WELLESLEY COLLEGE BULLETIN ANNUAL REPORTS PRESIDENT AND TREASURER ^^ 191 6= J 8 WELLESLEY, MASSACHUSETTS DECEMBER, I9I8 PUBLISHED BY THE COLLEGE IN JANUARY, MAY, JUNE, NOVEMBER, DECEMBER Entered as second-class matter December 20, 1911, at the post-office at Wellesley. Massachusetts, under Act of Congress of July 16, 1894. SERIES 7 NUMBER 6 WELLESLEY COLLEGE ANNUAL EEPOKTS PBESIDENT AND TREASURER 1916-1918 PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL REPORT To the Board of Trustees of Wellesley College:— I have the honor to present in one the report of the two years from July 1, 1916, to June 30, 1918. Heretofore the annual reports of the President and Treasurer due June 30 have been published in the following March. It was decided to publish these hereafter in December. To avoid publishing two reports in the 1918 series, the report for 1916-17 was de- layed, and is here combined with that for 1917-18. The sup- plementary reports of the Dean, the Librarian, and the Chair- man of the Committee on Graduate Instruction will also cover two years. These two years have brought many losses to the College. On February 12, 1917, Pauline Adeline Durant, the widow of the founder of the College, died at her home in Wellesley. Mrs. Durant gave the heartiest co-operation to Mr. Durant's plan for founding the College, and throughout his life assisted him in every way. After his death in October, 1881, she accepted the care of the College as a sacred trust from her husband, and gave to it thought, time, and money. Mrs. Durant had been an invalid confined to her home for more than three years before her death, but until these later years no meeting of the Board of Trustees nor any college function was complete without her presence. No more just appreciation of Mrs. Durant's Hfe and work would be possible than that furnished by the following Resolutions adopted by the Trustees and by the faculty. In the death of Pauline Adeline Durant on February 12, 1917, Wellesley College loses not only its associate founder but a devoted friend and bene- factor. Ably assisting Mr. Durant in the founding of Wellesley College, Mrs. Durant accepted on his death, in accordance with his wishes, the office of Treasurer, and with it the demands upon her time and strength which the Wellesley College office involved. For fourteen years she carried the financial burdens, often meeting emergencies from her own purse, and when in March, 1895, she resigned the office of Treasurer, she nominated her successor. She con- tinued to hold the office of Secretary of the Board until her death, although during the later years she had been reliev-ed of the details of this office by the appointment of an assistant secretary. In 1881, when Mr. Durant died, the College numbered four hundred and fifty students. During the thirty-five years since his death, Mrs. Durant has seen the College grow to over fifteen hundred, a gain of two hundred and fifty per cent. Mrs. Durant jegarded the College as a sacred trust; she gave to it with unstinted generosity thought, energy, and loyalty that seemed absolutely tireless. Nor were her sympathies and efl'orts to serve by any means con- fined to this institution. In purpose and desire, if not in fact, they were as wide as the current calls and needs of Him who came not to be min- istered unto but to minister. In placing this minute upon the records, the Trustees gratefully record their gratitude and admiration for more than forty years of a service which has yielded freedom for progress, and pledge themselves anew to high en- deavor for the College which is the fruit of such a noble foundation. In view of the recent death of Mrs. Henry F. Durant, we, the Academic Council of WeUesley College, would express to her family and put upon record the little that our words can tell of the gratitude and reverence in which we held and hold her who was not merely the wife of Wellesley's founder, but in very truth the co-founder and co-giver of our College Beautiful. Together they suffered the loss of their only son; together they con- secrated the proud estate which was to have been his to the uses of the Christian education of women; together they lavished wealth and thought, unresting care and labor, on the building, equipment, and academic organization of Wellesley. Together they rejoiced in the erection of College Hall, Music Hall, Stone Hall; together they laid the cornerstone of Simpson; but it was alone that Mrs. Durant watched the rising walls of the Art Building and the four dormitories on Norumbega Hill, Billings Hall, the Quadrangle, the Gymnasium, the Observatory, the Library, the Chapel, and all the other buildings that have come into being during these thirty-five years of her widowhood. Far into old age, Mrs. Durant, at first officially, as secretary and treasurer of the Board of Trustees, always as donor, friend, and guardian, continued her work and her husband's for their beloved College. With rare mag- nanimity she accepted, one by one, the changes incident to progress. To each of our successive presidents she gave loyal support. Freeman Hall was erected by Mrs. Durant's own generosity in recognition of Mrs. Palmer's brilliant administration. With President Shafer, President Irvine, and President Hazard she was in cordial sympathy, and to all who loved her it was a cause of special thanksgiving that she lived to take President's Report part in the inauguration of our first alumna president, Miss Pendleton, whom she welcomed to that high office with an almost maternal joy and faith. But devoted to her own College though she was, Mrs. Durant's vision reached far beyond the borders of Wellesley, even so far as Constantinople, whose American College for Girls counted her among its most discerning trustees. Philanthropic causes had appealed to her from childhood, and her life overflowed with labors for missions, prisons, asylums. Work for boys made a sure appeal to her bereaved motherhood. One of the founders of the Young Women's Christian Association of Boston, she was continued in the office of president for half a century. Many other public activities as well as private charities owe a lasting debt to her sound judgment and practical ability. A Virginian lady, Mrs. Durant's dignity and charm, above all her grace of hospitality, have meant much to Wellesley during these four decades gone. Many a homesick girl from the South has learned that the footpath across Lake Waban meadow led to a gracious welcome. The Students' Aid Society, apparently initiated in 1878, soon centred in Mrs. Durant, who remained its very heart and soul to the last of her working strength. She enjoyed the college frolics; her presence at the Tree Day festival was hardly less constant than at Commencement; and she was ever gratified by her birthday serenades. Many of us in the faculty cherish precious memories of her courtesies and kindnesses,—flowers from her greenhouse that came to us in illness; words of tender comfort in our bereavements; concern for our troubles, and pleasure in our joys. In early girlhood Mrs. Durant gave herself to God by a written act of consecration,—a vow renewed again and again under stress of utmost trial. As we recall her noble hfe, rich in beauty and love, in sorrow and in service, and realize that her death has set a period to that first intimate chapter of Wellesley history, we are well awa,re it would be her dearest wish that we commemorate our loss of her by taking up anew, with deeper purpose and diviner hope, the task our founders have left us,—the in- cessant building of that Wellesley whose cornerstone is Christ. On May 13, 1917, a memorial service was held in the college chapel. With Mrs. Durant's death the first period of the history of the College is brought to its close. On April 26, 1917, Helen J. Sanborn of the class of 1884 died at her home in Somerville after a long illness. Miss Sanborn was elected to Hfe membership on the Board of Trustees in 1906. She was devoted to her Alma Mater and contributed generously to its needs. She was instrumental in raising the debt on Norumbega Cottage in early days, and made many Wellesley College gifts to the departments of English Literature and Spanish during her Hfe, providing further for these departments in her will. She was a generous contributor to the Students' Aid Society, and by bequest established a scholarship fund for the aid of students, especially of the daughters of alumnae.—The following minute was adopted by the Board of Trustees: Miss Helen J. Sanborn was elected to the Board of Trustees in 1906. She had already shown her devotion to the interests of the College by her service as a member and, for some time, as chairman of the alumnae com- mittee which assisted in cancelling the debt on Norumbega Cottage. This committee was only one of the many ways in which Miss Sanborn gave time and thought to the College before her election as trustee. Her member- ship in the Board simply deepened the interest she had already shown in her Abna Mater. The departments of English Literature and Spanish have specially claimed her interest, receiving from her gifts of money and many valuable books. The Students' Aid Society, the Shakespeare Society, and later the Shakespeare Garden are among the causes which counted her a generous supporter.