The students were received on their arrival by the president,
Miss Ada L. Howard, in the reception room. They were then shown
to their rooms by teachers. The majority of the rooms were in
suites, a study and bedroom or bedrooms for two, three, and in
a few suites, four girls. There were almost no single rooms in
those days, even for the teachers. With a few exceptions, every
bedroom and every study had a large window opening outdoors.
There were carpets on the floors, and bookshelves in the studies,
and the black walnut furniture was simple in design. As one alumna
writes: "The wooden bedsteads with their wooden slats, of vivid
memory, the wardrobes, so much more hospitable than the two hooks
on the door, which Matthew Vassar vouchsafed to his protegees,
the high, commodious bureaus, with their 'scant' glass of fashion,
are all endeared to us by long association, and by our straining
endeavors to rearrange them in our rooms, without the help of man."

When the student had showed her room to her anxious relatives,
on that first day, she came down to the room that was then the
president's office, but later became the office of the registrar.
There she found Miss Sarah P. Eastman, who, for the first six
years of the college life, was teacher of history and director of
domestic work. Later, with her sister, Miss Julia A. Eastman, she
became one of the founders of Dana Hall, the preparatory school
in Wellesley village. An alumna of the class of '80 who evidently
had dreaded this much-heralded domestic work, writes that Miss
Eastman's personality robbed it of its horrors and made it seem
a noble and womanly thing. "When, in her sweet and gracious
manner, she asked, 'How would you like to be on the circle to
scrape dinner dishes?' you straightway felt that no occupation