Dr. Seelye favored the teaching of music and art, but not to the exclusion of other things, unless one had special gifts along those lines. "Musical entertainments," he said, "have generally been the grand parade-ground of female boarding-schools. All of us are familiar with the many wearisome hours which young ladies ordinarily are required to spend at the piano,—time enough to master most of the sciences and languages; and all of us are familiar with the remark, heard so frequently after school-days are over, 'I cannot play; I am out of practice.'"
President Seelye had to meet all sorts of objections to higher education for women. When he told a friend that Greek was to be studied in Smith College, the friend replied, "Nonsense! girls cannot bear such a strain;" "and yet his own daughters," says Dr. Seelye, "were going, with no remonstrance from him, night after night, through the round of parties and fashionable amusements in a great city. We question whether any greater expenditure of physical force is necessary to master Greek than to endure ordinary fashionable amusements. Woman's health is endangered far more by balls and parties than by schools. For one ruined by over-study, we can point to a hundred ruined by dainties and dances."
Another said to President Seelye, "Think of a wife who forced you to talk perpetually about metaphysics, or to listen to Greek and Latin quotations!" This would be much more agreeable conversation to some men than to hear about dress and servants and gossip.
When Smith College was opened in 1875, there were many applicants; but with requirements for admission the same as at Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Amherst, only fifteen could pass the examinations. The next year eighteen were accepted.
Each year the number has increased, till in the year 1895 there were 875 students at Smith College. The professorships are about equally divided between men and women. The chair of Greek, on the John M. Greene foundation, "is founded in honor of the Rev. John M. Greene, D.D., who first suggested to Miss Smith the idea of the college, and was her confidential adviser in her bequest," says the College Calendar.
There are three courses of study, each extending through four years,—the classical course leading to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, the scientific to Bachelor of Science, the literary to Bachelor of Letters. The maximum of work allowed to any student in a regular course is sixteen hours of recitation each week.
Year by year Miss Smith's noble gift has been supplemented by the gifts of others.
In 1878 the Lilly Hall of Science was dedicated, the gift of Mr. Alfred Theodore Lilly. This building contains lecture rooms, and laboratories for chemistry, physics, geology, zoölogy, and botany. In 1881 Mr. Winthrop Hillyer gave the money to erect the Hillyer Art Gallery, which now contains an extensive collection of casts, engravings, and paintings, and is provided with studios. One corridor of engravings and an alcove of original drawings were given by the Century Company. Mr. Hillyer gave an endowment of $50,000 for his gallery. A music-hall was also erected in 1881.
The observatory, given by two donors unknown to the public, has an eleven-inch refracting telescope, a spectroscope, siderial clock, chronograph, a portable telescope, and a meridian circle, aperture four inches.