VOLUME I.—No. ^. CONTENTS. PAGE. PAGE. - Leader, Sarah M. Bock, '90 - - - 3fc. 65 College Notes, Theodora Kyle, '91 - - - 75 Love's Largess.—Poem, Louise ManiiingHodgkins 66 Auld Acquaintance, Edith S. Tufts, '84 - - 75 A Bird Calendar, A. C. Chapin - - - 66 Inter-Collegiate News, Mary W. Bates, '92 - 76 Jack, Rosa Dean, '90 - - - - - 67 Our Outlook, Mary Barrows, '90 - - - 76 The Greek Play at Smith, J. S. R. - - 68 Waban Ripples 77 Oxford Letter, S. Lilian Burlingame '85 - - 70 Magazines and Reviews, Mary Barrows, '90 - 77 Our Letter from Athens, Emily Norcross, 'So - 72 Book Reviews, Sarah M. Bock, '90 - - 78 The Week, Emily I. Meader, '91 ... 73 Wellesley, Mass., October 19, 1S89. Willis F. Stevens, Publisher, Wellesley, Mass. Wl^^^ rme^ (Formerly exclusively wholesale.) HIGH CLASS NOVELTIES A SPECIALTY. Direct Importations and their Own Celebrated Make. SPRINGER BROTHERS' POPULAR CLOAK ESTABLISHMENTS- RETAIL BUILDING, WHOLESALE AND RETAIL, 500 Washington St., cor. Bedford St. Essex St., from Chauncy to Harrison Ave BOSTON. To all students of Wellesley College, as well as other educational institu- tions, Springer Brothers offer a discount of six per cent, on any purchases the} may make at either establishment. Please mention this advertisement. The Wellesley Prelude. Vol. I. WELLESLEY COLLEGE, OCTOBER 19, 1889. No. 5. something entirely different. Neither is it a loss of The Wellesley Prelude. time. Those who do it, eventually accomplish Edited by the Students of Wellesley College and published more than those who habitually allow their work to weekly during the college year. Price, )f3.oo a year, in advance. Single copies, 10 cents. crowd into their rest time. What is gained in time is inevitably lost in health As EDITORS: or quality of work. a large body of students, living together, we should Mary D. E. Lauderiiurn, '90. Sarah M. Bock, '90. consider this especially, and for the sake of those Mary Barrows, '90. about us, if not for ourselves, we should drop our Emily I. Meader, '91. Theodora Kyle, '91. work occasionally, and stop the continual " talking Mary W. Bates, '92. " Edith S. Tufts, '84. shop at table and in our walks and calls. But besides keeping our recreation hours free Publisher, Willis F. Stevens. from our work, we should fill them with more posi- All literary communications from the students of the tive enjoyment. Many of us have an idea that college should be sent to Miss Lauderuurn, through the exercise is all need. It is unusual thing, " Prelude " bo.K in the general office. Literary communi- we not an cations from outside the college should be directed to the therefore, for a girl who is weary of her studying to Alumnae Editor, Miss Edith S. Tufts, Dana Hall, Welles- ley, Mass. force herself to take a long walk because she feels Subscriptions and all other business communications it her duty to take her exercise. The only result is, should be sent, in all cases, to the Publisher, Willis F. Stevens, Wellesley, Mass. often, that body as well as mind is worn out. Absolute rest is better than such exercise. Fatigue Entered at the Welledey Post Office as second-class matter. of the body will never reheve fatigue of the brain. We must idealize and disguise our exercise. We AT the beginning of another year, among the many questions that confront us, few are must take it in the form of play, if we wish to get more important than the question of recreation. any good from it. The walk taken as a duty was By this we do not mean the necessity of recreation. as much work to that girl as her study. The boy That has been settled long ago, and most of us who piles up the wood for his mother, imagining have learned by experience the truth of the old that an enemy is approaching and that he is throw- saying, " all work and no play makes Jack a dull ing up a defence, is a hundred times healthier and boy." We do mean, however, the question of how happier than the boy who looks upon it simply as we can get the greatest good in the short time work. And yet they both have the same muscular which we give to recreation. With many, this is exercise. So the girl who takes her exercise, not only an hour each day, but much more benefit may from a sense of duty merely, but looks upon it as be derived from this one hour, if properly spent, a pleasure and recreation will be refreshed and in- than is usually derived. vigorated by it in body and mind. There are two things that we must learn to do Finally, we believe that five or ten minutes re- before our recreation hour will yield the profit it creation taken at the end of every recitation or should, ^\'e must shut out from it our work, and study period, if possible, would often be of more we must play more. value than a whole hour at the end of a long weary The first may seem impossible to some and a loss day. Sarah M. Bock, 'go. of time to others, but it is neither. It can and has it been done. Many business and literary men have Do not despise your situation ; in you must found it their only salvation to have some time each act, suffer, and conquer. From every point on day when they simply drop all thought of their or- earth we are equally near to heaven and to the dinary occupation, and turn their attention to infinite. Amid. ; . : " 66 THE WELLESLEY PRELUDE. LOVE'S LARGESS. morning in October ; but most of the fly-catcher family are gone. ' Only givi: mc bark mine man in love ; that will he i?iuch.' Alas for the thrushes I They may still be lurking Only thine own, dear Love? about silent and unseen. Only the robin will lin- Not of the blest are such ; ger till Thanksgiving, or Christmas perhaps. I give be3'ond, above, The sparrows and finches are not in so much Nor count it overmuch. haste, "chippy" acts as if he intended to stay all I give thee back thine own winter, and I heartily wish he would, but I fear he Count it and thou shalt see is not such a lion-hearted little hero as the chicka- That tliou hast all the loan, " Thine own "—with usury. dee. A bird's pluck seems to be generally in in- Louise Manning Hodgkiiis verse proportion to his size. The nut-hatches appear to be more abundant A BIRD CALENDAR. now than in the summer, and they too will be here all winter. The following article clipped several These are days of flitting, alike for the summer- years ago from the London Standard may be of boarder, the student, and the birds. Flocks of interest at this season. emigrants are gathering, setting out with unerring " Professor Newton considers that were sea-fowls instinct southward. They brought much with them satellites revolving round the earth, their arrival when they came, they are taking much away with could hardly be more surely calculated by an as- them for which we shall look and listen in vain. tronomer. Foul weather or fair, heat or cold, the Already we have had some silent birdless days, and puffins repair to some of their stations on a given then again the air seems full of wings. Blue-birds day, as if their movements were regulated by are much on the wing, not in long aspiring flights clock-work. like swallows, but with many rapid flutterings even The swiftness of flight which characterizes most after they have lighted. Their autumn note is birds enables them to -cover a vast space in a brief pathetic in the extreme, sounding like the word time. The common black swift can fly two hun- "weep, weep," uttered softly. But one glorious dred and seventy-six miles an hour. The chimney morning when the sky was as blue as their wings, swallow is slower, ninety miles an hour being about I heard the true spring warble from a small flock of the limit of its powers. them who were playing round the pointed trim- Migrants during their long flights may be direc- mings of the college turrets. Each time we see ted by an experience partly inherited and partly them may be the last, though some will linger into acquired by the individual bird. They often follow November. the coast-line of continents, and invariably take, on We find ourselves now dividing our birds into their passage over the Mediterranean, one of three two classes, residents and migrants, and among the routes. But this theory will not explain how they latter, the early and the late. Large numbers de- pilot themselves across broad oceans, and is inval- part in September. Those most brilliant in color idated by the fact, famihar to every ornithologist, and voice seem to go first, like the scarlet tanager, that the old and young birds do not journey in the rose-breasted grossbeak, the Baltimore oriole, company. the red-start and all the warblers except the yel- I suspect the truth of it Hes in these- words of low-rump or iTiyrtle-bird which is said to remain all Browning winter, though I have never seen it here. There ' ' I see my way as birds their trackless way, have been large flocks of pine-creeping warblers to He guides me and the bird." be seen even on rainy days. "Ask the gier-eagle why she stoops at once The wood-peewee comes late and like Charles Into the vast and unexplored abyss, Lamb, makes up for it by going away early.