She knew that two hundred and sixteen people were houseless; that the departments of Zoology, Geology, Physics, and Psychology, had lost their laboratories, their equipment, their lecture rooms; that twenty-eight recitation rooms, all the administrative offices, the offices of twenty departments, the assembly hall, the study hall, had all been swept away. Yet, in a little less than three weeks, there had sprung up on the campus a temporary building containing twenty-nine lecture and recitation rooms, thirteen department offices, fifteen administrative offices, three dressing rooms, and a reception room. Plumbing, steam heat, electricity, and telephone service had been installed. A week after college opened for the spring term, classes were meeting in the new building. During that first week, offices and classes had been scattered all over the campus,—in the Society houses, in the basements of dormitories, the Art Building, the Chemistry Building, the Gymnasium, the basement of the Library, the Observatory, the Stone Hall Botany Laboratories, Billings Hall; all had opened their doors wide. The two hundred and sixteen residents of old College Hall had all been housed on the campus; it meant doubling up in single rooms, but the doublets persuaded themselves and the rest of the college that it was a lark.
This spirit of helpfulness and cheer began on the day of the fire, and seems to have acquired added momentum with the passing months. Clothes, books, money, were loaned as a matter of course. By half past nine o'clock in the morning, the secretary of the dean had written out from memory the long schedule of the June examinations, to be posted at the beginning of the spring term. Members of the faculty were conducting a systematic search for salvage among the articles that had been dumped temporarily in the "Barn" and the library; homes had been found for the houseless teachers, most of whom had lost everything they possessed; several members of the faculty had no permanent home but the college, and their worldly goods were stored in the attic from which nothing could be saved. It is said that when President Pendleton, in chapel, told the students to go home as soon as they had collected their possessions, "an unmistakable ripple of girlish laughter ran through the dispossessed congregation." This was the Franciscan spirit in which Wellesley women took their personal losses. For the general losses, all mourned together, but with hope and courage. In the Department of Physics, all the beautiful instruments which Professor Whiting had been so wisely and lovingly procuring, since she first began to equip her student-laboratory in 1878, were swept away; Geology and Psychology suffered only less; but the most harrowing losses were those in the Department of Zoology, where, besides the destruction of laboratories and instruments, and the special library presented to the department by Professor Emeritus Mary A. Willcox, "the fruits of years of special research work which had attracted international attention have been destroyed.... Professor Marion Hubbard had devoted her energies for six years to research in variation and heredity in beetles.... In view of the increasing interest in eugenics, scientists awaited the results with keen anticipation, but all the specimens, notes, and apparatus were swept away." Professor Robertson, the head of the department, who is an authority on certain deep-sea forms of life, had just finished her report on the collections from the dredging expedition of the Prince of Monaco, which had been sent her for identification; and the report and the collections all were lost.
Among the few things saved were some of the ivies and the roses which the classes had planted year by year; these the fire had not injured; and a slip from the great wistaria vine on the south side of College Hall has proved to be alive and vigorous. The alumnae gavel and the historic Tree Day spade were also unharmed. But that no life was lost outweighs all the other losses, and this was due to the fire drill which, in one form or another, has been carried on at Wellesley since the earliest years of the college. Doctor Edward Abbott, writing of Wellesley in Harper's Magazine for August, 1876, says:
"Whoever heard of a fire brigade manned by women? There is one at Wellesley, for it is believed that however incombustible the college building may be, the students should be taught to put out fire,... and be trained to presence of mind and familiarity with the thought of what ought to be done in case of fire." From time to time the drill has been strengthened and changed in detail, but in 1902, when Miss Olive Davis, Director of Houses of Residence, was appointed by Miss Hazard to be responsible for an efficient fire drill, the modern system was instituted. An article in College News explains that "the organization of the present fire-drill system is much like the old one. With the adoption of Student Government, it was put into the hands of the students. Each year a fire chief is elected from the student-body, by the students. This girl is a senior. She is counted an officer of the Student Government Association, and is responsible to Miss Davis. Then at meetings held at the beginning of the fall term, each dormitory elects one fire captain, who in turn appoints lieutenants under her,—one for every twenty or twenty-five girls.
"The directions for a fire drill are:
"Upon hearing the alarm (five rings of the house bell),
"1. Close your windows, doors, and transoms.
"2. Turn on the electric lights.
"3. March in single file, and as quickly as possible, downstairs, and answer to your roll call.
"Each lieutenant is responsible for all the girls on her list. After the ringing of the alarm, she must look into every room in her district and see that the directions have been complied with and the inmates have gone downstairs. If the windows and doors have not been shut, she must shut them. Then she goes downstairs and calls her roll (some lieutenants memorize their lists). When the lieutenants have finished, the captain calls the roll of the lieutenants, asking for the number absent in each district, and the number of windows and doors left open or lights not lighted, if any.