Perhaps Vere Metkiff was a suggestor rather than a seer, and it may have been this prophecy that set the boy in the path to the presidency of the University of California. I observe, however, that he is still minus the proposed degree of D.D.
The next day a boy and girl sat all day on the stairs of Claremont Hall and crammed Roman History out of two brick-red primers, and in the afternoon took two college entrance examinations, to meet necessary requirements. And they both passed. And perhaps they know as much Roman History now as if they had spent months instead of hours in its study.
And so the year ended, and I left to go east to college as had been planned for me so long as I could remember. But had there not been stiffer backbones than mine at home, I think I would have been a member of that first class at Pomona.
My friends did not forget me, and twice I hurried home from Wellesley to go into camp with them up in San Antonio Cañon, two wonderful experiences. Our party of twenty-six was the first of any size to go beyond Hogsback. We had to go to its base by wagon, and then over the trail, walking on up to the mouth of Bear Cañon where we stayed for ten days. From here a dozen of us made the ascent of the peak, ten-thousand feet high. Six of us stayed the night to see the wonder of the sun coming up out of the desert,—one of the rare memories of my life.
The three teachers, Prof. Brackett, Dr. Norton, and Dr. Spalding, whom I knew in that long ago day of the beginning of things, have all these years been giving of their strength and knowledge. And Dr. C. B. Sumner, who dreamed and planned and worked for the college, lives to see it established and prosper, its bare, single building grown to the beautiful campus and many buildings of the present, its student body increased more than ten fold, while his son, the youngest of that famous class, has for years been a valued and loved professor in the strong and growing college of today.
CHAPTER XV
CONCLUSION
The first shovelful of earth was turned for Wellesley College the day before I was born, and when I was ready to enter as a student, only eleven classes had been graduated. Yet to me, coming as I did, from the embryonic, frontier college, with its single building in a waste of cactus and sagebrush, Wellesley, with its many dignified buildings set beside Lake Waban in a campus of sweeping lawns and stately trees, seemed an institution not only honorable, but ancient. Because of my three earlier visits in the East, the conditions of climate and of village life were not unknown to me, but it was the four continuous college years spent in the environment to which my race was wont, and to which my instinct responded, that brought me my heritage of joy in the slipping seasons, and made possible an understanding reading of the songs of our English tongue from “Sumer is icumen in” to “When lilacs last in the door yard bloomed.”
Wellesley’s hills and meadows, her trees, her birds, her lake brought me an ecstasy that lingers; her out-of-doors became an integral part of me, stored pictures of the wide whiteness of winter, with snow-laden firs or interlacing crystal branches, or of an autumn sunset sky, glorious behind a black screen of naked trees; memories of hepaticas and snowdrops in early spring, of anemones and crow-foot violets; of a mist of new pale leaves on the elms and red buds on the maples; of lushness of green June, and waxen lilies on summer streams, a greenness and wetness unlike my land at home, unlike my California with its wide skies and open miles, its great mountains, its grays and tans, its far blues and wistful purples. It is blessed I am to know two homes.
Time in its passing brought me to college, not to the one which I had been destined from birth, Mt. Holyoke, but to Wellesley. The former had not then transformed itself from a female seminary into a woman’s college, so, since the value of a degree for women had become increasingly apparent, it was deemed wise for the girl going three thousand miles to school to go to the institution of the higher rank. Neither Berkeley nor Stanford University, though near home, had been considered. The State University was of necessity non-religious and hence somewhat suspect of the orthodox, and Stanford was new and untried—and besides—didn’t it derive its support from race horses and a winery? Moreover, New England parentage and tradition sent the children “home,” if possible, for their education.
With Mt. Holyoke eliminated, the choice lay between Smith and Wellesley, and fell upon the latter for the following reasons: