Greene writes me (the clergyman who suggested
to Sophia Smith that she give her money to found a college for women,
and who at eighty-five years has a perfectly unclouded mind): "I want
to say that my ambition for Smith College is that it shall be a real
women's college. Too many of our women's colleges are only men's
colleges for women."

I desire now to add my tribute to that noble woman, Sophia Smith of
Hatfield, Massachusetts.

On April 18, 1796, the town of Hatfield, in town meeting assembled,
"voiced to set up two schools, for the schooling of girls four months
in the year." The people of that beautiful town seemed to have heard
the voice of their coming prophetess, commissioned to speak a word for
woman's education, which the world has shown itself ready to hear.

In matters of heredity, Sophia Smith was fortunate. Her paternal
grandmother, Mary Morton, was an extraordinary woman. After the death
of her husband, she became the legal guardian of her six sons, all
young, cared for a large farm, and trained her boys to be useful and
respected in the community.

Sophia Smith was born in Hatfield, August 27, 1796; just six months
before Mary Lyon was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, about seventeen
miles distant. Sophia remembered her grandmother and said: "I looked
up to my grandmother with great love and reverence. She, more than
once, put her hands on my head and said, 'I want you should grow up,
and be a good woman, and try to make the world better.'" And her
mother was equally religious, efficient, kind to the poor, sympathetic
but not impulsive. Sophia lived in a country farmhouse near the
Connecticut River for sixty-eight years. She was sadly hampered
physically. One of the historians of Hatfield writes me:

Her infirmity of deafness was troublesome to some extent when
she was young, making her shy and retiring. At forty she was
absolutely incapable of hearing conversation. She also was lame
in one foot and had a withered hand. In spite of this, I think
she was an active and spirited girl, about like other girls.
She was very fond of social intercourse, especially later in
life when my father knew her, but this intercourse was confined
to a small circle. Doctor Greene speaks of her timidity also. I
know of no traditions about her girlhood. As an example of the
thrift of the Smiths, or perhaps I should say, their exactness
in all business dealings, my