The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1890-05-25
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD
VASSAR WILL CELEBRATE ITS
QUARTER CENTENNIAL.

The Growth and Development of the
First Woman's College-Mlle. Dziek-
onska-The Woman and the Mes
senger Boy-E2g Hunting as Fash
ionable Diversion.
(Copyright)
NEW YORK. May 24-vassar in spring is
Vassar in its glory, and Vassar this spring
is vocal with robins, golden with sunshine,
green with the luxuriance of May verdure,
and thrilling with the electricity Of 800 and
more girls at their poisoning time, all ex-
ulting in the Knowledge that in three weeks
more they are to celebrate with whole
hearted and gladstone enthusiasm the COM
pletion of the first quarter of a century of
the first college for women. There were
schools before Vassar, all honor to them,
but when in the autumn of 1865, the $50
women, ranging from the shy girl IN her
| teens, whose heart fluttered in its first
throes Of homesickness, to the woman to
whom life had already brought much of sad
knowledge, passed under the massive stone
| arch with its great cock and up the slope
of the gently rising ground to the stately
brick piles modelled, they say, after the
design of the Tuilleries and always imposing
20 look on, even if not then masking as now
the American newness of their walls. that
are still the eriest infants as universities
count age, under mantle of ivy and wood
bines, when the first classes were called in
| the first thoroughly equipped and worthily
endowed class rooms, then really began
what in popular phrase we are now pleased
to call the higher education of women.
1t will be news to many that Vassar Col
lege, founded by man, was the thought of
woman. Mr.. Matthew Vassar had
niece. Mi Lydia Booth, who taught the
Cottage Hill Seminary of Poughkeepsle,
and who, when her uncle's thoughts turned
to the disposition of his property and he in
clined to the foundation of a hospital after
the plan of Guys in London, suggested to
him the opportunity open to wise and
progressive man who should erect college
to be to women what Yale and Har-
ward were to men. The Ameri-
can Woman's Educational Associa-
ton had been formed in New York, the
B iptists had opened the Ladies' Collegiate
Institute" at Worcester. in Massachusetts,
the time was ripe, aud after good deal of
correspondence with educators in this coun-
try and in Europe charter for the incor-
poration of "Vassar Female College"-the
''female" was dropped in 1S67-was granted
by the New York legislature in January,
1861, the bill being the first or second of
that session to receive the governors sigma
ture.
There were no presidents to govern the
organization Of such school, and there is a
good deal of benlgnity, and yet of hesta-
tatlon and experiment i'll a paragraph of Mr..
Vassar's statement to the first board of
trustees outlining course of study, which
should embrace at least the following par
ticulars: The English language and its liter
ature; other modern languages; the ancient
classics, so far as may be demanded by the
spirit OF the times; the mathematics, to
such an extent as may be deemed advisable;
all the branches of natural science; anatomy,
physiology aud hygiene, with practical ref
erence to the laws of the health of the sex !;
intellectual philosophy; the elements of
| political economy; some knowledge of the
federal and state constitutions and laws;
moral science. particularly as bearing on
the filial, conjugal and parental relations;
| aesthetics; domestic economy practically
| taught. in order to prepare the graduates
readily to become skillful housekeepers," etc.
The civil war was already kindling and it
| was not until the close that the college build
| ings were completed. The early years at
Vassar were yeasty. Maria Mitchell repre-
sented the radical element, and sometimes
| her strong mems meat proved too much for
| the stomachs of babes. Hannah Lyman,
1
conservatives, and there was in addition a
younger and progressive element repre-
| sented by Prof. Truman j. Backus, now
president of the Packer Institute of Brook
| Ign. The students were both younger and
older than one commonly inds at
the present day i'll girls colleges.
About some of them there was some
thing more than eager; something
strenuous, strained, in a few cases almost
morbid: a consciousness OF doing the IN
usual. And yet it was this very eagerness
| this exultant sense of the new possibilities
of womanhood that did much to shape the
college during its formative period. The
| students in some particulars had broader
| ideas of what they wanted than had those
| in authority, and it was thev who kept the
college up to its standard. DR.. NJ. P. Jewett,
| the first president resigned before the col
| ege was opened, and DIR. John H. Ray
mond, under whom work was actually
| begun, was. man of much executive
ability.
There is nothing to indicate that the early
students averaged any better as to mental
caliber than the girls who have found it so
much easier and perhaps SO much pleasanter
to come after, though Mrs. Lizzie w.
Champney, whose Vassar girl books all
other girls have read, and Prof. Whitney,
who now fills Maria Mitchell's chair, and
Mrs. Christine Ladd Franklin, who showed
herself a mathematical genius at Johns
Hopkins University, and Miss Ely, formerly
of the New York Normal college bnt now
of the Vassar faculty, and Miss Goodsell,
for so many years lady principal of Vassar,
with others who have made regulations for
themselves, had part not in the first years
but in those that were close to the begin
ming.
There is an old book-how quickly a thing
comes to seem oid-which gives cuts of the
quaint costumes with flowing skirts and
dropping feathers in which the first Vassar
students rode horseback, and of the huge
chignons, short skirts and pantalets-how
did they keep in their hairpins?-in which
they exercised in the gymnasium but since
the first founders day celebration, April 30,
1866, when the girls got themselves up, one
as Deborah, another as Xantippe, a third as
Joan of Arc, ETC., picturIng the women of
all ages, nothing has excited more general
interest among students and the outside
public than the projected celebration of the
colleges Quarter-centennial-w is to
take place June IL. as a conclusion to this
springs commencement exercises, and at
which the attendance of as large a proper
a. S1nft