Miss Woolley

How uncomfortable to be a static female in a world where all the males are moving.
         Mary E. Woolley

Never change a play because of bad weather.
         The Reverend Joseph J. Woolley

At Mount Holyoke, Miss Woolley came in with the twentieth century. Although she was not formally inaugurated until May of 1901, she took up her duties on the first day of the new year. Those who were on the campus at the time remember the date easily because of an unusual gift bestowed up on the new President in honor of her arrival.

The gift was from Professor Hooker, Head of the Department of Botany, whose great 'outside' hobby was the raising of prize hens. On the last afternoon of the hundredth year of the nineteenth century, Miss Hooker went out to her flock and found two extraordinarily large newly laid prize eggs. She arranged them in a basket and sent them to Miss Woolley at Mary Brigham Hall, with the inscription, 'Some Nineteenth-Century Eggs for a Twentieth-Century Breakfast.'

Thus it came about that the dawn of a new era found the new President, at her first official breakfast, enjoying a strictly fresh yet already historic three-minute egg from the previous century, on the morning of New Year's Day.

Both Miss Woolley and Miss Hooker have told this tale with relish: Miss Hooker, because of her characteristic imp-like glee at having thought of such a 'rarely elegant' token of esteem; Miss Woolley, because at a moment when she was not yet acquainted with the members of her Faculty, the originality of the gift assured her of friendliness and humor on the campus, and made her feel at home.

Not only an untouched century, but a free field at the College was open for action. The retiring President, Mrs. Mead, was off for a voyage to Europe. The students were in a mood to fall in with fresh ideas. Additions to Faculty and Staff were clamoring to be made. The building program had begun and was ready to expand. Equipment and endowment must be enlarged. A vigorous personality of no small caliber was needed at the head of affairs, to give continuity and steadiness to the general impulse toward growth.

From the first day of her administration, Miss Woolley looked and acted the personification of the part she was called upon to play. If the College world had been a stage, with scenery set for a drama entitled 'The President Arrives,' she had only to walk on. The newspapers made much of her dignity and the fact that she was the youngest of college presidents at the time. Doctor Judson Smith, speaking for the Trustees on Inauguration Day, said to Miss Woolley as he gave her the Keys of the College:

When some months since this office became vacant, the Trustees made wise and diligent search for a woman qualified by natural gifts and generous culture and academic experience to assume its duties. A kindly Providence led us with singular unanimity and strength of conviction to select you, Miss Woolley, for this great service, and led you to give heed to our call.

The appointment was approved by her constituents. Nobody with an ear for campus music could have questioned that. Those were the days when students sang to express their opinions far more assidulously than is the prevailing fashion now. Whenever a public personage appeared on a campus, the vox populi, if favorable, was instantly lifted up in cheer or serenade. The Wellesley girls cheered and sang to Miss Woolley in College Hall when the news of her presidential election to Mount Holyoke was announced. The Mount Holyoke students sang to her after her arrival with equal vim. For example: on the occasion of a preliminary visit that she made on the twenty-second of May, 1900, we find in the College magazine a description of how 'the College had the pleasure of welcoming Miss Woolley. As she arrived the girls greeted her with the Holyoke cheer and song. At the reception held in the afternoon there was present, among others, Mr. and Mrs. Woolley, President and Mrs. Seelye of Smith College, and President Hazard of Wellesley. In the evening, after a short organ recital, Professor Thomas of Columbia gave a lecture on Goethe, and later the seniors serenaded Miss Woolley' - twice, it appears, in a day.

She had been serenaded by students and alumnae ever since - one, at least, with a Latin ode, 'Care Praeside,' in words and music especially composed.

Humanly speaking, it is not the easiest thing in the world to know exactly how to act when on the receiving end of a serenade. From the first, Miss Woolley was a model recipient - attentive, unflurried, neither too stoical nor unduly overwhelmed; never bored, always observant, taking this opportunity, one suspects, to review her troops. At least that has appeared to be her attitude rather than a pedestal pose; and certainly she has memorized all those thousands of singing faces, every one by name.

Twice on her inauguration day the impromptu serenading broke out, once at the close of the ceremonies and again when the guests were going home. In extenuation of this informality, one can only plead that the weather, after a week of showers, was a sudden radiance of blue sky and apple blossoms, such as every May Day pageant prays for and seldom gets; that the gorgeous colors of the out-of-door procession had clashed and glowed in the mazes of an elaborate march under the trees and around the quadrangle, with representatives of all the visiting colleges and universities in complete 'academicals' and the Second Regiment band of Springfield in full fig; that there had been a succession of high moments in the program, notably speeches by President Hazard of Wellesley and President Faunce of Brown, and President Woolley's Inaugural; that the benediction had been truly a Benediction, pronounced by Miss Woolley's father, who, with Mrs. Woolley, had been seated with the Faculty and Trustees; and that the recessional had finally withdrawn the chief dignitaries, leaving the College itself to follow on. At all events, the last bright visiting hood was scarcely out of the Chapel when alumnae and students together struck up a favorite tune. Mr. Hammond, catching the key on the organ, turned loose his most festive trumpet-peals, and the whole assembly sang to Miss Woolley amain.

Then they went streaming across South Campus to the reception at the Gymnasium, where they found that workaday place transformed with blue and white draperies and clustered branches of apple blossom. Even the basketball baskets were completely hidden with apple tree buds and flowers. And when, hours later, the visitors were going home, they found the students massed outside the building on the greensward, waiting patiently for Miss Woolley to come out, in order that they might serenade her, indefatigably, all over again.

Time has modified the exuberance of many a college custom, and has brought new ones (and very much older ones) around and around, in a rapidly revolving view. To keep a steady head on a whirling campus, a college president needs a mental gyroscope for poise. To accomplish anything permanent with a population that changes itself every four years, the president needs a rock-ribbed sense of reality in a discontinuous world. This combination of conviction and stability was a natural part of MissWooley's endowment by right of heritage.

Her principal family lines, with one exception, came down to her through early New England pioneers, all of English stock, mostly coastwise Connecticut families: Lockwood, Keeler, Burroughs, Nichols, Beers, and particularly the Benjamin Ferris line from Leicestershire County in England. Three Ferris brothers were given grants of land in territory that now comprises the towns of Greenwich and Stamford, Connecticut. One of these brothers, Benjamin Ferris, settled his grant in Greenwich in 1665. From him descended the Revolutionary soldier, Gould Ferris: and from him descended Stephen Gould Ferris, who established his family at 'Old Well,' Connecticut, a town that is now South Norwalk. The edlest daughter of Stephen Gould Ferris was Mary Augusta Ferris, who was married in 1861 to the young Congregational minister, Joseph J. Woolley, in South Norwalk.

The father of the Reverend Joseph J. Woolley was the only late arrival in America among all these family lines. He, Joseph Woolley, had been sent to this country to be educated, from the island of Jamaica, where his father was a British planter. Scarcely had he begun his studies when he learned that his father in Jamaica had died. Accordingly he stayed on in this country, married into the Burroughs family of Fairfield and Bridgeport, and encouraged his own son, Joseph J. Woolley, to train himself for the ministry.

The first pastorate of the young minister was in Ridgefield, Connecticut; and the second, when he was still in his twenties, was the 'call' to South Norwalk, where he married, on December 11, 1861, Mary Ferris, the daughter of one of the presiding officers in his church.

Here, in South Norwalk, July 13, 1863, at the home of her grandparents, Mary Emma Woolley was born. That pleasant house of Mr. Stephen G. Ferris on West Avenue was not only her birthplace, but the destination for childhood visits later on. The house, now about a hundred years old, is still in careful and appreciative hands. The business district has moved out toward it; but one finds it unspoiled, with its elm and lilac trees, high up on a sloping lawn, its hospitable steps and terraces setting it apart from the traffic of the Avenue. The house has been remodeled to some extent - for instance, by the addition of a broad porch with four tall white pillars to the top of the second story, capped by the original wide white gable, which has been set forward with its three little paneled windows to look out over the valley toward the harbor. The front doorway, deeply paneled, with its slender window-lights at either side of the pilasters, and its broad oblong single light above, has been kept as it was; and so has the paneling inside the house, including the beautiful original wainscoting under the tall windows, and the twelve-paned window-sashes themselves. Besides its sunny rooms, which seem to be fairly made of tall, wide windows and tall, glass-knobbed doors, the house has two independent attics, each with a stairway of its own. One could hardly ask so much of a Grandmother's House - that it should have not only one attic but two.

Out behind the house, a very old Baldwin apple tree is still in flourishing condition, the only tree left of the original orchard unless one counts the stump of an 'early pippin.' But there is a 'Rose of Sharon' still hardy at the south side of the house; and the slender old lilac trees with knotted branches still blossom every spring.

The house seems very peaceful now, but it must have been the scene of some anxiety in the early sixties; for the young minister who had married the eldest daughter of the family was enlisted as chaplain in the Civil War. A chaplain's duties at the front were often the duties of assistant surgeon in those days before the Red Cross, and still more often the duty of amanuensis of the wounded, and always the duty of official scribe to write to bereaved families when young men had been slain. Joseph J. Woolley came out of his long service with a rooted enmity against the cruelties of war. Soon after the war had ended he was called to his third pastorate, the Congregational Church in Meriden, Connecticut.

But although the war was over, the Eighth Connecticut Volunteers never forgot their chaplain. In his honor they elected Mary E. Woolley 'Daughter of the Regiment.' And on occasions when she attended the reunions of her father's old companions they delighted in recounting to her one of their favorite anecdotes of his behavior under fire. The story has been told by Miss Woolley in a chapter of the book, What I Owe to My Father, but it is so characteristic of certain traits, not only in the father but in the daughter, that the publishers, Henry Holt and Company, have kindly permitted one more re-telling here.

Just before the battle of Fredericksburg, Chaplain Woolley was having breakfast in his tent. A messenger galloped up to say that the enemy would probably shoot in that direction. At this moment a bombshell from the enemy flew over and exploded near the tent. The courier started to beat a retreat, but Chaplain Woolley remarked: 'Let 'em shoot. I'm going to finish my breakfast.'

His personal immunity against panic was evident still later, in Rhode Island at his parish in Pawtucket, when he was so responsive to calls for help in the more troubled sections of the city that the working-people called him 'Father Woolley' as if he had been their appointed priest. Regardless of denomination he was sent for in dangerous emergencies; and no matter how turbulent the part of the township that needed him, he would get up at any hour of night and go.

This active non-sectarianism of the Park Place minister made him a figure in local episodes; for he was definitely in advance of his time. Indeed there was one lady in the polite circles of Pawtucket who was so prejudiced against any dealings with persons not of the Protestant faith that she made a point of ordering goods at shops on condition that only Protestants should be employed to deliver the orders at her house. One afternoon a load of wood was ready to be sent to her, and no Protestant driver could be found. The wood-dealer, explaining matters to his man Mike, told him to drive to the back of the house, pitch in the wood as silently as might be, and get away unobserved. Mike did his part well, but just as he was ready to drive off, the lady caught a glimpse of him climbing back into his empty cart. Out of the house the lady flew in the manner of Miss Betsey Trotwood defending her premises from the Murdstones, and demanded, 'Are you a Protestant?'

'Yes, mum,' said Mike, with a smile like the Irish heavens.

'Whose church do you attend?' pursued the lady, thinking that there she had him.

'Father Woolley's, mum!' responded Mike in triumph, and drove away.

In general, through life, Mr. Woolley had the support of his congregation, although a certain critical parishioner once remarked that she found it hard to have any confidence in a minister who went upstairs three steps at a time.

When, some years later, Mr. Woolley died, there was sorrow throughout the town. A man digging in the streets paused with pick in the ground after he heard the news. 'Well,' said he, taking off his cap, 'Father Woolley, he was a good man.'

The undenominational element in Miss Woolley's training was a definite contribution to the development of Mount Holyoke College. There had been times in its earlier history when it was in danger of being sectarian. For instance, when Edward Everett Hale was preaching in the vicinity the students were not allowed to go to hear him. President Woolley immediately brought in not only Edward Everett Hale, but, as years went on, a remarkable succession of religious leaders without regard to denomination: Bishop Lawrence, Rabbi Wise, Bishop Brooks, Lyman Abbott, Newell Dwight Hillis, Ozora S. Davis, Dean Brown of Yale, Doctor Faunce, Rabindranath Tagore, Ian Maclaren, Dean Rousmaniere, Doctor Calkins, Doctor Fosdick, Abbe Dimnet - the complete list would describe a very interesting graph of the best religious thinking of the times. All this is so thoroughly taken for granted now that one forgets it was not always so.

Tolerant views and resistance to stampede are only two of the traits that Miss Woolley owes to her father. She is very like him in health, in love of out-of-doors, and in stature. But her complexion she inherits from her mother, whose eyes and hair were very dark. Among strangers, Mrs. J. J. Woolley was often introduced as 'Mr. Woolley's daughter,' a mistake that rejoiced her beyond measure but vastly irritated him. He was only six years her elder, but his hair was silvery white, whereas hers never turned gray.She, with her dark hair, dainty ways, and the little bunch of violets in her bonnet, looked a great deal younger than her age. When she stood in the same group with her husband, her daughter, and her two sons, she was quite overshadowed by her family as to stature though not in that vivid quality that the French would call esprit.

Yet, though she could carry sail gallantly, even in the lee of taller craft, she also knew very well how to be demure. Some of the members of the parish who knew and loved her in Pawtucket have recently reported, in a tone of 'now it can be told,' that when all the friends of the family were rejoicing in the news of Miss Woolley's appointment to the college presidency, Mrs. Woolley had very little to say. Whenever the subject was mentioned to her, she acted almost shy. At last a friend got her off into a corner and asked her point-blank, 'Aren't you proud of your daughter?'

'Well,' said Mrs. Woolley confidentially, looking around to make sure she could not be overheard, 'I try not to say much outside. But inside I strut like a peacock!' This miniature self-portrait of 'Lady Pleased with her Daughter' was all that anybody in the parish ever saw of the pride that she took in the news.

Moderate behavior with intensely human feelings underneath; tranquility in good fortune and serenity under fire: from both her parents Miss Woolley inherited balance and a tendency to self-control.

This matter of President Woolley's heritage has been summed up by Professor Jeannette Marks, writing for Harper's Bazaar in 1912, from the vantage-point of one who knew the family. With permission from Miss Marks and from the magazine, a passage may be quoted here:

Miss Woolley is an illustration of one truth which in her work she feels passionately: that young people can hardly do without the care, influence, and love of the right sort of older people. What she owes to her father and mother, and to an uncle and aunt who have done much for her, no one except herself or someone who has lived in her home can know. Her father, a minister and army chaplain, was a man of wide humanitarian interests, fearless and broad in convictions, unafraid to be himself. The mother was a woman of singularly loving, self-sacrificing, and blithe nature.

When she studied, then kept interruptions away from her, and no success of hers was so tiny that they did not rejoice in it.

From her mother Mary E. Woolley took her gentleness, her willingness to adjust, to compromise, her optimistic outlook upon all difficulties; from her father, a sense of humor and shrew perception of the follies, foibles, weaknesses of human nature; from her mother, a disinclination to give pain, even when that pain is part of the day's work. The daughter bears a striking physical resemblance to her father. Recently a famous artist tried to paint her portrait. He produced a portrait which, suggesting nothing of the strength, power, and goodness of the modern working-woman, was a failure. Had he known and studied her father, the history of the picture would have been different. Her hair and skin are dark as a child of Judah; her brown eyes big, clear, and soft; her nose is, if th nose be an index to the will-power, a good index; her mouth large and full; her jaw strong to the verge of roughness in its hard, dominating lines . . . . Color of hair and skin stands for the vigor that never seems to fail her; the big eyes for a heart that is warm, faithful, and generous; and nose and jaw for the accomplishment of those ideals from which nothing can deflect her.

The power which charges every day to the full for Miss Woolley is faith in the supreme worth-whileness of what she is set to do.

The uncle and aunt mentioned by Professor Marks in this description were Mr. and Mrs. Frank Ferris, the only brother and the sister-in-law of Mrs. Woolley. Both these relatives took a constnat interest in the education of their niece.

This education began in Connecticut and Rhode Island, in the schools of Meriden, Pawtucket, and Providence; and it continued in Massachusetts, in what is now Wheaton College, in 1884 and 'invited back' to teach. In 1890 her experience was further broadened by a trip to Europe with a college group, among them Doctor and Mrs. Blodgett from Smith College, and Miss Elizabeth Palmer, a Wellesley graduate who taught Latin at Wheaton and later at Vassar College. With these friends, Miss Woolley enjoyed a tour of the Continent, arriving at Oberammergau in time for the 1890 Passion Play; and she also spent some time in Scotland and in England. Here the most memorable episode of the journey was a visit to Oxford University, and the sudden wish, at the sight of Oxford, to be a student there. The wish was appropriate to a girl whose traditions went back to England - so immediately in her paternal line and so deeply in all the others. There was an appropriateness in personality too; it is not hard to imagine the young Mary E. Woolley reading history at the Bodleian.

The plan was not practical at the time, but the wish had taken hold. Her father mentioned his daughter's wish casually one day to President Andrews of Brown University. Doctor Andrews, recognizing a genuine appetite for study, suggested that Mr. Woolley's daughter might do some work at Brown as a guest of the professors. Under Professor J. F. Jameson, Head of the Department of History, she would certainly find inspiration for whatever historical work she cared to do.

Arrangements were made; and from those arrangements grew a plan for half a dozen other young women to be admitted, on examination, to studies looking toward the bachelor's degree. It was the beginning of the Women's College in Brown University - an unexpected outcome of one girl's impulsive wish to go to Oxford.

Under Doctor Jameson, whose great subject was the Colonial History of America, Miss Woolley wrote a number of papers, several of which were published. One of these, on 'The History of the Early Colonial Post Office,' appeared in the Quarterly of the Rhode Island Historical Society for January, 1894. This paper is notable for its telling use of material taken from old correspondence, showing first the lack of facilities for sending letters except by friendly travelers or Indian runners - Roger Williams's Pequot runner Wequash, for instance, and John Winthrop's runner Mascanomet; then the unsuccessful efforts of the governors to establish a post from Boston 'to farthest settlements in Hartford, Fairfield, and Springfield,' with a rider who would 'behave civilly' and 'mark the trees for the direction of passengers'; then the installation, in 1660, of a post-box 'placed in New Amsterdam in th eoffice of the secretary of the province, for the receipt of letters, and for all those capable of registry, three stivers in wampum to be paid'; and at last the definite establishment of cross-country service when, about 1700, 'letters began not with the name of the bearers, but with expressions such as the following: "The post is just blowing his horn and cannot help it that I write no more particularly."'

The investigation draws toward its conclusion with this passage revealing the arduous duties of the early post-rider:

It is to be hoped that Lovelace's description of the first post as 'active, stout, and indefatigable' would apply equally to his successors, for they too went laden with 'letters, portable goods, and bags.' . . . Wait Winthrop writes from Boston to Fitz-John Winthrop of Connecticut, 'I have yours by the post with little bundle . . . . If Sudance can bundle up John's frieze Jacket and Mingoe's cloth Jacket in an old towell pray let the post bring them,' and 'If Anthony has lamed the horses he may despatch them quite that they may be no further trouble; but if their legs are fit to bring them, I desire they may be sent by the post unless some safer opportunity present in two or three days.'

There is a great deal of aptly chosen and pertinent detail which makes the 'source material' readable, in these historical papers written by Miss Woolley in her university work; especially, perhaps, in her publication entitled 'The Development of Appreciation of Natural Scenery in New England,' which can be found in Volume III of the American Historical Review.

After receiving her bachelor's and her master's degree at Brown University, she was invited to teach Biblical History at Wellesley College. A glance at the following dates will show that promotion was rapid. Appointed Instructor in 1895, she became Associate Professor of Biblical History in 1896, and Professor and Head of the Department of Biblical History and Literature in 1899.

Wellesley alumnae who were students in her classes have told that she had a particularly happy manner of conducting informal discussions in the midst of her lectures, drawing out the capacities of her students in a way that they found memorable. She was made presiding head of one of the Halls of Residence, and to all appearances was launched on a life career as Department Chief at Wellesley, when Miss Eastman, then Head of Dana Hall and one of the alumnae trustees of Mount Holyoke, drew the attention of her fellow trustees to Professor Woolley, and strongly advocated her election as the net President of Mount Holyoke College.

Doctor Judson Smith, representing the Board of Trustees, and Mr. A. Lyman Williston, Treasurer of the College, went to see Miss Woolley at her home in Pawtucket in the Christmas vacation of 1899, and asked her to make a trip to visit South Hadley before the winter's term began. Mr. and Mrs. Williston met Miss Woolley in Springfield and took her on a preliminary tour of the campus. Not many weeks afterward, Doctor Judson Smith wrote an official letter from the trustees asking Miss Woolley to become President.

And so the ardent girlfriend ambition for a scholarly career at Oxford turned unexpectedly toward the life of administrative leadership and service.

Although she had not consciously prepared herself for an executive office, there had been three factors in her early training that made it natural for her to accept public responsibility without awkwardness, and without the slightest 'illusions of grandeur.'

In the first place, some expert in social psychology should analyze the effect upon a youthful personality of being 'Daughter of the Parsonage' between the dates of 1863 and 1900, in New England towns. To a young woman with that experience behind her, the mere act of living in the public eye was nothing new.

In the second place, she had always been one of those born office-holders, who, without ever seeking an election, are almost automatically voted into the president's chair by their contemporaries, in any organization to which they may belong. From the days of her earliest childhood she had had to 'preside.'

And still more disciplinary for balanced behavior in office was the experience of being the responsible elder sister in the family with two extremely able younger brothers - brothers who could recognize their elder sister's right to a certain measure of authority over them, but within strict limits which they accurately defined. Miss Woolley's family had a cherished byword for this limitation, the kind of watchword that enriches what Carlyle calls the 'coterie-sprache' of a home. It was the remark made by the youngest child in that family when his elder sister had been practicing her executive talents in the household circle, to a point at which the youngest brother felt it would be wise to call a halt. So the next time she asked her to do an errand he said firmly - but I think I will ask Mr. Frank Ferris Woolley to give a description of this matter, in his own words.

He writes:

My sister has taken great delight in telling of one particular incident in which, as a younger brother, I replied to one of her requests, 'Not if it is upstairs.' I think my sister has always interpreted this as being rather a joke upon myself. But, on the other hand, I interpret it as a qualification of a good executive: that is, to manage things so that those about you will be busy.

Another happening that I recall is a habit my father used to have of lying down for a short nap, oftentimes in our living room, where he would develop a delightful session of snoring. About this time my sister would quietly step over and kiss him on the forehead and say, 'Having a nice nap, Papa dear?' in her tactful way.

The daughter of the household was permitted to suggest, with tactfulness; she was even permitted to command - but not beyond stated limits - 'not if it was upstairs.'

This family life in the midst of vigorous personalities was capital training for her work as College President, on a campus peopled with as many pronounced individuals as she found waiting for her in South Hadley. Mount Holyoke was never a rubber-stamp college, and Miss Woolley would not have known what to make of it if it had been. She was not by nature or by training a martinet. There was no bombastic desire on her part to show her power. In the transition period when she was taking over the administration, many a problem left over from earlier history was quietly settled 'out of court.'

To take a minor instance: there was a curious affair of the McKinley Dishes. The year before Miss Woolley arrived at Mount Holyoke, President McKinley had attended Commencement in honor of his niece, who was a member of the graduating class of '99. The college was worried (and with some reason) for fear something might happen to the President, who came escorted by a heavy guard of secret service men. After the exercises there was to be a collation, and it was thought wise to serve it under shelter. The only shelter large enough for the crowd was the old skating rink. There was a suggestion from alumnae quarters that President McKinley should use a special luncheon service, carefully looked out for - and that those particular dishes should be preserved afterward as a memento of the day.

This was in line with the passing craze for 'souvenir spoons,' 'souvenir plates,' sourvenir everything imaginable. Accordingly, in a cabinet with other treasures, the collation things 'used by President William McKinley on his visit to the College' were duly set aside.

The only trouble was that the plates and spoons provided, while suitable enough for a picnic luncheon in the skating rink, were not exactly the thing for historical exhibits under glass. Recall for a moment what American picnic china of the McKinley period could rise to, and you will understand. Besides, the craze for souvenirs, as souvenirs, was on the wane. Certain students were irked by the McKinley lunch things almost as the Amherst students in olden times were worn upon by Sabrina; and one student made it her life task to do something about it. Charlotte Corday herself could not have been more earnestly dedicated to a crime.

Every morning she visited the cabinet, hoping to find it accidently unlocked. Every morning she wore a blue cape lined with scarlet, one corner carelessly thrown over her shoulder. Finally the incredible happened. She found the cabinet unlocked, and when she strolled away the McKinley souvenirs were hidden under her cape.

Now her troubles began. She hardly liked to destroy the treasures or sink them in Lower Lake. And yet, with a sharp-eyed roommate, where to put them? She decided to ask a rather young but discreet member of the Faculty to act as McKinley Dish Trustee. (All the principal actors in this crime story, by the way, have died, except the member of the Faculty from whom we have the tale.) This trusted individual happened to possess picnic plates and spoons very like the McKinley collection, and she blended them casually together on her cupboard shelves.

Time went by. If anybody missed the dishes, nobody mourned them. The new Administration came in; and the culprit, feeling safe, told the whole story one evening at table to amuse a guest. But the culprit had an enemy; the enemy was at the table; the enemy went next morning to President Woolley with the story.

Here was a poser for the new President. If she ignored the matter entirely, she compounded a felony. If she raised a public hue and cry about it - she raised a public hue and cry. She sent for the girl and heard her side of the story - all except the name of the person who was acting as repository. Grasping the whole of the situation at once, Miss Woolley assured the girl that the dishes would never again appear in public, but that they must be given up. There was a slight delay about this, because the Custodian of the Dishes had lent her tea--things to a needy friend and must wait to get them back. But in the end they were duly returned with even their labels restored. Miss Woolley never asked where they had been. And just exactly what she did with those items 'used' by President William McKinley on the occasion of his visit to the College, nobody knows unto this day.

The story is rather typical of Miss Woolley's reliable gift of humor and sense of proportion. It will be observed that she did not shirk her administrative duties. Officially speaking, she counted her beads and made her bow to Buddha, and caused the culprit to make a bow as well. But nobody in the College, except the main actors in the drama, knew anything about the episode of the McKinley dishes - an episode which, in heavier hands, could easily have become a cause celebre.

The working day of a college president, in a transition period, is necessarily full of small things. But in the midst of all the detail and all the manifold duties (for a long time Miss Woolley had no personal secretary), she kept her purpose well defined and steady on the main issues.

Within the College, President Woolley worked consistently from the beginning toward the accomplishment of a definite group of ideals: first, improvement in faculty salaries, which were amazingly low (Miss Lyon's salary was two hundred dollars a year, and even in 1900 there were many salaries well below nine hundred); second, democratic conditions and equality of opportunity for the students; third, a broad measure of academic freedom, both in the departments and in the working day of each individual; and finally, improvement of endowments, scientific equipment, working facilities, and the building-up of adequate housing conditions, so that every student may enjoy the full college life, under a college roof.

At the same time, her own intercollegiate connections and her ability to work with others made her able to foster alliances with outside institutions, and to plan with them, not on the basis of cut-throat competition, but on terms of mutual co-operation, for advance.

Inside the College, then, she stood for an orderly and forward-looking program. Outside the College, she has stood for whatever concerns the welfare of women, the advancement of education, and the conservation of young life. One small episode will indicate the attention that this new figure before the public began at once to inspire.

In 1903, the Women's Class in the Law School of New York University had chosen Miss Woolley as their Commencement speaker. Hearing that she was to be on the platform in that capacity, the Phrenological Society of America, without Miss Woolley's knowledge, sent a representative to observe her and to write an analysis of her head for the Phrenological Journal. It is rather amusing to read that analysis now, in the light of her subsequent career:

We regret [remarks the Phrenological Journal for October, 1903] that the only photograph we could secure of Miss Woolley is the one with cap and gown, but sufficient of the head is seen to give the reader an idea of her practical bent of mind, energy and force of character, and her sincerity of disposition. She has the Motive-Mental Temperament, hence is vigorous, active, and executive in all her work. Her forehead indicates that she is a capable organizer and one able to carry into effect work on a large scale . . . . She is conscientious and looks ahead, hence knows how to provide for emergencies. She is seldom taken unawares, but is able to suggest a new plan if the old one fails. Her sympathies are broad and far-reaching.

The breadth of Miss Woolley's interests is too obvious to need elaboration. Her outside offices and activities have been numerous, but not as numerous as those she has been obligated to forgo. Shoulder to shoulder with such women as Jane Addams and Doctor Anna Howard Shaw, Miss Woolley worked for the cause of Equal Suffrage until that case was won. She saw the College through the difficult years of the World War, and put the various resources of the College into the service of patriotic work. She was appointed to serve on the Red Cross Commission with Calvin Coolidge and Alfred E. Smith. She was the only woman member appointed on the Commission to investigate educational conditions in China. She has been active in the Institute of Pacific Relations, and in the National Advisory Committee on Education; and she was the first woman to be chosen Chairman of the College Entrance Board.

Meanwhile she has served as one of the Senators of the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa, and as one of the Board of Electors to the Hall of Fame. The American Association of University Women made her their President, and have named one of their most generously planned fellowships in her honor: the Mary E. Woolley Fellowship for Graduate Research. She has been a director of the League of Nations Association, and active in the Foreign Policy Association and in the Massachusetts League of Women Voters.

After her return from China, another chance to go abroad on another mission was offered to her - an offer that could hardly be declined. But the Mount Holyke students prepared and presented a formal petition requesting her not to go. There was personal gratification and a good deal of glory to be had if she had gone on the mission. But she stayed.

And then, in 1932, President Hoover appointed her as the only woman delegate to the World Conference for the Limitation of Armaments at Geneva. This time even the students endorsed her appointment, in spite of the disappointment of the seniors in not having her at the College to see them graduate. Knowing of this disappointment, Dean Allyn, as her gift to the senior class, arranged for a Commencement message to be telephoned by Miss Woolley from Geneva and amplified so that it might be part of the Commencement ceremonies in Chapin Hall. Five minutes before the time set for the message, Miss Woolley was called to her telephone at her suite of rooms in Geneva and told to 'stand by for the transcontinental tie-up.' The word 'tie-up,' transcontinentally speaking, meant 'hook-up.' Miss Woolley stood by as directed. Presently she heard Mr. Kjoller, the College electrician, saying quietly across the Atlantic, 'Wait just a minute, Miss Woolley, until Mr. Hammond gives the signal.' Whereupon, waiting for Mr. Hammond to give her the signal, President Woolley felt that she was back again in South Hadley with the choir and the seniors and the Commencement Assembly in Chapin Auditorium before her. She reported later that this was the most striking part of the curious experience. And certainly, at the other end of the long-distance 'tie-up,' the College assembly was stirred by the message from that unmistakable voice that has been heard at every Commencement time these many years.

The conference at Geneva seems like rather a wistful episode now. Miss Woolley's part in it is a matter of international record and need not be reported here. But in the light of what has happened since, it is interesting to recall a speech that Miss Woolley made to her students before she sailed:

People may be disappointed in the outcome of the conference. The hopes of so many people who care at all are so large. What we have to do is to cultivate and develop a new spirit. I suppose that never perhaps will this new spirit be one hundred per cent true of all mankind, but when it prevails among the long stretches that tire. Fortunately our lives are broken up into short stretches, into days, and it is the daily effort to better relations between man and man and nation and nation which will count in the long run.

You don't get changes by a single event. They come more or less slowly by education and influence.

With this sane attitude toward world affairs, Miss Woolley was able to come back and take up her work again at the College without a sense of anticlimax. No public reputation of hers should cause any student of her character to overlook the fact that one of her strong points was always her talent as a presiding officer on her own campus. Somebody who has followed her procedure at parliamentary gatherings throughout the years should some day write a description of her method, entitled 'Miss Woolley Presides.'

To illustrate: Famous in old days was President Woolley's manner of coping with a celebrated remark that was made by Miss Carrie Harper one evening when the Faculty began a discussion of a broader curriculum.

It should first be explained that Miss Harper acted in many capacities at Mount Holyoke. Her teaching of English Literature was famous. She was a product of Radcliffe, a student of Kittredge; and she paced through our midst with the full consciousness of her critical responsibility as walking delegate from Harvard. A great deal that was stimulating departed from us when she died. By reason of her keen wit, she was the greatest joy and the greatest thorn of the campus. As Campus Joy, she was a treasure of mirth and sagacity. As Thorn-in-Chief, she diligently pricked us on.

In her capacity as Thorn, she arose on this particular evening and addressed the Chair.

'Madam President!' intoned Miss Harper, with her enunciation, which was very good. The 'dent' on 'President' was exceptionally well done. Miss Harper had a dramatic speaking voice, and whenever she announced herself in that liturgical tone-quality, everyone knew there was good theater to come.

'Mada President,' she repeated. 'There is a defect in our deliberations on this subject, which should lead us to distrust our conclusions. The defect is this. We plan improvements in the curriculum, but always with one ideal: namely, that the College shall turn out graduates who shall be as nearly as possible like us. The students look about them. [Here Miss Harper looked about her.] And they do not wish to be like us.'

Whereupon Miss Harper sat down.

Well, now! thought the gallery of newly appointed instructors; from the sheer standpoint of parliamentary procedure, what will Miss Woolley do with that?

The front ranks of the Faculty had whirled as one man to look at Miss Harper, and in a gale of laughter the place was demoralized. High on her perch in the sloping auditorium sat our beloved Harpie, returning the gaze of the populace with her large blue eyes through her powerful pince-nez, and bridling as she sat. Miss Harper was one of the few persons in the modern world who ever really knew how to 'bridle.' The word might have been invented with her in mind.She was affecting in those days a brilliant green blazer with orange stripes (the girls had a word for it) - and she was wearing not only a black velvet dog-collar fastened high on her throat with a jeweled pin, but also many a necklace. She bridled, and all her gold chains bridled too. The more the Faculty looked at her, and the more they thought about her, the more they laughed.

Will Miss Woolley have to use her gavel, we htought, as any class president or club president would feel obliged to do by this time? But Miss Woolley was laughing too, not at all as if at her Faculty, but with a cordial and interested sort of laughter, her eyes fastened unswervingly upon Miss Harper.

Whenever a parliamentary gathering dissolves itself temporarily in this way, its presiding officer is likely to feel obligated to act either as a check or as a cheer leader. Miss Woolley was not leading the cheering. Neither was she checking it. She was acting as an alert and thoroughly established helmsman enjoying an unexpected breeze, yet holding the tiller ready for the next change of the wind, with a practiced hand.

And still we wondered exactly what Miss Woolley would say. What do those who were not present suppose she said? Not a thing. Not until the members of the Faculty had calmed down and faced front again, and had withdrawn their eyes from Miss Harper, did Miss Woolley withdraw her own. And when her glance did return to the Faculty as a whole, it was a ready-for-the-next-item-of-business glance that instantly reorganized the meeting as if it had never been scattered to the wind.

The intentness of Miss Woolley's eye is certainly one of the explanations of her effectiveness as a presiding officer. So definite an attention to business about to go forward inevitably suggests business going forward. And forward it goes. With hardly a moment's delay, she had three choices of 'next speakers' to recognize, and she recognized with accurate fairness the one who started to rise a fraction of a second before the other two.

Perhaps it is partly the expressiveness of her glance that keeps her office interviews also moving along punctually without irrelevant waste of time. Her own concentration upon the business in hand makes it easy for the person who is presenting a matter of her attention to keep to the subject. She is capable also, without many words, of bringing a flash of humor into an encounter, even during office hours.

A case in point was a certain interview regarding the Faculty Play. In the winter of 1936, at the peak of Miss Woolley's outside engagements, the students demanded their traditional right to see, once during their four years in college, a Faculty Play. The Play would not be complete without Miss Woolley. After much consultation with the official calendar, and much running to and fro, a date was fixed; and the youngest member of the Faculty Committee was sent to Miss Woolley's office, to give her the lines of her part and to obtain her formal consent to act. Of course, since the whole affair had been built around the President's program, Miss Woolley had consented long ago. But at the end of the interview, the member of the Committee, wishing to wind up the matter spontaneously and casting about for something spontaneous to say, exclaimed (according to her own version of the episode) in a voice quite bubbling with enthusiasm; 'O, Miss Woolley! When I tell the Committee that you've consented, they'll be so excited!'

Whereupon Miss Woolley, getting all the way on that, exchanged a deep glance with the young committee-woman and said dryly, 'You must try to restrain them.'

There has never been anything exuberant or flowery about President Woolley's speech. The Yale Review once asked her to write a comment on the biography of Doctor Anna Howard Shaw. In the course of her review of the book, Miss Woolley quoted the compliment paid by an old sea-captain on Cape Cod, who said of Doctor Shaw's sermons that one always 'knowed' where she 'was a-comin' out.'

The same phrase, with modifications, could be applied to Miss Woolley's own writings and speeches. Her audience might not always foresee the end from the beginning - and certainly not the beginning before she began; but they could feel an assurance, as she went along, that she herself always 'knowed' in advance where she was coming out.

A striking example of her directness of aim is the article that she was asked to write for the Encyclopaedia Britannica on 'Women's Colleges.' One may find it in Volume 23 of the Fourteenth Edition. The article had to be short, but within its brief compass one finds packed a wealth of information, including the most important dates and facts concerning the founding of the women's colleges, a logical classification of them, and now and then a spice of direct quotation from some charter that sets forth a fact in the light of its time as no comment on it could do as well.

Following her own practice of exact quotation, one can give a rapid impression of her spoken and written style by citing a few representative bits. The first quotation in my collection is taken from her Inaugural, and those that follow are a random selection from her chapel talks, public addresses, and reports.

An old-time compliment to a New England woman was that she 'had faculty'; in these days of progress and competition her granddaughter must have something more than native intelligence and quick wit . . . . A trained intelligence must be added to the 'will to do' if the best results are to be expected.

Teaching demands sacrifice, that sacrifice which enters into all successful life, whatever the interpretation of success.

A college is rich in proportion to the really great personalitities on its faculty, personalities which help in shaping other lives and so make immortal high thinking and noble living.

No modern institution is more thoroughly democratic than the college. A girl is accepted for what she is in ability, personality, and character, and not for what she has.

If asked whether the college woman has any defects of character, I should feel like answering with Susanna Crum, 'I couldn' say, Mum!' There are, however, two dangers that must be recognized, dangers arising in part from the very advantages of college training, as a virtue carried to excess may come perilously near to the limits of a vice. The first is that of becoming self-centered, and the second, of being over-critical. . . . There is no characteristic that arouses more resentment on the part of others than being self-centered, unless it is the fault of being over-centered in your neighbor's affairs.

The habit of doing well, not by spurts but steadily, persistently, habitually, that is an invaluable asset in a human life.

For the purposeful life, there is no day into which the 'law of preferables' does not enter, and it is not an easy law to follow. It takes courage to put and keep oneself in the way of intellectual growth, the courage of concentration, which accomplishes the necessary mechanical details of the daily life with accuracy and faithfulness but not with the spendthrift's waste of time; which makes the precious hours of study and reading sharp-cut, without ragged edges of irrelevant thought.

The daily paper, the current magazine, have their place and value, but a mind that finds in them all its food for thought is not likely to follow food for other minds.

The adaptability of the college woman is one of her most marked characteristics. . . . The present danger is . . . that the lessons in adaptability will be too easily learned. The life in the college is so varied and fascinating, the forms of activity so numerous, that the temptation to do many things is a very real one, and the mastery which comes from concentration is not infrequently sacrificed.

The country needs on all sides, in every kind of work, men and women who can be depended upon to perform their tasks accurately, thoroughly, who have the habit of good workmanship so firmly established that they can turn to new and unexpected tasks more and more frequently required in these abnormal days.

There was once a man whose wife persisted in climbing all the highest towers she could find. Finally when they reached Pisa, she went up and he stayed down, and after waiting a time, he looked up and saw her wave her hand to him from some opening up above, and for the first time noticed the peculiar condition of that tower. Making a trumpet of his hands, he shouted, "Mary, come down quick; you are bending the building.' Now the time has passed when people fear that college training will help in bending the building. Rather they are beginning to realize increasingly that the college men and women, women as well as men, must help in laying the corner stone of the secure foundation of the buildings, political, social, industrial, and religious, which will not bend.

Altogether too popular a pastime of the American people is 'sitting on the bleachers,' as far as international policy is concerned.

Wars become fatal at the moment when people believe in them, that is when they begin to persuade themselves that war is inevitable.

War undercuts all efforts of human progress.

Human attitudes do not change quickly: the beginning of a change should be counted an achievement.

This is not the time, and not the place, for a seasoned estimate of President Woolley. Her achievement can speak for itself. In her administration the College enrollment has doubled, the Faculty has been increased threefold, more than a score of buildings have gone up, a student government has been entrusted with broad powers, the Graduate School has been established, foreign exchanges and 'Junior Year in France' have been encouraged, the alumnae organization has assumed business-like responsibilities, and substantial endowments for the various College activities have been secured.

It has meant a formidable program of sheer industry and vigilant administrative work, with a sound sense of the value of delegated powers.

But all those things can be discovered in the records. I should like, therefore, to close this informal chapter about Miss Woolley with a group of personal impressions of her, as they have been remembered through the years; first, the comments about her made by several men, including my own father; second, things remembered of her by certain of the alumnae; and third, an impression of my own.

Wishing to go back as far as possible with these recollections, I asked Doctor J. F. Jameson, her Professor of History at the time of her student days in Brown University, what he remembered of her as he saw her at that time. And Doctor Jameson, from his office in charge of the Division of Manuscripts in the Library of Congress at Washington, promptly replied:

Miss Woolley's beginning as a student in Brown University was not merely an event in one woman's biography, but is memorable as the beginning of the Women's College. Of the history of that genesis, various people will have various recollections, no one of which is the whole story. My remembrance of it is as follows:

In the early part of September, 1892, President Andrews said to me, then Professor of History in Brown, 'You know Miss Mary Woolley, don't you?' I said I did. He said, 'Would you have any objection to her coming into your classes in history?' I said, 'No indeed!' Just like that! And that was the beginning of the Women's College. It sounds simple, but to some Providence people of that day it would have seemed revolutionary. Brown University had been going on nearly one hundred and thirty years without the presence of women. I, however, saw no reason to the contrary. While perhaps the first thought of President Andrews or Miss Woolley may have been of attendance on classes of history alone, presently their plans were enlarged into her taking full college courses for the bachelor's degree. It is, however, a great satisfaction to me to remember that she began as specifically a student of history. I remember well the day when she first came into the class - came in without bashfulness and without forwardness, quite as if it had been her daily habit, and as if unconscious of traditions to the contrary that had prevailed since 1763. Still more vividly I remember the first occasion when, after some days, I asked her to answer a question or discuss a matter. She answered it or discussed it with so much fulness and exactness and skill that I could see the young fellows on the front seat glancing at each other with a smile, as much as to say, 'Who but a girl would get a thing up to so fine a point as that?' Such perfection was indeed not customary, but it was salutary to the class and it was respected. I do not need to say that the introduction of women into Brown University after so many years of their absence was, in principle, not welcomed by the male undergraduates, but in this first case of Miss Woolley, it immediately appeared to them that it deserved toleration, and I do not think that she was ever treated otherwise than with due respect. In fact, if one were minded to bring women students into an ancient institution full of boyish traditions alone, no young woman could have been found better for the purpose of such introduction than Mary Woolley. All her work was of the grade with which I have indicated it began - careful, exact, intelligent, judicious, and all her conduct marked by excellent good sense and right feeling and perfect manners. I have rejoiced at all her successes, first at Wellesley and then at Mount Holyoke, and at the high appreciation of her gifts which has been publicly shown on many occasions, but I have never been surprised at any element of all this.

Shortly after Miss Woolley's inauguration, there was an occasion when she appeared at the Gymnasium to make an address of welcome to student delegates from other colleges. A young medical officer from the United States Army Medical Corps was present, as the guest of the Mount Holyoke student whom he later married. He stood very still and erect, watching Miss Woolley as she made her speech. When she had finished, the young doctor said to the girls around him, 'Your president stands as if she stood for something.'

In 1911, in New York City, there was a large public meeting of national delegates for the women's campaign in a drive for foreign missions, at Carnegie Hall. A reporter for the New York Evening Post wrote of the occasion:

The big auditorium was packed. Miss Woolley presided, no easy task at so large a meeting. Everyone had something to say, and was trying to say it in chorus. The presiding officer rose to her emergency in a way that was a surprise to many. No small part of her success lay in the fact that her even, well-modulated voice carried to the farthest corner of the hall.

At Geneva, in 1932, Will Rogers made the acquaintance of Miss Woolley, discussed with her his views of world affairs, and wrote about her as follows to the editor of the New York Times:

Geneva, February 1, 1932

Our female delegate, Miss Woolley, is the outstanding novelty. I had an hour and a half's chat with her this afternoon. Didn't know whether to call her Miss, Mrs., Professor, Doctor, or what, so I called her 'Doc,' and 'Doc' and I got along great. I had taken an interpreter, but I didn't need him, but some of my stuff had to be repeated to her.

She is very plain, likeable, and broad in mind. You would like her.

And on February 2 he adds: 'I went into another huddle today with "Doc" Woolley. I am strong for "Doc."'

My father's acquaintance with her was made under greater difficulties. President Woolley was giving a reception for students and their guests; and I, in my freshman year, was taking my father up the line. There was a very long trail of parents and daughters waiting to be introduced, and th conventional thing to do upon reaching Miss Woolley was to make your bow and move on. But my father, a lawyer of the old-time Harvard Law School character-judging species, would fain have lingered. He liked Miss Woolley on sight. A leisurely conversation with her was his all-too-evident plan. I was at the age when any conspicuous behavior on the part of my parent was felt as a personal disgrace. With a clasp on his arm that looked filial but must have felt like a steel trap, I led him briskly past.

That was the only meeting he ever had with Miss Woolley, but an impression was indelibly made. He considered her his especial discovery. Ever after, when he saw me returning to college at the end of vacation he would say benignly, 'Be sure to remember me to my good friend Miss Woolley.' This instruction was always greeted with mild derision by the rest of the family, who knew, if he did not, that I was unlikely to find myself alongside the College President on terms of intimate chat. But in spite of my unreliability as messenger, my father went on to the end of his life warmly remembering himself to his good friend.

I never delivered any of my father's messages to Miss Woolley; but I think perhaps, if he could know about it, he would like to have me take this occasion to repair the omission now. So I hereby tell Miss Woolley that the parent of one of her freshmen, long ago, wished to be remembered to her, over and over again.

Another lawyer, very much older than my father, met President Woolley at the out-of-door festivities on May Day, in 1935. Looking down at her from the pinnacle of his almost ninety years, he spent some time under the trees of the Pageant Field in congenial talk. Later he remarked to his granddaughter that Mary Woolley 'really seemed to be quite a bright girl.'

Mr. Norman H. Davis wrote of her:

Through association with Miss Woolley, particularly as a Co-Delegate to the Disarmament Conference in Geneva, I grew to have for her the highest esteem and admiration, as did all the members of the American Delegation. Her chief characteristics which stand out most clearly in my mind are her wholesome idealism, her knowledge and wisdom, her keen sense of humor, her tactful firmness, her fascinating smile, and above all her deep sincerity of purpose.

And William Lyon Phelps, in presenting Miss Woolley for an honorary doctor's degree at Yale University in 1932, said of her, after introducing her by name:

President of Mount Holyoke. A Connecticut girl. B.A., Brown University, a recipient of the doctor's degree from Brown, Amherst, Smith. Nine years ago we gave her the degree of master of arts, and the results have been so gratifying that we have requested her to return. A woman with two Yale degrees is certainly the equivalent of a Yale man. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and active in that organization. She is an authority on Bible history, on higher education, on early American history, on labor legislation, and has been happily identified with the cause of woman suffrage and with the American Peace Society. She was the only woman member to investigate educational conditions in China. She has been professor at Wellesley and since 1900 President of Mount Holyoke. In that great institution her talents for administration have been equal to constantly increasing problems, and her life and teaching an inspiration to thousands of young women.

Conferring the degree, President Angell said:

In recognition of your distinguished contributions to education and especially of your leadership in guiding an old and honored institution into the front rank of American colleges, we confer upon you the degree of doctor of laws, and admit you to all its rights and privileges.

This matter of honorary degrees, by the way, came rather pleasantly to the attention of the College when, in 1936, the students decided that they would like to know what the different colors in the academic processions stood for, and determined to have an exhibition of hoods from all the different colleges and universities represented on the Faculty, with labels for the instructions of those who cared to learn. The committee asked Miss Woolley if she would lend her hoods to be displayed with the rest. A little space was especially reserved for the President's hoods, plenty of space for five or six. But when her hoods arrived, it was discovered that a side of the room would have to be cleared in order to display them fully in all their rich heraldic colors.

There were two master's hoods, from Brown and from Yale; and there were eleven doctor's hoods, with their many hues of silks and velvets, from Amherst, Brown, Denison, Lake Erie, New York State, New York University, Oberlin, Rollins, Smith, Wheaton, and Yale. Miss Woolley was asked how she decided which of these to wear on any given occasion, and she said she took them by turns; but that if the speaker of the occasion hailed from one of the institutions that had given her a hood, she wore it on that day.

In spite of all this outside recognition, I believe that her students and her graduates like to think of her as she has appeared before them on the campus. A certain alumna says she remembers her best by the fireside of her living-room at Mary Brigham Hall, where she made her headquarters before the President's House was built. It was at the opening of the year when Miss Woolley had announced that she would have an 'at home' on a certain afternoon. She had added that freshmen were especially invited to drop in after their afternoon classes. This happened in 1905, before there were enough College buildings to house all the students. A little group of off-campus freshmen who were living 'out at Lovell's' - quite a long distance from Brigham Hall - debated whether or not they would dare to take Miss Woolley at her word. They decided that since there was one freshman in their group who had lived abroad - and, if conversation flagged, could be brought forward to talk to Miss Woolley about Europe - they dared.

Thus, after their last class, with no time to go home and change, they presented themselves promptly at the President's Tea, just as they were, without hats, their notebooks still under their arms and their fountain pens still in their fingers. They were the first guests to arrive. Miss Woolley greeted them with evident delight, took their fountain pens away from them together with their notebooks, seated them around the fire - some of them on the floor -and started the conversation immediately, and the refreshments as well. What did she talk about? First of all their names, in detail, and where they all came from, and what they did out at Lovell's. But especially and particularly she asked about their names. Life in Europe did not need to be brought to the fore at all.

In the midst of this homelike contentment, the more sophisticated guests began to arrive, all clothed in tea-going things with white kid gloves and card cases (literally - this was 1905) and one needs only to imagine what impressive hats. The freshmen rose and retired; but the chairman of one of our largest alumnae associations, who was one of the freshmen in that group, says that she can never forget how Miss Woolley made the Lovell freshmen feel that they were the charter members of her 'at home' that afternoon; that they were the ones who were dressed in standard costume; and how cordially she returned their notebooks and their fountain pens as she said good-bye to each of them by name, without mistake.

Another alumna remembers her best entering Chapel in the morning; another at candlelight service; and another, now an author with a book or so to her credit, writes:

My memories of Miss Woolley are seen through the haze of hero-worship; but I do think there might be projected that characteristic view of her, in white, walking down those tree-bordered aventues toward Prospect Hill, with the dogs: the erect figure . . . the noteable professional appearance. Then her voice, as she read the scriptures, and prayers - its intonations, I have always thought, exceptional; and the brow, with the sweep of dark hair.

The granddaughter of an alumna, Eunice Fuller Barnard of the New York Times, wrote for that paper on the occasion of Miss Woolley's sailing for Geneva in 1932:

There is nothing wearied or bored about her, and she took the barrage of photographers and interviewers following her appointment with a more tireless serenity than many a young tennis champion.

My own favorite memory of Miss Woolley goes back to a Sunday evening sunset in early spring, when the pink hawthorn tree by the Library was in full bloom. This was in the days when I had freshly returned to College to do some teaching, and the hawthorn tree, which has since been moved over toward the grove, was still in its original place beside the Library. A group of choir girls had come out to the Chapel lawn, during the interval between rehearsal and Vespers, to stand beside the wrought-iron fence and enjoy the view. I stopped at the other side of the fence to talk to them on my way to Vespers.

No doubt we were all chattering like magpies; but magpies can chatter and still keep an eye open; and the beauty of that sunset campus was not wasted on any of us. It was at the last moment of level sunlight when every brave dandelion in the well-kept lawn had its own quaint shadow on the grass. Over against the Library stood the flowering hawthorn tree, the definite rose-color of its tiniest blossoms clear-cut, almost sculptured - more permanent-looking than the shadowy stonework of the beautiful Library wall. One knew with one's mind that the Longmeadow stone of the Library was as old as the dinosaurs and more substantial; but in this light its dim rose-color looked more transitory and more dreamlike than the hawthorn flowers.

All at once somebody said, 'There comes Miss Woolley.' We turned to look toward the President's house. Up the lane and across the road under the new leaves of the great elm trees came Miss Woolley with Doctor Lyman Abbott. Both of them were ready for the Vesper service, in their long academic robes. Lyman Abbott, with his pure white hair and his long white beard, made one think of Merlin of the Cornish tales. He looked like somebody still more ancient from an English legend - perhaps like somebody who came from Arimathaea.

It took an unusual sort of woman to walk beside that tall mythological figure and not look out of place. But in that clear spring air, with the bells ringing for Vespers, Miss Woolley, too, might have walked out of a legend. She was listening with her serious look, eyes forward, intent. Merlin was doing the talking. His long, thin stride set his black gown swinging. President Woolley's gown stayed calmly in place, unruffled, while she effortlessly moved forward in perfect step with him. Past the old hawthorn tree they went, up the side steps of the Chapel under the wisteria vine, and out of our sight.

But such memories, on a college campus, never go entirely out of sight. We must write them down in our notebooks while we still are here to remember.

Not quite adequately can we hope to write them down. Often, on Commencement morning, someone reads a stately passage about Wisdom: 'The depth saith, It is not in me: and the sea saith, It is not with me.' When we try to set down our deepest thought concerning great matters of the human spirit, the most carefully kept notebook saith, 'It is not in me.'

Miss Mary Lyon's students remembered her 'with her cap-strings flying.' Miss Mary Woolley's students remember her with her academic cap and tassel all serene. At the two ends of Mount Holyoke's first century they stand, these two memorable women: Miss Lyon responsible for the first twelve years of the century, Miss Woolley for the last thirty-seven.

It would be hard to find, in a hundred years, two women more conspicuously unlike each other in many of their ways yet in basic matters more congenial - or more gifted, both, in one quite important presidential trait: the ability to preside.