the ease and rest of Wellesley, and who can count the stairways
Mrs. Durant went up, not that she might know how steep the stairs
of another, but to find the least toilsome steps for Wellesley feet.

"Night did not bring rest, only a change of work. Letters came and
went like the correspondence of a secretary of state. Devotion
and consecration I had seen before, and sacrifice and self-forgetting,
but never anything like the relentless toil of those two who toiled
not for themselves. If genius and infinite patience met for
the making of Wellesley, side by side with them went the angels
of work and prayer; the twin angels were to have their shrine
in the college."


V.

On September 8, I875, the college opened its doors to three hundred
and fourteen students. More than two hundred other applicants
for admission had been refused for lack of room. We can imagine
the excitement of the fortunate three hundred and fourteen, driving
up to the college in family groups,--for their fathers and mothers,
and sometimes their grandparents or their aunts came with them.
They went up Washington Street, "the long way", past the little
Gothic Lodge, and up the avenue between the rows of young elms
and purple beeches. There was a herd of Jersey cows grazing in
the meadow that day, and there is a tradition that the first student
entered the college by walking over a narrow plank, as the steps
up to the front door were not yet in place; but the story, though
pleasantly symbolical, does not square with the well-known energy
and impatience of the founder.