could tell to no one but you and father is that I think
it shows that Mr. Durant has some confidence in me and what
I can do. But--"tell it not in Gath"--that I ever said anything
of the kind.

Thus do we trace Literature 9 (the Shakespeare Course) to its
modest fountainhead.

Elizabeth Stilwell left her Alma Mater in 1877, but so cherished
were the memories of the life which she had criticized as a girl,
and so thoroughly did she come to respect its academic standards,
that her own daughters grew up thinking that the goal of happy
girlhood was Wellesley College.

From such naive beginnings, amateur in the best sense of the word,
the Wellesley of to-day has arisen. Details of the founder's plan
have been changed and modified to meet conditions which he could
not foresee. But his "five great essentials for education at
Wellesley College" are still the touchstones of Wellesley scholarship.
In the founder's own words they are:

FIRST. God with us; no plan can prosper without Him.

SECOND. Health; no system of education can be in accordance
with God's laws which injures health.

THIRD. Usefulness; all beauty is the flower of use.

FOURTH. Thoroughness.

FIFTH. The one great truth of higher education which the noblest
womanhood demands; viz. the supreme development and unfolding
of every power and faculty, of the Kingly reason, the beautiful
imagination, the sensitive emotional nature, and the religious
aspirations. The ideal is of the highest learning in full harmony
with the noblest soul, grand by every charm of culture, useful
and beautiful because useful; feminine purity and delicacy and
refinement giving their luster and their power to the most absolute
science--woman learned without infidelity and wise without conceit,
the crowned queen of the world by right of that Knowledge which
is Power and that Beauty which is Truth."

CHAPTER II

THE PRESIDENTS AND THEIR ACHIEVEMENT

Wellesley's career differs in at least one obvious and important
particular from the careers of her sister colleges, Smith, Vassar,
and Bryn Mawr,--in the swift succession of her presidents during
her formative years. Smith College, opening in the same year as
Wellesley, 1875, remained under President Seelye's wise guidance
for thirty-five years. Vassar, between 1886 and 1914, had but
one president. Bryn Mawr, in 1914, still followed the lead of
Miss Thomas, first dean and then president. In 1911, Welles