llesley girls are twirling a-tiptoe in every moment
not spent in class; and in class their thoughts sometimes dance.
Indeed, the students of late years have begun to ask themselves
if it may not be possible to obtain quite as beautiful a result
with less expense of effort and time and money; for Tree Day,
the crowning delight of the year, would defeat its own end, which
is pure recreation, if its beauty became a tyrant.

This multiplication of joys--and their attendant worries--is
something that Wellesley has to take measures to guard against,
and the faculty has worked out a scheme of biennial rotatory
festivities which since 1911-1912 has eased the pressure of revelry
in May and June, as well as throughout the winter months.

Wellesley's list of societies and social clubs is not short, but
the conditions of membership are carefully guarded. As early
as the second year of the college, five societies came into
existence: of these, the Beethoven Society and the Microscopical--which
started with a membership of six and an exhibition under three
microscopes at its first meeting--seem to have been open to
any who cared to join; the other three--the Zeta Alpha and Phi
Sigma societies founded in November, 1876, and the Shakespeare
in January, 1877--were mutually exclusive. The two Greek letter
societies were literary in aim, and their early programs consisted
in literary papers and oral debates. The Shakespeare Society,
for many years a branch of the London Shakespeare Society, devoted
itself to the study and dramatic presentation of Shakespeare. Its
first open-air play was "As You Like It", given in 1889; and until
1912, when it conformed to the new plan of biennial rotation,
this society gave a Shakespearean play every year at Commencement.

In 1881, Zeta Alpha and Phi Sigma were discontinued by the faculty,
because of pressure of academic work, but in 1889 they were
reorganized, and gradually their programs were extended to include
dramatic work, poetic plays, and masques. The Phi Sigma Society
gives its masque--sometimes an original one--on alternate years
just before the Christmas vacation; and Zeta Alpha alternates with
the Classical Society at Commencement. The Zeta Alpha Masque
of 1913, a charming dramatization in verse of an old Hindu legend
by Elizabeth McClellan of the class of 1913, was one of the notable
events of Commencement time, a pageant of poetic beauty and oriental
dignity; and in 1915 Florence