WELLESLEY COLLEGE.
Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass., fifteen miles from Boston, was founded in 1875 by the benefaction of Henry F. Durant. The purpose of the trustees was “the establishment of a college in which girls should have as good opportunities for higher education as the best institutions afforded to young men, and to do so with due regard to health.” They held that “it is not hard study but violation of law that injures health.”
The college is beautiful for situation, with extensive grounds, like an English park, varied by oak woods and elm-shaded avenues, and including Lake Waban, which furnishes ample facilities for rowing and skating. Thousands of rhododendrons and other flowering shrubs have been set to brighten the grounds, and the spring turf blossoms in crocuses and snowdrops.
Amid all this seductive beauty, suggestive of dreaming, rise noble structures, of solid and elegant proportions, dedicated to successful work. Within them the practical and the æsthetic are charmingly combined. Music has its temple, art has its ministry, science its every facility, and the air of a happy home life broods over all.
Thoroughness and system are manifest everywhere. This is not a college of yesterday. Nowhere are the latest methods and the best facilities more promptly welcomed. One wanders charmed and glad through its fine library, its extensive laboratories, its dining-room, where a special grace of living comes with the refined service of the students themselves, its dainty parlors and reception-rooms, and, seeking some flaw to prove it real, finds it, at last, in the fact that only half the youth of the land—only girls are admitted to it.
From the opening of the college it has been under the presidency of women. Miss Ada Howard, a graduate of Mount Holyoke Seminary, was succeeded by Miss Alice Freeman, who received the degree of “Doctor of Philosophy,” from her alma mater, the University of Michigan, and that of Doctor of Literature from Columbia College. In 1887 Miss Palmer resigned the presidency of Wellesley College, but as Mrs. Alice Freeman Palmer continues to serve it as a member of the board of trustees, which out of twenty-five members has one third women members. Miss Freeman was succeeded by the present President, Miss Helen A. Schafer, a graduate of Oberlin College.