"It was my privilege to be one of a class of ten or more students
who, during the last two years of their college life (1884-1886)
elected Miss Shafer's course in Mathematics. It is difficult to
give adequate expression to the impression which Miss Shafer made
as a teacher. There was a friendly graciousness in her manner of
meeting a class which established at once a feeling of sympathy
between student and teacher.... She taught us to aim at clearness
of thought and elegance of method; in short, to attempt to give
to our work a certain finish which belongs only to the scholar....
I believe that it has often been the experience of a Wellesley
girl, that once on her feet in Miss Shafer's classroom, she has
surprised herself by treating a subject more clearly than she
would have thought possible before the recitation. The explanation
of this, I think, lay in the fact that Miss Shafer inspired her
students with her own confidence in their intellectual powers."

When we realize that during the last ten years of her life she
was fighting tuberculosis, and in a state of health which, for
the ordinary woman, would have justified an invalid existence,
we appreciate more fully her indomitable will and selflessness.
During the winter of 1890-1891, she was obliged to spend some
months in Thomasville, Georgia, and in her absence the duties of
her office devolved upon Professor Frances E. Lord, the head
of the Department of Latin, whose sympathetic understanding of
Miss Shafer's ideals enabled her to carry through the difficult
year with signal success. Miss Shafer rallied in the mild climate,
and probably her life would have been prolonged if she had chosen
to retire from the college; but her whole heart was in her work,
and undoubtedly if she had known that her coming back to Wellesley