Wellesley girls of this lovable and ardent pioneer.


III.

Wellesley's debt to her third president, Helen A. Shafer, is
nowhere better defined than in the words of a distinguished alumna,
Sophonisba P. Breckenridge, writing on Miss Shafer's administration,
in the Wellesley College News of November 2, 1901. Miss
Breckenridge says:

It is said that in a great city on the shore of a western
lake the discovery was made one day that the surface of the
water had gradually risen and that stately buildings on the
lake front designed for the lower level had been found both
misplaced and inadequate to the pressure of the high level.
They were fair without, well proportioned and inviting; but
they were unsteady and their collapse was feared. To take
them down seemed a great loss: to leave them standing as
they were was to expose to certain perils those who came and
went within them. They proved to be the great opportunity of
the engineer. He first, without interrupting their use, or
disturbing those who worked within, made them safe and sure
and steady, able to meet the increased pressure of the higher
level, and then, likewise without interfering with the day's
work of any man, by skillful hidden work, adapted them to
the new conditions by raising their level in corresponding
measure. The story told of that engineer's great achievement
in the mechanical world has always seemed applicable to the
service rendered by Miss Shafer to the intellectual structure