The rare privilege of seeing and hearing Ralph Waldo Emerson was also ours. He read his lecture and fumbled with his papers, meantime casting apprehensive glances to the faint far-away lights on the gallery side. "I am a student," he began slowly, "and a lover of light." The hint was speedily taken and silver candelabrum with blazing candles from the lady principal's parlor was quickly forthcoming.
In those days we knew the trustees very well, and their paternal interest in the venturesome experiment of the higher education of women was something akin to the Founder's. Fourteen of the twenty-eight on the original Board were residents of Poughkeepsie; seven of them had professions, seven were simply close business friends, including his two nephews, John Guy Vassar and Matthew Vassar, Jr. Some of these men were rather hard to persuade that so large a gift of money invested in this way was not in a perilous cause, but each lived to witness the beginning of Vassar's grand success and the Founder's triumph. Once when there was a question of extension of the Christmas vacation and the Prudential Committee—as they were then called—had met to consider its advisability, one of them opposed the measure saying, "Pretty soon our patrons will be complaining that they don't get the worth of their money. We don't give them much over forty weeks of school now." Not one member of this first Board is living, the first break coming with the death in March, '69, of James Harper, senior member of the firm of Harper & Brothers.
Dr. Elias Magoon stands out vividly in my portrait gallery. Dear, kind, eccentric man! He looked, and we all thought him in his enthusiasm, mildly crazy, but we came to appreciate him and delight in his ardor. The college bought from him his whole private art collection of pictures, folios, books, armor, etc., to stock the Vassar gallery. The books—chiefly editions de luxe—were later transferred to the library proper, and it made the librarian sore at heart to discover how much Dr. Magoon had apparently read, pencil in hand, and how much patient work in eradication must result in consequence, impossible to accomplish wholly, as traces existing to-day testify.
Dr. Magoon was a lover and student of nature as well as of art. He was a frequent visitor at the college in the spring, coming from his Philadelphia home "just to get up at five o'clock in the morning for a tramp over Sunset Hill or around the lake to hear and see the birds." My table in the dining-room was near that of the Faculty, and it was a pleasure to see him come in to breakfast with face aglow from his walk, and to mark the interest and brightness he carried with him.
Now and then he gave us a talk in chapel. The frequent eight o'clock lecture was not quite so welcome always as it should have been, and when one evening at prayers it was announced that Dr. Magoon would talk on art at the usual hour, there were many reluctant feet hitherward. As we entered, he was already on the platform behind the desk, on which rested a huge bouquet of wax flowers. Of course attention was arrested, and as the last comer was seated he leaned over the flowers and gazing in mock adoring admiration began, "Now ain't that pooty?" A great wave of laughter went over the room, and if any one present had feared to be bored and grudged the hour from other duties, she forgot it all in the charm and delight of what followed this queer introduction. A hint of the true and beautiful in art, shown by contrast with ugliness that all could recognize, gave many of us our first wonderful lesson then and there.
Dr. Magoon and Miss Mitchell were warm friends in spite of difference in religious belief and opinions. She liked his unconventionalism and independence. They used to have great discussions, and he took very meekly her ratings for not being "more progressive." "But do me the justice to say I try," he would retort, and if he had occasion to write a note to her was fond of signing himself "your ever growing E. L. M."
Some curious letters were received at the college by Matthew Vassar, and his rage over one, I happened to witness. An untactful student, who had received the benefit of a full scholarship all through her course, conceived it to be her duty as soon as she graduated to remonstrate against the way the Founder had made his money, saying, "A college foundation which was laid in beer never will prosper." "Well, it was good beer, wasn't it?" shouted Mr. Vassar to his audience in the lower office. "I wonder where that girl would have got her education if it hadn't been for beer." Then the humor of it struck him and he laughed with us most heartily.
Among other queer letters received at the college, were requests to open correspondence "with view to marriage," the demand being for promising candidates to serve in the mission field. One such letter was addressed "To the Head Lady at Vassar." The writer was not backward about stating his requirements for his wife as home missionary. For one thing, she must be able to play the melodeon in church and to contribute the instrument also.
Perhaps this is as good an opportunity as any to tell the story of the bootjacks, about which so many conflicting statements have been made. After the Founder's death, a walnut tree on the Main Street premises had to be cut down, and Matthew Junior had a little sentiment about the use of the wood in some form for the rooms at college. Why he selected bootjacks nobody ever knew, but the lumber was sent to a factory in town to be made up in this fashion, and was distributed accordingly to the hilarious delight of all concerned.
Some friend in town chanced to remark to the Founder that the college parlors with only a few choice old engravings on the walls looked rather cold and bare; whereupon, in his eagerness to make good any deficiency, Mr. Vassar (without consulting anybody), betook himself to the leading photographer's in the city and bought the best he had in stock. The craze of the chromo was beginning, and several hundred dollars worth of these in most expensive frames were hung one evening as a grand surprise. The consternation and horror of Professor Van Ingen can be imagined, and the general amusement. However, the infliction had to be endured till after Mr. Vassar's death, and afterwards, there was Matthew Junior to be reckoned with and his sensitiveness to innovations. Professor Van Ingen was always on Founder's Day committee, and with much tactful diplomacy contrived to get consent to use the chromos in decorating the dining-room the second anniversary following. Here under a drapery of white tarletan with evergreen wreaths in profusion, the effect was really quite brilliant, and Mr. Vassar was much pleased. The art gallery was called upon to supply the places of the chromos taken from the parlor, and no one questioned that it was never convenient to change back. Gradually, in the wholesale kalsomining of walls in the summer vacations the offensive pictures disappeared, and portraits of trustees took their place.