Part 8 (1/2)
Another says: ”It is a pleasure to have an opportunity, after so ratitude I owe you
The course in Political Economy which I was so wise as to take with you has proved of vital importance to me That was in 1887-1888, but as I look back I see that in your teaching then, you presented to us the ideas, the concepts, which are now accepted principles of ht as to the relation of class to class, of man to man And so I feel that it was to your enthusias your pupils that I owe ical affairs”
And still another: ”I have had y courses than froe course Had it not been for yourself and Miss Balch, that ould not have stood for so rateful I have tried to carry out your ideals as far as possible in the Visiting Nurse work and the Social Settle Wellesley”
Professor Emily Greene Balch, who succeeded Miss Coman as head of the Department of Econoration; her book, ”Our Slavic Fellow Citizens”, is an important contribution to the history of the subject, and has been cited in the Gerration
She has also served onthe Board,--and the sanity and judicial balance of her opinions are recognized and valued by conservatives and radicals alike
Besides the traditional courses in Economic History and Theory, Wellesley offers under Miss Balch a course in Socialism, a critical study of its main theories and political movements, open to juniors and seniors who have already completed two other courses in Economics; a course entitled ”The Modern Labor Moveislation, factory inspection, and the organization of labor, with a study ofthe difficulties of the ration and the probleives rise in the United States
The Wellesley fire did the college one good turn by bringing to the notice of the general public the departments of Science When so many of the laboratories and so much of the equipment were swept away, outsiders beca done in those laboratories; of the raphy carried on not only in Wellesley but for the teachers of Boston by Professor Fisher who is so wisely developing the department which Professor Niles set on its firm foundation; of the work of Professor Robertson who is an authority on the bryozoa fauna of the Pacific coast of North America and japan; of the authoritative work on the life history of Pinus, by Professor Ferguson of the Departh, modern work for students in Physics and Cheanization of departmental work at Wellesley is found in the ease and siene, formerly the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics, has become a force in the Wellesley curriculum under the direction of Miss Amy Morris Horadual process of adjust to a certificate in the Departiene ”will be liree at Wellesley College and to those who already hold the Bachelor's degree either froe” A five years' course is also offered, by which students ree and the certificate of the depart for the certificate or not, iene in the freshymnastic work in the freshes, Wellesley ic power of its teachers Their days are pretty well filled with the classroom routine and the necessary and incessant social intercourse with the eager crowd of youth
It e for women can sustain and foster creative scholarshi+p for its own sake, after the exaenerous; the Sabbatical Grant gives certain heads of departments an opportunity for refreshment and personal work every seven years; and even those who do not profit by this privilege e to keep their minds alive by outside work and contacts
Every two years the secretary to the president issues a list of faculty publications, ranging froazines to papers in learned reviews for esoteric consuaret Sherwood's ”Daphne”, and sympathetic travel sketches like Katharine Lee Bates's ”Spanish Highways and Byways”, to scholarly translations, such as Sophie Jewett's ”Pearl” and Vida D Scudder's ”Letters of St Catherine of Siena”, and philosophical treatises, of which Mary Whiton Calkins's ”Persistent Problees, is a notable example
But the Wellesley faculty is a public-spirited body; its contribution to the general life is not only abstract and literary; for many of its members are identified with modern movements toward better citizenshi+p Miss Balch, besides her work on municipal coue, and is interested in the greatof 1915, she was one of those who sailed with Miss Jane Addaue, and she afterwards visited other European countries on athe interests of the International Institute in Spain
The Ae for Girls in Constantinople often looks to Wellesley for teachers, and iven a Sabbatical year to the schoolgirls in Constantinople
During the absence of President Patrick, Professor Roxana Vivian of Wellesley was acting president, and had the honor of bringing the college safely through the perplexities and terrors of the Young Turks' Revolution in 1908 and 1909 Professor Kendall, of the Departuished traveler Her book, ”A Wayfarer in China”, tells the story of some of her travels, and she has received the rare honor, for a woraphical Society
Miss Calkins is an officer of the Consuue Miss Scudder has been identified froe Settlements Moverants inaugurated by Denison House
As a result of these varied interests, the intellectual fellowshi+p ae co quality, and the fact that it is almost exclusively a feminine fellowshi+p does not affect its intellectuality The Wellesley faculty, like the faculty of Harvard, is not a cloistered body, and contact with the h books and the visitations of itinerant scholars is about as easy in the one case as in the other Every year Wellesley has her share of distinguished visitors, American, European, and Oriental, scholars, poets, scientists, statese her spiritual vision
III
One chapter of Wellesley's history it is too soon to write: the story of the great nareat personalities, the spiritual stuff of which every college is built This is the chapter on which the historians of es love best to dwell But the women's lips and pens are fountains sealed, for a reticent hundred years--or possibly less, under pressure--with the seals of academic reserve, and historic perspective, and traditionalof Wellesley's first forty years are still alive There's the rub
It would not hamper the journalist But the historian has his conventions One hundred years fro to-day, will be written in Wellesley's golden book? Already they are written in many prophetic hearts However, women can keep a secret
Even of those who have already finished their work on earth, it is too soon to speak authoritatively; but gratitude and love will not be silent, and no story of Wellesley's first half-century would be co influence
A and forceful personality than Susan Maria Hallowell, who came to Wellesley as Professor of Natural History in 1875, the friend of Agassiz and Asa Gray She was a Maine woor and Portland, before she was called to Wellesley Her successor in the Department of Botany writes in a able zeal so characteristic of her whole life, she began the work in preparation for the new position She went fro the scientific libraries and laboratories At the close of this investigation she announced to the founders of the college that the task which they had assigned to her was too great for any one individual to undertake There must be several professorshi+ps rather than one Of those naiven first choice, and when, in 1876, she opened her laboratories and actually began her teaching in Wellesley College, she did so as professor of Botany, although her title was not fored until 1878
”The foundations which she laid were so broad and sure, the several courses which she organized were so carefully outlined, that, except where necessitated by es in the arrangement and distribution of the work in her departanized and built up a botanical library which froe in the country, and is to-day only surpassed by the botanical libraries of a few of our great universities”
Fortunately the botanical library and the laboratories were housed in Stone Hall, and escaped devastation by the fire
Professor Halloas the first woman to be admitted to the botanical lectures and laboratories of the University of Berlin
She ”was not a productive scholar”, again we quote frouson, ”as that terifts and her achievements are but little known to the botanists of to-day She was preeanizer Only those who knew her in this double capacity can fully realize the richness of her nature and the power of her personality” She retired froe in February, 1902, when she was e with her friend, Miss Horton, the forives us a charnified little old lady ”When in recent years the blossoreat occasions, the badges of scholarshi+p see, and she walked bravely in the Co the little bonnet which henceforth became a distinction”
Another early s, who came to Wellesley as a student in 1876 and kept her connection with the college until her death, as associate professor, in 1906, was a scientific scholar of distinguished reputation
Her work in cryptogaained the respect of botanists for Wellesley