Smith College

“ Shall the American College student follow his option, or his curriculum? And shall the college itself be a school for schoolmasters, a collection of debating clubs, a reading-room with library attached, an intellectual quarantine for the plague of riches? or, a place of close and protracted drill, of definite methods, of prescribed intellectual work? Shall it fulfill the statement of the Concord sage,—'You send [191] your son to the schoolmasters, and the schoolboys educate him?' or, shall a strong faculty make and mark the whole tone of the institution? ”

“ She had provided for a better and more enduring monument in Smith College, and she knew that no other was needed. The seventy-five-thousand-dollar academy at Hatfield would also keep her in blessed remembrance.
The thought of Miss Smith, after her death, began to shape itself into brick and stone. Thirteen acres of ground were purchased for the site of the college, commanding a view of the beautiful valley of the Connecticut River; and the main building, of brick and freestone, was erected in secular Gothic style, the interior finished in unpainted native woods. ”

“ The sun is glaring down on the campus. A crowd of parents and other relatives is surging toward an awning near the steps of College Hall; a stream of white-dressed seniors continually flows toward the Hatfield House, where a procession is forming. Forty junior ushers struggle with a rope wound with laurel, which is to encompass the column of seniors. A few scattered members of the Faculty and a crowd of alumnæ wander aimlessly about, obstructing traffic generally. ”

“ Tuition is $100 a year, with $300 for board and furnished room in the college houses.
Smith College is fortunately situated. Opposite the [Pg 170] grounds is the beautiful Forbes Library, with an endowment of $300,000 for books alone, and not far away a public library with several thousand volumes, and a permanent endowment of $50,000 for its increase. The students have access to the collections at Amherst College and the Massachusetts Agricultural College, also at Mount Holyoke College, about seven miles distant.
There are no secret societies at Smith. ”

“ What a help to any college class is the influence of one such man! His connection with the class of 1843, was, no doubt, the presentation to some of its members of an ideal such as they had not formed before; an ideal, not only of enthusiasm for the largest acquisitions and the finest culture, but of that enthusiasm sustained by the love of excellence for its own sake, and not alloyed by any merely selfish ambition to surpass others. ”

“ Smith’s splendid testimonial to the value of a college education—how it has unlocked for him the ages’ accumulated wealth of literature, of science, of art—how it has put him in vivid touch with the world in which he lives—how it has made him realize his own powers, and given him a serene confidence in his ability to use them wisely—how fully it has equipped him to live in this complex and difficult age—in a word, how it has helped him to become all that a twentieth century American citizen should be! ”

“ It is hardly necessary to say that the influence of such a man was an important factor in the last two years of our college life. His noble bearing, his handsome face, his impressive manner, his uniform kindness and courtesy, and, especially, his manifest appreciation of young men who were struggling against heavy obstacles in their course of study, will never be forgotten by those who were so fortunate as to be under his tuition. Nor can it be doubted that the power of his refined intellect and taste has been felt in many places where his name has never been heard. ”

“ My long and intimate connection with a most beloved and affectionate people—a connection rendered interesting not only by its duties and delights but by its very solicitudes and afflictions—a diffidence of my powers to meet the expectations of the Trustees, and the demands of the college; the exchange, at my age, of a sphere whose duties, though arduous and exhausting, are yet familiar, for another in which new duties, new responsibilities, new anxieties arise ”

“ John M. Greene writes me (the clergyman who suggested to Sophia Smith that she give her money to found a college for women, and who at eighty-five years has a perfectly unclouded mind) : "I want to say that my ambition for Smith College is that it shall be a real women's college. Too many of our women's colleges are only men's colleges for women."
I desire now to add my tribute to that noble woman, Sophia Smith of Hatfield, Massachusetts. ”

“ The best organization in the world is the home. Whatever in the education of girls draws them away from that, is an injury to civilization."
At the close of an article in The Outlook, written by Elizabeth Fisher Read, of Smith College, she said, speaking of their last adaptation of athletics: "From the beginning, the policy of Smith College has been, not to duplicate the means of development offered in men's colleges, but to provide courses and methods of study that should do for women what the men's courses did for them. ”

“ If in each college the tutor or teacher, who was to instruct each student in all arts and sciences, should not be voluntarily chosen by the student, but appointed by the head of the college; and if, in case of neglect, inability, or bad usage, the student should not be allowed to change him for another, without leave first asked and obtained, such a regulation would not only tend very much to extinguish all emulation among the different tutors of the same college, but to diminish very much in all of them the necessity of diligence and of attention to their respective pupils. ”

“ In the East girls get their higher education for the most part in colleges of their own. Smith College for instance has no connection with any of the men's universities. Nor has Vassar nor Bryn Mawr. These institutions have their own staffs, their own courses and examinations, their own rules, and confer their own degrees. Barnard College, on the other hand, is closely connected with Columbia University, occupying much the same position as Girton and St. Margaret's Hall do with regard to Cambridge and Oxford, scarcely as intimately joined to Columbia as Trinity Hall is to Dublin University. ”

“ Smith was a great and good man. He never appeared to toil for professional fame, but to do good to his fellow-man: and in view of his virtues as a citizen and his justly preëminent skill as a physician, one of his surviving pupils of those early days, who now counts more than four-score years, feels impelled to exclaim,—Honored be the memory of Nathan Smith, the founder, father, and for many years the sustainer of the Medical Department of Dartmouth College; ever recognized by all his friends and acquaintances—and their name was legion—as an honest man and most useful citizen. ”

“ At that time the college was visited by a revival of religion of uncommon power, and my reverend president suddenly awoke (at least to my view) in an entirely new character.
"He came to the students with a power and unction which were quite irresistible, and manifested a depth of religious feeling for us which made us at once love him and admire him. He seemed to have found his appropriate sphere of labor; to have got into an atmosphere which filled his soul and body with life and energy; to have work to do which was congenial, which he loved, and which he knew how to do as few men did. ”

“ We commend the cause of our beloved country to all the Alumni of this Institution; and we invoke from them, and pledge our own most efficient and cordial support, and that of Dartmouth College, to the Government, which is the only power by which the rebellion can be subdued. We hail with joy and with grateful acknowledgments to the God of our fathers, the cheering hope that the dark cloud which has heretofore obscured the vision and depressed the hearts of patriots and statesmen, in all attempts to scan the future, may in time disappear entirely from our horizon ”

“ I'm so glad you're on the campus. You know Uncle Wendell knows the President very well indeed—he was in college with him—and, somehow or other, 125 I've got a room in the Lawrence, though we didn't expect it so soon! I feel inspired already when I think of the chapel and the big Science Building and that beautiful library! I've laid out a course of work that Miss Beverly—that's the literature teacher—thinks very ambitious, but I am afraid she doesn't realize the intention of a college, which is a little different, I suppose, from a boarding-school (!) ”

“ The college should be distinctly and eminently Christian. Not in the narrow, sectarian sense—that be far from us—but in the broadest evangelical view. Our course of thought culminates here; and here does all else that has been affirmed find its proper centre and unity. Christianity is the great unity. In it, as was intimated at the outset, are all the chief elements of organic influence. It is itself the very acme of completeness, and it tends to all symmetry and finish. It is at once conservative and progressive, balancing perfectly the impelling and restraining forces ”

“ The effort to establish distinctly women's schools was continued after the Civil War by Matthew Vassar, who founded in 1861, and opened in 1865, the first adequately endowed and organized college for women in America. Ten years later, Miss Sophie Smith founded and endowed Smith College to furnish women "with means and facilities for education equal to those that are offered in colleges for young men." ”

“ When I think of the vast momentum for good which has originated here, and is now in unchecked progress, and must extend beyond all the limits of conception, I cannot help feeling that it is a great and precious privilege to be in some way identified as a member of this college. It does not diminish my satisfaction that other graduates of other American colleges can say the same thing. It rather increases the satisfaction. ”

“ Smith agrees to settle as Professor of English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee, etc., in Dartmouth College, to teach which, and as many of these and other such languages as he shall understand, as the Trustees shall judge necessary and practicable for one man, and also to read lectures on them, as often as the president, tutors, etc., with himself shall judge profitable for the Seminary. He also agrees, while he can do it consistently with his office as professor, annually to serve as tutor to a class of students in the College. ”

“ He wants me to do something with my music. But I told him of the fine Music School there was at Smith, and how much harder I should work there, naturally. He talked a good deal about the art advantages and travel and French—you know what I think about the terrible narrowness of a boarding-school education! It is shameful, that an intellectual girl of this century should be tied down to French and Music! And how can the scrappy little bit of gallery sight-seeing that I should do possibly equal four years of earnest, intelligent, regular college work? He said something about marriage—oh, dear! ”

“ We celebrate to-day the founding of our college. We come hither to testify our veneration and our affection for our benign Alma Mater. We can hardly think she is a hundred years old, she looks so fresh and so fair. We are sure that many, many blessed days are before her, but a mother's days are made happy and delightful by the love and faithfulness of her children. Much has been done for this institution, recently, much which makes our hearts glad. The names of the benefactors of the institution, mentioned here to-day, dwell freshly in the hearts of every graduate, and will live forever ”

“ Professional culture is remitted to other and often separate schools. The undergraduate course is for general training; it lays the foundation for whatever superstructure. It has no particular reference to any one pursuit; but, like the first part of the old University course, aims to fit the whole man for a man's work in any specific line either of study or of action.
"In this conception of the college, there are, it is believed, important advantages. It is better for preparatory education; it is better for professional. It felicitously discriminates. It keeps things in their place. ”

“ There are several literary and charitable societies in Smith College. Great interest is taken in the working-girls of New York, and in the college settlement of that city.
None of the evil effects predicted for young women in college have been realized. "Some of our best scholars," says President Seelye, "have steadily improved in health since entering college. Some who came so feeble that it was doubtful whether they could remain a term have become entirely well and strong.... We have had frequently professors from male institutions to give instruction ”

“ Our thought may be fitly limited to that class of institutions which these ancient halls of learning and these inauguration solemnities naturally bring before us. The college is my subject, considered in its proper functions and characteristics.
"I use the term college in the American sense. This, not for the poor purpose of ministering to national vanity, but because we must needs take things as they are; and for the further reason that there is much to commend in the shape the institution here assumes. It has hardly its prototype either in the Fatherland or on the Continent. ”

“ Neither the Trustees nor the Faculty coincide with the president of the college in the views which he has published, touching slavery and the war; and it has been their hope that the college would not be adjudged a partisan institution, by reason of such publications. It has been our purpose that no act of ours should contribute to such an impression upon the public mind, inviting the public as we do, to contribute to its support, and to partake of its privileges. ”