blished a system of management
and purchasing into which all the halls of residence were brought,
and this remains almost without change to the present day." On
March 27, 1895, Mrs. Durant resigned the treasurership of the
college, which she had held since her husband's death, and upon
her nomination, Mr. Alpheus H. Hardy was elected to the office.
In 1896, the trustees issued a report in which they informed the
friends of Wellesley that although Mr. Durant, in his will, had
made the college his residuary legatee, subject to a life tenancy,
the personal estate had suffered such depreciation and loss "as to
render this prospective endowment of too slight consequence to be
reckoned on in any plans for the development and maintenance of
the college." At this time, Wellesley was in debt to the amount
of $103,048.14. During the next nineteen years, trustees and
alumnae were to labor incessantly to pay the expenses of the
college and to secure an endowment fund. What Wellesley owes
to the unstinted devotion of Mr. Hardy during these lean years
can never be adequately expressed.

The buildings erected during Mrs. Irvine's tenure of office were
few. Fiske Cottage was opened in September, 1894, for the use
of students who wished to work their way through college. The
"cottage" had been originally the village grammar school, but when
Mr. Hunnewell gave a new schoolhouse to the village, the college
was able, through the generosity of Mrs. Joseph M. Fiske,
Mr. William S. Houghton, Mr. Elisha S. Converse, and a few other
friends, to move the old schoolhouse to the campus and remodel it
as a dormitory. In February, 1894, a chemical laboratory was built
under Norumbega hill,--an ugly wooden building, a distress to
all who care for Wellesley's beauty, and an unmistakable witness
to her poverty.

On November 22, 1897, the corner stone of the Houghton Memorial
Chapel was laid, a building destined to be one of the most
satisfactory and beautiful on the campus. It was given by
Miss Elizabeth G. Houghton and Mr. Clement S. Houghton of Cambridge
as a memorial of their father, Mr. William S. Houghton, for many
years a trustee of the college.

In 1898 Mrs. John C. Whitin, a trustee, gave to the college an
astronomical observatory and telescope. The building was completed
in 1900. Another gift of 1898, fifty thousand dollars, came from
the estate of the late Charles T. Wilder, and was used to build
Wilder Hall, the fourth dormit