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expressing our high appreciation and grateful acknowledgments for her valuable services during her connection with this institution.

Hoping for a pleasant tour and safe return from her journeyings abroad, we will pray for her safety, her continued success, prosperity and happiness in any sphere of labor and usefulness she may be called to fill in the future. [Unanimously adopted.] D. A. OGDEN, Secretary.

CHAPTER VIII.

PRESIDENT OF EVANSTON COLLEGE FOR LADIES.

The circumstances that led to my being elected president of a new college, and the first woman to whom that honorable title was accorded, though so many others have deserved it better, are thus narrated by my mother to the stenographer :

In 1868 Frank went to Europe. Her good friend, Kate Jackson, paid all the expenses of their trip, which cost about $12,000 in gold, at the time when gold was at a premium. We rented Rest Cottage to Rev. Mr. Safford and family, friends of ours from Oberlin, and I boarded with them for a year. The next year my son and his family moved into our house, and I boarded with them a year. Then we closed the house, and I went to Churchville to visit our relatives and await my daughter's coming. Frank and Kate returned in September of 1870, and we three reopened Rest Cottage, where I have lived ever since.

That winter we did all of our own work, not because we could not have a girl, for Kate had no lack of money, but after such a tremendous outing as those two had been through, they seemed to enjoy hugely the idea of hiding away out of sight and hearing, and keeping house for themselves. Frank occupied herself chiefly with the outdoor part, chopping kindling, bringing in wood and coal, and doing the rougher work, while Kate and I attended to the culinary and ornamental departments. One day when Frank was busy nailing down the stair-carpet, Mrs. Dr. Kidder, whose husband was then leading professor in the Theological Seminary, came from her home across the street, and taking a seat on the stairs, said, "Frank, I am amazed at you. Let some one else tack down carpets, and do you take charge of the new college." 'Very well," answered Frank; "I shall be glad to do so. I was only waiting to be asked."

Comparing the opportunities for womanhood then and now, the old Persian proverb comes instinctively to mind, kingdoms wait thy diadem than are known to thee by name." Coincident with the advance of woman into an unknown realm, began another epoch in my life, as I was made President of the Evanston College for Ladies.

On St. Valentine's day, 1871, I was elected to this position, and at once entered on my duties.

Its

Our college was, indeed, something new under the sun. beginning was on this wise: Mrs. Mary F. Haskin, wife of the kind friend who gave me my first financial send-off, was a woman of decidedly progressive thought. She believed that women should be a felt force in the higher education, not only as students, but as professors and trustees. She believed that to have men only in these positions, was to shut up one of humanity's eyes, and that in the effort to see all around the mighty subject of education with the other, a squint had been contracted that was doing irreparable damage to the physiognomy of the body politic. Therefore, Mrs. Haskin ordered her handsome carriage and notable white horses one fine day, and calling on half a score of the most thoughtful women in Evanston, proposed to them to found a woman's college, in which women should constitute the board of trustees, a woman should be president and confer diplomas, and women should be, for the first time, recognized and proved as the peers of men in administrative power. She pointed out that even at Vassar College the president and all the trustees were masculine, while at Mt. Holyoke, where one would think the spirit of Mary Lyon would have left more liberal traditions, men only were trustees, and a man always conferred the diplomas that young women's study and older women's teaching had combined to earn. Evanston is the paradise of women, and Mrs. Haskin found abundant preparation of heart and answer of tongue among the earnest Christian matrons to whom she addressed herself. A meeting of ladies was appointed in her own home, at which measures were instituted to secure a charter and empower Mrs. Bishop Hamline with fourteen other ladies, and their successors, as trustees.

Our genial townsman, Hon. Edward S. Taylor, was in the Legislature that winter [1869-70], and through his influence the Charter was secured. Meanwhile, my own beloved Alma Mater, the ** Northwestern Female College,' was in full career, for although its founder, Prof. Wm. P. Jones, had been consul in China for several years, he had placed the institution in 1862-63 under care of Mrs. Lizzie Mace McFarland, and, later, that admirable College president, Rev. Dr. Lucius H. Bugbee, had

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Bishop E. O. Haven.

been at its head. Professor Jones himself had now returned and for a year resumed the leadership. But by wise diplomacy Mrs. Haskin, president of the new board of trustees, and those associated with her, secured the transfer of the Charter of the old college into their own hands, with a choice list of alumnæ, the formalities of the change taking place in the old Evanston church. at the final "Commencement" of the old College in 1871. Meanwhile, in 1869, Rev. Dr. (afterward Bishop) E. O. Haven had resigned the presidency of Michigan University to accept that of the Northwestern University at Evanston, none of whose advantages had been open to women until this man, who stood second to no college president in the nation, made it a condition of his coming to us, that every door should be flung wide to the gentler half of humanity. How many times have I thought, with regrets unutterable, of what it would have meant to my own education had all those doors been open in 1858! But this was not at all in the plans of the good men who founded and controlled the University, and had not Dr. Haven been born with the diplomatic skill of a Talleyrand he never could have fitted the conflicting elements of the three educational interests-old College, new College, and University-into one, of which the University was from the first, not only helm, but wheel and rudder. It was he who held high counsel with Professor Jones when the latter, strenuous-and justly so-for the dignity and historic perpetuation of an enterprise into which he had poured heroic years of toil, was loth to see his pet College merged in ours. It was Dr. Haven who arranged for the Evanston College for Ladies to be so correlated with the University, that, under his presidency, the two moved on in perfect unison; and had he remained until the new order of things became fully established it is my confident belief that ours would have been to-day the greatest, because the most thoroughly American University extant.

I see him now, medium-sized, alert-moving, most modest and unostentatious of men, with his fine brow, mild, but keenflashing eyes, dominant nose of Roman mould, and his “smile as sweet as summer." His voice was musical, his manner winsome, but behind all, his purpose was unconquerable as Cæsar's. Unlike almost every other person I have known, he had the piercing mental gaze that could divide the accidental from the necessary

"In Non-essentials, Liberty."

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in this purpose; the latter he followed with the rapidity and lightness of a greyhound. Most men carry luggage in following their purpose; he laid aside every weight; they load with small shot and their fire is scattering; his was always Sharpe's rifle— one ball, and hit the game; they tithe mint and cummin, he tithed nothing, but made all gleaners welcome to his harvestfield. More than once I heard him say, "I think a man who has the ability and who manifests the spirit of Professor Jones, should have a good position in our University. He gives up the hope of a lifetime in order that the educational interests of Evanston may become unified, and this action should be recognized not in words only but in deeds."*

He wanted only what came to him naturally as the result of his own reaction on the forces about him, and rejoiced to see the dignity and prerogatives of others fully acknowledged, not fearing for his own. How much of life's present friction will be avoided when the average mind discovers that the central aim of any life is best conserved by choosing for one's motto "In non-essentials, liberty"! But the trouble is, only a great mind can so take in the scope of life to perceive that most things are relatively, and all things are absolutely, non-essential except "truth in the inward parts"; and that to apply that truth more perfectly to heart and home, to state and world affairs, is more than all burnt-offerings and sacrifices. Dr. Haven saw the truth of family government— the fatherly plus the motherly eye applied to the problem of educating young people; and he followed it more grandly than any other educator of his time.

With such a master spirit among us, so intuitive in thought, magnanimous in heart, and harmonious in action, we launched the fearless ship that flew the pennon "Evanston College for Ladies."

But we suffered from plethora of plans coupled with such a dearth of dimes that something had to be done, and that right speedily.

Now came to the front, with her unmatched gift of imparting enthusiasm, Mrs. A. H. Hoge, the new president of our "Women's Educational Association," and the distinguished

*Both these true men have passed onward now: Bishop Haven in 1881; Professor Jones in 1886.