wed from the Billings
estate, and in December, 1903, Mr. Thomas Minns, the surviving
executor of the estate, presented the college with an additional
fifteen thousand dollars, of which two thousand dollars were set
aside as a permanent fund for the establishment of the Billings
prize, to be awarded by the president for excellence in
music,--including its theory and practice,--and the remainder was
used toward the erection of Billings Hall, a second music building
containing a much-needed concert hall and classrooms, completed
in 1904.

Miss Hazard's love of simple, poetical ceremonial did much to
increase the charm of the Wellesley life. Of the several hearth
fires which she kindled during the years when she kept Wellesley's
fires alight, the Observatory hearth-warming was perhaps the
most charming. The beautiful little building, given and equipped
by Mrs. Whitin, a trustee of the college, was formally opened
October 8, 1900, with addresses by Miss Hazard, Professor Pickering
of Harvard, and Professor Todd of Amherst. In the morning,
Miss Hazard had gone out into the college woods and plucked bright
autumn leaves to bind into a torch of life to light the fire on the
new hearth. Digitalis, sarsaparilla, eupatorium, she had chosen,
for the health of the body; a fern leaf for grace and beauty; the
oak and the elm for peace and the civic virtues; evergreen, pine,
and hemlock for the aspiring life of the mind and the eternity
of thought; rosemary for remembrance, and pansies for thoughts.
Firing the torch, she said, "With these holy associations we light
this fire, that from this building in which the sun and stars are
to be observed, true life may ever aspire with the flame to the
Author of all light."

Mrs. Whitin then took the lighted torch and kindled the hearth fire,
and as the pleasant, aromatic odor spread through the room,
the college choir sang the hearth song which Miss Hazard had
written for the occasion, and which was later burned in the wooden
panel above the hearth:

"Stars above that shine and glow,
Have their image here below;
Flames that from the earth arise,
Still aspiring seek the skies.
Upward with the flames we soar,
Learning ever more and more;
Light and love descend till we
Heaven reflected here shall see."

At the beginning of her term of office, Miss Hazard had requested
the trustees to make "a division of administrative duties somewhat
different