nt. He brought
to his task a large inexperience of the genus girl, a despotic
habit of mind, and a temperamental tendency to play Providence.
Theoretically, he wished to give the teachers and students of
Wellesley an opportunity to show what women, with the same
educational facilities as their brothers and a free hand in directing
their own academic life, could accomplish for civilization.
Practically, they had to do as he said, as long as he lived. The
records in the diaries, letters, and reminiscences which have come
down to us from those early days, are full of Mr. Durant's commands
and coercions.

On one historic occasion he decides that the entire freshman
schedule shall be changed, for one day, from morning to afternoon,
in order that a convention of Massachusetts school superintendents,
meeting in Boston, may hear the Wellesley students recite their
Greek, Latin, and Mathematics. In vain do the students protest
at being treated like district school children; in vain do the
teachers point out the injury to the college dignity; in vain do
the superintendents evince an unflattering lack of interest in
the scholarship of Wellesley. It must be done. It is done.
The president of the freshman class is called upon to recite her
Greek lesson. She begins. The superintendents chatter and laugh
discourteously among themselves. But the president of the freshman
class has her own ideas of classroom etiquette. She pauses. She
waits, silent, until the room is hushed, then she resumes her
recitation before the properly disciplined superintendents.
In religious matters, Mr. Durant was, of course, especially active.
Like the Christian converts of an earlier day, he would have harried
and hurried souls to Christ. But Victorian girls were less docile
than the medieval Franks and Goths. They seem, many of them,
to have eluded or withstood this forceful shepherding with a
vigilance as determined as Mr. Durant's own.

But some of the letters and diaries give us such a vivid picture
of this early Wellesley that it would be a pity not to let them
speak. The diary quoted is that of Florence Morse Kingsley,
the novelist, who was a student at Wellesley from 1876 to 1879,
but left before she was graduated because of trouble with her eyes.
Already in the daily record of the sixteen-year-old girl we find
the little turns and twinkles of phrase which make Mrs. Kingsley's
books such good reading.

VI.

Wellesley College