. The gift was a deep-hearted offering to God in memory of their only son, a little lad of unusual beauty and promise, whose death in his ninth year was the supreme sorrow of their lives. But there are founders and founders. Mr. and Mrs. Durant gave to Wellesley College not

only its three hundred acres of picturesque upland and meadow, not only its vast original building, not only the minute direction and superintendence of all the multifarious labor required to prepare the visible college for its first students, but a greater and higher gift: its purposes and ideals. Hammatt Billings was not more truly the architect of College Hall than was Mr. Durant, in close consultation with his remarkable wife, the architect of the invisible Wellesley. Large constructive imagination, the prayerful study of many years, advice obtained from leading educators, practical experience as a trustee of Mount Holyoke, all went into the shaping of that great new entity. Mrs. Durant, moreover, had already been long engaged in the development of the Boston Young Women's Christian Association, of which she continued the sage and progressive president for many years after the opening of Wellesley College. She was, therefore, fitted to aid her husband by actual constructive and administrative experience of no mean order, as well as by great natural ability. The new institution was born in striking completeness. Mr. Durant knew just what he wanted; and quite as definitely, what he did not

want.

First of all, Wellesley College was to be utterly consecrated to the service of God. It was to stand for a vital and growing Christianity; to be a true outpost of the church

militant. "Christ first in everything," was the impassioned watchword of its founders, as the motto they selected for it, "Non ministrari sed ministrare," was taken from the words of Christ. This fundamental purpose was to be worked out through the chapel services, through the departments of Philosophy and Bible Study, through furtherance of great religious movements in the world at large, especially of foreign and domestic missions, and above all through the development of Christian character among the students.

Wellesley was to represent no less uncompromisingly the highest standards in education. It was to be a college not only in name but in fact, offering to young women the equivalent of what their brothers were getting at our best colleges for men, and demanding the utmost thoroughness in preparation and in academic work. If there was anything Mr. Durant especially hated (and he was a particularly good hater), it was sham and pretension. He attributed much of this, perhaps too sweepingly, to the boardingschools of the time. Wellesley was to be at the farthest possible remove from such. The students were to be encouraged to select the hardest courses, such as those in Greek and the higher mathematics; to seek (I quote his own words) "the supreme development and unfolding of every power and faculty"; to illustrate "feminine purity and delicacy and refinement giving their lustre and their power to the most absolute science."

To propose such an intellectual standard for women, forty years ago, was a very different thing from what it is to-day. It is true that twice forty years ago, Oberlin had opened her doors to men and women alike. After a considerable interval, her example had been followed by several western state universities. But in the East the movement was slower. When actually under way, it showed a preference for the

more conservative development of colleges for women only. In 1875, the year which witnessed the opening of both Wellesley and Smith, Vassar was the only one of the greater women's colleges already in the field. Mount Holyoke, which was eventually to attain so high a rank, and which was even then doing pioneer work of inestimable value, was still but a "seminary,” with standards far below the mark. As a scholarly critic declared a few years since, "For 1876, Mr. Durant's plans were revolutionary. For 1906, many of them are still beyond anything yet attained in the education of women."

Again, for all her intellectual aims, Wellesley was to stand firmly for "distinctive womanhood." Mr. Durant, though by profession a lawyer, and one of the most brilliant of his day, was by nature a poet. Mrs. Durant was a gracious and finely cultivated southern lady. Both were persons of rare dignity and breeding. The sort of young woman who apes the masculine, or sacrifices refinement to vigor, was repugnant to them both. They initiated at the College a tradition so fine that it eludes definition like the fragrance of a flower. The typical Wellesley girl was to be no less a woman, because a student of subjects hitherto reserved for men; no less a lady, because a member of the college world; no less a lover and exponent of beauty, because dedicated to usefulness. But the beauty was to be of no merely superficial kind. "Remember while you live," cried Mr. Durant, in eloquent appeal to his first students, "that the most beautiful woman is the one through whose face shines the pure, noble soul, the educated intellect, the unselfish radiance of lofty purpose."

These three great ideals-the Christian, the academic, the feminine-every successive administration at Wellesley has loyally accepted and transmitted.

If among those who read these words there be any who entered the College on its opening day, they will recall their first drive up the stately main avenue, now too often neglected for shorter approaches. They will catch again their first thrilling view of the great palace of learning, known in later years as College Hall, but then as Wellesley College itself. They will pass once more into the spacious and beautiful "Centre," with the lovely surprise of its pillared palm-garden, and its throngs of excited young faces; and they will recognize again the vivid, alert distinction of Mr. Durant himself, receiving all with a hospitality as business-like as his interest was vital. They will recall, too, the impressive figure of Miss Howard, the first president, with her crown of silver hair, and the welcoming faces of those genial teachers who provided each student with three characteristic supplies: the key of her room, a book of regulations, and her assignment for "domestic work." They will remember the stirring weeks of organization which followed. There were nearly three hundred students to be examined and ranked; and it was discovered, to the great dismay of founder and faculty, that only a handful of these were prepared for actual college work. But not for a moment was the original plan suffered to lapse. Wellesley held strictly to its college standards, though for the moment it had to fit its own students. Thirty only were sufficiently equipped; and all the others were relegated to a great preparatory department, where the work was pushed with the utmost speed consistent with thoroughness. So ably was this matter handled, that in five years the preparatory department was discontinued, and the College set free to do its proper work. In the autumn of 1881, an independent preparatory school, known as Dana Hall, was opened in Wellesley village, with the warm

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encouragement of Mr. Durant; thus providing an adequate fitting place for many who should come after. Dana Hall was established by the Misses Eastman, under whose rare and masterly guidance it developed into one of the leading private schools of the country, the position which it holds to-day.

During the first six years of struggle and shaping at Wellesley College, there can now be no question as to its real executive head. It had been formally placed in the hands of a Board of Trustees, a distinguished self-perpetuating corporation, which actually controls. its business to-day. As mentioned above, Miss Ada L. Howard, a former teacher at Mount Holyoke and a lady of much dignity of character and manner, had been installed as president. But the person who made the presidential decisions and did the higher presidential work was unquestionably Mr. Durant, though he would accept no title save that of treasurer of the Board of Trustees. He was more than president of the College; he was its Father. The government was paternal to a degree which suggests the saying, "Life is a comedy to those who think; a tragedy to those who feel." It was the outpouring upon hundreds of young lives of a deep and passionate fatherliness, which had been manifolded by bereavement. And thus, aside from the large creative tasks of those arduous years, Mr. Durant took an active and brilliant part, or rather, many active and brilliant parts, in the daily life of his great family. As priest, he frequently conducted chapel services and held earnest personal interviews with the students. As scholarly counselor, he advised them individually about their studies. As connoisseur of exceptionally pure taste, he surrounded them with beauty, and with his own impetuous enthusiasm called their attention to many a beloved treasure of literature and

ARCHITECT'S SKETCH OF DORMITORIES TO BE BUILT ON COLLEGE HILL