power of her personality." She retired from active
service at the college in February, 1902, when she was made
Professor Emeritus; but she lived in Wellesley village with her
friend, Miss Horton, the former professor of Greek, until her
death in 1911. Mrs. North gives us a charming glimpse of the
quaint and dignified little old lady. "When in recent years the
blossoming forth of academic dress made a pageant of our great
occasions, the badges of scholarship seemed to her foreign to the
simplicity of true learning, and she walked bravely in the
Commencement procession, wearing the little bonnet which henceforth
became a distinction."
Another early member of the Department of Botany, Clara Eaton
Cummings, 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 cryptogamic botany gained the respect of botanists
for Wellesley.
With this pioneer group belongs also Professor Niles, who was
actively connected with the college from 1882 until his retirement
as Professor Emeritus in 1908. Wellesley shares with the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology her precious memories of
this devoted gentleman and scholar. His wise planning set the
Department of Geology and Geography on its present excellent
basis. At his death in 1910, a valuable legacy of geological
specimens came to Wellesley, only to be destroyed in 1914 by the
fire. But his greatest gifts to the college are those which no
fire can ever harm.
Anne Eugenia Morgan, professor in the Department of Philosophy
from 1878 to 1900; Mary Adams Currier, enthusiastic head of the
Department of Elocution from 1875 to 1896, the founder of the
Monroe Fund for her department; Doctor Speakman, Doctor Barker,
Wellesley's resident physicians in the early days; dear Mrs. Newman,
who mothered so many college generations of girls at Norumbega,
and will always be to them the ideal house-mother,--when old alumnae
speak these names, their hearts glow with unchanging affection.
But the most vivid of all these pioneers, and one of the most
widely known, was Carla Wenckebach. Of her, Wellesley has a picture
and a memory which will not fade, in the brilliant biography
[Carla Wenckebach, Pioneer (Ginn & Co. pub.).] by her colleague and
close friend, Margarethe Muller, who succeeded her in the Department
of German. As an interpretation of
|